Chapter Twenty-Five (Ranma 1/2)
Trouble did not come immediately. I hadn't gone looking for it, and it knew better than to come to me. At the same time, I was going to stoke the fires of chaos as much as possible, just to sit back and enjoy the show. This perhaps spoke volumes of my current state. Once, the manipulation of key events for selfish reasons would have had me up in arms for the indignity of it all. Taking away free will, altering the events, modifying stuff just so it would fit a worldview of sorts and so forth had been a part of my long, really long life once. I had thought I had put them all behind me.
Apparently, playing the god that doesn't do anything but watches gets boring fast. History was cyclical after all, so I should have seen it coming.
It was with that thought in mind that I motioned Rito away from the road back home and towards an empty courtyard of dirt and grass, where a building would one day be built, but that served as nothing more than a place to train in that instant.
I sat down at the top of a stack of steel cylinders, held together with industrial wire and yawned, rubbing my eyes a bit before stretching my arms. "So," I said. "How did you find your first day at your new school?"
Rito shrugged, "It was nice...I guess," he said. "Why are we here?"
"Because it's a good enough place to get started on your Planeswalking," I remarked. "See, I reckon that with your bad luck, you might end up slipping through dimensions and end up pressing against the breasts of a very powerful and easy to piss off individual, so I'm going to explain some ground rules to you."
Rito looked sideways. "It's not like I want that to happen," he mumbled.
"Then fix it," I replied nonchalantly. "You can say you don't want to, you can claim you don't want to and you can even think you don't want to, but hey, you're a budding hormonal teenager. You'd dip the brush if you had the chance and we both know it. Less holier than thou attitude, more human-like answers pal. It's just you and me here, no judgment."
"That's not—look, I—" he passed his fingers through his hair, "I love Sairenji, she's my classmate—"
"I know who she is," I replied. "You also could have told her that on the first day of school and solved it there, but you didn't. And rather than pick one, you managed to get your wriggle room by thinking that if you marry Lala, then polygamy becomes acceptable, didn't you?"
Rito blushed, and began to twitch, "That's—no, it's just...I got so nervous, I lost my voice whenever she was nearby. It's only thanks to Lala if things got to the point where we could talk to one another."
"Then why didn't you tell her your feelings then?" I crossed my arms in front of my chest. "You were ashamed? Or perhaps you hoped to let things solve themselves?" I massaged my forehead, "Then again, you're a Green bred and thorough, I reckon it's in your nature to do that."
"I just didn't want to ruin...everything," Rito said, "I wasn't really thinking I'd end up...in that situation, but once I was it felt—I can't explain it, but I didn't want it to end badly for anyone involved. I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings."
"Indecision is by itself a painful answer to give," I said quite calmly. "Doing nothing is an answer too, you know?" I plopped my chin on my knuckles. "Try to make a plant grow," I said with a sigh, "But don't forget my words, Rito. If there's one thing I dislike it's to have to repeat the same thing again and again to the same person."
Rito looked around, and then back at me. "Which plant?"
"Whatever plant you want," I replied. "See, there are various means of achieving power as a Planeswalker, travelling would normally be one of them, but in your case it's best we don't move too much around." I tapped with my right foot against the ground. "Concentrate, feel the Spark within you ignite and burn, and let it take over in your stead."
Rito gave me an awkward nod, before crouching down in front of the closest stalks of green he could find. They were nothing more than blades of grass, a couple of sparse ones that still grew despite the poor conditions of the ground itself. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, extending both hands over them. Tiny motes of green mana began to gather around his fingertips, pulsing down into the ground and upon the grass.
In a second, the tiny motes around Rito's fingers grew larger as the feedback loop established itself. The thrumming power of the land was there, if not truly Green, at the very least formed from the countless practitioners and the spiritual energy of the people themselves. Through that energy, Rito's Spark burned as it enhanced the land beneath his feet, the mana slowly, but surely, starting to pour out of it as the sparse blades of grass became thick patches of green, small saplings grew and became trees, and vines ruptured forth from the top of the massive ancient trees that now stood in all of their glory high above our heads.
Rito fell on his back, gasping for air as a nearby bush rustled to an unseen breeze, and as his wide eyes took in the change he had made to the once empty building lot, he turned his questioning gaze towards me. I simply hopped off the steel cylinders' top and walked towards him, a hand extended to help him up.
"I did this?" Rito asked as I pulled him up.
"You did this," I answered him. "And I made sure nobody realized anything's changed. Let's get out of here before you inadvertently turn the trees into sexy wooden ladies though," I continued as I began to walk out of the small thicket that had sprouted in the middle of the city, and that to the minds of those nearby had always been there, and would always be. "Capable of giving you wood, if you know what I mean," I wriggled my eyebrows, and Rito stared blankly at me.
I huffed. "Thousands of years go by, and I have yet to find someone who laughs at my puns," I shook my head. "The multiverse is truly an unjust place."
"Maybe try to make jokes that aren't so horrible?" Rito hazarded. "And..." he scrunched his eyebrows in curiosity, "I don't get it," he scratched the side of his cheek, "I feel different, but...not so much."
"Ah, well, think of it as popping a cherry," I said, wriggling my eyebrows as one of the trees in the thicket sprouted cherry leaves. I watched as Rito stared blankly at the cherry tree, and then back at me. "Come on," I pouted, "This one was a good one, wasn't it?" he nervously coughed and looked away. I grumbled, and shook my head. "Fine, and here I am, trying to be the funny teacher. Youngsters these days, never understanding what is going on..." I pinched the bridge of my nose, and as we entered the street that would lead us back home, I stopped in front of the Tendo dojo.
Rito stopped next to me, and frowned. "Tendo dojo? One of my classmates has a dojo?" he asked.
"Yep," I said, "They teach the Anything Goes Martial Arts, and you're going to learn them," I continued with a bright smile. Rito looked at me. I looked back at him. He kept on fixing his gaze on me as if unsure of what I was telling him. I, in turn, slapped him gently on the back and stepped inside the courtyard, ringing the bell to announce our presence.
Kasumi was the one who answered the door, and as Rito guffawed at the sight of my body having become that of a middle-aged man with a briefcase in my right hand, he suddenly understood that I was posing as his father. Mostly because I had taken over his father's appearances for the sake of this secret, covert mission.
Soun Tendo was actually happy to have a pupil into his school.
One that came with a hundred thousand Yen inscription payment on the fly was even better.
Ah, greed...
...the number one sin that works by adding zeroes to a number.