Dinner was delivered quickly and eaten just as fast. After dinner Ranma and Kassy fell asleep, exhausted by their earlier efforts. They woke the next morning and headed down to the common area of the motel where a “continental” breakfast consisting of stale Kellogg cereals and dry breads was set out for anyone to take.
During breakfast not much was said. Kassy was completely absorbed in her thoughts about what to do about Ranma’s problem, and Ranma was absorbed in them too. Ranma was starting to get worried about Kassy’s silence when Kassy’s eyes suddenly lit up.
“I’ll be right back I have to make a phone call,” Kassy chirped running out of the motel common area.
“Um…” Ranma replied turning away from his “continental” breakfast only to see Kassy disappear around a corner.
Outside Kassy made a mad dash to the nearest pay phone. Slipping in her phone card she began punching in numbers as quickly as she could think of them. Kassy couldn’t help praising herself. If anything could be done to help Ranma this phone call would set things in motion.
(------)
Somewhere in an office a long way from Juuban or Nerima a phone began the tedious process of forwarding its call through to the next phone which would do the same for the next, and the next, and the next. Finally, a phone in a darkened room began to ring rousing a sleeping figure shrouded in shadows. Turning over with a grunt the figure began to flail wildly trying to find the phone which had carefully hidden itself underneath the garbage that covered the floor of the room. After a few seconds the phone was recovered from beneath an empty bag of tortilla chips.
“Juuban…” the figure grunted to himself checking his caller ID, “Hello?”
The person on the other end of the phone began talking animatedly and the figure’s eyes widened slightly as he listened.
“Right,” he said cutting off the speaker, “Just tell me the names and send the rest of the pertinent information to my email.”
Their was a brief pause on the other end of the line followed by another brief burst of speech.
“Got it. If you haven’t heard from me in 48 hours than I’m not interested. Sorry,” the figure interrupted hanging up the phone which was still trying to talk, “Nerima… Saotome Ranma…Hmmm…”
With those words the darkened figure flipped back over to sleep. Today could afford to start a little later.
(------)
Back in Juuban, Kassy had returned from her phone call with the same inner-focus she had had before.
“What was that about?” Ranma asked as he checked them out of the room.
“Huh? Oh, nothing,” Kassy replied snapping out of her dazed stupor, “Just had to make a phone call that didn’t go quite like I expected it would. Let’s head back everyone is probably wondering where we are.”
“Um… right,” Ranma said still put off by Kassy’s answer.
The trip back to Nerima was uneventful. Uneventful for Nerima that is. Thus nobody was very surprised by the men in nondescript black suits who seemed to be on every street talking to one person or another or taking pictures of everything.
“I wonder who all these weirdoes are,” Ranma said after the third time one of them had taken his picture.
“Yeah,” Kassy said in a slightly less confident tone. She had an idea of what was going on but hoped she was wrong.
(------)
At the Kuno mansion Tatewaki Kuno gave a loud triumphant cry as he hung up the phone. This was shortly followed by a sharp cry of pain as Kuno nearly passed out from having tried to open his mouth while it was wired shut.
“Master?…” Sasuke, ever loyal, asked poking his head into Kuno’s room, “I didn’t quite catch that.”
Kuno dazedly lifted a wooden sign he had purloined from a rampaging panda earlier that day upon which he had written, “Saotome Ranma! Your comeuppance is at hand!” flipping the other sign said, “Sasuke I have made preparations to end that fool and deliver-,” -flip- “the fair Cylutian princess to her beloved.”
“Master are you alright? You look like you’re in pain,” Sasuke said dubiously approaching his master who had tears streaming from his eyes and jaw wiring sticking out in odd places.
-flip- “Don’t just stand their call an ambulance!”
“Right away sir!” Sasuke said taking up the phone Kuno had assumedly been speaking into. I wonder how he did that flipping thing with the sign. Sasuke thought to himself forgetting to dial momentarily.
“Shash-kayyy,” Kuno groaned on the ground.
“Oh right,” Sasuke said as he finished dialing the local hospital, “Hello this is- Yes and I- Yes he did it again can you come right over? Thanks.”
The ambulance was already on its way since half of Nerima had heard Kuno yell and the people at the hospital had already answered three such calls since releasing Kuno the previous day.
(------)
Nabiki was not having a good day. First, Kikuko’s computer geeks had failed to find any more information on the billboard incident.
“Honestly boss they say its like somebody came through and completely rewrote the system they can’t even get to the information they had before. Whenever they try their computers pick up a virus and they have to spend hours debugging. I had them on it all night!”
Second, Ryonami had completely lost track of Kassy. While her Ranma tracking team had lost track of him last night and now seemed to have dropped off the face of the Earth. The two of them missing meant nothing good in Nabiki’s mind.
And third and finally, this morning the entire district and its environs had been flooded with men in black suits who seemed to be everywhere examining every facet Nerima had to offer, and Nabiki couldn’t get any info on who they were or what they were doing.
“Someone is going to PAY for this!” Nabiki rage her voice rising to join the distant cry of an injured Kuno.
(------)
Arriving back at the dojo Ranma and Kassy were greeted by Kasumi and the water she throwing out on the sidewalk.
“Oh you’re back,” Kasumi said as she left for the days shopping, “the school called they are wondering if you were ill or not and I didn’t know how to answer them about whether you were coming or not. Would you please go call and tell them?”
“School?!” Ranma and Kassy chorused.
(Posted Fri, 12 May 2006 16:39)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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