It was just a normal day in Nerima, like any other. As was usual after school, Ranma ditched his followers and ducked into an alley to turn into a superhero. Same old, same old.
If he hadn’t been hiding out, he’d spout some sort of catch phrase. He settled for a dashing pose.
This was the cue for special effects: growth, fuzzing, and tail swishing fanservicy goodness.
Ranma grinned as he gained a foot of height, sixty pounds of lean muscle, blonde fur, and a tail. Then he quick changed into a costume he’d furled away in his belt, and hid away his clothes behind a loosened. He’d been learning to plan ahead for this sort of thing.
This was the sort of stock footage that would likely be repeated every episode.
One quick check to confirm the coast was clear, then cue the sound effect of: “zip, zoom, zing!” as Ranma dashed away faster than the eye could follow.
“Meow meow!” said a blonde blur as he shot through the streets at Ridiculously High speeds.
Walking down the street with an armful of groceries, Urd’s own blonde hair blew in the sudden slipstream. A nearby TV turned on (apparently by itself) and showed Ranma running so fast the background was a blur.
“Ranma!
Urd is after you,
Ranma!
If she catches you, you’re through,
That Urd is really a crazy clown!”
“HEY!” yelled Urd at the TV. Someone upstairs was going to get it when she got back online.
“All she wants to do is to make out with you!
Ranma running down the road all day!
Life is just some game he wants to play!
Ranma! (meow meow!)
Urd’s after you!
Ranma! (zoom zip!)
If she catches you you’re through!
Ranma’s having too much fun to say he won,
Cause running down the road is just having fuuuunnn!”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” Urd told nobody in particular as the set switched off. “Cheeses, some kami! Alright. Anyway, enough delays. It’s way past time to put ‘operation match Ranma up with a girl so I don’t have to spend the rest of my life making kittens with that beddable tomcat’ into action. Meow! That’s right!”
She fluttered back and forth nervously plotting what she would need. Passers-by wondered if she had a ballance disorder. She laughed maniacally as an idea came to her. The passers-by hurridly remembering urgent business elsewhere.
With a “zip!” a “zoom!” and a “zing!”, a carefree Ranma dashed about the streets and rooftops of Tokyo. Sometimes he slowed down enough to be seen and admired, but never enough to be photographed.
Somehow he always managed to come out blured on even the best rapid motion photography. Amature and professional photographers were dismayed at how it was almost as if he could sense their cameras’ prescence.
Some took it personally. Gurio Umino and Hikaru Gosunkugi meet online with others of like persuasion to form the “Weird Werecat Watcher’s Club.” The W.W.W. was determined to bring in photographs identifying the mystery cat-man, no matter what.
“Ah!” Ranma exclaimed. There was a bunch of school girls being attacked by a clothes disolving octopus. “Strange how that sort of thing has been happening a lot lately. But, no matter. When girls are in trouble, I’m there on the double.”
“I finally got a clue!” Minako declared. “Now that he’s let the cat out of the closet about his identity! I am going to leave no stone gathering moss.”
“You mean no stone unturned,” Artemis corrected, “and… wait, did I miss something?”
“I know where to find him!” Minako bounced on her bed excitedly. “Oh, oh, this is great. Just you wait. We’ll meet up and go on a date. This is the hand of fate!”
“Girl, stop rhyming and explaining. When did you get his address… and who are we talking about? You haven’t met a new boy since… you’ve been… obsessing over uh, oh. Not him!”
“Teheee!” Minako giggled and clutched a pillow. “He shows up all the time to rescue me! It’s like he’s my very own Kat-man Mask! Hey, do you think he’s from the Silver Millenium?”
“That’s not very likely,” Artemis surmised. “Anyway, you’re not the only one he…”
“Soon, my hero!” Minako swooned. “Soon, I’ll be in your arms!”
Artemis planted a paw in his face. “Alright, enough with the boycrazy ditz routine, already. Just what do you have on him!”
“No time to explain! I’ve got to prepare a trap!”
“A what now?”
“A man trap!” Minako explained nothing as she puckered up to apply a layer of lip gloss. “I’m not letting this one get away! I’m going to bait the hook, line, and sink her!”
“That’s… close. But what exactly…”
“See Ya!”
“Hey! Come back here and… I swear, that girl’s craziness causes me more… Wait for me!”
“What are we doing here?” Artemis wondered.
“Hehehee!” Minako giggled from the bushes. “This is bound to catch him.” She lifted her binoculars and observed the picknic blanket once more.
“This will never work,” Artemis denied. “To think I was worried about you tarting yourself up. You’ve gone and confused man-trap with tiger-trap. There’s no way this is going to catch…”
Cue special effects of, Zip! Zing! Woosh!, followed closely by Crash! Boom! and “Rwowwr!”
“Yes! I got him!” Minako lept with joy, and ran over to her blanket. “Wait. The fish is gone, but the blanket is still here. Why didn't it work?”
“I, yi, yi… I wouldn’t jump up and down on it like that,” Artemis advised.
“I don’t get it,” Minako pouted. “What was the crash and roar about?”
Minako’s ears pricked as from stage left she hears, “arrrgh! Stop that! Rrrr! When I get my paws on you.”
“Ah, ha! A clue! The game is a hand!” proclaimed Minako, and with that she bounded away towards the voice.
“Hey! Don’t just run off!” Artemis cried and pounced after her. He felt the ground shift from underneath him, and froze mid leap. “You have got to be kidding me.” He looked down at the now uncovered pit beneath him, wriggled his paws, sighed, shrugged, waved good-bye, then dropped down with a boom.
Across the park, Minako found another clearing with an identical pit surounded by two boys with cameras flashing away.
“Stop! Stop, in the name of love! Boys stealing a girl’s idea to trap boys is … well, it’s just just plain wrong! I am –not in costume– ah, heheh, I mean, my name is unimportant, but in the name of love, I am going to punish you!”
Hikaru turned to Umino and said, “right, you know what to do in situations like these?”
Umino turned to Hikaru and nodded. “Yes. Only one thing for it.”
As one they turned to Minako, pointed in the air, and shouted, “run away!” And they did so.
“Hey!” Come back here you wiley rascals. Don’t just… Wait a minute. this means… Heeheee.”
“We got pictures!” the boys shouted as they danced arm in arm. “We did it. We got pictures!” They danced around, hugged each other, and –“Ack!”– pulled away in embarassment.
“Right,” Hikaru coughed. “Wait. Did we manage to get a clear shot then?”
“Yeap!” Umino anounced as he adjusted his glasses and held up the digital camera. “Right here! You can clearly see the stripes and … wait…”
“Huh? Stripes? That’s not right. And– are those…? Is that…?”
“I think so. Do you know what this means?”
“We failed! We caught the wrong subject!”
“Idiot! This means there are more of them out there! And this one is a female. Look, I’ll zoom in. See, see?”
“I see, I see,” Hikaru drooled.
Urd dusted herself off as a crying Minako helped her out of the pit. “Dammit. I was cutting across the park when I smelled such a delicious scent, then, bang! I ask you, who would do such a thing?”
“I have no idea,” Minako sobbed.
“Hey, kiddo, cheer up. What the heck are you crying for?”
One breif, garbled explaination latter, Urd was nodding and saying, “I see, I see, so you were stood up for a date.”
“Uh, that’s not quite it… I was— wah, so close to catching a boyfriend!”
“Well, anyway, whatever. In situations like this there’s only one thing to do. Wash that man right out of your hair … with booze!”
“That isn’t going to solve… oh what the heck.”
“Uh, Minako? Anybody? Help! I’ve fallen and can’t get up!”
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(Posted Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:46)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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