Ranma DewBlossom
Chapter Two
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Ranma glanced down to the sleeping girl, clinging tightly to his chest. There had been a guest room... but for some time Genma had been extremely wary of sleeping near him. Hypocrite. Perfectly all right for him to awaken his student by kicking him off the edge of a cliff... but not for the student to return the favor, albeit rather more lethally? Absurd. So what if he'd decided to awaken Genma at near one in the morning? When he came to power he would make assassins a legal occupation again. The ninja he'd met would be pleased.
He considered leaving the room to sleep elswhere, but the second he'd wormed his way out of the girls surprisingly tight grip she'd begun to toss and turn, obviously sinking into the depths of a nightmare. He'd had to return to her bed to keep her quiet. He'd not expected this. With Genma refusing to stay in the same room as his student, Soun had coldly offered Ranma the choice of sleeping in Hotaru's room, or in a tent outside. He'd very nearly opted for the tent... it would have been little different from what he could remember for most of his life... but tears had begun to gather in the corner of the girls eyes. There was only one way to solve such a predicament.
Unfortunately, he happened to be wearing his blue shirt instead of the red one, and didn't care for getting blood all over it. So he had gone with the next best thing and agreed to share Hotaru's room. Soun had given him a cold sneer, but capitulated. He was beginning to get the idea that perhaps Soun hadn't been trying so much to manipulate him as he'd thought. No matter. He'd already placed his name and punishment into his little blue book. He'd wanted a black one but Megalomaniacal Fiends R Us had sold out and only had dark blue in stock. His punishment was already decided.
Genma had seemed nervous, probably trying to decide whether or not Ranma would end up killing the girl in the night, but relaxed as he quietly reassured the girl, who apparently had a severe inferiority complex, that he wasn't about to reject her like that. How sleeping in a tent instead of her bed was a rejection, he had no clue, but it kept the girl from crying and she'd been perfectly chaste before dropping off, treating him more as a large, warm 'teddy bear' than a possible... playmate. Though something told him that if he'd been inclined to 'play', then she'd have been more than happy to oblige.
He beat that thought to death before drifting off. She was only fifteen. Granted, so was he, despite the fact that he looked older, but that wasn't the point. The calm and rational debate in his mind continued until he fell asleep, unaware of the things in store for him in the morning.
xxx
"School?"
Genma flinched. The question had been posed in a calm and rational voice, but the owner of the voice in question had begun to emit a dark colored aura and had withdrawn a half-finished glove from within his clothes, knitting patiently.
"Y... y-yes... s-s-school... We'll be here for a little while, and, and, and, I thought..."
"You thought? How rare. But for once you've come up with a good idea. Knowledge is power. The correct classes could increase my current knowledge exponentially, thus placing me that much closer to the fulfillment of my goals. Remind me to think up a suitable reward for you... perhaps a position of some power, after the take-over."
Genma nearly fainted in relief.
"Y... yes, I... I thought something like that too."
Naturally he hadn't, but when his son got into one of his 'moods' it was best simply to agree with whatever he had to say. Somewhat like the master, except that his son had none of the master's few exploitable weaknessess.
Kasumi entered the room, carrying a large platter full of breakfast. Ranma's dark aura and scowl instantly evaporated, along with his knitting project, to be replaced with a vapid smile and an aura that made his teeth hurt to look at, for a moment he was sure he saw daisies and rose petals drifting through it, as she set the veritable feast upon the table.
"Oooh... it smells soo good and looks sooooo yummy! Can I have some now, Kasumi-chan? PLEEASE?"
... Well, yeah, there was that. Ranma had no problem using girlish wiles in this state... regardless of the fact of his current gender. While disturbing at times, it actually worked far more often than you'd expect. Even when he was a guy... though a couple of those shopkeepers had looked rather more feminine than most, and seemed to blush more when it was otoko-Ranma making the rounds... hmm.
"It's the same school that Hotaru and I go to..." Nabiki finished her plateful suspiciously quickly. "Want me to walk you there?"
Ranma appeared to consider the offer for a moment as he savored the delightful meal.
"No. I'll wait for Hotaru-chan."
Nabiki mentally scowled. He may not have chosen her... but he had too good a body to simply let pass by. If he'd been in the tent last night like she'd expected, she and Kasumi could have double-teamed him and easily 'convinced' him to switch the engagement to one of them. Neither of them had expected him to agree to stay in her room... She grumbled internally and shifted her hips. Now he was avoiding her plan to drag him into an alley and have some of her other 'slaves' hold him down while she... she broke of the line of thought, concentrating on just how much leather panties chafed. Couldn't be caught blushing at the breakfast table... daddy wouldn't approve of what she was thinking until after she got the engagement switched. Then he would just bawl about how much like her mother she was and give her permission to do whatever she wanted to her fiance.
Ranma was being difficult, though. Every other boy she'd met was easy to lead around by his... hormones... what made him so different? No matter. The brat had been so happy when she'd bounced down the stairs this morning... obviously lording it over her elder sisters that she had been the one to score the hunk without lifting a finger. No matter. Men liked to think they were faithful, but she had yet to find even one who wouldn't jump at the chance for a few hours of meaningless sex. Sooner or later, Ranma would give in, or she would manage to catch him off guard, and he would be her toy, and she could re-teach the brat just what her place was.
For now though, she just shrugged and headed for school. There would be other opportunities. Besides, she had a change of panties in her locker and more than enough time for one of her 'subordinates' to take care of the problem that leather rubbing against her easily stimulated regions was causing.
xxx
Ranma glanced at the fence. In all three of his moods he preferred to be at the highest point available, but for different reasons, whether it was fun, let the peons surrounding him know where he was, or tactically gave him an advantage against random attacks. However, Hotaru had seemed likely to sink into the depths of depression again when she decided that he was walking on the fence to keep away from her.
He paused, under Bruce's advisement, and waited for the water that suddenly splashed out in front of him to hit the ground before stepping quickly past, Hotaru shadowing him.
Minutes later, he was at the school, arching his eyebrow at the group outfitted in kendo gear that was blocking the entrance. Obviously, they intended to haze the fresh meat... new student. That would be him.
A boy in blue hakama, toting a bokken, stepped forward to sneer at him, confirming his guess.
"Who might you be, cretin? Ah, but I forget, it is the custom to give ones own name before asking anothers, is it not? Fine! Mine I shall give. My name... is Upperclassman Kuno, Junior group E. Captain of the Kendo club, and undefeated star of the high school fencing world. You may adress me as either Sempai... or the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High! Also... You appear quite familiar with Nabiki-sama's younger sister, nameless cretin."
Ranma, with some effort, forced himself into neutrality.
"...My name is Ranma. I have transferred to this educational facility only today. Our respective elders," Damned if he was going to admit Genma's relation to him. In a public place, no less. "Have arranged an engagement between Hotaru and I. Have your questions been answered, 'sempai'?"
Kuno ignored the sarcastic overtones of the last word to focus on the rest.
"Ah, a new student! I welcome you then, and give you this news. I am under orders from Nabiki-sama herself to test any who care to associate with her... younger family member. They must defeat me and my minions in fair combat."
His minions, the kendo team, grumbled slightly but moved into ready stances. Ranma almost cried after looking at them. Perfectly by the book, hundreds of holes in their guard... he could beat them all in under a second. No fun at all. Kunou seemed slightly better, though. If he was lucky, he might last a full minute.
"I offer you this single chance, to renounce all association with the girl beside you. I assure you, it will be far less painful that way."
In her classroom, Nabiki was mentally crowing as she watched the little drama play out. Ranma was guaging his chances against the team of six, plus Kuno. She congratulated herself for thinking of setting Kuno and his gang on Ranma. Now he would, faced with unbeatable odds, switch the engagement to her or Kasumi. Either one would work. She didn't really want to marry him, just get him in the sack a few times, and Kasumi was good at sharing.
She nearly fell out of the window when she heard Ranma's reply.
"No."
"No?"
"No... Hotaru, would you mind standing over there for a moment? It looks like I'm going to have to reaffirm the position I took with Tendo-san... but with a large application of healthy violence."
His hands were already in his pockets, stroking the switchblades Bruce had given him. His invisible 'foster parents' floated to hover by Hotaru next to the gate. Neither of them cared to have to clean blood off themselves... flippers made holding soap very difficult.
Kuno sighed and stepped behind his minions.
"A pity. I shall send a card to your hospital room."
The Kendo team rushed forward in a unified attack.
Nabiki turned away, unable to watch the impending beating.
Hotaru took a deep breath, preparing to scream.
Bruce was knitting.
Ribbons was watching a butterfly.
Kuno had averted his eyes. He had no true desire to do this, even felt a pity of sorts for the poor boy and girl, but Nabiki-sama had given her orders and since the incident... he had no choice but to obey.
Ranma released all semblance of control over himself as his personality swung to mimic a respected father figure. A wide grin, filled with battle-madness, spread over his face and his arms blurred as they left his pockets.
Even as he made the conscious decision to avoid vital areas and his arms blurred once more into silent strikes, the sharp click of switchblades opening echoed through the schoolyard.
xxx
Both Nabiki and Kuno blinked at the click, and again as the screams began. Simultaneously they turned their heads back to the one-sided massacre. It was that, but in the other direction than they'd anticipated. Nabiki turned green and had to turn away again to keep her stomach under control. So much blood...
Kuno on the other hand was skilled enough to tell that all of the attacks were precisely aimed to look far worse than they really were. The worst his minions would have would be a little superficial scarring... and despite appearances they hadn't lost enough blood to truly matter. A plan began to form in his head. This Ranma... he would be a truly worthy battle. He knew perfectly well that he would lose, but there could be an advantage.
Ever since... the incident... he'd been forced into Nabiki's service until someone defeated either him or her in combat. Then... the bindings of his geas would switch to the victor. It would only work once, and then only defeating the previous victor could change the binding of the geas, but anyone would be a better daimyo than Nabiki-sama. His actions towards the girl that near everyone scorned and despised to one degree or another spoke well of his character... despite the way he was grinning as he made the kendo club bleed.
In class, Nabiki had just thought of the same thing Kuno had, but was too slow to forbid him to challenge Ranma. She grimaced and cursed the loss of a perfectly good 'servant' as Kuno leapt through the air with his bokken in an attack position that looked fine to her, but that both boys were aware had a great many holes in defense that could be easily exploited. Ranma had already returned the knives to his pockets and casually backhanded Kuno into the stone wall surrounding the school. Nabiki winced. Those weird magic thingies could only be used once before their power faded, and she was down to...
A brilliant plan crossed her mind. Use the magic thingies on Ranma. Then she could just order him to switch the engagement to her, and he'd have no choice but to obey. And as an added bonus, she'd get Kuno-chan back too... she'd just have to order Ranma to order Kuno to do whatever she wanted.
A particularly ecchi fantasy crossed her mind, and her face settled into its customary 'Ice queen' mask. Yes. She would have them both... at the same time!
She casually wiped away a small trickle of blood from her nose before anyone noticed.
xxx
Hotaru was still slightly shocked. Unlike Kuno, she hadn't been trained in the martial arts, so she couldn't guage the real amount of damage done... and all the blood was very misleading.
"He... he... he maimed all those boys... for me?"
Oddly enough, the thought caused her to smile for some reason.
"Thats... thats so sweet. He just maimed six innocent students and smashed an upperclassman into a stone wall... all for me."
Granted, he'd seemed to enjoy it far more than he probably should have, but it had been so long since anyone had treated her with anything more than indifference that she was willing to ignore his less nice qualities in favor of his nicer ones. In her mind, Ranma was now categorized as something above friend, above fiance even. He was her Knight in Shining Armor. He could do no wrong. He would be her Royal Consort.
She blinked and wondered where that last thought came from.
xxx
Setsuna screamed, unheard from her vantage point at the time gates. For some time now, the timelines had been going very, very wrong. Take Saturn for instance.
Saturn was reborn as the daughter of a sciency type named Souichiro Tomoe... and died in an accident. The bereaved man was supposed to come into contact with a malevolent entity named Mistress Nine, who would offer to return his precious daughter to life... for a price. Instead, he had somehow resurrected his daughter by himself in exchange for the sacrifice of his own life. Soon after, Hotaru had disappeared into one of the few areas of Japan that she couldn't scry for whatever reason, but she couldn't figure out which one. She'd frankly forgotten about it until the 'witches 5' had shown up to attempt to bring Pharoah 90 to this world. Unsurprisingly, without Tomoe as brains they were easily defeated. Mistress Nine had never appeared either, leading Pluto to wonder just what had happened to her.
xxx
Mistress Nine sneezed before glancing around in the damp darkness. She was chained to a wall, wearing a straitjacket, in some sort of cell in a sewer with bars made out of pipes. That sneaky bastard Tomoe had pretended to go along with her offer, only to catch her off guard and turn the tables on her, killing himself to bring Hotaru back to life and seal her within the girls soul to keep her that way. She'd been locked up here, cold, damp, and oddly enough extremely lonely, for what she guessed was something around the last ten years. She recalled an old boyfriend in some other dimension who'd gotten himself into a similar situation. Name started with a K... She'd thought it was hilariously funny at the time, couldn't stop laughing for weeks.
She wasn't laughing now.
She was beginning to lose it. She could feel her evil seeping away into the quiet darkness. She'd be good, she'd masquerade as a human, she'd fix things so Pharoah 90 could never come to this planet, ever, he wasn't that good in bed anyway, she'd give money to charity, she'd take up nursing at old folks homes, she'd take in stray puppies and other cute animals and make flowers magically grow wherever she walked, start a religion based on purity and love, ANYTHING as long as someone let her out of this FUCKING SEWER CELL THING... or at least let her see what the kid she was stuck in was doing sometimes. The steady sound of water dripping was really starting to mess with her mind... she was beginning to think the Tomoe bastard planned it that way.
xxx
Setsuna dismissed the thought as irrelevant. Her absence had made it possible to close the doorway to Pharoah 90 before he could pass through, even with Saturn being absent as well. According to the time gates, there was an extremely low chance of her ever appearing again, and if she did she wasn't going to be any trouble. Oddly enough she'd gotten an image of her running an orphanage, and one of her starting up a religion that swiftly grew in numbers to spread across the globe... even more surprisingly, neither of them had been for a vile plot. For a youma type entity, that was something akin to converting to Satanism and sacrificing infants.
Anyway, the timelines were rapidly shifting and squirming around a single point in time, throwing millenia of careful planning... she'd been preparing for Crystal Tokyo even before the Silver Millenium had fallen... straight down the tubes. The image of that point in time was horrifying.
Sailor Saturn's Wedding.
It was terrible, and could never be allowed to happen. Even in the Silver Millenium, Saturn wasn't allowed to wed, take lovers, or even make close attachments to people. Given the overwhelming power she had locked in her tiny frame, and that she became... Overprotective was a good word, but to truly understand it you had to add a few modifying words. Like Extremely, Absolutely, and Insanely. She tended to start blowing random things, and people, to oblivion if someone she actually liked was so much as scratched.
After a heated debate it was decided that an apathetic Saturn, with no regard whatsoever for human life, but no real reason to destroy it... at the moment... was far less dangerous. The fact that the groom appeared to be a nexus of chaos and mild insanity didn't help either.
She sighed as she looked back into the Gates. For some reason, she couldn't get a lock on the exact date on the wedding either. If she could, she could just bomb it to oblivion. Saturn would survive, but noone else would... and even if she died she'd just be reincarnated again. No problem.
Unfortunately, she'd just have to find out some other way to stop the wedding. And get the other two outers to have to take care of and raise Hotaru. Somehow. They had too much time on their hands by far.
xxx
Despite fitting in a one sided massacre before school, Ranma hadn't had any trouble making his way to the classroom. He'd chosen a seat next to Hotaru, which was surprisingly easy as there was a ring of empty seats surrounding her. Oddly enough, the only attention he'd gotten was a couple of kids who wanted to know if Hotaru was any good in the sack.
One casual use of Mallet-chan, one destroyed desk, and two sets of soiled undergarments later even the teacher was sweating nervously and trying to ignore the psychopath in the room. Hotaru's close proximity to the psychopath meant she was ignored as well. It was a novel experience for her. Usually she was targeted with questions college students would have difficulty answering and loudly mocked if her answer was incorrect. But sadly, all good things must come to an end and soon, lunchtime and recess came, seperating her from her knight, and leaving her to be dragged off by the girls of the class to gossip about her new fiance.
"Oof!"
Hotaru fell to the ground, winded from the blow to the stomach.
"Why does a freaky little runt like you get a hunk like him? It's not FAIR!"
The last word was punctuated by a swift kick to the downed girls ribs, knocking the wind out of her once more, and serving to keep her down. Hotaru whimpered as the foot drew back once more only to pause as a whiffling noise sped past the bullies face, ending in a thunk as a switchblade imbedded itself into the school wall. A thin red line appeared on the bullies face, and began to ooze a trickle of blood.
"Ah! What! Who'd?"
"Some men believe that striking a woman is a flaw in their character, something not to do..."
Eyes turned to Ranma, who was casually spinning another switchblade around his fingers.
"I personally subscribe to the belief that if you meddle in my business, male or female, you heartily deserve whatever happens to you. Hold still, I hear this only hurts for a moment."
The girl broke and ran, leaving Ranma to step forward and help Hotaru to her feet. Hotaru latched onto his side, sobbing quietly into his shirt.
"..."
Ranma calmy memorized the girls face, making a note to find out her name later. So he could add it to the list of people to be purged. It was all her fault that Hotaru was rubbing dirt into his favorite shirt. Her punishment would be both painful and humiliating. Chinese silk was difficult to come by in Japan.
xxx
A.N.
Looks like my previous chapter redeemed the prologue... a little anyway. Hmmm. I actually can't think of anything to say. How odd. Anyway, I intend to cram as many cameos and references to stuff in here as possible, simply out of sheer boredom. See how many you can spot! Also, who doesn't like Ranma being the one with a mallet for once? Hahaha!
Also, I'm debating whether to actually make him conquer the world, or not. It'll be fun to write either way, but I'm probably going to end up flipping a coin or something.