Ruroni Ranko
Chapter Two
by Skysaber
aka Jared Ornstead
New author's notes uploaded, with some slight corrections, to Chapter One.
During the mushroom incident events diverge from normal and enemies try to take advantage of our pigtailed hero. Unfortunately for them, attempts to get rid of him often go disastrously wrong.
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It had long been Hiko family policy, ever since the master and student had agreed to the ruse and publicly assumed the identity of a family, that since Ranma was the heir, they would never seek to emphasize the fighting skill of his girl side.
Obviously, she was every bit as well trained, since they were the same person. If anything, the style's emphasis on speed gave his girl side an advantage. However, the cursed martial artist had learned to compensate for the advantages of each by concentrating on its strengths, and so in the end the extended reach and strength of his male body made sure that once all was said and done he was equally talented in both of his forms.
However, as the boy side was the official heir, it was the form he chose whenever he knew beforehand that he was about to get into a fight. So, on finding directions to the airport named by the floating image, Ranma went to assume his boy form.
It wasn't terribly easy.
At first the pretty young redhead went shopping for a kettle, since her own had gotten left at her and her father's camp boiling water for tea while they explored the ice cave. Unfortunately, while she had money, it was all antique, coins long out of public usage and no longer familiar to any average retailer.
That meant she was effectively flat, dead broke.
Perhaps a rare coin dealer would take her currency, but she did not know of any of those around and didn't feel she could spare the time to look. Charming a merchant out of a cup of hot water would have to do for the moment, so she did so - with difficulty.
Her skills on that were more than a little rusty. Flirting was okay only when it was safe. When males of all stripes felt that women were property, making overtures could lead to unfortunate deaths as she had to get her 'husband' or 'father' to defend her virtue. It had just been better to act reserved and not let any of those misunderstandings start.
Still, Japan was rooted closely enough in its past that when a traditionally dressed young lady with elegant, if antiquated, manners asked politely for something, she could generally get some older, grandfatherly type to help out the respectful young thing. Or so she assumed, anyway. Finding such a person in a position to offer her hot water wound up taking too long, so she'd hauled out her rusty flirting skills and gotten a young guy out of the many of those available running shops and stalls to give her some.
Then it was time to change, and she found herself frozen for several seconds by the urbanization of everything denying her ready access to handy bushes or clumps of trees. It took her a moment to locate a place she felt comfortable changing, and even that was to just jump through a park very quickly, leaping between the branches of trees too fast for most eyes to see while making the switch.
Fortunately, a kimono was a pretty universal garment. Unfortunately, unlike Chinese silk clothes, they had patterns and other easily identifiable marks, plus there were no end of seemingly trivial details about how to tweak it for a girl instead of a guy, so regardless of the seeming universality of a proper kimono she had to change more or less entirely when she became a guy.
Thus it was that Ranko Hiko darted into one side of a green and leafy park, and her 'husband' Ranma charged out of the other, just fastening the clasp on the cape he'd gotten as a symbol of his mastery over their family art form.
Strictly speaking, a student of Hiten Mitsurugi style was supposed to kill their teacher to earn their mastery. But that had never sat well with Ranma. So he'd risked death, using a wooden sword instead of a metal one, in an already lethal contest to learn the final technique or die trying.
Obviously, he'd won.
That hadn't been the only Hiten Mitsurugi tradition to die with the creation of the 14th master. What had once been the art of a lonely practitioner became a family style as the previous master had survived and adopted his student, who'd pretended to be married to himself for so long that it was a simple reflex by now to hide behind the facade, even in front of people like the Tendos who knew better, and he knew they knew better.
But one never knew when or where others might be listening.
Ninja were not a modern invention, and the Hiko family had caught them listening in at the oddest times, trying to learn their secrets. And, one of the most delicate and frequently probed secrets they had was Ranko and her marital status. Kuno was FAR from the only nobleman to become crazed with desire for the girl, and by now she'd had to endure more successful kidnapping attempts than Akane.
It was an age where swordsmen were real swordsmen... and ninja were real ninja. No pathetic Sasuke-types among them. Those guys had been every bit as good in their way as the samurai were in theirs. And, like swordsmen, they were available in service to most nobles clans, doing their bidding in their own stealthy way.
When swords failed to get something a noble wanted, stealth was always the next option to try. And an awful lot of nobles had bid their ninja get the redhaired sword maiden for them, for purposes that could easily be imagined.
Or, if you didn't want to just imagine, they had magazines on it in the modern age. A selections of them would give you ideas about the noble's intentions.
Most Meiji-era ninja were too good at their jobs to go leaping in a window, swords and shuriken flying. That turned things into a combat situation, and swordsmen were better at combat situations than ninja were, as a rule.
No, they used sneaky, underhanded, dirty tricks. Things they were best at, to take down samurai without going into combat at all. They did things like poison you instead of lunge at you, screaming and wild-eyed where you could just stab them and be done with it.
Poisonings were something most sword styles were weak on defending against. If it wasn't placed on something obvious (like the edge of a sword they'd be avoiding anyway) there wasn't much a sword fighting art taught you to do against it.
There had been the usual poisoned food, including more than two poisoned apples (at least one of these had been chopped up as an ingredient in something else, and there may have been more than one in that dish, so the count wasn't a sure one). Frankly, tainted food was the least successful method, aside from using poisoned blades. No, gasses, airborne powders and poisoned baths had all been tried to much greater effect. One of the more interesting of the poisoners used an incense burner that was in another room, yet the fumes had been potent enough to work anyway.
By necessity, Ranma had built on the experience of Akane's cooking to detect any strange feelings he got from air or food or water, and so hopefully have enough warning to go elsewhere or do something else. Still, however, his girl side had succumbed to enough knock out drugs administered in different ways to wake up far too often in some nobleman's estate, all bound and clothing optional, usually in the hands of Geisha or similar getting her all washed and perfumed in preparation for the main event.
Thank heaven, her metabolism worked fast enough she'd always gotten over those drugs before anything real substantial happened. And 'hot' bath water of the era was below lukewarm or typically just tepid. They'd not gotten used to the luxury of western plumbing yet, so anything not mountain stream cold was a 'hot' bath, even for most nobles. Still, the experiences had been mind-numbingly horrifying all the same, just from what could have so easily happened if she'd not woken up in time. Those possibilities gave her nightmares sometimes.
And yet, Ranma, 14th master of Hiten Mitsurugi, was only alive because Ranko was the one the ninja were after, and perverted nobles always wanted her unmarked, alive and unspoiled. If they could have found him as a guy they would've killed him, either by deadly poison or paralyzing or knockout agent finished off with silent blades.
But the deadly stuff was harder to administer and easier to detect, not to mention the rather irreversible consequences if you hit the wrong target, and their orders were always to bring in the girl alive, so immediately lethal measures on her close family, when the poisons just might hit the wrong target on a mischance, were generally avoided.
So far, every time he'd felt a hint of poison in his system he'd always been able to either escape or turn female, if he was male at the time. Canteens were handy for that.
Still, her father helped her put a good face on it - he thought those kidnappings were hilarious! He'd never failed to get a good, roaring laugh out of them, even as he chopped his way in through guards to rescue 'her'. And, often enough, Ranma was chopping his own way out to meet him, so in a way it was kinda funny.
Putting such distracting thoughts aside for now, the 14th master of Hiten Mitsurugi arrived at the side of the airport. Police had already closed it off to the public, just as they would have done for a credible terrorist or bomb threat, and now they formed a perimeter.
Ranma had no difficulty at all in evading them to gain an entrance to the buildings beyond. After getting the lay of the land, he chose a good spot to wait, a place on a roof where he had a great field of vision and yet could stay concealed himself. Then he pulled out the book Happosai had given him and prepared to read during the wait.
Just his luck, it was in Chinese. And he'd still never managed to learn that language. Putting it aside, he began to watch for new arrivals, keeping vigil while making arrows out of supplies he'd thought to bring with him.
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At the House of Tendo, home of insanity and uncontrolled emotional outbreaks, the family was sitting around in a circle staring at the offending object Tatewaki Kuno had brought into their household, claiming it would 'cure the problem'.
That was probably the last time they'd go to a Kuno for help. Nobody could even recall the line of so-called reasoning that had led to their doing so in the first place.
Laying on the dining room floor between them, the offending artifact was a simple Lo Pan, a geomancer's compass useful in feng shui to determine chi flows.
Nobody was touching it.
"This has to be related to the source of the problem," Nabiki kept saying. "One moment, we had a cute chibi-Ranma on our hands, the next a cold eyed killer."
"Mushrooms from the Forest of Time, eh?" Happosai once again diverted the subject, absently rubbing his chin as he contemplated that thought. "One can return to youth from a simple meal. Hot Dog! I'll get ahold of those and live for ANOTHER three hundred years! No! I'll live FOREVER!!" The old master popped up to his feet, proudly posing while Genma and Soun popped open firecrackers with victory streamers behind him, weeping openly in unconcealed misery as they waved victory fans for their tormenter.
Ryoga suddenly found himself lifted up by the front of his shirt by the hook of a pipe, with Happosai holding him up from the other end. No mean feat since he was back to his normal sixteen year old body, and all of the tiny master put together had to weight less than the Lost Boy's head.
"Now you!" the old pervert demanded. "You're going to give me those mushrooms, aren't you?"
"No way in Hell! Those are MY mushrooms!!" Ryoga shouted, getting to his feet.
Moments later he was lying, broken and bruised, on the ground, wrapped around with rope until he looked like a mummy and with the Founding Master of Anything Goes standing on his back, between the shoulder blades, sharpening knives.
"I'll tell! I'll TELL!" The Lost Boy screamed in panic, thrashing about uselessly inside of his strong bonds. Tears of panic flew from his eyes.
Happosai hopped down off his prisoner to stand on the grass beside his head where he could gaze down at him with an intimidating glare.
"Hold it right there, sugar!"
A tiny girl's voice cut through that scene. A first no one could believe it was Ukyo's, but staring up at the wall, there she was, five years old in a cute hand-me-down jumper and with a small spatula clutched in each hand. The anger on her face was beyond normal limits.
"ACK!!" Ryoga, in a panic, started to worm-crawl away from her, darting into the house where he tried to get lost in the corridors. Chibi-Ukyo ran right in behind him. But when her foot accidentally touched the mystic compass still laying out in the middle of the floor, she vanished.
A second later this was followed by another flash of light, but nothing appeared or disappeared, so it got discounted quickly. Happosai had already reclaimed his prey, and this time was taking no chances by tying one of those ropes to a stake he'd pounded into the yard.
"So," Nabiki asked while Happosai was occupied. "Care to tell us what that was about?"
"Uh, hehehe, I don't know what you mean," Ryoga lied badly, sweating bullets.
FLASHBACK
Wandering about in a desolate wilderness, Ryoga had camped overnight in a cave, carefully tending his tray of growing mushrooms. Then, at last, when morning came he took and ate one that he'd grown to precisely the right size to restore him to his lost age.
When it worked, he reared back and began gloating at the top of his lungs.
"AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I've got you now, Ranma! At last you will be utterly defeated! I'll have my revenge on you, just wait and see!!"
"What revenge are you talking about, sugar?"
Ryoga glanced over his shoulder and all his limbs splayed out in startlement, as his 'desolate wilderness' turned out to be a pair of potted plants, and the cave a dumpster that Ukyo threw her garbage away in. She'd only just walked out with a bag of refuse now.
Resuming the confident stance he'd held only just a moment before, Ryoga directed his gaze toward the sky, clenched a fist and pretended righteousness as he claimed, "At last, after so much suffering, trial, toil and pain, I've got Ranma just where I want him! Right now he's stuck as a five year old child, and only the magic mushrooms in my possession can cure him! I'm so going to make him suffer! I'm..."
This tirade was cut off by the flat of a giant spatula impacting his head. Hard.
Eyes moist from the pain, head shoved over to where it was between his ankles with the rest of his body doubled over in between, he noticed Ukyo going through his pack to find and retrieve the package of small mushrooms accidentally cooked in the Tendo bath. The very ones he'd force-fed a sample of to Ranma, to shrink him down to a child's body.
He'd only carried them away from the Tendo home to avoid leaving any trace of the special magic plants behind, in case someone thought of some way to cure Ranma even with cooked plants that wouldn't grow to larger sizes that would provide a higher age.
Grinning down at him cutely, Ukyo posed with her spatula slung casually over her shoulder. "Sorry, sugar, but Ranchan's my fiance, and I can't let you just beat him up without trying to get him out of whatever trap you've got him into this time."
"Oh yeah?" Ryoga came surging to his feet, angry eyes blazing as he gave her an uppercut that shoved one of those small mushrooms from her hand into her mouth. "Then you can JOIN HIM!!!"
A second later, a Chibi-Ukyo was looking at him in shock, draped in her suddenly over-large clothes.
END FLASHBACK
"Hehe, I don't know what you're talking about." Ryoga lied to Nabiki.
She scowled at him, but it was Happosai's turn as he'd finished staking the Lost Boy down so he couldn't move around too much.
Soun started to heat hot pokers in a fire while Genma, in panda form, was pumping the foot pedal of a grinding wheel, sharpening knives, hooks and other implements for their master, who was standing, glaring down at the newly pinned Lost Boy. "There's only one question I'm going to ask you, boy," Happosai breathed steam in real anger. "And that is 'how much are you going to suffer before you give me what I want?'" He shouted, proving that Soun was NOT, in fact, the inventor of the Demon Head technique.
"I'LL TELL!!" Ryoga yelled, blubbering and whimpering. "I've got them all in my pack!"
"Really? SWEETO!" The ancient pervert dropped the menacing act as though it had never been and, eyes wide and twinkling as innocently as a child's toy, made a leap over to loot that backpack... before sailing past the empty space and striking face first into a wall.
"Hey, where did your pack go?" Akane asked of Ryoga, emphasis arrows pointing to the empty place it had been up until a moment ago.
"Uh?" Ryoga sweatdropped in terror as his eyes bugged out, seeing the empty space his backpack had once filled. Then he began shouting a wordless cry of terror as Happosai rose out of his stance to become three stories tall, staring down at the Lost Boy with eyes turned crimson red from anger, glowing against a backdrop of angry, purple lines that his darkened body radiated.
"Aaaiieeeaaaaahhh!!!"
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Ukyo stopped running only once she'd crossed several blocks and taken shelter in a secure corner of an abandoned building. While far from perfect, it offered her shelter long enough to swiftly and efficiently search the pack, cataloging all of the items within and at last getting a seed crop of the powerful magic mushrooms.
Finding one of exactly sixteen inches, part of a batch Ryoga had grown for his own use, to have spares in case of an accident, the ninja lowered her mask and ate one, getting her age reduced from somewhere in her mid twenties to sixteen once again, her body shrinking slightly and growing softer, losing some of the definition a touch of maturity adds to a young woman as she turns into an adult.
Those years had been hard won, and almost stopped accumulated more than once, but she was glad to be rid of them for now. During this era, sixteen was the age she was supposed to be, and if there was one thing they taught a ninja it was how to blend in to the environment and appear to be something that doesn't draw any attention.
However, incomplete as her training had been, she had to congratulate herself that on her entirely unanticipated return she'd still somehow managed to keep anyone at the Tendo compound from noticing her come back (or steal Ryoga's pack where she knew those special mushrooms lay), although she was certain she had evaded the old man's senses only because he was prone to distraction and already involved in something else.
A ninja also learns not to overburden herself, carry unwise or incriminating equipment about where it could tip off others or be discovered. Having found what she wanted, Ukyo made a cache, burying the rest of Ryoga's gear in a secure place, leaving no outward sign of its presence, relying on memory alone to tell her from nearby landmarks where it was.
She could come back for it later, after she'd stopped by her restaurant for clothes appropriate to this era, and a chance to stash the ninja garb.
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This was Nerima, where secrets don't stay secret long, particularly not when Nabiki has anything to say about it. But the reason the Cat Cafe had no debts to the Tendos was that Cologne was a crafty old bird, who was every bit as good deflecting or defeating the middle Tendo and her schemes as she was at running a profitable business in the middle of battle-torn Nerima.
Which was to say, very, very good.
The Chinese Amazons had been around for three thousand years. They had been around for virtually all of the turbulent periods in a war-torn China's history. Having survived them proved that they knew a thing or two. Cologne had also lived through turbulent times herself, being over three hundred years old mean that she'd lived through quite a few of them. More to the point, she'd learned something from those periods of strife.
The Chinese had their own ninja, and those had been sent against the Amazons more times than they knew how to count. Modern armies, local warlords, evil sorcerers, all had tried to subdue or eliminate the Amazons.
Sometimes the Amazons vanished, only to reappear later. Often the leaders of whatever force was being used against them changed their minds (there were many more formulas of their special shampoo than just the two dealing with memory), sometimes they came to agreements, and more times than you would think the Amazons simply fought off their attackers.
While merely a few thousand strong, every Amazon was a fighter. And while none of the younger crowd were up at Ranma's level, all of them were above Akane's, most far above her. Also, they had more elders than anyone suspected, with skills and talents out of the range of even most dedicated martial artists.
The Chinese Amazons also had a seemingly limitless supply of magical artifacts. This was no accident. They'd learned to detect them, using a more advanced version of the chi senses that had been taught to Ranma and Seijuro Hiko. And quite often they'd acquired magic objects that opponents had sought to use against them, adding those to the catalog of special magic items they created for themselves.
That was a versatile and effective force, capable of dealing an astonishing amount of damage, evading superior forces, and canny and mobile as anything, while very capable of operating long term independent of bases or supplies.
The last time they'd fought the Red Army they'd outright humiliated it. Oh, they had lost a few empty towns in the process, but they'd expected that and moved everything except their lands and walls out into secure and very hidden locations. They had enough masters of Hidden Weapons style they could practically carry their entire villages inside of their robes.
After that humiliating defeat and the assassination of quite a few of their leaders, the communist party had agreed to granting the Amazons independent nation status if they'd just stop hurting them.
But it wasn't a secret to either party in that peace deal that if the Amazons had wanted they could easily have brought down the communist government and replaced it with something more to their liking. The Red Chinese were now trying very hard to pretend that the Amazons didn't exist, for fear of invoking their wrath once again.
Which is not to say they could not be defeated, but those who did most often found themselves married into the tribe and their techniques and powers added to their own - an arrangement that had helped refine the Amazon fighting (and magical) styles for over three thousand years.
It still wasn't perfect, but Cologne liked to think they'd get there eventually.
So, as she was hopping home from sitting in on a City Council meeting (never hurt to know what they were doing, even if they took an interminably long time getting over-long and complicated phrases out to describe simple things), when chi-senses which had been used to save her own life from assassination more than once detected a nearby magical object buried in unmarked dirt of a construction yard she'd been passing by.
It might look casual to passers-by, but she had carefully measured the radiation and tested the surroundings several times before she hopped over to dig away some dirt and pull out Ryoga's backpack.
When she saw mushrooms growing out of the fabric of it, she smiled and raced back to her restaurant.
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Well, the sides have arrived. thought Ranma, as he watched the Sailor Scouts and their enemy appear and begin their speeches. Having seen more or less the same thing in personal honor duels, it did not strike him as strange that both chose to make short monologues cataloging the other side's faults and crimes.
However, by the time this Jedite person had sent an airplane to try to run the Scouts over, the observing martial artist had learned all he wanted to know about the little girls.
Earnest, but unskilled was his assessment. However, despite their lack of battle awareness and tactics, they had obvious magical powers that were quite impressive, and their foe was obviously no friend to mankind.
Ranma rose to his knees, out of concealment, and raised his bow. Archery was not his best attack. However, using the Godlike speed of Hiten Mitsurugi style on just his arms was easier than motivating his entire body in those amazing leaps and dashes. Situated on a building as he was, he had enough distance from the fight that he could get practically all of his arrows into the air at once.
The wandering samurai had prepared sixty arrows, each of slightly different materials out of the hopes that this creature, like so many others, would have a material weakness, like cherry wood or holly. But a number of woods and tips had been tried. Each arrow was different from the last in hopes of finding such a weakness by chance. The only thing they shared were the sutras painted on them in hopes of an extra punch against an obviously magical foe.
He was just firing the last two as the first one hit.
This guy, whoever he was, (hadn't someone called him Jedite?) was certainly a very powerful sorcerer. Ranma hadn't fought any of those, yet. When the first arrow impacted it was upon a nearly transparent shield that flashed into visibility when struck. The second and subsequent arrows followed in fast succession, each getting repelled in turn a fraction of a second after one another.
Those arrows were striking fast enough to be comparable to machine-gun bullets, however. And they did each have a very small portion of magical energy, as Ranma had done his best to turn them into Ofuda. The first dozen got shattered without breaking through. The next dozen had a very slight measure of penetration as they struck those weakened wards, sinking tip-deep into the Dark General's shield. The next dozen sank deeper yet, and the fourth struck nearly half their length through the shield before it repelled and destroyed them, minute fractions of a second later.
What the last dozen arrows might or might not have achieved was moot, as from the sidelines rushed in a blur that darted past the possessed airplane, cutting in half the landing gear and bringing it to a halt, without a pause in its own rush before the lunge dissected the Dark Kingdom General in a 'Z-slash', cutting him from shoulder to shoulder, then shoulder to hip, then hip to hip, right through his previously weakened shield, while Jedite's attention was focused in the opposite direction.
Standing there as the body of the blond-haired villain came apart in a truly gory display was Seijuro Hiko. Pausing only long enough to note the cherry-red glow of his sword for future consideration, the 13th Master of Hiten Mitsurugi reared back and yelled, "Ranma, my son. I know your arrow technique. Come show yourself to your absent father!"
"Is he really dead?" Serena took a step forward to lean around the swordsman. As she caught a glimpse of what was left of Jedite, she turned green and quickly ducked back behind the back of the large, muscular man who'd done this.
Sailor Moon didn't think about it. She was, in many ways, still a child and with a child's viewpoint on aspects such as trust. Jedite was a bad man, of that she was clear. He'd tried often enough to kill her or hurt her friends she no longer had any doubt of that. The Dark General had also threatened to burn down the city if they hadn't come here to face him. So, at least on some level, she'd already accepted that the Sailor Scouts might have to kill him.
However, the magic attacks the Sailor Scouts used killed clean. Seeing him a gory pool of messy pieces was not anywhere on her agenda for today.
On the other hand, this man who'd done it just radiated kindness and strength, the sort of aura a small teenage girl instinctively trusts. In truth, despite his having just killed a man the most impulsive Scout automatically viewed Seijuro as a sort of fatherly, masculine figure she wished her own dad could be. And, it could not be overlooked, the man who'd died had been trying very hard to hurt her personally at the time of his death, and part of the attack that did Jedite in had also saved her. Then, immediately after the Dark General had perished, the swordsman had ceased showing hostility to anyone.
Automatically filing this person beside Tuxedo Mask in her 'Trust on Sight' category, Sailor Moon concentrated on getting her rebellious stomach back under control and cared not a button about any possible danger from the samurai.
Girls, especially teenage girls, are influenced more by the attitudes of their friends than they'd ever like to admit to anyone. Seeing Serena automatically accept this stranger who'd just casually appeared and killed a man, Amy and Rae were inclined to accept him also. However, while Amy was the brainy one, Rae especially had a touch more caution than the rest.
That might have had something to do with a Dark General invading her home and nearly doing in herself and her grandfather, of course.
"Excuse me, sir," Rae stepped forward pertly, unaware of her legs being shown off to fabulous advantage by her short red skirt and glittering high heels. "But who are you? And why did you help us?"
Seijuro turned his face away just a fraction from watching his son jump off the roof of an airport building and being to bound their way, just enough to catch Rae's gaze with his and hold it for a steady heartbeat, before answering, "I am Seijuro Hiko, 13th master of the Hiten Mitsurugi style of sword techniques. Approaching us is my son, Ranma Hiko, the 14th master of our family style. As for why we are here," here he paused to laugh, a full belly roar of hearty amusement. With his son arriving, Seijuro turned to face the Sailor Scouts directly, automatically accepting Ranma's presence at his back.
Waving a mighty arm to indicate the airport, the 13th master answered, "Why, this barbarian declared war on a city! Why does it surprise you that others would answer his challenge? My son and I, and his wife, are all Devil Hunters."
The words, "and his wife" seriously bummed out the three Sailors who'd begun to appreciate the quintessential manliness of the young male who'd just walked in among them to rejoin his father.
"But..." Mercury stuttered, blinking rapidly through her pale blue visor, "my computer says he is only sixteen. How can he be married?"
"I arranged it!" Seijuro proclaimed boastfully, proud of himself and unashamed to admit it. Catching their collected disappointed frowns the young maidens didn't even know they were making, however, he performed a quick mental measurement of the girls' hips and busts, doing a rapid calculation from there about future child-bearing capacity. When he spoke, he adopted a kinder tone.
"Tell me, none of you are from noble families, are you?" Seeing three girls each shake their heads somewhat nervously, he gave a nod in return. "Then, should any of you wish it, my son will be proud to take any of you on as mistresses."
"Father!" Ranma let out an anguished squeak of surprise, blushing to the roots of his hair, and glancing quickly over three girls who were doing the same.
Seijuro spoke back over his shoulder to him, casually at ease and confident of himself and his decision. "Ranma, my son, you and I have fought outside marriages for your wife for years now. It amuses me, and we shall continue to do so. But as you disappeared at the ice cave I came to realize that my future was permanently tied up in you. I have already outgrown my original purpose for living. There must be another, and that reason is you, and the family you must create if our clan and martial art style are to live on."
Surprising those who would've known him before, Ranma accepted this and stopped objecting. But none of the Scouts present were aware of how remarkable an event this was for them to witness.
Rotating smoothly about to face his son, Seijuro took a few steps to place a loving hand on his shoulder and to gaze seriously and soberly into his eyes. "However, it has come to a time when we must face that your beloved wife is incapable of bearing you children. Thus, for the sake of our future, both for our clan and our Art, you must take additional brides."
"But... isn't that illegal?" Amy was the surprising Sailor who found her voice enough to offer any opinion on this.
Seijuro offered her a kind smile over his shoulder before facing the girls and gesturing with one massively muscular arm. "I have yet to stand on any ground where I could not walk an hour and have the laws change. Every town, every village, every petty noble has their own laws and rules. Perhaps it is not the law you seek to change, but walk far enough and it will be. Somewhere on this Earth there is a stretch of land where I can stand to give my son multiple brides. For the sake of my clan, I would walk there."
A blushing Amy typed into her computer, did a search, and was surprised. "He's right. I had no idea how many places this was legal."
"None of this gives us any reason to be interested!" Rae broke in, hotly insisting. An arrangement of some sort with such a hot hunk would ordinarily be interesting, but this was, in her opinion, exactly the wrong way to propose one. Really! The guy was already married for Pete Squeaks!
Ranma's adoptive father, far from feeling offended, was actually amused as he directed a question to the fiery Sailor Scout, "And what would you regard as a valid reason for interest?"
"A guy is supposed to court a girl, make sure she's interested! They are supposed to go out on dates and get to know one another and fall in love!" The fiery one blurted out in the heat of emotion, before calming somewhat and growing introspective, speaking of her dreams as much as her opinions. "Then he's supposed to show that he can provide for her, and prove that he can be tender and caring when she needs him to be. Then, he should be able to stand up for her and defend her."
This last got said in response to memories of her own father, who'd abandoned her to live at the temple, and wasn't there to soothe her when she got teased or insulted, ignored or mistreated.
"I'm sure you'll find my son far from lacking on that last count," the 13th master stated with an amused grin. "He's among the deadliest swordsmen of the world."
"Yes, but it shouldn't just be about that! They've got to learn how to be together and love each other, bear one another's burdens and rely on each other!" Sailor Mars declared with utmost resolve of inner feeling. Both other girls were nodding in fervent agreement with her.
Coming from an age where most girls were happy to get married at all, and couldn't afford the luxury of arguing terms, Seijuro couldn't help but be amused at the Scout's demands. A princess would regard that price as too high to demand for a marriage where he came from. Perhaps there was more to these girls than good hips and magical knowledge. They certainly set the price high enough for there to be.
Then he surprised them all by laughing aloud, before shouting, "Done! Very well, we agree to your terms. Ranma shall begin to court you at once, getting to know you so you may fall in love. Please direct us to your homes, so he can know where to go to pick you up for these dates. He will start tomorrow at noon."
"We have school until early afternoon," a blushing Amy admitted, not sure how she should be feeling about any of this.
"Book learning?" Seijuro raised an eyebrow, then rubbed his chin. "Strange to give it to girls, but if your parents can shoulder the expense, that speaks well for them. You are an unusual bunch, and may rate status as full wives."
He slapped hands together decisively. "Very well. Tell me when this schooling of yours ends. He shall pick you up immediately after."
"But what if that's not what we want?" Serena blurted out in unexpected resistance.
"That is what the courtship will decide, will it not?" the man asked reasonably.
"Uhm," she had no response to this.
"Have you any other immediate prospects?" Master Hiko asked, not unkindly.
"Uh, no..." none of the girls could deny that they hadn't, at least right now.
Seijuro smiled. He knew he had them. There were all sorts of responses those three girls COULD have given, but Seijuro was an unstoppable force that had (admittedly after years of trying) gotten meekness out of Ranma, of all people, who was standing beside him, voicing no objections while his father did what fathers were good for and decided his future for him (and trusting completely his adoptive father to do exactly right what Genma had royally screwed up - YEARS had been spent building that trust).
As young girls, unsure of themselves and their futures, they didn't stand a chance as Master Hiko completed his catch. "Then, so long as your courtship with my son continues, you may count on the swords of the Hiten Mitsurugi to defend you from your enemies. And in return, you will teach us what you know of magic."
Seijuro considered the prospect a total win. The girls had obvious magical powers such as his family had been searching for for years. Obtaining access to this was worth many months of wandering. And, if the girls were truly reprehensible or hid dark secrets the Hikos could not abide, they could end the courtship at once and be free of any obligation.
The Sailor Scouts had agreed before they even knew what they were doing, and allowed the boy and his father to show them to their homes, even accepting a schedule of martial arts training so their future opponents would not so endanger them.
Ranma would be teaching them his unarmed fighting style, at least to start. They wouldn't be trusted with the swords arts until after he'd married them, supposing things got that far.
Laying on their beds that night, the three Scouts reflecting back on this concluded that this might work out well for a while. It wasn't like they were about to leap into marriage or anything, just a few dates, is all. And until they called it off they had some extra, proven support they could count on against the Negaverse.
And, if it really wasn't working out, they could call it off at any time, right?
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Returning from the penthouse mansion where they had delivered Amy, the two martial artists were stopped in their progress by a voice calling out from above. "Ranma Saotome! I call on you to fill a debt owed between our clans!"
"Ucchan?" Ranma looked up with some amount of puzzlement on his face, which then immediately brightened. "Ucchan!" He'd made a carving of her face early on in his training under his new adoptive father, and kept it in their cottage. "How is my best friend? Hey, is there anything I can do for you?"
"Well, yes, Ranchan, there is," the Kuonji girl came down off of the rooftop she'd occupied while making the challenge, sheathing her spatula back over her shoulder. "But it's not exactly a story for any and all ears, if you know what I'm saying."
"I understand exactly what you mean," he replied. "We should find some private spot. We were just looking for a place to spend the night. Would you care to join us?"
Ukyo's eyes went to and from the tall man beside Ranma, but she said nothing.
"Of course, how rude of me," Ranma bowed, introducing her former master, "This man is Seijuro Hiko, my adoptive father. Pleased am I to introduce you to him. Father, this is my oldest friend, Ukyo Kuonji."
Seijuro was not a man fond of repressing himself when he thought it was to no purpose. Ordinary dangers meant nothing to him, so he feared not to do away with tact when bluntness suited him or could throw a potential opponent off. However, he could be very wise and respectful when he wasn't going out of his way to embarrass a student. He had a fully developed set of polite manners. It was just that his even more fully developed sense of humor sometimes consumed them.
Placing a heavy hand on Ranma's shoulder, he directed a steady gaze at Ukyo and asked, "My son is already married, but his wife doesn't give him enough sex. When can you start fulfilling that duty?"
Ranma's flesh turned red and he partially melted in embarrassment.
Amazingly, Ukyo didn't even blink, meeting Seijuro's direct gaze with her own. "I can start right now, if you like. But I'd prefer a measure of privacy so I could do a better job."
"Done!" Seijuro cried with vast amusement, lifting an arm as he declared it. "You can be his second wife, and add a bit of stability to his life. Frankly, his first one is a bit of a tease, never getting him off right."
Ranma hid his blood-red face in his cherry red hands and tried not to die from shame.
"So! From this day you must call yourself a Hiko," Seijuro put his remaining hand on Ukyo's shoulder, still not releasing Ranma's from his grip. "We can find a priest if you like, to formalize it, or we can just perform a ceremony ourselves."
"A private ceremony will be fine," Ukyo did show a small blush. "I'm not unused to the idea of being a second wife. But the laws these days are such we might have trouble finding a priest who'd allow it."
"Nonsense!" Seijuro cried, greater than life and loving it. "There's always some noble who'd allow it. We'll just look for one. If an official ceremony would make you happy, then such you shall have. I ask only you consider yourselves married as of this moment. As clan head, I declare it done, and shall so record on our register this evening."
Ukyo's reply was a respectful, even a relieved, bow, "Thank you, my father-in-law. May I ask who is the First Wife? Would I know her name?"
"Father is enough," Seijuro told her, beaming proudly behind his smile. "And, if you are half the friend my son told tales of, I'm sure you know her name. She is Ranko, formerly of the Saotome clan."
A crack appeared in her stoic demeanor, then Ukyo sputtered a brief second before busting a gut laughing. She laughed only a moment before the mortification of the groom caused her to regain control of herself. Still, it was with a bright smile that she asked, "So, Ranchan, you married your cursed side?"
Ranma was busy inspecting the scenery, trying to hide his reactions. Still, he gave her a small glance before dropping his gaze to the floor. With a small shrug, he whispered, "It was either that or have her married to some perverted creep by force."
"Enough of this!" Seijuro declared, once again placing a proud hand on the brown-haired chef's shoulder. "Tonight you are my daughter! We will speak of other things until we find a place to rest the night."
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Author's Notes:
Well, I felt so grateful for the positive response to the first chapter of this that I immediately sat down to write another chapter of it, as a form of thanks.
I hope you all had a very merry Christmas, and just wanted to assure you that I DO intend to keep writing and posting.