"It looks like a couple of antique planes," remarked Katsunari. They could hear a faint drone through the vastness of the sky.
"But what's that white shape?" asked Yuuki. "I can't quite make it out. It looks like a seagull or something, but it's too big to be one."
"What do you think, Juna?" asked Katsunari, turning to look at her friend. "Juna?"
Juna Ariyoshi still had that frown on her face. "Something doesn't feel right about them. I'd like to check it out, if you don't mind."
Katsunari shook her head. "Go ahead. Just remember, you're not in Kobe anymore, and there won't be any Chris or SEED personnel to save you should you get into trouble."
"I understand, I'll be careful." The sloe-eyed girl looked around for a convenient place to transform, found it in a copse of trees, and was off in a flash, streaking through the sky like a golden-headed, glowing pink arrow decorated with long, translucent white ribbons at the sides.
"I wonder what's up with her," Yuuki rumbled.
"Me too. I can't sense anything," said KatKat, scratching her short, wavy black hair. "Except your stomach complaining."
Yuuki smiled sheepishly as his belly let out a growl. "Sorry."
"Why don't we get something to eat?" suggested Katsunari, looking around, tugging at the mask below her chin. The people seemed not to be minding Arjuna. "Maybe we can pass by Harajuku Station. There's bound to be something there."
"What about Juna?" asked Yuuki.
"Oh, she'll find us when she needs to. Come on." Together they set off to find some comestibles to fill Yuuki's stomach.
------oOo------
Deeper in the park, five off-duty police officers were walking slowly along a footpath, enjoying the quietude of their surroundings. It was a welcome change from the crowds, noise and bustle of the mall they had just come from. They patiently endured the stares they got from passers-by, which were wholly due to the strange costumes they wore.
One of them, a woman in her twenties with dark-brown eyes and a modified pageboy hairstyle, groaned. She was wearing a white-and-green sentai-type uniform. "I can't believe the Chief was cruel enough to set us up like this." She swung the helmet she held in one hand around, nearly hitting the tall man walking behind her.
"Watch it, Tsujimoto!" the man warned, jerking his head back, out of the way of the swinging helmet. He adjusted his reflective shades, which it seemed he always wore, even into the showers at Bokuto Station. "At least your uniforms look okay enough. Just look at me!" He gestured at his own costume, which resembled the body of a Godzilla-type monster. "How do you think I feel walking around like this? I should go work for Toho!"
Natsumi Tsujimoto leaned back and elbowed him in the ribs. "Huh. I bet you had a fun time pressing all those contact explosive points on Miyuki's OB-3 uniform, Ken," she teased.
"Natsumi!" protested the woman walking to her right. Her delicately-featured face turned as crimson as the trim on her costume, and she lowered her head so the fall of her bangs would cover her eyes.
"Yeah, Nakajima, I'll bet Natsumi's right," said another woman, who was walking slightly behind the one who was blushing. Among them all, she was the only one dressed in civilian clothes. The lenses of her eyeglasses glinted in the winter sunlight. "I saw the way you looked afterward. It's a good thing I triggered them and got your fingers away from her, or you might have embarrassed yourself and Miyuki even further."
"Yoriko!" said Ken Nakajima threateningly. "Will you guys stop saying such things?"
"Aww, look, he's blushing," chuckled Natsumi. "C'mon, Aoi, Yoriko," she said, stepping in between two of her companions, one female and the other merely female-like, and hooking their arms in hers. "Let's leave these two alone. I'm sure they have a lot to talk about." She pulled them away, lustily singing their group's hokey theme song as she did so.
Seeing as how he was being left behind with with his long-haired love interest as the laughing trio surged on ahead, Nakajima shouted, "Hey, where are you guys going?" then sighed. "B-believe me, Kobayakawa," said he, stammering, "n-none of what they're saying is true. I was just doing my job as the villain, that's all."
"It's okay, Nakajima," said Miyuki Kobayakawa, looking up and smiling at him. "I know that." She put her head back down, and her hands seemed to clasp the red helmet in her hands more tightly. "I just wonder why the Chief would send us out on a job like this so soon after Christmas. It seems so pointless."
"Well, at least we entertained those kids back at the mall."
"Yeah."
The White Hawk of Bokuto turned away from the woman walking beside him, afraid of being caught staring at her. He cast around desperately in his mind for something else to talk about. Come on, you, he urged himself. It isn't every day you get Kobayakawa all alone like this. Say something!
There was a call, and he snapped out of his reverie to find Natsumi pointing to the sky. Looking up, he saw a trio of planes banking high in the air above them.
"So what?" he whispered. "What's gotten Tsujimoto all worked up?"
Miyuki lifted an arm and pointed in a slightly different direction. "I think she means that."
The vivid blueness of the sky and the bright pink glow and tiny size of the flying object, along with the filtering nature of his glasses, served to impair the policeman's vision. "What is that thing? Is it a UFO?"
"I don't know. But you remember the reports we read about strange things in the sky around here for the past few days?"
Nakajima nodded as he followed the speck on its arching upward path. It seemed to be headed towards the group of planes. "We can't do anything about that. I don't think the Dauphin 2s we use would be able to catch up to them anyway."
"So do I." Miyuki shrugged. "I guess it's a matter for other authorities. I'll just call it in when we get to the cars." They spent one more moment looking at the mysterious pink object, then resumed walking along the footpath.
------oOo------
Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind was in trouble. She had been in trouble for the past couple of weeks or so, ever since the Christmas party at the Koganei animation studio ended. She couldn't get back home. And neither could her two compatriots, who were flying beside her.
"Bollocks!" she heard one exclaim over the roar of the wind. He was a tall, thin man in a blue jacket, with a leather flying cap on his head and a yellow scarf around his neck. A trimmed moustache sat above his upper lips. He was flying the dark-blue bi-winged seaplane with the rattlesnake emblem on its tail and the pontoon landing gear, and was furthest from her. "This is useless, Marco! There's still no portal!"
The pilot of the red seaplane, which was nearer to Nausicaä, lowered the fluttering white scarf covering the bottom half of his face. He was a barrel-chested man with a more luxurious moustache than his companion, and wore small black rounded sunglasses which effectively covered up his eyes. He shouted back. "Keep going, chicken cowboy! I thought you said you wanted to become President of the United States! You're not giving that position up to that Franklin Roosevelt person, are you?"
"But we're almost out of gas!" the 'chicken cowboy' yelled back. "I don't want my plane to seize up running on this world's avgas! We'd better return home and try again tomorrow."
The man in the red plane looked the other way, towards Nausicaä. He throttled his engine back to lower the noise, and Nausicaä adjusted her own glider's position and drifted a little closer to his open cockpit.
"Curtis is right, hime-sama," Marco Pagot shouted to her. "No portal, no going home for any of us. We'd best get back to Koganei before dusk."
The blue-clad one nodded. She was disinclined to talk, even more so than usual because she wore her snout-like mask over her face, along with her usual cloth headgear with its built-in goggles. She watched the city wheeling below her and tried to use its strange and wondrous sight to mask her growing despair.
Donald Curtis, pilot of the blue R3C0, banked his plane to the left and started to turn around for home. Marco Pagot and his red Savoia S.21 followed suit, and Nausicaä was about to do so herself, when a voice in her mind startled her.
Pardon me, it said. May I be of some assistance?
Nausicaä's head snapped up, and she looked wildly around her. Chikuku? Charuka? Is that you? she sent-asked, even though she knew the voice did not belong to either of her friends, whom she had left a world away. She twisted her head around and found a glowing pink person--a woman, in her estimation--serenely maintaining formation just outboard of her glider Mehve's right wingtip. Her V-shaped golden hair buffeted in the wind; the ribbons trailing from the crook of her arms fluttered sinuously in the 175-knot slipstream.
Sorry if I startled you, the being calmly apologized, smiling at her with an inhuman smile. But I sensed your trouble. Is there anything I can do to help? My name is Juna.
My name is Nausicaä, replied the Princess of the Valley of Wind as she stared at the flying girl. Unless you can send me and my friends home, I'm afraid there's not much you can do for us right now.
The shimmering being moved closer to Nausicaä's prone form. You're not from around here, are you? she asked, noting the extraordinary blue clothing the stranger wore.
No. I'm from... far away. Far, far away. Nausicaä chanced to look into her eyes.
A welter of visions erupted in Arjuna's mind, and she gasped on seeing them. A forest made up of huge mushrooms and other fungi. Many men riding ostrich-like and deer-like creatures, shooting and killing each other with a variety of weapons, from cannons to rifles and swords. Cactus-skinned automatons serving a kingly figure who had eyes all around his golden helmet. A mustachioed man with a tasseled hat and covered in a bloody cape expiring in her arms, whispering a loving "Ever forward, my darling wind," as he did so. Strange, gigantic, many-eyed insects rumbling along a sandy wasteland, to strike the shell of an ancient ship with their massive bulk. A sensation of being thrown into the air, of blackness and pain...
Very far away, Arjuna agreed. Nausicaä merely nodded and turned to look at the Savoia so she could keep station with it.
Would you mind if I tag along? Arjuna asked. I might be able to help you.
Do as you wish.
Where are you headed?
Without looking back, Nausicaä pointed in a southwesterly direction. Koganei.
Arjuna made a couple of decisions in the next few seconds, and she said, I'll catch up with you. I just need to talk to a few friends first.
Nausicaä turned her head round, pulled down her brown mask and smiled. Thank you. I shall wait for you. She contacted Marco and Curtis mentally, held up an index finger, and made a circling gesture with it. Marco looked briefly at their strange new companion and nodded. So did Curtis.
All of us will wait for you.
Arjuna made a thumbs-up sign and dove away, heading back to Yoyogi Park, already far behind her. Inside her head she pictured herself talking to Ka-chan and Yuuki excitedly. You'll never guess who I met, she heard herself saying.
------oOo------
"Hey, Aoi, look," said Natsumi Tsujimoto. "That pink glowing thing is coming back." They were standing on the outskirts of the park, near Harajuku Station. In their futuristic costumes they stuck out amid all the Gothic finery around them like ravens in a flock of gulls.
"So it is," replied OB-Purple in his distaff voice. "Hey, everybody, look."
The rest of the Bokuto police officers turned and craned their necks.
"It seems to be coming this way," Nakajima commented.
After a few minutes they saw it grow larger. It was definitely humanoid, and it vanished behind a nearby grove of trees.
Natsumi caught Miyuki's eye. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Miyuki nodded. After being on the beat with one another for so long, they could almost read each other's mind. Without another word they began to sprint, sentai uniforms and all, to the place where they had seen the shining figure disappear.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Fri, 11 Mar 2005 05:07)
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.