He would freely give his name as Ahkmed. Everyone knew him as that Crazy Arab. Actually his name was Lyle Madagascar Rhodes and he was born in Liverpool, but he looked Arabic and dressed the part and had a long and involved story that he had painstakingly put together over a whole lot of years. Ahkmed (or Lyle if you prefer) was someone who had gone through the Great War. No, not that one, the other one. The one involving the Kaiser and experiments in Rune Magic that really proved to be unwise, but that was hindsight for you. The people involved at the time had all thought it was a wonderful idea and could have shown you several pages of nearly incomprehensible mathematics that absolutely proved why these experiments were going to revolutionize the world.
Of course, in the case of the mathematician/rune theorist Lyle Madagascar Rhodes - it had indeed extended his lifespan and rune mastery considerably. It had also made him crazier than a bedbug and apt to talk to himself in nonexistent languages and giggle hysterically at odd moments.
The story behind Ahkmed was long and involved and had evolved several times in the years since the Great War. If you asked him he'd tell you about cities of ancient Babylon swallowed up by the sands and calamities from the skies and books of Secrets Best Forgotten. Mainly it was pieced together from various rumors that had been told of him over the years - he'd selected the bits he'd liked and woven them all together and had quite forgotten being a minor mathematical savant from Liverpool. Of course, if he'd had his druthers, the young Lyle would have rather been a jazz musician. Instead he ended up being a crazy old rune-master living in the shadows of society.
Life happens, as they say.
Within a few days Ahkmed The Half-Crazed Arab (despite the facts that he'd never been further south than Naples, he was of Pakistani descent born and raised in England, and his sanity varied from day to day though he wasn't a violent sort of insane) had forgotten entirely about the pudgy foreigner and had gone on to his next great creation.
Which had left Genma in possession of the sort of Rune that a crazy person would think was handy.
Which was:
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(Posted Fri, 09 Sep 2005 09:39)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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