"Mistress, are you alright?!"
Heads snapped around to gaze at the main entrance to the Tendou home, where two girls in white kimonos now stood. One -- Marie's personal assistant Ami, Ranma quickly recognized -- had a blue stick with a strange heart-like symbol at the top. The other...!
"Tokiha Mai...!" escaped his lips as his eyes locked in on the burning golden rings surrounding the other slave's wrists and ankles.
Tokiha Mai, a busty strawberry blonde with blue-grey eyes who hailed from Tokyo, was an S (Special) Class mamluk, so rated thanks to a gift given to her at birth: the powers of a HiME (the English-based acronym based on the Japanese word for "princess" meant "Highly-Advanced Materializing Equipment"). That birthright granted her the ability to call on the power of a metaphysical source of energy, the so-called "HiME Star," to create defensive/offensive "elements" she could use in battle. It also gave her the ability to summon a "Child," a massive techno-organic being she called "Kagutsuchi," who possessed the ability to blast apart whole battleships in one blow.
She was the last of her kind, too. A year before, Mai, along with twelve other girls who had been brought together at the Fuuwa Academy at the behest of someone nicknamed "the Queen of Hell" -- Ranma didn't know the full particulars of this story, unfortunately -- was plunged into a living nightmare called "the HiME Festival." "Battle Royale" or "Massacre" would've been a better word to describe the event, where the HiMEs had been pitched into battle against each other. If a HiME lost, her Child was destroyed and the HiME lost her link to the HiME Star. If a HiME won, she absorbed her defeated opponent's power and moved on to tackle other HiMEs.
Until one was left.
What hadn't been said in the issue of International Jannissary Ranma had seen which had covered Mai's story, was that the defeated HiMEs all had died afterward. The causes behind those tragedies were unknown, but the result was known: shortly after the "festival" ended, Mai surrendered herself to the Imperial Police, allowed herself to be mentally conditioned into a full-use mamluk, and then found herself sold as the personal bodyguard/companion to a prominent member of the Joint Privy Council of the Dual Kingdoms.
That person, Ranma now realized, was Marchioness Susumu Marie's elder half-sister, Princess Hana Sakuya.
"I am fine, Mai," Marie replied, her voice as cold as ice. "Summon your Child, please."
Mai blinked, and then she nodded. "Hai!"
A point on her chest, just to the right of her breastbone, then glowed star-white as she screamed out:
"KAGUTSUCHI!!!!"
As soon as the light faded, Mai found herself standing in front of a ten-metre tall creature built seemingly out of white armoured plates, they interconnected with plasma-like flame which gave Kagutsuchi the general overall appearance of a phoenix, complete with burning wings spanning thirty metres and a long, flat tail that gave ten metres more to Kagutsuchi's overall length. The head was elongated and bird-like, shaped almost like a velociraptor's from the late Cretaceous period in Earth's history, though it came with four puffy-like "ears," the glowing eyes were situated at the jaw joint and the jaws themselves were pierced through by a dagger quadruple the size of Mai!
Staring at this monster the lovely mamluk had just summoned, Souun and Genma both wet their pants before the sheer terror of the moment made them scream. In a burst of speed and a trail of smoke, they raced off, hopped over the fence, and ran off for the hills!
Kagutsuchi mewed as he watched the male humans race away, and then he turned down to gaze on Mai. "No, Mai. Don't let him go after them," Marie then instructed. "I believe they got the hint. Ami?"
Ami perked. "Hai, Mistress?!"
"May I see our copy of Ranma-kun's contract?"
"Hai!"
Moments later, the contract was rolled out and lying on the sitting room table. Everyone save Kasumi and Mai stared at it; the former elder Tendou daughter and the HiME were busy on the porch chatting away with each other as they petted Kagutsuchi's beak. Gazing at what had been hand-written on the agreement, which was now legal and binding, the others could only moan.
"Can I say something, Ranma-san?" Akane then said.
"What is it, Akane-san?"
"You got seriously screwed here. You and the Mistress both!"
Ranma nodded. "Thank you for telling me that, Akane-san."
The contract stated...
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(Posted Sat, 26 Mar 2005 16:00)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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