Disorderly Princess & Fiery Steed WIP

[borgrabbit]

I really like how the Ran-nata gestalt is so mature and perceptive. Now, if the synthesis could form when both are awake and aware of the outside world, they might be able to do some serious ass kickage. If Hinata can pull off some vacuum blades...or Ranma the Byakugan. Still, great story idea. Keep your muse well fed and focused. OBTW, regarding the apartment, Sarutobi was fully appreciative of Naruto's part in the previous war against the mine-tails. Also, considering the near annihilation of the Uchiha clan and general killage in the Kyubi's wake, decent housing was probably available to anyone that wanted it.
└☺┘

[gsteemso]

@borgrabbit: Recall that this is currently pre-manga for both series. They possess limited ass-kicking potential at this point in the timelines.

Was unhappy with Genma’s fight scene (it turns out I was remembering the details of the Sen-ken techniques wrongly). In particular, the Umi-sen-ken doesn’t make you invisible, it just makes you hard to notice by hiding your aura. Fixed version below. Feedback please?

Will be posting the chapter in a few days if no one points out any showstoppers. Hate the draggy pacing of this chapter but am going to just cut my losses and get busy with the next one, rather than undertaking an extensive rewrite.

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Genma stood bravely in the middle of the Elders’ private sparring circle, grimly eyeing the three purportedly dangerous old biddies arrayed around him. The example of the dreaded Master, whom he dared not actually name even in the privacy of his own thoughts, showed that shrivelled-up senior citizens could be extremely threatening sometimes, so he wasn’t going to be complacent about this even if they were a bunch of old women.

“Saotome Genma, your performance in this challenge match will determine whether you live long enough to see the sun set in an hour,” said one of them. “To pass the test, you must stay alive until we say you have succeeded, and you must also remain within the sparring circle at all times. Hold nothing back, for your life depends on it, even if you manage to avoid being killed in the course of the fight.”

His face an expressionless mask, Genma stared confidently at the Elder who’d spoken, making sure to show no weakness… while simultaneously keeping his senses sharp where the two off to the sides behind him were concerned. Sure enough, a few seconds later, the Elder he was looking at subtly relaxed, just enough to mislead a less experienced fighter into thinking they weren’t going to start quite yet… and he barely managed to dodge the leaping kick coming silently from behind his left flank.

So fast! he gibbered, mentally winding his operating level up several notches even as he narrowly evaded the third Elder’s equally stealthy strike. These old hags were individually faster than he was, and while he couldn’t accurately judge their actual skills yet, it looked like even the horrible Master — may his tormented shade be molested by sweaty incubi for all eternity — would have had trouble fighting all three at once like this. No alternative, then. He whipped a large, ratty-looking blanket out of… somewhere… and adopted a very odd stance—

The Elders’ faces briefly registered shock as he either disappeared from or became insignificant to all their senses, and even the fact they could still technically see him wasn’t much help with the speed he was suddenly moving — the Elders may have been faster, but like most fighters, were unused to tracking someone who was barely visible and didn’t register at all to their chi sense. However, you don’t live to be that old in a place as intensely competitive and political as a small village of warrior women without learning to hide your thoughts, and the telltale expressions were gone almost before Genma even saw them. Quickly, one of the ancient fighters kicked the ground, releasing a precisely shaped surge of chi.

Genma barely kept silent as the ground erupted beneath him, the entire sparring circle suddenly being transformed into a hellish landscape of jagged earthen spikes. Not missing a beat, he gathered an irregular subset of the freshly loosened earth and rock into his unnoticed blanket — much to the Elders’ bewilderment, as the spikes disappeared across a seemingly random patchwork of the sparring circle even as they heaved out of the ground. They caught flickers of movement all over the circle, but were unable to stay focussed on him. Genma wasted no time, and employed the finishing move of the Umi-sen-ken on the closest Elder.

She detected the meteoric descent of the blanket full of debris when it was a full metre above her head, and was only struck a glancing blow by it as she made a startled evasion to the right. It was just barely enough to bump her out of the circle, though. The remaining two crones, meanwhile, whirled in a concerted dance of vicious strikes through Genma’s apparent position, hoping to get in a lucky blow before he had time to distance himself from the heap of debris.

What they didn’t realize was that he had, at the last moment, launched himself straight up as the mass of earth had plunged downwards, adding to the momentum of its descent and distancing himself from the evidence of his passing in one simple manœuvre. He took full advantage of the Saotome school’s ærial specialization to reach a position in the circle that most people would have thought impossible relative to his starting point, desperately lashing out with a modified Strike of the Spitting White Snake to catch an Elder by the arm as she flickered past.

Unfortunately for Genma, she detected him when he got in close. Suddenly there were seven of her, swirling in three dimensions around his position, since they’d twigged to his ærial manœuvres. His hand went uselessly through an afterimage, even as his unobtrusive body suddenly started to take inaccurate but still debilitatingly painful blows from, it seemed, every direction at once.

He swore inwardly and, unable to escape the Elder’s assault, gambled on a sneaky move with the blanket. Alas, he caught only an afterimage, and with the second remaining Elder joining in the attack, the new evidence of his position was nearly his undoing. Only a desperate burst of vacuum blades cleared a way out for him, though they didn’t hit anything more substantial than the hem of a robe. Worse, he lost both his concentration on the Umi-sen-ken and his blanket in the escape, returning to full visibility with large bruises and obvious cuts all over himself.

Rolling and flipping, he managed to propel himself into the air just in time to avoid a return salvo of much smaller vacuum blades from the two Elders, who had abandoned the Splitting Cat Hairs for the moment. “You already know that one? Shit.”

The damned old baggages smirked at him! Genma had a moment’s concern that Ranma’s cursed form might smirk like that as the boy grew older, and shuddered. Bad thoughts. Mind on the fight! With renewed determination, he stooped low and began firing rocks at his opponents with powerful flicks of his fingers, finding plenty of ammunition as he scuttled crablike across the spiky surface of the devastated sparring ring. In a way it was convenient that one of the two ancient terrors had flipped his blanket out of the ring, denying it to him, as he now had one hand free to flick rocks at each of them.

Unfortunately, even with a stream of unpredictably aimed rocks of varying sizes being launched at them at nearly crossbow bolt speeds, the Elders were still faster than him, especially as beat up and sore as he was. He was just glad they hadn’t quite managed to tag his hands. As hard as they’d been hitting, he would have suffered multiple broken fingers, or worse. Even so, his left wrist was one of the loudest of the many, many body parts screaming at him.

Being faster, they’d soon managed to close with him again, and Genma knew the end was near. He grimaced, and prepared a desperation strike using the full power of the Yama-sen-ken. “HALT!” he shouted authoratively in Mandarin, having learned this single word of the language from all the policemen who’d shouted it after him as he crossed China. His chi-charged voice hit the rapidly approaching Elders with the force of a runaway freight train. He grimly pivoted and tried to perform two of the Yama-sen-ken’s signature power strikes on the momentarily stunned old women at the same time; but their auras were as strong as his own, they were substantially more experienced and battle-hardened, there were two of them, and they had both more or less recovered from the chi-borne paralysis before he could actually strike them. As Genma frantically evaded their return blows by retreating under cover of a few rapidly-flicked pebbles, he realized he was about out of tricks. They hadn’t even had to work to evade the pebbles this time.

The two Elders, having his full measure now, closed in again. A knife-hand strike blurred in towards his neck from each side, and he realized he wasn’t going to get out of the way in time! Only one option le—

Blackness.

[Spokavriel]

I don't like the change. Genma isn't "Barely seen" he's unnoticeable. He can't be seen through like a fading after image or something he's still just as hard to look through as he is outside of the technique but no one can notice or track him because of it.

There is no barely seen they can see him clearly but they can't tell where he is because he's unnoticeable. Its like point to the air that isn't moving. Try it right now point to where the air is not moving.

[borgrabbit]

If we're talking non-noticeability, that put me in mind of an old (really old) science fiction novel that I forget the title of. The protagonist was given the gift of non-noticeability by some aliens to perform a task. The only way anyone 'saw' him was when he grabbed them and looked them in the eye. I'd think that unless there was a pretty darned powerful active component, the elders would see through the mere masking of Genma's aura in the same way one would see a rock and dodge to avoid stubbing a toe. Maybe the blanket is acting like a radar dish, projecting hypnotic, do not notice me rays.
At least this is my take on the idea. Heh.

Yeah, I guess that Ranma hasn't had quite the 'training' regimen of Nerima. Still would like to see what the crones would make of chakra manipulation. Would she be declared a youma? or classified in Saffron's category.