*standard disclaimer* I own none of the characters here except Sotaki. This is a tribute to Ranma, Sailor Moon, Slayers, Jet Set Radio, or anything else except some guy named Josh who I own once a week at Dynasty Warriors 4. This is merely a way for me to express myself and relieve stress. Please don't sue, I don't have much.
*****
A.N:
"Japanese"
'English'
[Signs]
>Chinese<
(Thoughts)
-SOUND EFFECTS-
(AUTHOR'S NOTES NUMBER)
*****
Chapter 10: Undertow
*****
Another wonderful, sunny morning in Nerima. Another day of extortion, violence, lust, brutality and delusion. Worst of all for Sotaki, however, was the sunny morning part.
-Damn and blast! I swear I can't keep my eyes shut when it's this bright. Let's see, what time is it anyway?-
A thoroughly groggy ponytailed Gatecrasher woke up, checked his alarm-clock, decreed 11 AM to be far too early to be awake, and started thinking. -Nothing I can do right now to get rid of this blasted sun... and I'm too lazy to rig some kind of eye cover up... AHA!) Thinking thus, Sotaki reached into his rucksack with much more arm than the size of the bag warranted. Groping around a minute, he got bored and stuck the upper half of his body in. He emerged half a minute later with a crystal vial filled with pitch-dark fluid. Reading the label, Sotaki smiled grimly. *Potion of Darkness. Effects last one hour or until magic is dispelled. One dose. Do not use on external surfaces. Caution: Flammable. Just the thing I'm looking for - I've got too many of these things anyway.* Quaffing the draught of darkness, Sotaki's grin became quite happy as his eyes glazed over. *Ahhh.*
Meanwhile, at the Tendo Dojo, Ranma was having similar thoughts about certain pandas, without the parts about potions.
At the same time, at the Gosunkugi residence, Hikaru was sleeping in through a simpler method - closing the curtains. This was of course a luxury neither Sotaki nor Ranma had, Ranma because he had no time for closing curtains, and Sotaki because he had no curtains to speak of.
*****
A while later (sometime after lunch), Sotaki and Hikaru woke up, both feeling understandably hungry. As both climbed out of their respective places of repose and set about freshening up - one at a nearby stream, the other using the facilities at his house, they contemplated the virtues of various foods, and came to the same conclusion. *Man, I want some ramen.*
Seeing as they had already eaten at the one non-martial-arts-powered ramen joint in the district, they both set their sights on the Cat Cafe, and set off.
Hikaru's trip was uneventful, for the most part. Sotaki's was a bit more active. His sleep-addled mind didn't detect the flux of dark energy that portended the spawning of a youma. Said youma, however, immediately started stalking the nearest, strongest psychic signature - Sotaki's. The Sailor Senshi, feeling a bit less cocky than before, started stalking the nearest, strongest dark-energy signature - the youma's. Sotaki had unknowingly almost caught up with Hikaru, when the youma began closing in for the kill. Alarms went off in Sotaki's head, as he detected some VERY not-friendly thoughts being directed at him. This, coupled with the sudden jump in temperature and the simultaneous screaming of the very fabric of existance against the youma's very presence cued him off as to what was stalking him.
The youma lunged, certain that it would soon sever its target's neck from behind and feast on the body and soul of the one it would decapitate. Sotaki, however, stepped sharply to the left and dodged the red, dog-like demon, releasing a bright flash of light. This resulted in the dazed demon banging head-first into a lamp-post, which didn't sit too well with either fixture or extraplanar evil. Sotaki was now dressed in clothing a bit more appropriate for mortal combat his previously-worn black jeans with a few metal studs (and protection enchantments) attached and white t-shirt were now covered by a dramatically-flaring cloak.
The Sailor Scouts were impressed. Well, some of them. However, Sotaki wasn't done. "Oy! Fido! I JUST WOKE UP! What's the big deal attackin' me when I'm not even awake yet! Come back at a decent time. Like, say, 6 in the evening."
Hikaru, recognizing the voice of his sensei, turned around and started watching. From a safe distance, of course.
The dog, not very creatively, lunged again. Sotaki stepped to the side, and sighed. "Ah man, I've only got one viable weapon on me... and I hate firing this thing in populated areas. Well, you asked for it." Saying so, he lobbed a sachel charge in the path of the demon's next charge and, holding the detonator in one hand, he reached the other into his backpack. The youma lunged yet again.
The resulting explosion, enhanced by Sotaki's magic, shattered a few nearby windows.
The resulting explosion propelled the creature upward, mostly unharmed. "Fire-based, as I thought." Pulling his arm out of his backpack, Sotaki withdrew...
"NO WAY!" the Sailor Scouts were now ALL impressed. They all knew an anti-aircraft gun when they saw it. The fact that Sotaki was holding it with one arm made it all the more impressive.
The next explosion made the first one sound like a kid's capgun.
A few moments later, there was a brief rain of youma bits. Then, quiet.
Sotaki stowed the flack cannon where he had retrieved it from, and started ambling in the direction of the Cat Cafe. Hikaru joined him.
"You weren't kidding about the flack."
"What, you think I was? Since when have you known me to kid?"
"Point." Hikaru was impressed, yet again. "When do I learn how to do that?"
"Just after you learn to shoot a regular gun."
"And when does that happen?"
"Sometime after lunch, once you make your first psychic construct."
Hikaru boggled. "Don't you need a license for that sort of thing?"
"Which, the gun, the ack-ack, or the construct?"
"Gun and ack-ack." By this time, Hikaru had already gotten a hunch as to Sotaki's answer.
"The gun? Probably, but I never bother with them. The anti-air is a different story, I think. As for why: is there any police activity in Nerima?"
Hikaru thought back to the last time he had seen a policeman on duty in Nerima. He found that it was a couple of years back - some time before Ranma came along. "A long time ago. I think that's because Ranma pretty much took over everything of that kind."
"Probably. I've also noticed that martial artists are pretty much above the law. Assault in broad daylight, use of hazardous techniques that would normally be considered to be or at least blamed on explosives, indecent exposure, attempted rape, the works. Am I right here?" Hikaru nodded. "All right. Anyway, what are the police going to book me on? Possession of unregistered weapon?"
"That's what I was thinking."
"One: Searching me won't come up with anything. My guns are stored elsewhere, and gated in at-will, which means that even a stripsearch will come up with nothing. Two: What are they going to file my guns AS? They're all non-standard. My personal handguns exceed the maximum caliber by a factor of more than four. A testimonial that I fired them against some kind of magical entity, or some other junk, is just ABSURD. Any scientist will tell you that the recoil from my guns should tear my hands off, and thus the judge will find me an overconfident idiot, give me maybe a week, and let me keep the guns. Finally, the ack-ack. How likely is it that the police, in ANY district, are going to try and subdue a man for firing an anti-aircraft gun? Seriously. They don't get payed enough for that."
Hikaru's stomach rumbled as he nodded again. "Point. So what brings you here?"
"Same as you - food."
As they entered the Cat Cafe, Cologne nearly fell off her staff. *That aura... it's insane! The man who has it is a capable mage, and a better martial artist than Xian Pu! Haven't seen one of these for a hundred years.*
Sotaki, having taken a few light precautions when he sensed a powerful mind emitting shady thoughts at him, enabled a psychic shield and a small defensive spell as Shampoo flounced out to greet them.
"Aiyah! Welcome to Cat Cafe! Today special is too too good ramen. Follow me to table!"
With these words, the purple-haired Amazon bounced away again. Sotaki felt the hair on the back of his neck rise slightly as someone very quietly slipped into his personal space - a circle of a radius of five feet. Focusing almost all of his powers into his legs and feet, Sotaki performed a dodge with his feet firmly planted on the ground. The speed astounded Cologne, as it had dodged her Amaguriken-supplemented staff, which had been seeking one of the various nasty pressure points found on the back.
"Hello, sonny," cackled Cologne. "That looks to be fairly uncomfortable. Why don't you straighten out?
Shifting some psi and mana to his arms, and twisting around on foot, still bent nearly double, Sotaki ran a small scan on Cologne and prepared himself. "A mummy! A rather observant one at that... and a slow one. What's up?"
Cologne's staff blurred as she strove to strike the ponytailed mage. Her hands continued on their path... however, her staff did not. Sotaki snapped the wooden head-walloper in half and beaned Cologne in the head with the bottom half.
*What IS he? He grabbed my staff like it was nothing!* Cologne was shocked.
Sotaki's eyes narrowed. He rubbed the arm he had cought the staff with, and smiled. "Sorry, none of that now. I have business to attend to, and my pupil and I are rather hungry, so we'd appreciate it if you didn't try to stab either one of us again. Now if you'll excuse us, our tables call. Ah yes - I'll have the beef ramen, hold the drugs, potions and powders, thank you, and I'm pretty sure my apprentice will have the same."
Cologne picked herself up off the floor. *This is truly frightening. His smile... like a demon! I must avoid getting this one enraged. The way he moved screamed of power.* "Very well. Your order will be right out."
Hikaru was shocked. "I knew you were good, but THAT good? You blocked her staff like it was nothing!"
Sotaki smirked. "I'll tell you at the table." They strolled over to the booth Shampoo was at, and sat down. Stowing the top half of Cologne's staff up his sleeve, Sotaki stretched out as much the surroundings would allow, and yawned. Hikaru noticed something off about his arms.
Looking more closely, he noticed a small splinter of white sticking out of Sotaki's forearm, almost parallel to the skin. "Is that... bone?"
Sotaki nodded grimly. "Yup. Just because I make it look easy doesn't mean it is. I've got a large supply of healing draughts, so this is a minor injury. But it took a LOT out of me to block that staff. Furthermore, I had three advantages. One: I knew where Cologne was going to strike. I am somewhat skilled in mind-reading, a normally VERY difficult art. However, the old woman was EXTREMELY focused, and radiated her thoughts throughout her entire aura. Second: Her attack pattern locked. This means that although it's fast, it's predictable. She couldn't change it - you saw how her hands kept blurring even after I snagged the staff. However, all this would have been useless without the third advantage. She wasn't really putting EVERYTHING into her strike. She attacked as she would a martial artist of about half her ability. If she had truly attacked me, I would be quite dead. All of these combined to allow me to snag the staff, and stop her sequence - essentially, I blocked one strike. Now if you'll excuse me, the pain is getting to me." As he spoke these words, Sotaki reached into his backpack with his non-damaged arm and pulled out a crystalline vial of red fluid. Uncorking it with his teeth, he chugged the contents and sighed relaxedly. Before Hikaru's eyes, the damage to Sotaki's arm repaired itself - splinters receded into flesh, swelling subsided and damaged flesh became whole again.
"How many of those do you have?"
"About ten or so - that was a potion of cure serious wounds, extremely potent and really rare. I have a variety of other potions, some for healing. They're quite simple to make, too. I'll teach you - after gunplay lessons."
At this moment, a rather subdued Cologne brought out their ramen, and silence enveloped the table. >1<
-----
A while later, Hikaru and Sotaki were in another abandoned lot. Hikaru was focusing on gathering power, and Sotaki was focused on his funnel cake. Hikaru was sweating with the exertion, and Sotaki was sitting cross-legged and relaxing. Both were achieving the same thing, altough Sotaki's came with a bit more ease - they were shaping a construct. Essentially, they were programming their own psychic energies into a stable form that would serve a certain function. Namely, they were working on a 'laser sight'. Sotaki's had already taken form and was projecting a 'bright-red' line of light to their enhanced eyes. Hikaru's was taking a bit more effort; his energy refused to simply sit still and function. Hikaru was getting frustrated with his own difficulties, and the ease at which Sotaki made his energy obey.
"All right, now that you've had enough experience screwing up, it's time for you to actually MAKE the construct." proclaimed Sotaki, around mouthfulls of pastry treat.
"Wait - you mean all that was for nothing?"
"No, it's just that I left one piece out. Right now you're trying to control everything at once - you're striving to constantly renew and hold the construct."
"Yeah? So? Without that it would disappear."
"Are you sure?"
"Pretty sure."
"What's mine doing, then?"
Hikaru blinked, and moved on. "So you release the energy?"
"Not really - more like put it out to pasture. You sort of will it to stick together, and keep doing this and that, and maybe for long-term constructs to draw its own energy, and let it go, and it works."
Hikaru had long ago learned that there was no such thing as a free lunch. "What are the downsides to this method? Are there any others?"
Sotaki nodded as he finished off his desert. "Sure! The problem is it takes some time to refamiliarize yourself with the construct if, e.g., you want to modify it. That can be trouble if you need it changed or disabled FAST. The alternate method is what you were doing, with a lot more skill and control. The downside is, of course, that you need to focus on the construct, which pretty much immobilizes you. In a battle situation, it's rather doubtful that any construct will save your ass directly - psychic powers influence people MUCH more easily than weapons or projectiles, and that's almost always with direct force of will, so constructs rarely manage it - so it's a no-go for combat."
"Is there another method? There should be a way to get the best of both worlds."
Sotaki smiled. "Of course there is. In fact, there are several. Some are dangerous, most are ineffective, and all require a little more energy than you've got right now being held in constant reserve. So instead of that, I'm going to give you a pop quiz." Here, Sotaki tossed Hikaru a dark-red potion. "This is a potion of infra-vision, often associated with shadow. It lets the quaffer see into the infra-red spectrum for a limited time. Very useful in dark places where you don't want to give away your position. It gets kind of messed up by bright light, but that's another story. Anyway, what I want you to do is to find a way to use this potion in the technique I'm about to show you."
So saying, Sotaki started juggling potions behind his back.
Hikaru waited a while, in case something interesting happened. Then he waited a little more, just in case it was a gradual sort of thing. Then he waited another minute or so, in case Sotaki had just zoned our or something. Then he got impatient.
"Sotaki?"
"Yeah?"
"So what's this technique?"
"Oh, you didn't catch it? Here, I'll do it again."
Hikaru shook his head. "Nono, that's OK. I think you can just explain it. Really."
Sotaki shrugged. "Well, OK, but the best way to learn is by doing, you know."
Hikaru blinked. "Yeah, but I had no idea of what you were actually DOING."
Sotaki blinked. "Good point. All right. Now, you probably know the basic concept behind Remote Viewing: see things you shouldn't be able to see. Quite handy, really, because it's not fooled by illusions, and you can see through walls, around corners, etc. Each person has a different way of RV. Almost all of them depend on some kind of ordered information - usually a set of coordinates. Traditionally, RV was used for spying purposes. You give the spy a latitude and longitude, and a comfortable room, and some time later the spy gives you a description of whatever's at that place, be it nuclear silo, research facility, or farm."
Hikaru nodded. "Sounds handy. So how does juggling come into it?"
"Juggling requires fine muscle control, practice - and a reasonable knowledge of where the stuff you're juggling is at. Do I look like I have eyes on the back of my head?"
Hikaru admitted Sotaki did not.
"I'm using RV to see them. Quite handy, really. I'm not nearly a good enough martial artist to, say, develop a danger sense, but this keeps me a little safer nonetheless. The downsides are, of course, it only applies to physical objects that can easily be seen. A blade hidden in an apple, for instance, would snuff me right out if I couldn't get it out and get a healing potion in in time. Any kind of poison would do me in quite quickly. Killing intent, which often triggers sixth senses, is quite distinguishable to me, so I'm safe from that, but for a different reason."
"So if it's that useless, why not develop a danger sense?"
"I'll show you why, once a rampaging martial artist attacks us."
"SAOTOME! FOR TAKING MY BELOVED SHAMPOO AND CASTING HER AWAY, DIE!" A thoroughly enraged (if somewhat off in his aim - Ranma was currently at the Tendo compound) Mousse swooped down from the rooftop he was on and pointed at Sotaki.
Hikaru twitched. "Spooky timing."
Sotaki shook his head. "I've gotten into the Nerima groove. Now, observe. Two knives." Sotaki pulled a pair of switchblades out of nowhere. "Note how his posture immediately tenses. He senses pointy stuff not under his control - he feels this to be dangerous, and rightly so. Now, watch as I close in." Sotaki held both blades at the ready in front of him, and slowly crept towards Mousse.
"Saotome, you coward! Resorting to switchblades? I didn't think you were street trash, but apparently there are no depths to which you will not sink. For my beloved Shampoo, DIE!" How Mousse's eyes could see the blades and identify them so precisely, while not being able to tell the difference between Ranma and Sotaki, was a mystery Sotaki decided to investigate later.
By this time, Sotaki was right in front of Mousse, and had thwapped him upside the head.
"Hah! You must be on drugs as well! That was a PATHETIC attack!"
Sotaki held both knives an equal distance from Mousse. He made a few light, easily dodged jabs, which Mousse evaded. Suddenly, both sides blurred almost too fast for Hikaru to see. The brief combat ended with Sotaki crouching on Mousse's lower back at an impossible angle, holding one blade up to Mousse's jugular vein, and the other to his wrist. Sotaki's voice suddenly sounded much less carefree, and much more... deadly. "Ah, I see you know your vulnerable points. Now, it just so happens I am not Ranma Saotome. I am NOT a street tough - which means you have a chance to get out of this alive. However, I am also not a martial artist. This in turn means you have a chance to get out of this dead. If you understand this, and are now going to get out of my sight, and never attack me without provocation on my part, you can live. Otherwise, I'm going to have to kill you. Now, if you're going to leave now, give me a sign."
Mousse, very carefully, nodded.
Sotaki's arms and knives vanished from their positions, and he lazily flipped off of Mousse's back with a kick. The myopic martial wonder stumbled and shivered, and promptly headed back to the Cat Cafe, very much glad to be in possession of his bodily fluids and parts.
Sotaki sheathed his knives where he got them, and sighed.
Hikaru blinked. "Two questions. One, would you have actually killed Mousse? Two, what exactly happened?"
Sotaki shook his head. "I'm not sure about the answer to the first question. It all depents on the circumstances. If he plotted murder against me personally, and would not abate until I killed him, then yes. For a hot-blooded attack like that? No, not the first couple of times.
"As for your second question: What did you see?"
Hikaru thought back to what had transpired. He knew a little about martial arts after watching Ranma duke it out with various challengers for almost a year now. Thus, he correctly identified Mousse's actions. "He looked like he blocked a stab that wasn't there."
"That's right."
"Why did he do that, though?"
"His danger sense tipped him off."
"Really?"
"Yeah. It takes a lot of effort to fine-tune a danger sense. Almost impossible to get it perfected, too - it's THEORETICALLY possible, but it would require either a special technique, or years and years and years of nothing but all the dangers in the universe coming at you from various angles in controlled conditions. Mousse clearly had neither."
"All right. But how does this relate to what happened?"
"I'm getting there. Now, which would you say is more dangerous - a knife moving at, say, 2 miles an hour, or a knife moving , say, a hundred miles an hour?"
"The hundred-mile-an-hour knife."
"Normally, that's the case. But in this case, it wasn't so. This is because when the knife moved, it moved AWAY from Mousse. This meant that his danger sense said "fast-moving knife and slug-speed moving knife." Guess which he countered first? After all, it doesn't make much sense to move a knife fast and NOT at the target, right?"
Hikaru nodded, seeing what had happened.
"Yeah. Well, I used a twist to slip around Mousse's guard and get behind him. 2 miles an hour can be REALLY fast if you're preoccupied, especially if it's not 2 miles an hour the entire time. I snaked my arm around him, and that's the end of that."
"And all this is an explanation of why a danger sense is good but not great."
"Yeah."
"Wow. You've settled right into Nerima."
"I guess I have. Hard to believe I'm a roaming mage, huh? Or, knowing this place, not so hard."
"All right. Now I believe you said something about guns?" Hikaru had always wanted some power in self-defense, and a gun had always seemed the way to go. He was far too law-abiding (and wimpy) to go to the Yakuza and get a handgun, however, so it had always remained an unfulfilled dream.
"Sure. Just finish up the quiz."
"Quiz? Oh, right. The potion." Looking at the potion, Hikaru frowned. He didn't see anything that leaped out at him. Drawing a bit of shadow, he promptly went bug-eyed. The insides of the potion were a swirling mass of light and dark - he could see snatches of everyday life from all over Nerima inside the vial. Here, a couple rested in the shade of a tree. There, a little old lady ladled the sidewalk under a telephone pole. In another scene, a mugger hid in an alley from his enraged 'victim' - another travelling martial artist.
Tearing his eyes away, Hikaru looked at Sotaki. "What was that?"
"My best guess? You just remote viewed. Ancient principle of magic - like affects like. You use shadow energy to 'see' things you couldn't before. You looked into essentially a vial of condensed shadow. Naturally, you'd see OUT of shadow as well."
Hikaru shook his head in wonderment. "That's amazing. It's just wacky enough to make sense. The things I could do with this potion-"
"What, you want it? It's much more useful quaffed, I've always thought, but alternative uses HAVE tended to be surprisingly potent... yeah, you can have that. It'll be your first trinket."
Sotaki blinked. "Trinket?"
"Yeah. That's what mages and psychics call enchanted everyday items - not just enchanted like a flying carpet, but things that are used as lenses - to focus abilities. I'd say the potion qualifies, if you use it to scry."
Hikaru laughed in amazement. "How many potions do you HAVE?"
Sotaki shrugged. "Actually, most of them are not mine. I've got a gate to the Mages' Guild Vault - each mage is allowed a certain quota of items borrowed or used, barring any situations that require the mage to draw more - within certain parameters. Say, I could use five more of the healing potions to save a couple of lives. If then I get shot in the gut, I may be entitled to another potion to save myself. I'd have to work it off later, and make replacements, with interest, but it's preferable to a slow and painful death. However, if I used the potions to heal scratches, that would be deemed a waste of resources. I'd probably have my gate suspended, and I'd have to work back everything and then some. If it was a repeated offense - say, I'd done similar things regularly per trip out of guild in the past, then I might not even GET the potion.
"Anyway, now that you've done that, attach the construct you've made to this gun." Sotaki handed Hikaru a perfectly ordinary .38 revolver, standard issue for the police department - with a bulky silencer somehow attached.
"Where did you get this?"
"A framed cop went to jail - some jailkeepers are corrput. The keepers, naturally, keep the prisoners' effects. This includes guns. The Yakuza got a hold of this gun, and then lost hold of it to a travelling magician, along with most of the cash in their safes."
"Ah." Hikaru nodded sagely. Leave it to Sotaki to rob robbers. "How exactly do I attach the construct?"
"Think about it. Add a little extra power between the sight and the top of the gun. Think strong, attached and permanent."
"All right..." muttered Hikaru uncertainly. He drew some more shadow, tried what Hikaru suggested, and was rather surprised to find that it worked.
"Now what?"
"Now," said Sotaki, "you have a great advantage over the vast majority of gun users. You can see exactly where your bullets go - and where they are GOING to go."
Hikaru looked at Sotaki. "Isn't that normally how it's supposed to work?"
Sotaki shook his head. "Not with handgus. The aim is tricky at best, and trying to figure out where your gun's supposed to be to hit a given target, and then moving the gun there, and holding it steady while firing, is EXTREMELY difficult to do. This is why most gun users simply commit their shots to muscle memory - the traditional firing stance, for instance, can hit anything within ten degrees of where the shooter is looking, but not much else. My style of gunplay is much more free-form. After you get used to shooting the gun with the guide, you'll take it off and get used to it without. In the mean time, try and shoot some of those bottles over there."
Sotaki pointed to a half-finished wall, where some lazy drunks had left many empty beer bottles.
Hikaru nodded, and raised the gun carefully. Channeling his power through the potion in his pocket, he 'looked' at the area he was aiming for, and 'saw' the red line of his sights sweep past the bottle, then twitch back and steady. Sotaki noticed it too. "Good aim - you've got talent. Now squeeze the trigger."
Hikaru yanked the trigger back, and a quiet shot echoed lightly across the parking lot. The bottles remained intact.
Sotaki whapped Hikaru on the back of the head. "I said 'SQUEEZE', not 'PULL'. Try it again. Carefully." Hikaru nodded, and tried again.
This time a bottle shattered.
Sotaki's face lit up, as did Hikaru's. "Great shot!"
Hikaru nodded. "It was... easy."
"Well, with the guide, and the gun, yeah. Guns are simple like that. The problem is that the difficulty of any actual technique rises exponentially."
Hikaru stared at Sotaki. "Techniques?"
Sotaki grinned. "Sure. A fast-moving piece of metal is, in fact, incredibly useful in many spells. Also, there are several physical properties of bullets which make them more powerful than people know."
"I don't suppose I get to learn any of these?"
"Not 'til you need them, no."
"Do I get to SEE them?"
"No, but I can name and explain a few. The Celestial Hammer uses the same principle as armor-piercing bullets - you fire one bullet like an artillery round, then you fire another such that it drives the first one into the target at the moment of impact. The Fire-Cyclone Shot - by heating the bullet up to extreme temperatures, the resulting shockwave from the bullet carries with it a concentrated inferno. The Spell-Shot, which imbues bullets with spells, to be released on impact with the environment, or, for the harsher attack, the target. The Shieldshot, which increases the density of the air around the bullet by a factor of one hundred, making it quite useful as a non-lethal round."
Hikaru nodded. "I see."
Sotaki pulled a strange-looking piece of wadded cloth out of his pocket and handed it to Hikaru. "Here."
Hikaru took the silky cloth and looked at it. "What is this, a mystical hanky?"
Sotaki shook his head. "Portable hole. Sort of like my storage-gate spell. Keep the gun in there. There's a dweomer on it that prevents anybody but the people I specify from seeing anything other than a silk hankerchief… and a few weapons in it that you might want to learn how to use."
"That's great. Just one question... how do I use it?"
Sotaki took the compressed object by an edge, and whipped his arm towards a wall. The cloth expanded and darkened as it flew, becoming a veritable hole in existance, about one foot in diameter. When it impacted the wall, it stuck to it.
Hikaru walked over and stuck his head inside. "It's kind of dark."
Sotaki shrugged. "Well, what do you expect? There's no light sources."
"That makes sense."
"Oh yeah - a warning. The insides of the hole, when it's not open, slow down time to a crawl. Several notable mages have used this as a poor man's time machine... it works, but only in one direction. A minute becomes a year quite easily... so be careful as to what you put inside. I once stuck a rampaging lion in this one, and forgot about it. Let me tell you, I was lucky I was facing feral antelopes when I had to open it again. Otherwise I shudder to think what might have happened."
Hikaru stared closely at the hole. "How does it work?"
"It's like this: There are animals that are capable of phasing into and out of reality at will. Blink dogs, phase spiders, and kittens who don't know any better spring to mind."
"Kittens?"
"Sure. How do you think they get around like that?"
"You have a point. Anyway, go on."
"These animals all have some sort of byproduct. Blink dogs and kittens, for instance, shed some REALLY annoying hair - it tickles but can't be removed because it's not there. Phase spiders weave really annoying webs - almost impossible to tear, because only the parts on you are in your reality. The hole is a circular piece of woven cloth from those materials, with a gate spell being cast into the weave."
"That's pretty clever."
"Yeah. It's a real effort-saver, too. You can carry about ten cubic feet of whatever in this model. Just a warning... I know you probably won't encounter any, but NEVER PUT BAGS OF HOLDING IN THIS HOLE. Or the hole in bags of holding. Both tend to have some... strange effects."
"Like?"
"Well, fiddling about with the space-time continuum is dangerous. The items I mentioned have the few stable constructs we've discovered woven into them. However, these constructs are only stable because of the properties of the space they bend - one of these properties being the reasonable 'smoothness' of the space. In other words, a lack of other constructs."
Hikaru blinked. "Oh. So putting this inside a 'bag of holding' would be like fiddling with the restrainings on a really tense cosmic rubber band?"
"That's about right, yeah."
"So now what?"
"I dunno. I was planning to take a nap."
"What about further lessons?"
"That's up to you. You've learned the basics of all of my abilities. Now you just have to find ways to combine them. I said you would find your own way of life. Well, I'm not about to tell you anything that could potentially set you down a particular path. That's YOUR path, not mine. I can show you a few spells, but I think it's best if you work most of your repetoire out on your own. Seriously - then each spell is your own creation.
Hikaru blinked. "So... that's it?"
Sotaki nodded. "Yeah. You've gained your abilities. You can now cast at least two simple spells, fight hand-to-hand, run, skate, shoot, and make constructs. You are now a graduate of my training."
"Is there a ceremony or something? It's barely been a week."
Sotaki shook his head. "I kitted you out, didn't I? It's all about free will, man. You've got your abilities, now use them. Or don't. It's your choice."
Hikaru's head was awhirl. He now had control over his life. Complete control. He had learned the basics of three incredibly powerful disciplines in a short time, and was now free.
As thoughts to this effect ran through Hikaru's head, Sotaki plopped down on a block of concrete, fell over and began to snore.
Hikaru's inner monologue was interrupted by the sound of Sotaki arduously sawing logs. He briefly considered waking up Sotaki, then remembered what the demon that had attacked him had recieved for its troubles. Exercising the discretion he had survived on before his recently-completed training, Hikaru decided to head home.
Approximately an hour later, Sotaki awoke, discovered no one around, and decided to patronize the all-you-can-eat buffet he had found yesterday. The ramen had been great. Couldn't hold a torch to the Cat Cafe's efforts, but the associated hazards of eating there far outweighed anything else. It just so happened that this little joint was in Juuban. The Sailor Scouts had been stalking Sotaki for a while now, if only to keep an eye on him before he began their training, and now that he was on their turf certain hotheads decided to make their presence felt. Sotaki had just entered a slum district - pretty much abandoned - when he heard...
"GUNS ARE FOR THE CIVIL SERVICE AND THE ARMY, TO DEFEND LOYAL CITIZENS OF OUR NATION! FOR FIRING A WEAPON IN A PUBLIC SPACE, AND SPREADING YOUR DEPRAVITY TO OTHERS, I, SAILOR VENUS, SHALL PUNISH YOU!"
Sotaki sighed, and his stomach rumbled in agreement.
"Oh yeah. I promised you training, didn't I?"
Venus quickly sent a Crescent Beam towards Sotaki. "Well, looks like you've been doing some training already. That attack was much faster than it should have been. Or are you just so pissed you forgot its name?"
A World Shaking vaporised the pavement Sotaki had been standing on, along with a considerable chunk behind and in front of his previous position. "That's not nice. You know, for defenders of the public good you sure destroy a lot of property."
A Dead Scream ripped through Sotaki's new position, and a Deep Submerge blasted the street light he was sitting on out from under him. Grabbing the street-light, Sotaki snapped off the head and punched the top a few times to flatten it out, and balled up the other end, making a freakish cross between a zanbato and a bo staff - sharp enough at the end to cut but with a much longer handle and a counterweight.
Suddenly, a demon emerged from the shadows, moving rather quickly for Sotaki's throat. This one appeared to be a copy of the one he had demolished that morning, barring its change in color scheme - blue rather than red. It was soon followed by several more. The attacking Senshi smirked, confident that they would soon see Sotaki fall before the demon horde. Only Sailor Moon's scream of terror, and faceplant, warned them that the pack had spared one demon for them. The battle would take up much of their time.
Meanwhile, Sotaki deployed a few psi-speakers in the surrounding area, cued them to begin, and began to fight to the resulting music.
Some sad, disjointed piano music enveloped the area. A man who sounded like he had adenoids the size of golf balls began singing.
Well you play that tarantella all the hounds'll start to roar
The boys all go to hell and then the Cubans hit the floor
Sotaki threw up the zanbato, pulled out his hand cannons, and blasted two hounds into four bits, while they were lunging at him.
They drive along the pipeline, they tango 'til they're sore
They take apart their nightmares and they leave them by the door
Sotaki stowed his guns, cought his melee weapon, and bounded in time to the plinking of the piano for an abandoned apartment door, tearing the demon slinking there into bits, which fell to the ground with a sick patter.
Let me fall out of the window with confetti in my hair
Deal out Jacks or better on a blanket by the stairs
A demon had apparently cought Sotaki unawares, as he tumbled out of one of the third story windows, with the demon clawing at his back. As they fell, Sotaki positioned the demon between him and the floor, and oriented himself feet-down.
I'll tell you all my secrets, but I lie about my past
And send me off to bed for evermore
Stepping off the now-split corpse of the demon, Sotaki patted the back of his shirt, which was miraculously intact. He swatted a demon flying at him with the sharp bit of his makeshift weapon. The resulting two half-demons skidded along the pavement, leaving behind youma dust.
Make sure they play my theme song, I guess daisies will have to do
Just get me to New Orleans and paint shadows on the pews.
Tuxedo Kamen chose to make his appearance here. He had been filled in by the less friendly Sailor Senshi as to what had been happening, and thus chose to fire indiscriminately at the melee going down on the street. After that, he started irritating the youma that was harrassing the Senshi with tossed flowers.
Turn the spit on that pig and kick the drum and let me down
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'til I get back in town
Sotaki danced out of the way of claws and thorns alike, and suddenly lanced out with his weapon, neatly skewering a slavering set of chops all the way to the tail. Flicking his wrist, he neatly made it spill its insides, which became dust even as they seperated from it. The rest of the youma followed suit. Sotaki suddenly lashed around with a roundhouse kick to his side, severing another demon's head from its shoulders. He suddenly slipped on nothing, handily ducking under another brutal lunge. Pulling out his twin pistols again, he blasted the hairy thing above him to bits, and rolled back towards the abandoned apartment.
Let me fall out of the window with confetti in my hair
Deal out Jacks or better on a blanket by the stairs
I'll tell you all my secrets, but I lie about my past
So send me off to bed for evermore.
Sotaki kicked the pavement, launching himself back towards the window. He flew out of the fourth-floor window shortly afterwards, this time with his right foot holding off the snarling demon that had lunged at him. Un-crouching in midair, Sotaki blasted the demon back towards the window, which promptly laccerated the fiend.
Looking around, he saw that he had disposed of approximately half the pack. Another youma pounced on him from behind, aiming for his neck.
Just make sure she's all in calico and the color of a doll
Wave the flag on Cadillac day, and a skillet on the wall.
A quick Mars Flame Sniper saved Sotaki's arse, crisping the youma to a lurid pattern of charcoal and embers before it dissipated. Sotaki spun around and, with a swat, smeared another pouncing beast against the wall of the apartment.
Cut me a switch or hold your breath 'til the sun goes down
Write my name on the hood, send me off to another town
And just let me fall out of the window with confetti in my hair
Deal out Jacks or Better on a blanket by the stairs
Tell you all my secrets, but I lie about my past
Will you send me off to bed for evermore.
Sotaki began mopping up, sending foes into various locations in various states of well-being, or lack thereof. One demon smashed into the hood of an abandoned car - another one was shredded by the hole it made in another window. The rest left no mark of their passing, except maybe a dent on Sotaki's now-blurring sword.
Fall out of the window with confetti in my hair
Deal out Jacks or Better on a blanket by the stairs
I'll tell you all my secrets, but I lie about my past
Send me off to bed for evermore, send me off to bed for evermore
Jumping up onto the roof, apparently unconcerned by the fact that he should be weighed down by the middle-sized sapling of almost solid metal he was wielding, Sotaki landed with his feet on both sides of the hilt, driving the sword straight through the midsection of the last demon, which happened to be in the middle of another dodge, avoiding a number of attacks from the Senshi. Yanking the now-battered blade out of its concrete sheath, Sotaki stowed it away. Turning to Sailor Mars, he bowed deeply. "Arigatou gozaimasu, Hino-san. I would have been quite dead without your assistance."
Kicking with one foot, Sotaki rolled through the air, out of the way of the Time Key. Landing in the same position, merely relocated a few feet, Sotaki straightened up. "That wasn't very nice. I was thanking your comrade for saving my life, and here you go assaulting me. Do that again and I may bring Zan back out."
Sailor Venus smirked. "Name weapons awfully fast, don't you?"
Sotaki nodded. "Well, yeah. It served me well - why shouldn't it have a place of honor in my collection? It's only fitting."
Venus held up her hand, summoning down blasts of energy. "Name THIS! CRESCENT BEAM SHOWER!" Sotaki dodged, only to have his arm snared by a quickly-summoned Love-Me Chain.
"Very good. You've chained your attacks, no pun intended. You've already gotten better just watching me fight and analyzing your weaknesses."
"Shut up! We don't need your help!"
Sotaki blinked. "Wasn't the rule one monster per day?"
Venus nodded. "Of course. Everyone follows that rule."
Sotaki yanked the chain that ensnared his arm, seemingly ignoring the jolt of energy that wrapped around his hand. The resulting force sent Venus skidding into and against a roof access. Sotaki then thrust the hand he had grabbed the chain with and whipped Venus's own weapon towards her. He released the energy that had shocked him along the chain back at his assailant. The result was crispy Minako Aino. The blonde vigilante stumbled out of her vertical crater and stumbled back to the group, glaring at her attacker the entire time.
"What do you call this, then? You can clearly count to more than one - and if you would care to remember how many demons there were you'd see that there were SEVERAL of them. Things are already changing."
"S-SHUT UP! They don't count because only one attacked us."
"Oh? What happened to 'defending the public'? Or are you only interested in your own hides?"
Uranus attempted a Space-sword Buster, only to be countered by the piece of metal Sotaki had wielded during his recent battle. Twisting his wrist, Sotaki smacked Uranus with the flat of the blade, and then reversed the motion and disarmed her. Snagging the glowing sword out of mid-air, he paused for a moment, then held his two weapons parallel and smashed them together.
The result was interesting. The glowing blade was still chipped, but quickly repaired itself. It shone with an inner illumination, and cast no shadows, apparently shining straight through things. The actual illumination was quite soft, and tapered off quickly, but the effect was unnerving. Especially as the sword reformed itself into a massive, full-fledged zanbato made of what looked like mercury.
Sotaki prodded the sword, which pulsed in response.
It also rippled.
Grabbing the base of the blade, Sotaki pulled a hilt out of his backpack and brought it into contact with his new weapon. The sword promptly absorbed it, forming a hilt of its own.
"Hm. An artifact-level weapon. How handy!"
Upon uttering these words, Sotaki grabbed the massive chunk of metal and stowed it in his backpack.
Uranus promptly picked him up by the neck and attempted to throttle him. "GIMME BACK MY SWORD!"
Sotaki was shaken about for a while, and, upon getting his bearings, flipped Uranus over the edge of the roof. Regaining his footing, he chucked a small cylinder of metal after her. -BONK-
"OW! DAMMIT, YOU LITTLE PUNK! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!"
Sotaki walked over to the edge of the rooftop, and peered down. "It's your sword. What's it look like?"
Uranus chucked the cylinder at him. "DIE, YOU LITTLE LIAR!"
Sotaki neatly cought the thing, shrugged, and wandered away from the edge.
Sailor Moon walked up to him. "Um... excuse me..."
Sotaki glanced at her. "Yes?"
"I'm pretty sure that's not her sword."
"Uranus's sword was an ancient magical artifact. Normal magic doesn't last that long. It needs something to latch on to. This cylinder was it - it also functioned as a hilt. However, the magic was so old its binding force was past degraded. Quite frankly the thing would have gone off in a few more attacks. Although the actual magic is gone, and absorbed into my sword, this cylinder is still extemely powerful, if only for its magical storage capacity. Uranus threw it at me, denying any desire to have it. So I think it's mine now."
Saying so, Sotaki pulled out a marker and doodled the word " Battery" on the little knick-knack.
Most of the Sailor Scouts facefaulted. From street level there came a most horrendous cursing of Sotaki comparing him, his ancestors, his habits and his bodily parts to various animals, events and diseases.
Sotaki blinked, and nodded. "Impressive."
Walking over to the edge again, he dropped the fob-on-a-chain around his neck onto Uranus. He then proceded to return the verbal favor for approximately half an hour, in over one hundred varied languages. Uranus, for some reason, got the full effect.
After that, Sotaki lifted his hand, and the trinket flew up and into his palm. He then put it on again.
"As I was saying, before I was rudely interrupted, I now have a magical battery. Also, Mars has taken the first step along the path of my training for you - recognizing the value of teamwork. Her attack saved me, and for that I am grateful. Her tactics were excellent, and for that I am happy. Some of you, however, have attacked me repeatedly. I really don't like this. In case you haven't noticed by now, I'm considerably more powerful than you. I've taken out over ten demons, whereas you've managed one. Furthermore, your fighting style is fundamentally flawed and you can only bypass your built-in limiters with an incredibly powerful wave of emtion - the kind that overrides judgement, making it worse than useless in a real battle. The first thing you're going to do under me is to start training your powers outside of your transformation."
Pluto got wide-eyed. "How did you know we're transformed?"
Sotaki sat down on the edge of the roof. "Aside from the fact that you're emitting massive amounts of magical energy, and the fact that your outfits are incredibly powerful artifacts with a recall spell to a subspace built into their functions? And the fact that you look damn similar to girls attending a local highschool, or private school? Your ability to vanish without a trace. You'd get bored if you just hid - you have to have a normal life."
Mercury shook her head. "Although your analysis is correct, we can't access our powers outside Sailor form."
Sotaki nodded. "Exactly as I suspected. Hence, of course, the training. Your transformations multiply your physical abilities by a reasonably large factor. They also increase the amount of magic you can channel safely, and locks you in several pre-set patterns for this magic - hence, your attacks. Hopefully, you'll be able to reverse-engineer the suits to pick-and-choose your benefits. Maybe you'll want to be able to cast your own spells, or you may choose to build in some better ones."
Here, Pluto got angry. "You intend to teach these girls incredibly dangerous and potentially abusable knowledge in order to tamper with ancient artifacts from a noble kingdom that fell ages ago?"
Sotaki whapped her on the back of the head. "Yes. Your artifacts are in EXTREMELY poor repair and not at all suited to the current combat. They're a good example to work from, and quite handy otherwise. Plus, they're ALREADY artifacts. As to the moral implications: They've defended the planet thus far. You think they'll suddenly turn on you if they get some power you're not an expert on?"
Pluto promptly turned red, partly from rage and partly from embarrasment. She attempted to brain Sotaki with the Time Key, which he promptly caught and broke over his leg. "You know, I could pawn this, just for the embarassment it causes you."
Pluto screamed here. "YOU BROKE THE TIME KEY!"
Sotaki bopped her on the head with the bottom half. "Damn straight I did. It's pretty bad material, too. See? Stress faults, old ones by the look of it." And indeed, there were numerous stress fractures, with rust running along them, showing their age.
Here Pluto turned even redder, mostly from embarrassment. "Well, I've been meaning to get it repaired, but there's always this or that, and..." Sotaki shrugged.
"If I were a chrono-mage I'd just make you a new one. As it is, you'll have to do it yourself."
Pluto glanced around nervously. "Um... Well, you see, that is..."
Sotaki sighed. "Forgotten time magic?"
Pluto sighed and answered in a meek voice. "Never learned it in the first place."
Sotaki bopped her with the staff again. "Now that makes my training imperative, don't you think? It just so happens I can secure a book on basic time-magery, and I suspect you'll be able to extrapolate from there. But I will only teach you on one condition."
Pluto looked up hopefully, seemingly having forgotten that it was Sotaki who broke her staff in the first place. "What's that?"
"No unprovoked assaults on me."
Pluto nodded. "Deal."
Venus shrieked in indignation. "PLUTO! He just wrecked all hope for Crystal Tokyo! He completely humiliated you, and now you're becoming his STUDENT?"
Sotaki nodded. "Looks that way, huh?"
Venus attempted to brain Sotaki with a mallet. "THAT MAKES NO SENSE, IDIOT!"
Sotaki looked up as the mallet descended, and stepped out of the way. Stepping on the head of the hammer, he pulled a semi-automatic combat shotgun out from his sleeve and aimed it straight at Venus's face. Venus suddenly froze. Sotaki's voice turned deathly cold. "That was completely uncalled for. I've tolerated your assaults thus far, however, my patience is growing thin and none of my other methods of conflict resolution seem to be having the desired effect. I defeated you in honorable combat. Both of your so-called "leaders" have accepted my value and ability as a teacher. I have done nothing to harm you personally, nor as a group. You have no reason whatsoever to assault me, except for me TALKING in ways you don't approve of. This calls into question your ability to govern yourself, MUCH LESS millions. Now you either cease any and all hostilities, now and into the forseeable future, barring any openly hostile action against you personally, or the Senshi as a whole, which the majority of you do not accept as neccessary or as part of your training."
Venus was torn between the urge to scream and tear Sotaki's head off, and the urge to become very, very small. Far away. VERY far away from the unhappy-looking man and his unhappy-looking gun.
Unfortunately for Venus, the urge to scream and tear won out. She very quickly brought up the handle of the mallet, trying to throw Sotaki off its head so she could get a better shot. In her rage, she overshot and the handle flew out of her hand. Sotaki calmly walked up the handle as it rose, and ended up balanced on top of it.
Mercury's computer was screaming something about "violation of all known physical laws" and "magico-spatial flux".
Sotaki remained balanced on the handle of the mallet, which remained balanced on the head of the mallet, which remained balanced, as one would expect it, on the roof.
Venus realized she was now defenseless.
Pluto stepped in here. "Venus! That is ENOUGH. Sotaki has in fact done nothing to warrant this sort of behavior. You're behaving like an animal." *I hate having to defend this threat. Ah well, once I repair my staff I'll kill him.*
Sotaki pulled out another shotgun and poked the barrel into the back of Pluto's head. "I AM a psychic, you know."
Pluto eeped and quietly stepped out of the way. Sotaki's shotgun tracked her the entire time.
"Now. I am a reasonable man. Seeing as I seem to represent the International Guild of Magery, I think I am allowed to offer you a temporary alliance, to expire when the current threat is neutralized. Does that sound amenable?"
Sailor Moon nodded. "Yes, it does. As the leader of the Sailor Scouts I accept for all of us."
"WHAT? HOW CAN YOU ACCEPT FOR ALL OF US?" Venus was steaming mad now.
Sotaki shook his head. "Actually, Venus is right. You can't accept for your friends - they have to decide individually. If they don't, then I'll probably start using heavy weaponry against attackers in the future... if that persists I'll just declare a blood feud against the offending parties, and then they're screwed. As it is, however, this is my last resort at reason. I am explicitly stating my motives, reasons, abilities, etc. I'm laying myself bare, essentially. If you accept my services, you get a decent teacher and maybe a few new abilities. If you don't, then I continue killing youma and defending myself."
Moon, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Mercury all agreed this was reasonable quite happily. Pluto and Neptune agreed grudgingly, but gave their consent nevertheless. Only a steaming Venus and Uranus, who had by this time climbed back on the roof, disagreed.
"We refuse to be bound by an agreement with a threat. ESPECIALLY one who attacks us." said Venus.
Sotaki sighed. "When have I attacked you? Have I ever used any serious force against you, even when you use attacks that can, should I fail to dodge them, render me quite dead?"
Uranus stepped in here. "You hit back! Only evil resists our attacks."
Sotaki turned to Mercury. "You look like a clever girl. Tell me, can you see any parallels between this situation and the witch hunts of colonial times in America?"
Mercury was confused, but her training and studiousness rallied to the sudden question and she brought fourth several similarities. "Yes. Self-validating arguments - circular ones. A 'shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later' mentality. A severe case of xenophobia. No way to prove your innocence and live, because if you stand still and get hit by our attacks you'll die and it'll be a case of 'another enemy defeated', and if you resist you're all the more heinous."
Sotaki turned back to Uranus. "This is what I've been trying to get across here for the past couple of days. You're beginning to sound like an idiot as well as act like one. When have you ever known a sane individual to NOT try and dodge massive blasts of energy headed their way? Well?"
"Um... when they're ambushed?" Uranus asked dimly.
Sotaki nodded. "Yup. So if you want me dead, you ambush me. Otherwise, don't bitch at me and call me evil for ensuring my own survival."
Uranus sighed. "I see your point. I still don't like you though."
Sotaki shrugged "I'm not asking you to like me. I'm telling you how to improve yourselves."
"All right. What do we do now?" Mars asked
Sotaki looked at her. "I already told you... you'll be working on drawing power from your respective powers detransformed, except for Pluto, who has her own curriculum."
Pluto looked at him warily.
Sotaki raised one hand over his head. "GATE!" A massive book labled The Basics Of Time Magic For Dummies impacted Pluto's green-tressed head.
Jupiter and Moon giggled. Pluto grumbled as she got up, flipped open the book to page one, and smiled. Sotaki tossed her the bits of her staff, which she promptly reversed the timeflow for, resulting in a brand-new Time Key.
The Senshi all blinked. Mars spoke up again. "I for one agree to Sotaki's terms, and am for his training." Jupiter, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Neptune and Pluto all voiced similar feelings. Uranus grumbled a while, and finally said similar. Only Venus held out.
"I refuse."
Sotaki sighed. "All right."
Moon looked at him, questioning. "Are you sure? She's a part of the Senshi... she's one of us. How can you just let her go?"
"Simple. It's fairly clear the Senshi as a group are getting my training. If she's deciding not to let me train her, that's her problem - it's clear she's not acting as part of the Senshi, or considering her role as part of the group. Despite the fact that she was justifying her actions with the defense of the Senshi, and thus the public, when it's clear that the only course of action for the preservation of the public and the Senshi is cooperating with someone she doesn't like, she promptly backs out. She's a hypoctite, plain and simple."
Venus flung a brick, an invective, and a "HOW DARE YOU?"
Sotaki stared at the brick, and narrowed his eyes. As it approached his face it seemed to slow down... then it reversed. Then it continued accelerating, back at its flinger. Venus very narrowly dodged her own weapon, which was now travelling at well over a hundred miles an hour, and still gaining speed. The brick rapidly left their field of sight, and was last seen crashing down into an ocean somewhere.
Sotaki turned his now-serious gaze on Venus. "I give up. You attack me again, I'm taking the kiddy gloves off. Screw the code of the Crasher - you're getting hurt."
Venus's response was yet another flying brick. Sotaki pulled a scythe from his backpack and bisected the brick as it flew by him. He then turned the two brick-halves to dust with the impact of the counterweight on the scythe handle - a massive, eerily glowing ruby. The resulting cloud soon settled, revealing a glowing Sotaki in a low stance, wielding a large scythe, which was covered with pulsing, sullen red aura. Sotaki had a deadly expression on his face, and the aura of his weapon was slowly enveloping him. He was running his fingers along the edge of the blade. The light of the sun glinted off where he ran his fingers, revealing an incredibly sharp edge.
"Don't do this. She's just a child."
Sotaki ignored Pluto's plea. "She claims she's a warrior. She chose her path. It's away from you, so you have no obligation - or ability - to protect her." His voice was different from before; it was a complete monotone. Sotaki's breathing was not heavy, and his face was not flushed. The tempo of the pulsing of the glow around the scythe told the Senshi that his heartbeat was perfectly steady. This meant that he was totally in control and feeling no emotion. From what they had seen of him so far, this probably meant that he was going to teach Venus a painful lesson, and scare her to the point of submission, in a last-ditch effort to make her see reason. That's what was PROBABLY going to happen. However, he was emitting enough of killing aura to make Setsuna and Mars fear for their own well-being, and to make the rest of the scouts shudder on general principle. They remembered the ease with which he had dispatched the youma he fought, and the smile he wore when he did so, and suddenly realized that Venus was most likely even farther up the creek than they had previously realized. Knowing Sotaki's fighting style, they listened closely. However, no music reached their ears, and no poetry - just a light breeze.
Sotaki dashed forwards and swung a crushing blow at Venus with the hilt of his scythe. She took it to the gut, staggered back and launched a counterassault with a swiftly-summoned Love-Me Chain. Sotaki avoided it effortlessly, moving out of the way of punches and kicks with an absolute minimum of effort. Though his feet remained planted, Venus would have had more success striking smoke. He quickly launched a sweep, and with the energy of the followthrough spun all the way around and kicked Venus sharply in the temple. The force kept her on her feet - but made her stagger anew.
Venus attempted to back up and prepare another attack, but Sotaki stopped her and mechanically began decimating her defense. Every block Venus attempted was swatted away effortlessly, and the general effect was that of a twig turning aside a tsunami. This was compounded by the fact that Venus couldn't directly block Sotaki's scythe - the best she could do was turn it aside with her chain.
Venus snared Sotaki's arm with her chain. Sotaki stowed the scythe, and pulled out his anti-air cannon, and lobbed it up. Launching himself out of the crater formed by the kickback of this throw, he dragged Venus along. He rebounded off the cannon, past Venus on the way down. The jerk on the chain reversed the direction of her flight path. Launching himself upwards, he rammed his fist into her gut, nearly folding her in half. The shock dissipated the chain binding the two, and Sotaki flew up, grabbing his wayward weapon on its way down. The whole exchange took less than two seconds. Venus landed face-down. Sotaki landed with a crash nearby. Ramming the barrel into the roof just in front of a stunned Venus, he lifted it up, pulling her up. Flicking it up again, he launched her into the air. Sotaki assumed another low stance and continued to bat Venus around with his weapon.
Finally swatting her down into the ground, he stowed the cannon and brought out the shimmering blade. Emerging from Sotaki's pack-of-many-things in the form of a hovering ball of mercury, it quickly assumed its last seen form. Extending a hilt at Sotaki, the magical weapon allowed itself to be grabbed and wielded. As Venus staggered up, one of her legs buckled and sent her down, resulting in a narrow miss from what otherwise would have been a decapitating strike. Sotaki reached down and pulled her up by her hair, resulting in a very dizzy Venus.
Twisting his wrist, Sotaki made his sword shimmer with a surreal light. The visible edges on the weapon faded, leaving behind something more closely resembling the lamppost that composed the thing. Repeating his performance with the flack cannon, Sotaki took Venus on a quick tour of the area approximately one lamp-post length from him.
Suddenly, Sotaki's form blurred and faded from view. Venus continued her broken-line flight path around where Sotaki was last seen. Then, her path began to deviate a little. Then more, and more. Finally, she was launched upwards, face-down. Sotaki appeared about two feet behind her, parallel to the ground and matching her speed fairly closely, but spinning like a top. His sword was nowhere to be seen, but there was a blurry silver ring around him, near what would be his shoulder height. As Sotaki slowly slowed, the Scouts saw what was happening, and those with an elementary grasp of physics shuddered in sympathy with Venus.
Sotaki suddenly twisted his wrist again, turning his weapon into a mace. This slowed him down to the point that he was reasonably easy to see to the non-magically-aided eye. This also resulted in the majority of the mass of a lamp post and then some moving at hilt-length from Sotaki, about Sotaki's axis. In other words, it was the most brutal, precise and embarrasing strike imaginable on Sotaki's part. Venus crashed down into the roof, and a section of the poor building-part gave way under the repeated stress the battle was placing on it. Venus fell through several floors, stopping only because of a silver thread about her waist. Sotaki jerked his hand up, throwing Venus up again, and resulting in her forming yet another crater on top of the poor building.
By this time, Venus was barely conscious. Sound was muted, her vision was blurring and her entire body seemed to be coated in concrete dust. None of this was improving her disposition towards Sotaki. Him hauling her out of the crater by her hair was expected, and worsened her temper. Him tossing her aside fell in a similar category. Her being caught by her teammates, set down gently and given enough time to recover her breath was counter to her understanding of Sotaki. She kneeled there for a while, just staring at the ground/roof beneath her, breathing heavily. Hearing a displacement of air, she looked up and saw Sotaki with his anti-aircraft gun pointed directly at her face. Sotaki was frowning.
"I don't know why I give people so many chances, I really don't. Now. That was me not even trying - in fact, it took more effort to keep you alive than it did to fight you. You have no chance whatsoever. I have been tolerant to the point of dealing with you like a stubborn child. Pull your head out of your ass." Here, Sotaki's voice displayed more emotion than he had shown during the entire beat-down he had administered to Venus. "Even if you don't agree with my methods, or my origins, or my goals - admit this. As long as you remain cynical, you stand against me. I am willing to teach you regardless of this. What would I gain by training a warrior who serves justice and peace if I were evil? I mean, Kami-on-a-stick! What more evidence do you need of my good-will? Healing?"
Halting in his rant, Sotaki reached out and from thin air pulled what appeared to be a beer bottle. Flicking the cap off with his thumb, he sloshed the contents over a blankly staring Venus. As the pale red liquid inside made contact with her flesh, it seemed to vanish - and the wounds that it touched were cleaned and sealed, their pain receding to a mere dull ache. "Now. Are you prepared to listen?"
Venus's mind was in turmoil. This man had been prepared to kill her a few minutes ago, and here he was, helping her up and healing her. Everything he said - every logical step he took - made sense. She smelled something fishy about his argument, but for the life of her she couldn't find it. Could it be... he was right? Had she been attacking someone who didn't deserver it, and was sparing her life after repeated insults, ambushes, assaults and harassment?
Sotaki sighed. "As for the rest of you... You've accepted. You'll be my trainees now, yes? Let's do this in an orderly fashion. I presume most of you go to the same school... barring Pluto, who I'm guessing has a job to fit in, and Saturn, who seems a bit younger, and Uranus and Neptune, who I'm guessing by body language, yaddah yaddah, are happily cohabiting. I'm gonna go with assuming you," here Sotaki pointed to the Inners "girls tend to hang together. Thus I assume you can all come up with a semi-truthful alibi for any parents or guardians that may be worried. The rest of you I assume have flexible enough hours on whatever occupations you have to be able to cut out a few hours early - whatever works. I would prefer to have all nine of you trainable at the same time... that and for the more physical side of this training I should have someone a bit more experienced than me in the fighting arts teaching you. At least, if I can help it."
Venus shook her head to clear away the remainder of the fog, and slowly got up. "I... I'm sorry. I jumped to conclusions, and wouldn't listen, just attacking you... I..." Her tears started to well up, threatening to overwhelm her. Sotaki shook his head. "Don't worry about it."
Venus's tears cleared up, if only out of sheer shock at this response. "But... I tried to kill you!"
Sotaki shrugged. "Yeah, and now you regret it. Chill out. You're not trying to do it anymore, no one got hurt, and you're more likely to consider your motives for attacking someone before doing so. You're more mature and rational now. I'd say that overall this is a better situation than before. So why the sorrow?"
Venus could only boggle at the teen in front of her. He had challenged her, defeated her, tolerated her, sought to teach her, beat her within an inch of her life, healed her, and now forgiven her. "Why?" She whispered, the word catching in her throat.
"Because, as you may have noticed, there is a foe coming, and I thought you girls might like the ability to fight back, save the Earth, that sort of thing. You know, the stuff you're supposed to normally do."
Venus actually cracked a grin at that. "Point. So... what do we do now?"
"As I was saying - training. Tactics, teamwork, hand-to-hand, magic, and some heavy weapons training for those that show the desire and talent to learn it. If any of you display any other... talents... I may be able to teach you something extra. In the meantime, we'll set up patrol rotas, detectors, and maybe some kind of automated anti-demon defense system. Once we figure out where these things are coming from, we'll ensure that they stop. Sound good?"
Seeing a weak nod as his response, Sotaki turned to the rest of the Senshi. "I'll be seeing you all soon. Work something out before the next attack."
Seeing nods from all the Senshi, Sotaki smiled and dropped a smoke grenade. When the grey substance had dissipated, he was nowhere to be seen.
*****
>1<: Cologne didn't put her all into that attack but she did put forth some effort. The fact that Sotaki was emitting almost no aura (he doesn't have much - Ranma saw a supercharged aura due to circumstances that will be explained later, and as far as Cologne knows mana and psi can't be used to improve the performance of a body) she came to the conclusion that Sotaki is good enough to suppress his aura to the point of blending in with the average citizen, AND can flare it quietly and accurately enough to block her attacks. She was so preoccupied she failed to notice the gate access and potion. All in all, an extremely difficult and ballsy bluff, which Sotaki was only able to pull off with the benefit of his psychic powers.
