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Sorry bout the delay.  My comp was in the shop.

Disclaimer
    Kuno swaggers forward, holding his bokken at the ready.
    "The questionably honorable Flaming Amarant hath requested that I do him 
a favor in providing information for you, the reader," he states.  "The foul 
sorcerer Saotome, the beautiful Akane Tendo, my beloved Pig-Tailed Goddess, 
my noble self, and all other characters from Ranma 1/2 belong to the great 
Rumiko Takahashi-sama.  Also, he states that the esteemed Heihachi Mishima 
and the redoubtable Bryan Fury are the property of whoever owns them.  He 
humbly requests that none who read this work of fiction would bring forth a 
lawsuit against him, for he has nowhere near the vast resources of the great 
House Kuno."
    The author steps forward and pats Kuno on the back, saying, "Good job, 
Kuno.  You can go home now."
    "What?!" Kuno exclaims, outraged.  "Foul demon, to deny my right to star 
in your work!  I shall smite thee!!"  He then proceeds to beat the author 
into a bloody pulp, and finally leaves.
    "Owie...," the author mutters.

Flashfyre5 presents,

In association with Digital Wizardry Studios, Minnesota,

A Flaming Amarant production,


Of Gods and Men
Chapter Five


A Ranma 1/2 fanfic with characters from the Tekken series.

" " = speech
< > = thought
/ / = panda sign
<" "> = other language where the norm would be Japanese
* * = sound effect

*   *   *   *   *   *

    A bruised and battered Akane dangled from the treetops, breathing 
heavily.  Her entire body, save for one finger, was bound in place in some 
way, shape, or form.  That finger was currently the most damaged part of her 
body, which was saying quite a lot.  <Ranma,> she thought.  <I’ve got to do 
this for Ranma.>
    "Again," she called, seeing the boulder being pulled back.  Cologne, 
after securing the boulder, hopped over onto the branch that Akane was 
hanging from.
    "Akane, you’ve been at this for four and a half hours.  Even Ryoga took a 
break every two hours, you know that.  You need to rest," the elder told her. 
 Akane shook her head.
    "He didn’t have someone’s life depending on him learning this stupid 
thing.  I do," Akane declared, the fierceness in her eyes belying her 
battered state.  "Throw it again."  Cologne sighed.
    "I’ll swing it once more, Akane.  After that, we’ll rest," Cologne 
compromised.  Akane, sensing that this was the best offer she’d get, nodded.  
With that, Cologne sent a tiny bolt of chi at the rope securing the great 
boulder.  Freed of the force preventing it from succumbing to the pull of 
gravity, it plummeted, only to be caught in its fall by another rope, 
attached to a great, sturdy oak limb.  The boulder, forced by this rope and 
the sling it sat in, was forced to change its trajectory and swung straight 
at the young girl hanging, restrained, in her own sling.
    Akane sensed the boulder coming before she saw it, and spun to face it.  
As the great rock came into view, she felt a small tightening in the base of 
her ribs, fear for her well-being.  She pushed it down, extending her free 
arm, and prepared for impact.  The boulder, following its forced trajectory, 
gained speed through centrifugal force until it had nearly a ton of force 
behind its powerful swing.  Right at the bottom of its swing hung Akane, 
staring at the rock as though she could shatter it by force of will alone.  
As the boulder came within five feet of her, Akane thrust out with her finger 
, sensing something in the rock, some weak point.  As finger finally met 
rock, her finger crunched into the boulder, the hardened skin crunching 
through the solid granite.  When her fist caught up with her finger, it 
impacted the side of the boulder, causing a small crater to form around it 
from the force of the blow.  However, this small effort hardly slowed the 
rock, and it continued on its path, smashing into the victi- err... trainee 
with all the force of a compact car.  Needlessly to say, Akane lost this 
argument with the rock too.
    Cologne hopped down onto the rock, tapping the breaking point as she 
landed.  The rock blasted into a million pieces, leaving Akane and Cologne 
hanging from the treetops by canvas slings.
    "Ready to take a break yet?" Cologne asked wryly.  Akane sullenly nodded, 
feeling like a failure.
    "I’m never gonna get this," she sighed as Cologne began to free her from 
her harness.
    "You’ll figure it out," Cologne reassured her.  "Rome wasn’t built in a 
day.  I know; my mother was there," she joked.  Akane, appreciating the 
relief of tension, chuckled as the last tie of the harness finally came free. 
 Agilely, she dropped to the ground.  She would have landed gracefully, had 
she remembered about the leg injury she’d gotten that one time when she hit 
the boulder wrong.  And the other one she’d received when Cologne had 
distracted her.  And the other one...
    "Need some help?" Cologne asked, offering Akane her staff.  Gratefully, 
she accepted the oaken rod and used it to lever herself up from the ground, 
and then as a cane.  Together, the two walked off to their campsite.

*   *   *   *   *   *

    Nabiki idly tapped her pen on her ledger, thinking.  Since this class was 
Economics, she could afford (no pun intended) to ignore the class, for the 
most part, and pursue her own agenda.  The strange man at school, the one 
who’d given her so much money for information about her sister, was worrying 
her.  <People just don’t throw money around like that,> she thought, shaking 
her head.  
    Perplexed, Nabiki leaned back in her chair, chewing on the end of her 
pen.  <Ranma’s out of it, and Daddy’s too emotionally fragile to do 
anything.  Mr. Saotome wouldn’t, regardless.  Shampoo’d probably help him, 
and Mousse too,> she thought, cycling through the list of martial artists she 
knew.  <Happosai wouldn’t do it unless I gave him a dozen panties or so.  
Save him for a last resort.  Ukyo wouldn’t care one way or the other.  
Ryoga’d help, if he’d  somehow be able to find his way over here in time.>  
Leaning forward once more, she cradled her head in her fingertips, her teeth 
gritted.  <Guess there’s no way around it.  Get some extra underwear and have 
it ready, just in case I need to pull a trump.>  Sighing, she made a note in 
her ledger to buy more underwear.  That done, she pulled out an envelope of 
pictures of Ranma(in his girl form, of course) and, counting them, calculated 
just how much she should ask Kuno for them, knowing fully well that she’d end 
up with twice whatever she asked for.

*   *   *   *   *   *

    After two hours of rest, one failed attempt at cooking lunch on her part, 
a number of shaiatsu point applications on Cologne’s, and a few aspirin, 
Akane was back at the training grounds, staring at the sling that she would 
soon hang from.  She regarded it with something akin to loathing, a slight 
frown creasing her face.
    "I know I had something that last time," she muttered.
    "What was that, child?" Cologne, who was readying the boulder, asked.
    "I sensed something on that rock last time.  Like... a weak spot," Akane 
said, trying to describe what she’d felt.  "I hit it, though, and the boulder 
didn’t shatter.  It didn’t even break."  After this, Cologne paused in her 
preparations, thinking.
    "Well, since you’re an Outsider, I cannot tell you anything that might 
lead to your mastery of the technique, weather I teach you or not," Cologne 
said, causing Akane’s shoulders to slump, ever so slightly.  "However, as a 
teacher mentoring her student perhaps I can speculate that there is something 
more to the Breaking Point than just hitting the weak spot," she continued, a 
small grin on her shriveled face.  With that, she continued to raise the 
boulder.
    "Thank you, Cologne," Akane said softly, climbing the tree.  Once she was 
high enough, she leapt to the sling and secured herself as best she could.  
All the while, she thought about what Cologne had just said.  <Something 
more...  What could it be?> she wondered.  After a few minutes of relative 
silence, Cologne hopped down onto Akane’s supporting branch and shimmied down 
to finish tying her trainee into place.  Akane winced once or twice as the 
ropes tightened around particularly painful wounds, but most of the pain was 
dulled, either by shaiatsu or medication.  <Well,> Akane thought, remembering 
Ryoga’s first fight with Ranma after he’d learned the Breaking Point.  <He 
was screaming mad the whole time.  Maybe you have to be mad to be able to 
pull it off?>
    Suddenly, Akane noticed that Cologne was no longer perched on her sling, 
and that the forest had grown silent, except for a quiet rushing of air.  
Sensing the boulder, Akane faced it, summoning all the anger she could 
manage.  Remembering the things Ranma called her, how he never tried her 
cooking, how she was never good enough to beat him.  She remembered how 
Mousse had kidnapped her, using her as a tool to try to marry Shampoo.  She 
remembered how Shampoo always threw herself on Ranma, acting like a hussy 
just to try and steal away her fiancee.  Finally, she remembered Kuno’s 
proclamation, from all the way back before Ranma had entered her life.  By 
the time the boulder entered sight, Akane was glowing a bright red, her anger 
manifested.
    In the treetops, Cologne noted this with a fair note of surprise; this 
girl, while untrained in the art of focusing one’s chi, was putting out 
enormous amounts of unfocused energy.  This, if nothing else, indicated an 
extraordinary potential for chi abilities, should she receive formal training 
in the chi arts.  It was with a note of sadness that Cologne remembered just 
what freeing Son-in-law would cost this girl, and wiped away an errant tear.  
She would not cry, for she was an Amazon Elder, and Amazons do not cry.  
Besides, this girl was an obstacle to Shampoo’s progress, and obstacles were 
for killing.
    In the sling, Akane pulled her fist back, her finger extended, as the 
boulder came thundering towards her.  At the last moment, she swung her fist 
with all her might, her battle aura blazing with a fearsome intensity.  Her 
finger and fist crashed into the boulder with unstoppable force, driving 
deeply into the rock.  However, despite her little tunnel, the boulder 
crashed into her body.  As far as victory was concerned, it was, more or 
less, a draw- Akane was hurt, but there was now an Akane-shaped crater on one 
side of the rock.  Chuckling, Cologne hopped down onto the boulder.
    "Well, that’s one way to try and accomplish it.  I admit, I’ve not seen 
anyone try that before, and I’ve been alive three hundred years!" she cackled.
    "Damn it," Akane said bitterly, grinding her teeth.  Absently, she 
punched the boulder, causing a bit of it to chip off.  "I thought I had it 
there."
    "On one hand," Cologne said, her amusement draining.  "You’ve failed to 
learn the Breaking Point as of yet.  On the other, look what you’ve done to 
my boulder."  For the first time, then, Akane noticed the state that the 
boulder was in with a start.
    "I did that?" she wondered aloud, a shocked look on her face.  Cologne, 
seeing the look, broke out into a full belly laugh, something she’d not 
enjoyed for many years.
    "Yes, child, you did," she finally replied, once she’d reigned in her 
laughter.  "That, I believe, is just a little more powerful than the beatings 
you have a tendancy to give my son-in-law."  Akane immediately made a note to 
cut back on either the force or the frequency of the beatings she gave Ranma. 
 She forgot it within a minute.  "I’ll set up the boulder again," Cologne 
decided after a short pause.  Once again, Akane was left alone as the boulder 
was lowly raised beyond her eye level.  <Okay,> she thought, <how do I do 
this?  It’s gotta be chi, because I just proved that physical force will only 
split or crush rocks of this size.  Let’s see... maybe I need to hit it, but 
strike at it more deeply with the chi.  Cologne never hits these things very 
hard.>  Carefully, Akane calmed herself, concentrating on her sole extended 
finger.  Carefully, she concentrated, as best she could, on the chi flow in 
and around her body.  Pressing her finger to her forehead, her chakra, she 
concentrated, imagining a needle of invisible, intangible force that extended 
from her fingertip.
    Absently, Akane noted that the boulder had been released and was 
approaching.  Slowly, being careful not to disturb the tiny spike in her chi 
field that existed at her fingertip, she moved her hand from her forehead to 
directly in front of her.  The boulder whistled into view, and again she felt 
the tugging to hit a certain area, just below and to the right of the center. 
 Quickly, she moved her finger so that she’d hit the spot right on, extending 
the chi needle as much as she could.  In the next instant, contact was made.
    Suddenly, Akane felt her consciousness enfolded by a cold, hard prison.  
She was streaking down a tunnel that was barely large enough for her to pass 
through at speeds that made details unnoticeable.  The path weaved and 
twisted, all at sharp angles, was intercepted and detached from by other 
pathways, but Akane was pulled along one in particular.  Suddenly, she 
stopped.  She was at a point where thousands of the tunnels joined into one 
nexus.  For one instant, she rested there, and noticed that she had no form, 
that her entire being was amorphous and made of light.
    In the next instant, she was pulled in all directions, through all the 
tunnels.  Her awareness remained in the nexus, but her form twisted and wound 
through all the thousands of passages, which split into millions.  Finally, 
all the pathways arrived at what she realized was the surface of the boulder. 
 Once she made that realization, her consciousness was instantly back in her 
own body as she stared in satisfaction at the shattering boulder.
    From above her and slightly to the left, she heard a soft clapping.  
Cologne, a small smile on her face, dropped from the treetops, her tiny hands 
applauding Akane’s accomplishment.
    "I did it!" Akane cried triumphantly.
    "That you did," Cologne confirmed.  "Now let’s go home.  We have a 
certain cursed martial artist to save, I believe."
    "Right," Akane nodded, looking triumphantly towards Tokyo.  Several 
seconds passed.  "Umm, could you let me down?" she asked Cologne sheepishly.  
Obligingly, Cologne hopped over onto the sling and began to free her 
ex-trainee.  "So, the Breaking Point only works on rock?" Akane asked after a 
few moments of silence.
    "It works on any nonliving subject with a crystalline structure," Cologne 
explained, untying the last knot and freeing Akane.  Akane landed lightly on 
the ground, while Cologne chose to pogo down slowly, bouncing between two 
trees.
    "What do you mean?" Akane asked, confused.  Cologne sighed in 
exasperation as the two headed off to camp.
    "If it’s never been alive, and has a crystalline structure, the Breaking 
Point will work.  Take ice, for example.  The Breaking Point works on it 
because it is frozen in a crystalline arrangement, and has no chi to form 
defensive pathways," Cologne explained.  "But say you had to fight a stone 
golem, a creature of stone animated by magic.  The Breaking Point would work, 
because the creature has no natural chi, but it would take effort, because 
the magic that animates it would try to do the same thing, but with a lesser 
effect.  Do you understand now?"
    "I think so," Akane said.  "But why can’t magic stop the Breaking Point?  
I’d think it’d be better than chi; it is more rare."
    "Magic is no more rare than chi.  In fact, magic is just chi that’s been 
shaped to a specific task.  Since it is confined to that task, it cannot 
function as it normally would," Cologne explained.  As they arrive at the 
campsite, their conversation moved to inconsequential things as they struck 
their camp.  In the sky, the sun was just beginning to dip below the horizon, 
a mere seven hours after Akane had begun the Breaking Point training.

*   *   *   *   *   *

    Cayenne rested atop the school wall, waiting.  Only a day had pa


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