Ranma 1/2 in Konoha's Court
Chapter Five
by Lionheart
-oOoOo-
As the fight moved away from her, and Sasuke followed to keep a good vantage to view it, Nabiki wiped a tear of laughter out of her eyes. "Poor Ranma. That means he got to keep his dangerous ability to attract suitors. Or is that his ability to attract dangerous suitors?"
"Ah, well," she moved off, chuckling, to go see Iruka about borrowing some scrolls to train from. "I guess that could be considered essential to his character."
-oOoOo-
"See anything yet?"
Hinata frowned.
The newly reformed Secundus swallowed, forming a sickly smile, "Hinata-chan?"
The girl beamed gloriously.
The pair were bounding over the rooftops, her bloodline activated. After all, Principal Kuno hadn't said they'd had to beat him in a fight, only find a coconut with a note in it to pass this stupid test. And who better to find things than a girl with three hundred and sixty degree x-ray vision?
Secundus had been reformed to keep her safe, escorting her as they ran around town together, while Primus and Secundus kept their jonin occupied. Things would be working great if the Hyuga heiress wasn't so flustered. She kept pausing and wasting time!
Ino was pretty much a lost cause, not good enough to participate in the fight and no use on the search either. But Ranma wasn't going to stress about it.
No, he was too busy stressing about his and Hinata's relationship. The girl had explained quite sternly that she didn't feel it was appropriate NOT to use terms of affection for each other. But then it'd been like she'd run out of juice, and all the sternness ran out of her...
... right when they could have used a dedicated drive to go find that coconut then girl went all limp with nerves and wouldn't concentrate!
Ranma knew Principal Kuno. If they didn't hurry with this test then he was going to throw all sorts of complications onto an already tough assignment. Tactical mind activated, he could tell that if Hinata didn't get it into gear soon they were going to have much more massive obstacles thrown in their path. So, for their victory and success as a genin team (which was itself a goal on his way to Hokage), whatever was troubling the girl had to be fixed, and fast!
Along with that brilliant tactical mind of his he'd developed a downright uncanny insight into what motivated those around him, when he chose to use it. It was vital for gaining insights into the weakness of his enemies, which was mostly what he'd used it for, and so primarily this was one of those tools he pulled out only during fights.
Luckily, this qualified.
In moments he knew of a solution to the problem. But he didn't like it. Of course, not liking something that he needed to do to win a fight or beat a challenge had never stopped him before. He'd faced cats, gone girly, worn lingerie, or done just about anything else he'd detested in order to triumph or accomplish a challenge set before him.
And it wasn't like he disliked this. In fact, he liked it very, very much. It was just... scary.
But fear had never stopped Ranma Saotome!
"Hey, Hinata-chan?" Secundus probed as they came to a rest atop a building. She turned to him in an instant, blushing and nervous, and he did his best to project confidence and keep his own nervousness out of his voice, shooting her a cocky grin. "You know what? If we can get this done early, I can take ya back ta that hotel. And we can..."
He trailed off suggestively and adopted just the right grin (copied from Mikado).
Hinata blushed cherry red for a moment, smiled maniacally, straightened up showing much more confidence than before and took off like a shot, quartering Konoha as they leapt in unison together so she could search the entire village for that coconut with a coupon inside.
The girl's sudden drive was almost as amazing as her nearly disguised leer.
-oOoOo-
Kakashi was upset. That was obvious.
What was not was that he was puzzled. Truly, he'd cared little for whatever team they tried to foist off on his this time... until it was announced the Uchiha was going to be on it. That had perked his interest, as this could be his last chance to make amends to Obito by helping his last loyal clan member achieve greatness.
He'd actually been toying with the idea of letting the team pass this year.
Then that girl had come along.
Kakashi honestly didn't know what to think of her. She was not that impressive, among the lowest grades of the class, nothing exceptional anywhere, just barely passed... which either meant the academy teachers knew nothing about their students or she'd been concealing her abilities deliberately.
Kakashi frankly hadn't cared about the composition of any teams the academy gave him. In the first place, he'd never intended to pass one, and in the second, he'd trusted them to be professionals about their jobs and hand out well balanced teams. It'd never even crossed his mind what to do with a team once he'd gotten one, so he'd never actually cared.
Until that Nabiki Tendo girl had started spouting off all that knowledge about him.
There were maybe four people in Konoha who knew him so well, and none outside it. That had been the case this morning. Now there were five. He could discount the other two genin as doubtless they'd forget half of what they'd heard.
Still, that girl, barely adequate as an academy student, had casually told him two A-rank and one S-rank secret. She'd also told him things, personal things, that he'd thought no one else should know. While not strictly speaking village secrets, he'd felt they were as well guarded as some S-ranks.
Of course, he'd already known about them, but there was no way SHE should! Then she'd had to compound that by going and telling him evaluations that, while he'd not agreed with them, on examination proved to be true. He'd tested his conditioning, and it was shot. He'd let himself get dangerous out of shape without even admitting that to himself; which brought up with uncomfortable validity her assessment that he was a has-been ninja. Certainly his last great accomplishments were... too far ago to think about, honestly. He'd been coasting on past greatness for a long time.
So where did this genin girl get her information? How do you assess someone better than they knew themselves? Turn up both personal and village secrets like that?
Who did she know?
Had contacts blabbed? Was it a bloodline? Frankly he didn't know anything about her, and considering what she knew about him that gave her an uncomfortable advantage. That was why, for the first time ever, he'd gone quite against his original intentions and plucked the academy files for his students.
In the first place, this Nabiki Tendo showed no abilities, access or anything else that ought to have given her that kind of in-depth knowledge; not even any of the usual sources of leaks. The girl had no clan, so no elder on the council to let slip what he'd overheard. She was not involved in any of the usual businesses that often sprung leaks, drinking establishments or... well, 'undercover' activities. According to her file, she didn't even know anyone who knew anyone who might be around when those who had secrets started dropping their guards.
It was enough to cause him to wonder if this Nabiki Tendo was an enemy infiltrator. But if so, why blow her cover?
The second thing he'd discovered was even more unnerving, and had blown his faith in the professionalism of the academy teachers. Kakashi had never given it much thought, but he'd always somehow assumed that his experience as a genin was normal - exceptional, sure, but he'd still made the assumption that what he'd been through had been some type of template - everyone went through training more or less the same thing as him, right?
Wrong.
He'd never known how wrong he'd been until looking over those records, either.
Kakashi had always been surrounded by powerful ninja. His family, their friends and their children had all been immersed in the shinobi lifestyle to the point where they were like the fish unable to notice the water - they couldn't imagine anything else.
He'd never even considered how you grew a ninja, but that was always the environment he'd imagined.
Instead, like a cold dash of water in his face, he'd discovered that all three of his students lacked that. Nabiki Tendo was a kyubi orphan, but her family had no ninja background even so. Sakura Haruno was a child of civilian parents, the kind that usually washed out of the academy at a young age. And Sasuke, the one he'd pinned so many hopes on, Sasuke had once been in the kind of all-ninja, all the time setup Kakashi'd always assumed was normal for the village nin. But then he'd lost it, and by all reports his training had slowed to a virtual crawl.
Having been passed from one elite teacher to another Kakashi didn't truly have a good sense of what was normal, but this was about as far from his expectations as it was possible to get and still be qualified as ninja. The kind of personal care and one on one attention he'd always assumed you picked up in your clan largely hadn't happened with these kids. From his own background, the ninja school was the place where you outshone your classmates in order to impress instructors and get recommended to a truly awesome teacher. That was its only purpose, to show off.
He'd never even imagined trying to pick up all of your ninja skills there.
Well, that was it. The Legendary Copy Cat dropped the files back onto the desk. Some academy instructor would put them back for him.
No way was he going to pass a team whose skills were as pathetic as this.
Kakashi paused. There was one other matter. Until now, the son of his teacher had been something he'd been successfully ignoring. Back in the deep, dark recesses of his soul he knew about his responsibility. Seeing as the boy had nobody else, as the Fourth Hokage's last remaining student, the duty of caring for the child fell squarely on his shoulders.
But he didn't want to.
And as quickly as that, he'd thought up a justification. So now, the jonin reasoned to himself, he couldn't. Ranma's identity as the Fourth's son was an S-rank secret. Anyone could have been listening to that genin girl as she gave him a dressing down. He hadn't anticipated it, so held that 'meet and greet' in a very public location. So anyone could have overheard her reveal it. Granted, he probably would've sensed them, but...
But [blank] it! He didn't WANT to care for the lad!
Kakashi had been making up lame excuses for so long he didn't even notice as he did it to himself. He couldn't care for the boy. Anyone who might've overheard that little secret fest would now be watching him to see if his behavior changed toward anyone. He couldn't go do anything for Ranma now, as that would only serve to pinpoint the boy for enemy agents. It was for his own good. His safety demanded it.
After all, who knew what crazed villains, criminal masterminds, traitorous ninja, infiltration agents, heads of enemy villages, or just plain nutcases would take an interest in the boy if he did?
Not far away, the jonin sensei of Ranma's team suddenly sneezed, then went immediately back to trying to tackle his little genins and shave all of their hair off.
-oOoOo-
Ranma Primus smirked as Quatrus formed.
That gave him three clones and four Ranmas total.
That entity guy had made a Big mistake when he told Ranma chakra was made up of bits, because ONE of those bits was something he already understood full well. He was already a chi expert, one of the best on his world, and there wasn't anything that was going to be able to keep him from being just as good at those other bits!
It wasn't too hard to adapt much of what he'd already known about chi manipulation to this mana stuff. But without that extra anti-Sharingan training, he'd have been stuck with no clue how to manipulate the portions of it for better control of the whole. He'd have been stuck with that Naruto guy's chakra control, which stank!
Big time.
Now he knew how to manipulate chakra by understanding the components and how they mixed, he could also analyze how they worked in that mixture, and from that he'd be able to reverse engineer a few spells... hopefully.
He really wasn't sure. But he'd done similar stunts with fighting feats before now, and this was pretty similar. Just understand the energy flow and what it did, then apply that know-how to change a bit of how it flowed to get it to do what you wanted out of it.
Of course, analyzing it was the big stresser, as Ranma didn't have a whole lot of magic to study. It was one thing to analyze the fuel mixture (chakra) when he could take out a known component and then study the rest. That wasn't a problem.
However, now he had to build an entirely new engine.
Sure, he could take bits out his chakra techniques, but he only knew a couple of them, and anywhere those were a whole nuther level of complexity. Because with chakra it wasn't just chi and mana, it was how the interaction with each changed the other.
He could tell that one was going to be a complex issue just because, well, he'd already known the Body Switch technique before he'd come here. So he knew the chi-only version of his own past, PLUS the chakra-powered one of this world. And the differences in chi flows between the chi-only one and the chakra powered one were very, very strange.
So it would be an advantage to work on something wholly magical for a while. And, well, he HAD one of those. But...
The boy sighed and looked down at the gems in his palm.
No longer glowing, they were the 'this will teach you this skill, that one will teach you that' jewels that entity guy had left embedded in that pillar. Before he'd left, Ranma had already tried touching them a second time. But they stopped that whole 'knowledge implant' thingy once they'd stopped glowing. So, as near as he could tell, they were strictly one-use items.
That hadn't stopped them from being valuable gems, though. Fifty carats each, at a guess.
Ranma had pried up no-longer glowing training jewels after having used them. He'd have brought the pillar, too, but couldn't lift it off from where it was attached to that seamless floor - otherwise he could've sold it as an ornamental garden piece, or something.
Genma Saotome was big on making the most out of scrounging, and made for a great teacher, if you were into that sort of thing. Which, as itinerant martial artists, it was hard not to be, as the alternative was stealing (at which Ranma was also unfortunately very good).
But, no, the entity guy had given him gems, so Ranma had taken those gems, even if that may not have been that guy's original intention.
The only one he hadn't managed to scavenge was the last one, the general background information one, and he'd chosen that one as last because, deep in his heart of hearts, he'd been hoping to run into someone like Cologne on this side who'd be able to make them work again - and he figured anyone else those entities moved, they'd get their own set of background lore when they got dropped here. So that was the most extendible.
The boy sighed, sliding the jewels back into weapon space. What it came down to was that none of these were terribly extendible, and he knew that he could easily break one, or all of them, if he tried recharging them blindly. And until they were recharged he couldn't see them in use with his new magic senses, so couldn't easily learn to duplicate them. Or even make his own spells by watching the one teaching spell encoded in them do their thing.
That left him with only one real option.
Quatrus nodded, needing no explanation, and ran off toward this Naruto guy's apartment... that was now the dump that Ranma was supposed to stay at. The hot water didn't work there, but either way, they had a water heater in the basement. Between that and a garden hose, and Quatrus would be able to trigger the curse on and off as often as he liked.
That was the one truly magical thing Ranma had that he could trigger as often as he wanted. The distinctive tingling of his body switching to female and back again had been one thing back BEFORE he could sense the flow of mana. Now...
Well, maybe it could teach him how a transformative spell worked.
Sure, that wouldn't add anything unique to his arsenal. That entity guy had already passed on this Naruto fellow's ability to shapeshift. But that was another chakra technique. However, between the Body Switch technique, which Ranma could do using either chi or chakra, and this Shapeshift, which he could do with chakra and hoped to be able to learn just using mana ... well, that'd give him the ability to explore how these energies worked from both ends.
Comparing a chi vs chakra technique and a mana vs chakra one could well lead to him getting a much better understanding of all of the energies involved.
Ranma really didn't know what he'd discover doing this. But magic had been a major stress factor throughout his recent life, and that entity guy had hinted there were possibilities to be explored there, and the martial artist already had PLENTY of experience to show magic offered a wide range of possibilities. He didn't know if he'd reach them, but it would put him in a better position to analyze whatever magic he ran into in the future.
Besides, if nothing else, it was something to keep a clone busy on.
Of course, there were other benefits to the anti-Sharingan thing, Primus reflected as he stood on the head of a beaten-to-a-pulp jonin instructor. A glancing hit had destroyed the jonin's sunglasses and revealed red swirly eyes below.
After that, it had been a simple matter for Ranma to switch his anti-Sharingan measures from 'look like a normal person' to 'hide everything' mode. He'd set the 'normal person as his default just in case there were more of these freaky chakra-viewing people about, and he didn't want to look weird.
Which, he reflected, looking back on the fight (and giving the Kuno under his foot a sharp kick in the head as he'd started to recover) had even taught him something valuable.
Looking back in review over the pineapple freak's actions, it was obvious to Ranma that at 'normal human' settings, he left enough chakra visible for this guy to have at least a partial ability to predict his actions - but not to copy them.
Useful information.
Once under 'hide everything mode, however, everything changed. Not only could his sensei no longer even partially predict his attacks, but it was obvious he couldn't even SEE him! Apparently the chakra-sight or whatever of the eye super eye thingy overrode the user's normal vision.
And without the ability to predict him the fight had been over pretty quick.
Ranma smirked. Yeah. That had some interesting possibilities.
Madara twitched, and Ranma kicked him in the head again.
-oOoOo-
"Let's all introduce ourselves," Kurenai told her group, after having gotten them to a training ground and tested their physical conditioning with a run.
"I'm Kiba!" the furry jacketed boy shot up a hand, "and this is Akamaru." There came an affirmative bark. "Together we are Dog Chow Rangers!!"
The boy stood and posed with a wave and sunrise coming up the academy roof to crash dramatically behind him.
Kurenai was holding her head in her hand. "Did Gai serve as one of your teachers?"
"Nah! He just substituted when a teacher got sick," Kiba scoffed, then admitted, "Of course that Hayate guy was sick most of the time..."
"Next," the female jonin looked to the bug user, half expecting him to tear off that long coat in a dramatic gesture to reveal that he was wearing tights.
"Shino Aburame," the serious genin told her in flat, unemotional tones.
After a moment Kurenai began to think that was all he was going to say.
"And I am wearing tights."
The woman flopped face first on the ground.
"They make me feel... sexy," the boy finished in an utter deadpan.
Kurenai practically fell off the roof of the academy building in her shock.
"Now you," she told the girl, pointing quickly to avoid any more of that conversation.
The girl instead leaned forward, invading the jonin's personal space rather abruptly, and with big, shining eyes declared, "Wow! Those thigh bindings are SOOO cute!!!!"
Moments later Kurenai's desperately tugged her shirt down to cover her panties as the girl in an expensive skating costume with her long hair done up in costly ringlets for an over-the-top elaborate hairstyle was skating away merrily with the jonin's thigh wrappings trailing along through the air behind her.
And, apparently, Kurenai's wrappings were now named "Marie-Curette."
"Azusa Shiratori," Kiba provided a name for the little klepto to their shared teacher.
"And I love what she's done with her hair," Shino continued in an utter deadpan.
-oOoOo-
Author's Notes:
Welcome to my insanity. I hope you like it here.
