Warrior Class
By Ozzallos
VII.
Bump-be-dump-be-bump-beb-bump...
The unnatural rhythm intruded on Ranma Saotome's foggy subconscious as he slumbered, wallowing in the unconscious black of his minds eye. It was a supremely peaceful place to just float. No wars. No death. No nothing. But the rhythm continued, sending waves across the tranquility that his intellect floated within. Strands of thought began to coalesce with each jarring movement, like ripples intercepting across a pond, rebounding to create more awareness within the pigtailed teens lethargic brain.
Babump-bump-beh-bump-badabump...
A dim glow began to infuse itself through the inky darkness, pulsing in time with the unnatural beat. Barely coherent thoughts became annoyed by jostling, as the act itself pulled the martial artist closer and closer to the the waking world. The light became steady illumination, still pulsing with each tremor that inflicted itself upon him. Each bump became more pronounced , spurring the unconscious to consciousness with each passing second. The world seemed to strobe with white pulses in time.
Bump-ba-bump-badeh-bump...
Ranma's eyes fluttered open, blinking as full daylight assaulted his retinas even as his head continued to bounce and roll. The harsh movement was registered as his sluggish thought process quickly picked up speed while sorting the details. The teen's eyes blinked open in alarm. He wasn't in bed. He was outside. Trees and dirt all around. He was female. She was being carried by somebody- over somebody's shoulder and draped down their back like a sack of rice as evidence by her skewed view of the world. Adrenaline flowed. Ranma's knee flexed like a piston and smashed into his assailant's chest like a gunshot.
"OOOF!"
The grunt was immediately recognizable as her attacker's grip slackened with the impact, allowing her to roll off the man's shoulder and across the ground in a controlled tumble that ended in a kneeling attack position. From it, the redhead watched as her kidnapper recovered. White gi? Check. Glasses? Check. Bald and Stocky? Check and double check. Ranma Saotome only had one question for her assailant.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, old man?!"
Genma Saotome coughed, but recovered from his own hunched over position while rubbing the sore spot on his chest courtesy of her kick. Ranma's father straighten up, adjusting his glasses. He favored his offspring with a dire look. "Saving your hide, boy. Now get moving. Stay in one place too long and-"
"Like hell I will!" The teen snarled, likewise rising to her full height. "Do I look like I need saving?!"
"Yes!" The Saotome patriarch bit back, jabbing a thumb at the rainforest wilderness around them. "This isn't our fight, Son! They're going to seal off the borders boy, nothing in or out."
That stopped Ranma short. "They?"
"The rest of the world!" Genma gestured around them emphatically as he filled his son-turned-daughter in on current events. "They're drawing one huge demilitarized zone around China to keep these green skinned aliens contained... by any means necessary. They're talking nuclear weapons, boy."
Ranma's thoughts boggled at the development even as she kept a wary eye on his father. News of the outside world was getting harder and harder to come by and even current events could be delayed by a week as more and more of China's infrastructure was torn apart by the invasion. Nukes weren't exactly news after Beijing, but nukes from other countries were. They were being cut off and that alone had dire implications. Even so, one thought dominated the pigtailed boy's thought process inspite of the news.
"Akane?"
Now he could talk some sense into the boy. Genma smiled slightly as the ultimate fulcrum to the boy's cooperation presented itself. "Safe. I managed to get her out before the talk of nukes made all of the normal transportation dry up, but if we're going to join her we need to be going now."
Ranma nodded. That was enough. She was safe, or at least safer. Indecision warred within Ranma's brain for the briefest of moments in what was barely a contest. She liked the tomboy but... But she had obligations. Debts to repay. Blood on her hands. Backing out was simply no longer a consideration. Her next words were spoken with measured regret. "I... Give her my best then. Mom too. I got loose ends to tie up."
"What part of nuclear weapon don't you understand, boy?!" Genma retorted angrily. "We're martial artists, not the army!"
"Then better get to swimmin'," The redhead replied flippantly, all but dismissing him as she turned back in the opposite direction.
"Boy, you're coming with me," A dangerous tone found its way into the father's voice. Ranma watched as the man tightened the knot securing his gi. "Sometimes a father must do what's best for his child... his only child. Even if it hurts."
"Don't that sound familiar," Ranma rolled her eyes, and turned back to her father. 'He's serious,' she judged by the look in his eyes and utter stillness with which he stood. It, nor the almost room temperature sentiment with which he spoke his threat didn't change a thing however. She was here to stay... Even if it hurt. "Let's do this."
"Let's."
Genma Saotome promptly lurched forward with the word, immediately fading from sight as he did. Ranma's roundhouse kick gathered nothing but an afterimage, but used the momentum to pirouette and block two strikes with the flat of her leather vambraces from the back. 'Going for the quick win,' Ranma broke her father's tactics down even as she faded into the Umi Sen Ken herself. She smiled grimly from her own cloak. 'Two can play at that game.'
Dust kicked up along the uninhabited path as nearly invisible strikes were exchanged while the pair themselves only re-materialized to exchange blows before disappearing again. The phantom combatants traded kicks and punches for another minute until the earth near the path's edge suddenly erupted in an explosion of dust and debris. The redhead tumbled out of it in an uncontrolled roll, bouncing along the hard dirt path twice before stabilizing her slide.
The petite redhead shook the impact off and warily watched as her father stepped out of the cloud of dust, his left hand still smoldering with traces of red chi. He had done something with that technique... Her ki felt like it was slowly being sucked away. The Saotome patriarch continued to level a dire stare at his son as he filled in the blanks. "The Devil's Hand. Don't force me to show you the true horrors of the Sen Ken arts, boy."
"Can't be worse than what I've seen out here," There was no humor in the girl's face either as she met the challenge. Ranma stepped back up to the ready, flexing a fist. "Besides, you ain't the only one who's got a trick or two."
The advisement was Genma's only warning as Ranma charged in at an oblique angle, assaulting her father's left flank in a barely visible blur. The elder martial artist weathered the flurry of punches and kicks, but it wasn't the wasn't the ones slipping through that worried him. It was how she was executing the attack that held his undivided attention. Genma smacked the girl's next punch aside and attempted to step inside her guard for a counter attack, only to find her once more sliding off to the side. Her entire offensive seemed to be layered flanking movements and he was barely forming a hypothesis as to why when one of the kicks she pulled turned into a punch. The father's guard snapped up to intercept the roundhouse aimed at his face when his face promptly exploded.
Supercooled vapor detonated from the point of impact along his shoulder and by proximity, his head. The overpressure of the frozen environment ruptured in a thunder that all but deafened her father while she pursued his tumbling body down range to set up another strike. This time Genma saw the faint trail of vapor as the girl's attack curved into him but could do little to stop the impact, having barely stabilized his own stance. Another crack at point blank range left the patriarch's ears ringing. His last second parry diverted the blast to a body blow but the pressure wave resonated through his torso, sucking the wind out of his lungs while sending him sprawling once more.
Even as he landed hard and rolled out, the new technique was being broken down and analyzed. Whereas his own Devils Hand required direct contact to deliver chi cancelling effect, his son's damaged by proximity. '...But requires those weird flanking movements to power it up?' Genma theorized as the girl charging down on him curved around to set up for a third strike. She was too close and too fast to test the first theory, but he could test the second. The bald martial artist allowed his son to commit to the attack and profiled right, deflecting her open palmed strike into empty air at the very last moment. Cold chi passed his face but failed to detonate, confirming his theory as he desperately tried to extricate himself from the followup combination she pressed her offensive with. Genma screened his next attack with a feint, aiming a snap kick at the girl's head that forced her to block, then faded back to the relative safety of the Umi Sen Ken cloak.
'Impact based,' Genma Saotome decided as Ranma recovered from his sudden disappearance. This time the girl was less willing to go after him under the cover of her own cloak, giving him time to think. 'The oblique attacks charge the cold chi and any impact destabilizes it... violently. Damn clever, boy.' The father smiled to himself. Even so, it seemed to have a relatively short effective window and if it didn't hit, dissolved almost immediately. Both attributes were easily countered in his eyes, but there was a third, more concerning byproduct of the technique. They were also loud. Any enemy within earshot was bound to investigate the noise. The devils hand would shorten the battle, but it wouldn't shorten it fast enough with her every attack unleashing what amounted to a gun report.
'Going to have to end this quickly,' Genma nodded to himself and readied his trump card. While there was still hidden depths to the Sen Ken arts, time wasn't on his side. His son was simply too good to go down quietly and the Devil's Hand was going to be too slow for what was becoming a rush operation. The older martial artist simply dropped his cloak in direct sight of his son. He was shaking his head with regret even as Ranma tensed to renew hostilities. "Don't make me do this, boy."
"Could say the same thing, old man," The redhead returned coolly, flexing her fist.
"When you recover, just remember how you drove your father to this desperation," Genma warned and took a lead off stance that all but screamed he was going to rush his offspring. Both arms hung off to the sides while the hands seemed to claw at the very air around him. Ranma's father favored his son with a dire look. "Prepare yourself."
"Bring it." Ranma replied seriously, beckoning her father closer.
Genma did just that.
The balding martial artist charged forth in a blur, covering the fifteen meters of space in under two seconds, but stopped short even as Ranma committed to her counterattack. One moment there was her father charging at her in a full frontal assault. The next...
"AAAAHHHHGHH!"
The redhead screamed in terror as a cat suddenly filled her vision, flying at her face in the place of her father. Terrified fur smacked into her face and latched on as any semblance of Ranma's art dissolved in ailurophobia fueled panic. Genma Saotome watched as his child flailed about with a sigh until tripping over a rock at the path's edge. The girl flopped to the ground and the cat off of her, dashing to a tree directly above her person. Yellow eyes stared down at the trembling martial artist whose blue eyes stared back in abject terror.
"C-Ca-cat...cat...cat..." Ranma gibbered the word as Genma approached his all or nothing gambit cautiously, watching for signs of the Neko-Ken.
"Never let it be said your father doesn't care," Genma huffed as closed the final few meters, satisfied his son wouldn't lapse into a berserker state. The orange striped kitten mewed from its treetop branch, watching as father reached for son. "Now lets get-"
CRAaaCK!
What could only be described as chi lightning ripped across the earth in a blue blaze, nearly taking Genma's own fingers off as it raised the final meter separating the pair from one another. The martial artist hastily rolled away from the violently sundered earth and slid into a guarded crouch. A quick glance at his son found the redhead still quivering in terror as the kitten jumped down to burrowed into her red silk shirt for shelter from the blast. It was the figure floating down from the skies was his primary concern, however.
"I don't have time for this!" He growled as his attacker touched down lightly. The silks and armor appeared chinese in origin, but the slitted eyes and blue-white hair gave the teenage boy an almost otherworldly appearance. Gold scaled armor shifted as the newcomer took a quick glance at Ranma then faced off against his person.
"As you are her father, I will allow you to live," The musk prince stated with calm arrogance as he closed on Genma. The balding man stood warily by as he continued solemnly. "Your punishment, however, shall be quite severe nonetheless."
"Not as severe as what you're about to receive if you don't step aside," Genma warned darkly, pushing his glasses up his nose for a better view of his opponent. What he knew of him was from Ranma own encounters. 'Herb, Prince of the Musk. Human-Dragon hybrid. Jusenkyo cursed. Chi mastery.' The older martial artist quickly revisited his son's own recount of the locking ladle incident over a year ago.
"At least we agree on the necessity of a violent outcome," Herb nodded and began to feed his power into a blue aura that flickered with impatient power. The Musk prince pointed a knife edged hand at the Saotome patriarch. "Let us begin."
Genma Saotome was already moving by the time Herb's hand dropped, evading the annihilating edge of chi that tore past him. The earth to the right of the martial artist was violently eviscerated, but the martial artist was already responding with the sweep of his own arm. Instead of chi, a blade of pure vacuum represented Genma's response, forcing the dragon prince to dodge left in avoidance. The very air hissed its objections to being halved and quartered as the two combatants launched mass salvos of ethereal blades at one another until one found Genma squarely in the chest.
The man promptly exploded into a cloud of white vapor.
Herb's surprise lasted a fraction of a second, then a glowing lance of pure blue ki materialized in hand. He swept it right and caught the after image of the Genma, slicing it in two as well. The Musk heir merely smiled, closing his slitted eyes. "Chi flows through me and I feel yours, Genma Saotome."
The sightless dragon prince lunged again, cutting apart another after image. This time he leapt back and pointed a hand to the ground, projecting a sphere of chi downward. It hit the dusty path upon which they fought and immediately rebounded to rise nearly two meters before catching an invisible martial artist in the gut. Genma took the impact completely unguarded, knocking him out of cloak for the waiting prince to attack ruthlessly. A flurry of punches that resembled an overpowered Chestnut Fist technique probed his guard while the martial artist fought to maintain his footing. One out of every ten strikes got through however, and they hurt.
Block.
Parry.
Withdrawal.
The martial arts master slid across the path as he used the blows to gain the momentum necessary to extricate himself from the setup. Genma Saotome stabilized himself even as Herb tore behind him in flight. Slitted eyes flashed their anger as another chi lance was conjured in hand.
"Time to end this," The Saotome growled and adopted a swan-like stance. "Shun Goku Satsu!"
The Dragon Prince watched in morbid fascination as the older man darkened like a shadow, gliding through the tempest of his attacks. The lance was bypassed. His combinations failed to connect. Genma Saotome passed through the onslaught untouched and delivered the pain. Sledge hammer blows fell with impunity as the bald man flowed like water around him. Had he not been fighting to avoid them, Herb would have appreciated the lethal grace with which the human now operated. That, and most of his other thoughts were obliterated by the demon fist smashing into his cheek. Into his ribcage. Down his spine. Another to his face. Body blows. Bones cracked in spite of his dragon heritage. The last right cross sent him spinning wildly down range and dug a trench across the path itself, barely aware of anything by the time he rolled to a stop.
Black splotches swam through Herb's vision as he struggled to even kneel, only to find Ranma's father already standing above him. The human's left hand was glowing a menacing red, ready to drop at the slightest provocation.
"I would stay down if I were you."
The Musk heir stared at the waiting fist, then glanced back over to the quivering redhead trying to separate herself from the cat that had sought refuge in her bosom. Herb's gaze hardened with a snarl as he returned it to the Saotome patriarch. "I will not."
"You were warned." Genma advised with no emotion in his voice and raised the hand. The dragon prince fought to stand. Genma Saotome cleaved the air in two.
"PANDA MAN STOP!"
The order rang out across the path and Genma's eyes widened. The voice was instantly recognized and carried with it the authority of God himself... or in this case, herself. When Herb looked back up, the hand chop was frozen, its chi extinguished. He studied his opponent for a moment before turning his gaze where Genma himself was staring. A lone, imminently recognizable woman stepped out of the clearing and onto the path, approaching them. Shampoo's purple hair flowed with the light breeze and she step up along side Ranma, kneeling down to pluck the kitten from her breasts before tossing it gently aside to shoo it off.
"Airen is okay?" The one-eyed Amazon squeezed the redhead's hand with gentle concern. It took Ranma a full minute and a half to process the fact that there was no longer a cat in her shirt and and thirty seconds to realize who her benefactor was.
"T-Thanks, Sh-hampoo," Ranma tried to will calm through her body while Shampoo herself merely smiled kindly. She gave the hand a final reassuring squeeze before returning to her full height. The Amazon adjusted her black eyepatch and turned her single remaining eye on Genma Saotome. The edge of hostility it held was immediately apparent.
"No more violence from stupid Panda father," She ordered and Herb watched as the tension seemed to drain out of Genma's frame. Herb pushed his aching body upright with the Amazon's approach, favoring her with a deferential nod as she did so. Shampoo returned it respectfully, but her full attention was on Genma. "This one still have control, yes?"
"Yes, mistress," The old man nodded as if her dominion over him were merely a fact of life. Shampoo smiled, but it was hardly a pleasant one.
"Shampoo thought so," She likewise confirmed as the dragonkin stepped over to help Ranma up. She returned her attention to Genma. "What this one do with silly male?"
"Keep his ass out of my business!" The redhead rounded on her placid father sharply, nearly losing her already unsteady balance with the outburst. Herb's helping hand turned into a supporting brace that prevented her from falling back on her butt. She turned a grateful expression back to the musk prince. "Heh, thanks. Old man did something to my ki."
Herb merely nodded and stared. Ranma stared back from his supportive embrace. The moment stretched on uncomfortably until Ranma's cheeks pinkened, breaking their mutual gaze first. She hastily sought to stand under her power, extracting herself from his arm. "Ah, I got this."
The Musk prince withdrew while Shampoo cocked her head at the oddity, filing it away for later. For now, there were more important things to worry about and she turned to Genma to address them. "What panda-man do to Airen's ki?"
"The Devil's hand technique," Genma admitted freely as the trio gathered around him. "It destabilizes the vicitim's chakra by overloading the life gate with a focused chi strike. The imbalance of rei and ki temporarily destroys their harmonious conversion into usable chi."
"And what is the significance behind the name?" Herb wondered aloud. Genma glared at the musk prince but remained silent until Shampoo prompted him for an answer.
"Too-annoying Panda answer all questions."
"It is possible to permanently destroy a person's ability to produce stable chi by sufficiently damaging the life gate." Genma elaborated with the order to tell all.
"Son of a..." Ranma muttered under his breath, suddenly realizing why his father had chosen to seal the Sen Ken arts. Burying an art simply because it was a destructive and immoral had always seemed like a thin excuse, but this... This was on par with the Weakness Moxibustion and sealing it away suddenly made a whole lot more sense. Ranma's next question dropped thoughtlessly from her mouth. "And who else did ya use this technique on anyway?!"
"Soun Tendo." Her father answered without hesitation.
"Soun..." Ranma mouthed the name before even realizing who it was for the first fraction of a second. The redhead's eyes widened. She stared at the parental figure, who studiously avoided eye contact. She could have sworn his eyes were beginning to become glassy with moisture. Even Shampoo stared, well aware of the implications now while Herb wondered at the varied reactions without a point of reference.
"Explain a lot, Shampoo think," The one-eyed Amazon murmured with amazement then turned to her redheaded counterpart, where a mixture of emotions were playing out across her face. The Amazon watched the Ranma's mouth open as if to press the issue but mentally unable to clear the mental log jam she was experiencing. It took a full minute for her mouth to snap closed, having finally sorted it all out for herself.
"I... I don't even want to know," Ranma sighed, shaking her head with weary resignation as she watched her father. "Just go, Pops. Take care of Mom, Akane and the rest, but... But I got unfinished business here. Let 'em know i'll be back when I can."
"Boy, I won't leave without-!"
"Lazy Panda follow order," Shampoo rebuked sternly. Genma stiffened, but the twitch on his cheek represented the only significant resistance he could mount as he spoke a again.
"Yes, Mistress." He replied sullenly and began to walk.
"Dammit, I almost feel sorry for him," Ranma muttered as her father trudged down the path, defeated mentally if not physically.
"I do not," The dragon prince frowned, glancing from one martial artist to the other. "Your father is too formidable of a nuisance to be left to his own devices."
Ranma arched a thin red eyebrow at the remark while Shampoo happily supplied the subtext. "Herb say too-too good fighter for him."
"I did not." Herb rumbled irritably.
Ranma began to smile for the first time since being kidnapped, directing a smirk at at the Musk Prince. "That's what I heard too."
"You are mistaken." The slitted draconian eyes settled upon Ranma with a decidedly unamused expression.
"Aiyah, silly Musk no admit defeat," Shampoo teased, but once again found an uncomfortable staring contest had settled between the redhead and the dragon. This time Ranma maintained her superior smirk for the duration and Herb was the first to blink, turning away with a seemingly contemptuous sniff.
"We should go."
Ranma watched him turn back down their path from which they originated, silently departing. She glanced back at Shampoo with a curious look, but the lavender haired girl could only shrug her own befuddlement over the odd behavior. Ranma dismissed the quirk and instead turned one last time to sight her father walking in the opposite direction, only to find the way clear out to the nearest bend in the road. The slightest sigh of regret escaped her lips before she turned to follow her friends.
It was time to get back to work.
Author's Notes: One more. Larger section so it may take some time. Back to the Orks!
Shampoo; Since events diverged before Ranma returned to Japan, Shampoo never had the opportunity to release her control over Genma via the Phoenix Imprinting Eggs. As such, I assumed she has full control over him in the here and now. As a side note, I know of at least two instance including this one where Shampoo could have wreaked absolute havoc in the fiancee wars using mind control (not to be confused with the 411 arc).