Power and Responsibility: Chapter 2

Ranma, sitting under his usual tree, was peacefully eating a freshly
grilled okinomiyaki.  Shampoo hadn't shown up as he had expected and
Ryoga was still off in the wrold, so life was bearable, sorta.
Akane wouldn't even look at him, but that only meant she couldn't hit
him, another point in the good day category.  It would soon be passing
the bad day category, if, and only if, the idiotic boys at Furinkan
High stopped splashing him with water.  They had learned from Nabiki,
of course, that he was cured and were curious to see the miracle of a
wet, yet still male Ranma.  One of the braver, and dumber guys of the
senior class had actually gone so far as to berate Ranma for taking
being selfish and not giving anyone a chance to see Ranma-chan again.
He would be getting out of the hospital within the month.

"Saotome, you fiend!" The familiar cry of a certain kendoist silenced
the gathered students.  Ukyou, who had been sitting near Ranma and
making puppy dog eyes at him, quickly folded her portable grill up,
batter still cooking on the surface, and hurried to safety.  Her line
of customers followed suit.

He knew that the idiot was bound to show up.  Frankly he was suprised
that it had taken so long.  Shoving the last half of the okinomiyaki down
his throat, Ranma stood up, wiped his hands on his pants, and asked,"What
is it now, Kuno?"

"Do not seek to fool me with false indifference!  I have discovered
your heinous crime and know that even now you must tremble in fear for
I am the vessel of holy vengeance which, with Kami-sama's blessing,
shall bring about your demise!" Then he drew steel.

Ranma scowled.  He scowled darkly.  It made three girls cry just to see
his face in that position."What did I do now, Kuno?" he spat.

"The mercenary sister of my beatiful goddess of the hunt, the object of
your dark obsession, has informed me that you have vanquished the pig-
tailed goddess.  Even now she must weep to be hald in my powerful
arms.  Alas, we are now separated by the most determined of foes; death.
But you, foul demon, shall pay for your crimes!  This I swear on the honor
of the Kuno line!" Kuno began a slow and steady advance on Ranma from
across the school yard.

Nabiki probably thought this was all wonderfully funny, Ranma thought.
Would it be so funny if someone got hurt or killed?  Ranma wasn't willing
to find out.  In a blur he rushed forward and punched Kuno in the gut
before he could even begin to defend himself.  The older boy fell to
his knees asping and heaving.  While he was incapacitated Ranma kicked
him in the head.  As Kuno went flying, Ranma's arm shot out and grabbed
the point of his katana.  It slipped easily from Kuno's slack fingers.

The bell chose this time to ring signalling the end of lunch.

Ranma flipped the sword around and caught it by the hilt.  Contemptuosly,
he prepared to break it over his knee, but at the last second got a
better idead.  Holding the hilt in his right hand, he placed the point on
the palm of his left, then as the gathered students watched, he curled
the blade into a tightly wound circle of steel that resembled nothing
more than a shiny lolly pop with a fancy stick.  There gasps and whis-
pered comments from his audience.  They were all amazed that even someone
as legendary as Ranma could do that without injury.  Ranma wasn't about
to tell them that he had cheated a little.  Iron, and therefore still,
is highly ferous.
****

"I heard about what happened at lunch today, Ranma," Nabiki commented as
she and Akane walked home on the sidewalk.  Ranma, as always, took the
higher fence route.

"I wonder who the mercenary was that sold him the information.  I can't
wait to get my hands on her since now Kuno thinks that I killed the
pig-tailed girl.  There's no telling what he will try now," Ranma said
while looking down on Nabiki with cold indifference.

She met his gaze, but didn't say anything.  Her eyes easliy said she
didn't give a damn.

"Ranma," Akane screamed,"are you threatening my sister?!" She didn't wait
for an answer.

Ranma ducked out of the way of Akane's thrown school bag.  A few
seconds later he heard a splash.  Akane had thrown her books into the
canal!

Akane screeched, gripped the chain link fence he was standing on, and tore
it out of the concrete that anchored it."It's your fault, so you can go
and get them!" Akane then attempted to throw the fence and Ranma into
the canal.  She was only partially succesful.  The section of fencing
did make a nice splash.  Ranma, however, used his fiance's head as a
spring board and propelled himself across the street and onto the roof of
a nearby grocery store.

In the heat of the moment Akane had even felt Ranma's foot on her head
and Nabiki's vision was clouded by concrete dust, so he made a clean
getaway while they waited for him to come out of the canal with
Akane's school bag.
****

Ranma didn't bother to announce his arrival, instead going straight to
the dojo.  He'd only be able to practice in it whenever he wished for
a couple more days, then he would be moving across town.  As he
entered, Ranma noticed the hole he had accidentally inflicted on the
dojo had already been repaired, leaving no evidence of its existance
except for a slightly darker color where new materials were used.

"Ranma, you in there?  Boy where are you?" Genma called from the back
yard.  He enterd the dojo moments before Ranma could begin working out.
"There you are, boy.  Come with me, Tendo and I need to talk to you."

Ranma shrugged and followed his father into the sitting room of the
house.  He sat on a cushion and waited to here what retarded scheme
his and Akane's father had dreamed up to get them together.

"Ranma," Soun began,"we've decided that since you will be leaving to
stay with Nodoka-san in a few days that you and Akane should be wed as
soon as possible."

Genma picked up the torch."We've already called the minister.  He should
be here within the hour.  Aren't you happy?!" Genma finished with
tears streaming down his face.  Soun was bawling like a baby.

Ranma was anything but happy. In fact he was kinda pissed.

"I'm home!" announced Akane.  She appeared in the doorway with a curious
look on her face.

Soun leapt to his feet and rushed over to his daughter, hugging
her tightly."Oh I'm so happy for you!"

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

"Why your upcoming marriage to Ranma of course."

"What?!" She knocked her father back as she threw her arms up and spread
her glare between all three of the men in the room.

"Hey don't look at me like that.  It's not like I had anything to do
with this crap.  They just told me too."

Akane said,"Leave this to me," and whipped out a really big mallet.

Glad that she wasn't after him, Ranma quietly slipped out of the room
and headed back to the dojo.  As he left he heard cries of 'not to your
own father' and 'son help me' mixed in with the more pronounced cries
of pain.  Served them right.  They wouldn't have anything to worry about
if Akane dealt with the minister the same way.

Letting the matter drop, Ramna returned to the dojo.  Once there, he
found the box in the back corner where they kept all the weapons that
people left behind when they tried to kill him.  There were hundreds
of shuriken, kniges, and other assorted throwing weapons that all belonged
to Mousse.  It also contained more exotic weaponry, such as some of
Kodachi rigged gymnastic implements.  Pushing all the chains aside,
he gathered a handful of shuriken from the non-poisoned pile.

Next he set up on of the new titanium training dummies that Nabiki had
bought for Akane.  He tore the pig-tail off of it, though.  Dealing
with distorted space was easy for Ranma it was his main ability and
came easily to him.  That's not to say gravity and magnetism eluded
his control, but he didn't feel that he could fully trust himself in a
fight yet if he had to use them.  Not that he expected to ever really
need that kind of power unless he decided to take on the Japanese
Defense Force.

In hopes of bettering his control of over his secondary powers, Ranma
threw the shuriken into the air and suspended them there by counteracting
the natural pull the earth exerted on them.  He couldn't control them like
he had the dart from the night before becuase there were too many, but
he couldmove them all in the same general direction.  After a moment
of gathering the energy in is hand, Ranma cast it outward towards
the floating shuriken.  When the magnetic pulse hit them, they were
sent hurtling towards the dummy.  Almost faster than Ranma could see,
several of them sunk deeply into the metal dummies, but five continued
past it.  This is where the second part of his plan came in.  Concentra-
ting, he created a very strong unidirectional gravitational pull.  No
more than a foot past the dummy, the shuriken slowed to almost a stop,
then snapped back to the dummy like rubber bands.  They all *thunked*
solidly into the spot where Ranma had increased the gravity.

Ranma walked up to the dummy to inspect his handy work and saw that
the shuriken in the back of the dummy were imbedded almost entirely in
it.  The circular spot where he had increased gravity was also
deeply indented where the titanium had compressed under its own
increased weight.  That had gone better than he had hoped.  Once
again grasping the magnetic side of his powers, he tore the shuriken from
the dummy and smoothed out their dulled and bent edges good enough that
he could use them again.  For the next hour Ranma practiced directing
the shuriken at different areas of the dummy with a combination of
directed gravity and magnetism.  By the time he decided to stop for
the evening, Ranma had discovered how to create multiple areas of
altered gravity and could use them to guide specific objects.  The
shuriken, though, were a lost cause.  Ranma had turned them into nothing
more than tiwsted lumps of metal with his training.  Good thing he had
more.

"Bravo, Saotome, bravo!" came Nabiki's voice from behind him.

Ranma spun around, startled by Nabiki's entrance, and silently
berated himself for letting his guard down."What do you want Nabiki?"

"Oh nothing really important.  I'd just like to know where you
learned magic." She held up a mini-video cassette."It was really
amazing.  I'm glad I got it on tape."

Ranma suddenly remembered something he had seen on a movie the month
before.  A man had killed a woman, but was caught on tape.  The man had
found the tape and rather than destroying it, had used a powerful magnet
to erase it.  With a little smirk, he gathered and directed the force
into the tape, and just to make sure the job was done, used a lot
of it."Magic," he barked out a humorless laugh."I can't do magic."

Nabiki shook her head."It would explain why you aren't cursed anymore.
I mean like if you had found a book or something and it told you how."
She shrugged."I'm sure you'll be honset with me, won't you?"

"I really don't know any magic Nabiki, I promise.  What you saw was
just really advanced chi control," he assured her.  In a way he wasn't
lying.  The system of generators, capacitors, and emitters that made up
the weapons system that he had become fed off the energy his body gener-
ated, his chi, so if you stretched it a little you could see what he did
as very advanced chi control.

"Really Saotome, do you expect me to believe that.  If I were to show
this tape to Cologne, what would she saw?  I'd be willing to bet it would
be something about the impossiblitites of making things fly"

Sighing, Ranma held out his hand.  The tape flew from Nabiki's hand into
his own.  A second later, after she had taken a deep breath, Ranma
returned it to her the same way."All I did was pull or push it with my
chi.  Simple as that."

Nabiki stuck the tape in the back pocket of her shorts for safekeeping
and frowned at Ranma."I know that you're hiding something from me,
Saotome, and I'm going to find out what it is." She then, with a huff,
left Ranma in the dojo by himself.

"Well that went well," he told his new training partner, a now perfer-
ated titanium dummy, who he had affectionately named Ryoga.
****

That night Ranma had trouble going to sleep.  Every time he closed his
eyes his mind would wander and he would begin seeing strange landscapes
, alien wildlife, and titanic battles between a people whose skin and
hair covered a wide range of colors.  They fought one another savagely,
some using simple swords, while others manned laser cannons.  The
visions didn't disturb Ranma who was used to fighting, but it
was distracting.  They might have bothered him more if he hadn't know
why he was having them, also.  The alterations to his brain, he had
learned from one of those bursts of spontaneous insight he seemed to
get now, that allowed him to control something as chaotic as distorted
space and perform feats like teleporting without appearing inside of
walls had expanded his senses beyond imagining.  Now wherever he had
been, Ranma could go back to that place in his mind and view what
had happened there in the past or what was currently happening.

Unfortunately he had a lot of unaccessed knowledge about whatever planet
it was that Chiron was from floating around in his head and combined with
the lack of control over his visions, he had a virtual theater on the back
of his eyelids.  Ranma only hoped that Chiron knew someway to help him
get control of the visions, or sleep was going to become a precious 
commodity.

Author's notes: I know this is a short chapter, but this felt like a
good stopping point.  I'd lie to think everyone who has sent me
comments about this story.  The response was unbelievable!  Anyway, I'd
like everyone's help again.  As you know, if you've been reading the
story, I've already fleshed out Ranma's abilities pretty well, and I
also introduced Satori in the first chapter with her ability to create
and manipulate light and plasma.  Her color is yellow.  That means that
out of ten colors, only black and yellow have been used.  Below, I'm
going to list the different colors I plan on using for the cubes and
the gender of who will have it.  If anyone wants to, they can right
a paragraph or two long character and power description, and I'll use
it in my story.  Keep in mind that each cube grants abilites in a
certain area.  No one character should be able to throw balls of ice,
shoot lightning out of their eyes, and breath fire, understand?  This
would really help me because besides Ranma all the other people with a
cube are going to be new.  Oh yeah, you character doesn't have to be
good.  They could be evil, perverted, greedy, or all three at once for
all I care as long as they're well developed.

Red-boy
Blue-girl
Orange-boy
Purple-girl
Green-boy
White-girl
Crystal(you know, clear)-boy
Gray-girl

I'm going to start on chapter two in a day or two, but I'm only expecting
to use Satori in it as an extra.  That means I won't be needing these
for about for or five days, so get to work:)  Thanks!

dark_phoniex@hotmail.com