Time Well Spent When they returned to the castle, Alana spoke to him about what he had done. Under her guidance, he started studying the power, extending on it, and coming to understand it. She showed him the traditional ways of using magic to change forms. He found that when transformed using traditional means, most of his power was unreachable. He could take on the form of almost any animal, but while in the form, about the only magic he could accomplish was to allow himself to return to his normal form, or take on a different form. He could still access his ki though, and while he could not channel or use as much in the smaller forms, he could use his ki claws, and he could use the Juushin Jisei Ryuu techniques. In spite of the disadvantages, he spent time in a number of forms over the next year, amongst training with a number of masters, and teaching in his dojo. He became a garden snake, in his own gardens, and learned to slither, to move by pressing himself against the ground. He learned to track scents, and interpret the information his heat sensitive glands gave him. He became an adder, and learned how to strike, to coil his body in layers of tension, before throwing himself forward with blinding speed to sink his fangs into a target, pouring in the venom that would disable it. He took the form of a constricting snake, a boa, and practiced by wrapping himself around stone statues and applying pressure until they crumbled to dust within his powerful coils. He also learned, in the beautiful ten foot body of the boa, to climb trees, and move from tree to tree. A lizard, next, small and lithe. He learned how to focus on his environment to get his skin to shift in shade and color, and make himself nearly invisible against almost any surface, and how to use his claws to race across the ground, and to scale vertical surfaces at nearly equal speed. He entered a pond as a snake first, learning to swim as such, then as a fish. He didn't care much for being a fish. Most of the other fish would leave a snake alone, but as a fish, he was constantly darting away. He moved to mammals, and became a ferret. He liked that... it moved much like a snake or lizard, but he had more energy, less desire to just sit in the sun or shade and do nothing. Though Ranma didn't really think of himself as a predator, he quickly learned that taking predatory forms was the best way to avoid other predators, though it didn't always work. It was during this time that Arkus returned his attention to Ranma. Initially he couldn't find Ranma, until rather suddenly a garden snake ballooned into a young boy. At first, he was delighted. Ranma was putting himself in real danger. With only the most minor of tweaks, Arkus should be able to get him near something truly dangerous to whatever form he was in, and then, snap, it would all be over. But the boy seemed to glance around as if irritated by something, and reach out as if to flick it away. Arkus' mirror proceeded to explode, sending shards of silvered glass everywhere. Arkus swore. Obviously the boy had reached a level of awareness equal to that of that damned Master, but he was far more powerful. Arkus decided that when he recovered and managed to replace his mirror, he would have to have a basin installed. Water was much safer for scrying on the brat. Finally, Ranma moved on to birds, and learned to fly. He learned to hover as a hummingbird, spent considerable time as a crow learning both to fly for long distances, and more importantly, how to behave as part of a flock, then moved on to the larger birds of prey, learning to soar, and to seek and ride the thermals, the rising columns of air that could lift him high into the sky. He also learned to employ the curiously disjoint vision of the eagle, the normal sight surrounding a little circle of magnified vision. He learned to spot movement on the ground far far below him, and enter a dive that would take him straight to that point, before snapping back out into a strong upward climb. His ki forms, on the other hand, were vastly more powerful than the traditional forms. He never took dragon form around Alana again, fearing to cause her pain, but he studied it, and learned to fly with it. He discovered that he could not take just any form with this technique. There seemed to be something peculiar specifically about tigers and dragons. He supposed this wasn't unexpected, considering the place they held in Chinese mythology, symbolizing the yin/yang duality. Unfortunately for Arkus, Ranma had mastered these mere two forms, and moved on with his studies by the time his new mirror was obtained, and a basin installed for water based scrying. The time passed quickly, now that there was no more need to go on long journeys. The masters started changing faster, staying with him for only two months, then just one month, before telling him that they could teach him no more, and moving on. Between the masters, and with the help of a few of them, Ranma learned ot fight in his animal forms, to adapt his art to their capacities, and in turn, learned new moves for his normal form based on the natural fighting patterns of the animals he became, a process with overall reminded him of some of the varieties of Kung Fu he had learned. --- In his tenth year, Ranma again faced the Mage Tower challenge. This time only the Masters and students of the Mage Tower were in attendance. Ranma walked easily through the male doors, but focused on using magic on the female doors. Instead of using his ki, or his strength to get through the female doors, he used his magic to destroy the spells. It was an impressive spectacle, but nothing on the scale of what had happened his ninth year. He spent considerable time in front of the last door, and was able to weaken the chains, and undo a few knots, and push the doors open using only his strength, the Neko-ken, and the Juushin Jisei, not bothering to transform. This was enough of a victory that he willingly joined the celebration afterward. Alana, having fewer options now, in terms of skilled masters, or new arts, managed to find a theme for the year's masters that greatly appealed to Ranma. These were masters of martial arts based on various extremes, mostly extreme natural environments, and they took advantage of his powers, to have him bring them to remote places, to train in those extreme conditions. This also marked a year of constant activity on the part of Arkus, though indirectly. He had successfully summoned a powerful demon. To avoid the restrictions his Lady had placed on him, and delighting in the appropriateness of the boy's choice of training regimens, he summoned a demon capable of summoning elementals, spirits from planes of elemental extremes, and binding them to natural elements, and set him to torment the boy, and destroy him if possible. --- Ranma sat in lotus position before a large basin of water, across from Master Tufi, a small man with a long blue beard, and blue hairs, and a constant aura of cold about him. Master Tufi was peering into the water, and describing his requirements, as Ranma guided the view, searching for a location that would fit the needs of this Master of Winter-Elemental Martial Arts. "Mountains are good, yes, but what I am really looking for, young teishi, is a good glacier..." "What is a glacier, sensei? I am unfamiliar with the term," replied Ranma, momentarily releasing his control of the scry, so that the view stilled. "A massive sheet of ice, teishi, sometimes a mile or more thick. Look for a more northern range of mountains, rather than a mountain alone, and perhaps we'll find one." Ranma nodded, and resumed his concentration, as the view in the scry blurred and stilled in a constant cycle, as the search continued. Finally, it settled on the edge of what looked like a thick crinkled wall of ice. "Is that a glacier, sensei?" "Yes, very good, teishi. Now, find a cave in the mountainside near the upper rim of the glacier somewhere." Master Tufi was grateful for long experience in schooling his expressions, when a few minutes later, after locating a cave meeting Tufi's requirements, Ranma casually opened a doorway leading onto the sheet of ice. Ranma hefted both packs, his own and the Master's, and Tufi led the way through the opening, out onto the sheet of ice. Ranma covered his eyes, startled at the dazzling white glare. Tufi spun to face him, eyes glinting with amusement. "You'll get used to it, teishi... or go blind." Ranma nodded in acknowledgment, and slowly pulled his hands away, allowing his eyes to adjust. Tufi motioned toward the cave. "Come on teishi, we'll set up camp first." Ranma dismissed the doorway, and followed the small man. As he did so, he focused his sixth sense, observing the ki flows in the older man, trying to see what he was doing to adapt to the cold environment. As they set up the tents within the protective enclosure of the cave, after Ranma assured Tufi that he could sense no sources of ki in the unlit depths, Ranma focused on attempting to mimic the ki flows, as well as trying to guess the purpose behind them. When Tufi led him back out onto the glacier to begin the lecture, Ranma felt he was already well on his way. He had managed to mimic some of the flows, and noted that his feet no longer felt cold. It was not that they were warm, for if anything, even less heat was escaping to melt the ice on which he walked, rather, it was as if the ki flows were preventing the escape of the heat. Tufi turned to face him. "Now, teishi, you will need a strong control of your ki for this. What you must do..." He broke off, looking closer at the boy, then laughed aloud. "Well, I see the Lady was right. You are indeed a prodigy... I see you have already begun to get the idea. Very well, teishi, start a simple kata, and I will instruct you as you do so." When Ranma nodded and began one of his simpler katas, one which did not involve any of the aerial aspects of his school, Master Tufi continued. "What you must do is use your aura to prevent the escape of heat from your body. Most people when trying to deal with the cold, try to shield against it, in some way, or increase their own heat. This is the way of foolishness, teishi. The way of wisdom, is to recognize that cold is the absence of heat, and that it is the flow of your heat into the chill that surrounds you that causes you to feel cold, not the cold invading from outside. Seek not to prevent the cold's entrance, but to prevent your heat's exit, and you will succeed." Tufi watched, and made occasional comments, as Ranma sought to perfect the technique. Whenever he erred, he could almost feel the heat rushing to leave him, and several times he slipped when an accidental wave of heat through his feet melted the ice below. Tufi was considering the next step in the training, when the demon summoned by Arkus acted. It summoned an air elemental, and sent it to attack Ranma. Ranma felt a tingling, and got a sense of approaching danger, but saw nothing to concern him, up to the very moment that what felt like a massive and powerful fist slammed into his chest, sending him rocketing across the ice to slam into the rocks by the side of the cave. He rose unsteadily to his feet, and extended his senses to get his bearings. He sensed no attacker, no ki, even as he was hit with a powerful uppercut, that sent him twenty feet into the air, and slamming back onto the ice, cracking it where he hit. This one was more expected though, and he had had time to focus his ki into his limbs, and so was able to leap directly to his feet. Invoking his mage sight, he looked about him again, and this time he was able to make out the movements of the indistinct figure in the air. Tufi was moving quickly towards the wall, away from the fight, unable to sense what was attacking his student, but not yet willing to intervene. Ranma tensed as it approached, then fired a three-punch combination that led into a spin-kick. He hit nothing, and in the middle of the kick received a blow to the leg that increased his rate of spin, nearly causing him to lose his balance completely. He recovered, and focused again until he could once more perceive his attackers approximate location. Remembering the dragon form's peculiar ability to see air currents, he focused the Neko-ken, and drew up the magic into himself, swelling into his tiger form, then past it into his half-dragon form. The first thing he noticed was that he was suffering no heat loss, though he had been forced to allow that flow of ki to lapse to summon the Neko-ken. Not questioning his good fortune, he eyed the enemy, and was shocked to see that it seemed in fact to be composed of air currents. He had expected to perceive it by the air it displaced, not to discover that it was air itself. Grinning, he thought of a technique that would probably have an impact, and when it approached again, its fist driving forward, he punched as fast as he could, cracking the air, and sending a series of compressed shockwaves through the air towards the creature. Indeed, its advance halted, and it writhed, as if in pain, then rose up, coming down towards him from above. He dove out of the way, and as he rolled, he released the Neko-ken, banishing the dragon form. Useful as the sight was, if the dragon form was immune to the cold, he would not be learning what he needed to learn here by fighting in it. He leapt back to his feet, and wove a quick skein of magic to give himself dragon sight in his natural form. He focused on it again, just in time to receive a heavy blow to the face, followed by a strike to the chest that slammed him into the large slabs of rock that jutted up through a portion of the glacier, which actually were the tip of a rocky spire the glacier had flowed around. He felt a chill creeping into his limbs, and groaned as he rose, realizing that he had neglected, on releasing the transformation, to reinstate the protective ki flows. He did so, but still felt cold. Realizing that he had lost too much body heat, he focused on pulling heat from the air, to replace what he'd lost. After all, if his heat had escaped into the air, then there must be heat there to be regained, he decided. The air elemental, irritated that this mortal shrugged off its powerful blows, began stirring the air, creating a vortex that drew up snow off the surface of the ice, creating a visible white funnel, then directed it at the mortal. Ranma was distracted from his concentration on the ki technique necessary to regain his body heat when he was suddenly surrounded by swirling ice crystals. Contrary to the air elemental's intent, the driving snow did not draw any heat from Ranma, for his protective Tainetsu Hoon Shiirudo, or Body Heat Insulating Shield, was still active. It did serve to confuse his senses. With the swirling air all about him, he could not detect the elemental... but nor could it attack him, for though it could form the funnel easily enough, it had no desire to fight through it. Ranma stumbled forward, but the funnel remained with him. An idea hit him, and he shouted, "Juushin Jisei Senpuu!," as he used the Juushin Jisei techniques to spin his body about his own center of gravity in the opposite direction of the funnel. His body blurred into the tight spin, countering the force of the wind, and negating the funnel. When he released the spin, the snow had all fallen about him, in a tight circle, and he could see the air elemental coming towards him. Deciding the technique might work as well on a creature of air, as on the air itself, when it approached, he shouted again "Juushin Jisei Nekki Senpuu!" He flared his ki aura as he spun this time, to provide the Nekki, or Hot Air, portion of the whirlwind. The air spun about him, and as it picked up his heat, it began to melt the ice beneath him, drawing it up as water, that froze again into snow as it reached the upper regions of the swirling wind. All the watchers, Ranma included, were surprised at the result. Given the intense cold of the air around, the rising hot air from around Ranma cooled quickly, and fell again to the outside of the rising hot air, to be sucked in again at the bottom. The effect was more of a horizontal convection cell than a whirlwind, a cell that was watery in the interior, and swirled with snow at the outer edges, while the center air around Ranma, when he stilled, was calm. The air elemental was trapped in the cell, spun about and torn by the snow and water. Intruiged, Ranma studied the flow of air with his dragon sight, and began flaring his aura again, as he recognized that the mass of air would continue its behavior as long as it had a heat source in the center. He continued to flare his aura until the air elemental disappeared from within the cell. He switched, immediately to the new technique he had been trying to use just before the elemental had attacked again, what he was thinking of as the Hainetsu Kyuuin, or Waste Heat Absorption move. With his ki built up, he found the missing link in his attempt, and in a mere instant, the heat from around him was sucked in. He was not ready for the speed of the technique, as he had been focusing a greater amount of ki to try and get it to work. When he finally hit the right focus, that mass of ki acted much more quickly than he was expecting, and he felt a great rush of heat through him, and fainted from the exertion, not even noticing the peculiar half-torus of ice with which he was now surrounded. Master Tufi managed to pull Ranma from the center of the partial torus, and drag him into the cave. He was disturbed to note that the boy had a fever, but remembering what the Lady Alana had told him of the youth's healing abilities, decided not to overreact. He simply sat by the boy, feeling his forehead occasionally, waiting for him to awaken. He was surprised when after only an hour, the fever broke, and Ranma's temperature returned quickly to normal. The boy woke soon after, sitting up slowly. "That was most impressive, teishi. That was indeed the next technique I had intended to demonstrate to you, but you must be careful with it. You should draw the heat in much more slowly than you did, lest it overcome you." "Yeah," groaned Ranma, holding his head, "I kinda noticed. I didn't really mean to..." "Yes, I suspected as much. Rather like a tug-of-war, pulling as hard as you could, and when the rope suddenly came loose, you fell hard, hmm? Anyway, once you learn to draw the heat in, then you can both use it to prevent your own loss of heat, and to recover heat that you've already lost before starting the technique. More important, of course, is the ability to use the gathered heat to attack." The conversation continued as they ate the dinner Tufi had prepared during Ranma's unconsciousness. "Attacking your opponent with heat is one way, though of course, if they're good enough, they'll have no problem absorbing, deflecting, or dissipating the heat. More valuable sometimes, is using the heat to attack the environment." "What do you mean, sensei? Why would I attack the environment?" "Well, for example, if you were fighting someone on the ice, you could send a wash of heat at ground level where the enemy was standing, or about to land. If you're quick enough... well, I once saw a fight where one participant managed to melt the ice they were on enough that the second landed in it up to his waist, then pull the heat back out before the he was able to react, leaving him encased to his waist in a block of ice." "Then too, that technique you demonstrated a short while ago used heat to fuel the air, didn't it? You generated that heat from your battle aura, as far as I could tell, but if you had collected the heat already, you could have simply used it as fuel, rather than expending so much ki." --- His next master took him to a desert. The first time he tried a kata on a sand dune as his master instructed, his first leap sent him two feet into the sand when he landed, causing a sandfall along the side of the dune, and burying him to his neck, in the end. He had been able to lift himself out with the Tai Chi Chuan, but his master wouldn't let him use his Tai Chi extension to the Musabetso Kakuto Ryuu to avoid actually landing on the sand. Instead, he forced him to learn to land on the sand, without disturbing a single grain. Once he had learned this, the same master suddenly had him take them to a lake, where he showed Ranma that the same technique would allow him to fight over the water. Ranma would land lightly and leap again immediately. Eventually, he was able to do this while leaving only the tiniest of ripples to spread behind him, and cross the whole lake without getting wet. It proceeded like this for most of the year, as he got used to fighting under all sorts of strange conditions, including fighting a running battle along a knife-edged ridge near the peak of a mountain, and another aerial battle over a field of pikes driven into the ground, point spearing upwards. He learned to fight while balanced on a live bamboo as the master caused it to sway beneath him, and similarly on a rope crossing a thousand foot deep gorge over jagged rocks. He fought on the side of a volcano, as superheated jets of steam roared up from fumaroles, and lava oozed about them. He chased mountain goats across rocky crags, and learned to fight underwater, while avoiding sharks and barracuda. He even spent time fighting one master on slick rocks covered with damp stringy mosses over deep still waters while the master flung rocks into the beehives that riddled the rocky walls about them. Arkus found his life extremely frustrating, as the boy was put in one hazardous, even deadly, situation after another, and survived each. But the boy was nearly always completely alone, with no one but the master, and sometimes Alana, near him. No one on whom he could bring his influence to bear, while the elementals the demon summoned just seemed to be treated as part of the boy's training. --- For most of his eleventh year, Alana brought in ki masters, and he learned to do ever more complex things with his ki, including starting fires, concealing his presence, moving through solid objects without disturbing them, and infusing any ordinary item, from a fan, to a piece of cloth, to silverware, with ki, making it a deadly weapon. He also learned pure ki attacks, though he never found it necessary to do the shouting that the masters used. He learned how to use his dominant emotions to fuel ki attacks, increasing their power, ranging from his confidence in himself to his depression over his inability to free the Lady. He also learned how to counter ki attacks, to draw the ki from inanimate objects used against him, and how to use minor amounts of ki to counteract much larger attacks. Then they went deeper, and he learned to control the movement of his ki, even after it had left him. He also learned to generate pure ki attacks without the crutch of emotion, and to control their nature, so that he could have them affect only inanimate objects, only animate objects, deal a crushing blow, explode in flame, or slice through objects like knives. Ranma found it particularly interesting that while it took more willpower and concentration to use pure ki, it was less draining, and could be used for longer periods of time with less strain than emotion fueled ki. Later masters taught him to draw ki from his surroundings to fuel his blasts. Again, he came closer than the year before to releasing the doors without destroying them, though still not close enough. Arkus was even more annoyed this year than the year before, as nearly every master that came along noticed his attempts to observe. One caused his pool to fill with ink, another caused it to boil, giving Arkus severe burns. At least once, it was the boy who noticed it, and reacted, causing the waters to flash instantly to steam, turning his scrying room into a sauna. Arkus was really infuriated by that one, because somehow the steam caused bubbles to appear in his mirror's silver lining, ruining it yet again. Arkus stopped watching in disgust. It would be some time before he returned to the boy. He was often busy with his Lady's work, anyway. --- As his twelfth year approached, Alana seemed to be having more difficulty finding masters who could train him. Shortly after his birthday, he reluctantly agreed to take on other sorts of teachers. Some consolation came when that year, he was invited to seal a portal. He spent considerable time on it, focusing equally on sealing the doorway, and on resisting any attempts to negate the spell, while hiding its weak point deep within a web of tricky twists that would turn aside force brought from most angles. They tested his door for strength, and it was placed in the second to last position, a signal honor. The rest of the year was spent learning rather peculiar things. He spent several months learning various styles of martial arts cooking. One of the strangest of these was the Art of Pastries, taught to him by a Frenchman with a ridiculously large nose. Watching this man whip up a quick batch of thick icing, throw a heavy glob of it in his air, then slash at it with a heavy knife, his arm a blur, only to have a perfectly formed rose land on the cake, was a real marvel. Many of the finer pastries were formed of innumerable delicate layers, resembling sushi. This semblance was further brought to home when the next master was the master of Silent Sushi, not to mention a ninja. Several months were then spent under a single master, who taught him to play a number of instruments in the heat of battle. He showed him how to infuse them with ki to prevent their taking harm, and make them useful as weapons... a ki-filled violin makes an excellent bow, as long as you have multiple bows handy, a curious attribute... as well as how to infuse the notes themselves with ki, to carry his emotions on them. He was taught to use this as a weapon, to bring an enemy to tears, or to rally the spirit of his troops while striking fear into their enemies. He found it could even carry the ki healing technique he had learned in the Neko-ken retraining he had undergone with Sylie, radiating healing power controlled by his music. He could enter the garden, and control which plants were in bloom by the tones of his music, or make the blossoms of a rose plant open and close individually, each in tune with a single note. He was also introduced to the power of the vibrations produced by some instruments. He learned how to perceive the resonance frequency of a physical object, much as he had learned to find their weak point, and how to sustain that resonant tone on any instrument until the object destroyed itself. He also learned, with his master's guidance, though it was new to the master as well, to use the power of the Juushin Jisei to play instruments without touching them. Having accomplished this, he was encouraged to focus and meditate until he could play several instruments at once. Once he finally got the hang of playing the multiple instruments, he quickly improved in his facility with them, and by the time his master left, he could play on at least one of every instrument in a modern orchestra in a way that would make any conductor proud, while himself standing and doing the conducting. After the master had left, he had taken nearly a month off of that schedule, and worked with the Tai Chi Chuan eleventh dan, the Juushin Jisei, exclusively. Having realized its power through the demonstration he had given, he managed several more feats with it. He managed to cause the air to vibrate, to produce sound. Eventually he could reproduce the sounds of most of his instruments, without needing the instrument, a technique he termed the Genshindou Gakki Gihou, or Fundamental Vibration Musical Instrument Technique. He also managed to get used to handling multiple weapons with the Juushin Jisei, until he reached the point that he could spar against five non-existent opponents, each wielding a different weapon. Shortly thereafter, he realized that he had been steadily increasing his effective weight for years on end, and consistently tying up a larger and larger amount of ki in holding that weight. He took his leave of the Lady, temporarily, and went to a desert, far from any cities. There, he began to slowly ease off on the weight. Almost instantly, his aura bloomed in size and power, and he found that he had to stop, and bring it back under control. By the time he finished releasing the Juushin Jisei Juuryoku's hold on himself, he realized that his ki reserves were unbelievably huge. Nonetheless, he was able to conceal them. As soon as he began a kata, he discovered that he actually had to concentrate in order to move slower than the speed at which he cracked the air. Further, he had to concentrate in order to remain on the ground. If he thought of other things for but a moment, he would look down, and find himself floating above the ground. A mild flexing of the leg muscles, and he would be hundreds of feet in the air. He spent some time learning to fly like this, and found that he indeed preferred it to flying with the Juushin Jisei. It seemed more natural, and took less concentration. Before returning to the castle, he reengaged the Juuryoku, and weighed himself down until his available ki reserves were once again as they had been before he had released the Juushin Jisei Juuryoku. --- The next competition at the Mages Tower saw Ranma's door as the most powerful holding spell in the challenge, surpassing for the first time, the combined masterwork of two of the most powerful Mages of the Tower. Though he still failed to open their door without damaging it, he came much closer. Ranma was in his room, waiting for Alana to return, so that they could go home, and begin his training again, though he truly had no idea what was left to learn, when someone knocked at his door. "Enter," he said, and the door opened, and Ariana stepped in. "Ranma, they want you in the Council Hall. Alana is there already. She said to wear the Dragon Armor, now hurry, come on, I'll show you the way." He nodded, and focused, reaching out to the castle with his ki, until he found the Dragon Fang, where he had carefully stored it. He gently released the wards and seals he had protected it with, then called it to him, and summoned the armor. He gestured for her to lead, then. She led him quickly down the halls, deep within the complex, to the base of the central tower, where they came upon heavy iron doors. The doors were already being opened by a guard, who was standing to their right, turning a large wheel with heavy thrusts. As it turned, it ratcheted against a lever in the floor, and the doors shifted slightly further apart. Within moments, they were in the hall, and the doors swung shut with a loud ringing sound behind them. Ranma stepped forward, looking resplendent in his armor, and saw with surprise that Mardo was no longer sitting at the head of the U shaped council table. He had moved to the right, and Alana stood behind the pulled out central chair. As Ranma moved forward, Mardo stood suddenly. Ranma stopped, as Mardo bowed to him. He was confused, and worried. The rest of the assembled Masters then rose as well, and bowed, and then all said as one, "Hail, ArchMage." "Huh? What?" Ranma was flustered. What were they talking about? Mardo was the ArchMage, and had been for years. Ariana was at his elbow then, guiding him around the table to where Alana held the chair out for him. They pushed him to sit in it, then pushed his chair forward. Ranma just sat there, looking stunned, until the mages cheered suddenly. "Come now, Ranma, no false modesty. You've earned your place," Mardo said to him, grinning. Ranma remained a bit dazed, as the new realities of his position were explained to him. As the ArchMage of the Mage Towers, he held a rank of Lord in all of the Five Kingdoms, second only to their Kings. Quite nearly the position of influence that the old Lord Fey had sought by force, but Ranma had earned it, and it was freely given. --- Ranma spent most of the next six months with Mardo, learning his new duties, and meeting the other Kings, and the various Lords. He learned a lot about weather magic, and how the ArchMages had protected the Five Kingdoms against hurricanes, tornadoes, and other such disasters. He also learned how to lead and guide other mages in casting. He found that even though he could not see their spells, the female mages had no difficulty following his lead, for nothing hid his power or spells from them. Arkus meanwhile spent countless hours raging at the terrible injustice of the universe. To be thus handed the position Lord Fey had so often sought to take by force... it was humiliating. Ranma also learned how to act at court, how to deflect flirtatious ladies, enamored of his power but uncaring about him, how to avoid giving the useless, foppish, hereditary young lordlings any offense that could be misconstrued into a reason for a duel, how to dress properly for the court, how to eat properly in noble company, and numerous other things. He found himself wishing dearly for more martial arts lessons, even cooking or singing, until he discovered painting. Cooking was considered demeaning, and the nobles detested it, and singing or playing instruments meant constantly being invited to perform here or there. Painting, on the other hand, was a solitary thing, though he would have to avoid those females who wanted to be... immortalized. Alana found him a tutor, grateful that he had found something to occupy his time while he learned what was necessary. He learned quickly, and found himself quite skilled at it. Wielding a brush was not that different, he found, from wielding a sword, and a little ki in the paint gave his art a vibrancy and life to it that was unmatched. Alana found herself more than glad he had found something to learn, when he gave her a beautiful painting of her sister. It showed her as a human, reclining cradled in the paws of her as a dragon, coiled about the canvas, one arm delicately resting on the back of the head of her as a panther, with her castle as a backdrop. It was beautiful, and perfect in every detail, and made her realize how impressive his memory really was. When they finally returned home, Ranma decided that this was an area that he could explore further, since Alana was finding that locating masters who could train him was getting progressively more difficult. He went from quarry to quarry, carving out stone for his own use, paying the foreman on site, and carrying the huge blocks of stone off on his own back, much to their shock and surprise. With this stone, he began to teach himself to sculpt. At first, he used tools, as the books in the library suggested, but after a while, he switched to using a simpler, more effective technique. He would use his ki claws to carve, and sculpt the images. Then, when it was carved, he would use his Juushin Jisei techniques to send sand swirling against it, polishing it to a high gleam. --- Shortly after his fourteenth birthday, Ranma grew tired of sculpting. He had moved beyond simply stone sculptures, to using his ki and the Juushin Jisei to coat them with metals, then cut and rebond them, to form metal sculptures, and eventually to using his ki to heat and protect his hands, so that he could work with silver and gold as if it were putty, but he was ready to move on. Considering, he finally hit upon something that would be well worth learning, that was close to the martial arts, and could be made into an art form, not to mention being an opportunity to extend his magical abilities. Alana found masters to train him, and so Ranma took up the art of weaponsmithing. He learned the wood based arts first, the art of spear straightening, of fletching and bow-making. From there he progressed to the metals, learning how to purify them, mix them, hammer and form them. He focused on Japanese style weapons, though he learned a few other styles as well. The masters who taught him were all impressed by his skill and strength, and the speed of his learning. But all were more impressed, at least at first, with the fact that he heated the metal with his own hands, to the point of holding ingots in his hands until the metal melted through his fingers to flow into the mold. Then there was his remarkable ability to use the seventh sense to sense impurities in the metal, and to use the Juushin Jisei to remove them from the mix even as it flowed through his fingers. Not once did any of his masters have to show him how to deal with flawed metal. They never encountered any. Dragon Fang became a golden forge hammer, and pounded weapon after weapon, as Ranma mastered the art of folding metal to make katanas and other blades. Finally, a master came, who when he was finished teaching Ranma, had sighed, and said, "Well, boy, I've taught you all I can with what we have. It's too bad there are no more dragons, though. I would dearly have liked to have passed on the art of making weapons from dragon scale before I died, and I would have been proud to teach it to you." He was quite perturbed when Ranma vanished from in front of him, and spent some time puttering about looking for him, when Ranma returned, holding a single scale as big as he himself was. "You mean like this?" he asked. The old man gaped at him for a long minute, then a single tear rolled down one cheek. "How... how did you..." he sputtered. Dragons were dead and gone, and dragon scale unobtainable. "I asked the Lady's sister, and she gave me one of her scales. She's really nice once you get to know her." "One of her scales? She's a dragon?!?" "Yup. Now are you going to show me how to work this, or what?" So was forged Ranma's final masterwork. He remembered the one thing his father had mentioned about his mother... her katana. Genma had shivered every time he had said it, but it was the only thing Ranma could really remember about her. When the old man said that only dragon breath was hot enough to melt dragon scale, Ranma nearly gave the man a heart attack by promptly taking his half dragon form, placing the scale in a large stone container, and melting it with his breath. "Hmmph, I guess you're right." His voice in this form was much deeper, and seemed to carry its own echoes. At the master's rather timid suggestion, Ranma retained the dragon form as he beat the cooled scale into a sword. To the master's astonishment, Ranma proceeded to beat the sword continuously for a week, never stopping. Ranma himself was surprised at his own stamina. The final blade had been folded exactly forty thousand times, by Ranma's count, and it was a thing of beauty. The old man helped Ranma forge a portion of the remaining scale into a proper hilt. Not knowing what else to do with the remaining scale, Ranma proceeded to make a matching wakizashi, only this time, he studied the Dragon Fang first, and tried to match the weave of its magic within the new blade as he hammered it. When it was finished, it would indeed take the forms that Dragon Fang could, though it held always a metallic deep blue appearance. --- In his fifteenth year, he proceeded to the next obvious step, and took up the art of armor-smithing. He started with leather, learning to work it, boiled and hardened, or still pliable and filled with metal studs. He learned to make simple metal strips, and punch holes through them and sew them together on a backing of leather to form both splinted and banded mail. He learned to make chain mail, to force metal through successively smaller holes until he had a long thin bar, then hammer it around a solid but thin round metal post, before cutting it off into rings, and linking them together in a weave. Then he learned to make plate. He spent much time here just studying the different varieties. He had to learn what all the pieces were, how they fit together, and how they were connected to allow proper movement. He also had to learn how to properly measure the person they were being fitted for, to properly size each piece, to insure a proper fit that wouldn't chafe. He had to learn all of this for each of the varieties, for partial plate, field plate, full plate, and so forth. He also learned how to make a variety of styles of each, and then how to make helms in a wide variety of styles. Finally he practiced on his dojo's masters, and his bodyguard, making for each a customized suit of armor. He found as he prepared for this, that by a proper infusion of ki at the right point, the armor could be made to carry some of its own weight, making it seem light and easy to work with. Again he finished out the year with a masterwork, a work of dragonscale. His dragonscale armor was full body, made for the Lord Roga, whom he invited to come and live at the castle while it was being crafted for him.