*****
A.N:
"Japanese"
'English'
Signs
Chinese
Thoughts
-SOUND EFFECTS-
(AUTHOR'S NOTES NUMBER)
*****
Chapter 1: Impact
*****
It was a beautiful day in Nerima. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, there were few clouds in the sky, possibly because some of them had been wounded by a flying figure.
Oddly enough, it wasn't our favorite pigtailed martial artist.
A young man of about 16 years with brown hair tied into a thin style somewhere between a pigtail and a ponytail with a frayed backpack and smoking clothes was sailing through the sky. When he was about 1000 yards from the sidewalk he was about to land in, he rolled over. This was because he was asleep.
Less than five seconds later, he woke up. This was because he hit the ground. This is not a pleasant way to wake up.
The boy crawled out of the hole he had made in the concrete.
*Hm... it looks strangely like a swan...* (1) he thought.
Reaching into his still-smoking backpack, he drew forth a rather tattered paper on which some notes had been jotted down.
*Let's see... I mis-calculated the velocity for entry... but I KNOW I didn't mess up the dimensional coordinates. I hope. Ah well, here goes nothing.*
He walked up to a random passerby and inquired politely, 'Excuse me, do you know the way to Furinkan High?'
"Huh? Say what?"
The boy smacked himself. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a small necklace with a strange pebble attached, and put on said jewlery.
"Is this better? Ah, there we go. Now, I hate to bother you, but could you please direct me to Furinkan High?"
An astute observer would have noticed that the boy's words didn't quite match his lip movements.
Of course, most denizens of Nerima didn't really pay too much attention to wierdos. They were kind of jaded in that department.
"Sure," replied the pedestrian, on the assumption that this was another martial artist come to challenge Ranma, "Just head down that street and make a right. You can't miss it."
"Thank you very much!" replied the ponytailed teen.
After a few minutes of travelling, he arrived at the gates of Furinkan. He checked his digital watch, realized that it was set for New Jersey time, pressed a few buttons, and checked it again.
*It's still fairly early in the morning. School should start soon. There'll be a confrontation between Tatewaki and Ranma, but I want to avoid that. Where does Hikaru hang out?*
He walked over to the shaded lot behind the school. Not a whole lot of people were there, what with just about everyone inside. The only person who was there looked like a dead man walking, with dark circles under his eyes, a thin build, and no skin tone whatsoever. He was sitting on the steps, supporting his head using a fist in a classic "thinker" pose. He was wearing the usual dark blue uniform, unusual only in the fact that he was wearing two lit candles in strange band around his head. On the ground was a pigtailed voodoo doll, a short-haired voodoo doll, a stick-wielding voodoo doll, and a few other voodoo gewgaws arranged in a pattern that seemed strangely meaningful.
"Hikaru? Hikaru Gosunkugi?"
The spoken-to turned away from contemplating the straw dolls and whatnots and stared at the newcomer. He wasn't used to this, given that very few people knew he even existed, much less spoke to him. "Yes?" he asked back?
"I know this sounds really strange, but I'm going to give you a chance."
Hikaru was baffled. "A chance at what?"
The boy smiled. "A chance at whatever you want. I'm here to train you."
"Train me? Train me in what?"
"Well, to start with, magic. That spell you've arranged is a little unbalanced."
Gosunkugi was surprised. "W-What do you mean?" he said.
"Well, if you manage to get that thing off the ground, which I doubt, then you'll have the undying affection of all small woodland creatures within half a mile of here."
"What do you mean, 'If I can get it off the ground'?" Hikaru pondered the stranger's statement.
"Well, have you ever wondered how and why voodoo works? Or in your case, how and why voodoo should work but doesn't?"
Hikaru stared at the newcomer. "Not really..."
"Well, the main power of voodoo comes from the energy of the universe."
"What do you mean? Everything comes from the energy of the universe. So what?"
"No no no. What I mean is, the energy of the UNIVERSE. The kind that enforces karma, not the kind that's expanding."
"Oh."
"Right. Now, you know how people have different luck? For instance, some people are blessed right from the start with good looks, a good brain, a healthy body, a righteous spirit, talent for this or that? Well, that's because their luck is strong from the beginning. Not always good, mind you. Strong luck can be evil too, like when a twister rips through your house.
"Well, as I was saying, voodoo was originally developed as a way to bleed off excess luck. Bad luck was cleverly misdirected using stuff fools the universe into believing that the recipient of a certain amount of bad luck is someone beside from the caster, or, if the caster is low on bad luck, the caster's friends.
"Blessings are a bit trickier; they use up whatever the blessing produces. So, say, a voodoo spell that ends up making the target more energetic might drain the caster of energy for a while, while a nerve-steadying spell would probably arrange events so the caster's life is more stressful for a while. It's not always good luck; it's possible that the caster actually gets the long end of the stick from a blessing, and both the caster and the subject can benefit from the same spell. It's not always good luck that these spells use.
"Now, the things that all of these spells require is changes in luck. In other words, you have to sometimes have bad things happen to you, and sometimes better things. For instance, a shaman might make, say, a dog barking in the neigborhood keeping him up all night to his rival, but he can't do that every day. Then he might bless his friend to find 100 yen on the sidewalk, but, like the dog, he can't do that all the time."
"Is this going anywhere? I've got to go to class soon."
"Not to worry, I'm finishing up this lecture. Now, as I was saying, luck fluctuates. That's the basis of voodoo. You don't have enough to power it. You need some other school of magic. Now get to class. If you want to hear more, I'll see you under the tree Ranma doesn't sit in during lunch."
*****
Before this continues, a few notes to remember please.
Knights of the True Fiance please bugger off. Rabid Canon Thumpers please thump elsewhere.
I'll be bashing almosteveryone. Nerima is a festering pile of sludge. But it's a good kind of sludge, the anime kind.
And this is kinda a SI. It's not ME me that arrives, but then again most OCs are in fact SIs on one level or another.
No, voodoo isn't really "Luck magic". I just made that up.
(1)Semi-inspired by Mirrors Multiplied.
chainchomp5
