Her pace began to flag, as her strength faded -- too quickly. She definitely needed to get her father to teach her more! Just before she tripped, the Chinese girl who had called herself Shampoo caught her, and then hefted her in her arms, easily outpacing Hotaru's top running speed. "Good girl," she cheered. "Care for father -- he okay!"
Hotaru nodded, unconvinced, as Shampoo charged straight for the crowd, preceded by Ukyou and Akane. The Tendo naganita caused the majority of the crowd to part around their dash, and those few stragglers who were too stunned or slow to get out of the way found out that in the correct hands, a giant spatula is a surprisingly gentle weapon. In short order, the quartet reached the smoke and dust, and made it into the ruins.
It was hard for Hotaru to see, and breathe. She coughed a few times, and then Ukyou pressed a handkerchief over her face, and it filtered the worst of the dust out. Hotaru nodded her thanks as they managed to get to a point where they could see, though the area was ringed in dust.
Ranma sat on the twisted remnants of a steel girder, looking drained. Lying in front of him, broken and bleeding, was Tarou, human again, and tangled in a thick tangle of pantyhose. But Hotaru didn't really care about him -- she squirmed out of Shampoo's grip, and launched herself at Ranma.
She caught him, eliciting a subdued, "She have Joketsuzoku training?" from Shampoo before she glomped him.
Grunting slightly, Ranma blinked away some of his tiredness, and caught her gently. "Sorry," he said, cracking his knuckles in a yawn. Then he blinked, seeing Akane, Ukyou, and Shampoo. "Er," he managed. "What brings you here?"
"We heard you were in trouble and came to see if we could help," Ukyou offered. Then she looked contemplative. "You, uh, gonna blow up a national monument every time someone tries to kidnap Hotaru, Ranchan?"
Ranma blanched, and looked around him at the devastation. "Oooh, boy," he sighed. "Yeah, I hope not. But panty-fiend here is down for the count. Hey, Shampoo?"
"Yes, Airen?" she chirped eagerly.
"Can you do me a favor and see if the ol' ghoul can lock this guy down for a while?"
"Hiba-chan is going back to Joketsuzoku," she said, shaking her head. "Left last night. Won't be back till Saturday." He frowned. "But, Shampoo think she can keep panty-monster from being trouble. Even monster fight bad with...." She paused, and surveyed Tarou's form visually. "Aiyah," she breathed. "Sixteen broken bones is very many. Tarou make you very mad?"
"Yeah," he said. "He messed with my daughter." Hotaru suddenly felt very warm and happy -- and completely safe in her father's embrace.
"Why not turn him over to the J.S.D.F.?" Akane asked. "They're right outside -- they'll probably come through the dust in a minute anyway."
"Eh, for one, I don't know what kind of lab they'll haul him to, for another, this fight's gonna leave some pretty bitter memories, I think. I'd like to make sure that he knows he's not gonna do it again before I let him out of my sight. Last thing I need is for him to come back from the J.S.D.F. with armored plating or something," Ranma said.
"Point," Ukyou agreed.
Shampoo pouted, but picked up Tarou, seeing he was so thickly wrapped in pantyhose that his extremities were not jostled -- probably a good thing, Hotaru thought, since his bones hadn't been set yet. "Shampoo go back to Neko-Hanten. You come by for lunch with daughter?"
"You feel like ramen?" Ranma asked Hotaru. "I could eat anything right now."
"I love ramen!" Hotaru cheered.
Smiling, Shampoo nodded, and then vanished into the dust. At that moment, Ranma's phone began to ring, and he looked somewhat pained. "Um, can I put you down for a moment, Hotaru-chan?" he asked.
She nodded as he set her down, Ukyou and Akane both looking at his gold-colored phone with interest.
"Hello?" he answered with some trepidation. His face fell immediately, and he held the receiver a slight distance from his ear. "Er. Yeah. I'm really sorry about that, Boss--" He frowned, then looked surprised. "Speech? But--" He rolled his eyes, and then winced. "Okay! I'm on it, it's just not something I've ever.... Eh, what's the worst that can happen. I'm on it." He waited a moment longer, and then closed the phone.
Turning back to the girls, he smiled apologetically. "Sorry about that -- my boss wants me to give a speech," he explained.
"To who?" Nanami Jinnai asked, emerging from a pocket of dust with her camera man, just before the massive sphere of it around them seemed to dissipate. At that point, Hotaru realized that the rubble and ruins had sloped upward, and Ranma had been perched on one of the highest points. She wasn't much lower, and that meant the circling news helicopters and reporters on nearby rooftops now had excellent shots of all of them.
"I'm not sure," he admitted, as a gaggle of other reporters began to chase up the hill, only to be halted by fourteen men and women in casual dress standing in a rough circle around the base of the tower. For whatever reason, as reporters reached the periphery of that circle, they seemed to lose the urge to go any further. Hotaru wondered why that was, and decided she'd probably want to ask Ranma about it later.
"Well!" Nanami exclaimed cheerfully. "I'm Nanami Jinnai, why don't you tell me your story, Special Operative Saotome Ranma?"
"Er," Ranma began slowly, then suddenly brightening. "It's pretty simple, really," he said with a shrug. "When you face a problem, you need to decide if you're going to try and work with it to get it fixed, or just smash it out of the way. Tarou tried to smash his way through things, and this is the result." He shrugged, gesturing at the remains of the tower. "I'm disappointed it came to this, but I'll see to it he never does anything like it again."
"Ooh," Nanami cooed, "a real hero for the people! Anything else?"
"He didn't say it had to be a long speech," Ranma mumbled.
Read the comments on this episode
See other episodes by Sgt. Chibi De`Ohki
(Posted Wed, 20 Jul 2005 07:56)
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.