"The boy won a slave," said Agito, looking unhappy.
"He and his father have fought and fought well in the tournament," said Boren. "It is not unexpected that they do not know of our ties to the very pirates they have fought in the past alongside the NMF."
"Both the father and son have talents that they have pulled out of nowhere," said Agito. "We did not expect metahumans to participate."
"Neither used their talents in the tournament," pointed out Boren. "You are mainly balking at this because of the loss of a highly trained slave to serve the boy."
"Of course," said Agito, stepping to the window looking down into the arena. "I expected him to use that odd power of his and to be disqualified. Instead he fought by the rules and we have to honor the arrangement. It still grates me that we end up rewarding those who have cut into our profits."
Boren waved it off, going to a table and pouring himself a small drink from one of the decanters there. "The pirates operating in the Sea Of Japan have no official link to either the Kingdom Of Korea, nor the offices of SanyoTech. You know that an attempt to push two warriors like that into slave programming was what awakened those admittedly inconvenient metahuman abilities."
"I have to wonder if our offices in the Pan-Arabic Consortium or the Hellenic League have similar problems with their black market operations," griped Agito.
"Doubtful, I believe the two Saotome are unique in that respect," said Boren, silent for a moment as he sipped on his drink. "I believe I have a solution though."
"Oh?" asked Agito.
"You'll recall that one of our pirate crews had run into a few problems recently," said Boren. "Captain Magno?"
"Oh yes, Vivian Magno," said Agito. "That old biddy."
"One of her crew members was captured, as I recall," prodded Boren.
"That idiot?" said Agito. "Ditza, wasn't it? We were able to blank her memories when the police asked us to probe her. She expected a rescue, but there were some side effects as I recall."
"Yes," said Boren. "That IS the one. I'm surprised you remember that."
Agito waved it off. "That girl had some information WE wanted too. Unfortunately we couldn't take the chance she might know something about other operations. I remember seeing her, and she was talking about aliens and other nonsense."
"She's a good cook, fair seamstress, has a number of skills," pointed out Boren.
"The tournament was supposed to give a highly trained and well adjusted slave," said Agito. "Can we be sure that giving them damaged goods will not reflect back upon us?"
"I'll take care of it," Boren assured him.
the 'present'
The girl came awake slowly, and from her posture and expression was in severe pain.
"That's odd," said the tech. "Your records show that you had trouble with psych downloads earlier, but we used entirely different methods available today. You shouldn't be in pain."
Slave dita began throwing up into the wastebasket, making pitiable noises from the pain.
"Wow," said the tech.
"...master ranma..." groaned dita.
"I hope they were at least able to get her to stop callin' me 'Mister Alien'," said Ranma. "Yeesh. Two and a half years she's been calling me that."
"Well, she also calls you Master Alien," pointed out Genma.
"Well, here we are," said Ranma, pointing to the building down the block. "At least we can get back to her cooking. That 'camp rice' stuff or those nutri-pills are gettin' old REAL fast."
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Sat, 27 Jan 2007 18:43)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.