Chapter four of Soun and Genma's… Operation Conquer the World!
Early the morning at the Tendo dojo the morning after Ranma's mixed success in his duel with Tatewake Kuno there was a crash as a body went flying out of a second-story window and into the koi pond below. This plunge was immediately followed by a shout of "I don't want to learn your stupid Quantum Logic you dumb old man!!"
Genma Saotome of the Saotome School of Martial Art, the purveyor and creator of Quantum Logic, pulled himself out of the pond with a sigh. "There's gratitude for you Saotome.." he mumbled to himself before letting out a bitter laugh. His son was so unwilling to even try to learn the True Art. Perhaps he should teach his son that he wasn't 'all that'… and he certainly hadn't arrived. Genma sat down cross legged and began shutting the rest of the world away and concentrating on constructing a suitable plan.
Meanwhile, Ranma rolled over and tried to go to sleep, then he rolled over again. After several minutes of being unable to get comfortable enough to sleep he decided to get up. Not that he would do any of that Quantum Logic crap his dad was harping about as the 'True Art'. Ranma couldn't help but snort at that, it was ridiculous, plain and simple.
Ranma would have done schoolwork, if it had held any interest for him at all that is. Instead he went downstairs to the training hall and started stretching so he could work on his katas.
He was just finishing his third kata when Akane came into the room and looked at him intensely with a questioning gaze.
"What do you want you uncute tomboy?" Ranma slurred at the intruder and started on a series of punches, kicks, and blocks that was interrupted by a truly unladylike squawk of indignance.
Ranma looked over at Akane who stared back with an intently angry gaze that just made Ranma want to hit something… not Akane, because she was a girl and, let's face it, just plainly weaker, slower, dumber, and otherwise inferior.
"Oh, so ya wanna fight?" Ranma laughed smugly at Akane, this was going to be easy… he'd just humiliate her by not letting her even touch him. 'Yeah, that sounds good… I'll just humiliate her and prove I'm the best!' Ranma laughed aloud with the smug arrogance that the prideful always seem to acquire as he dropped into a ready stance.
Ranma hadn't even blinked, or even taken a full breath, when he found himself flying backwards from a powerful kick, and as he rolled to his feet after smashing painfully into the wall, he thought to himself. 'Wow, who knew those short, stubby legs could pack such a wallop!'
Ranma shook himself out of his amazed stupor just in time to dodge another flying kick from his opponent and countered with a quick jab as he whirled around the side, but both maneuvers were useless as his punch was solidly blocked and he never saw the kick falling down from the sky like the proverbial vengeance of heaven, although he felt it afterward, and for most of the week for that matter.
"What are you doing there?" a voice asked from the training hall entrance…
"Akane?" Ranma frantically looked back and forth between the two Akanes and promptly developed a migraine. "But, I… you…" Ranma sputtered ineffectually as he continued to look back and forth.
Akane looked over to see what Ranma was sputtering about and saw only PenPen… then it dawned on her that he'd mistaken her for the penguin, or perhaps the penguin for her… but that was moot at this point because the vein on her forehead was throbbing with almost as much violence as she threw into the punch while she yelled "RANMA!!"
Turning around after sending Ranma flying through the roof of the training hall Akane sighed and thought to herself as she started for the livingroom and breakfast. It was horrible that she was constantly being confused with a penguin, I mean she didn't really look like a short, waddling, flightless bird, did she? And it was still a sore spot that her father spent far more time training PenPen in the Tendo School of Anything Goes Tae Kwon Do, enough that the penguin was in the second phase of training, Indiscriminate Tae Kwon Do. Her father called it the three in's, the most advanced stage was Inconsistent Tae Kwon Do, the intermediate stage was Indiscriminate Tae Kwon Do, and the first stage, her stage, was what he termed Incredible Tae Kwon Do. "How corny!" Akane growled under her breath as she sat down for breakfast… though she couldn't understand why everyone was edging away to give her such a wide berth.
Ranma thought hard as he stared at the clock on the schoolroom wall, an extremely unusual occurrence for him as he would much rather sleep, but as it had nothing to do with school it wasn't out of character either. He sighed as the teacher began to drone on, it was history maybe, or perhaps English… it could be math too, he never paid much attention to irrelevant details like that before, why should he start now?
"I don't know which was worse… thinking I'd been beaten by a girl… or knowing I'd been beaten by a penguin…" Ranma muttered to himself as he drew on his desk with a pencil and tried to go over how he could have won that fight with that stupid penguin.
"The penguin, man, definitely the penguin." The guy sitting next to him said, startling Ranma, who thought for an instant that this guy could read thoughts before realizing that he'd spoken aloud. Without even looking at Ranma, and still seeming to maintain a large degree of concentration on the teacher, the other student said "I'm Hiroshi, nice to meet you."
"Ranma Saotome," Ranma answered, and was about to say more as the teacher whirled around and stared straight at him.
The teacher didn't speak as much as bellow "Saotome!! Hall!!" he yelled as he threw a pulsating index finger at a pail of water that was near the door.
Sighing Ranma got up and excused himself from the classroom, that was incredible, the teacher had been at the front of the classroom, facing the blackboard, and talking when Ranma had introduced himself to the other boy… it was almost like the old saying 'eyes in the back of his head' was actually true, or maybe the man simply had really, really good hearing. It really didn't matter at this point though, he had to go stand in the hall holding buckets of water now.
Kasumi looked at the figure of Genma Saotome, still sitting there after all these hours, completely unresponsive to all her efforts to get his attention. Sighing, she let the duster droop as she turned to her father and asked "What should I do with your friend here father? I need to dust there… but he looks so peaceful."
Soun looked from Kasumi to Genma and back again before replying "Just dust around him. He'll probably be like that for some time." Soun reassured his daughter, "When he sits and thinks like that he's usually contemplating a complex problem of some sort. Why he last time I saw him do this was when he sealed Ha… I mean the master, away."
"Father?" Kasumi asked with a trace of curiosity in her voice. "You've never told us much about your master… why is that?"
Soun broke into a cold sweat, just hearing someone mention The Master sent shivers down his spine, caused the room to get hot and stuffy, and also made him break out in a cold sweat. "W-w-well, Ka-ka-ka-suuumi, th-the m-m-master's training was ho-ho-horrible!" Soun stuttered along before bursting into tears.
Most people would think that Soun Tendo was being something of a drama queen or a crybaby right now and accuse him of having a terminal case of chickenheartedness, but then most people have never served as an apprentice under the evil and debased master Happosai. Any normal human would cry after being forced to do such terrible and amoral deeds, and that's just the Master's "mandatory extracurricular activities", the actual training itself was arduous, punishing, toilsome, and grueling… the only time one was safe was sleeping, and not one's own sleep, but the master's. the whole experience was the stuff that would give nightmares to nightmares.
"There-there father." Kasumi said comfortingly, "it's been a long time since then. Surely he'd dead by now, there's no need for you to cry so." She said the only words that could really comfort her father concerning the master, only death, destruction, and random Chaos could reach Soun Tendo when he was thinking about his former master.
"Th-th-thanks Kasumi." Soun said as he gradually brought himself back under control, shuddering sporadically, and thanking God that she hadn't pressed any further. "You know Kasumi, you're right…" Soun said as he got up and started walking to one of the storage rooms.
"Right about what?" Kasumi wondered for the few moments her father was in the room moving things around and searching for something. "What is father doing?"
Soun burst out of the storage room with a medium sized box and a huge grin on his face. "I knew we still had this!" Soun was all but singing as he sat down across from Genma and placed the box between them.
"What father?" Kasumi asked, eyeing the inch thick layer of dust on the box.
"This!" Soun inhaled and then, to his eldest daughter's dismay, blew all the dust off the box. "Shogi! See!" Soun smiled and pointed at the now dust-free box, completely missing the dismayed look on Kasumi's face.
"Alight, you don't mind if I set up a game do you Saotome?" Soun asked his unresponsive houseguest, and when Genma made no reply Soun smiled and said "I thought you'd see it my way." as he began setting the board up.
"Now, Saotome, you don't mind if I make the first move, do you?" Soun asked after he had set the board up.
It was incredible. Simply incredible. How could it be that a single highschool student could cause so much trouble? It wasn't as if Furinkan High had a bad reputation, like being the center of mass destruction, senseless chaos, and delinquency like some of the other schools had. Most of the so called delinquency stemmed directly from the principal, but still… this Ranma Saotome meant trouble, or he wasn't Master Sergeant Ralph Baxtley, Ret. US ARMY.
This was why it didn't so much as surprise him as confirm his thoughts when he saw the Saotome boy involved in a fight during the lunch period. It was a good thing he'd been able to get him out of his class before the boy could cause a real disturbance.
If he was back in the Army things'd be different and he'd have fixed this troubled boy, but as a teacher now it was quite beyond his current jurisdiction. That and as long as he could be pushed off on someone else Ranma Saotome would be nothing more than a minor annoyance.
MSG Ralph Baxtley chuckled as he watched the fight between the Saotome boy and the strange kid in the bandanna. Even if they weren't his problem he could still enjoy a fight and admire the technique of the victor.
It had started as a simple question, sure the surprise attack was underhanded and, well, a surprise, but it was the answer, or rather the lack thereof that really got the attacker going. Who'd have thought Akane asking "Who's this, Ranma?" would result in a fight?
After a few moments of trying to remember exactly who this was Ranma simply stopped trying. He'd been in too many places, seen too many people, and done too much on his near ten-year training journey with his father to remember every person he'd seen, much less pissed off.
"Wait!" Ranma exclaimed in the middle of a killer uppercut, "You're that guy!!"
"What guy!?" the stranger asked as he reciprocated the hit with interest. "Don't tell my you've forgotten the single guy you beat up every day in middle school!!"
If Ranma had been really empathetic with other people he would have sensed the pain. Surprise, anguish, and sheer outrage in the voice, as it was it sounded to Ranma as a simple question, and so he answered it calmly and rationally with a short and simple "No, I don't."
The other's face fell, and it seemed as if he were trying to say something with the way his mouth was opening and closing. "Hibiki! Ryoga Hibiki, you moron!!" the boy screamed so loudly that Ranma would have felt it through the ground if it had been an octave lower. "You can't have forgotten me yet!! Not after humiliating me like you did!!"
"So Ranma, who is this?" Akane asked for what seemed like the twelfth time in as many minutes. "What did you do to make him so angry at you anyway?"
"I don't know! I don't know!" Ranma yelled at Akane, not particularly a wise thing to do in theses circumstances, but understandable when someone was nagging. "Just let me fight!" Ranma growled as he dodged between punches and delivered a kick to Ryoga's jaw that sent the bandana-clad boy reeling and made half the watching student body wince in empathy as the echo of his teeth clacking together faded.
The other half winced when Ranma turned around to meet Akane's foot in his abdomen and sent him flying up and over Ryoga, who was shaking his head to clear it and charging at the same time. "I'll get you Ranma!" Ryoga yelled as he ran blindly by Akane's side.
The entire student body was surprised when he ran into the wall of the school building… and didn't stop.
Akane sighed, this was embarrassing to say the least. "Oh come on Ranma!"
"N-n-no! I c-c-can't g-go!" Ranma sputtered, and Akane thought, not for the first time today, that Ranma was weird. "R-r-really! I Can't!" Ranma wailed again. "No Akane, NO!!" Ranma struggled to get away in terror.
"What's gotten into you Ranma? It's only music class." Akane asked, she was only dimly aware that she was probably still in shock over the normally beyond-manly macho Ranma huddled there gabbing his knees and on the verge of crying from sheer terror.
"Don't make me go in there, it'll be horrible… I'll turn into some kinda monster." Ranma pathetically whined as the tears finally broke and started to roll down his cheek.
"Oh, really!?" Akane grabbed his arm and forcibly pulled him into the music class.
"Honestly!" Akane muttered under her breath as the teacher in the front took roll-call.
It was mesmerizing, in a train-wreck kind of way, how the teacher could speak in that monotone and still keep his students awake and aware, in what seemed a painfully intentionally way. "Bueller? Bueller?" The teacher was droning at the moment.
'Good, he's still on B…' Akane thought, 'that meas that we can still appear normal if Ranma can straighten up…' Akane reluctantly looked over at Ranma, dreading that she would find a quivering blob of what could only be called human in the biological sense of the word… and to her surprise Ranma was sitting in his chair, without her having to forcefully sit him down either. 'Maybe this'll work out,' she thought as she concluded her glance of Ranma.
It was another few minutes before the teacher, a Mr. Stein, finally got to Ranma. "Saotome? Saotome?" He paused a moment to see if anyone would respond when Akane elbowed Ranma and he shot up in his chair shouting "Here!!"
"Very good Mr. Saotome." Mr. Stein said as he arched an eyebrow, the most emotion that he'd yet shown caused the rest of the class to snap out of their trances. Meanwhile, Mr. Stein continued in his monotone, "Now class, we should all strive be as excited about music as Mr. Saotome and I are."
"Oh brother." Akane sighed, missing the end of the teacher's admonition. 'Excited… Right…' Akane was trying not to laugh when he called her. "H-H-Here!" She replied hastily, almost breaking into uncontrollable laughter.
"There, there, Miss. Tendo," Mr. Stein said in a comforting manner that, while not lacking sincerity, lacked any emotional tone. "We all feel shy on our first day. However, I can assure you that nothing embarrassing will happen to you in my class."
Akane felt relived, in an odd way, that their teacher had mistaken her attempt to stifle her laughter as embarrassment. It would certainly help if Ranma were to relax a little, Akane thought as he looked over at him, he was pale, sweating like a football player finishing practice, and so tense that his arms looked ready to snap as he clutched the seat of his desk. 'Oh brother.' Akane didn't feel much relived now, it was embarrassing just looking at him here, scared witless at a music class, much less being engaged to him!
"Ok, class, let's begin shall we?" Mr. Stein asked in a purely rhetoric way that, while devoid of any tone, still managed to carry along something that might vaguely something related to excitement or perhaps anxiety. Maybe it was something in the rhythm that he used? "Welcome to Jazz" CRASH!
Mr. Stein was interrupted by the sound of Ranma breaking his desk, breathing heavily as he clutched two splintered wooden remnants of his desk.
"class." Mr. Stein finished, unfazed by the unexpected behavior of his student. "We'll start with Chuck Mangione." Mr. Stein pulled out a remote and pointed it at a receiver.
"NOOOOO!!" Ranma yelled as he made a mad dive at the remote, missing by a good twelve feet and falling flat on his face Ranma shuddered as he heard the upbeat music start to emanate from the speakers.
"What's this?" Kasumi held up a black and yellow book that she'd accidently pulled out of Genma Saotome's pocket when she snagged her duster on it. "Father?"
"Just a moment Kasumi… he's a formidable opponent." Soun rubbed his chin and then gestured to the shogi board where all the pieces, save one, lay untouched in their starting positions.
Kasumi looked at her father, the board, Mr. Saotome, and her father again. "I don't think he's going to move anytime soon Father, you've been sitting there waiting for him to move for four hours now."
"Really? What makes you say that?" Soun asked as he looked up.
"Because he's asleep father." Kasumi calmly replied.
"What makes you say that?" Soun asked again, sounding oddly like a broken record.
"I heard him snoring just now." Kasumi's reply was emphasized by the sitting form os Genma Saotome falling on it's side and exhaling an unmistakable snore.
"I see." was all that Soun said, it wasn't like he could argue with that kind of evidence. If he knew Quantum Logic… maybe, but he didn't so that hardly mattered. "What's that you have there?" Soun asked, nodding at the book Kasumi clutched in her hands.
Kasumi sighed as she handed the book to her father, sometimes it seemed like it was all so… futile.
"The Martial Artist's Guide to Obtaining Culture." Soun read the title out loud, 'This sounds kind of interesting.' He thought as he opened to the book to the place Genma had marked. "Let's see what you've been doing, shall we Saotome?" Soun muttered at his sleeping friend.
"Chapter 8: Jazz – The Trumpet Fist" Soun read aloud, "The Trumpet-fist is perhaps the easiest way to instill culture in even the most stubborn of students, it's ease of use and rapid training combine synergeticly to produce the optimized memory retention and behavior conditioning in the subject!?" Soun turned it into a question at the end even though it lacked the question mark, this was kinda weird stuff, Soun continued. "The training is simple, all one has to do is: Tie the trainee up, cover with Cajun food, and throw him on the stage of a Jazz or Blues band…" Soun trailed off as he imagined Genma tying himself up in the rafters above a Jazz band, rolling in Cajun food, and throwing himself, well rolling, off the rafters and into the band below. "A true martial artist to the end!" Soun exclaimed as he wiped a tear from his eye.
Ranma could feel it taking root. It was the most horrible and vile of sensations, like he was trapped watching as he made a fool of himself, it was always like this when the Trumpet-Fist training took a hold of him and he started to dance to the music, beautifully, explosively, and completely against his will. Ranma tried to scream as he felt himself take a step in time with the music, then another,, and a third. That's when he felt himself slipping into the Trumped-Fist, vaguely aware that the true terror of the Trumpet-Fist still had to emerge.
Ranma's class mates watched on in rapt fascination as the new kid, Ranma Saotome, started to dance with the music. If they hadn't thought he was weird when he jumped during roll-call, or after breaking his desk, they sure did now.
Akane tried to hide and hope nobody thought to associate her with Ranma, maybe if she was lucky she could find some way to annul their engagement or something. It was bad enough that he turned into a girl… but this?
Ranma, now in the full throes of the Trumpet-Fist smiled as he danced over to the CD player and switched out the CD with one that he pulled out of thin air and danced with it as he ejected the CD that was in the player. Akane wasn't sure, but she thought she saw 'Broadway' on the case in Ranma's hand.
Moments later Akane was treated to Ranma's preformance of 'Tradition' from Fiddler on the Roof, 'Oklahoma' from Oklahoma, 'Where did Things Go Right?' and 'Springtime for Hitler' from The Producers. She shuddered constantly as Ranma did things that no mortal should… and what was worse was for his finale well let's just say there's a line that'll be going around Furinkan for a while: "Take it away PenPen!"
Author's Notes: Yeah, SnEptUne, I knew about the spelling, which I've corrected. You see sleep deprivation is not the time you want to run a spell-checker, especially if it's on an English paper. (They took more points off for wrong words than misspelt ones where I did this, lowered my score quite a bit.) I've taken care of it and re-uploaded the previous chapters. Thanks for the heads up though.
Akane'sWife - Here's your autograph:
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Tip - If you can't read it then cut n' paste the preceding into edit.com
Sorry about that before... has some weird upload "features". However I did fix the autograph.