A.N. Well I must say, this wasn't as well received as UM. Oh well, I'm stubborn that way, which is why you get EE ch2. But don't worry though, by the time this hits the open web, UM 19 should be out. Enjoy both, will ya?
Exchanging Education: Chapter 2
"So, you think you'll miss all this, Ferrous? The deep forests, I mean?"
A question of such hidden depths deserves a moment to reflect. Especially since after two weeks, all subject matter that consisted of inane banter had long been used up. Pacing her larger companion, Ferrous kept her head lowered both in thought and to keep an eye out for sneaky roots that always love to trip her up when she's under her crush's scrutiny.
Taking a deep break, she replied, "Well, I'm sure it will take some getting used to, not having the huge trees about."
Still silent, Ash lent his unprying encouragement. Content with her 'space' Ferrous went on to sound out her thoughts on another person.
"Without these creaky old trees, it'll be harder to tree-hop like my friends and I normally do. I suppose their presence is comforting. Not having them around to listen to in the wind will be unsettling."
Ash took his chin in hand again, nicknamed 'The Thinker's Pose', and interjected.
"It may not be all doom and gloom yet, kiddo. The place you're going to is called the Hidden Village of the Leaf, and is supposed to be a very old respectable village. They wouldn't name it 'the Leaf' if there weren't any trees, would they?"
"Eh, I suppose..." Ferrous replied. She also sweat-dropped, since she's also heard of some places that were named after geographical features that were not to be found near the town.
"Oh, look ahead!" Good, he changed the subject.
"Huh?" was her oh-so-elegant response.
"I see the tree line. We should be crossing from primeval to recent woods soon, and a week will take us into the far eastern grasslands. From there, it should take a week and a half to reach the isthmus and we'll cross into the Fire Kage lands. Then, it'll take the rest of our travel time to reach Konoha."
Looking quite bored with the status of things in general and lectures on geography in specific, Ferrous 'humph-ed'.
"Tchya, keep doing that and you'll get wrinkles Ferr-chan," he teased.
The girl's scowl only deepened before she figured out that he was playing. Inwardly, she rejoiced in that the muscular teen had called her Ferr-CHAN and not imouto like usual.
Keeping her new glow of sunshine to herself, Ferrous allowed a light silence to fall comfortably on the travelers' shoulder for a few more hours.
In the end, it was Ash who broke first and started a conversation that would have a direct influence on her life for the next three years.
"Ferrous, I've been thinking about something..."
"Heh, don't hurt your head, Ash-kun."
Startled at the immediate comeback, Ash looked up and over at her.
"What'd I do to deserve that?" he asked in a semi-hurt tone.
Ferrous looked a little downcast that her joke wasn't appreciated. She tried to cover for her actions with a "It was too good to pass up on. You shouldn't leave openings like that, they'll get taken advantage of."
"What makes you the expert, then?"
"Ranma-sama taught that in second year gym training, and I was eight at the time."
A quiet 'oh' was her only reply for a few more minutes. Then Ash tried again.
"Speaking of oyaji, he asked me to propose a line of action to you before we left."
Ferrous kept her 'intrigued' face on until he kept speaking.
"You know how dad always says to keep most of your abilities a secret until they are needed, right?"
"Well yeah!" she says sarcastically, but piped down at another one of Ash's looks.
"Well, if you consider it this way, Ferr-chan, you are going into a very long-term battle. You are the representative of the whole of the pokemon lands, and everyone in Konoha will be looking at you to see what we're like."
Ferrous looked halfway between swallowing a lemon and getting a whiff from a noxious Grimer. She liked attention with the best of them, but being under such close scrutiny hadn't occurred to her before. And she wouldn't have her pokemon friends to back her up.
"Man, that's harsh."
Ash ruffled her hair again to show some empathy. As the winner of so many pokemon Leagues, he too was a pretty well watched fellow, but when other people found out that he was Unnamed Gym's heir... Lets just say it ain't pretty.
"Okay, so I should limit some of my normal activities Ash?"
"Not so much limit as moderate."
"How so?"
"Well, dad mentioned the Empathy Aura you had developed. He says that during the rest of our trip you should practice keeping your feeler vibes invisible. I think, and dad agreed, that you should by all means still utilize that technique, since its quite useful, but not to let anyone know you can do it. He also says to keep your martial arts and weapons combat to a minimum until you can assess the level the other kids are at. When in public you're to meet their standards, but don't limit yourself too much. Unnamed has its reputation too, yanno."
Ferrous went into thought about how to practice what was suggested. Ash only continued when her gold rimmed brown eyes lifted and met his own chocolatey brown.
"Dad also said that he noticed that all the messengers and diplomats used a different energy system that what Unnamed utilizes. Ki and chi were relatively unknown in our lands as it was, before dad got here, and they still are being kept under secrecy for the edge it gives our village."
"Uh-huh."
"Well, given that information, Dad thought you should also keep visible ki and chi to a minimum, and try to find a way to learn what they use. Perhaps incorporate it into the Anything Goes so you can bring it back. I know 'the almighty Ranma-sensei' will want to get some new tricks."
One can just HEAR the mischief dripping off Ash's description of his old man. It was an open fact that the Unnamed Gym leader was fascinated by and driven to master any new techniques that happened across his path. Since he no longer travels as extensively as in his youth, the still young gym leader would pump his returning students for new stuff and generally would master it within the month, if not that day or week.
"Hey, tonight is camp night, isn't it?" Ferrous asked, trying to change the subject so she can think about the ramifications this change would wrought.
"It's been three days, hasn't it? So yes, we can sleep tonight. Remember the last time you convinced me to go another day? You were so dead on your feet that we were only making half-time and you let those Spearows make off with a week's worth of rations."
Embarrassment, thy name is Ferrous.
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Thus, three further weeks passed with the two traveling in this manner. Running through the night and daylight hours for thee days and then resting on the eve of the third. A total of four weeks had passed since Ferrous and Ash started on their journey and the young preteen had made leaps and bounds on refining her empathy aura so that it was invisible to the naked eye and undetectable by most other senses.
Although resigned to trying to stay as anonymous as possible when it came to her abilities, Ferrous was also impatient when Ash revealed his father's incentive for maintaining a 'moderate' lifestyle while she was out of country.
For the longest time growing up, and when she was old enough to appreciate it, Ferrous had been pestering Ranma about a certain technique that had exploded his ki/chi control when he was about Ash's age and had lived a few years in the pokemon Amazon lands.
Few outside Unnamed even knew of the generalities of the technique or even what purpose it served, but the results could speak for themselves.
Ranma's ki/chi control was just this side of absolute, and he kept and exercised huge reservoirs of the stuff. Because of this, Ranma had also found a way to easily convert one into the other, and back again, which made almost infinite possibilities for the energy's utilization. But techniques of this magnitude were far in the future for Ferrous. All she wanted to learn now was just how Ranma-sama trained with weight resistance, with no weights in sight.
Ash finally caved to her insistent prods two days before they were scheduled to cross the isthmus and into the Kage lands. He felt that her using Ranma's method would help others further underestimate the girl, since it would, in effect reel in and diminish her battle aura.
Ferrous had declined the latter stages of battle aura development in lieu on enhancing her early warning system and Empathy aura effectiveness. To this end, her battle aura was a flashy lightshow with few benefits. Ranma's method would increase her natural protection, providing a semi-impermeable armor more useful than her weak battle aura.
That night was a designated sleep night and instead of pulling to the underbrush on the side of the road, Ash gestured ahead.
"In about fifteen minutes, imouto, we'll come upon a village where we will stay at the inn. This'll be our last stop where we can safely travel, and from here on we've got to keep a night watch."
While Ferrous looked happy at her imminent stay in a real bed, Partis, who had primarily remained quiet on the girl's shoulder sighed a mushroom puff. What the electric mouse's partner apparently didn't realize was that as soon as they stepped out of the pokemon lands, her first pokemon friend would have to go into the stupid travel ball.
Most pokemon who resided with humans normally got used to that ever-present sphere very quickly, but again, Unnamed Village was always a step beyond the norm. Most every pokemon who kept relations with their human trainers were not retained in their ball twenty four/seven, but when an Unnamed went out into the rest of the lands for journeys and tournaments they kept a belt of the spheres. While both sides tended not to like this capture system, it was better not to clash with other land's authorities, since most other societies did not always allow the intelligent creatures to roam. Ranma and Unnamed's village council highly urged their travelers to keep a low profile.
Too much publicity was detrimental to the village's well-being, and the trainers got enough attention just when they submitted their village's name on the tournament papers alone.
Ash and Ferrous crested a small rise in the surrounding grasslands which revealed the snug little village a little ways below their present elevation.
"This is a tactically bad place to put a village, Ash-kun."
The raven-haired teen slid her an unreadable look.
"Yes, so it is. Building your homes in a minor valley would be ill considered."
Happy with her puppy love agreeing with her, Ferrous rushed on in an attempt to further impress him.
"I mean, come on? What morons don't consider flooding, or the lack of advantage that line of sight would give? Ooh, what about if attackers came? The enemies would have the edge if they had long range projectiles or pokemon who could attack from a distance."
With each word, though, her companion became a little more closed, a bit more imposing. The sea-green haired girl slowed to a rambling stop at the disappointed eyes in his implacable face.
"Um, nii-chan?" she deliberately wheedled, using the term he most liked trying to get out of the obvious oncoming lecture.
"Ferrous," his voice coming down on her like stone, as he didn't use any of his pet names for her.
"Before you go casting an entire village into the depths of idiocy, look over at each of the surrounding rises."
When she did so, Ash went on in that same unforgiving tone. "Those towers you see are there to scout the surrounding countryside. Line of sight you said? They have that here, in better effectiveness actually.
"If you will also deign to remember your orientation lessons, the winters in these parts are unusually fierce, and the winds high at most parts of the year. The village planners thought ahead and deliberately did not construct their homes where they would be sure to fail. That means in a depression of the land.
"There is little chance of flooding, the soil here is highly drained. And for your last argument, once we arrive, you will also notice that their guards are almost as highly trained as our neighboring amazons."
Looking very subdued, Ferrous was inwardly kicking herself repeatedly. Keeping herself a step behind the dark teen, she remained silent as a sort of self-imposed penance.
At the gates, the duo were indeed approached by a wary pair of guards while four more covered the gate. Ash showed their passes, and the uniformed guard in front looked critically between the pictures that the people.
Of an older sort than Ash and Ferrous, the two guards' eyes widened when Partis and Pikachu peeked over their trainer's shoulder to get a load of the hold up. They too were feeling the wind's bite and wanted to get inside where it was sheltered.
The guard on the right had a kindly weathered face which lit up when he took in the sight of Ash and his pikachu. Opening his mouth to say something, he was cut off by the guard on the left who blurted, "You're Ash Ketchum!"
The teen in question blinked and then slowly nodded.
"Yes, yes I am. Can I- help you with anything? Are our passes in order?"
The right guard had a grin splitting his face.
"By all means. Everything is in order, won't you come in Mr. Ketchum - and your companion?"
Ash nodded once again and accepted the documents back.
"We'll be leaving tomorrow so you won't have to worry about Team Rocket catching up again. We lost them about a week and a half ago, and I'm sure they don't know where we're headed. I'd like to apologize again about last time I was here, sir."
Both guards shook their heads simultaneously.
"It was no problem at all, Mr. Ketchum. You did Border-town a world of good on that visit. You'll always be welcome back, any time."
Ferrous, who had hung back during most of this exchange asked what was uppermost on her mind as soon as they passed beyond the gates with smiles and nods from all six of the guards.
"You've been here before?"
Looking thoughtful, Ash "hmm-ed" a yes.
"It was just after I started traveling without Brock and Gary. Aside from when I first started out, I always had someone there with me on the road. That time, though, I wanted to get away from everything that was familiar. I had won too many awards and leagues to go anonymous in any of the main lands, so I decided to follow the pokemon borders.
"I spend the last six months before I met my dad along roads like these with only my pokemon for company, and I met up with several towns, just like this on my way.
"The reason I pretty much bit your head off earlier was because you don't know what they go through."
Ferrous arranged her lips into a thinking moue.
"So what exactly do they go through, then, Ash-kun?"
"Come on, imouto, think for a second. These people live on the borders of the pokemon lands where other countries might try to invade. Life is harsh, and there are few luxuries that most people take for granted. They are isolated, have little access to pokemon in general, since they are so far out, have to grow ninety percent of all their food and raise their children without the help of daycares and gyms."
Again he let the silence stretch in an effort to allow the concepts to sink into her head. It wasn't that he was angry with his adopted imouto, but he definitely considered himself disappointed in her. Perhaps his little talk would put things into perspective.
While Ferrous's mental CPU went over this new data, her eyes reflexively noted all of the blind spots perfect for ambushes, places where it would give her the advantage of shelter in case of ranged fire and the few people still out on the street at this time of evening.
Night was falling swiftly on this little homestead, and the shadows crouching near walls and imperfections in the land were growing bolder, stretching beyond their places.
The people that she noticed hurried about their business even as a skinny boy on makeshift stilts was lighting lanterns on the other side of the street. Very few of the townspeople had more than a tiny layer of fat to pad their bones and they all sported sun weathered squint lines that indicated long days outdoors.
Ash was right. These people had it a lot harder than what she thought. It was a testament of their perseverance that they do so well at all.
Still keeping at a pace behind Ash, Ferrous also took this opportunity to gauge his subtle physical cues and utilize a minor variant of her Empathy aura. She was curious as to how he would react to coming back to a place that obviously held memories for him.
What he had mentioned earlier with the guards hadn't been explained yet, and she was hoping he would at the Inn they were staying at tonight.
Speaking of such, Ash led his charge unerringly down the main street and down a side one before coming to a pause in front of a small but tidy looking two story building. In lovingly drawn but faded paint, 'The Cat's Meowth' graced the upper facade with a quirky caricature of a gossipy Meowth to accompany the words.
Holding open the door like any good gentleman would, Ash just rolled his eyes when Ferrous mentally blew the action all out of proportion with her eyes going all dewy and sparkly.
As she swept by him in love's glow, the darkened interior soon dimmed her fervor until her eyes grew used to the decreased amount of light. Just at her shoulder, Ferrous could feel Ash also pausing to adjust.
She blinked up at him when he placed a large callused hand on her shoulder and stepped from behind to approach the bar. Following, she wove between the chairs and tables after him and came to a halt before the long block of waist high polished wood.
The bartender was one of those jolly portly men with thinning hair on top and going grey on the sides. You could practically find one in every city, village or town. And somehow, they all were in the service industry in some way or another. This one apparently owned the inn and the mini tavern below it.
The reason why Ferrous knew the man to be jolly was kinda given when a big grin split his fleshy face and the watered blue eyes light up in recognition. It was the gate guards all over again, and Ferrous wondered if this was standard procedure for her love whenever he revisited a town. The eighteen year old has had so many adventures and training trips that he could almost rival his dad at that age.
While Ferrous was most interested in hearing Ash's exploits of the past, she was not too keen on hearing the preparations of a room for the night, and idle chatter about where they were going in the morning.
To pass some of the time, her gold rimmed eyes scanned the dimly lit room and noted the four figures seated or lounging as was their tastes.
Two women in modest house-wife-ish dresses were seated at a table together, and both had turned curious faces to Ferrous and her escort.
The other two were men, one sitting at the bar nursing a drink, and the other at a table a little off to the side apparently writing something of great interest to him, since he never looked up at the sound of the door opening.
The man at the bar looked haggard and thinly ratty and was appraising Ferrous's looks and budding bosom with a very inappropriate intent. However, when he looked over at Ash to see if he would be any trouble, he gulped a little and turned around almost as quick as a Kadabra can teleport. There is always a little something primal seated at the back of a human's mind that will instinctively tell them to back the hell away when they encounter a wild predator. It is only the fools who ignore this warning, or the mentally inept that are prevented from hearing them. Author coughs, interjecting a 'Kuno' between expulsions of blocked air
Ferrous' eyes, hardened from the look that creep gave her darted back to the women when a new wave of tittering reached her sensitive ears. Barely picking out what was whispered amongst the huddled females, the Unnamed warrior-in-training rolled gold-rimmed brown eyes.
"...so chivalrous, protecting her... famous here..."
"...agree... creep outsider... banned"
"Wonder if Mr. Ketchum is heading in the same direction..."
And then both of the housewives squealed in unison, exclaiming "HIRE THEM AS AN ESCORT!"
Ferrous looked again at Ash to see if he'd heard any of this nonsense, but caught a thoughtful look on his face as he turned away after getting the key to their rooms. It actually seemed as if he were considering this outlandish business proposal.
$&()#$&()$&()
It would take a total of four days to reach the village the ladies wanted, and because of their presence, Ash and Ferrous knew better than to train in open sight. It also kept them on a strict walk during the day, sleep every night schedule. No more running for three days straight while they had company. Not only would it be noticed that they had an extremely odd endurance, but the ladies couldn't keep up.
It was during the first night of camping that the thinner woman alerted Ferrous to a previously unknown pet peeve.
"Why Ferrous dear, now that we're all settled for the night, you can answer some questions I've had bubbling for a while."
Ferrous's brows lowered as she tried to untangle the logic that necessitated her answering this woman anything at all. The plumper brown haired lady's eyes were also on the child, willing her to sit down and indulge the two gossips.
A glance at Ash-kun only merited a helpless shrug. Ferrous sighed and plopped down on a log by the fire with the other women.
"Yes?"
The plump one let out a good natured laugh, and the thinner one chortled with glee.
"Well, I've been meaning to ask you about your darling hair, child. Whatever on earth possessed you to dye it?" the thinner, and unknowingly rude one asked.
Before Ferrous could defend herself, the brunette gasped in a scandalized manner.
"Perci! How can you say that? Don't you recognize a natural oceanic color when you see one? Don't tell me you've lived too long on the other side of the isthmus not to have seen one.
I know they're rare, but two or three come into Bordertown every year or so."
The dark blond thin one widened her eyes in surprise, and then a moment later, grinned uneasily at Ferrous in chagrin.
"I'm truly sorry. Didn't mean to insult you, but Sasha's right, I haven't seen anyone with that kind of hair color who hadn't had it dyed."
Feeling a little better, the Unnamed replied, "S'fine. I don't think I've ever had to defend my hair color before. Since Ash and I live near the Amazon lands, there's always been people around with unique colors and styles."
And then to herself, 'I don't think I like being questioned. Dad has it. Grandma has it. Why should I be called a dye job?'
Ferrous shot a look of pure feminine fury when she caught a snort and muffled chortle coming from the only male at their camp. It was hastily cut off, and she knew the warning had been received.
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A.N. Hey guys, I'm definitely being a klepto again, but this time it isn't from Mr. Nguyen's work. Naw, I've diversified, and the basics of Ranma's 18 year old technique was thought up by the author who has the site g r u m . a n i f i c s . c om
Just take out the spaces. And thnx btw for those who left a review letting me know the website didn't show through the first time.
He's got a multi-part storyline, and a rewrite that is just as good as the original, if in a different direction. I really recommend that website. I'd like to take this chance to both apologize to him now, since I've kinda taken without permission, and also since I, for the life of me, can't remember his name. Bad Sierra.