FATE
A Ranma1/2 fanfic by PansutoTarou5925
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Disclaimer to follow at end of chapter
-----------------------------------------
The Tendo home had seen this before, certainly. A martial artist
sprawled across their futon and all but impervious to any attempts
to wake them up.
"Chiyeko-chan! Rise and shine!" Ranma said, flipping on the lights
and opening the blinds. The rising sun shone directly on the
sleeping girl's face, causing her to flip over and bury her head
underneath the pillow.
"...just one more minute, obaba..." Chiyeko mumbled semi-
coherently.
"Atasuke, take the blanket away," Ranma commanded her other
morning sparring partner.
He got a good handfull of her blankets and managed to yank the
blanket away with difficulty as the half-asleep Chiyeko kept
wrestling the warm blanket away from herself. Eventually he
managed to completely get the blanket away from Chiyeko, who
didn't let the lack of a blanket deter her; she balled up around the
pillow and growled when he tried to take it from her.
Ranma opened the window up and turned back. "Last warning,
kid!" Receiving no reply, Ranma shook her head, picked Chiyeko
up, and threw her out the window towards the koi pond. "Ahh,
brings back memories!" Ranma said, as she jumped out the window
herself, followed a second later by Atasuke. "Though you aren't
usually as bad as I was, I'll grant you that."
"Damnit Mom, that was dirty pool!" Chiyeko said, standing up in
now soggy pajamas as she flicked a fish out of her hair. "Ewww!"
she said, disgusted.
"No, it's a dirty pond," Ranma corrected. "And a true student of
Anything-Goes is ready for anything... and maybe next time you'll
wake up on time."
"Enough talk!" Chiyeko yelled, jumping out of the pond with a loud
kiai. Ranma deftly jumped over the angry lunge, and Chiyeko
vented her frustration on the unsuspecting Atasuke, who had been
planning to double team Ranma with Chiyeko as usual.
"So that's the game, you against everyone?" Ranma said lightly,
firing off a light ki blast, causing Chiyeko to jump away in surprise.
Atasuke jumped in with a flying kick - one that concentrated too
much on perfect form instead of pure speed, in Ranma's estimation
- and was thrown down as Chiyeko jumped up to meet him in mid
air and forced him down.
Springboarding off her fiancé's head, Chiyeko gathered energy for
her own Moko Takabisha, and Ranma's eye widened, sensing just
how much energy her daughter was tapping into. She dove out of
the way as Chiyeko's ki blast mushroomed into a thick beam that
vaporized the rock Ranma had been standing on and rattled
windows throughout the block with the sound of its impact.
Ranma didn't waste a moment, immediately rushing her daughter,
who was standing there in shock at the crater she had just blasted.
Off balance, Chiyeko only lasted a few seconds before going down.
"Ranma? What was that?" Kasumi said, having come running from
her kitchen at the sound of the explosion.
"Oh, Chiyeko-chan here just surprised us all, that's it," Ranma said,
looking at the wiped out Chiyeko with a critical eye. She seemed
almost completely out of ki; apparently she'd managed to dump
most of her ki in one huge blast. Might be useful for her as a last
resort technique, Ranma judged.
"Are they alright?" Kasumi asked, looking at the two unconscious
teens. Atasuke had been knocked out simply by being too close to
Chiyeko's ki blast.
"They're fine, it wasn't anything serious," Ranma said, 'Although if
Chiyeko had nailed him with that we'd be picking him up with a
sponge...' she thought, looking at the crater again. "I'm going to
bring Chiyeko in for her bath. Atasuke should be up any moment
now, OK?" Ranma dumped her prospective son-in-law near the
table and dragged Chiyeko into the bathroom.
"All right, Ranma," Kasumi said, and put a warm cloth on her son's
head.
-----------------------------------------
"Now spit it out, Chiyeko. You did something strange when you
did that Moko Takabisha. You're just lucky you were trying to hit
me - if you had aimed it at Atasuke, you would have killed him."
"I didn't do anything different!" Chiyeko said, angrily splashing
Ranma with hot water. "It just came out wrong!"
"You poured all your reserves into that blast, and you say you did
nothing different?" Ranma asked incredulously.
"I didn't do anything different!" Chiyeko repeated herself, and
crossed her arms over her chest. "It's my ki, it's acting funny. I - I
wanted to concentrate my power, like you're supposed to, and it all
just flowed into my gut without any resistance. It scared me and I
pushed it all out. But I didn't do anything different!"
Ranma studied her daughter for a second. Sure enough, Ranma
could sense the ki flows in Chiyeko had changed somehow,
although she couldn't tell exactly how; her daughter had always had
strange ki patterns, her weirdly heavy ki being difficult to analyze at
the best of times. But it certainly seemed to be more active than it
had been. "I wouldn't try any ki techniques today, not until after
school. You and I are going to practice basic breathing exercises
until you can safely control your own ki again, young lady."
"Aww hell," Chiyeko said, pouting. "I hate breathing exercises,"
she grumbled. "They put me to sleep."
"Might I remind you that you could have killed someone this
morning?" Ranma said sharply, then got up. Her face softened.
"Listen, Chiyeko, it won't be that bad. Likely you're just under a
little stress. Stay in the bath until you're ready, OK? I know you
like a nice long bath."
Ranma left, leaving Chiyeko to soak in her own thoughts and the
furo's hot water. She leaned back and immersed herself fully in the
warm waters, and could feel the soreness and tiredness seem to
dissolve in the water. Feeling fully refreshed, she got up a few
minutes later, and sat down at the table for another traditional
Saotome mealtime.
-----------------------------------------
'I should take a real long soak like that before school every day.
It's like I didn't even practice at all,' Chiyeko thought to herself,
ignoring the teacher and staring out the window. English bored her
to tears, like every class except sometimes gym, and that was only
because she got to run around a bit instead of being tethered to a
chair. To top it off, she was horrible at learning foreign languages -
after a whole year wandering Korea with her mother, she only
learned how to say "Hello," "Goodbye," and "Where's the
bathroom?" Giving up on the lesson, she fidgeted for a bit and then
turned to watch Atasuke for a bit.
She still wasn't sure what to make of him. Sure, he was cute
enough, but having a fiancé plopped on a plate in front of her by her
mother was annoying. Besides, he was a pervert. Of course, most
of the boys were perverts around here; she had caught one trying to
peek up her skirt when she was running on top of the fence to
school and had slapped him so hard that you could still see the
fading hand-shaped bruise on his face.
She caught the eraser tossed at her head entirely on automatic pilot,
and threw it back without having even registered catching it. "Miss
Saotome!" the teacher yelled, as the eraser bounced off the
blackboard. "Please try to pretend to pay attention to the lesson,
instead of mooning over your boyfriend!"
Mortified, Chiyeko grinned sheepishly and blushed, silently thankful
that her naturally 'tanned' skin, which the other girls had teased her
mercilessly about for years when she was younger, hid blushes just
as well as the odd light bruise from training. She looked down at
the lesson in front of her and concentrated on reading it, for once
being ashamed into actually taking class seriously. She read the
banal, simple English sentences for a few minutes, before she
realized something important.
She was reading the English sentences. And she didn't know
English.
"ACK!" she yelled, falling out of her chair as she tried to jump
away from her book.
"Miss Saotome! Buckets, hall, now!" the teacher yelled, as the
whole class turned around to stare at her. He then pointed to the
buckets stacked up neatly by the sink. Chiyeko nervously glanced at
the textbook again. The sentences were incomprehensible English
gibberish again.
"Nice one, Goldilocks," Sifu whispered, then snickered, as Chiyeko
passed her on the way to get the buckets.
"It's probably your fault, witch," Chiyeko said quietly on the way
back.
"What?" Sifu said, turning in surprise.
"Miss Morisato! Perhaps you and Miss Saotome could continue
your conversation in the hallway, and leave those actually interested
in learning in peace?" the teacher snapped, pointing to the buckets
again.
Once they were safely out in the hall, Sifu turned towards Chiyeko.
"What was that witch crack about?" she demanded angrily.
"You know what I'm talking about," Chiyeko said, taking a step
closer to Sifu and glaring down at the shorter girl, daring her to
make an issue of it. "Your uniform? The grease? A little light show
in the equipment shed?"
Sifu stood there in confusion, working her mouth. "But I'm not a
witch! You should know that, you idiot!"
"Witch!" Chiyeko said, then turned again and leaned against the
wall. "But I guess it's not your fault."
"No, that little drama in the classroom was probably you
hallucinating or something. The fumes from your hair dye must
have driven you nuts." Sifu knew that Chiyeko almost certainly had
inherited her blond hair from her demonic parent, but the rumors
that it was fake had never failed to annoy the taller girl back in
Nekomi.
Chiyeko gave her an evil glare. "And I thought it was the motor oil
smell from your hair, Greasemonkey."
Sniffing with mutual immaturity, the demoness and goddess both
turned away from each other.
Concentrating, Chiyeko reached within herself. She was still on
edge from that strange little incident in the class, and forced herself
to relax and release all the nervous ki she was holding in herself
with some meditation techniques her mother had taught her. She
breathed out and allowed that energy to escape in a brief pulse of
power.
Sifu looked at her suspicuous, having felt the release of demonic
energies. 'What the heck is she up to?' she wondered.
-----------------------------------------
Directly below her, as her power was slowly released, was a
classroom containing the most famous teacher in Furinkan - famous
for his complete eccentricity. Others would call it craziness; but
Tatewaki Kuno was too rich to be crazy, and he had found his
calling in life. He taught literature and coached the kendo team, and
was universally loathed by his students.
At the moment, Kuno-sensei was reading the class poems from
other languages, something that usually was terrible because poetry
usually lost a lot in translation, if not everything, but from their
perspective incomprehensible gaijin gibberish about birds was still
better than being forced to listen to Kuno's haiku.
Kuno for his part actively enjoyed reading poetry, even strange
gaijin stuff like Poe. However, he was growing irritated, because
someone kept making a tapping noise ever since shortly after he
started reciting the poem. Growing irritated, he signalled for the
class rep to open the door and see what joker was out in the hall,
tapping at his door.
The class rep opened the door, then screamed and jumped back as
an actual black raven came through the door and landed right on
Kuno-sensei's desk. The whole class squirmed in their seats, unable
to tell whether this was just freaky or something along the lines of
the thunder Kuno-sensei seemed to create whenever he started
getting more pompous than usual.
The bird simply hopped along the desk and pecked at papers. Kuno,
regaining his composure, swatted at the bird and forced it to
abandon his desk for the window, cawing in annoyance. "Now that
that is finished, we will return to the poem," Kuno said, and
continued where he left off.
The students kept switching between paying attention to Kuno and
nervously glancing at the big black bird perched on the windowsill.
"-tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore.
Quoth the raven-"
"Nevermore!" it croaked in a terrifyingly creaky voice. Several girls
fainted and other students yelled and nearly knocked over their
seats at the unexpected sound.
"Vile sorcerous beast!" Kuno yelled at the raven, and somehow
managed to pull a bokken out of his hakama.
"That wasn't part of the poem," one of the students said dumbly,
and was smacked by several of his classmates.
Kuno yelled out a loud kiai and chopped overhead, cleaving
through wood and plaster, but missing the bird, which cawed
mockingly and fluttered over to the teacher's desk. Planting his foot
with a slight step backwards, he then shifted his hips and his weight
and slashed at the desk, ripping the top off of it and smashing it into
the blackboard; the raven flew and started flying about the room,
causing the students to scream and try to avoid it, or whack it with
thrown books or swung bags. Their teacher ran through them,
leaping and jumping off desks and chairs, smashing many, and
putting huge holes in the ceiling and walls until the half-wrecked
door was torn off its hinges by an irate Principal Ninomiya.
"What is going on here?" Hinako yelled, having come running when
she heard the sounds of a classroom being trashed. She had been
expecting something like this ever since a Saotome ended up back
in Furinkan, but the Saotome girl wasn't even in this classroom.
She pulled a coin out of her pocket and drained the class
indiscriminately, changing into a middle-aged woman. She picked
up the bird that apparently was the source of the chaos and threw it
out the window, then turned to the weakened Kuno. "Kuno.
Meeting. In my office. During lunchtime." She glared at him.
-----------------------------------------
The noise coming from downstairs had gotten the two girls'
attention. "What the heck is going on down there?" Chiyeko said,
after the sounds of yelling and furniture being smashed ceased.
Several teachers had stuck their heads out of the classrooms in
curiousity, along with a few students. Chiyeko was almost
interested enough to simply skip class and check on whatever was
going on, except that she'd undoubtedly be busted by the teacher
tomorrow and whaqtever was going on apparently finished before
she nerved herself up to leaving in the first place.
"How would I know?" Sifu said, still irritated that Chiyeko had
gotten her in trouble. She was a goddess; she wasn't supposed to
get in trouble, her aunt Urd to the contrary. Thinking of Urd made
her regard Chiyeko for a moment, then snort.
"What?" Chiyeko said, turning to the shorter girl.
"Nothing. I was briefly thinking you reminded me of someone,"
Sifu said. "You're different, though." She paused. "More thuggish
and tomboyish." She smirked.
Chiyeko considered the merits of pouring her buckets on Sifu's
head, then decided to stew in silence.
"Well there, I hope you've learned your lesson, girls," the teacher
said after opening the door. "Come back inside and finish your
lessons. No more outbursts from you two in class, understand?"
"Yes, teacher!" the two chorused.
-----------------------------------------
It was halfway through the next class of the day that the next
strangeness occured. Chiyeko was beginning to lean over and look
tired and run down, and it got Atasuke's attention. "Hey Chiyeko,"
he asked, curious. "What's the problem?"
"Nothing," she said, then looked away as her stomach growled.
Atasuke grinned. "Sounds like you're hungry," he observed.
"No, I'm not," Chiyeko said as she worked on her math. She put
her pencil down and turned in her seat so she could face Atasuke.
"I'm not hungry."
Her stomach growled again, louder this time.
"Your stomach says otherwise," Atasuke noted.
"Fine then, I'm hungry. Are you happy?" Chiyeko turned back to
her work and sniffed. Actually, she was a little hungry, but that
wasn't what had her down. She felt like she did after she fired off
several ki blasts, or as if she had been pushing herself all day. She
really wanted a bath and a nap, not food, although food seemed a
really nice idea right now. Especially with lunch so soon.
"No need to bite my head off," Atasuke grumbled. The two
returned to working on their math.
From time to time, Chiyeko kept returning to the thought of food.
Now that Atasuke had her thinking about it, she really wanted a
bite to eat. They still had an hour to go, though.
-----------------------------------------
Down in the cafeteria, food poured out of pots and pans in an
amorphous mass, as the cafeteria laides first edged away, then fled
in terror. Bread buns formed eyes, as bannanas sank into the
widening gape a new-formed mouth. Sandwiches rose on its back
like spines, and it took steps on mashed-potato legs, a horrible
mishmash of food items that left soggy, soupy footprints, as it
stalked the halls looking for its creator.
Opening its mouth, it let loose a bestial roar, and smashed aside the
door to the stairwell.
-----------------------------------------
"What the hell was that?" Chiyeko said, as the rest of the class
looked around in confusion.
"Pay attention to your lessons," the teacher snapped. "They're
probably watching a movie in the next classroom!" The students,
admonished, turned back to their work. All except for three, that is.
"Miss Saotome, Miss Morisato, Mr. Ono. Perhaps you three are
finished, and need more work?"
"Something's coming," Sifu said. "Something big."
"Definitely," Chiyeko said, ignoring the novelty of agreeing with
the Morisato girl.
Atasuke did nothing and frowned. He knew that, sadly, Chiyeko
horribly outclassed him in fighting, and he'd be relegated to backup
duty in the coming fight.
The door was splintered into matchsticks as the food monster
barged into the room, its breath an unpleasant reek of random
soups and tea.
"What the fuck is that!" Chiyeko yelled, before jumping out of her
chair as the thing leapt at her. The chair she vacated was crushed
immediately.
"It's a monster!" Sifu said, grabbing her schoolbag. Her magic
really wasn't up to this, and it wasn't something she wanted to
advertise in a roomful of students anyways. Hopefully Chiyeko
would keep the thing occupied until she could get her thermos and
cellphone out. "Everyone get out!" she yelled, trying to hustle
students out the door. Not that they needed much encouragement'
most were already fleeing through the door at full speed.
Dodging the attempts of the thing to grab her, Chiyeko bounced off
the walls as she scrambled for room to maneuver. The thing
shrugged off her best blows, and after what happened this morning,
she wasn't keen on trying the Mouko Takabisha even if she wasn't
too concerned about how much damage she caused to this thing - if
it didn't work, she'd be almost completely out of gas.
Atasuke wisely kept his distance and smashed it with chairs and
tables, having seen that physical attacks were meaningless against
this monster. "Chiyeko! Shouldn't we just run?"
"You nuts? It's chasing me!"she yelled. Which was about par for
her life - if a monster broke into a room and wasn't after her, it was
because it was after her mother.
"I'll distract it long enough for you to escape," Atasuke said
bravely.
"I'm not running!" Chiyeko yelled again, staying out of the
monster's claws. It didn't seem to be putting out any hot ki, so the
Hiryu Shoten Ha was straight out. "Sifu! Blast this thing with witch
magic!"
"I'm not a witch!" Sifu yelled back as she opened up her cellphone
and speed-dialed Aunt Skuld. Upon a closer look, that thing was
powered by demonic energies. A rival trying to take out Chiyeko?
she wondered. If so, they had to put a stop to it. The Doublet
System would make that equally fatal for a god.
Chiyeko grunted and gave serious consideration to using some
forbidden techniques her mother had recently taught her. Sure,
she'd get in trouble, but she might manage to wiggle out of it by
telling her that she'd have just blasted the thing if she could have
used a Mokou Takabisha, but you told me I couldn't use one,
Mom! "Screw that," Chiyeko said, and hopped back, gaining some
room. "Sifu! Atasuke! Hit the deck!"
"I've called for help, just run!" Sifu said, ignoring her and holding
up the cellphone. Behind her, her untopped thermos was open for
Skuld.
"KIJIN RAISHU DAN!" Chiyeko yelled, whipping her arm back
and letting loose with a deadly vacuum blade, which sliced through
one of the food monster's arms, causing it to fly apart in a messy
explosion of food, and incidentally distracting her and her fiancee
from the arrival of Skuld, who got slimed by flying, well mixed
foods.
Only briefly distracted by being splattered, Skuld let fly with one of
her handcrafted explosives. "Skuld bomb away! Fire in the hole!" It
sailed into the monster's mouth perfectly. Skuld and Sifu
immediately hit the floor, as did Atasuke, leaving Chiyeko to be
knocked over by the force of the blast (and flying food) as the thing
was blown to smithereens.
She bounced back up quickly enough, then caught notice of Skuld.
"Aha! Another witch!" she said.
"Witch?" Skuld said, confused. Then she took a good, long look at
Chiyeko, blinked, and walked over to Chiyeko slowly, who backed
away from her nervously.
The wall of the classroom - now scorched, splattered with food,
and definitely not winning the Good Housekeeping seal of approval
- stopped Chiyeko from backing up any further. "Back off," she
told Skuld. "I'm a martial artist," she said, staring at the blue
tattoos on Skuld's head. "Try any magic witch stuff on me and
you'll regret it." Her eyes flicked over to Atasuke for a second; her
fiancee looked like he was readying himself to jump Skuld if he
attacked her.
Skuld continued to examine her for a few moments more. "You
look like my sister," Skuld said finally.
"She's too thuggish," Sifu chimed in from the other side of the
room.
"Hey!" Chiyeko said angrily. "You're one to talk, motorhead!"
Skuld ignored the two's bickering and compared the girl in front of
her to Urd. She resembled Urd far too much for it to be
coincidence, whatever Sifu's thoughts on the matter were. "Do you
know Hild?" she asked without preamble, even though it seemed a
stupid question - every demoness knew Hild.
"Auntie Hild?" Chiyeko said, confused.
"It figures," Skuld muttered. If Hild was her aunt, that meant that
she was Urd's cousin. "You are related to my sister."
Chiyeko looked over Skuld's shoulder, a horrified expression
crossing her face, equalled only by the surprised one on Atasuke's.
"You mean that Greasemonkey here," she said, pointing a shaky
finger at the other girl, "Is related to me?"
"I'm afraid so," Skuld said.
Chiyeko fainted.
DISCLAIMER: Ranma ½ is the property of Rumiko Takahashi,
Shonen Sunday, Viz, and other parties; I make no claims of
ownership of any of the intellectual or other properties pertaining to
it. Oh! My Goddess belongs to Kosuke Fujishima, Studio Proteus,
Dark Horse, and other parties, and I make no claims of ownership
of any of the intellectual or other properties pertaining to it, either.
-----------------------------------------
Author's Note: More work done! Hurrah and frabjulous joy!
A Ranma1/2 fanfic by PansutoTarou5925
-----------------------------------------
Disclaimer to follow at end of chapter
-----------------------------------------
The Tendo home had seen this before, certainly. A martial artist
sprawled across their futon and all but impervious to any attempts
to wake them up.
"Chiyeko-chan! Rise and shine!" Ranma said, flipping on the lights
and opening the blinds. The rising sun shone directly on the
sleeping girl's face, causing her to flip over and bury her head
underneath the pillow.
"...just one more minute, obaba..." Chiyeko mumbled semi-
coherently.
"Atasuke, take the blanket away," Ranma commanded her other
morning sparring partner.
He got a good handfull of her blankets and managed to yank the
blanket away with difficulty as the half-asleep Chiyeko kept
wrestling the warm blanket away from herself. Eventually he
managed to completely get the blanket away from Chiyeko, who
didn't let the lack of a blanket deter her; she balled up around the
pillow and growled when he tried to take it from her.
Ranma opened the window up and turned back. "Last warning,
kid!" Receiving no reply, Ranma shook her head, picked Chiyeko
up, and threw her out the window towards the koi pond. "Ahh,
brings back memories!" Ranma said, as she jumped out the window
herself, followed a second later by Atasuke. "Though you aren't
usually as bad as I was, I'll grant you that."
"Damnit Mom, that was dirty pool!" Chiyeko said, standing up in
now soggy pajamas as she flicked a fish out of her hair. "Ewww!"
she said, disgusted.
"No, it's a dirty pond," Ranma corrected. "And a true student of
Anything-Goes is ready for anything... and maybe next time you'll
wake up on time."
"Enough talk!" Chiyeko yelled, jumping out of the pond with a loud
kiai. Ranma deftly jumped over the angry lunge, and Chiyeko
vented her frustration on the unsuspecting Atasuke, who had been
planning to double team Ranma with Chiyeko as usual.
"So that's the game, you against everyone?" Ranma said lightly,
firing off a light ki blast, causing Chiyeko to jump away in surprise.
Atasuke jumped in with a flying kick - one that concentrated too
much on perfect form instead of pure speed, in Ranma's estimation
- and was thrown down as Chiyeko jumped up to meet him in mid
air and forced him down.
Springboarding off her fiancé's head, Chiyeko gathered energy for
her own Moko Takabisha, and Ranma's eye widened, sensing just
how much energy her daughter was tapping into. She dove out of
the way as Chiyeko's ki blast mushroomed into a thick beam that
vaporized the rock Ranma had been standing on and rattled
windows throughout the block with the sound of its impact.
Ranma didn't waste a moment, immediately rushing her daughter,
who was standing there in shock at the crater she had just blasted.
Off balance, Chiyeko only lasted a few seconds before going down.
"Ranma? What was that?" Kasumi said, having come running from
her kitchen at the sound of the explosion.
"Oh, Chiyeko-chan here just surprised us all, that's it," Ranma said,
looking at the wiped out Chiyeko with a critical eye. She seemed
almost completely out of ki; apparently she'd managed to dump
most of her ki in one huge blast. Might be useful for her as a last
resort technique, Ranma judged.
"Are they alright?" Kasumi asked, looking at the two unconscious
teens. Atasuke had been knocked out simply by being too close to
Chiyeko's ki blast.
"They're fine, it wasn't anything serious," Ranma said, 'Although if
Chiyeko had nailed him with that we'd be picking him up with a
sponge...' she thought, looking at the crater again. "I'm going to
bring Chiyeko in for her bath. Atasuke should be up any moment
now, OK?" Ranma dumped her prospective son-in-law near the
table and dragged Chiyeko into the bathroom.
"All right, Ranma," Kasumi said, and put a warm cloth on her son's
head.
-----------------------------------------
"Now spit it out, Chiyeko. You did something strange when you
did that Moko Takabisha. You're just lucky you were trying to hit
me - if you had aimed it at Atasuke, you would have killed him."
"I didn't do anything different!" Chiyeko said, angrily splashing
Ranma with hot water. "It just came out wrong!"
"You poured all your reserves into that blast, and you say you did
nothing different?" Ranma asked incredulously.
"I didn't do anything different!" Chiyeko repeated herself, and
crossed her arms over her chest. "It's my ki, it's acting funny. I - I
wanted to concentrate my power, like you're supposed to, and it all
just flowed into my gut without any resistance. It scared me and I
pushed it all out. But I didn't do anything different!"
Ranma studied her daughter for a second. Sure enough, Ranma
could sense the ki flows in Chiyeko had changed somehow,
although she couldn't tell exactly how; her daughter had always had
strange ki patterns, her weirdly heavy ki being difficult to analyze at
the best of times. But it certainly seemed to be more active than it
had been. "I wouldn't try any ki techniques today, not until after
school. You and I are going to practice basic breathing exercises
until you can safely control your own ki again, young lady."
"Aww hell," Chiyeko said, pouting. "I hate breathing exercises,"
she grumbled. "They put me to sleep."
"Might I remind you that you could have killed someone this
morning?" Ranma said sharply, then got up. Her face softened.
"Listen, Chiyeko, it won't be that bad. Likely you're just under a
little stress. Stay in the bath until you're ready, OK? I know you
like a nice long bath."
Ranma left, leaving Chiyeko to soak in her own thoughts and the
furo's hot water. She leaned back and immersed herself fully in the
warm waters, and could feel the soreness and tiredness seem to
dissolve in the water. Feeling fully refreshed, she got up a few
minutes later, and sat down at the table for another traditional
Saotome mealtime.
-----------------------------------------
'I should take a real long soak like that before school every day.
It's like I didn't even practice at all,' Chiyeko thought to herself,
ignoring the teacher and staring out the window. English bored her
to tears, like every class except sometimes gym, and that was only
because she got to run around a bit instead of being tethered to a
chair. To top it off, she was horrible at learning foreign languages -
after a whole year wandering Korea with her mother, she only
learned how to say "Hello," "Goodbye," and "Where's the
bathroom?" Giving up on the lesson, she fidgeted for a bit and then
turned to watch Atasuke for a bit.
She still wasn't sure what to make of him. Sure, he was cute
enough, but having a fiancé plopped on a plate in front of her by her
mother was annoying. Besides, he was a pervert. Of course, most
of the boys were perverts around here; she had caught one trying to
peek up her skirt when she was running on top of the fence to
school and had slapped him so hard that you could still see the
fading hand-shaped bruise on his face.
She caught the eraser tossed at her head entirely on automatic pilot,
and threw it back without having even registered catching it. "Miss
Saotome!" the teacher yelled, as the eraser bounced off the
blackboard. "Please try to pretend to pay attention to the lesson,
instead of mooning over your boyfriend!"
Mortified, Chiyeko grinned sheepishly and blushed, silently thankful
that her naturally 'tanned' skin, which the other girls had teased her
mercilessly about for years when she was younger, hid blushes just
as well as the odd light bruise from training. She looked down at
the lesson in front of her and concentrated on reading it, for once
being ashamed into actually taking class seriously. She read the
banal, simple English sentences for a few minutes, before she
realized something important.
She was reading the English sentences. And she didn't know
English.
"ACK!" she yelled, falling out of her chair as she tried to jump
away from her book.
"Miss Saotome! Buckets, hall, now!" the teacher yelled, as the
whole class turned around to stare at her. He then pointed to the
buckets stacked up neatly by the sink. Chiyeko nervously glanced at
the textbook again. The sentences were incomprehensible English
gibberish again.
"Nice one, Goldilocks," Sifu whispered, then snickered, as Chiyeko
passed her on the way to get the buckets.
"It's probably your fault, witch," Chiyeko said quietly on the way
back.
"What?" Sifu said, turning in surprise.
"Miss Morisato! Perhaps you and Miss Saotome could continue
your conversation in the hallway, and leave those actually interested
in learning in peace?" the teacher snapped, pointing to the buckets
again.
Once they were safely out in the hall, Sifu turned towards Chiyeko.
"What was that witch crack about?" she demanded angrily.
"You know what I'm talking about," Chiyeko said, taking a step
closer to Sifu and glaring down at the shorter girl, daring her to
make an issue of it. "Your uniform? The grease? A little light show
in the equipment shed?"
Sifu stood there in confusion, working her mouth. "But I'm not a
witch! You should know that, you idiot!"
"Witch!" Chiyeko said, then turned again and leaned against the
wall. "But I guess it's not your fault."
"No, that little drama in the classroom was probably you
hallucinating or something. The fumes from your hair dye must
have driven you nuts." Sifu knew that Chiyeko almost certainly had
inherited her blond hair from her demonic parent, but the rumors
that it was fake had never failed to annoy the taller girl back in
Nekomi.
Chiyeko gave her an evil glare. "And I thought it was the motor oil
smell from your hair, Greasemonkey."
Sniffing with mutual immaturity, the demoness and goddess both
turned away from each other.
Concentrating, Chiyeko reached within herself. She was still on
edge from that strange little incident in the class, and forced herself
to relax and release all the nervous ki she was holding in herself
with some meditation techniques her mother had taught her. She
breathed out and allowed that energy to escape in a brief pulse of
power.
Sifu looked at her suspicuous, having felt the release of demonic
energies. 'What the heck is she up to?' she wondered.
-----------------------------------------
Directly below her, as her power was slowly released, was a
classroom containing the most famous teacher in Furinkan - famous
for his complete eccentricity. Others would call it craziness; but
Tatewaki Kuno was too rich to be crazy, and he had found his
calling in life. He taught literature and coached the kendo team, and
was universally loathed by his students.
At the moment, Kuno-sensei was reading the class poems from
other languages, something that usually was terrible because poetry
usually lost a lot in translation, if not everything, but from their
perspective incomprehensible gaijin gibberish about birds was still
better than being forced to listen to Kuno's haiku.
Kuno for his part actively enjoyed reading poetry, even strange
gaijin stuff like Poe. However, he was growing irritated, because
someone kept making a tapping noise ever since shortly after he
started reciting the poem. Growing irritated, he signalled for the
class rep to open the door and see what joker was out in the hall,
tapping at his door.
The class rep opened the door, then screamed and jumped back as
an actual black raven came through the door and landed right on
Kuno-sensei's desk. The whole class squirmed in their seats, unable
to tell whether this was just freaky or something along the lines of
the thunder Kuno-sensei seemed to create whenever he started
getting more pompous than usual.
The bird simply hopped along the desk and pecked at papers. Kuno,
regaining his composure, swatted at the bird and forced it to
abandon his desk for the window, cawing in annoyance. "Now that
that is finished, we will return to the poem," Kuno said, and
continued where he left off.
The students kept switching between paying attention to Kuno and
nervously glancing at the big black bird perched on the windowsill.
"-tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore.
Quoth the raven-"
"Nevermore!" it croaked in a terrifyingly creaky voice. Several girls
fainted and other students yelled and nearly knocked over their
seats at the unexpected sound.
"Vile sorcerous beast!" Kuno yelled at the raven, and somehow
managed to pull a bokken out of his hakama.
"That wasn't part of the poem," one of the students said dumbly,
and was smacked by several of his classmates.
Kuno yelled out a loud kiai and chopped overhead, cleaving
through wood and plaster, but missing the bird, which cawed
mockingly and fluttered over to the teacher's desk. Planting his foot
with a slight step backwards, he then shifted his hips and his weight
and slashed at the desk, ripping the top off of it and smashing it into
the blackboard; the raven flew and started flying about the room,
causing the students to scream and try to avoid it, or whack it with
thrown books or swung bags. Their teacher ran through them,
leaping and jumping off desks and chairs, smashing many, and
putting huge holes in the ceiling and walls until the half-wrecked
door was torn off its hinges by an irate Principal Ninomiya.
"What is going on here?" Hinako yelled, having come running when
she heard the sounds of a classroom being trashed. She had been
expecting something like this ever since a Saotome ended up back
in Furinkan, but the Saotome girl wasn't even in this classroom.
She pulled a coin out of her pocket and drained the class
indiscriminately, changing into a middle-aged woman. She picked
up the bird that apparently was the source of the chaos and threw it
out the window, then turned to the weakened Kuno. "Kuno.
Meeting. In my office. During lunchtime." She glared at him.
-----------------------------------------
The noise coming from downstairs had gotten the two girls'
attention. "What the heck is going on down there?" Chiyeko said,
after the sounds of yelling and furniture being smashed ceased.
Several teachers had stuck their heads out of the classrooms in
curiousity, along with a few students. Chiyeko was almost
interested enough to simply skip class and check on whatever was
going on, except that she'd undoubtedly be busted by the teacher
tomorrow and whaqtever was going on apparently finished before
she nerved herself up to leaving in the first place.
"How would I know?" Sifu said, still irritated that Chiyeko had
gotten her in trouble. She was a goddess; she wasn't supposed to
get in trouble, her aunt Urd to the contrary. Thinking of Urd made
her regard Chiyeko for a moment, then snort.
"What?" Chiyeko said, turning to the shorter girl.
"Nothing. I was briefly thinking you reminded me of someone,"
Sifu said. "You're different, though." She paused. "More thuggish
and tomboyish." She smirked.
Chiyeko considered the merits of pouring her buckets on Sifu's
head, then decided to stew in silence.
"Well there, I hope you've learned your lesson, girls," the teacher
said after opening the door. "Come back inside and finish your
lessons. No more outbursts from you two in class, understand?"
"Yes, teacher!" the two chorused.
-----------------------------------------
It was halfway through the next class of the day that the next
strangeness occured. Chiyeko was beginning to lean over and look
tired and run down, and it got Atasuke's attention. "Hey Chiyeko,"
he asked, curious. "What's the problem?"
"Nothing," she said, then looked away as her stomach growled.
Atasuke grinned. "Sounds like you're hungry," he observed.
"No, I'm not," Chiyeko said as she worked on her math. She put
her pencil down and turned in her seat so she could face Atasuke.
"I'm not hungry."
Her stomach growled again, louder this time.
"Your stomach says otherwise," Atasuke noted.
"Fine then, I'm hungry. Are you happy?" Chiyeko turned back to
her work and sniffed. Actually, she was a little hungry, but that
wasn't what had her down. She felt like she did after she fired off
several ki blasts, or as if she had been pushing herself all day. She
really wanted a bath and a nap, not food, although food seemed a
really nice idea right now. Especially with lunch so soon.
"No need to bite my head off," Atasuke grumbled. The two
returned to working on their math.
From time to time, Chiyeko kept returning to the thought of food.
Now that Atasuke had her thinking about it, she really wanted a
bite to eat. They still had an hour to go, though.
-----------------------------------------
Down in the cafeteria, food poured out of pots and pans in an
amorphous mass, as the cafeteria laides first edged away, then fled
in terror. Bread buns formed eyes, as bannanas sank into the
widening gape a new-formed mouth. Sandwiches rose on its back
like spines, and it took steps on mashed-potato legs, a horrible
mishmash of food items that left soggy, soupy footprints, as it
stalked the halls looking for its creator.
Opening its mouth, it let loose a bestial roar, and smashed aside the
door to the stairwell.
-----------------------------------------
"What the hell was that?" Chiyeko said, as the rest of the class
looked around in confusion.
"Pay attention to your lessons," the teacher snapped. "They're
probably watching a movie in the next classroom!" The students,
admonished, turned back to their work. All except for three, that is.
"Miss Saotome, Miss Morisato, Mr. Ono. Perhaps you three are
finished, and need more work?"
"Something's coming," Sifu said. "Something big."
"Definitely," Chiyeko said, ignoring the novelty of agreeing with
the Morisato girl.
Atasuke did nothing and frowned. He knew that, sadly, Chiyeko
horribly outclassed him in fighting, and he'd be relegated to backup
duty in the coming fight.
The door was splintered into matchsticks as the food monster
barged into the room, its breath an unpleasant reek of random
soups and tea.
"What the fuck is that!" Chiyeko yelled, before jumping out of her
chair as the thing leapt at her. The chair she vacated was crushed
immediately.
"It's a monster!" Sifu said, grabbing her schoolbag. Her magic
really wasn't up to this, and it wasn't something she wanted to
advertise in a roomful of students anyways. Hopefully Chiyeko
would keep the thing occupied until she could get her thermos and
cellphone out. "Everyone get out!" she yelled, trying to hustle
students out the door. Not that they needed much encouragement'
most were already fleeing through the door at full speed.
Dodging the attempts of the thing to grab her, Chiyeko bounced off
the walls as she scrambled for room to maneuver. The thing
shrugged off her best blows, and after what happened this morning,
she wasn't keen on trying the Mouko Takabisha even if she wasn't
too concerned about how much damage she caused to this thing - if
it didn't work, she'd be almost completely out of gas.
Atasuke wisely kept his distance and smashed it with chairs and
tables, having seen that physical attacks were meaningless against
this monster. "Chiyeko! Shouldn't we just run?"
"You nuts? It's chasing me!"she yelled. Which was about par for
her life - if a monster broke into a room and wasn't after her, it was
because it was after her mother.
"I'll distract it long enough for you to escape," Atasuke said
bravely.
"I'm not running!" Chiyeko yelled again, staying out of the
monster's claws. It didn't seem to be putting out any hot ki, so the
Hiryu Shoten Ha was straight out. "Sifu! Blast this thing with witch
magic!"
"I'm not a witch!" Sifu yelled back as she opened up her cellphone
and speed-dialed Aunt Skuld. Upon a closer look, that thing was
powered by demonic energies. A rival trying to take out Chiyeko?
she wondered. If so, they had to put a stop to it. The Doublet
System would make that equally fatal for a god.
Chiyeko grunted and gave serious consideration to using some
forbidden techniques her mother had recently taught her. Sure,
she'd get in trouble, but she might manage to wiggle out of it by
telling her that she'd have just blasted the thing if she could have
used a Mokou Takabisha, but you told me I couldn't use one,
Mom! "Screw that," Chiyeko said, and hopped back, gaining some
room. "Sifu! Atasuke! Hit the deck!"
"I've called for help, just run!" Sifu said, ignoring her and holding
up the cellphone. Behind her, her untopped thermos was open for
Skuld.
"KIJIN RAISHU DAN!" Chiyeko yelled, whipping her arm back
and letting loose with a deadly vacuum blade, which sliced through
one of the food monster's arms, causing it to fly apart in a messy
explosion of food, and incidentally distracting her and her fiancee
from the arrival of Skuld, who got slimed by flying, well mixed
foods.
Only briefly distracted by being splattered, Skuld let fly with one of
her handcrafted explosives. "Skuld bomb away! Fire in the hole!" It
sailed into the monster's mouth perfectly. Skuld and Sifu
immediately hit the floor, as did Atasuke, leaving Chiyeko to be
knocked over by the force of the blast (and flying food) as the thing
was blown to smithereens.
She bounced back up quickly enough, then caught notice of Skuld.
"Aha! Another witch!" she said.
"Witch?" Skuld said, confused. Then she took a good, long look at
Chiyeko, blinked, and walked over to Chiyeko slowly, who backed
away from her nervously.
The wall of the classroom - now scorched, splattered with food,
and definitely not winning the Good Housekeeping seal of approval
- stopped Chiyeko from backing up any further. "Back off," she
told Skuld. "I'm a martial artist," she said, staring at the blue
tattoos on Skuld's head. "Try any magic witch stuff on me and
you'll regret it." Her eyes flicked over to Atasuke for a second; her
fiancee looked like he was readying himself to jump Skuld if he
attacked her.
Skuld continued to examine her for a few moments more. "You
look like my sister," Skuld said finally.
"She's too thuggish," Sifu chimed in from the other side of the
room.
"Hey!" Chiyeko said angrily. "You're one to talk, motorhead!"
Skuld ignored the two's bickering and compared the girl in front of
her to Urd. She resembled Urd far too much for it to be
coincidence, whatever Sifu's thoughts on the matter were. "Do you
know Hild?" she asked without preamble, even though it seemed a
stupid question - every demoness knew Hild.
"Auntie Hild?" Chiyeko said, confused.
"It figures," Skuld muttered. If Hild was her aunt, that meant that
she was Urd's cousin. "You are related to my sister."
Chiyeko looked over Skuld's shoulder, a horrified expression
crossing her face, equalled only by the surprised one on Atasuke's.
"You mean that Greasemonkey here," she said, pointing a shaky
finger at the other girl, "Is related to me?"
"I'm afraid so," Skuld said.
Chiyeko fainted.
DISCLAIMER: Ranma ½ is the property of Rumiko Takahashi,
Shonen Sunday, Viz, and other parties; I make no claims of
ownership of any of the intellectual or other properties pertaining to
it. Oh! My Goddess belongs to Kosuke Fujishima, Studio Proteus,
Dark Horse, and other parties, and I make no claims of ownership
of any of the intellectual or other properties pertaining to it, either.
-----------------------------------------
Author's Note: More work done! Hurrah and frabjulous joy!