Ranma stared open-mouthed as Akane walked away. He half-raised one hand, about to call out to her to stop so that he could ask what she meant when a stray thought caused him to hold his tongue.
"I know your school focuses on unarmed attacks, Ranma, but you do know how to use weapons, right? Well, if these techniques are your attacks and skills in this form, then knowledge is your weapon. You can achieve many goals without any knowledge, if your skill with words is good enough, but you can achieve much more with less skill if you have knowledge on your side. On the other hand, skill can be turned useless if your opponent has knowledge that you lack. And the worst thing you can do is reveal your lack of knowledge, for that is like showing your enemy your weakness." Nabiki's words returned to his mind.
Maybe I should find out more before I go revealing that I don't know what's going on here. After all, Akane is being nice again, Ukyou seems to have accepted that I just want to be her friend, and she isn't even complaining about her honor anymore. Nabiki apologized to me!
Seeing that a number of students were heading in his direction and that Kuno was beginning to stir, Ranma leapt away, making it to the window of his class in a few powerful jumps. Sitting once more at his desk, he watched Akane and Ukyou as they entered the class a few minutes later. Akane seemed genuinely happy, something he hadn't seen in her in a long time, while Ukyou had cleaned up and no longer looked visibly despondent.
Ranma reminded himself that he still needed to obtain his scrolls from the Tendo's attic before turning his attention to the entering teacher and focusing once more on his lessons.
The instant the final bell rang Ranma had bolted through the window. He touched lightly on the ground and immediately sprang to the outer wall and thence to the roofs. When he realized that he was heading back towards the dojo he pulled to a stop.
I can't go there yet, he decided. I'll have to wait for dark to get my scrolls. I don't wanna face anybody until I've figured out why Akane called me Ishida-san, so...
He was interrupted by the sound of a sweet voice calling for him. "Airen!"
He spun around, dropping into a deceptive ready stance, focusing his senses to find where she was coming from. Even as he noticed her he heard the distinctive ringing of her bicycle bells. She was rocketing down the road balanced on the thin fence top and heading in his direction. She had already seen him, as her call indicated.
For just a moment he considered waiting to see what her reaction to him would be, given how unusual Ukyou and Akane's reactions had been. A half-second later he realized that if somehow he had in fact been removed from the Saotome family register, as Akane's comment had implied, then all the engagements would be off... except for Shampoo's, which had nothing to do with his name and everything to do with him.
"Damn," he muttered, "didn't want to have to use this so soon." In spite of his grousing he wasted no time, spinning away from the onrushing Amazon, engaging his dual counter-spinning auras and blasting away at a velocity that put the Amazon's impressive biking speed to shame.
Shampoo shouted after him then sighed unhappily as she watched him vanish in the distance. "Why airen run from Shampoo?" Continuing her swift passage, she headed back for the Nekohanten. Perhaps her great-grandmother could give her some insight into Ranma's behavior.
---
Cologne looked up as her great-granddaughter entered the store. She looked unhappy and a little angry. Cologne considered the rumour she had heard from the lunch crowd and decided that this was more important than opening on time.
She pogoed over to the door where the closed sign still hung and motioned her heir to sit at a table. "Now, what is this all about, child? Why do you look so down?"
Shampoo sat and looked at her hands for a minute. Looking up, she said, "Airen disowned stupid Panda-man, changed name, but he still run from Shampoo. Shampoo not understand why."
Cologne looked up sharply. "Did you say that son-in-law has changed his name?" This is not good. If he has finally decided to renounce honor, we could all be in trouble.
"That what Sneaky-girl say. His name now Ishida Ranma. That ends all engagements Panda-man made, so why Ranma run from Shampoo?" Shampoo frowned, pouting cutely. "Ranma should be happy to be free to be Shampoo's airen!"
Cologne gave no outward indication of her thoughts but held a steady gaze on her heir. Shampoo sat at the table and she looked at her great-grandmother for several minutes, then sighed deeply. Her shoulders slumped. "Shampoo no understand, great-grandmother. Airen angry about bombs at wedding... Jusendo show Shampoo airen really care for Violent Kitchen-Destroyer. But why he change name and not marry Violent Girl if he love her? If airen not love her, then why he angry at Shampoo?"
"Does he love you?" Cologne eyed her heir sharply. It almost sounded as if Shampoo had opened her eyes...
Shampoo moaned unhappily. Unconsciously she began to rub the web of her left hand between her right thumb and forefinger. "Shampoo no think so anymore, or he not run from Shampoo. Nothing to hold him anymore, no reason to run, unless he not like Shampoo." She looked up and her eyes were filled with pain.
"Shampoo is failure, great-grandmother. Ranma not even like Shampoo as friend anymore, Shampoo think." Her eyes overflowed with slow tears as she stared at her teacher. "Shampoo do everything wrong! Now Shampoo have no friends here and must go back to village without husband, without friends."
She dashed the tears from her eyes, noting that her great-grandmother's expression had not changed. She firmed her face, hiding her pain and suppressing her tears. "Shampoo is Amazon warrior, does not need friends..."
She clenched her hands into fists, her fingernails biting into her palms as she tried to suppress the fear she felt. "H-Honored Elder, Shampoo has failed in her quest. Shampoo is sorry she has shamed her ancestors. Shampoo return to village with Elder, and face her punishment." She rose and walked to the back of the restaurant, her head held high, her stride firm and strong, hiding the pain that her aura laid bare to Cologne's old eyes.
As Shampoo vanished up the stairs, a single tear appeared in Cologne's eye and made its way down her wrinkled cheek before dropping from her face to splash against the floor. "How I wish that were true child, how I wish that were true. We all need friends... at least Jusendo was enough to finally convince you that winning him with trickery would do you little good."
Cologne sighed as she pogoed to stand looking out the front of the restaurant. "I'm sorry it came to this, Ranma." She understood the Japanese far better than did her great-granddaughter, and she knew what it meant that Ranma had forsaken his name.
"I need that boy as an ally even if Shampoo has failed to win him. I wonder if it's too late? He was always so pleasant, so nice in spite of the pressure. I didn't expect this. This changes everything. Ishida... Ishida... where have I heard that before?"
---
Ranma released the aura technique as soon as he was sure he was out of Shampoo's range and paused on a rooftop to rest for a moment. Exhilarating as the speed of the technique was, it was also draining. Still, it wasn't the drain that occasioned his rest, for he could easily have maintained the technique all the way to the park.
Having to flee from Shampoo rather than facing her, even after resolving things with Akane, had drained his confidence. He had been feeling ever more confident with Nabiki's training, the imminence of a cure for the Neko-ken, and his first successful detection and defence of a water based attack since gaining the curse. That had all been reversed over the course of the day, with Nabiki's strange behavior and learning that he had been kicked out of the Tendo home and then the disturbing words of Akane, implying that he had somehow been moved to the Ishida register, a name he could not even recall having heard before.
Ranma started roof-hopping again at a more normal pace, heading for the park, but keeping his senses wide open watching for anyone following him. Just when everything had been going his way, it seemed, something had come along and pulled the stability out of his life. Once again a single day had changed everything, much like that day when he first met the Tendos, and went from a life of constant travel to having a home.
Landing lightly on the brick wall that lined the park, he strolled along the top for a ways before hopping to the ground at a break in the bushes. Moving more slowly, he continued into the park, trying to release his stress and anxiety. While he kept his eyes out for a good place to practice some kata, he practiced the Void and the Flame, feeding the flame with his uncertainties while cloaking himself within the void.
---
Hotaru was having a surprisingly decent day. While the teasing had not really let up, she had taken solace in the fact that she had made it to school without becoming tired along the way. She wasn't even really certain why she had tried so hard to keep doing the exercises everyday.
The dark haired boy had not shown up again, though she continued going to the park every day, just in case. Several times she had wanted to give up on the exhausting exercises, even after she had determined that she was becoming able to do them for longer periods of time.
In the end she had decided that her persistence had to do with grace. That boy had taken fighting, something she had always seen as dark, depressing, dirty, and unpleasant, and made it into an art, graceful, beautiful, and uplifting. She found herself clinging to the hope that if she could just learn how he could make such a dismal thing as fighting seem bright, without taking from it that which made it real, for she remembered still the final killing blow that made her see it as a dance of death, then perhaps she could do the same with her life. Take something which was dismal and depressing, her daily life, and make of it something worth having.
Yes, today was a good day, she thought, right up to the point where she found herself in the park, where she had gone as she went every day, surrounded by a group of boys. She didn't recognize them, they were not her usual tormentors, and the fact that several of them were carrying weapons made it look as if they wanted more than simply to see her cry.
She gasped and turned to run, only to find that they had gotten behind her as well. One of them laughed, cruelly, and she shrieked. Her scream was immediately stifled by a heavy hand against her mouth and her head rang as someone hit her, cursing quietly but forcefully. She shrank back and closed her eyes, knowing that there was nothing more she could do.
A moment later she felt herself lifted and moved with great speed cradled in strong arms, then set down by a tree. She opened her eyes in surprise and saw one of the boys fly past her to impact against a tree. She stared in startled wonder at the group only to see the last of them falling with a thin spray of blood issuing from a cut above his eye.
Standing in the midst of the battered and bruised was a figure she had given up hope of seeing again. "It's you!" she cried out before she could stop herself, and she felt her heart stop when his deep blue eyes fell on her. He was beside her in a flash, so fast that she could hardly believe that he had moved at all, kneeling by her side.
"Are you injured?" He asked in a tender, concerned tone.
"No... They hit me on the head, but not hard," she responded, her voice shaking a bit. She thought of what he might do if he ever spoke to the children at her school. The thought of her being treated the way those punks had been made her feel ill, and it suddenly occurred to her that he might not appreciate her trying to learn from him. He had said he wasn't a teacher. Would he hit her then?
He looked around then scooped her up. "Come on, we can't talk here," he said. She shrieked when he leapt, sailing up and over the trees, and she hugged him tightly, afraid that he would release her and she would fall. Surely a fall from the height of the top of a tree would be enough to kill her... or would it just leave her badly injured and in great pain? She burrowed tighter into his strong embrace, trying to take comfort in the immense power she could feel in his muscles, while trying to avoid remembering the painful blows those muscles had just dealt out.
It was bad enough when he bounced off treetops and then rooftops but when he leapt from the roof of a two story building straight to the street, she could not contain her scream, picturing them both shattered on the sidewalk.
He landed lightly though, so lightly that she felt just the slightest of bumps, then set her down. "Sorry about that, miss. Sometimes I forget that not everyone travels the way I do. I wouldn't let you fall, I do this sort of thing all the time. Anyhow, we can talk here, okay?"
He gestured at the building he had landed in front of and to her surprise when she looked at it it was an ice cream parlor.
---
Ranma heard a shriek and even as he moved swiftly in that direction, responding with the instincts of his training, his father's words in his mind, "A martial artist's first duty is to protect the weak," he showed no outward sign of emotion. Even the satisfaction of knowing that he had managed to retain the meditative technique while responding to the cry of distress was given to the flame, concealed within the void.
Though he was certainly not invisible, nor acting in a manner to avoid attention, as he leapt through the park at high speeds, no-one noticed his passage.
Landing near a group of boys, he recognized their type immediately. He had encountered enough of them on the road, though Nerima was largely clear of them by now. They were punks, boys with an over-inflated opinion of themselves, but not true street toughs. Street toughs lived on the streets and lived by the street's rules. They might not know the forms, but they generally knew how to fight, though not well enough to be a danger for a martial artist of his caliber, as long as he kept his eyes open for dirty tricks.
These boys on the other hand were mostly clean cut school boys, who were probably pampered and deferred to in their regular lives. This was their form of rebellion. They would be lucky if two of them knew the forms of an art, and it was far less likely that any of them had real experience with fighting.
They went after easy prey and did their work by threats and bluffs, and now apparently they had a schoolgirl. The fact that one of them was holding her made him realize right away that they were not merely extorting money and the recognition of their intent would have ignited a cold fury in him... but instead it merely fueled the flame that was already burning within.
None of them detected Ranma's silent entrance into their group. The boy holding the girl fell to a carefully placed ubujitsu strike, though not a painless one by any means. Ranma didn't want to risk the girl's well-being with harsher attacks. As soon as she was free of the falling youth's hands he scooped her up and sped out of the group. They were only just beginning to react to the fall of one of their number, who had not yet quite hit the ground, when Ranma was once more among them.
His force was proportionate to their weaponry. The boy who was wielding a pair of brass knuckles against a defenseless school girl received a crushing kick to the chest that cracked a rib and sent him flying while those who were unarmed received consciousness-stealing blows from a steel-hard fist.
He took down the last of them and stilled then turned his gaze to the girl. To his shock, he recognized her, the lonely eyed dark haired girl that he had seen twice before. In an instant he was by her side soliciting her health.
As she spoke his mind was racing. This was the third time he'd seen her, he had a legitimate reason to speak with her and his fiancee situation finally seemed to be getting closer to a resolution. When she fell silent he made his decision; the chance to get a new friend was worth the risk.
He glanced around. If he was going to try to make a friend, this was hardly the place to do it. It was littered with the bodies of the injured and would probably make her feel uneasy. He said as much then scooped her up before she could protest. She might take it the wrong way, he mused as he leapt, but she seemed too small to hurt him and she certainly hadn't been defending herself strongly against those boys.
She screamed then burrowed into his arms and as he began to allow his focus technique to relax a small smile grew on his face. It felt good to hold someone, cradled protectively in his arms. He had carried a few of his fiancees in this way and it had felt good then too, though it had always carried with it an undercurrent of fear and danger. Now he merely enjoyed the feeling of strength that always came when someone allowed him to protect them. It felt good to be able to use the art for what it had been intended for.
To be certain, he had learned the art for more than just helping people. It was his life, it was his passion, but so few people seemed to understand it the way he did. They could at least understand the protective aspect of it and when people accepted that, it felt as if they were accepting him. She had stopped screaming but she was still holding on to him tightly, silently asking for his protection, and the mere fact that she wasn't shoving him away, loudly declaiming that she could protect herself and needed not his help, against all evidence to the contrary, made him feel warm with acceptance, something he had enjoyed far too little of in his life.
As he leapt, he considered his destination. She was a small girl and younger than he and though he could not consider changing to a girl himself, for she knew nothing of his curse, still he felt that treating her to ice-cream would be the best way both of calming her after her narrow escape and of making her a friend. He knew that ice-cream always made him feel better when he was a girl and though it was not quite as exquisite an experience as a man, he hardly wasted a moment's thought about it being unmanly.
If in fact he had been thrown out and disowned, then he hardly had to worry about his father's notions of the behavior of a man. If his mother complained, he would just point out that he was doing it to win over a girl and she would be happy, even if she would read more into it than he was placing there.
The girl screamed loudly, piercing the silence, when he dropped smoothly from a two story building to land in front of an ice cream parlor. He apologised, being careful to focus on accepting the blame and avoiding any intimation that she had been in the wrong. That was one of the things he had learned from Nabiki; often more control over a situation could be gained from being in a conciliatory position than an aggressive one, if one did not have reason to be conciliatory to begin with, and the other person knew it. She had been very careful to admit up front that it was a wasted tactic if the other party would simply assume guilt, but otherwise it could forestall considerable recriminations. Nabiki had deftly made the point that he should evaluate the probable response and consequences of accepting the blame. If doing so meant having to pay money or accept punishment, then fighting it intelligently might be worthwhile, but if it would merely result in censure, then accepting it up front could often reduce or even eliminate the reproof.
He had not had a chance to try her suggestion before, since as far as he could tell, pretty much every relationship he had in Nerima was of the sort she had described wherein the fault would automatically be ascribed to him, making the technique useless. This, on the other hand, was a situation where he had just committed, as his mother might say, an act of heroism. Recriminations should be in short supply, and punishment still harder to come by, so taking the blame up front should help avoid any hard feelings and increase his chances of coming out of this with a friend and not another rival or enemy.
She looked up at him and nodded slowly. The expression on her face, if he read her rightly, was one of disbelief. He led her inside, opening the door for her, then guided her to a table and sat across from her.
A waitress came by and gave them menus. She tried to flirt with him but he was experienced at appearing oblivious. He did note the mild annoyance in the purple eyes of the young girl though. It did not surprise him; what surprised him was that the annoyance seemed reserved for the waitress and not for him. He was used to being the target of the recriminations, being accused of flirting and womanizing when girls tried to catch his eye. That she did not think that of him gave him a little hope that this might finally be his day.
"Order anything you like," he said, before glancing at his own menu. He kept one eye on the clock. Making a friend would be nice, but he didn't want to miss his appointment with Meiou-san. The chance to cure himself of his greatest fear was one he would not allow to pass him by.
The girl lowered her menu to stare at him for a moment, then she blushed and bowed her head. "I'm terribly sorry, I haven't even thanked you. I'm Tomoe Hotaru. Thank you for saving me, sempai."
Ranma grinned. "Ah, it was nothing, Hotaru-san. I'm Saotome Ranma and I'm pleased ta meetcha."
The girl smiled softly and was about to speak when the waitress returned, earning a glare for her interruption. She left after taking their orders, and Hotaru returned her attention to Ranma. "I saw you once before, Ranma-sempai. You were... I don't know what it is called... you were fighting someone who wasn't there."
"That was a kata," Ranma replied, remembering that day, and the feelings that had been evoked and after the first kata was done, a brief glimpse of lonely purple eyes.
"A kata, then. It... it was beautiful, Ranma-sempai. I've never seen anything like it. I've seen fights at school, but they were always so dirty and ugly. You made it seem so...," Hotaru paused. She'd been about to say graceful, or elegant, but those were feminine terms. Would he be offended? "So meaningful." A dance of death... the words echoed in her mind though she did not say them.
"Yeah," Ranma smirked. "That's why it's called an art. I've been learning it since I could walk." Ranma paused for a moment. He had been about to say "I'm the best," but would that be merely doing what Nabiki had said of him? Was he just seeking out the girls to stroke his ego? But it was true, wasn't it? He had beaten Saffron, for Kami's sake, surely he could be forgiven for claiming to be the best? Still the comparisons to Kuno and Kodachi would not leave his head. "The greatest Kendo champion!" rang in his head in Kuno's declamatory tones. Saying does not make it so, Tofu had said that once. Ranma had felt the same thing the first time Tofu had told him what a nice girl Akane was.
"It is an art intended to be used for defense," Ranma said, but immediately contradictions ran through his mind. Sure that is what his father had always claimed, but the two most powerful sets of moves were based on a thief attacking a house. How could that be construed as defensive? The only place for offensive moves in the art should be in response to the dictum that the best defense is a strong offense.
The waitress returned with their ice-cream and set it before them. Ranma looked at his for a moment. His instincts screamed at him to eat it and quickly, before someone stole it, but his training with Nabiki had already kicked in. At the same time that she had taught him to treat conversation as a fight, she had strongly indicated that there were aspects of it that had to be treated differently. In a fight, he could not afford to second-guess himself and absolutely had to trust his instincts if he were to win.
That same pattern of behavior, translated to verbal skills, had netted him immense amounts of trouble, for it meant speaking without taking time for thought. Nabiki had made it painfully clear that while there were many aspects of life that could be treated as a battle, that particular pattern was of use only in a physical confrontation where a moment's pause could mean the difference between life or death, winning or losing. In almost every other aspect of life, though, pausing for thought gave more advantage, and the well-considered word could do far more good than a hasty one.
Indeed, she had shown him some texts speaking of war and battle tactics, and one of the dictums had disturbed him greatly. "The hasty stroke goes oft astray." They made it plain that even in war and battle, instant decisions should be made only in the heat of battle and the midst of the fight, that in preparing for battle and arranging for the fight, care and caution were far more effective than speed.
With his instincts short-circuited, his mind kicked in. She was small and thin and hardly a danger to his food. No-one else but his father was foolish enough to try to take his food and while he might normally be concerned that an interruption could come at any moment and steal his opportunity, he was now in another district, far from any who knew him, bar one.
For once in his life, Ranma picked up his spoon and ate slowly, savoring the ice-cream, the textures and flavors. The benefit of not startling or disgusting his companion outweighed, in his short balancing of the scales, the risk of not finishing or being interrupted.
Some of the demons actually turned out to be quite good at ice-skating.