After bathing, Ranko dressed again, and slipped out the back door of the house. As she snuck away, she extended her senses to be sure no-one was following. She leapt lightly, easily, over the village wall, then moved quickly through the forest until she found a clearing that had a large enough stone in it.
She pulled back, allowing Ranma to come to the fore. Onna-Ranma used her ki claws to inscribe a rune of power and holding on the stone, and several runes of strength, then begin charging it. She charged it slowly, but at a steady pace. She was timing herself by what she had learned charging the stones in the room where she had... had failed. If she went slow enough, her ki replenished itself, and by the end, she was still at full, as was the stone.
A little over an hour later, it was done. Ranma eased back, allowing Ranko to the fore again. At his urging, she focused, and drew up the ki aura, flickering blue flames that licked about her, then called on the Neko-ken. As the aura became more solid about her, Ranma watched in the glassy pool, muttering suggestions. He had noticed, from his external perspective, what she had not... that the aura was definitely, even distinctively feminine.
Yet Ranma could see it wasn't working... she couldn't get the aura to disengage itself. He quickly cast a gate spell, opening a portal to the location he was scrying, and stepped through. She gasped. "You... you look like a ghost, Ranma."
"I know." His voice was hollow and thin, strange-sounding even to his own ears. He reached out with threads of magic, and his will, and pulled on his ki. It resisted, and he strengthened the pull. Ranko cried out in pain, as her ki aura tore itself from her, and absorbed Ranma, becoming a male aura again. She fell to her knees.
"Ranko," he cried out, "Release the stone. You must release the stone!" Already, he could feel the drawing sensation, as her body reached out to regain what was hers. The stone flared, and she cried out in relief. She stood, strong again, and looked at him, glowing blue male half-tiger standing before her.
"I cannot come too close, Ranko. I can still feel the pull the body has for its ki. I've got to go away now. Don't worry... I've bound it with magic. I won't lose it." He turned, and leapt, bounding over the trees, and away from the clearing.
She stared after him. She had noticed what he had not. Their aura had grown... the half-tiger that left her was fully ten feet tall. She wondered how big he would be as a half-dragon.
Meanwhile Kho Lon paused in her slow thoughtful progress towards her house, and looked to the distant clearing. She had felt that sudden massive surge of magic and ki, and she started to move in that direction.
Ranma was moving quickly now, with utter silence. He had a semi-solid form, he could feel the claws on his feet biting the ground. He passed within meters of two crouching Amazons, intent on their prey. They didn't notice him... nor did he notice the two older Amazons nearly a thousand feet up the slope, watching the younger two. After he was gone, they came bounding down to land behind the younger two.
One of the younger two turned and hissed. "What are you doing?! You scared it off!" She was referring to the tiger she and her sister Amazon had been stalking.
"More important things, child. A massive tiger spirit passed not two meters from you."
"Over here," said the other woman, "Come here girls, look at these tracks. What made them?"
"A tiger... a big tiger," the elder of the two girls said.
"Look closer," the woman commanded them. "Look at the stride."
"A two-legged tiger? What is this?" The younger girl looked at the two older women in confusion. "Tigers don't walk on two legs."
"We watched the spirit. It was a tiger... and a man, and it walked on two legs, and moved in great bounding strides, but it glowed blue, and we could see you through it as it passed between us and you."
"What should we do?" asked the older girl, "Send for an Elder, and follow it?"
"Whatever mischief it plans will already be done by then," the first woman replied. "We will follow it, now!"
They set off, tracking the tiger spirit. They strung out in a long line. One would stand where the tiger landed, near the visible indentations of its claws, while the other three moved ahead to scout for the next tracks. When they were found, the whole process would repeat. After tracking it for four hours, they realized it was slowing, and moved slower themselves. They switched to having two teams, so that two women together waited at the known tracks, while the other two looked for the new tracks. One member of each pair stayed focused on their surroundings, hoping to prevent the tiger from catching them unawares a second time.
The second woman finally decided she knew where it was heading, and brought them around to where they would be able to look down upon the spot from a hill covered in trees and brush.
Though the cover was good, Ranma would have known they were there. But he did not. He was not scanning the night with his sixth and seventh sense. Instead, he had turned them inward. He had released the Neko-ken, and been pleased that his aura seemed to lapse into his own shape, as he dwelt in it, rather than returning to blue flames.
He had drawn up the magic into himself, and then stared down bemused at his body. It looked like him, on the outside. He was nude, he noticed, not having brought any clothing with him. He had been used to having Fey's clothing to fall back on, but the wristband was not on his wrist, it was on Ranko's. He decided to see if he could get out of the body without dissolving it, so he could look into it, and see why he couldn't seem to breathe, and felt no heartbeat.
The watching girls breathed long happy sighs in awe, when they peeked over the top of the hill, and saw the naked young man, strong and beautifully muscled, standing by the deep pool that lay deep and still beyond the foam that churned at the base of the fifty foot waterfall. It was a perfect scene to frame what looked like a young god, and the girls would likely have gotten into a fight over which one got to go down and get defeated by him for peeping on him, had the older women not been there to hold them back.
The older women held the girls back for the crucial moments it took for the tiger-spirit to step from the body, letting it drop lifeless to the ground. Ranma looked at himself, and realized that in even that short time, he had grown stronger, because the body had generated ki. "I should stay in a body, then." he said to himself, and drew up the magic strands.
The watching Amazons stifled their gasps when the tiger-spirit seemed to suddenly take on real physical form. No longer a glowing blue, it looked like a true tiger now, yellow and black, and they had to stifle their sudden strong swell of desire for the finely muscled form.
Ranma was delighted when he realized he could breathe. Apparently his tiger and dragon forms, based on his body as they were, had all the pieces, while the body he was trying to build was being created based on his spirit, an altogether different situation. He was also surprised that this body felt hungry... and it grew hungrier as it gazed on the body lying before it.
At first he was slightly sickened at the thought, but then he realized that he would have to cut it up anyway, to study it and see what he had done wrong. He would either have to go and hunt and kill something else, that had done nothing, so that his hunger would not overwhelm him... Or eat his own body as he examined it. The decision was an easy one. After all, this body was his, there was no-one else to care if he ate it. He supposed he could have summoned some fruit, but this body was that of a carnivore, and the thought simply didn't have the appeal it would normally have held for him.
The girls' desire was cramped when the beast reached out and tore off the boy's arm. The youngest girl could barely contain her retching. The second woman nudged the first. "Look at it. It is peeling back the skin, and looking at the muscle, before eating it. Why is it doing that?"
They watched in mingled disgust and awe, as the beast proceeded to eat its way through the chest cavity. When the beast dove into the waterfall, to wash away the blood that matted its fur, they saw their chance, and darted down, picked up the still hot remains, almost whole except the arm that had been torn off, and made off with it.
When Ranma emerged from the water, cleansed of blood, he shook himself vigorously, then gaped at the pool of blood, and the complete absence of his body. At first, he thought a wild animal had come to investigate the scent, but looking closer, he could see the footprints. The Amazons! Oh, no... he couldn't let them get that body back to the village. He was afraid of what Ranko would do when she recognized the face, which he had not harmed. He hadn't tried the mental communication, and didn't know if it would work. She would be asleep by now, so he couldn't try without alarming her. He set to work, hunting them, following the scent of his own blood.
Several hours later, they stopped and made camp. The youngest girl ran her fingers across the bloody face. "He was so handsome, so strong... He would have been a good husband. I wonder who he was?"
"Not Musk, I hope... though who else has such strong males, these days?"
"Oh dear. We'll really be in for it if the Musk catch us carrying one of their own like this."
"I doubt it. Its fairly obvious that the body was mauled by a beast."
Suddenly, their senses alerted them to approaching danger, and they grabbed for their weapons. Before they could bring them to bear, the huge tiger-spirit had leaped over the trees to land in the clearing, heaved the torn body to its back, and leapt away again.
They cursed fluently. "Now, what? We go back, and track it again?"
"We'll leave a message here for the elders. They will come look, before tomorrow is finished. Hopefully, they will find this place, read the signs, and find our message." Even as she spoke, she was writing quickly on a leaf of parchment. She rolled it into a tube, tied it off, and hung it from a high branch. "Let's go."
Ranma returned to his waterfall. He had surmised that they had come up while he was in the waterfall, and hadn't seen the massive tiger. He figured once they saw what took the body, they would leave well enough alone. That was why he had moved slowly enough to let them get a good look at him.
He needed to burn this body anyway. He placed it on a rock, out in the depths of the pool. Hopefully that would at least keep off any wild animals drawn by the scent of blood. Before he left, he slashed the face to ribbons, to prevent identification, in case someone tried the same thing again.
By the time he had built up a large enough pile of deadwood to lay the body upon, the women had returned, and taken up their position to watch. They observed him place the body on the pyre, deciding it must be some ritual the cat-spirit needed to retain his form.
They watched, and their thoughts seemed confirmed, when he stood back from the pyre, still unlit, and raised a hand. Sudden blue flames flicked about it for a moment, as he lifted it to the air, and flames roared up from beneath the pyre! He watched the orange flames for a long minute, then decided they weren't hot enough to do the job. He drew up magic, hands glowing with power, and the flames roared higher and hotter, moving from orange to yellow, then finally they flared blue.
The blue flame roared, leaping high into the air, giving off no visible smoke, and when it finally died, Ranma leapt off into the night, wanting to focus on his body as it moved, and leapt, and breathed, so that he could feel the action of the organs.
The Amazons crept down the hill, and surrounded the fire. One knelt and felt the ashes. They were a fine gray dust. No flesh, not even bone remained... and bone always remained. "Very hot fire?," one asked.
"Spirit fire. The spirits took the body," responded another. They pulled back, and set up camp some distance away. They did not build a fire, this time.
---
When morning came, they again crept up to the hill. It took them a moment to realize that the tiger was there, lying sprawled upon the ground, snoring. They considered moving in and attacking it while it slept, only to have that option removed as it suddenly stirred. It sat up, shaking its large head back and forth as if to knock the sleep out.
Ranma looked about blearily. Too early, and his mouth... he tasted iron. He looked at the pool, and thought about washing his mouth out with that, then he realized, as his senses were again stretched about him, more by reflex than intent, that he was being watched by four women.
As he felt their auras, he realized they were not from his village, or at least, hadn't been there during the time that he had been. He wondered what to do about it... and realized he was entirely unclothed. He flicked his fingers and summoned a pair of black silk boxers, then a pair of loose, baggy pants. He didn't summon his usual tight shirt though. It would make his fur itch.
He tried to decide what to do about the women... but his head hurt, and he didn't want to think about it. He would feel better after a cup of herbal tea, he decided. He glanced in their direction, but saw no movement. He thought about looking for herbs, but decided not to bother. So what if they saw he could do magic? It would just make them more afraid, he thought, and maybe they would go and leave him alone. He summoned a low table, and a tea set, with five place settings. He wasn't sure why he did that, but then decided he wouldn't really mind company.
He summoned five tatami mats, and knelt on one, pouring the herbal tea into his cup. He lifted it, and took a large sip, rolling it around in his mouth, to get the taste of iron out, then spat it behind him. He took another sip, and swallowed this time. He looked directly at the women, with a challenging gaze, and smiled at them. He wasn't really aware that smiling with a mouth full of terribly sharp teeth is not the most reassuring thing you can do.
"Aiiee... he knows we are here!," the youngest squealed. The second woman slapped the girl's head. "If he was unsure before, he knows now, foolish girl. Well we know he can move faster than we. We cannot run and hope to escape, if he chooses to follow. Let us go down and meet him. It seems we have little choice to do otherwise." She stood, holding her spear, and stepped out of the underbrush, and walked down to the grassy waterside, followed by the other three, all holding their weapons nervously.
He had placed the four additional settings and mats across the table from himself, reckoning they would not want to get too close. He was only partially right. The closer they got, the stronger their desire for him became. As they approached, he smiled again, and holding the tea pot delicately in his massive hand, he poured tea into the four cups. They sat gingerly on the mats, watching him. It was only then that he really realized that he had gotten larger. Even sitting down, he towered over them.
The two younger ones still looked fearful, but the elder had firmed their faces. They would not show weakness before a spirit, lest he take it as an invitation to attack. They gripped their cups firmly, and drank, praying inside that it not be poisoned. He had drunk first after all, from the same teapot, but wait... he had... yes. Both coming to the same conclusion, they followed his pattern of swishing the tea in their mouths, then turning to spit it behind them, before drinking from their cups. The younger two followed suit, as he looked on.
When he saw that they weren't going to take the lead and speak, he decided he needed to impress on them that he was not prey, to be hunted. He raised his large claw, and the first woman's spear jerked forward, almost pulled from her grasp, as the haft just below the head slapped into his palm. She gasped, eyes wide in fear, as he casually snapped the head off the weapon. He took the metal head in one hand, holding it above the other, and supplied great heat with his ki, as he had done when learning weaponsmithing.
They gasped in awe, and the acrid scent of fear rose from them, as the droplets of brightly glowing molten metal dripped through his fingers to roll and pool on his palm. "I am not for hunting." Ranma said plainly. His voice was different in this form. It was deeper, rougher, almost a growl. The women nodded slowly. Finally, the woman who's spear he had destroyed spoke. "We were not hunting you, Lord Spirit. We are Amazons, and we must investigate possible dangers to our tribe."
"I am no danger to your tribe. I am here, not to disturb you, but to work in peace. I must make a body for my sister... but I must perfect my own first. I have no female example to work from, but I will manage." His words were simple, direct. He was stating in the plainest terms why he was here, hoping they could see his sincerity, and would leave him in peace.
He did not really consider the effect his words would have from their perspective. He didn't know that they had seen everything they had.
He didn't know that they had watched as he pulled the body apart, examining each piece before eating it. He didn't realize the implications they would draw from his statement of the lack of a female example. Each of them was picturing this beast slowly stripping their flesh, examining each piece, as he devoured it.
Furthermore, he had just told them enough to realize that he was not yet confident of his understanding of the male body... much less the female... He would surely need many examples, and they had just told him they were from a tribe of Amazons. His smile, meant to put them at ease, seemed to them the grin of a beast looking forward to having some fun.
Their hands were cold with sweat, and even to themselves they stank of fear, as they sat drinking their tea, and wondering how they would get out of this. Ranma smelled their fear, but didn't realize the real reason for it. He figured he had done enough to ensure they would not return, not realizing that he had in fact done exactly what would ensure their return in force. When he saw that they had finished their tea, he waved a hand, and the tea set disappeared, as did the table and mats. He stood, and they got shakily to their feet, looking up at him with fearful eyes. Even the older women could not disguise their terror, and they were frightened still more by the fact that they could still feel a strong udnercurrent of desire for him, through their fear, leading them to believe the desire was unnatural, perhaps even magical in nature.
"Remember," he said, in a deep rumble, "I'm not for hunting." He turned, and with several leaping bounds, was quickly out of sight. The Amazons sagged against each other in sudden relief, as the fear and desire both drained away.
"He doesn't need us?" The youngest asked hopefully.
"Not yet," replied the first woman, "Not yet. You heard him, he must master the male form, before he begins on the female. We must destroy him before that time. We must get to the village, quickly, to warn the elders." With that, they were off.
The next day, when Ranma awoke, there were two elders and ten strong warriors concealed on a hill across the stream, protected from his sight by a powerful magical medallion worn by one of the elders. They watched with wide eyes, as he stood up, stepping up and out of his body, becoming once again the glowing entity of ki, before suddenly filling out again. The tiger-spirit picked his old body up, and carried it to lay by the water. He tore open its chest, and washed the blood away with water.
The elders had looked at each other with awe in their eyes when he had stepped from his body. A spirit of pure ki... unbelievable! Silently, they praised their luck at its decision to examine its own body. Had they not seen it arise so easily from its prison of flesh, they would have attacked. They realized now that slaying its body would have little effect on it, and settled in to watch, hoping to see a weakness.
They looked on, as the creature removed one organ after another, tracing the connections between them, and slicing them open to examine the inside, before laying them back in the body. After examining his own chest cavity for nearly an hour, the spirit shucked his new body, then suddenly became a strong young man, shucked that body as well, then picked up the tiger body he had just discarded, and put it back on.
He lay the boy's body down, and broke open its chest in the same way. He had done better... there was a heart, and lungs, and he had been able to take a breath. Still, the stomach wasn't connected to the mouth, and the lines that went from the heart to the lungs were missing. He sighed. This would be a long slow process... and then he would have to do the same with women. Sighing, he gestured at the bodies, and they erupted in crackling blue flames that quickly reduced them to ash.
He sat lotus style, and went to reach for his flute, but it was not there. He realized, once again, that Ranko had the Dragon Fang. Aah... he could use that wakizashi he had made. He pictured where it sat, cradled on wooden pegs on a board in his room at the castle, and he called to it, and pulled it to him.
The watching elders gasped in awe when he pulled a beautiful dark blue wakizahi from nowhere. They were even more startled when it became a dark blue flute, and the tiger began to play. The warriors around them sighed happily, thrilled by the beautiful music. The elders were concerned... they could feel the ki that imbued the music with power, and wondered what the beast was trying to accomplish. They could see that the tiger's eyes were closed in concentration.
They all gawked in startled wonder when a gorgeous green haired neriad rose silently from the water, only hair covering her heaving upper body, to lie listening upon a stone amidst the depths of the pool. The young warriors saw only a well-endowed young woman with greenish skin, brilliant sea-green hair, and a long snake's body below the waist. The elders though, saw a being of power, a neriad, a spirit of water, drawn up, entranced by the tiger-spirit's music.
When he lifted his head from his flute, to draw a deep breath, and sigh, and look about him, the neriad slipped quietly from the rock back into the silent depths of the pool. She was gone before his gaze fell upon the rock, and the elders realized to their shock that the tiger-spirit had not only not intended to summon the water-spirit, but been unaware of doing so. The power implied in being able to accidentally summon a being of such power stunned them.
The music had eased his emotions, and his heart was steady again. But his mind still roiled with tangled thoughts. He needed to clear his head now. He leapt gracefully out to that stone in the depths of the pool, and began a slow kata. He did not see the neriad rise amongst the concealing waters of the waterfall, but the elders did. They too watched, entranced at his powerful forms and flowing punches and kicks.
They were stunned when he reached the aerial portion of the kata, moving considerably faster now, and several times landed upon the water and leapt lightly again, leaving only the faintest of ripples behind.
The first time his fist moved faster than sound, cracking the very air, they all jumped in shock, but the neriad clapped her hands in delight.
The tiger-spirit paused suddenly, landing lightly on the stone, and looking around for the source of the sound. The neriad moved from the concealment of the flowing water, holding her upper body easily above the water, and moved toward him. She opened her mouth, when his gaze lit upon her, and sang at him, a warbling beautiful sound like water babbling across stones in a shallow stream.
He stared in awe at the vision of beauty moving towards him. Not again, not again, he was thinking desperately, afraid that he recognized the hungry, possessive look in her eyes, but he seemed powerless to flee, mesmerized by the beautiful sound of her voice. Tigers, unlike most other cats, are not afraid of water, but will indeed go swimming in it for pleasure. He slid off the rock, and used the Juushin Jisei to hold himself partially submerged, so his head was level with hers. His eyes flicked down, and he saw her long body snaking away beneath them.
"Lady," he said, in his deep rumbling voice, "I'm sorry, but I cannot understand you." She had reached him them, and immediately raised a hand to run lightly along his chest, feeling his powerful muscles. "I did not mean to disturb you. I did not know this was your pool. I will leave, if you wish." He made the offer in hope that she would ask it, though the feel of her hand on his chest made him think she did not want him to leave. He was rather worried, in fact, about what she probably did want.
The watching Amazons were equally mesmerized by the sight. Only the two elders knew fear. They too could not pull themselves away, but they had heard stories of what angry water spirits could do, and they imagined that both spirits would grow angry if they detected their presence upon the hill.
Ranma moved slowly to draw up threads of magic. He could see she was a being of magic, and he wanted to move slowly enough that she could have time to see what he was doing, and that there was no need to fear it. When he completed the spell, he spoke again, and though his voice came out sounding like the rushing of water down a thin gorge, he understood it, and her response. "I say again, Lady, it was not my intention to disturb you. I am sorry. I did not know this was your pool, and I will leave, if you wish it."
"Please, do not leave. Your music speaks to my heart, fierce tiger, and I enjoyed watching you play above my pool. You are pleasant to look upon." He felt her coils sliding about his body, submerged beneath the rippling surface of the pool, a cold caress. "If I let you stay, will you play for me again?"
"Lady, I cannot stay forever, but if you let me stay, I will play for you." She smiled at that, and he saw that she had long fangs, like a poisonous snake, but it only made her smile more beautiful.
"I can see that another holds your heart, fierce tiger, so I will not ask more of you than that, and that you let me watch you at play."
"At play, Lady? I do not understand you."
"When you danced upon the water, just now. You are beautiful, you know."
"Oh... my katas. Yes, Lady, I do not mind if you watch my katas."
"What are you doing here, fierce tiger? Why do you sit and play by my waters? I thought you called to me, but that is not why you are here, is it?"
"No, Lady." He smiled. "I am making a body for my sister, that together we may free my Lady from bondage, and find my mother."
"A noble cause, indeed. I could wish your heart were not already taken, fierce tiger." She smiled at him, then backed away, and sank beneath the water.
The watching elders had not understood the words, but they could see that some agreement had been reached. They watched in surprise and wonder, when the tiger-spirit rose smoothly from the water, then padded across the surface as if it were solid ground, to stand upon the near shore, and shake the water from his fur.
He looked about him, then bounded off, disappearing into the distance almost instantly. The elders took the warriors back to the village. They would have to convene the council, to debate what to do. They were not sure that even the whole village had the power to fight this thing.