For a few minutes after that, Arisa looked about cautiously, trying to determine when and where Ryoko might pop up again.
After that, Arisa strutted around the compound in her armor, declaring herself the winner for having driven the legendary demon away, and showing off victory poses for the audience. Nuku Nuku joined in on the fun of the posing and strutting, sparking a heated rant from Arisa about furry attention hogs.
In that period Tenchi managed to put together a sort of toga from some curtains. The Japan of his timeline did not have a nudity taboo as such, but he had been running around in the buff for a while without being able to complete the activities associated with the absence of clothing. He was still very much feeling a need for those activities, but putting on some clothing helped him to get past that and focus. He was not quite as confident as Arisa that Ryoko was gone for good. He had already been fooled once by her apparent helplessness, and she had just fooled Arisa and Kyoko in a similar manner. Tenchi was beginning to suspect that the legendary demoness was not going to be stopped by anything short of legendary measures.
When Tenchi emerged from the house, Nuku Nuku was giving the Eyelid-and-Tongue gesture to Arisa while Arisa used her voice amplification system to comment loudly about where she might stick her armor’s dildo now that her intended target was gone. The crowd outside the compound fence had not yet dispersed, and many seemed to think Arisa’s suggestions sounded like a fine idea. Kyoko’s blue armor had a blue bird-girl perched on one shoulder, both observing the argument with some concern. Taking a deep breath, Tenchi plunged into the fray.
First he had to get their attention, which could be difficult in the middle of a brewing conflict like this one. He accomplished it by running up to them with arms waving while shouting, “Girls, Girls! Arisa! Nuku Nuku! If she comes back, her powers are in the gem on her wrist! Go for the gem on her wrist!”
“Tenchi?” Arisa’s questioning use of his name boomed and made Tenchi’s toga flutter, as her armor’s voice amplification was still active. “What? Oh, don’t worry about it. She’s long gone. That demon learned not to mess with the likes of us!” Arisa planted armored fists on armored hips, through her head (or her armor’s head, there was no effective difference in her mind at that moment) back and laughed deafeningly.
Nuku Nuku copied Arisa’s stance and said, “Yeah! She won’t mess with the likes of us!”
Her laughter was a bit more genuinely cheerful than Arisa’s (and had an endearingly cute quality as well) but it came to a sudden halt as Arisa’s crimson armor loomed over her, bellowing, “What makes you think I was including you in that ‘us’ hairball?”
The impending feud did not get a chance to continue as a cloud overhead seemed to burst into flame, lit by a bloody flare of light from within. Despite their tendency to compete with each other for attention from Master and others, the slaves of Natsume Kyusaku were experienced professionals. The human in the golem-mech and the bakeneko forgot their quarrel immediately and turned their attention to the sky. Aria made shooing motions at the young Master Masaki without taking her eyes off the blazing cloud. “Go back in the house. You told us what we needed, now get under some cover!”
Tenchi’s basic survival instincts and higher brain functions both agreed that following Arisa’s directives was a good idea. His heart said not to leave the girls to face this peril, no mater what. Due to this indecision and concern, he was looking at the girls rather than the sky when Ryoko flickered into existence behind Arisa.
His shouted warning came at the same time that Ryoko, now clad in a black bodysuit with a red design covering her left arm and shoulder, wrapped that scarlet arm around the scarlet metal head of Arisa’s mech and hauled back on it. Tenchi instinctively leapt forward to help, then leapt out of the way as the 10-ft tall metal mech staggered backwards and threatened to crush him.
Ryoko planted her feet in the small of the armor’s back and applied still more force to the head in her grasp. This bent the armored form over backwards, but Ryoko used her flight ability to keep it from actually falling over. She also kept it stumbling away from the other Natsume slaves with its bulk serving as a shield between herself and those potential combatants. Arisa clawed at the arm and tried to use the beam weapon in her armor’s arm to paralyze the grasping limb, but a sudden jerk and a kick to her shoulder threw her aim off. Then Ryoko manifested her sword.
Ryoko had not managed to penetrate the golem armor in the previous skirmish. On the other hand, she had made some portions of it glow with heat briefly when she slashed it with her sword. This time, she did not slash. She pressed the energy blade firmly into the exposed neck of the armor, and held it there. The magically reinforced metal began to glow on contact, and started to soften in a handful of rapid heartbeats.
The primary advantage to the type of mech and interface that Arisa used was that the mech effectively became the user’s body. This eliminated most of the need for training, increased the range of actions she could perform in the armor, and sped up her reaction time in performing those actions. The downside was that the mech effectively became her body and she could feel what happened to it. There were safety measures in place to mute the pain of damage, but the muted sensation of a red-hot bar burning into her neck was still enough to make Arisa scream in anguish. With her voice amplification system still up and running, that scream became a physical force, battering the people moving to help her.
The scream of a woman in pain became the screech of yielding metal. Then silence fell on the field as Ryoko pulled the head she grasped from its shoulders.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Tue, 04 Jan 2005 23:46)
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.