Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ A Fighter's tournment ❯ AFTCh5 ( Chapter 5 )

Scene: N.E.S.Ts HQ

"So have you made up your mind, sir?" asked Zero as his master entered the training room to give his battle suit another test. He had to admit that this room is probably the finest piece of work from the Engineering department, next to the battle suits that they had designed.

The room is about the size of a laboratory so there's plenty of space to move around. It also came with holographic projections so they could create holographic representations of the warriors that they had analyzed over the years. The computer had gotten everything down to the last detail in terms of appearance and moves. It also used data gathered about the behavioral traits from each fighter to create reasonable attack patterns. To keep things realistic, virtual health bars were created so they would have an idea of how well they did against a particular program.

Thanks to the simulations, Igniz and Zero had formulated various ways, depending on their own levels, to counter each move. However, they were going to need data on the new warrior, Ranma Saotome. Hopefully, he would be fighting heavily in the KOF 2001 tournament. That should be enough time to gather a good amount of data to deal with him.

"I think I might go with your idea of teammates switching with each other however we will need to formulate some new rules if that concept is going to be introduced." Igniz's suit flared momentarily as his hood and the cloth covering his legs flew out.

'Let's see here. Energy modules seem to be at full capacity. The Chain Blades have been improved by engineering recently. Well, time to get some practice then.' "Zero, start up the simulation."

Zero tapped a console to bring up a menu that showed which holograms were available to be used in the simulator. "Who would you like to fight first?"

"Surprise me," came Igniz's indifferent reply.

Zero moved down the list until he got to a program. After selecting it, the computer made some noises as it started up. "The simulation is about to begin in five seconds."

A moment later, Igniz found himself facing a holographic representation of Zero's clone. The hologram cracked his knuckles and smirked. "It's times like this that I find most entertaining."

"Not very original, Zero. Now then..." He paused as he fired a Divine Arrow in the air. The hologram rolled past it and attempted to send his shadow over to catch his opponent. Igniz rolled past it and sent out his Chain Blades.

The multiple Trans-Axial slice attacks easily kept the clone Zero helpless in the air. "The format will still be three fighters and one striker like in the past two years. The three fighters can select who would go first while the other two simply wait. For the first minute in the battle, there will be no switches." Igniz frowned as he mistimed a Trans-Axial slice, allowing Zero to recover.

He switched his strategy and got closer to the hologram. "Once a switch has been made, the teams will have to wait one minute before switching again. We'll set up some timers to let them know when they can switch."

Igniz stopped moving as the hologram tried a Cutter Art (Zankaze Enpa: Satsuma). "Fool!!"

Before the cape hit, Igniz activated his Nega Genesis move. As soon as Zero hit the shield, he was sent flying back.

"It is over..." Igniz flew towards the hologram, catching him and slamming him into a wall before backing off. He whipped out a Chain Blade quickly for a few hits. Next, his cape slashed his opponent ten times. "...as you so desired..." The energy modules were activated as the outward corners of his capes slammed four balls of energy into Zero. "...I NOW CAST YOU FROM HEAVEN!!!!" Igniz summoned a large ball of energy to hit his opponent eight more times.

"How could I lose..." muttered the hologram before dissipating.

Igniz looked up to his subordinate. "That wasn't very surprising, Zero. How about an actual fighter outside of NESTS?"

"Yes, sir. Is there anything else you wanted to add to the rules?" asked Zero as he went through the menu again.

"The team will have to decide on who substitutes who when their representative in the match gets knocked out. This will obviously apply only when their first fighter gets knocked out." He turned his attention back to the simulation as a new hologram was formed.

"KYOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

Igniz smirked once. A faster, more powerful and somewhat brain dead Iori Yagami. "This should be interesting. Remind me to thank the programmers for finally completing this program."

Chapter 5

Scene: Team Ranma

The sun had begun to rise when Ranma awoke from his slumber. He yawned once before rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

'Good morning, Strike Claw.'

You're up early. The reply was quite sharp as the spirit did not need to sleep.

The boy did a bit of stretching. 'Well, I just felt a jolt and then I woke up. It's gotta be my body clock. I think it set itself up this way thanks to pops and his hard training along with Akane trying to sneak up on me so she could wake me up for school.'

I see. What do you plan to do? The rest of the gang will not be ready for training for a few hours.

Ranma changed out of his pajamas and into some training clothes. 'I might as well go for a jog. It should do some good. Hey! Maybe Sara would like to come along. It would be nice to have a little company.'

Are you certain about that? I've heard stories of men who lost their lives when awakening a woman from her beauty sleep.

'I don't think Sara would try and kill me.' He went into the kitchen to drink some water and filled up two bottles. One for himself and one for Sara. The last thing he wanted was for himself and someone he cared about to be exhausted in training due to dehydration.

Sara was asleep in her bed, with some drool coming out of her mouth. Ranma went over to her and started shaking her awake. "Rise and shine, sleepyhead!"

She gave a loud groan and forced her eyes open. "For the love of cheesecake, it's..." She looked at the clock and gawked. "...five twenty five in the morning?!?"

Ranma smiled. "Yep. I'm going to go out for a jog. Should be good exercise and a good way to get ourselves warmed up for today's training."

"Alright. Have fun." She plopped herself back on her bed, intending to get some sleep.

"You should come too! It'll be good for ya."

"No thanks. I think I'll pass," came the muffled reply.

"I'll give you `the look'," stated Ranma in a sing-song tone.

Sara looked up at him. "YOU WOULDN'T DARE!"

"Yes, I would." Ranma was about to stick out his bottom lip. Practically, the only way to get her to do something was to make her melt.

She yawned once and stretched. "ALRIGHT! ALRIGHT! I'LL GO!" She got up and started to get dress, "you can be a devious bastard when you want to you know that?" Ranma just smiled.

Scene: Jogging

"Ah!! This feels really nice! Don't you think, Sara?" Ranma glanced back at the woman beside him.

She was keeping up with her young master. "Yes, it does. But promise me, you'll never do that again."

He gave a chuckle. "Should have figured that `the look' would work." The duo had been jogging outside for about forty minutes. Ranma figured that they would go for another fifty minutes before grabbing their morning meal. At least by seven o'clock, any restaurant that served a good breakfast should be open by that time.

He paused when he heard a familiar voice shouting. "Let's go already!! We still have another mile to run!!"

"Yes, sir!!" followed three voices.

Ranma gave a wave. "Heidern-san! Good morning!!"

"Company...halt!" After his subordinates stopped, Heidern extended his greeting. "Good morning, yourself. I see that you've decided to get some morning exercise in."

"Yeah." Clark and Ralf were already exchanging greetings with Sara. Leona, on the other hand, simply kept observing Ranma Saotome and noted how his training shirt stuck to his body thanks to his sweating.

Heidern wiped some sweat off of his forehead. "So you ready?"

Ranma took a sip of his water. "Just about."

"Indeed. If you would like, you are more than welcome to participate with our exercises. I'm warning you though that I don't go easy on anyone. Just ask any one of my subordinates."

"I can hold my own, Heidern-san. But I don't know about Sara."

"Oh you don't huh?" shouted Sara.

Ranma crossed his arms. "Can you hang with us?"

"Let's see shall we?" She sighed once. `The things I do to keep him happy.'

Scene: with Yamazaki

Ryuji Yamazaki had many resources at his disposal due to his status as one of the most powerful criminal figures in the world. So it was no surprise that he found out that the fighter who had defeated him would be participating in the upcoming KOF tournament.

He found out some information about the fighter such as his name and his address. Normally, he would just pop in and demand a battle but he decided that it would be more satisfying to defeat Ranma in public at the tournament.

However he was about to run into an obstacle with that plan. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN SINGLE ENTRIES ARE NO LONGER ALLOWED?!?!?"

There was no reply as he had yelled that out loud as a reaction to the rules that NESTS had posted on a website.

'Sure!! They continue to have single entries all the way up to KOF 2000 and then they just stop!!' Yamazaki wondered who he could team up with. He could try to talk to Geese Howard but the man had apparently reformed the Boss team and had found a fourth member already.

To be honest, there weren't a hell of a lot of people that he knew who were competent enough in the combat arena. He would have to find three people who could at least match up with his skill level. Maybe he could find the CYS band. But then again, he doubted that they would be interested. Orochi wasn't going to be involved this year so why should they care?

This is going to be tougher than he thought.

Scene: Opening Ceremonies

For the next three months, every single team that entered KOF this year trained and prepared for the competition.

Ranma's team had many intense training sessions with sparring matches going on for the whole day, every day. Sara also came up with a better name for the team. The Generations team. Not the best name but better than Team Iori's name.

Terry Bogard came up with a new move named Buster Wolf while Joe found a new way to manipulate the winds caused by his fists. He would create two tornados, one on each side of him, creating a barrier and effectively damaging anyone who tried to jump in. It worked similarly to Geese's Raising Storm move. He called it the Great Cyclone. Andy and Mary focused on finding new ways to combo their opponent.

Maxima and Whip worked together for the tournament and also worked together to get K' to prepare for the tournament. As for Lin, he kept his training to himself. The new moves that he came up with were working out well. Hopefully, his new arsenal will be enough to confront Long about his treachery. (AN: Ron is the common name but Lin will call the other Hizoku by his true name).

Daimon had lent his school space as their training ground whenever he did not hold classes. Kyo worked with Shingo to make sure that he does not screw up in the upcoming tournament.

The members of Team Iori went their separate ways, promising to meet up at the opening ceremonies.

Heidern had increased the intensity of the Ikari Warriors training when he found out that Rugal came out of the explosion back in 1998 and had entered the KOF 2001 tournament as part of Geese's team.

Robert could not spend too much time training with the Kyokugen team as he had to sort out financial problems with his company. At least it was a good thing that Takuma-sensei had worked him hard during the time before his financial woes popped up.

The NESTS team had spent much time in the holographic simulations. When they weren't in there, Igniz and Zero occupied it for their own preparations. Their spies were set up for the tournament so they can observe any unexpected newcomers and have enough time to modify or create a new holographic simulation program in the fighter's likeness.

Since the end of the KOF 2000 tournament, every free moment Hinako had was spent on perfecting her Sumo art. She had been worried about her other teammate's lack of training but recently, the team underwent some changes and now the others were training extremely hard. She wondered what could have happened. After all, she had two new teammates to work with: King and Chizuru.

Chang and Choi had gotten used to each other's bodies...more or less. With a potential disaster waiting to happen, Kim will have to rely on May Lee to pick up the slack.

Kensou had worked hard on getting reacquainted with his psychic powers. That meant he could use his SenkiHagin move again. He hadn't been able to use it since the 1998 tournament when he lost his powers. This was definitely going to be a surprise.

For Mr. Big, he was sorely tempted to just stay in bed and summon some of his harem but he had to get into shape. It's been five years since he battled seriously. He was going to need to think of some new moves.

The day of the tournament's opening is almost here. Every team had done their best to prepare and now, they are ready as they'll ever be. Only time will tell whether their preparations were enough.

Many TV reporters were covering the opening ceremonies of the KOF tournament for 2001. Normally, they would not bother to cover the event because of the disaster back in 1997 when some of the crew had gotten serious injuries that left them scarred for the remainder of their lives. However, because of the link between the destruction of a city and NESTS, TV networks have dispatched their reporters to find out about this organization and were given additional safety precautions.

Security had been increased at the six battle arenas around the world where the battles will be fought. The JSSDF looked over Japan while the host country's troops (or the UN troops, should the host country not have enough military muscle) looked over their own arenas.

The ceremony, which is being held at Japan's arena for the tournament, had some musicians performing for the crowd before the teams were introduced. There were some visible reactions as some people were introduced such as Iori's purple flames appearing for a brief moment when Kyo and Team Japan waved to the crowd. And of course, the Bogard brothers watching Geese with an eagle eye and Heidern silently promising Rugal that he will put an end to the pirate himself.

Then it was Ranma's turn, but when he came out, he came alone. "Huh?" He said, "what the hell? Where's my team?" Just then some music started and out came the rest of his team. They were dressed in a cat-like motif; Rock was in a black muscle shirt with a black cat's head on a platinum circle on the front. [1] Mignon was in a cute cat-suit and Chae was in a silver tiger striped tae kwan do outfit.

After all of the teams were introduced, the giant view screen set up for the fans to watch the fight in the arena blinked once to reveal a man in a beard sitting in a chair. An attractive woman is at his left side and another man (assumed to be a bodyguard judging by his suit) is at his right.

The man with the beard spoke. "Greetings, KOF fans and participants. I'm Igniz, the CEO of NESTS. It is delightful that there are many fighters participating this year. A total of 48 combatants have entered so the next two weeks should prove to be most exciting. I'm also certain that you are excited by the twist that we threw in for the teams. Although matches still have three on three fights with a striker, the switching idea should prove to create an impact on team strategy. I look forward to seeing how all of you will be able to handle this. In a moment, the computer will randomly assign teams against one another for the first match. I believe that is all that needs to be said right now so I wish all of you the very best of luck!!" The image changed back to its normal status with the KOF logo on it.

"Man, this is exciting. I wonder who we will fight first?" Ranma waited as he saw his team name appear on the board. Then the other team name on the board appeared.

First Round Matches

The Ikari Warriors vs. Team Japan

Team Iori vs. The NESTS Team

Team Korea vs. The Fatal Fury Team

The Boss Team vs. The Hero Team

The Women's Team vs. The Psycho Soldiers Team

The Generations Team vs. The Kyokugen Karate Team

+++++++++++++++

The computer was programmed to randomly choose all the matches save for one. The team Ranma was on and The Kyokugen Karate Team. Since there was a former King of Fighters Tournament champion on The Kyokugen Karate Team this would give NESTS the chance to get information on Ranma's techniques and style.

There were a few people who liked their matches and there were a few who didn't. One of those who liked the matches was Ryo Sakazaki who would be getting the first shot in on Ranma Saotome, the new face in town who tore apart Yamazaki.

There were a few who didn't like the matches. Iori Yagami was one that didn't. He wanted to fight Kyo right away (you can tell patience isn't one of his strong traits). Heidern was another. He wanted to rip the Modern Day Pirate a new hole.

Nobody really knew why NESTS had set up six stages all over the world. Why couldn't all the fights be in one arena?!? It would save so much time and hassle. However, NESTS is the one footing the bill for all this and each host country economy would receive a powerful boost from tourists, who would be interested in seeing a match live. With multiple locations to do battle, it is more convenient for the tourist to just travel to the closest location.

With that aside, the first match is to take place in Japan at around 8:30 in the morning. The Ikari Warriors had chosen Clark to open up for them, followed by Leona and Heidern. Ralf is to act as their striker. Team Japan decided to open up with Shingo. Benimaru acted as the striker so that meant Kyo and Daimon were to fight.

Since the next match would not be until late in the evening (in Japan time), Team Iori and the NESTS team would not have to leave the country until the mid-afternoon.

The match has no time limit and the arena is practically sealed, meaning no ring outs. The battle space is as large as a concert stage and had been sealed by a special glass, the same one used in hockey arenas. The glass height is about twenty five feet. There is a small space for each team so switching can be done quickly. Two doors were on each side for teams to enter and exit. They were to be sealed once both teams have entered until the match ends.

Many fighters had gotten up early to watch this fight. In Nerima, the NWC wanted to check out how strong these martial artists were and make some predictions as to how far Ranma can go in the tournament.

While Clark took off his shades and rubbed his eyes briefly, Shingo kept on ranting. "I, Shingo Yabuki, Kyo's first student challenge you!!!"

Everything seemed to be ready. Strikers, teams, opening fighters and the switch clock. As soon as the clock struck 8:30..."FIGHT!!!"

Shingo went on the offensive, wanting to make sure that Clark would be forced to play defensively and not use his grappling techniques. "Eat this!!" he shouted as he performed 115 Shiki: Dokugami Mikansei.

Clark had to admit that the kid had kicked it up another notch. And he was also trying to watch his move recovery time as well. After a few minutes of Shingo on the offensive, Clark summoned his striker. "Hey!! Ralf!"

Ralf hopped on to perform a mini version of Galactica Phantom but Shingo leapt into the air. "SHINGO KICK!!" Ralf got kicked back to the sidelines.

"Not a bright move, kid!!" Clark connected his Ultra Argentine Backbreaker move as Shingo got within range. He tossed Shingo up three times and hit his back every time he landed until the last air toss. Then Clark leapt into the air and got on top of Shingo to slam him down one more time. "Clark Spark!!"

Shingo felt the last bit of energy leave his body. "THANK YOU AND GOODBYE!!!"

Kyo stepped out to replace Shingo and Clark switched out with Leona. "Let's go!!" Kyo then did something unexpected and tossed out a low ground fire projectile, a move he had not used since the first tournament he entered.

He had mixed up his moves well enough to throw Leona off balance. She tried getting back at him with the V-Slasher but as soon as she got close to him, he turned up the heat and activated his Orochi Nagi move. Ouch.

Clark went back in again, having sufficiently rested himself. But Kyo's magatama abilities made it difficult for him to do anything. He connected once with a Running Three move but Kyo recovered quickly enough to use his Aragami chains to finish the battle.

Although he did not want to switch out, he needed to catch his breath so Daimon battled Heidern. Heidern used his Cross Slash move to keep the Judo Master at bay however Daimon got in close enough to use the powered up version of Jigoku Gokuraku Otoshi. However, Heidern had moves to drain his opponent's energy and send it to himself. That was precisely what he did to Daimon and he got knocked out.

So it's up to Kyo now. Benimaru just knew that Kyo would be bragging about this for a bit until their next fight about how he had to be the one to bail Team Japan out.

"Go to hell!!" Heidern leapt forward to use his Neck Rolling move on Kyo but he rolled out of the way and dashed forward to grab Heidern. He grew a maniacal look on his face which resembled Iori's during his Ya Otome move.

"Playtime is over!!" The flames were starting to heat up on Kyo's fists.

As soon as Iori heard Kyo say that, something snapped. He knew Kusanagi is a disgusting man and he never thought that he would stoop this low. He stormed to open the door from the outside, pushing his way past the guards. As soon as he knew that Kyo could hear him, he yelled. "KUSANAGI, YOU JACKASS!!! THAT'S MY LINE!!!"

The men in the security uniforms nervously approached the 9th hakkeshu in order to calm him down. They knew of Iori Yagami's reputation and did not relish this confrontation. Iori caught a glimpse of the guards approaching and gave them an evil look.

When the guards glanced in Iori's eyes they suddenly found their lives passing by in front of their eyes. They knew it was their job to take care of the disturbance that Iori was causing but they did not want to do it.

However the situation was taken out of their hands when a hand tapped Iori on his shoulder. Turning around the red haired man saw the new face in the tournament standing there.

"You want something kid?" Iori asked.

"Yes, I want you to stop causing a ruckus." Ranma answered. "I know about the blood feud between your clan and the Kusanagi clan but this is not a good way to fight his clan."

"Why NOT?" Iori growled out.

"Let me ask you some questions." Ranma asked Iori. The man nodded. "You want a fight with Kyo Kusanagi, right?"

Iori nodded.

"And you want to do it at this tournament?" Ranma continued the questions. The Hakkeshu nodded. "Now answer me this question. What will happen to you if you continue to make a disturbance here during the match?"

Iori shrugged.

"I'll tell you what will happen. You would be disqualified and your chance to fight Kyo will fly away out of your reach." Ranma explained. Understanding dawned on the man's face. "Now could you stop acting up?"

Iori growled and nodded. He quickly left the area and the guards relaxed. The guards nodded their thanks and walked back to their assigned positions. Ranma nodded and quickly walked back to where his team was standing. He continued to watch Heidern and Kyo Kusanagi battle it out.

Practically every single fighter had their jaw dropped in surprise (well, every fighter that knew what Iori Yagami was like) when they saw how easily Ranma calmed down the Insane Orochi Hakkeshu. If Heidern and Kyo hadn't been so busy battling it out, they would have probably been in the same state.

"Uh...shouldn't we see the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse coming around by now?" asked Andy.

Terry blinked when he heard his brother ask that question. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, you did say that if someone is able to get Iori to cool off after he starts to get mad, it's a sign of the Apocalypse," stated the younger Bogard.

"You boys are making a big deal out of nothing. I have to admit that his reasoning skills could be put to good use in my line of work," mumbled Mary. She had a bit of an odd look in her eyes as she stared at the pigtailed martial artist.

"Mary? You alright?" Joe Higashi had noticed the odd look in the woman's eyes.

"I'm fine." She mentally convinced herself that she liked Terry but there is no harm in looking at other men. If guys could ogle other women without worrying, then it should be true the other way around.

Not too far away from the Fatal Fury Team, the Hero Team were discussing amongst themselves the cause of Iori's behavior. "Odd. I'm not detecting anything wrong with Iori's brainwaves. He seems perfectly normal," muttered Maxima as he shut off his scanner.

K' frowned. "There has to be something wrong. Iori Yagami listening to reason? What's your take on this, Whip?" She appeared to be off in her own little world somewhere with the dazed look on her face. "Whip?"

She snapped out of it with a small blush. "Er...I think that Iori might have listened to Ranma because Ranma is a powerful fighter. So Iori has to give him a certain amount of respect. Ranma suggested something reasonable and Iori didn't have any problems with it. End of story."

While Iori started walking back to his team, Vanessa crossed her arms. "Seriously...what did Ranma do to get Iori to cool off like that? If we're going to be on Iori's team, I would like to know how Ranma spoke to Iori to get him to back off." She had planned to speak with Ranma Saotome later on. What is he like? She would be interested in finding out the story behind him.

"I'm seeing it and I don't believe it," muttered 'Chang'.

"What just happened?!?" shouted 'Choi'.

Kim Kaphwan answered his student. "The new fighter, Ranma, had been able to subdue Iori Yagami with words! It's astonishing!! I must speak with him and find out how he defines justice!"

May Lee remained silent as she became lost in her own little world with herself as a heroine fighting alongside Ranma Saotome, her ally and her friend (and a potential boyfriend), who would be able to convince villains not to break the law with his powerful speech. In case that didn't work, the two of them would stop the bad guys with force. He also would make a good friend (and possibly more) for the normal persona of the Tae Kwon Do student. {AN: Remember that May Lee has two personas. Normal somewhat shy Tae Kwon Do student and the Hero persona, which can't block or roll)

A pained shout came from the arena, getting the fighters to pay attention to the match again. Everyone looked up to see the tall man in the green uniform get blasted away by the flames of Kyo's Orochinagi.

The brown-haired fighter smirked, held up a finger and spoke. "Heh heh, I'm still the best."

Ranma, standing next to his team, sweat dropped heavily. "Is he ALWAYS like that, or is this just a special occasion."

Rock shook his head and sighed. "Sorry mate." He said while adjusting his pole arm. "The guy's a walking ego-maniac."

Ranma sweat dropped and nodded. 'Great, just what I need. Someone who's got enough egos on him to make mine look tiny.' He could easily see why there was a blood feud.

Kyo turned and smirked at the other teams. "Try and top that." Of course, this irritated SEVERAL of the fighters and warriors there.

"Well ladies and gentlemen, a victory for Team Japan." The announcer for the tournament spoke up. "Now the next match will be Team Iori vs. The NESTS Team."

Loud cheering met his announcement.

The best way to describe the atmosphere down at the tournament is chaotic. Or near chaotic. You see, there had been a bit of a fuss when Team Iori and the NESTS team attempted to start their match way earlier than scheduled. They were technically supposed to start in the evening at another arena in the world.

The first problem is that they wanted to fight earlier. And they did not want to travel all the way to another country just to fight. What's wrong with staying in Japan to fight there? What's the point of traveling when everyone is already gathered in one location? Only one match can happen in the arena at a time so there shouldn't be any problems since no two matches are scheduled at the same time.

The whole travel around the world thing had been Misty's idea. Frankly, Igniz didn't care too much about it but to appease his companion, he made the necessary arrangements and scheduled the matches so that there would be enough travel time for the teams to get there. However, none of the fighters had any intention of going anywhere.

"I thought that they would have appreciated traveling around the world," mumbled Misty.

"The problem is that it isn't practical. The idea doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I would have brought it up sooner but you insisted on trying this out," replied the man with the beard.

The female frowned. "You don't have to use the puppet right now, Igniz. Nobody from below is watching. Besides, that's kind of creepy."

The real Igniz released the puppet control from his suit and attached it to the puppet. "I'll have to get my contacts in the other countries to explain the change in plan."

The four soldiers of the Ikari Warriors were regaining consciousness. They were shaking their heads to get the cobwebs out of there. Heidern was extremely pissed off at himself. He had lost to an arrogant jackass.

"You guys ok?" A familiar voice asked. Four heads raised up to see the pigtailed martial artist looking at them with concern. The rest of his team was standing there with him.

"We're ok." Ralf said.

"Nothing hurt but our pride." Clark added.

Leona said nothing as a light blush tinged her cheeks as Ranma came over to see how they were doing. Everyone there missed the blush as they got back to their feet.

"We're fine Ranma." Heidern answered. "Just a little upset that we lost to Team Japan."

"You mean Kyo Kusanagi, don't you mate?" Rock asked.

"You guys seemed surprised at how he fought though." Ranma commented.

"That's true Ranma." Leona spoke up for the first time. "He mixed up his moves very well. Unpredictable. Stronger. Plus it looked like he used one of Iori's moves."

"That means he might know Iori's techniques." Ranma mused to himself. All the fighters there looked at Ranma as they thought about it.

"Whatever move he used to beat Commander Heidern didn't have any resemblance to any of Iori's techniques that we saw. Unless you count the last explosion of Iori's Maiden Masher move. That's the only similarity I can make out," stated Clark. Ranma filed this information away for further thought.

In the background, the group could all hear Kyo Kusanagi bragging about his latest victory. "Naturally, I had to be the one to get Team Japan out of this mess and so..."

"Geez, what an ego!! It's starting to annoy me," grumbled Chae.

"You're not the only one," replied Mignon with a sigh.

Ranma turned to Rock. "You said that he always had the ego? I'm surprised that everyone has tolerated it this long."

"He actually does come in handy in crunch situations. Like the Orochi battle in 1997. I'll tell ya about it sometime. Anyways, people just wait to go into battle against him to force him to shut up but nobody's had any real success. The times he actually gets knocked out in battle, he claims that he had been weakened by the previous opponent and it shouldn't count. Or some gibberish like that."

"I see. Can you excuse me a moment?" Ranma headed over to Team Japan's resting space.

Rock grew confused as to his teammate's intentions. "What's he going to do? If he can get Kyo to shut up, it'll be a bloody miracle."

Chae gave a shrug. "Well, he did manage to cool off Iori before he barged in on the fight. Who knows?"

"Face it. You guys would be nowhere without me. I'm still wondering how you made it as far as you did in 1999 and 2000..." Kyo stopped talking when he felt someone tap him on the shoulder lightly. "Must be an adoring fan. How can I..." When he recognized that the other person is not an adoring fan, he gave a small smirk. "So you're the new guy."

Ranma blinked. "Er...yeah. I'm wondering if it's possible that you could keep your bragging to yourself? Not everybody is interested in hearing your tales about your great battles and all."

"You have a lot of nerve, telling that to me." After seeing Ranma's look go unchanged, Kyo's smirk grew. "At least you are mentally prepared for the tournament. Anyways, shouldn't the victor of the match have the right to gloat? You seem like a person who has tasted victory numerous times. You can at least admit that you wanted to gloat to your defeated opponents."

"That's true sometimes. However, I've always given the proper respect to worthy opponents who had to force me to earn my victory by giving everything I had. You should be doing that too. The Ikari Warriors were no pushovers and your other teammates had given everything they had to earn the victory. It belongs to them much as it belongs to you. Besides, how would you feel if someone else bragged about how they beat you without breaking a sweat?"

Kyo laughed. "Hah! Like that will ever happen!!"

Benimaru gave a small sigh. "Don't tell me you forgot about Goenitz already..."

Kyo turned to his friend. "I underestimated the guy! How was I supposed to know that he was linked to Orochi? And I beat him in 1996, remember?"

"With a little help from Yagami and Chizuru," stated Daimon.

He gave a sigh before speaking to Ranma again. "That's quite an interesting train of thought. Sounds something like my old man might say. Look, I can say whatever I want anytime as long as it doesn't discriminate against other people and all that jazz. Freedom of speech. Look it up. Now, where was I? Oh, yes." Kyo turned back to his teammates and resumed his bragging.

"Well, I asked politely and now I guess I don't have any other option," said Ranma.

Kyo turned around slowly with an annoyed look on his face. "What are you planning to do?"

"This." Ranma's hand struck out at lightning speed, tapping parts of Kyo's neck before stopping.

"..." Kyo paused when he noticed that he couldn't make any sound at all. "...?!?"

"Master Kyo! What did you do to him?!?" demanded Shingo.

"Just hit a few pressure points and paralyzed his vocal chords. He'll be able to talk again after five hours." Ranma then turned around to go back to his team.

Iori had watched the entire display with an amused look in his eye. He chuckled as his rival started panicking. "I think I like that kid."

End of Chapter