Chapter 3 – Week of Weirdness
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Most of the students in the classroom looked bored or irritated, as if being there was a waste of time. A scant handful, including most of the Americans and Japanese students, were intently watching the tousel-haired man fiddling with a small device on his desk, every so often taking a look at a small pocket watch. Ranko watched the manipulation of the device with a bit of confusion, but assumed there was a point to it, so waited with some small amount of patience.
Finally after looking at his watch, the man stood, nodding. "About time, then," he said with an American accent. "Alright everyone. I'm Angus MacGyver, and this is beginner's Technomancy. Now, Technomancy is as much a science as an art. And surprisingly, one of the ways that 'Danes actually have the edge over us."
"'Danes?" someone asked with a hint of scepticism from the back.
"Yes, Mundanes. The American term for those who do not access magic directly. You call them Muggles. Rather odd term, if you ask me, but hey." The man shrugged, and a few students actually looked offended at the concept of Muggles having an edge over wizards. "Now, can any of you tell me what Technomancy is?"
Sakura raised a hand, and as Angus pointed to her, she stated, "Technomancy is the melding of technology and magic."
"Simple answer, but correct, for what you have. Now why would you want to meld magic and tech?" the professor asked.
Mitzi raised her hand, and said, "Well, there's two good reason I can think of. Efficiency and concealment. Technomancy can save you your own personal energies or amplify them. You can also use them pass magical effects off as technological effects to those less aware Mundanes."
Angus nodded with a smile. "Exactly. Very good. Now can any of you name a famous Technomancer? From any era."
Danny grinned and called out, "Samuel Colt."
"Interesting choice. Anyone else?" the professor asked.
Hermione hesitantly raised her hand and said, "If I recall right, Thomas Edison?"
"Very good choice, Ms. Granger. Anyone?"
Ranko paused, then raised a hand. "I think I heard somewhere that a guy named Fumori Taisei had done some work with..." she paused as she tried to translate the technical term she had picked up somewhere.
"Magic Polarization Cells, a way to isolate a small room of outside magic in order to simplify magic research," Professor MacGyver said, a bit startled. "Very good, Ms. Shidou. That was rather recent. Been reading TechnoWeekly?"
Ranko blushed in embarassment. "I uh... read it on the train."
"I see. Well, on that note, can anyone tell me what you've noticed?"
Nobody spoke for a moment, before Neville raised a hand. "They're American and Japanese?" he said, almost immediately looking as if he was going to regret saying it.
Several people laughed, but MacGyver nodded. "Exactly. The American magical heritage is rather recent, and except for some regions, rather open to new ideas. The spirit that led toward the 'Danes' 'Industrial Revolution' also helped inspire a Magical Revolution as well, in which people were willing to experiment with concepts nobody else was either willing or able to think of. And the Japanese were very hidebound up until after World War II, when both the technological and magical research took off with the rebuilding effort."
"Now our first practical lesson will be an interesting one, and one of the things that inspired the Technomantic boom, actually. Improvisational repair, also known in various places and fields as the Jury Rig, or sometimes pejoritively called kludge, is just what it seems. It's the act of putting something together with whatever you have available at the time."
Most of the students weren't able to do much. Ranko managed to repair an old metal detector which blew up after being tested on a coin, only to receive the professor's approval, with the comment, "You must have just flipped a capacitor by mistake. Not bad though."
Hermione's project, a radio, picked up a lot of static, but seemed to work. The biggest surprise, however, was Neville's project.
Angus grinned. "Nice job... it looks like you have the knack, Mr. Longbottom. You could go to any nuclear power plant and get this control rod mechanism working as a backup in any of them. Very good." Most of the class looked confused, though the Americans and one or two of the mundane-born were shocked at the presence of nuclear control rods in the professor's stash.
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Ranko smiled as she slipped into the seat next to Sakura, relaxing as she began to eat her meal, mostly traditional japanese fare, though she did take occasional tasting bites of British wizarding foodstuffs. When the crowd started to build, she asked, "So what happened with that tree in the courtyard?"
One of the third-year Ravenclaws replied, "You hadn't heard? Harry Potter and some other Gryffindor flew a flying muggle machine into the Whomping Willow."
"The Whomping Willow? How'd they survive?" Another student asked.
"Uh, who's this Harry Potter?" Ranko asked.
The conversation stopped. So did several other conversations, as everyone who could hear Ranko turned toward her, stunned and confused. "Come on," The first girl asked. "You /don't/ know the Boy-Who-Lived?"
Ranko groaned. "If he's carrying a bokken, I'm going to hurl." Everyone looked confused at that remark.
Someone claimed, "You know, the one who killed You-Know-Who?"
"No, I don't know who," Ranko said, just a bit testily.
A fourth-year looked at the redhead. "You know.. the Dark Lord?"
Ranko blinked. "Dracula? Isn't he a myth?"
Half of the students who heard seemed to struggle against a sudden intensity of gravity and barely succeeded.
Melange sat down on Ranko's other side, and was about to talk to the redhead, but was interrupted by a rather irritable voice, that of Cho grumbling rather loudly about redheaded twits interfering in training. Ranko rolled her eyes, then asked, "Ok, Chang, what's your beef with me? The snide comments got old about a day and a half ago."
Cho sniffed and turned away from Ranko, to end up facing Professor Flitwick who was looking at her with a rather disappointed expression. "Ms. Chang, I'd like to speak with you after lunch, please." Cho paled a bit, but nodded.
Professor Snape followed Filius to the head table, murmering. "Out of curiousity, why are you so lenient? She did attempt to attack a fellow student, and a first year at that?"
Filius actually chuckled softly. "I don't know if she attempted to actually harm Ms. Shidou. Besides which, do you really think she could do anything to her anyway?" His voice was just loud enough to be heard at Cho's end of the table, eliciting a flush of embarassment.
Ranko paused, then said, "Hey, C-Chan, want to try again tomorrow? I had fun." This not only caused a sputter of fury from the embarassed Ms. Chang, but stares of surprise from the other Ravenclaws that could hear her.
A moment later, Professor Lockhart stepped in, causing Ranko to roll her eyes. "I think I actually lost my appetite. I'm going to go for a jog." She replied, pushing away from the table and stepping out of the Great Hall. "And I thought Kunou was bad..."
"If this Kunou is anywhere as bad as Lockhart, I feel sorry for you," a voice called from behind Ranko.
Ranko chuckled. "Let's just say I wouldn't be surprised if they're related, Shir," Ranko replied as she turned around.
Shiriana chuckled as she rubbed beneath her eyepatch. "That sounds ominous, to be honest." She said wryly.
"Not sure what that means, but let's just say I'm in a hurry to confirm that I've well and truly dropped Lockhart's class. He's... what do they call them around here... a royal wanker?" Ranko asked.
Shiriana chuckled and nodded. "Appropriate... I've never seen anyone who got more pleasure from running his mouth."
Ranko shrugged. "So what brings you by?" She asked.
"Just heading back to the tower, that's all," Shir replied, then paused as a hawk flew in through a nearby window.
"Soratsume!" Ranko said with a smile, taking a letter from the falcon as she relaxed, beginning to read, her face going a bit pale.
Shir frowned softly. "What's wrong?" She moved to look over the letter, but before she could read it, Ranko put it back into her pocket.
"I... I'll catch up with you later," Ranko replied as she walked off to the tower. Shiriana found herself wondering what could cause such a reaction in the girl.
---
Ranko stood atop the Ravenclaw tower, looking at the letter she received. "Why do I feel like this..." She said, nibbling her lip, looking at the letter once more.
"Dear Ranma-chan," The letter began,
"I'm sorry to inform you, but Grandfather Happosai passed away the day I wrote this letter. He left a will, splitting up his assets into several trusts for you, Akane, Natsumi, and Kurumi, and even some for Hinako-sensei. All contingent on you marrying of course to avoid the taxes. He left a message to give to you, in which he specifically stated you are not to grieve over him, but be glad he had a full life, and at the end had all his goals reached. As he said, it's not bad to die, after all, it's the next journey, and he had a fuller life than most, his art will continue, and he'll be remembered, what more could he ask for? All he asks, is on occasion you leave a panty or two at his shrine."
"Also, Nabiki and Akane are out hunting for the mushrooms, for themselves. They feel… that they were denied their chance to learn Mother's Art. Tofu-sensei and a elder from the Amazons are helping them, so I feel that you do not have to worry on their account. Study hard in school, and bring honor to the families."
"With love"
"Tendou Kasumi."
Ranko stared at the letter. "He was an annoying old pervert who caused me nothing but trouble," she muttered to herself. "Sure he taught me a lot, but he was..."
"Sometimes it's the people who cause us the most problems that we care for the most," A somewhat spacy voice said from behind her.
Ranko turned to see the voice's source. "Oh... hi, Lovegood," she said, rubbing her eyes a bit. "What brought you up here?" she said, sitting down on the stone next to Soratsume who chirped a bit.
"I just needed to get a look around," Luna said simply as she sat down, letting the wooden hatch close with a thump. "Bad news goes away better in fresh air."
Ranko blinked, then shrugged. "I never noticed that myself. Mostly because I seem to attract bad news too often."
Luna nodded. "Perhaps you're having problems with Legurns."
The redhead looked at her confusedly. "Legurns?"
Luna nodded softly. "Yes... Little insects that eat good luck."
Ranko blinked then shrugged. "Sounds like I've had those since I was a kid..." she says dryly.
Luna looked at her a bit closer. "I'd never heard of a colony lasting so long," she murmered. "Try washing in lime juice. Legurns don't like limes."
Ranko chuckled a bit bitterly. "I'll have to keep that in mind."
Luna nodded. "Well, Professor Flitwick said that Charms class will be cancelled due to some problem."
Ranko nodded. "Might as well get some more sleep... why waste a free period?"
The blond replied, "Why not study in the library instead? That's what I'm going to do. I wanted to find out who was the youngest person to ever perform an animagus transformation."
Ranko blinked, looking at the blonde confusedly. Those occasional comments that seemed to hit close to home made her wonder how much she actually knew, but before she could ask, Luna was already re-closing the hatch above her.
---
The rest of her classes went well enough, and Ranko was able to calm down a bit by dinner time, though she tried to avoid answering questions, or even talking much by the simple expedient of eating quickly and leaving just as quickly. After dinner, nobody saw where Ranko went.
Meanwhile, a small kitten began to wander the halls of Hogwart's...
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The two were on a mission. Not for good, nor for ill, but for chaos. One of them pulled out an old piece of parchment, before tapping it with his wand. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," he whispered, as black ink flowed over the paper, revealing a map. "Here we are. Ready to go, George?"
George nodded to his twin and co-conspirator as he looked around, then put on a pair of glasses, handing another pair to his brother. "Very nice, Fred."
"Thank you," Fred replied then looked down at the map. "Let's see.. the area's mostly clear... wait, what's this?" He looked confusedly at a small icon upon the map, but garbage in place of the customary name.
George looked at the map, before moving to find a place to hide, yanking his brother over.
A siamese kitten walked near the twins, looking at them curiously. George blinked, then looked back at the map over Fred's shoulder. "Huh.. That's odd..."
Fred looked at the map, and then the kitten. "Very odd indeed."
George frowned. "I don't suppose it's broken, is it?"
Fred shook his head. "No... Maybe he belongs to one of the Asians?"
Suddenly a crash and a familiar cackle was heard. "Bugger!" George said as he grabbed Fred and dove toward a room.
Unfortunately, Peeves just set off one nasty little chain reaction at this point.
First George then Fred ended up stepping down on the kitten's tail. A pained yowl was heard, then the kitten ended up performing a phenominal leap (for a cat, anyway). All of a sudden Fred blacked out. Not in a sense of being unconscious, but rather, from having his entire field of view filled with kitten. Clawing, biting kitten at that. Fred fell forward, crashing into George's back, and he, too, fell victim to the terrible and righteous wrath of a well and truly pissed off Shidou-Kitty.
The kitten started to walk away, quite perturbed, but stopped as she almost collided with Mrs. Norris. The older cat looked directly into the kitten's eyes, before nuzzling the kitten gently, almost as if approving of the little one's actions.
--
Sakura looked curiously at Ranko as she emerged, rubbing on her tailbone, grumbling in Japanese. "Ranko!" she said, scandalized by some of the words the redhead was using. And wondering what she meant by idiotic redheads who don't watch where they're stepping. She followed the croud out to the great hall and to their table. A few minutes later, the Weasley twins arrived at their own table, to questions. Specifically what happened to their faces, as it obviously looked like, to the muggle-born, they were trying to french-kiss a blender, or to the wizard and witchborn, like they decided to stick their heads in an exploding cauldron. Ranko glared at the twins as she fidgeted in her seat, trying in vain to get comfortable.
"Hrm. Flying lessons... I could probably teach that one," Ranko muttered to herself. "Considering how much time I've logged."
"You've flown before?" Sakura asked, an eyebrow raised.
"Lots of times in the last two years. Most of them involuntarily. By a guy-hating gorilla-tomboy who never listens to a word I say," Ranko replied.
-
Half a world a way, a blue-black-haired girl arguing with her sister was interrupted by a rather large sneeze.
-
Sakura looked at Ranma sceptically, but replied, "Well, I assure you, this flight is entirely voluntary and controlled. In most cases anyway."
"Great. I'll believe it when I see it."
An hour later, the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws found themselves in the courtyard, standing over rickety old brooms as Madame Hooch explained to them the safety rules for flying. Unlike a certain first flying class from the previous year, it started rather smoothly. Everyone was capable of getting their brooms to lift in a short amount of time and nobody was hurt. It was after a few minutes that things got... weird.
Ranko began to put the broom through it's paces, curious as to what it could do. Nobody was paying particular attention to it, except for three people, Madame Hooch, who was a bit irked at Ranko's seeming lack of attention to her surroundings, one of the seventh year Ravenclaw Beaters, who was watching it with great interest, and an ancient woman who watched with both amazement and amusement at her student.
It was when Ranko began to, at least in Madame Hooch's eyes, show off to an excessive degree. Evidently she didn't know Ranko too well as the redhead began to develop a kata on the spot specifically for riding a broom. The Instructor called out to the girl with some heat, but Ranko was lost in her own world as she stood upon her broom, flying through an energetic exercise without the slightest appearance of losing control. Most of the students were staring at the girl now with two words in their minds, 'she's crazy!', though whether they were referring to her ignoring Hooch or her now utterly insane stunts on her broom.
As the girl made a low pass, the instructor attempted to fire a stopping spell at her. Ranko proceeded to flip, perform a one-hand-stand upon her broom and dodge the hex by a good inch. While hand-standing on the broom, she swung her foot out in a whistling arc that would have nailed a man standing on the ground right between the eyes, and even at her young age, quite likely knocked the person cold. To Madame Hooch, however, it merely looked like a taunting gesture, and with some fury, fired a series of stunners, all dodged smoothly in motions that looked completely and totally natural, as if the improvised kata was designed solely for that purpose.
Madame Hooch quickly raced her broom toward the student as Ranko tore directly for the wall. The instructor's heart pounded as she saw her student refusing to turn. At the last second, the broom turned sharply, moving parallel to the wall, as Ranko leapt off the broom, ran along the wall and leapt off with a crescent kick, before reaching back to grab the broom with both hands, swinging over it as though in a gymnastics meet, then coming back to her single handstand. Madame Hooch stared in shock as she stopped her broom.
Ranko finally moved back toward her fellow students, flipping with one hand into the air, then resting one foot on the broomstick, her body smoothly in a crane-stance. The broom stopped and stayed in place, its rider not moving a muscle save the rising and falling of her chest with smooth breaths as, save for a few applauding Hufflepuffs, nobody moved or said a word. The only sounds were those clapping hands, and raucous rasping laughter from the ancient Chinese woman.
Xiomora Hooch had never seen such a disgusting (read: beautiful), absurd (read: graceful), reckless (read: incredible) show of complete tom-foolery (read: skill) in her entire life. The professor in her wanted to dock Ravenclaw one thousand points and have Ranko thrown into Azkaban if she ever so much as looked at a broom again. The flyer in her, however, could only look on in complete and absolute wonder, utter respect, and a slight hint of envy, that not only could this girl do things to that creaky, half-useless Cleensweap 3 that would make one think she was on a top of the line Nimbus model, but that she could do so and look so completely, utterly and totally natural doing so, that even birds looked gawky and awkward in the air in comparison.
And the seventh-year Beater dashed toward the Charms classroom as if his backside were on fire and all Voldemort's Death Eaters were trying to put it out with Killing Curses.
"No," Ranko said to Professor Flitwick a few hours later. Madame Hooch was so flustered and torn, that she merely docked the girl three points for refusing to listen to her instructor's orders, which confused all the rest of the students, while Ranko was merely embarassed for her lapse.
Meanwhile, his Head-Of-House was trying to wheedle, cajole and was fairly close to outright begging the girl to try out for the Quidditch team. After all if Harry Potter could do so in his first year, and he had merely performed one simple (if flawless, from what he heard) dive, there was no way anyone could gainsay having the young Ravenclaw on his own Team.
Ranko, however, was being completely obstinant. She did not see any reason to be on a team for a sport she had very little interest in. Sure, she would get to fly a lot more often, and she was very much all for that, but a team environment just wasn't her, she thought. The few times she had been on a team, she was leading a pack of hooligans and nutcases who usually wanted his head (or repeatedly donated genetic legacy, depending on which people you asked in which form), and with Cho on the team, she could see little changing about that.
"Professor, I don't /want/ to play. I'd rather be studying!" Ranko paused. "Boy, would the teachers at Furinkan flip if they heard me say that..." She couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity. Mundane schools, Furinkan in particular, either bored her to tears or slumber (The latter more likely) or were deathtraps in general. Hogwart's, on the other hand, was incredibly fun, save for the fortunately aborted DADA class with Inoshishi-baka and the sleep-inducing History of Magic class with Binns-sensei.
"But Ranko, please, we need help and two of the team are leaving this year. You're a natural!" Filius tried appealing to her vanity.
"I'm a natural martial artist, not someone who goes chasing after golden sna.. snitches or plays target practice for bludgeons," Ranko protested.
"Bludgers," Filius corrected.
"The point is," Ranko continued, thinking 'if I don't hurry, I'm going to be late. I really don't want to do this, but...' "I just don't want to do it and don't have the time... Uh, Professor, your desk's on fire!"
And as the diminutive instructor turned toward his desk, Ranko promptly executed the Saotome Secret Technique and ran for her next class.