[Episode 145616] [Episode 145616]Holding one end of it while Kodachi looked puzzled and Ukyo tried to look glad through her unshed tears, Kasumi impulsively grabbed Ukyo's straw and traded with her, beaming to the wonderstruck chef as she explained, "Ukyo-chan, you gave Ranma to me by instructing him when I most needed him to understand. I don't think I could've done the same. Please be my guest in taking him first."
Kodachi, holding what had been the longest straw, symbolically broke it so that it was shortest of all, then cast the pieces away. "I agree, Kuonji-san. The brightest moment of my life was when Ranma-sama first hugged me, and that was all your doing. Please be first in offering your body to our joint Protector."
"Uhh, does anybody wanna tell me what that means?" The subject of their ardor asked. His best friend turned around, and the smile and look Ukyo turned on him was distinctly... hungry.
Ranma backpedaled. "Uhh, Master Yoda, we be training right now. Right? I know! I should be centering my spirit and all that, right? Huh?"
Yoda flickered merrily on top of a statue. "Hhmhmhmhm! Healed, your own heart must be. These women, know they do much of what you lack. Love for you they have. Training, this is."
"Ranchan," the hungry chef approached her beloved, who, he'd just realized, was trapped in a convenient corner. "You remember I said anything a girl covered with a swimsuit was special, and you should feel privileged just to see it? Well, breasts and bottom are one kind of special, but another is much more important. Right here," she took hold of his hand and held it to the layers of cloth outside her crotch. "That place is where a woman's babies are made, and nothing could be more dreadful than to have it broken into by someone she doesn't love. But on the same token," she slowly molded her body to his and took him in a warm and steamy hug. "There is no greater honor that she can give than to invite a man to touch her there. Would you please touch me there, Ranchan?"
Kasumi and Kodachi, mutually realizing that they'd been frozen like sheep staring at this developing scene with clothing catalogs hanging limply from their hands, gave up on the catalogs and produced buckets of popcorn.
=====
An explosion of fire, smoke and debris fountained skyward along with a yelp of pain that sounded quite alot like a man's voice played on an accordion as it got stretched out, then contracted.
As the Sufferin' Symphony went on behind them two people, a taller figure in the (authentic this time) outfit of a Catholic Priest, and a smaller, well-rounded teenage girl in a nun's habit, crested a rise in the streets of Nerima, looking down upon the Tendo home.
"Father O'Malley, will we find the Sainted One here?"
The taller figure crossed himself with a hand holding a rosary. "If it be God's will, but Vatican resources and the Jesuit Order both concur this is where he has most likely gone to ground."
"I've heard the rumors from the blessed sisters as I was getting assigned to this mission. Do you think that it's true he may have been living..."
"... in sin?" The priest finished for her. "Impossible. You know as well as I do that this person is a Saint. The Pope himself declared it to be so, and as we both know, he is infallible. We, the priests and cardinals, are merely remiss in our bookkeeping. That is beyond dispute, a minor filing error is what you and I, and hundreds of teams like ours, have come here on missions to correct."
The nun kept her peace, crossing herself faithfully to dispel doubting thoughts, wondering still at Father O'Malleys bold assertion. She recalled the events well enough. There had been two very well publicized healing events before the final miracle on the train wreck. The first had been a tour bus gone astray tumbling off an embankment on a very rural road, with many subsequent injuries. While the heathen had been calling out in pain or sorrow the sole Christian involved in that accident had called out in mighty prayer for the Lord and Savior to send an angel down to heal them.
What had followed was indisputable. While there hadn't been a band-aid in the entire tour group, other than the kit that came with the bus, everyone had seemed to have cameras. A male figure appeared in the sky above them, descended safely from a terrifying height (and proved in doing that he couldn't merely have jumped from the cliff above the tumbled bus as some naysayers had said), then proceeded to rescue those who'd been trapped, care for the injured, lift the bus with a wave of his hand to set it upon its wheels on the road again, then miraculously heal the wounds of the tourists before rising again into heaven, or at least until he was obscured by trees. But there wasn't any mortal way down from that height. Mountain climbers practiced their skills on that slope and didn't leap forty feet up them.
No, the nun had a very good photo book composed of shots taken from that occasion. So what if his white robes resembled a martial arts gi? The Lord often spoke to His People in their own language, why not send a messenger dressed in their attire? It had been white, hadn't it? It had been quite a miracle, and because of the photo evidence had been brought to the attention of churches internationally.
The second event was no less spectacular. Not days after the first miracle an avalanche had devastated a small village across the mountain from the first miracle, but of course because of the news they had still heard of it. Rubble had smashed up most of the buildings and a Buddhist priest had boldly called out a challenge to Christ the Lord that if he could fix up a tour bus, why would He not help a town?
Once again, it had been captured on dozens of cameras how a young man dressed as before descended from above once again, then with seemingly idle gestures had done the work that heavy construction machinery had been called on to do, but had not yet arrived because of another avalanche blocking the major road.
Not only had the stones been removed, but many had been sheared apart by blades of light, and the town rebuilt out of the stones that had destroyed it, made better than before. Because of the scope of both events and the coverage they'd been receiving, the Pope himself had been informed, and sent a pair of cardinals to investigate.
The Lord did see fit to try his people, however, and the train that had been carrying the Papal investigation derailed suddenly, causing hundreds of injuries and a few deaths. The cardinals had been roused by an eager assistant cleric who'd excitedly pointed out the young figure of mercy moving among them, healing the injured. Both cardinals testified under the most holy oaths they could make they saw that figure lifting the train back onto its tracks with only a gesture, and the more cynical of the pair had wept openly as he'd confessed to having his crushed bones mended in spite of his doubts about the validity of their rescuer. But both also agreed that when asked if he was an angel the minister of mercy had told them "No."
Upon receiving this news, and witnessing the effect of these miracles upon the faithful, the Pope had been glad to report that these three rescues had been the actions of a saint, and was not the only church to enjoy increased conversions in the affected area.
Photographs of the healing saint were common, but blurry. Eye witness accounts varied, as they often do (including one girl who'd kept insisting it was "her sempai"), but once police artists got involved in debunking the stories they found that drawings could be made that all concurred were the saint in question.
Before the Vatican could decide which saint it was (a debate that easily could have taken years) the Japanese surprised them again by producing name and address of the boy in question: One Ranma Saotome.
Well, the Pope had said he was a saint. There wasn't any question about the Pope being wrong. So that had set up a scramble for finding his records, but just to be on the safe side in case of a serious bookkeeping error or lost information, they'd gone ahead and restarted the process for elevating this Ranma to sainthood.
His qualifications had already come around golden. Three miracles? No problem. He'd done major ones of apostolic level before witnesses high in the church itself, and testimony of others was easy to find. Dead? That qualification had to be dropped for Mother Theresa, so obviously it didn't apply to him, either.
Catholic? Aye, there was the rub. They were sure they must have the records around somewhere, but they just couldn't find them. Priests in every parish in Japan were scouring their records just in case they had that precious information, but just in case (so the process of correcting that flaw in their bookkeeping could go forward as soon as possible you understand) hundreds of priests and their assistants were currently scouring Japan for the Sainted One, so they could ask him to provide the needed information.
And, if he couldn't recall it, no problem. Lots of people couldn't recall even such important dates. They'd just baptize him on the spot so they could have a date to put into their records. Every priest carried a good pint of holy water with an easy open top just in case.
The possibility had been floated that the Lord often set obstacles to test them, so if the saint wanted to pretend objections they weren't to take it personally. They should, like Jonah, endure whatever hardships the Lord sent their way and persevere in faith and love, knowing that it was only meant to test them and purify them for God's service.
The individual priests had all been warned that no matter what this saint might say or do it was only for the greater glory of God, and if he might appear to object to baptism or major doctrines of the Catholic church that was all, actually, merely furthering the inscrutable purposes of God and they were to ignore it and just go on with splashing him so they could prove he was Catholic.
No matter how hard he tried to avoid it, or object to it, Ranma Saotome was a Saint and that was all there was to it. They just had to get the baptismal record so they could clear up their bookkeeping, and if that meant splashing him with buckets of holy water by surprise in the middle of the night as he dodged every which way he could they were still going to do it!
God does move in mysterious ways, after all.
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(Posted Sun, 24 Jul 2005 10:31)
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