The girl's electrical charge is all out of whack. She can't charge electricity at the moment, because if she were to try, she would draw back positive and negative charges, which would simply cancel each other out. Even as she realizes what is happening, she can feel her body working to calm the charges. So, for now the girl cannot call on the power of thunder. Rolling her neck, the girl reaches back, her shoulders popping, and the girl's magic shifts. Clenching a fist, the shattered concrete around Chen's collapsed body rumbles, before large, thick roots burst from the shattered soil, growing up and wrapping around the unconscious boy.
Makoto quietly stands there for a moment, her eyes tracking out across the battlefield. The courtyard outside the apartment complex she has been living in for the last few years has been utterly transformed, changed into something entirely unrecognizable.
That isn't to say that the courtyard had ever been memorable, far from it, but the simple stone walkway that connected the parking lot to the building had been wrecked. The slabs of concrete reduced to little more than gravel, with even the few places that had escaped complete destruction still cracked and shattered.
Jupiter's fists clench tight, a sound almost like creaking metal as she feels the bite of her nails on the inside of her palms. All of this devastation and destruction that was wrought here, it was all because of her. All because Chen couldn't accept his own failings, couldn't see beyond the short term. A familiar voice whispers at the back of her mind, one that sounds almost like her own, yet so entirely alien.
The girl glances over towards Chen, where he lays on the ground, unconscious and wrapped in vines, and she can feel her magic coiling tight, ready to strike. It would be so easy. So simple to make sure that this never happens again.
Makoto takes a breath, she loosens her hands, ignoring the wet heat on her palms and turns away. The voice that she was hearing... It may have sounded like her own voice, but the words were more like... His.
Glancing up and across the shattered courtyard, the brunette Senshi watches as Ukyo and Sailor Mars hurry over to where Ranma had been thrown aside by the explosive overload of Makoto's own magic. Hurrying after them, the girl's mind turns over the... something that she saw during the last few moments of the fight, between Chen shattering the water main and her own explosion. The water crashed into Ranma, and Makoto clearly saw his hair bleed from black to red. The girl isn't entirely sure what that means, but she isn't going to ignore someone in trouble.
Sailor Mars can't help but still be impressed by the strange transformation that occurs when she takes on this form, it is so similar to her own self as Rei, but yet at the same time it is different, it is so much more.
When she first arrived there had been something nagging her, a sensation that she knew that she knew, a feeling that she recognized, but she didn't know from where she recognized it, nor what it was. Now, though, that the battle is over and she has time to think and to feel without worry, she can pinpoint the sensation. The feeling reminds her of the 'Cured Mask' that she once saw when she was younger, during one of the times that her grandfather took her to one of the other Shrines in the area.
There was something dark and rotten in the mask, a sickly sweet horror bound up in the wood sealed away under ancient ofuda. At the same time, what she is feeling now is distinctly... different. Perhaps part of that is the fact that her Senshi form could detect it long before she landed in the courtyard, but the majority of it is the fact that the actual sensation is different.
The mask felt of horror and death, rotting blood and rancid meat, yet this... Well, the four that she feels now are each and every one distinct from the next.
The massive towering boy feels of magic, yes, but the magic feels... Old. Refined. If such a thing could have a scent, it would smell of river cane. But there is also a tinge of... Medicinal bitterness to the magic coating Chen, specifically in a way that makes the girl think that the painful results the boy shows are not the intended effect, but born of misuse.
The second curse that the girl can feel is up, atop the roof of Makoto's apartment complex. This curse is... Clear, for lack of a better term. Like a mirror, and like paint stripper. The strangest thing that Rei can feel is that there is... A lock? Some kind of...
There is something more to the magic wrapped up on the roof, where Ukyo threw whatever happened to Shampoo. Unlike the cruelty of the magic of the mask, or the bitter medicinal feel of the magic wrapped around Chen, this magic feels...
Disappointed.
Like a teacher watching a student fail at the simplest of tasks.
Rei's eyes trail down from the roof towards the dark haired bo- Rei stops, blinking as she stares at the figure laying on the ground, smoke still wafting from the ends of... Her limbs?
There is a not a dark haired boy dressed in red, but a short redheaded girl dressed the same. The way that her clothes hang on her body make it clear to Rei that those are the very same clothes. Rei turns her more mystical senses towards the girl, hoping to understand what she sees.
She doesn't. And for good reason. Rei thought she felt two curses sitting over in this direction, but she was wrong. It isn't two separate curses laying atop one another, but instead there is a tangled cursed snarling knot of magic, one that has another magic layered atop it like some kind of...
Well, to be honest, Rei doesn't have anything even approaching the kind of vocabulary to explain what she is sensing. Bits and pieces of what she can feel are... almost familiar, but not quite. Stepping next to him... Her? Him? Rei stops, shelves fthe thought and the question, and then kneels next to Ranma, watching the slightly suspicious eyes of the girl kneeling next to him.
"Is this...?" She starts to ask, motioning to Ranma. "Normal?" There is a moment of silence as Rei realizes how silly the question is, even as Makoto steps up next to Ranma, a baffled look on her face. "At least, for him?... Her?"
What? Rei still wasn't sure how to refer to the knocked out figure before her, and it made it hard to phrase things.
"The curse?" Ukyo asks, and Rei nods.
"I... think so?" The girl admits, "I've not been in the area long, but Ranma's been like this for a while."
"I always just thought that there were two members of the Wrecking Crew called Ranma." Makoto admits, drawing a small chuckle out of Ukyo. Rei glances down at the unconscious boy, before she nods.
"I don't think I can do anything about the curses, but..." Sailor Mars says, her hands starting to glow with a soft red light, even as a feeling of warm hearths and roaring fireplaces exudes away from the girl. "I should be able to help at least a little."
Placing her hands above the unconscious girl, Rei allows the spiritual training she underwent as a miko to take control, allowing her mind to try and delve into the depths of the snarl of curses that is affecting the boy-turned-girl, to try and understand what could have happened.
Makoto is stuck, unsure of what to do at the moment. Rei is healing Ranma, Ukyo is watching Rei, and Makoto didn't exactly plan this far ahead. With nowhere else to turn her thoughts, the girl finds herself trying to wrap her head around the idea of someone who changes from a boy to a girl. That is...
A part of Makoto simply doesn't parse the idea. A boy is a boy and a girl is a girl, and the idea of one becoming the other... What exactly would that mean for people all over the world? What would it mean to be a boy if you could choose to be a girl? What would it be to be a girl if you could choose to be a boy?
These are thoughts and ideas that Makoto has never thought before. She isn't sure what she thinks, particularly because she is reminded of the last thing that her Senpai said to her.
...Well, not exactly the last thing, but close enough.
The thoughtless dismissal because she wasn't... Because Senpai was... It takes a moment of Makoto to draw herself out of the thoughts that she swore to herself that she would never think again. The memories that she wanted to forget, before she sighs, idly kicking a stone.
Unfortunately, pushing away thoughts of the past opens up a spot for thoughts of the present. And the question of responsibility. In particular, how much of this battle was her fault for not fighting the boy? Could all of this been avoided if she had fought him?
But... If she did fight, then that would have nearly guaranteed that she would have been expelled from her school...
What was the right thing to do? Did she do the right thing?
Thoughts bounce back and forth and back across Makoto's brain, slipping from Ranma to Senpai to Chen to Ami and Usagi and back again, over and over like a pinball machine from hell.
A part of Makoto wonders if Ranma has to deal with Monthlies, or if she just turns into a he and avoids them. She finds herself comparing the way that Ranma so readily threw herself into a fight that had nothing to do with her with the same way that Senpai was always willing to lend a hand to anyone and everyone who needed it.
With a gasp and a shiver, Ranma's eyes snap open, the girl practically sliding back out from under and away from Rei's hands, a momentary look of fear on the girl's face, her eyes snapping all around for a moment before she starts to relax, as if realizing that the threat was gone. "What? Who? Where?" Ranma asks quickly, but even as the questions are asked, Ranma's eyes grow firm, and the confusion slips off the girl's face. "Oh... What happened?" She asks, before pausing, a slightly confused look on her face, and a glance down. There is the softest "Ah." sound before she glances back up.
Makoto laughs humorlessly, scratching at the back of her head. "That's... my fault?" She says, not really sure how else to phrase the statement. "Chen punched through the water main, and..." Makoto mimes an explosion. "I was all charged up with electricity. So... I uhh... kind of exploded."
"A water main." Ranma says, not sounding disbelieving, but rather... amused. "That's a new one."
Finally, a thought of what to do occurs to Makoto, and she smacks a fist against her palm lightly. "Oh! I should go and get Makoto. Now that the fight is.. uhh, done."
The moment that she says the words, Ranma's eyes pop over to Rei for a moment and he grins, "There's no need." He says, somehow sounding conspiratorial. "I have a feeling that she knows the battle is over." The boy says, winking at Rei. "But, I'll do as you suggested. Go and find that shrine you mentioned." Next to Ranma, Ukyo's eyes glance up to Mars, and there is a strangely... protective look on the girl's face, but at the same time, Makoto can see the way that the girl's hands clench.
For a moment, Makoto isn't sure why that seems so familiar, before a thought pops into her head.
Is Ranma Ukyo's Senpai?
The question makes Makoto want to pull Ukyo aside to talk to the girl, to try and warn her what going down that road will lead to, but... At the same time, Jupiter isn't sure that she isn't just projecting, especially after so much of today has managed to remind her of Senpai.
Even Ukyo managed to remind Makoto just the slightest of her Senpai. Still, after a few moments, Ranma kips up to her feet, before she rolls her shoulders, a grin on her face.
"Anyways..." Ranma says, "We should probably get out of here. the Furinken police can be really testy with martial artists these days, ever since..."
"Happosai." Ukyo says, as if the word or rather the name itself was an explanation.
"Yeah." Ranma says, annoyingly that doesn't explain anything, but it is clear that the two really don't want to stick around for the police.
However, that does raise an interesting question. One that Rei herself brings up as the two Senshi watch Ranma and Ukyo hurry off. "...Should we..." Rei starts, "You know, stick around? Answer questions?"
Sailor Jupiter opens her mouth, before closing it. On the one hand, most of the superheroes in the comics don't stick around and answer questions of the police, so that might be a good reason not to, but at the same time... A lot of superheroes, like Spiderman don't have the best relationships with the police, so running away might send a bad message?
Further, Makoto knows that Usagi is planning on meeting with the Senshi's sponsor on Friday so...
[ ][Police] Stay and answer questions for the police
[ ][Police] Leave to make sure nothing is drawn back to the Senshi
[ ][Police] 'Leave' and have Makoto and Rei around to see what happens