The goddess carefully looked around to make sure that her entrance had not been observed. The room itself was empty and there was a panda was playing shogi against an older man out on the porch. They were too engrossed into their game to have noticed her. It seemed to Urd that the Panda was cheating, but other then that she could not see anything suspicious. There was certainly no hint of an orgy in progress in the vicinity or any of the other more obvious signs of the book's presence anywhere nearby.
"Oh, hello, I did not realize we had a visitor," a voice called out from behind her.
Urd turned around slightly startled.
"Hello, my name is Urd. I am looking for... uh..." Urd tried to explain.
"You must be looking for Ranma," the women concluded confidently. "Beautiful exotic women coming here almost always are looking for my manly son. My name is Nodoka Saotome by the way."
"Ranma does not live here anymore," the man on the porch called out now that he had noticed her.
It must have been a rather touchy subject for him since it seemed to make the man very emotional. The panda besides him used his inattention to move around a few pieces on the board. It then held up a sign proclaiming that the ungrateful boy had left them here alone.
"Never mind those two," Nodoka said. "They are just upset that Ranma recently moved in with one of his friends, but really we would not have had enough room here for so many girls anyway and the Kunou-compound is much larger."
Urd digested that. A young man who often got visited by beautiful women had lived here not too long ago and had recently moved in with a lot of girls. That sounded like a clue to her.
"Ranma moved away?" she asked.
"Yes, and he took my daughters too." The man on the porch was now near tears and the panda was patting him consolingly on the back.
"Oh, that is too bad. I was hoping to meet him. Can you tell me where I can find him?" she questioned Nodoka carefully.
"Oh, yes! I can give you the address so that you can visit him. The Kunous have a very nice property. I am sure you will like it there." The woman replied enthusiastically.
Since she could not use her powers in front of strangers Urd had had to leave the Tendou home through the front door instead of a television screen and was now forced to walk to the address Mrs. Saotome had given her on foot. Thankfully it was not very far and the directions were precise and helpful.
Another surprise awaited her when she rounded the final corner and spied the entrance of the large walled compound that she had been directed to go to. There were already several people there blocking her way. Urd decided to keep her distance to watch and listen in on them before moving further.
Two scantly clad young women appeared to be arguing with a boy in a kendo outfit and baring him from entering.
"You no welcome here, you no come here anymore," the first female declared in broken Japanese.
"Go away stick-boy," the other one added.
They both seemed to be Chinese and judging by their manner and the staff weapons they carried they were acting as guards. At first glance that idea might have appeared ridiculous.
The two girls looked beautiful and exotic but not very intimidating. Their guard-uniforms consisted mostly of pairs of colorful bikinis that showed of their fit and athletic but not overly muscular bodies. One might almost have dismissed them as highly decorative but no real obstacle to anyone who would wish to gain entrance by force.
That was unless you were sensitive to the aura of fighting-spirit the both radiated and the readiness to use lethal force that shone in their eyes.
The boy must have been insensitive to the former and with his eyes to busy elsewhere to notice the later. Either that or he did not care about the danger that he was in as he confronted the guards.
"I command you to stand aside and let me enter the ancestral home of the noble house of Kunou," he proclaimed imperiously.
"No!" The second guard simply answered.
"But I live here! This is my home!" The boy tried to reason.
"Not anymore! Amazons live here now. This is now homestead and territory of the heroic women tribe of Tokyo," the first guard told him. "Stick-boy and stupid little ninja and silly pineapple man no live here anymore."
"Go away!" her partner reiterated jabbing her staff weapon threateningly in his general direction.
"I must go in to find my loves. The fierce tigress Akane Tendou and the pig-tailed girl are inside."
Urd noted that bit of information. The boy had two loves and polygamy and harems were often the end-result of the book she was looking for falling into the wrong hands. But surely if the boy were in control of the situation than he would not have been kicked out of his own home and kept from his harem by these amazon guards. Maybe he had had the book and then lost control of it to somebody else at some later point.
"No mere male may enter these sacred grounds," the lead guard recited adding. "And no female will come out to see you. Your loves no want to see you. Your sister no want to see you. Nobody inside want to see you. I no want to see you."
"Alas you leave me no choice," the boy exclaimed drawing a wooden practice sword. "I have to rescue my loves and I will find them no matter how many foreign thugs the sorcerer Saotome enthralls to block my way. Stand aside, wenches!"
He really should not have said the last part, Urd thought. The ensuing beat-down was swift and brutal. The boy must have had some skill in the art but he was simply outnumbered and outmatched in both ferocity and motivation.
One of the guards soon had his broken form pinned to the ground with her staff while her partner swung back her weapon next to her. Then she stepped back and Urd cringed as the other guard brought down her weapon with a yell of 'Fore!'
The guards congratulated each other as the boy flew away in an arc with impressive hang-time. One of them picked up a piece of chalk to add a stroke to a number of others on a table chalked to the wall next to the gate. If Urd read the table right then either the guards were getting a large number of intruders falling into the same category or the boy was far more resilient and persistent not to mention stupid than he had looked.
The show over the guards took their positions again standing to attention.
Urd wondered what to do. Trying to enter without invitation seemed to be a bad idea as the boy had just demonstrated. Maybe she could just ask the guards politely to be let in. They had only said that males were not allowed so perhaps they had no problems with female visitors.
What was up with that anyway? Wasn't the son of the women she had spoken with earlier supposed to live here? If the place was full of girls you would have expected there to be at least on master who had read the book at the center of it, either this Ranma or some other male. Maybe the guards did not count him or maybe the book had fallen into the hands of a lesbian.
There also was the weird boy and what he had said about his two loves and a sorcerer. That sounded like something that Urd should follow up on if he was still in any condition to give out information.
Or maybe Urd should turn back to the Tendou home and ask a few more questions about Ranma and the girls that were supposed to live here before continuing.
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(Posted Mon, 03 Oct 2005 23:00)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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