**********
Prime Attitude
Chapter 02 - Learning
Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(c) 2002
**********
The first practice session was over and Ranma had been given a chance to see how the machine worked. He could only think of one thing that even compared to this machine and it didn't really come close. During that two week stint he had spent stuck as a girl because of the cat's tongue Cologne had once given him she had set up that area at the festival where all those spirit like things had tried to distract him. This had included that monkey dressed in clothing to attack him physically as well. That was the closest he could come to describing something that came even the tiniest bit close to the Danger Room. Wolverine's fight had started out easy enough, but it had slowly gotten more and more dangerous as the Sentinels had adapted to Wolverine's presence.
The fight had been a lot of fun to watch, but he understood that there was a bit of danger involved when it came to this Danger Room, Wolverine had taken quite a beating from those last Sentinel creatures, coming out of it covered in large bruises and cuts that seemed to close up and vanish as Ranma watched him. Like Wolverine, Ranma had entered the main room and found himself standing in the middle of the large empty area and waiting for Beast to pick out a program to run him through. He'd already been told that going up against the Sentinels would have to wait for later since Beast wanted to test him out on something a little bit easier and work his way up from there. That was fine with Ranma, he hadn't fought a whole bunch of opponents, one after another in some time. The last time he had done that was against an entire dojo full of students a couple of years back while over in China, he'd won, but it had taken every trick and sneaky attack he had available to do it.
Ranma knew that the whole place would change before his eyes when things started and he was kind of curious just how real it would be when things got underway. When he was learning the Hiruu Shoten Ha technique the old ghoul had taught him how to feel the world around him so that he could feel the change in temperature needed for the technique, it had the side effect of allowing him to 'see' the world in a ways that he hadn't been able to before. Now as he spent a few seconds running through some stretches to make sure he was ready for the upcoming fight he was getting curious, what would the room look like with that new sense, then he watched in fascination at the whole room shimmered and changed before his eyes as it turned into a large fighting arena, across from him was a man in a simple white gi in a fighting stance. He was about 5'5 or so, thin but muscular and looked more than a little like Bruce Lee.
"Ranma, this is a random combat sim set to test your skills, it will start out slow and be pretty simple at first, but as you go along the program will rate your skills and adapt to match them." Beast said over the intercom.
"Alright, this looks like fun."
"Are you ready?"
"Sure; is this actually Bruce Lee?"
"Just a computer representation of him that we whipped up once for a bit of fun."
"Cool, lets go for it." Ranma said and grinned as he smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand.
Suddenly Bruce came to life and stepped forward with a loud 'Whaaaaaaaa!!" and launched himself forward. Ranma twitched his body to avoid a punch and frowned a little, he'd seen enough Bruce Lee movies to know that the guy was faster than this, but Beast had said this would get harder and harder as the fight went on so he figured he would wait until things picked up before he really started to go. He certainly hoped this guy would get faster or this was going to be one boring fight. Moving with relative ease Ranma blocked Lee's multiple attacks and kept on the defensive as he studied his opponent. Up in the booth Beast sighed as Wolverine laughed at the look of boredom on Ranma's face. Beast tapped a nearby dial to kick the danger setting up several levels.
"Told you Ranma could take a higher setting than that." Logan growled out.
"I know, but had to make sure he wasn't giving us a lot of bull about his skills."
"I can judge a good fighter just by looking at them fur ball, Ranma has skills he hasn't even tapped yet, he does things should pick up."
"Well let's find out just what he has to give." Beast said.
Bruce Lee flipped over Ranma and landed in a relaxed stance and 'paused' for a second before he suddenly started to fight with a lot more skill and power. Ranma almost sighed with relief as the challenge increased and unconsciously started to mimic Bruce's current skill level and retaliate on a whole new level. Trading blows at an increased rate they started to move all over the floor, pushing each other to perform techniques and skills that only full level masters could pull off. Ranma had learned quite a bit about Bruce Lee's style of fighting over the years and he knew that this fake version wasn't even close to the real thing yet, but it was better than fighting that mindless copy cat drone he had started out with. He grinned as the skill level increased suddenly, by a factor of four or more, this was more like what he was expecting when he started this and they started to blur, their blows moving so fast that the human eye couldn't even keep up.
"Whaaaaaaaaa!!" Bruce Lee screamed and went into some pretty impressive aerial attacks.
Ducking and weaving Ranma just rolled his eyes and continued to block and test the copy's defenses, Bruce's true level of skill was starting to finally show up, but his vocabulary was a bit one sided. With a shrug Ranma exploded into an attack he used against Ryoga every now and then, three blows to Bruce's stomach, chest, and chin sent him sprawling to the floor where he vanished in a swirl of light, this caught Ranma by surprise. He figured that he would be fighting Bruce Lee through the whole test, was it done already?
"Is that it?"
"Hold on Ranma, that was the limit of that sim's capacities. Let me get your next opponent ready for battle."
"Bring it on!" Ranma said as he relaxed a little and looked around to see where the next attacker would come from, then he spotted another figure as it formed nearby. He didn't recognize this one, he was wearing one of those ridiculous spandex uniforms though. It was an all black body suit, kind of like a ninja would wear, but this was more glossy and form fitting than anything else. He even had a series of weapons on his back with a small pack, Ranma could tell that this guy had some interesting skills just from the way he was kneeling on the floor waiting to go into action. If the guy was a ninja they usually had ways to sit down and kneel for days at a time and always be ready for battle in an instant's notice, Ranma recognized this guy's stance.
There was no reaction when the sim started this time, no flicker of light or slight pause, just one second the guy was frozen in place, the next he was in motion. Ranma ducked as the guy pulled his sword and attempted to behead him with a lightning fast attack. It brought back memories of his morning fights with Kuno when he had first come across those magical swords, this guy's skill felt the same, the sword was running the fight and the guy had nothing to say about it but to hold the sword and do as the sword said. This guy was a couple of levels higher skill wise than Bruce had been so he charged a bit more Ki into his body and used the Amaguriken to tap several hundred attacks into the guys wrists, arms, and chest, to weaken his grip on the sword, lock his muscles, and mess with his breathing. The instant he dropped the sword Ranma straight punched him the forehead and knock him out, sending the body flying backwards. The body faded even before he hit the ground and Ranma bounced back a few feet and waited for the next attacker to show up.
The room itself flickered and changed before his eyes this time, taking on the look of a city, he seemed to be standing on the sidewalk, but there were no people around as far as he could see. Ranma wasn't sure what was going on, but Beast hadn't given him a warning this time so it meant he probably had to deal with this threat with no warning at all...
**********
Rogue rummaged through the fridge and pulled out whatever she could find to eat, they seemed to be out of or very low on most of the main ingredients for everything. She knew Ranma had eaten earlier, but she didn't think the girl would have been able to eat enough food for over a dozen people in one sitting. From the looks of things she had been wrong, there was bread for sandwiches, but no cheese and half a piece of lunch meat. Who in the world ate half a piece of lunch meat and put the other half back in the fridge? The jar of mayonnaise was mostly empty, yet she remembered buying a new one less than three days ago. Well she would have to improvise a little, that meant using odd things for toppings, it wouldn't be the first time that's for sure.
Ten minutes later she had two sandwiches made up, they both had a tiny amount of mayonnaise, then came the half a piece of lunch meat, some micro waved chicken stripped off the bone, cheese, lettuce, and pickles. She didn't normally eat pickles, but when one had to improvise, pickles did the trick and at least they weren't hot, those were just gross. Wandering into the front room she sat down to watch TV with the rest of the team, for some reason the last month had been incredibly boring. There hadn't been a rogue mutant attack, Magneto hadn't resurfaced, Cain Marko hadn't come by for a visit as the Juggernaut, nothing to speak of. Even the news had commented on how quite it had been lately, the Avengers and FF4 were starting to prove they could have normal lives again.
Wolverine had just returned from one of his runs through the Canadian woods where he had a cabin that he visited whenever he felt like getting away from everything. Then Beast and Storm had been in Japan to visit friends and advance science a little more, they still didn't really know what to think of this Ranma person they had brought back with them. Bishop was on edge and kept making patrols around the property muttering about targets and a glare in his grouchy eye, she was beginning to wonder if he had ever had a day off in his life. Even Gambit had decided to vanish for a while, Rogue missed him, but figured he would be back to pester her eventually. Rogue had no clue where Scott and Jean had been running off to every few days, but they just took off and returned some time later with silly grins plastered to their faces that let everyone know what they had been up to. This was the first time in three or four weeks when all of them had been in the mansion together, something was in there air, she could feel it.
"What did you think of Ranma, Rogue?" Storm asked.
"He seems normal enough, though that power of his is hard to adapt to."
"Power?" Bishop asked.
"Ranma can change from one sex to the other with hot or cold water, it's an amazing thing to see."
"A shape changer? Are there any other forms he can take?" Scott asked.
"Not that I know of, he seems to prefer his male form though. It's about twice the size of the female form y'all met earlier." Rogue said.
"Interesting, what did he look like?" Asked Jean.
"Like a male form of that girl, he has black hair and tons of well defined muscles. He said he'd been training in martial arts for close to ten years and you can see it in the way he moves, almost like Bishop here does when he's stalking someone."
Bishop raised and eyebrow and tried to recall if that girl had moved like that, he didn't want to admit that the only thing he could remember was how well Rogue's uniform fit on her body. He grunted.
"Where is he right now? Still with McCoy down in the Danger room?"
"Yeah, it should be a while yet, remember how long our first time in room took."
"True, true..."
**********
Chad wasn't sure what was going on, but he knew he was in trouble and had been on the streets to long not to recognize the signs. For over a year now he had been homeless, even held down a part time job to make some money, but was never able to get enough in his pocket to claw his way off the streets. No less than an hour ago he had been sitting down at a local dinner to eat lunch when his survival instincts had warned him of something. At first he had ignored them, he was in the middle of a dinner after all, but as he sat there finishing off a burger it had grown steadily worse. Something had been watching him, but looking around the dinner hadn't helped and there was no one outside that looked suspicious enough to make him think they were doing it. He'd kept his thoughts to himself and quickly finished his meal, the sooner he got somewhere more protected the easier it would be to hide.
For a second he even considered going to police, but they wouldn't do anything to help him, he was homeless after all so they wouldn't even care. They never did anything to help out people like him, they ran them off to keep them form bothering people. He had once heard the Police didn't protect people, they weren't allowed to think for themselves, instead they protected the Constitution. That was why Lawyers had so much power, one little mistake and they could get a mass murderer off on some tiny little technicality and be proud of themselves at the same time. He considered going to a local homeless shelter, but those places were a little to seedy for his tastes, the workers there were always acting funny and those guys that did get a bed for the night sometimes disappeared. There had to be some place he could go, but where? After a few minutes thought he stepped outside and headed uptown, towards the nice areas of town, where the cops were more prevalent. He may not have trusted cops, but they would help to keep this jerk off his back if they happened to see anything.
Half an hour later he didn't care about the cops, he didn't care that he didn't trust them, all he wanted to do was find one so they could use those guns of theirs on the thing following him. He was currently he was running down an alley deep in the lower part of mid town, he'd been diverted from going somewhere safe and almost herded through the maze of alleys and streets that were so crime ridden that even the police tried to avoid the place if they could. It was no secret that monsters lived down here, he had met a few of them here and there and learned to stay away from them if he wanted to stay alive. Now one of them was after him for unknown reasons and didn't even know what he'd done to provoke this thing.
As far as he knew he was up to date paying off the local gangs for protection, that was where most of his money went, but if this wasn't there normal way those bastards handled things. This was something different and it was out to get him for some unknown reason, it had come out of nowhere and started to chase him in broad daylight like it was no big deal. He had to get some help, but to do that he had to get away from it then he could get to safety. As Chad ran he glanced over his shoulder and saw a large shadow like thing running along behind him, moving with a silent gait that was almost to eerie to describe. He had a feeling it was mutant, but this was the first one he had ever met that acted like this, normally they were just ugly freak.
This thing wasn't like that at all, it was cloaked in shadows and hard to see as it moved. That meant he had to be doubly careful or he felt that he would be it's next...victim. He didn't bother to yell as he ran, it was a bad idea to attract attention down in this area. This thing would only kill him, there were worse fates for those stupid enough to attract attention from the wrong people. He ran out of the alley and barely even noticed as he ran out into one of the busier streets and past several cars, dodging through traffic, Chad ran for his life.
Behind him the shadow monster burst out of the alley and landed on the roof of a taxi parked at the side of the street. It's claws dug into the metal of the hood as the car rocked back and forth under it's weight and looked around with glowing eyes. It was like a gargoyle, an evil looking form with clawed wings and a stone like skin that had massive looking claws at the ends of it's hands and feet that seemed to be shredding the very metal of the Taxi was made out of like it was paper. It spotted Chad in the distance and with an inhuman screech spread a its wings and launched into the air. The Taxi and it's driver were nearly killed as it's powerful leg muscles came close to flipping over on it's side, there were claw marks all over the hood that exposed parts of the engine to the air. The driver had fainted when it landed on the hood.
It flapped its wings several times to gain height and sent shocked citizens running and screaming from their cars in a panic as it glided after Chad from about twenty feet above the street. Chaos and fear followed in it's wake as the 'herd' ran for it, to the monster it was a giant smorgasbord of easy prey, but it had set it's eye on this one first and would take it down first and foremost. It had a limited intelligence, but knew enough about it's prey to know that they liked to hide from danger like rabbits. Screeching in joy it took a bit of delight as it's victim ran from it, glorying in the thrill of the hunt and wondered if this one would be as much fun as it's last play toy.
Seconds before all this happened traffic had been moving alone quite nicely with no delays, but now with all the abandoned cars and the fleeing wave of humanity it was dead locked for miles with people running for their lives in all directions. Chad didn't care about all this, all he wanted to do was get away, he just ran and dodged around cars where he could, weaving through panicked mindless mob all about him as they scrambling for very their lives. He spotted a large truck in the distance with a flatbed trailer holding something large under a dark gray tarp. There were soldiers on and around the trailer with large weapons ready to protect whatever was under the tarp, the panicked mob had divided in half around as they ran and the soldiers looked to be on edge. Chad had once been in the Army, a very long time ago, and knew that these guys would be trigger happy if that cargo was important enough. He ducked around a car and attempted to get far enough away from the truck to keep these guys from shooting him, but his luck ran out as the thing flying above him dived suddenly with it's claws spread out to impale him through the shoulder.
He screamed in pain as he is slammed against the trunk of the car, the thing sets it's feet on his legs and digs in some claws there as well. Chad cursed as all the claws sliced through his body with incredible ease, but that wasn't the worst thing. The worst was a half second later when he felt his life being sucked out of him, it had to be the most painful thing he had ever felt in his life and he screamed to let everyone know it. No one stopped to help, that would have endangered them too and everyone knows how selfish people are in a situation like this, everybody for themselves. A little ways away the soldiers had pulled the tarp off the trailer to reveal a large energy weapon of some kind, the CO jumped in the seat and charged the weapons computers as he'd been shown how. A Godzilla fan would have compared it to the Lazer Cannon used in the earlier movies, but that was where the similarities ended. It lifted up and took aim at the monster in the midst of killing, the dish that made up it's front end flared with electricity, and fired a few seconds later.
The beam that fired out lanced through several cars before it hit the monster, it was just turning to see where the strange light was coming from as it screamed in pain and was literally ripped to pieces, of course Chad was in the way, but the death of one human was always an acceptable loss to kill a mutant. Sentinels had proven that time and again as they hunted down mutants that couldn't defend themselves. Chad hadn't stopped screaming yet, so this pain was added to his own as the world turned white. Then the unexpected happened, they were near the back end of a car that was catching the flare off of the Lazer energy. So of course as the paint melted and ruptured the car's gas tank the just had to explode right underneath them, it was the last thing the monster ever saw, but for Chad it was a different story altogether. The monster died in the giant ball of fire the explosion created, Chad on the other hand turned out to be a Neo Mutant, a normal human that had an inactivated mutant gene. He had no clue that the Government had tried several times to expose him to things, during his stint in the army, in an effort to activate it. He had no clue that that he was even a Neo Mutant, all he knew was that the world was suddenly...different than it had been and he was suddenly scared.
No one ever found his body.
**********
The basic definition of a Danger Room was someplace to test one's skills in controlled conditions. To Ranma that didn't matter, to him it was like some kind large real life video game that could test even his skills. The pile of shattered and broken robots was nearly hip deep and covered most of the room as Ranma wadded through them with a single mindedness that only Wolverine could understand. This had started out as a test to see what level he fought at, but as things went along Beast had been forced to toss in certain surprises and traps to keep Ranma occupied. Ranma's aura was flaring wildly as he battled stronger and stronger opponents and was giving off some strange shadows. He was currently in the middle of a pack of robots as they tried to take him down, but he elbow smashed one of them into scrap metal and body slammed anther into the floor and smashed it to pieces in one fluid motion.
These weren't the holographic solid light constructs they had started out with at the beginning, but full fledged combat droids that the X-men used to train their powers when the hard light holograms couldn't do the job. They used alien technology to adapt to their opponents during every fight to make themselves more effective. Ranma didn't know any of this, all he knew was that he could smash them and not worry about hurting anyone when he used his full abilities. He was in heaven, never had he been challenged like this and allowed to let loose with all he had to give. There wasn't one fight in the last few years that he hadn't been forced to hold back for fear of hurting someone permanently, well except Saffron of course, but he'd been a god.
At times Ryoga would give him a challenge, but he hadn't done anything really major in a long time now. Not since he developed his Shi Shi Hokudan and ever since then his depression and hatred had been getting really out of control, he rarely even cared about hurting an innocent in their fights because of it. He shook his head to clear it as he barely dodged a palm blast that would have scorched his shoulder, grabbed it's wrist and yanked it forward to shatter it's chest cavity with a well placed blow with his other hand and a burst of Ki that blew it to pieces seconds later. Spinning around he brought his leg up and wheel kicked the next robot in the chin, Ki blasted a third one, and ripped a fourth one to shreds with his bare hands.
Then a blow to his back sent him flying towards a nearby wall with a grunt of pain, he spun around in mid air and bounced off the wall and into the air. Standing behind him was another robot, but this one was looked kind of like a T-100 series from Terminator, it was a kind of robotic skeleton covered in bright silver chrome and had red glowing eyes. Ranma didn't have much more time to think about it as it jumped into the air after him and started to attack him with hand to hand martial arts attacks. The rest of the robots had just attacked him in one large mass and kept it up until they were all used up, this one seemed to be of a whole different breed, it knew martial arts. Ranma picked up the intensity of his attack and tore into the thing, but it blocked or took everything he had to throw at it. Then it started attacking him and Ranma knew he was in trouble as a lucky shot took him across the jaw and sent him sailing across the room to slam into a pile of broken robots.
He was back on his feet in an instant, but in that short time was all the skeletal like thing needed to jump after him and land just as he was on his feet. An elbow to his solar plexus blew all the air out of his lungs, but he was a trained fighter with his cheating old man as a teacher. Rolling with the blow instinctively he took the opportunity to use the force of the blow to spin him around and strike the thing across the jaw with the back of his hand. It's head snapped to the side with a loud clang sound and staggered it back a couple of feet as Ranma used the time to leap backwards, gather his Ki and fire a blast out of his hands. This was only the second time he'd used his Ki lately and it was still acting a bit strange, instead of the spiritual like energy that he usually collected in his hands, this was a ball of bright blue energy that fired out as a solid beam of destruction.
The robot took the blast right in it's stomach area and was blown across the room and into one of the piles, the beam was strong enough to melt some of them. Since the air had been knocked out of his lungs, he couldn't maintain it like he should have and a few seconds later, while gasping for air, the beam died and he dropped to his knees. Ranma staggered to his feet and controlled his breathing like he'd been taught, he knew that blast wouldn't have been enough to stop that thing, but he had hurt it. Off in the distance he was surprised when the pile of scrap shifted and the thing threw off several metallic bodies as it stood up and turned those glowing red eyes on him.
"Heh, who would have thought fighting a terminator would be so much fun, this is great." Ranma muttered to himself.
Kicking bodies out of it's way the thing stomped towards him with every intention of putting him down, but Ranma had no intention of giving up just because this thing was nearly indestructible. Now that he had his breathing back under control he focused on his Ki and formed a couple of small balls of light in both of his hands as he waited for the thing to get just a little closer. When it was ten feet away he brought his hands forward, combined both balls of energy, and fired out a massive amount of energy. It may have been a little to much as a few seconds later the whole area exploded. A wave of heat and pure force rammed into him and threw him the length of the room and slammed him into the wall, he slid to the floor as everything went black for a few seconds.
Throwing off the blow he forced himself to come to his feet, but instantly wished he hadn't done so as he watched a robotic silhouette limping out of the fire storm his blast had created. Even the walls were cracked and he could see scorch marks on the ceiling, but he didn't have much time to think as the robot jumped at him. Growling in anger Ranma jumped at it, they met in mid air and were instantly fighting again, this time Ranma wasn't holding back and the dents his fists left on it's metal hide were good examples of his skill in the Art. That didn't stop the damned thing though and within seconds Ranma was receiving his own beating as they bounced off the floor, the robot was controlling the fight now and there wasn't a thing Ranma could do about it.
As his anger built Ranma came up with a plan and smirked, he had a bloody lip, but it looked cool. He was fighting this thing the wrong way, they were known for being nearly unbeatable under normal situations. This thing was designed to take on mutants, people with large amounts of power to back themselves up with and he knew he wasn't using his full power yet, just his Ki. For a second he considered using a couple of Vacuum Blades, but decided that he wasn't in enough danger to call on those sealed moves just yet. He had that other stuff to draw on now and this seemed like a good time to see if he could us it directly instead of with his Ki. Ranma stopped his attack, used the thing's head as a jumping board and jumped as far away as he could get. When he landed a few seconds later he turned around and started to concentrate as hard as he could, a bright blue aura enveloped him and filled the room. He opened his eyes and was apparent that his power was leaking out of them as sparkles of power started to go off around them, his hair shifted around and started waving under the power of his aura as he grinned.
That had been a lot easier than he thought it would be.
He yelled as he used this new power of his to move faster than he ever had before, streaking across the Danger Room and attacking the robot as fast he could make himself go. He didn't hear the deafening sounds his fists and feet made as they pounded the robot, nor did he notice the floor below him cracking and shifting below his feet, all he could see was the robot as he pummeled it into a pile of twitching scrap metal with his bare hands. Then with one mighty overhand swing he brought his fists down on top of the thing's head as hard had he could, there was a loud clang of metal and a giant explosion that engulfed him an instant later and sent him flying across the room. He slammed into the ceiling and plowed through it in a shower of sparks and smoke as they crumpled around his body.
"You kid, you awake yet or do we have to get you to the med center?"
When he came to, Ranma wasn't sure what was going on for a few seconds. He was upside down and hanging over the center of the Danger Room, there was a ladder near his head and Wolverine was prodding him in the chest with a finger. "Huh?"
"You okay kid?"
Ranma up his body and saw that his flight through the ceiling had found tons of wires and little gadget, he was hanging by one foot tangled in some wires about twenty foot off the floor. "What's going on?" Ranma asked.
"You won, though you destroyed most of the Danger Room to do so, haven't had that happen on a long time."
"Why are you upside down?"
"Your a little out of it, but you don't seem to have taken any serous injuries other than some bruises and small cuts here and there."
"Um...help me down would you? Or get out of the way and I'll just drop to the floor from here, it isn't that high."
"Naw, Beast would get mad at me if I did that. He thinks you were trying to kill yourself with the way you were fighting those robots, I know better, but he doesn't understand us fighters."
Nodding, Ranma pulled himself up to grab the wires above him and worked his trapped leg free, swung around and lowered his feet onto the top of the ladder. Wolverine helped him balance as they climbed down to the floor. There were small robots moving all over the room cleaning up the mess and performing repairs, Ranma was a bit surprised that he had caused this much damage to a room designed to keep super powered people from losing their fighting edge. The door to the room opened to admit Beast, Wolverine was putting the ladder up in one of the nearby cubbyholes built into the walls of the room. He looked a bit shocked at what he'd just seen Ranma do during his workout and evaluation. That was probably why he was holding his ever present clip board scribbling down notes. He was just finishing this as Wolverine came back, tossed Ranma a towel to dry off a little, and lit up another cigar.
"Where did you learn to fight like that Ranma?" Beast asked.
"Ten years on the road Dr. McCoy."
"Well you are an exemplary fighter, there are very few people who could fight you straight on with just skill, you might even be on par with some of the best in the world. Most of us in the team are considered high level black belts, but you could out fight most of us in hand to hand combat with little problem."
Ranma smirks. "I'm the best."
"On the other hand you have several areas that you need to work on yet, your over confidence for one. If you don't curb that attitude of yours it will get you into trouble one of these days."
"Hmph! I'm the best there is."
Holding up his clip board Beast nods and takes a few more notes. "Over the last couple of hours we have been testing you to make sure you were back in full health, you have proven to me that you have several very powerful and amazing abilities. First is your ability to change sex..."
"It's a curse!!"
"It's still an ability Ranma, there's no reason to get mad about it, after the curse comes your martial arts abilities. You seem to have the ability to access what you call Ki to make yourself faster, stronger, and harder to damage. It manifests around your body as a blue aura of some kind that you use to produce blasts of energy from your hands and to manipulate the elements to create an artificial tornado as you showed us earlier when those robots started using flame throwers on you. That was quite an amazing thing to see, you nearly destroyed the room when you did it, luckily we have gotten used to Storm creating small thunder storms in here and learned how to adapt the room to contain them."
"That sounds about right..."
"Well after analyzing you for the last two hours and taking readings I think we have a pretty good idea what you are capable of doing. Our scanners were telling me that your energy levels are very similar to what Cyclops uses when he fights, except that your energy is a lot more focused and controlled than his is." Beast frowns. "I wonder if this means Cyclops could learn to control his optic blast?"
"It's just Ki Doc, of course he can learn to control it."
Beast sighed, Scott's ability to control his blasts was a long standing argument. "I'm going to have to sit you down and explain to you the difference between your Ki and a Mutant Power Ranma, they are quite different from each other."
"Not really Doc, Ki is the energy a body produces, kind of like a life force. All these mutants you keep talking about just seem to be normal humans to me that have more Ki than they should. It's a little hard to describe, you seem to have a low level of Ki available right now, yet your outer form is changed. This curse I have gives me a different look of the world, I change into a girl, Taro changes into a giant monstrous thing, and even Ryoga turns into a tiny black pig. It's a change in form and nothing much to worry about, its the person you're fighting that you have to worry about. Cyclops should be able to physically control his power, the fact that he doesn't tells me that he just hasn't tried."
"One eye tries all the time." Wolverine mutters through a cloud of smoke.
"Does he? Or did he give up trying a long time ago when he was given those glasses he wears?"
"What do you mean Ranma?" Beast asks.
"I mean that those glasses of his are a weakness, something my old man would never have allowed me to live with. Once he got those glasses he stopped trying to control his power and started to depend on them to hold his power in check, get rid of those glasses and he will be forced to adapt and control that power."
"Actually we can't do that, his power fires out of his eyes and if nothing stops it he could levels this whole city in a matter of minutes. That is to dangerous to take his glasses away, there has to be a way to do it while he is wearing his glasses." Beast pointed out.
"I'd suggest some heavy meditation to strengthen his mind to the same point as his body, when they are in balance, then controlling his power will be easy to do."
"Ol'Cyclops would dispute that kid, but who knows if he will do it or not, we'll see if he's tried it before."
"That's cool, so what will we be doing to get me used to the differences of this dimension?"
"Schooling most likely, read a few books and let you visit New York if you want, that shouldn't be that big of a problem."
"Ah man, I hate school! Isn't there some other way?" Ranma whined.
"Nope! Now let's get to your room and get changed out of those clothes."
After heading to his room, taking another shower and heading down stairs in a new pair of clothes Ranma decided to step outside and look around for a bit. He had been an outdoors person all his life, being cooped up inside the house, even one as big as the mansion, made him nervous enough to want to go outside for a while. With his senses functioning the way they usually did when he was in a strange place he was able to scan the whole property to pin point where all the people where. Most of them were in the house still watching TV, but he was picking up someone out in the woods moving around. Ranma blinked in surprise and concentrated on this person and realized it must have been Bishop since he hadn't sensed the guy in the house. He seemed to be practicing some badly developed stealth techniques and broadcasting Ki like a small bonfire. He stood out like a sore thumb and Ranma realized that he knew of at least four or five techniques from various schools that would have worked a bit better than the one this guy was using. Ranma narrowed his eyes and recalled that so far this guy had treated him with barely suppressed hostility and a lot of distrust, after dealing with the idiots in Nerima for so long he didn't want to be anyone's punching bag again and this guy seemed to have the same baseless distrust everyone seemed to have against him. Ranma didn't like that at all and wanted to show the guy just what he could do and just maybe get the guy to loosen up a little, he grinned as and idea came to him.
Cloaking himself in the Umisen-Ken and vanishing from sight, Ranma jumped off the porch and ran into the woods right for Bishop. Ranma failed to see the astonished look on Beast's face from where he was watching from a nearby window, grab his clip board and make yet another note and shake his head. Then he ran off to tell Professor Xavier about this latest development, this kid was just making one astonishing act after another. For a non-mutant the kid was very skilled and enough of a threat that they would have to keep an eye on him. Out in the woods Ranma slowed to a walk and made a bit of noise to let Bishop hear him.
"Come out of the woods now!" Bishop snarled and pointed a huge gun in Ranma's general direction.
"It's just me." Ranma said as he stepped out from behind the tree he was standing behind.
"What are you doing out here?"
"Just exploring to see what's around this place."
"Ah, well go away I was working on something."
"I know, a bad stealth technique."
"HOW IN THE WORLD..." Bishop started to yell.
Ranma snorted and crossed his arms with a smirk. "I spent over ten years having every technique ever known beat into my head and stealth techniques were a major part of the style." He had to bite off saying that cheap shots, low blows, and cheating were the other part of it, Anything Goes and all that.
"I am a fully trained member of the XSE and they used the best moves of all the martial arts..."
"Yeah right, if that was so you could do this." Ranma said and used the Umisen-ken to vanish before Bishops eyes.
"So you can turn invisible, I've seen plenty of mutants that could do that and they always give themselves away."
"True." Ranma's voice said from all around Bishop. "But this particular technique covers that little handicap."
Glaring around Bishop went through all of his senses looking for Ranma, he couldn't hear him moving, there were no foot steps in the grass, hell he couldn't even smell the kid. He concentrated on an aspect of his power that he didn't use all that often and focused on catching the energy signatures Ranma was putting out, but he wasn't anywhere to be seen. That was quite a surprise, even Wolverine could be seen when he did this, but Ranma wasn't anywhere to be seen. He grunted in respect of the technique, it was quite impressive and put anything he knew to shame. "Alright, I'm impressed, you can stop now."
Nothing happened.
'Where did the little punk go?' Bishop wondered to himself, reaching down to his belt Bishop touched something odd. He looked down and had to back up in shock, his clothing was gone, his shirt, spandex, belt, boots, his gun, everything but his boxers and a little yellow sticky note saying they were to gross to touch. His eyes turned red with fury as he started to growl, as his anger grew, so did the energy his body contained as it formed an aura of sparkling power around him. "RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNMMMMMAAAAAAAAA!!!" Bishop screamed as a wave of energy formed around his body and exploded outward and leveled a couple of trees. He moved though the smoke and dust, his eyes trailing energy sparks as he ran to catch up with little punk that had done this to him. "GRHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"
Once Bishop was out of the area Ranma reappeared with a smirk and looked at the bundle of clothes he had in his hands. He chuckled and wondered how the guy had been able to carry so many weapons in that skin tight outfit, sure he had the belt pouches and a couple of other things, but over all he seemed to have way more than that suit should have been able to hide. The guy was like one of those Klingons from TV, mean, tough, carried around way to many weapons, and full of threats. Ranma felt like laughing evilly, but decided that a joke like this had to be played just right and an evil laugh wouldn't do it. Ever since learning the sealed techniques from the old man he had been perfecting it when he could, oh sure he had every intention of sealing his father's techniques, but all he had to do was improve them a bit and they would be his own techniques to use as he wanted.
Boy had he learned to adapt them over the last few months, his father's version had only worked on keeping people from seeing him and moving really fast. Ranma figured he had improved on it by hiding things like smell and any visible signs a person might leave behind. It was The Way of the Silent Thief after all and stealing things with it was child's play, he always found little uses for it, like spying on Nabiki when she wasn't paying attention. Ranma listened for the sound of Bishop entering the mansion, he could just pictured the kicking down or shattering the back door and stalking into the main room where everybody was watching TV while he's walks in wearing those pokadot in his boxers. It was like playing with Ryoga, the temper and everything, though this guy seemed to have a little more in his head than Ryoga did.
"So now what?" Ranma mumbled to himself.
"I'd suggest not returning to the mansion for several days."
Spinning around Ranma was surprised to see Beast hanging from a branch. "What do you mean? It was only a little joke and he was getting on my nerves with all that snarling and death threats."
"Bishop is very high strung and very likely to shoot you on sight now, he spent several days trying to kill Wolverine just last month."
"Why?"
"Wolverine cut some strangely placed holes in all his clothing..."
"Oh, I wish I had thought of that, I'm tired of that guy growling at me like I'm going to be his next meal, I've barely known him for a few hours now and won't even give me a chance to prove myself."
"Well you be careful, he holds a grudge, that was a pretty good joke though." Beast said with a grin. "Just like something Bobby would have pulled off when he was living here."
"Bobby?"
"He was known as Ice Man and had the ability to pull moisture out of the air and turn it into ice. He was pretty young when he joined the X-Men and tended to be a practical joker."
"I don't pull them all the much, but when I do it's usually for a pretty good reason and that jerk needed to be brought down a peg or two."
"Well you just be careful, Bishop isn't known for having much of a sense of humor."
"Yeah sure, he can't lay a hand on me anyway."
"Oh, ha ha, well I wanted to ask you how you pulled that little trick. You didn't mention it when we were going over your abilities earlier."
Ranma shrugged. "I used my Ki, it has lots of uses, I just have to find a way to apply it and I can usually do something."
"Well you can turn invisible, make tornados, punch faster than Quicksilver, and bench press about ten tons with this Ki, is there anything else?"
"Sure, there are several things."
"Can you fly?"
"Fly?"
Beast nodded and dropped to the ground. "Yes, several members of our team can fly. Like you saw Rogue do earlier when you were with Charles."
"I saw a guy once lift himself off the ground and hover in place for a while, but I wouldn't call that flying. Though he had this plunge and attack maneuver down to an art."
"Well from seeing your abilities I think you might have enough power to fly as well, have you ever attempted this technique you were describing?"
"Sure, I've done it a couple of times when I was practicing on some of my secret techniques, even improved it a little, but it sucks up Ki so fast that I can only maintain it for about thirty seconds or so and it's more of a hover than flying."
"How about we make a deal Ranma." Beast said with a weird grin.
"A deal? For what?" Now Ranma was confused, this guy kept jumping from one subject to another in the blink of an eye.
"You my friend have made me grow curious about you, your powers and abilities are way above the norm for a regular human and easily make you one of the toughest fighters around. I've never met a human that could do what you can without a special suit or corporate backing of some kind. So here's the deal, you let me run tests on you to understand your abilities, and I'll ask Jean to telepathically educate you about all the ins and outs of this dimension or at least give you hand coping with things. This will give you an education on mutants, a run down on the types of mutants that are out there and the ones that the general public knows about. Deal?"
"What kinds of tests?"
"Anything and everything for about two weeks, I can perform enough to get a better handle on this Ki you are using, come up with some ways to improve your abilities, teach you how to work with our team and to fight some of the other members of the team one at a time and all at once, and anything else I can think of."
Beast looked down at Ranma and his glasses gleamed with suppressed scientific need, he even heard the 'gleeeeeem' sound effect from somewhere. Ignoring the fact that a sixfoot ape like creature with blue fur, large teeth, and wearing a lab coat was making the offer that would allow him to learn everything he needed to survive here, Ranma wasn't sure he wanted to be poked and prodded for two straight weeks before he could earn any kind of freedom from this place. It was a good deal though and it had several advantages he liked as well, he knew the guy wouldn't kill him and if it was anything like the experiments that Tofu had performed on him every now and then he could survive them with only a little bit of discomfort.
Suddenly a nearby tree exploded as Bishop wandered back into the clearing and pointed a giant gun Ranma's head, the man was still in his underwear and looked like he wanted to kill someone. "RRRRRRRAAAAAAAANNNNNNMMMMMMMAAAAA!!!! DIE!!!!!!!!"
Ranma and Beast had to dive for cover as the enraged man pulled the trigger and fired off a bolt of super heated plasma energy that vaporized some of the nearby trees in a giant fire ball.
"WHUUUMP!!!"
Running for one's life is an acquired art, one that Ranma had perfected over the year whenever his old man had screwed up or stolen something. There was always someone on their tail, bounty hunters, police, irate tavern keepers, bouncers, priests, demons, you name it Ranma had run from it. He even remembered running from an enraged purple haired Amazon that liked to use the strangers weapons, running from Bishop was worse because he was firing a weapon that could level a house in one shot. A two story house. He cursed when one of Bishops blasts got a little to close and the shock wave picked him and sent him flying right over a nearby hill by about twenty feet.
Splash!!
Gasping for air and female, Ranma found herself in a lake that she hadn't noticed in her head long run from the madman, okay maybe she had gone a bit to far to show the guy up, but he had deserved it. The sound of dirt rolling down hill and into the water nearby made her look up to see Bishop as he snarled, in his underwear, holding a giant gun to his shoulder while standing at the top of a small rise that Ranma had flown over. The barrel of the weapon was glowing and the enraged look of evil on the guy's face was quite a sight to see. Ranma gulped and wadded back a few feet as she wondered if she might have gone just little bit to far with her joke.
"It w-was just a j-joke…"
"Now you DIE!!" Bishop snarled.
"Oh I wouldn't say that." Ranma then said with a smirk as she dog paddles back a bit more.
Bishop growled and Ranma could almost feel the man's finger tensing on the trigger, she leaned back a little just as she brought her hands together and shoved them forward to sent a shark shaped wave of water right up the barrel of Bishop's gun and knocked the man off his feet. She dove under water and swam for all she was worth, behind her Bishop's gun crashed to the ground and sparked for several seconds as it died. He rolled back to his feet with his eyes sparking with energy and fired a blast of energy from his hands at the red head swimming across the lake. He grinned as it hit her and exploded, sending a pillar of water high into the air and shock waves in all directions.
"Bishop if you've killed him I'll..."
"SHUT UP!!!!!!!" Bishop screamed in Beast's face, loud enough to make his hair stream out behind him. "HE WILL DIE, SLOWLY AND PAINFULLY!!"
"Um...I'm sorry then."
Bishop slumped to the ground unconscious and Beast patted a patch he had placed on the guy's shoulder a few seconds before. "For the patch, you really need to learn some self control my boy." He looked across the lake to see Rogue fishing Ranma out of the lake and waved to her as he picked up the unconscious Bishop. Now he had to hope Ranma would go for that deal, maybe hiding from Bishop for a couple of weeks would be a good incentive to get her to accept some experiments.
"What happened Beast?" Storm asked as she floated down to land beside him.
"Ranma played a little joke on Bishop and they guy went a ballistic, I'm still not sure how much was real and faked though. You recall how he got revenge on Wolverine last month?"
"Indeed, do you think this might have been along similar lines?"
"It's so hard to tell, the guy is like two extremes that when he pulls something like this it's impossible to understand what he's thinking."
"Alright, I'll talk to Bishop about this and you can talk to Ranma. Rogue is taking her to the medical facilities right now, we can drop Bishop off in his room and wait for the sedative to wear off."
"Alright, thanks for the help."
"No problem, it's been pretty slow lately and this was a bit of fun."
"Indeed."
**********
TWO WEEKS LATER
The tests and experiments were done and Ranma was more than happy to get out of the lab that had been his home for the last couple of weeks. Ranma really hoped that he wouldn't have to do something like this again. He didn't think he'd ever been though anything like it in his life and Beast had performed things on him that had been really strange. In the end though it had been worth it, he had been able to learn a ton of things about this new world he was in with Jean's help. Now it was time for a little break from this chaos and swimming looked like a great idea to work off some tension that had built up lately. In her room she finished pulling on a silver and black bathing suit that Storm had loaned her, walked out to the pool, and tossing a towel beside a chair she dove in and started doing some quick laps. There were other things she needed to consider too, Bishop was at the top of that list.
Over the last several days the X-men had kept Bishop from getting his revenge as well by keeping him busy with missions and lots of training sessions away from the mansion. Ranma figured that while this was going on Beast had performed close to five hundred or more tests on both of his forms to figure out how the curse and his new abilities worked, he was baffled by the mass to energy ratio that that happened every time he transformed. The big blue mutant had made her run on treadmills for hours at varying speeds, perform actions that would test her power levels to the limit, blood tests on both forms, and even the one thing he didn't even like to think about at the best of times a gynecological exam. Those things gave him the creeps, but he had learned that the things were needed no matter how much he disliked them.
Shudder.
He may have learned to live with the curse just a tiny bit, but some of the things he had to do at times because of it made him cringe in disgust. Now that he was out of the lab he wanted to relax a little, Beast had pushed his skills to the limits of his ability and pushed beyond that to levels he didn't know he had. His whole body hurt this morning and he wanted to swim a little before had to do anything else, so he had to do it as a girl. Beast had suggested that he might have the ability to switch the curse on and off on his own with a bit of thought. He was a bit skeptical of the idea since she had been trying to do just that for some time now with no luck. Ranma could even recall the time Nabiki suggested just that to her one night for ten thousand yen.
It had been worth the money, but after several months of practice Ranma hadn't been able to find a way to control the curse, instead she had been able to find dozens of different ways to use her other Ki abilities by using different emotions for attacks and concentration. Still, Beast had come up with several suggestions that Ranma hadn't considered yet so there was a little hope that he would succeed some time in the future. There had been so much information from Beast that Ranma wondered if he would even remember everything that Beast suggested over the last couple of weeks. A lot of it had been good advice that he wanted to try out while some of it had been just plain weird.
While in his room, Ranma used the bathroom sink to change into a girl and put on her new one-peice bathing suit. Grabbing a towel she heads out to the pool, tosses the towel on a deck chair, and dives into the deep end. She was surprised to find that the pool was slightly heated, almost enough to activate her curse, but it didn't happen so she just started doing some laps. Now that she had a bit more free time to think about things she wondered what the future would bring, would she be stuck in this place for the rest of her life? She trusted these X-Men more than she had a couple weeks before and with Jean's help knew quite a bit about the way things worked now, but there was still some kind of underlying feeling that kept Ranma from fully trusting them. They kept to many secrets and if some of those Danger Room battles he'd participated in were any indication they had a weird way of handling situations.
He was willing to give them the benefit of doubt there was always one thing that made him refuse to take the one little step to trust them completely. Bishop was trying to kill him for pulling that practical joke, the rest of the team except for Rogue and Beast seemed to be the only one's she had any kind of contact with. The rest of them were always off doing something else, Wolverine was always leaving and returning as he did his own thing, Storm spent lots of time up in her garden on the roof while the Professor spent a great deal of his time in his office working on paperwork and down in the underground tunnels in the Cerebro room where he was always looking for emerging mutants that they could help.
Ranma agreed that keeping mutants safe from a world that hated them was something that was good and right, but he still thought that they went about it in the worst way. Dropping in out of nowhere and blowing everything up to stop rampaging mutants just didn't quite fit in with what he considered the best way. The old man had taught him tactics while on the trip, tricks and cons that could be used in dozens of different situations that would have helped make the job a whole lot easier. None of them would listen though, they had their own ways of doing things and wouldn't hear of doing it any other way. She could respect that, but it still seemed a little weird that they wouldn't even consider a different way of doing things. All that damage to streets, cars, even buildings wasn't going to make them any friends in the long run. Boy did he know that, the neighbors on either side of the Tendo's place really disliked him and all those idiots that used to attack them.
**********
He wasn't sure what was going on, but Chad knew that things had changed in some way he didn't understand. Images of his run from that monster flashed through his mind every now and then as he walked the streets, he remembered his fear, the pain, and the shock as the creature caught and impaled his body with those claws. He knew that something else had happened, but after all this time he just couldn't remember what it was, only that it had nearly killed him. The worst part of whatever had happened to him was the hunger that seemed to gnaw at his stomach, it was impossible to ignore, but he didn't know what to do about it or how to relieve it. You see he was like a disembodied cloud and after two weeks he had learned a few things about his new state of being, the biggest one was that he didn't have a physical body anymore. He was like a ghost or wraith of some kind, he could see himself and everything around him easily, but no one else could see or touch him.
Walking though solid objects had caught him by surprise and he still hadn't had a chance to test what walking through a human was like, the prospect frightened him more than a little. The hunger seemed to have a life of its own as well, it was drawing him towards something deep in the more dangerous areas of the city. There was something that had changed about his eyes too, looking at the people around him over the last few days had changed the way he perceived them. At first they'd just looked normal, but then they had all started to glow a bunch of different colors and he figured he was smart enough to know that humans didn't just start glowing on their own, so this was the way he was seeing them. They were a mix colors in dozens of different shades that were quite striking, if he hadn't been so hungry he would've liked to try and figure out what the colors meant.
As a ghost he couldn't just walk into a local McDonalds and ask for a Big Mac or two to fill his nonexistent stomach anymore, so he had to find another way to do it and he didn't know what he had to do. So here he was stumbling down the street trying to think of a way to satisfy his hunger that was driving him mad and leading him who knew where, he had to find something to eat before he collapsed completely. Luckily he was being pulled towards something and some deeper part of his mind was telling him that it was food, like an instinct or a buried memory. It was there in that dark alley, in a large box that looked like it had seen some hard times as well. He kneeled down at one end of the box and looked inside to see a pair of legs bundled up in newspapers.
It was some homeless guy, Chad could feel his new senses drawing him towards the guy as he stood there and wondered what this guy had to feed him. Even his eyes were telling him that this guy was different that most humans, instead of the strange glow that he'd seen on most everybody else, this guy had a kind of Rainbow like aura that shifted and waved like a surging tide. Without really realizing what he was doing Chad reached out and tried to feel the glowing colors, it was a mistake of the highest order, but only from a certain point of view. His body surged with pure ecstasy and he let off a silent scream, and writhed around as something happened to him.
**********
After finishing about twenty laps Ranma bobbed around for a while and put in a little practice on some of her underwater techniques to pass the time and make sure she could still do them. She'd been thinking of everything Jean had explained to her about how people perceived them and other mutants. This world was horrible, how anyone could live here and be happy seemed to be an impossibility, he understood hate, but on this level it was like and alien thing. She wanted to get home even more now that she understood what she would encounters out there beyond the fence line, her promise to her mother was one thing, but this world was...bad. There were places in this world, here in the United States no less, that if she showed any of her abilities there was a chance that the locals would hunt her down and lynch her if she's caught. Kill her for no reason other than something they thought she might do, not what she would do, but might do. Ranma had run into that kind of thing in the wilds of China where outsiders were usually killed on sight, but for it to happen in the middle of New York City here in the United States was simply incredible.
Some of the information Jean had shown her touched on some of the history of the Morlocks and their massacre down in the lower tunnels, to the kinds of Sentinels the X-men had encountered, even some of their enemies like Sabertooth who was a pain in the ass to fight. Ranma had wanted to fight some of them in the Danger Room and Beast had been curious to see how that fight would go. Ranma didn't like to lose, but he hadn't expected the guy to go for a lethal shot so early in the fight and it had taken him down almost instantly. One thing Ranma did learn while with Beast and Jean was that he didn't like having a telepath in his mind and was glad when Jean was finished helping him out. Ranma had kept that improvised mental barrier up ever since, even improving upon it a bit now that he understood more about how Jean's shields worked.
He'd found out something that even baffled Jean and Xavier, Ki seemed to be made to keep telepaths out of a persons mind, all she had to do was keep a tiny bit of it focused on the job and no one would ever go into her mind against her permission. That in turn would have a good side effect, making her Ki stronger than ever over time. She wasn't sure what that would mean in the future, but if she could find a way to survive out there among the insane morons that seemed to make up this world she would be fine. With that Ranma decided to get out of the pool and spent a couple of minutes drying off before heading back into the house. That reminded her of one other thing Beast had told her, her body was now using large amounts of energy and if she was just resting and not using them things were fine, but the instant she started tapping her Ki that changed and her reserves would decrease while this new power of hers would increase.
Since she planned to keep that mental shield up pretty much constantly she would have to replace that energy, that meant only one thing...pizza! She made her way to the kitchen and dug some pizza out of the fridge, they ate more fast food at this place any other she had ever visited in her life. With a few deft bites and a loud burp she finished it off and tossed the box in the trash before heading up to her room to get changed back into some normal clothing, she ignored the two lechers gaping at her from the living room as she trotted up the stairs. She hadn't seen them before, but didn't think to much of it since they were just sitting in the living room like they had been there for some time now. Once in her room Ranma quickly changed and sat down on the bed to put her shoes on, instead of leaving them downstairs by the door like she should have, breaking that habit had taken most of her time over the last couple of weeks. Beast said that since she was in the United States she wouldn't have to do that kind of thing anymore if she didn't want to.
This wasn't Japan so Xavier didn't seem to care and Ranma had always wondered why such a thing was needed anyway. So after thinking about it she decided to do what the others usually did and that was leave them on all day long. After that she headed for the bathroom, grabbed a cup of hot water and poured it over her arms to change back to his male form. He was about to leave the room to find Scott, the guy had promised to take him into New York today, when Ranma felt something weird in the air. He stopped and concentrated on it a bit and realized that someone with a lot of Ki had done some really powerful, but it wasn't in the mansion, but much farther away. What was even stranger was that Ranma could tell that the Ki was of a dark intent, evil in some way.
"What in the world was that?"
**********
To Be Continued...
End Notes - It's and interesting place to leave off and will drop you right into the next chapter, ever hero needs and enemy and since Ryoga isn't around and I gave Ranma a power up, he needs something to fight. This is the Marvel Universe after all, they just pop out of nowhere whenever some hero goes into action. ^_^
If you have any questions just email me
Ending Notes - It's and interesting place to leave off and will drop you right into the next chapter, ever hero needs and enemy and since Ryoga isn't around and I gave Ranma a power up, he needs something to fight. This is the Marvel Universe after all, they just pop out of nowhere whenever some hero goes into action. ^_^
If you have any questions just email me
Prime Attitude
Chapter 02 - Learning
Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(c) 2002
**********
The first practice session was over and Ranma had been given a chance to see how the machine worked. He could only think of one thing that even compared to this machine and it didn't really come close. During that two week stint he had spent stuck as a girl because of the cat's tongue Cologne had once given him she had set up that area at the festival where all those spirit like things had tried to distract him. This had included that monkey dressed in clothing to attack him physically as well. That was the closest he could come to describing something that came even the tiniest bit close to the Danger Room. Wolverine's fight had started out easy enough, but it had slowly gotten more and more dangerous as the Sentinels had adapted to Wolverine's presence.
The fight had been a lot of fun to watch, but he understood that there was a bit of danger involved when it came to this Danger Room, Wolverine had taken quite a beating from those last Sentinel creatures, coming out of it covered in large bruises and cuts that seemed to close up and vanish as Ranma watched him. Like Wolverine, Ranma had entered the main room and found himself standing in the middle of the large empty area and waiting for Beast to pick out a program to run him through. He'd already been told that going up against the Sentinels would have to wait for later since Beast wanted to test him out on something a little bit easier and work his way up from there. That was fine with Ranma, he hadn't fought a whole bunch of opponents, one after another in some time. The last time he had done that was against an entire dojo full of students a couple of years back while over in China, he'd won, but it had taken every trick and sneaky attack he had available to do it.
Ranma knew that the whole place would change before his eyes when things started and he was kind of curious just how real it would be when things got underway. When he was learning the Hiruu Shoten Ha technique the old ghoul had taught him how to feel the world around him so that he could feel the change in temperature needed for the technique, it had the side effect of allowing him to 'see' the world in a ways that he hadn't been able to before. Now as he spent a few seconds running through some stretches to make sure he was ready for the upcoming fight he was getting curious, what would the room look like with that new sense, then he watched in fascination at the whole room shimmered and changed before his eyes as it turned into a large fighting arena, across from him was a man in a simple white gi in a fighting stance. He was about 5'5 or so, thin but muscular and looked more than a little like Bruce Lee.
"Ranma, this is a random combat sim set to test your skills, it will start out slow and be pretty simple at first, but as you go along the program will rate your skills and adapt to match them." Beast said over the intercom.
"Alright, this looks like fun."
"Are you ready?"
"Sure; is this actually Bruce Lee?"
"Just a computer representation of him that we whipped up once for a bit of fun."
"Cool, lets go for it." Ranma said and grinned as he smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand.
Suddenly Bruce came to life and stepped forward with a loud 'Whaaaaaaaa!!" and launched himself forward. Ranma twitched his body to avoid a punch and frowned a little, he'd seen enough Bruce Lee movies to know that the guy was faster than this, but Beast had said this would get harder and harder as the fight went on so he figured he would wait until things picked up before he really started to go. He certainly hoped this guy would get faster or this was going to be one boring fight. Moving with relative ease Ranma blocked Lee's multiple attacks and kept on the defensive as he studied his opponent. Up in the booth Beast sighed as Wolverine laughed at the look of boredom on Ranma's face. Beast tapped a nearby dial to kick the danger setting up several levels.
"Told you Ranma could take a higher setting than that." Logan growled out.
"I know, but had to make sure he wasn't giving us a lot of bull about his skills."
"I can judge a good fighter just by looking at them fur ball, Ranma has skills he hasn't even tapped yet, he does things should pick up."
"Well let's find out just what he has to give." Beast said.
Bruce Lee flipped over Ranma and landed in a relaxed stance and 'paused' for a second before he suddenly started to fight with a lot more skill and power. Ranma almost sighed with relief as the challenge increased and unconsciously started to mimic Bruce's current skill level and retaliate on a whole new level. Trading blows at an increased rate they started to move all over the floor, pushing each other to perform techniques and skills that only full level masters could pull off. Ranma had learned quite a bit about Bruce Lee's style of fighting over the years and he knew that this fake version wasn't even close to the real thing yet, but it was better than fighting that mindless copy cat drone he had started out with. He grinned as the skill level increased suddenly, by a factor of four or more, this was more like what he was expecting when he started this and they started to blur, their blows moving so fast that the human eye couldn't even keep up.
"Whaaaaaaaaa!!" Bruce Lee screamed and went into some pretty impressive aerial attacks.
Ducking and weaving Ranma just rolled his eyes and continued to block and test the copy's defenses, Bruce's true level of skill was starting to finally show up, but his vocabulary was a bit one sided. With a shrug Ranma exploded into an attack he used against Ryoga every now and then, three blows to Bruce's stomach, chest, and chin sent him sprawling to the floor where he vanished in a swirl of light, this caught Ranma by surprise. He figured that he would be fighting Bruce Lee through the whole test, was it done already?
"Is that it?"
"Hold on Ranma, that was the limit of that sim's capacities. Let me get your next opponent ready for battle."
"Bring it on!" Ranma said as he relaxed a little and looked around to see where the next attacker would come from, then he spotted another figure as it formed nearby. He didn't recognize this one, he was wearing one of those ridiculous spandex uniforms though. It was an all black body suit, kind of like a ninja would wear, but this was more glossy and form fitting than anything else. He even had a series of weapons on his back with a small pack, Ranma could tell that this guy had some interesting skills just from the way he was kneeling on the floor waiting to go into action. If the guy was a ninja they usually had ways to sit down and kneel for days at a time and always be ready for battle in an instant's notice, Ranma recognized this guy's stance.
There was no reaction when the sim started this time, no flicker of light or slight pause, just one second the guy was frozen in place, the next he was in motion. Ranma ducked as the guy pulled his sword and attempted to behead him with a lightning fast attack. It brought back memories of his morning fights with Kuno when he had first come across those magical swords, this guy's skill felt the same, the sword was running the fight and the guy had nothing to say about it but to hold the sword and do as the sword said. This guy was a couple of levels higher skill wise than Bruce had been so he charged a bit more Ki into his body and used the Amaguriken to tap several hundred attacks into the guys wrists, arms, and chest, to weaken his grip on the sword, lock his muscles, and mess with his breathing. The instant he dropped the sword Ranma straight punched him the forehead and knock him out, sending the body flying backwards. The body faded even before he hit the ground and Ranma bounced back a few feet and waited for the next attacker to show up.
The room itself flickered and changed before his eyes this time, taking on the look of a city, he seemed to be standing on the sidewalk, but there were no people around as far as he could see. Ranma wasn't sure what was going on, but Beast hadn't given him a warning this time so it meant he probably had to deal with this threat with no warning at all...
**********
Rogue rummaged through the fridge and pulled out whatever she could find to eat, they seemed to be out of or very low on most of the main ingredients for everything. She knew Ranma had eaten earlier, but she didn't think the girl would have been able to eat enough food for over a dozen people in one sitting. From the looks of things she had been wrong, there was bread for sandwiches, but no cheese and half a piece of lunch meat. Who in the world ate half a piece of lunch meat and put the other half back in the fridge? The jar of mayonnaise was mostly empty, yet she remembered buying a new one less than three days ago. Well she would have to improvise a little, that meant using odd things for toppings, it wouldn't be the first time that's for sure.
Ten minutes later she had two sandwiches made up, they both had a tiny amount of mayonnaise, then came the half a piece of lunch meat, some micro waved chicken stripped off the bone, cheese, lettuce, and pickles. She didn't normally eat pickles, but when one had to improvise, pickles did the trick and at least they weren't hot, those were just gross. Wandering into the front room she sat down to watch TV with the rest of the team, for some reason the last month had been incredibly boring. There hadn't been a rogue mutant attack, Magneto hadn't resurfaced, Cain Marko hadn't come by for a visit as the Juggernaut, nothing to speak of. Even the news had commented on how quite it had been lately, the Avengers and FF4 were starting to prove they could have normal lives again.
Wolverine had just returned from one of his runs through the Canadian woods where he had a cabin that he visited whenever he felt like getting away from everything. Then Beast and Storm had been in Japan to visit friends and advance science a little more, they still didn't really know what to think of this Ranma person they had brought back with them. Bishop was on edge and kept making patrols around the property muttering about targets and a glare in his grouchy eye, she was beginning to wonder if he had ever had a day off in his life. Even Gambit had decided to vanish for a while, Rogue missed him, but figured he would be back to pester her eventually. Rogue had no clue where Scott and Jean had been running off to every few days, but they just took off and returned some time later with silly grins plastered to their faces that let everyone know what they had been up to. This was the first time in three or four weeks when all of them had been in the mansion together, something was in there air, she could feel it.
"What did you think of Ranma, Rogue?" Storm asked.
"He seems normal enough, though that power of his is hard to adapt to."
"Power?" Bishop asked.
"Ranma can change from one sex to the other with hot or cold water, it's an amazing thing to see."
"A shape changer? Are there any other forms he can take?" Scott asked.
"Not that I know of, he seems to prefer his male form though. It's about twice the size of the female form y'all met earlier." Rogue said.
"Interesting, what did he look like?" Asked Jean.
"Like a male form of that girl, he has black hair and tons of well defined muscles. He said he'd been training in martial arts for close to ten years and you can see it in the way he moves, almost like Bishop here does when he's stalking someone."
Bishop raised and eyebrow and tried to recall if that girl had moved like that, he didn't want to admit that the only thing he could remember was how well Rogue's uniform fit on her body. He grunted.
"Where is he right now? Still with McCoy down in the Danger room?"
"Yeah, it should be a while yet, remember how long our first time in room took."
"True, true..."
**********
Chad wasn't sure what was going on, but he knew he was in trouble and had been on the streets to long not to recognize the signs. For over a year now he had been homeless, even held down a part time job to make some money, but was never able to get enough in his pocket to claw his way off the streets. No less than an hour ago he had been sitting down at a local dinner to eat lunch when his survival instincts had warned him of something. At first he had ignored them, he was in the middle of a dinner after all, but as he sat there finishing off a burger it had grown steadily worse. Something had been watching him, but looking around the dinner hadn't helped and there was no one outside that looked suspicious enough to make him think they were doing it. He'd kept his thoughts to himself and quickly finished his meal, the sooner he got somewhere more protected the easier it would be to hide.
For a second he even considered going to police, but they wouldn't do anything to help him, he was homeless after all so they wouldn't even care. They never did anything to help out people like him, they ran them off to keep them form bothering people. He had once heard the Police didn't protect people, they weren't allowed to think for themselves, instead they protected the Constitution. That was why Lawyers had so much power, one little mistake and they could get a mass murderer off on some tiny little technicality and be proud of themselves at the same time. He considered going to a local homeless shelter, but those places were a little to seedy for his tastes, the workers there were always acting funny and those guys that did get a bed for the night sometimes disappeared. There had to be some place he could go, but where? After a few minutes thought he stepped outside and headed uptown, towards the nice areas of town, where the cops were more prevalent. He may not have trusted cops, but they would help to keep this jerk off his back if they happened to see anything.
Half an hour later he didn't care about the cops, he didn't care that he didn't trust them, all he wanted to do was find one so they could use those guns of theirs on the thing following him. He was currently he was running down an alley deep in the lower part of mid town, he'd been diverted from going somewhere safe and almost herded through the maze of alleys and streets that were so crime ridden that even the police tried to avoid the place if they could. It was no secret that monsters lived down here, he had met a few of them here and there and learned to stay away from them if he wanted to stay alive. Now one of them was after him for unknown reasons and didn't even know what he'd done to provoke this thing.
As far as he knew he was up to date paying off the local gangs for protection, that was where most of his money went, but if this wasn't there normal way those bastards handled things. This was something different and it was out to get him for some unknown reason, it had come out of nowhere and started to chase him in broad daylight like it was no big deal. He had to get some help, but to do that he had to get away from it then he could get to safety. As Chad ran he glanced over his shoulder and saw a large shadow like thing running along behind him, moving with a silent gait that was almost to eerie to describe. He had a feeling it was mutant, but this was the first one he had ever met that acted like this, normally they were just ugly freak.
This thing wasn't like that at all, it was cloaked in shadows and hard to see as it moved. That meant he had to be doubly careful or he felt that he would be it's next...victim. He didn't bother to yell as he ran, it was a bad idea to attract attention down in this area. This thing would only kill him, there were worse fates for those stupid enough to attract attention from the wrong people. He ran out of the alley and barely even noticed as he ran out into one of the busier streets and past several cars, dodging through traffic, Chad ran for his life.
Behind him the shadow monster burst out of the alley and landed on the roof of a taxi parked at the side of the street. It's claws dug into the metal of the hood as the car rocked back and forth under it's weight and looked around with glowing eyes. It was like a gargoyle, an evil looking form with clawed wings and a stone like skin that had massive looking claws at the ends of it's hands and feet that seemed to be shredding the very metal of the Taxi was made out of like it was paper. It spotted Chad in the distance and with an inhuman screech spread a its wings and launched into the air. The Taxi and it's driver were nearly killed as it's powerful leg muscles came close to flipping over on it's side, there were claw marks all over the hood that exposed parts of the engine to the air. The driver had fainted when it landed on the hood.
It flapped its wings several times to gain height and sent shocked citizens running and screaming from their cars in a panic as it glided after Chad from about twenty feet above the street. Chaos and fear followed in it's wake as the 'herd' ran for it, to the monster it was a giant smorgasbord of easy prey, but it had set it's eye on this one first and would take it down first and foremost. It had a limited intelligence, but knew enough about it's prey to know that they liked to hide from danger like rabbits. Screeching in joy it took a bit of delight as it's victim ran from it, glorying in the thrill of the hunt and wondered if this one would be as much fun as it's last play toy.
Seconds before all this happened traffic had been moving alone quite nicely with no delays, but now with all the abandoned cars and the fleeing wave of humanity it was dead locked for miles with people running for their lives in all directions. Chad didn't care about all this, all he wanted to do was get away, he just ran and dodged around cars where he could, weaving through panicked mindless mob all about him as they scrambling for very their lives. He spotted a large truck in the distance with a flatbed trailer holding something large under a dark gray tarp. There were soldiers on and around the trailer with large weapons ready to protect whatever was under the tarp, the panicked mob had divided in half around as they ran and the soldiers looked to be on edge. Chad had once been in the Army, a very long time ago, and knew that these guys would be trigger happy if that cargo was important enough. He ducked around a car and attempted to get far enough away from the truck to keep these guys from shooting him, but his luck ran out as the thing flying above him dived suddenly with it's claws spread out to impale him through the shoulder.
He screamed in pain as he is slammed against the trunk of the car, the thing sets it's feet on his legs and digs in some claws there as well. Chad cursed as all the claws sliced through his body with incredible ease, but that wasn't the worst thing. The worst was a half second later when he felt his life being sucked out of him, it had to be the most painful thing he had ever felt in his life and he screamed to let everyone know it. No one stopped to help, that would have endangered them too and everyone knows how selfish people are in a situation like this, everybody for themselves. A little ways away the soldiers had pulled the tarp off the trailer to reveal a large energy weapon of some kind, the CO jumped in the seat and charged the weapons computers as he'd been shown how. A Godzilla fan would have compared it to the Lazer Cannon used in the earlier movies, but that was where the similarities ended. It lifted up and took aim at the monster in the midst of killing, the dish that made up it's front end flared with electricity, and fired a few seconds later.
The beam that fired out lanced through several cars before it hit the monster, it was just turning to see where the strange light was coming from as it screamed in pain and was literally ripped to pieces, of course Chad was in the way, but the death of one human was always an acceptable loss to kill a mutant. Sentinels had proven that time and again as they hunted down mutants that couldn't defend themselves. Chad hadn't stopped screaming yet, so this pain was added to his own as the world turned white. Then the unexpected happened, they were near the back end of a car that was catching the flare off of the Lazer energy. So of course as the paint melted and ruptured the car's gas tank the just had to explode right underneath them, it was the last thing the monster ever saw, but for Chad it was a different story altogether. The monster died in the giant ball of fire the explosion created, Chad on the other hand turned out to be a Neo Mutant, a normal human that had an inactivated mutant gene. He had no clue that the Government had tried several times to expose him to things, during his stint in the army, in an effort to activate it. He had no clue that that he was even a Neo Mutant, all he knew was that the world was suddenly...different than it had been and he was suddenly scared.
No one ever found his body.
**********
The basic definition of a Danger Room was someplace to test one's skills in controlled conditions. To Ranma that didn't matter, to him it was like some kind large real life video game that could test even his skills. The pile of shattered and broken robots was nearly hip deep and covered most of the room as Ranma wadded through them with a single mindedness that only Wolverine could understand. This had started out as a test to see what level he fought at, but as things went along Beast had been forced to toss in certain surprises and traps to keep Ranma occupied. Ranma's aura was flaring wildly as he battled stronger and stronger opponents and was giving off some strange shadows. He was currently in the middle of a pack of robots as they tried to take him down, but he elbow smashed one of them into scrap metal and body slammed anther into the floor and smashed it to pieces in one fluid motion.
These weren't the holographic solid light constructs they had started out with at the beginning, but full fledged combat droids that the X-men used to train their powers when the hard light holograms couldn't do the job. They used alien technology to adapt to their opponents during every fight to make themselves more effective. Ranma didn't know any of this, all he knew was that he could smash them and not worry about hurting anyone when he used his full abilities. He was in heaven, never had he been challenged like this and allowed to let loose with all he had to give. There wasn't one fight in the last few years that he hadn't been forced to hold back for fear of hurting someone permanently, well except Saffron of course, but he'd been a god.
At times Ryoga would give him a challenge, but he hadn't done anything really major in a long time now. Not since he developed his Shi Shi Hokudan and ever since then his depression and hatred had been getting really out of control, he rarely even cared about hurting an innocent in their fights because of it. He shook his head to clear it as he barely dodged a palm blast that would have scorched his shoulder, grabbed it's wrist and yanked it forward to shatter it's chest cavity with a well placed blow with his other hand and a burst of Ki that blew it to pieces seconds later. Spinning around he brought his leg up and wheel kicked the next robot in the chin, Ki blasted a third one, and ripped a fourth one to shreds with his bare hands.
Then a blow to his back sent him flying towards a nearby wall with a grunt of pain, he spun around in mid air and bounced off the wall and into the air. Standing behind him was another robot, but this one was looked kind of like a T-100 series from Terminator, it was a kind of robotic skeleton covered in bright silver chrome and had red glowing eyes. Ranma didn't have much more time to think about it as it jumped into the air after him and started to attack him with hand to hand martial arts attacks. The rest of the robots had just attacked him in one large mass and kept it up until they were all used up, this one seemed to be of a whole different breed, it knew martial arts. Ranma picked up the intensity of his attack and tore into the thing, but it blocked or took everything he had to throw at it. Then it started attacking him and Ranma knew he was in trouble as a lucky shot took him across the jaw and sent him sailing across the room to slam into a pile of broken robots.
He was back on his feet in an instant, but in that short time was all the skeletal like thing needed to jump after him and land just as he was on his feet. An elbow to his solar plexus blew all the air out of his lungs, but he was a trained fighter with his cheating old man as a teacher. Rolling with the blow instinctively he took the opportunity to use the force of the blow to spin him around and strike the thing across the jaw with the back of his hand. It's head snapped to the side with a loud clang sound and staggered it back a couple of feet as Ranma used the time to leap backwards, gather his Ki and fire a blast out of his hands. This was only the second time he'd used his Ki lately and it was still acting a bit strange, instead of the spiritual like energy that he usually collected in his hands, this was a ball of bright blue energy that fired out as a solid beam of destruction.
The robot took the blast right in it's stomach area and was blown across the room and into one of the piles, the beam was strong enough to melt some of them. Since the air had been knocked out of his lungs, he couldn't maintain it like he should have and a few seconds later, while gasping for air, the beam died and he dropped to his knees. Ranma staggered to his feet and controlled his breathing like he'd been taught, he knew that blast wouldn't have been enough to stop that thing, but he had hurt it. Off in the distance he was surprised when the pile of scrap shifted and the thing threw off several metallic bodies as it stood up and turned those glowing red eyes on him.
"Heh, who would have thought fighting a terminator would be so much fun, this is great." Ranma muttered to himself.
Kicking bodies out of it's way the thing stomped towards him with every intention of putting him down, but Ranma had no intention of giving up just because this thing was nearly indestructible. Now that he had his breathing back under control he focused on his Ki and formed a couple of small balls of light in both of his hands as he waited for the thing to get just a little closer. When it was ten feet away he brought his hands forward, combined both balls of energy, and fired out a massive amount of energy. It may have been a little to much as a few seconds later the whole area exploded. A wave of heat and pure force rammed into him and threw him the length of the room and slammed him into the wall, he slid to the floor as everything went black for a few seconds.
Throwing off the blow he forced himself to come to his feet, but instantly wished he hadn't done so as he watched a robotic silhouette limping out of the fire storm his blast had created. Even the walls were cracked and he could see scorch marks on the ceiling, but he didn't have much time to think as the robot jumped at him. Growling in anger Ranma jumped at it, they met in mid air and were instantly fighting again, this time Ranma wasn't holding back and the dents his fists left on it's metal hide were good examples of his skill in the Art. That didn't stop the damned thing though and within seconds Ranma was receiving his own beating as they bounced off the floor, the robot was controlling the fight now and there wasn't a thing Ranma could do about it.
As his anger built Ranma came up with a plan and smirked, he had a bloody lip, but it looked cool. He was fighting this thing the wrong way, they were known for being nearly unbeatable under normal situations. This thing was designed to take on mutants, people with large amounts of power to back themselves up with and he knew he wasn't using his full power yet, just his Ki. For a second he considered using a couple of Vacuum Blades, but decided that he wasn't in enough danger to call on those sealed moves just yet. He had that other stuff to draw on now and this seemed like a good time to see if he could us it directly instead of with his Ki. Ranma stopped his attack, used the thing's head as a jumping board and jumped as far away as he could get. When he landed a few seconds later he turned around and started to concentrate as hard as he could, a bright blue aura enveloped him and filled the room. He opened his eyes and was apparent that his power was leaking out of them as sparkles of power started to go off around them, his hair shifted around and started waving under the power of his aura as he grinned.
That had been a lot easier than he thought it would be.
He yelled as he used this new power of his to move faster than he ever had before, streaking across the Danger Room and attacking the robot as fast he could make himself go. He didn't hear the deafening sounds his fists and feet made as they pounded the robot, nor did he notice the floor below him cracking and shifting below his feet, all he could see was the robot as he pummeled it into a pile of twitching scrap metal with his bare hands. Then with one mighty overhand swing he brought his fists down on top of the thing's head as hard had he could, there was a loud clang of metal and a giant explosion that engulfed him an instant later and sent him flying across the room. He slammed into the ceiling and plowed through it in a shower of sparks and smoke as they crumpled around his body.
"You kid, you awake yet or do we have to get you to the med center?"
When he came to, Ranma wasn't sure what was going on for a few seconds. He was upside down and hanging over the center of the Danger Room, there was a ladder near his head and Wolverine was prodding him in the chest with a finger. "Huh?"
"You okay kid?"
Ranma up his body and saw that his flight through the ceiling had found tons of wires and little gadget, he was hanging by one foot tangled in some wires about twenty foot off the floor. "What's going on?" Ranma asked.
"You won, though you destroyed most of the Danger Room to do so, haven't had that happen on a long time."
"Why are you upside down?"
"Your a little out of it, but you don't seem to have taken any serous injuries other than some bruises and small cuts here and there."
"Um...help me down would you? Or get out of the way and I'll just drop to the floor from here, it isn't that high."
"Naw, Beast would get mad at me if I did that. He thinks you were trying to kill yourself with the way you were fighting those robots, I know better, but he doesn't understand us fighters."
Nodding, Ranma pulled himself up to grab the wires above him and worked his trapped leg free, swung around and lowered his feet onto the top of the ladder. Wolverine helped him balance as they climbed down to the floor. There were small robots moving all over the room cleaning up the mess and performing repairs, Ranma was a bit surprised that he had caused this much damage to a room designed to keep super powered people from losing their fighting edge. The door to the room opened to admit Beast, Wolverine was putting the ladder up in one of the nearby cubbyholes built into the walls of the room. He looked a bit shocked at what he'd just seen Ranma do during his workout and evaluation. That was probably why he was holding his ever present clip board scribbling down notes. He was just finishing this as Wolverine came back, tossed Ranma a towel to dry off a little, and lit up another cigar.
"Where did you learn to fight like that Ranma?" Beast asked.
"Ten years on the road Dr. McCoy."
"Well you are an exemplary fighter, there are very few people who could fight you straight on with just skill, you might even be on par with some of the best in the world. Most of us in the team are considered high level black belts, but you could out fight most of us in hand to hand combat with little problem."
Ranma smirks. "I'm the best."
"On the other hand you have several areas that you need to work on yet, your over confidence for one. If you don't curb that attitude of yours it will get you into trouble one of these days."
"Hmph! I'm the best there is."
Holding up his clip board Beast nods and takes a few more notes. "Over the last couple of hours we have been testing you to make sure you were back in full health, you have proven to me that you have several very powerful and amazing abilities. First is your ability to change sex..."
"It's a curse!!"
"It's still an ability Ranma, there's no reason to get mad about it, after the curse comes your martial arts abilities. You seem to have the ability to access what you call Ki to make yourself faster, stronger, and harder to damage. It manifests around your body as a blue aura of some kind that you use to produce blasts of energy from your hands and to manipulate the elements to create an artificial tornado as you showed us earlier when those robots started using flame throwers on you. That was quite an amazing thing to see, you nearly destroyed the room when you did it, luckily we have gotten used to Storm creating small thunder storms in here and learned how to adapt the room to contain them."
"That sounds about right..."
"Well after analyzing you for the last two hours and taking readings I think we have a pretty good idea what you are capable of doing. Our scanners were telling me that your energy levels are very similar to what Cyclops uses when he fights, except that your energy is a lot more focused and controlled than his is." Beast frowns. "I wonder if this means Cyclops could learn to control his optic blast?"
"It's just Ki Doc, of course he can learn to control it."
Beast sighed, Scott's ability to control his blasts was a long standing argument. "I'm going to have to sit you down and explain to you the difference between your Ki and a Mutant Power Ranma, they are quite different from each other."
"Not really Doc, Ki is the energy a body produces, kind of like a life force. All these mutants you keep talking about just seem to be normal humans to me that have more Ki than they should. It's a little hard to describe, you seem to have a low level of Ki available right now, yet your outer form is changed. This curse I have gives me a different look of the world, I change into a girl, Taro changes into a giant monstrous thing, and even Ryoga turns into a tiny black pig. It's a change in form and nothing much to worry about, its the person you're fighting that you have to worry about. Cyclops should be able to physically control his power, the fact that he doesn't tells me that he just hasn't tried."
"One eye tries all the time." Wolverine mutters through a cloud of smoke.
"Does he? Or did he give up trying a long time ago when he was given those glasses he wears?"
"What do you mean Ranma?" Beast asks.
"I mean that those glasses of his are a weakness, something my old man would never have allowed me to live with. Once he got those glasses he stopped trying to control his power and started to depend on them to hold his power in check, get rid of those glasses and he will be forced to adapt and control that power."
"Actually we can't do that, his power fires out of his eyes and if nothing stops it he could levels this whole city in a matter of minutes. That is to dangerous to take his glasses away, there has to be a way to do it while he is wearing his glasses." Beast pointed out.
"I'd suggest some heavy meditation to strengthen his mind to the same point as his body, when they are in balance, then controlling his power will be easy to do."
"Ol'Cyclops would dispute that kid, but who knows if he will do it or not, we'll see if he's tried it before."
"That's cool, so what will we be doing to get me used to the differences of this dimension?"
"Schooling most likely, read a few books and let you visit New York if you want, that shouldn't be that big of a problem."
"Ah man, I hate school! Isn't there some other way?" Ranma whined.
"Nope! Now let's get to your room and get changed out of those clothes."
After heading to his room, taking another shower and heading down stairs in a new pair of clothes Ranma decided to step outside and look around for a bit. He had been an outdoors person all his life, being cooped up inside the house, even one as big as the mansion, made him nervous enough to want to go outside for a while. With his senses functioning the way they usually did when he was in a strange place he was able to scan the whole property to pin point where all the people where. Most of them were in the house still watching TV, but he was picking up someone out in the woods moving around. Ranma blinked in surprise and concentrated on this person and realized it must have been Bishop since he hadn't sensed the guy in the house. He seemed to be practicing some badly developed stealth techniques and broadcasting Ki like a small bonfire. He stood out like a sore thumb and Ranma realized that he knew of at least four or five techniques from various schools that would have worked a bit better than the one this guy was using. Ranma narrowed his eyes and recalled that so far this guy had treated him with barely suppressed hostility and a lot of distrust, after dealing with the idiots in Nerima for so long he didn't want to be anyone's punching bag again and this guy seemed to have the same baseless distrust everyone seemed to have against him. Ranma didn't like that at all and wanted to show the guy just what he could do and just maybe get the guy to loosen up a little, he grinned as and idea came to him.
Cloaking himself in the Umisen-Ken and vanishing from sight, Ranma jumped off the porch and ran into the woods right for Bishop. Ranma failed to see the astonished look on Beast's face from where he was watching from a nearby window, grab his clip board and make yet another note and shake his head. Then he ran off to tell Professor Xavier about this latest development, this kid was just making one astonishing act after another. For a non-mutant the kid was very skilled and enough of a threat that they would have to keep an eye on him. Out in the woods Ranma slowed to a walk and made a bit of noise to let Bishop hear him.
"Come out of the woods now!" Bishop snarled and pointed a huge gun in Ranma's general direction.
"It's just me." Ranma said as he stepped out from behind the tree he was standing behind.
"What are you doing out here?"
"Just exploring to see what's around this place."
"Ah, well go away I was working on something."
"I know, a bad stealth technique."
"HOW IN THE WORLD..." Bishop started to yell.
Ranma snorted and crossed his arms with a smirk. "I spent over ten years having every technique ever known beat into my head and stealth techniques were a major part of the style." He had to bite off saying that cheap shots, low blows, and cheating were the other part of it, Anything Goes and all that.
"I am a fully trained member of the XSE and they used the best moves of all the martial arts..."
"Yeah right, if that was so you could do this." Ranma said and used the Umisen-ken to vanish before Bishops eyes.
"So you can turn invisible, I've seen plenty of mutants that could do that and they always give themselves away."
"True." Ranma's voice said from all around Bishop. "But this particular technique covers that little handicap."
Glaring around Bishop went through all of his senses looking for Ranma, he couldn't hear him moving, there were no foot steps in the grass, hell he couldn't even smell the kid. He concentrated on an aspect of his power that he didn't use all that often and focused on catching the energy signatures Ranma was putting out, but he wasn't anywhere to be seen. That was quite a surprise, even Wolverine could be seen when he did this, but Ranma wasn't anywhere to be seen. He grunted in respect of the technique, it was quite impressive and put anything he knew to shame. "Alright, I'm impressed, you can stop now."
Nothing happened.
'Where did the little punk go?' Bishop wondered to himself, reaching down to his belt Bishop touched something odd. He looked down and had to back up in shock, his clothing was gone, his shirt, spandex, belt, boots, his gun, everything but his boxers and a little yellow sticky note saying they were to gross to touch. His eyes turned red with fury as he started to growl, as his anger grew, so did the energy his body contained as it formed an aura of sparkling power around him. "RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNMMMMMAAAAAAAAA!!!" Bishop screamed as a wave of energy formed around his body and exploded outward and leveled a couple of trees. He moved though the smoke and dust, his eyes trailing energy sparks as he ran to catch up with little punk that had done this to him. "GRHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"
Once Bishop was out of the area Ranma reappeared with a smirk and looked at the bundle of clothes he had in his hands. He chuckled and wondered how the guy had been able to carry so many weapons in that skin tight outfit, sure he had the belt pouches and a couple of other things, but over all he seemed to have way more than that suit should have been able to hide. The guy was like one of those Klingons from TV, mean, tough, carried around way to many weapons, and full of threats. Ranma felt like laughing evilly, but decided that a joke like this had to be played just right and an evil laugh wouldn't do it. Ever since learning the sealed techniques from the old man he had been perfecting it when he could, oh sure he had every intention of sealing his father's techniques, but all he had to do was improve them a bit and they would be his own techniques to use as he wanted.
Boy had he learned to adapt them over the last few months, his father's version had only worked on keeping people from seeing him and moving really fast. Ranma figured he had improved on it by hiding things like smell and any visible signs a person might leave behind. It was The Way of the Silent Thief after all and stealing things with it was child's play, he always found little uses for it, like spying on Nabiki when she wasn't paying attention. Ranma listened for the sound of Bishop entering the mansion, he could just pictured the kicking down or shattering the back door and stalking into the main room where everybody was watching TV while he's walks in wearing those pokadot in his boxers. It was like playing with Ryoga, the temper and everything, though this guy seemed to have a little more in his head than Ryoga did.
"So now what?" Ranma mumbled to himself.
"I'd suggest not returning to the mansion for several days."
Spinning around Ranma was surprised to see Beast hanging from a branch. "What do you mean? It was only a little joke and he was getting on my nerves with all that snarling and death threats."
"Bishop is very high strung and very likely to shoot you on sight now, he spent several days trying to kill Wolverine just last month."
"Why?"
"Wolverine cut some strangely placed holes in all his clothing..."
"Oh, I wish I had thought of that, I'm tired of that guy growling at me like I'm going to be his next meal, I've barely known him for a few hours now and won't even give me a chance to prove myself."
"Well you be careful, he holds a grudge, that was a pretty good joke though." Beast said with a grin. "Just like something Bobby would have pulled off when he was living here."
"Bobby?"
"He was known as Ice Man and had the ability to pull moisture out of the air and turn it into ice. He was pretty young when he joined the X-Men and tended to be a practical joker."
"I don't pull them all the much, but when I do it's usually for a pretty good reason and that jerk needed to be brought down a peg or two."
"Well you just be careful, Bishop isn't known for having much of a sense of humor."
"Yeah sure, he can't lay a hand on me anyway."
"Oh, ha ha, well I wanted to ask you how you pulled that little trick. You didn't mention it when we were going over your abilities earlier."
Ranma shrugged. "I used my Ki, it has lots of uses, I just have to find a way to apply it and I can usually do something."
"Well you can turn invisible, make tornados, punch faster than Quicksilver, and bench press about ten tons with this Ki, is there anything else?"
"Sure, there are several things."
"Can you fly?"
"Fly?"
Beast nodded and dropped to the ground. "Yes, several members of our team can fly. Like you saw Rogue do earlier when you were with Charles."
"I saw a guy once lift himself off the ground and hover in place for a while, but I wouldn't call that flying. Though he had this plunge and attack maneuver down to an art."
"Well from seeing your abilities I think you might have enough power to fly as well, have you ever attempted this technique you were describing?"
"Sure, I've done it a couple of times when I was practicing on some of my secret techniques, even improved it a little, but it sucks up Ki so fast that I can only maintain it for about thirty seconds or so and it's more of a hover than flying."
"How about we make a deal Ranma." Beast said with a weird grin.
"A deal? For what?" Now Ranma was confused, this guy kept jumping from one subject to another in the blink of an eye.
"You my friend have made me grow curious about you, your powers and abilities are way above the norm for a regular human and easily make you one of the toughest fighters around. I've never met a human that could do what you can without a special suit or corporate backing of some kind. So here's the deal, you let me run tests on you to understand your abilities, and I'll ask Jean to telepathically educate you about all the ins and outs of this dimension or at least give you hand coping with things. This will give you an education on mutants, a run down on the types of mutants that are out there and the ones that the general public knows about. Deal?"
"What kinds of tests?"
"Anything and everything for about two weeks, I can perform enough to get a better handle on this Ki you are using, come up with some ways to improve your abilities, teach you how to work with our team and to fight some of the other members of the team one at a time and all at once, and anything else I can think of."
Beast looked down at Ranma and his glasses gleamed with suppressed scientific need, he even heard the 'gleeeeeem' sound effect from somewhere. Ignoring the fact that a sixfoot ape like creature with blue fur, large teeth, and wearing a lab coat was making the offer that would allow him to learn everything he needed to survive here, Ranma wasn't sure he wanted to be poked and prodded for two straight weeks before he could earn any kind of freedom from this place. It was a good deal though and it had several advantages he liked as well, he knew the guy wouldn't kill him and if it was anything like the experiments that Tofu had performed on him every now and then he could survive them with only a little bit of discomfort.
Suddenly a nearby tree exploded as Bishop wandered back into the clearing and pointed a giant gun Ranma's head, the man was still in his underwear and looked like he wanted to kill someone. "RRRRRRRAAAAAAAANNNNNNMMMMMMMAAAAA!!!! DIE!!!!!!!!"
Ranma and Beast had to dive for cover as the enraged man pulled the trigger and fired off a bolt of super heated plasma energy that vaporized some of the nearby trees in a giant fire ball.
"WHUUUMP!!!"
Running for one's life is an acquired art, one that Ranma had perfected over the year whenever his old man had screwed up or stolen something. There was always someone on their tail, bounty hunters, police, irate tavern keepers, bouncers, priests, demons, you name it Ranma had run from it. He even remembered running from an enraged purple haired Amazon that liked to use the strangers weapons, running from Bishop was worse because he was firing a weapon that could level a house in one shot. A two story house. He cursed when one of Bishops blasts got a little to close and the shock wave picked him and sent him flying right over a nearby hill by about twenty feet.
Splash!!
Gasping for air and female, Ranma found herself in a lake that she hadn't noticed in her head long run from the madman, okay maybe she had gone a bit to far to show the guy up, but he had deserved it. The sound of dirt rolling down hill and into the water nearby made her look up to see Bishop as he snarled, in his underwear, holding a giant gun to his shoulder while standing at the top of a small rise that Ranma had flown over. The barrel of the weapon was glowing and the enraged look of evil on the guy's face was quite a sight to see. Ranma gulped and wadded back a few feet as she wondered if she might have gone just little bit to far with her joke.
"It w-was just a j-joke…"
"Now you DIE!!" Bishop snarled.
"Oh I wouldn't say that." Ranma then said with a smirk as she dog paddles back a bit more.
Bishop growled and Ranma could almost feel the man's finger tensing on the trigger, she leaned back a little just as she brought her hands together and shoved them forward to sent a shark shaped wave of water right up the barrel of Bishop's gun and knocked the man off his feet. She dove under water and swam for all she was worth, behind her Bishop's gun crashed to the ground and sparked for several seconds as it died. He rolled back to his feet with his eyes sparking with energy and fired a blast of energy from his hands at the red head swimming across the lake. He grinned as it hit her and exploded, sending a pillar of water high into the air and shock waves in all directions.
"Bishop if you've killed him I'll..."
"SHUT UP!!!!!!!" Bishop screamed in Beast's face, loud enough to make his hair stream out behind him. "HE WILL DIE, SLOWLY AND PAINFULLY!!"
"Um...I'm sorry then."
Bishop slumped to the ground unconscious and Beast patted a patch he had placed on the guy's shoulder a few seconds before. "For the patch, you really need to learn some self control my boy." He looked across the lake to see Rogue fishing Ranma out of the lake and waved to her as he picked up the unconscious Bishop. Now he had to hope Ranma would go for that deal, maybe hiding from Bishop for a couple of weeks would be a good incentive to get her to accept some experiments.
"What happened Beast?" Storm asked as she floated down to land beside him.
"Ranma played a little joke on Bishop and they guy went a ballistic, I'm still not sure how much was real and faked though. You recall how he got revenge on Wolverine last month?"
"Indeed, do you think this might have been along similar lines?"
"It's so hard to tell, the guy is like two extremes that when he pulls something like this it's impossible to understand what he's thinking."
"Alright, I'll talk to Bishop about this and you can talk to Ranma. Rogue is taking her to the medical facilities right now, we can drop Bishop off in his room and wait for the sedative to wear off."
"Alright, thanks for the help."
"No problem, it's been pretty slow lately and this was a bit of fun."
"Indeed."
**********
TWO WEEKS LATER
The tests and experiments were done and Ranma was more than happy to get out of the lab that had been his home for the last couple of weeks. Ranma really hoped that he wouldn't have to do something like this again. He didn't think he'd ever been though anything like it in his life and Beast had performed things on him that had been really strange. In the end though it had been worth it, he had been able to learn a ton of things about this new world he was in with Jean's help. Now it was time for a little break from this chaos and swimming looked like a great idea to work off some tension that had built up lately. In her room she finished pulling on a silver and black bathing suit that Storm had loaned her, walked out to the pool, and tossing a towel beside a chair she dove in and started doing some quick laps. There were other things she needed to consider too, Bishop was at the top of that list.
Over the last several days the X-men had kept Bishop from getting his revenge as well by keeping him busy with missions and lots of training sessions away from the mansion. Ranma figured that while this was going on Beast had performed close to five hundred or more tests on both of his forms to figure out how the curse and his new abilities worked, he was baffled by the mass to energy ratio that that happened every time he transformed. The big blue mutant had made her run on treadmills for hours at varying speeds, perform actions that would test her power levels to the limit, blood tests on both forms, and even the one thing he didn't even like to think about at the best of times a gynecological exam. Those things gave him the creeps, but he had learned that the things were needed no matter how much he disliked them.
Shudder.
He may have learned to live with the curse just a tiny bit, but some of the things he had to do at times because of it made him cringe in disgust. Now that he was out of the lab he wanted to relax a little, Beast had pushed his skills to the limits of his ability and pushed beyond that to levels he didn't know he had. His whole body hurt this morning and he wanted to swim a little before had to do anything else, so he had to do it as a girl. Beast had suggested that he might have the ability to switch the curse on and off on his own with a bit of thought. He was a bit skeptical of the idea since she had been trying to do just that for some time now with no luck. Ranma could even recall the time Nabiki suggested just that to her one night for ten thousand yen.
It had been worth the money, but after several months of practice Ranma hadn't been able to find a way to control the curse, instead she had been able to find dozens of different ways to use her other Ki abilities by using different emotions for attacks and concentration. Still, Beast had come up with several suggestions that Ranma hadn't considered yet so there was a little hope that he would succeed some time in the future. There had been so much information from Beast that Ranma wondered if he would even remember everything that Beast suggested over the last couple of weeks. A lot of it had been good advice that he wanted to try out while some of it had been just plain weird.
While in his room, Ranma used the bathroom sink to change into a girl and put on her new one-peice bathing suit. Grabbing a towel she heads out to the pool, tosses the towel on a deck chair, and dives into the deep end. She was surprised to find that the pool was slightly heated, almost enough to activate her curse, but it didn't happen so she just started doing some laps. Now that she had a bit more free time to think about things she wondered what the future would bring, would she be stuck in this place for the rest of her life? She trusted these X-Men more than she had a couple weeks before and with Jean's help knew quite a bit about the way things worked now, but there was still some kind of underlying feeling that kept Ranma from fully trusting them. They kept to many secrets and if some of those Danger Room battles he'd participated in were any indication they had a weird way of handling situations.
He was willing to give them the benefit of doubt there was always one thing that made him refuse to take the one little step to trust them completely. Bishop was trying to kill him for pulling that practical joke, the rest of the team except for Rogue and Beast seemed to be the only one's she had any kind of contact with. The rest of them were always off doing something else, Wolverine was always leaving and returning as he did his own thing, Storm spent lots of time up in her garden on the roof while the Professor spent a great deal of his time in his office working on paperwork and down in the underground tunnels in the Cerebro room where he was always looking for emerging mutants that they could help.
Ranma agreed that keeping mutants safe from a world that hated them was something that was good and right, but he still thought that they went about it in the worst way. Dropping in out of nowhere and blowing everything up to stop rampaging mutants just didn't quite fit in with what he considered the best way. The old man had taught him tactics while on the trip, tricks and cons that could be used in dozens of different situations that would have helped make the job a whole lot easier. None of them would listen though, they had their own ways of doing things and wouldn't hear of doing it any other way. She could respect that, but it still seemed a little weird that they wouldn't even consider a different way of doing things. All that damage to streets, cars, even buildings wasn't going to make them any friends in the long run. Boy did he know that, the neighbors on either side of the Tendo's place really disliked him and all those idiots that used to attack them.
**********
He wasn't sure what was going on, but Chad knew that things had changed in some way he didn't understand. Images of his run from that monster flashed through his mind every now and then as he walked the streets, he remembered his fear, the pain, and the shock as the creature caught and impaled his body with those claws. He knew that something else had happened, but after all this time he just couldn't remember what it was, only that it had nearly killed him. The worst part of whatever had happened to him was the hunger that seemed to gnaw at his stomach, it was impossible to ignore, but he didn't know what to do about it or how to relieve it. You see he was like a disembodied cloud and after two weeks he had learned a few things about his new state of being, the biggest one was that he didn't have a physical body anymore. He was like a ghost or wraith of some kind, he could see himself and everything around him easily, but no one else could see or touch him.
Walking though solid objects had caught him by surprise and he still hadn't had a chance to test what walking through a human was like, the prospect frightened him more than a little. The hunger seemed to have a life of its own as well, it was drawing him towards something deep in the more dangerous areas of the city. There was something that had changed about his eyes too, looking at the people around him over the last few days had changed the way he perceived them. At first they'd just looked normal, but then they had all started to glow a bunch of different colors and he figured he was smart enough to know that humans didn't just start glowing on their own, so this was the way he was seeing them. They were a mix colors in dozens of different shades that were quite striking, if he hadn't been so hungry he would've liked to try and figure out what the colors meant.
As a ghost he couldn't just walk into a local McDonalds and ask for a Big Mac or two to fill his nonexistent stomach anymore, so he had to find another way to do it and he didn't know what he had to do. So here he was stumbling down the street trying to think of a way to satisfy his hunger that was driving him mad and leading him who knew where, he had to find something to eat before he collapsed completely. Luckily he was being pulled towards something and some deeper part of his mind was telling him that it was food, like an instinct or a buried memory. It was there in that dark alley, in a large box that looked like it had seen some hard times as well. He kneeled down at one end of the box and looked inside to see a pair of legs bundled up in newspapers.
It was some homeless guy, Chad could feel his new senses drawing him towards the guy as he stood there and wondered what this guy had to feed him. Even his eyes were telling him that this guy was different that most humans, instead of the strange glow that he'd seen on most everybody else, this guy had a kind of Rainbow like aura that shifted and waved like a surging tide. Without really realizing what he was doing Chad reached out and tried to feel the glowing colors, it was a mistake of the highest order, but only from a certain point of view. His body surged with pure ecstasy and he let off a silent scream, and writhed around as something happened to him.
**********
After finishing about twenty laps Ranma bobbed around for a while and put in a little practice on some of her underwater techniques to pass the time and make sure she could still do them. She'd been thinking of everything Jean had explained to her about how people perceived them and other mutants. This world was horrible, how anyone could live here and be happy seemed to be an impossibility, he understood hate, but on this level it was like and alien thing. She wanted to get home even more now that she understood what she would encounters out there beyond the fence line, her promise to her mother was one thing, but this world was...bad. There were places in this world, here in the United States no less, that if she showed any of her abilities there was a chance that the locals would hunt her down and lynch her if she's caught. Kill her for no reason other than something they thought she might do, not what she would do, but might do. Ranma had run into that kind of thing in the wilds of China where outsiders were usually killed on sight, but for it to happen in the middle of New York City here in the United States was simply incredible.
Some of the information Jean had shown her touched on some of the history of the Morlocks and their massacre down in the lower tunnels, to the kinds of Sentinels the X-men had encountered, even some of their enemies like Sabertooth who was a pain in the ass to fight. Ranma had wanted to fight some of them in the Danger Room and Beast had been curious to see how that fight would go. Ranma didn't like to lose, but he hadn't expected the guy to go for a lethal shot so early in the fight and it had taken him down almost instantly. One thing Ranma did learn while with Beast and Jean was that he didn't like having a telepath in his mind and was glad when Jean was finished helping him out. Ranma had kept that improvised mental barrier up ever since, even improving upon it a bit now that he understood more about how Jean's shields worked.
He'd found out something that even baffled Jean and Xavier, Ki seemed to be made to keep telepaths out of a persons mind, all she had to do was keep a tiny bit of it focused on the job and no one would ever go into her mind against her permission. That in turn would have a good side effect, making her Ki stronger than ever over time. She wasn't sure what that would mean in the future, but if she could find a way to survive out there among the insane morons that seemed to make up this world she would be fine. With that Ranma decided to get out of the pool and spent a couple of minutes drying off before heading back into the house. That reminded her of one other thing Beast had told her, her body was now using large amounts of energy and if she was just resting and not using them things were fine, but the instant she started tapping her Ki that changed and her reserves would decrease while this new power of hers would increase.
Since she planned to keep that mental shield up pretty much constantly she would have to replace that energy, that meant only one thing...pizza! She made her way to the kitchen and dug some pizza out of the fridge, they ate more fast food at this place any other she had ever visited in her life. With a few deft bites and a loud burp she finished it off and tossed the box in the trash before heading up to her room to get changed back into some normal clothing, she ignored the two lechers gaping at her from the living room as she trotted up the stairs. She hadn't seen them before, but didn't think to much of it since they were just sitting in the living room like they had been there for some time now. Once in her room Ranma quickly changed and sat down on the bed to put her shoes on, instead of leaving them downstairs by the door like she should have, breaking that habit had taken most of her time over the last couple of weeks. Beast said that since she was in the United States she wouldn't have to do that kind of thing anymore if she didn't want to.
This wasn't Japan so Xavier didn't seem to care and Ranma had always wondered why such a thing was needed anyway. So after thinking about it she decided to do what the others usually did and that was leave them on all day long. After that she headed for the bathroom, grabbed a cup of hot water and poured it over her arms to change back to his male form. He was about to leave the room to find Scott, the guy had promised to take him into New York today, when Ranma felt something weird in the air. He stopped and concentrated on it a bit and realized that someone with a lot of Ki had done some really powerful, but it wasn't in the mansion, but much farther away. What was even stranger was that Ranma could tell that the Ki was of a dark intent, evil in some way.
"What in the world was that?"
**********
To Be Continued...
End Notes - It's and interesting place to leave off and will drop you right into the next chapter, ever hero needs and enemy and since Ryoga isn't around and I gave Ranma a power up, he needs something to fight. This is the Marvel Universe after all, they just pop out of nowhere whenever some hero goes into action. ^_^
If you have any questions just email me
Ending Notes - It's and interesting place to leave off and will drop you right into the next chapter, ever hero needs and enemy and since Ryoga isn't around and I gave Ranma a power up, he needs something to fight. This is the Marvel Universe after all, they just pop out of nowhere whenever some hero goes into action. ^_^
If you have any questions just email me