[Ranma][FanFic] The Bet - Featherbrite's Tale 3a
MetroAnime
Featherbrite's Tale, the Bet. Rough version
by Gregg Sharp based on Rumiko Takahashi's situations/char
other char TM Jack Chalker, JRR Tolkein, and other authors.
Metro...@aol.com
http://members.aol.com/greggsharp/index.html
3a: Another New Complication
------------Tendo-ke, Nerima----------------------------
Featherbrite awoke to find the tall girl
checking on her. Another quick probe penetrated
the mortal's flimsy mental defenses.
Kind, nice, polite, quite intelligent, though
there were restraints and barriers in place. Featherbrite
snapped to full wakefulness and felt sympathy for this
mortal. She'd accidently put in a compulsion that would
have her treating Ranma's father like a low-grade moron.
(Not that he wasn't, in Featherbrite's opinion, but it might
cause further friction if this girl acted like that before
Featherbrite was ready to exploit it.) (1)
Worse, this girl had some odd compulsions
and self-imposed restrictions on her behavior that the
faerie couldn't quite understand. Still, there were some
things that Featherbrite had learned after 9,500 years of
intermittent observation of the Big Folk. One of these
was that some of these humans suffered from odd diseases
like "shyness" and "insecurity" and other insanities.
In some ways, Featherbrite decided, this girl
was even better as a potential mate to Ranma than the
amazon. It wouldn't take much, either. A little tweak here,
a little push there, a tiny adjustment behind those chestnut
eyes and the girl would be seducing Ranma within the
week.
Featherbrite sighed. It was SO tempting. She
knew Ranma had some odd ideas about this right/wrong
thing, and probably wouldn't approve. It was so hard not
to do _something_ though. This "Kasumi" put on a happy
face but that was just on the surface layers. From what the
faerie could see and interpret, if she got this girl and Ranma
together, there was a fair chance of a deeper happiness
developing. All it would take was a little nudge.
Featherbrite restrained herself, but it was a close
thing.
Kasumi was talking about making the little guest
a little bed when Featherbrite remembered she'd left an
amazon sleeping on the roof.
--------------Furinkan SHS, Nerima----------------------------
Ranma grabbed one end of the whirling chain
and realized that this wasn't a good idea. She would have
dodged but there had been people behind her, and it was
only a whirling length of steel with sleeves of a darker metal
on the links. It wouldn't have been any problem if she'd been
in the uncursed male form. However, in the half-faerie form...
Nabiki was moving before the first involuntary
scream from Ranma, reaching into the flames in order
pull the chain weapon away from where it had wrapped
first around Ranma's hand, then the other end around the
faerie-girl's neck.
Akane went from deer-in-headlights to moving
forward when she noticed that Nabiki had already gotten
there. Not having read the same stories as her sister, Akane
thought that Kuno must have done something really odd.
Incendiary charges seemed out of character for the kendoist.
A quick glance at Kuno confirmed that he hadn't expected
this sort of thing either. The samurai was standing there
still, in shock at what his own actions had just wrought.
"Akane," Nabiki said as she stuffed the chain
into her bookbag. "Give me a hand here. She's gone into
shock."
Akane lifted Ranma, amazed at how light the
cursed form was. "Hot water?"
"Nurse's office first," Nabiki replied as she
opened the doors to the school. "Those are third degree
burns."
Kuno continued to stare at the place his winged
goddess had stood. His plans had crumbled away, and even
his usual delusions had trouble putting a positive spin on
this development.
-------------Myou na Maru(2), China------------------
The "fishing" vessel landed at a small dock that
was conveniently not on any maps, patrol routes, or official
lists. A deal had been cut ages ago (literally) that as long as
certain types of cargo weren't shipped/sold, then the dock
would remain open and a secret.
Five amazons of the Nichieju boarded the ship,
not having to pay for passage as this was part of another
agreement. As long as the ship was of use to the various
groups who made use of its services, it was neutral ground.
The male amazons and the "washouts" were a little nervous
about the passengers, but others took it in stride.
Parcels were loaded into a haycart, and the ship
was quickly and efficiently unloaded. Just as quickly, the
ship was loaded and set out again. Mainland China had been
a brief stop for several decades now. Some of the crew could
remember before the "People's Revolution" and the closing
of Chinese society. One could remember the Wall being erected.
Nathan Brazil, owner of the Myou Na Maru, was
in one of his phases where he was _not_ the Captain. He
watched the amazons board and remembered the plains of
Scythia and the horse-riding spear-toting women that they
had been well over 3000 years previously. They had been
a fading legend in Homer's time, but nomads were notoriously
hard to pin down.
"Well," came a basso grumble from a squat seaman
even shorter than the Wandering Jew, "whatever you can
say about it, it's gotta be different. Chinese Amazons?"
"Last time they had crossed the ocean and had
been located in Nevada. The time before that, they were in
South America. Every time the universe gets reset, it's just
a little different. If it weren't a little different each time, I don't
think I could handle it." Nathan watched one of the amazons
getting seasick even before the ship had pulled from the dock.
"Hmph. Still don't know how you do it. I mean,
I'm only 900 years old, and I still feel like going to sleep and
somebody wake me up when someone's actually doing
something new." Tolkein snorted. The old dragon still spoke
with an English accent despite his years of seperation from
that land. He'd taken the name of a writer from that land as
a joke to any who knew his real nature.
Nathan grunted softly. Despite appearances,
maybe something different WOULD happen. Certainly he
didn't remember dragons and faeries showing up in the 20th
Century the last time.
---------------------Tendo-ke, Nerima--------------
"Something's happened to Ranma," Featherbrite
was buzzing along like an unhappy hummingbird. "He's
hurt."
"Oh dear. He's probably at school by now."
Featherbrite didn't think that Shampoo would
wake up, but she didn't want the warrior to cause problems
in her absence if she did. There was also the unexplained
matter of the scent of supernatural evil in the yard.
The faerie sent a structured command into the
amazon's mind. <*This is Kasumi. She is a friend but not
a warrior. You can trust her. Because she's not a warrior,
she may need your protection.*> She sent a similar set into
Kasumi's mind, explaining that the amazon was a foreign
warrior but a friend who needed to be looked after.
It was due to the extreme hurry to find out what
had happened to Ranma that Featherbrite hadn't anticipated
the sort of problems that these two sets of instructions
could cause in the future.
In fact, by the time she remembered casting this
spell again, the effects would have snowballed.(3)
Shampoo smiled in her sleep. A friend. She had
always wanted one of those.
----------------Furinkan SHS, Nerima-----------------------
Mister Hisakawa, biology teacher, adjusted
his belt and tried to get his attention back on his class.
He was failing miserably.
A few more photos had been added to his
collection of Ranma-yousei. He had borrowed the Physics
Department's high-speed camera and caught a number of
shots of the flying martial artist. His friends in Tokyo
University's faculty would be intrigued by his sudden
interest in special effects, until they saw the wing sample
he'd managed to get from the patient in the nurse's office
while her "guardian" was occupied elsewhere.
Once they actually saw this Ranma, well,
Hisakawa still had some dreams. Being stuck at a minor
Senior High School in a Tokyo suburb was not what he
had planned for his future. Fame, fortune, girls, essays,
the lecture circuit.
A pity about the boy, but exploratories would
have to be performed. What were the musculoskeletal
connections for the wings like? Were the internal organs
more suggestive of mammals, or were the wings insectile
nature indicative of the internal anatomy?
Hisakawa knew he couldn't count on much
help among the faculty at Furinkan. The physics teacher,
Keiko Nagai(4) would especially be against any of his
plans. Likewise Keiko Tomita was already waxing quite
eloquently about crushing the competition from the
other schools if she could get that flute player to sign
up.
Seeing the 4'10" Tomita laughing maniacally
and talking about the utter humiliation and destruction
of other High School's music programs had been quite
amusing. One would never have guessed that she had
taken the school's poor performance over the last six
years so personally.
Sighing to himself, and putting his dreams
of the lecture circuit to the side, Hisakawa-sensei returned
to the lecture of ATP>ADP and how muscles worked.
The fire never left his eyes, however, with the thought that
he might not have to do this again NEXT year.
-------------------------
Ranma awoke to find that he was a he again,
and that he was alone in the Nurse's office. A quick check
revealed that the Nabiki's scent (an inexpensive but vaguely
flowery-spicy perfume) was still fairly strong in the air.
Bandages at wrist and neck covered the worst
of the burns. Ranma could feel a small injury in his back,
a gouge or something.
Getting up proved to be somewhat more difficult.
Years on the road had taught Ranma a number of things. The
sensation of being poisoned was one of these and he gave
both sets of burns a tentative label of poisonous. The act
of catching certain black chains was filed under "things you
want to avoid in the future."
As the dizzy spell passed, Ranma got up and rinsed
his face off in the sink, remembering at the last minute to let the
water warm up before doing so.
A tiny figure glowing and sending off sparks, shot
into the room.
-----------Myou No Maru, near China------------------------------
"<You suppose this is usual?>" Shammi hung over
the side of the ship. The green tint to her complexion was an
interesting match to the darker green of her pantsuit.
"<You mean the way the ship keeps lurching up
and down? Or do you mean the way that glowing green ship
keeps appearing behind us?>" Dina tapped her nunchaku
idly against her boot.
"<Oceans didn't look nearly so bad on the
map. Why didn't anyone mention this problem of keeping
one's lunch in the proper place?>" Shammi glanced over
at the hooded and cloaked figure of Vanilla, whose reddish
eyes were calmly regarding the two males that had periodically
reappeared over near the forward railing.
Shammi envied the albino little, but her ability
to remain unfazed during the ship's movements was the
subject of some envy at the moment.
That left a little nine-year-old girl who was
only slightly less comfortable than Vanilla. Rei Ga had
been chosen because, once again, she'd managed to get
on the bad side of Elder Cologne.
Rei Ga was watching the shorter of the two
men and was coming to an unpleasant conclusion. She
would have to make SURE she didn't get into a situation
where she had to fight the short man. It would be most
unpleasant.
---------------------------------------------
=========================
(1)- It's been said i need to clarify this. Featherbrite is
not quite the sort of faerie that appears as the kid's sidekick
in some children's video. In keeping with the slightly more
mature audiences that Ranma was intended for, these are the
faerie of the Faerie Realms, old and fey creatures who don't
quite understand human morality at best. Beings of wild magic
who are quite powerful, but also quite limited. Featherbrite is
near the low end of the power scale. Oberon (more on him
much later) is at the upper end. Think less "Rainbow Brite"
and more Shakespeare and "L'Mort d'Arthur" era pieces.
Another problem is that FB's view of humans and their
customs, practices, and morals is that she's developed them
over the past nine thousand years and has a rather piecemeal
idea of such things as mating practices...
(2) Spelling corrected.
(3) In keeping with the nature of faerie, Featherbrite's spells
are all pretty much instinctive weavings of wild magic (referred to
as wyld magic hereafter to avoid confusion with wild use of magic)
with the basics being the entreaty/requests of nature that Ranma
can manage.
(4) Have NO idea what the official names of any of the teachers,
other than Hinako Ninnomiya, are. For purposes of this fic:
Sanbei Hisakawa, biology teacher with dreams of being a lecturer.
(5) it has been pointed out that i continue to defy two major
laws of the Takahashi universes:
1) All males are stupid egotistical jerks. This rule also seems
to apply to damn near every American sitcom, which is why i don't
watch American TV anymore.
2) Violence from a man to a woman is wrong. Violence from a
woman to a man is justified. Sadly, many people in RL take this same
view. It is not a view that this writer shares.
And yes, i am going to CONTINUE to defy these laws. So
there! Even more despicable, i shall continue to follow some of the
laws governing OTHER anime universes:
Weirdness accumulates.
Consequences happen, snowballs abound.
Main character men are generally clueless about main character
women. The reverse is generally also true. Clueless does not mean
stupid.
It ain't over till the end credits roll, and sometimes not even then.
No matter how good the heroes get, the villain of the current
plotline STARTS OUT stronger.
There are anime conventions i will violate:
everyone is of the same genetic phenotype/race, and speaks
the same language.
just because R has a curse, S uses magic potions, and i've
seen a ghost cat, i scoff at the idea of a cursed spirit doll. (Frankly, i'd
think Kasumi or Nabiki would be pouring hot water on any stray animals
that show up just to be sure it isn't another suitor/challenger.) This
doesn't even get into the various things like a cursed antique shop or
a legendary phoenix, etc.
<clip to 3b>
someone let me know if i failed to post chapter 2. (don't see it,
but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.)