She had to bug him on a regular basis just to get him to remember to eat, so she wasn't expecting him to pay any attention to her at this point.
The weird lights were simply balls of some kind of foxfire hanging there in midair. They might be dangerous, so she didn't touch them. She was curious though. Maybe she could get one for her collection. They didn't seem to produce any heat, so maybe it was safe.
After the mystery of the lights was regarded, Hotaru turned her attention to the room itself. Some of it looked kind of Middle-Eastern though the big eye-motif was kind of odd. What was with this pedestal anyway?
As she got closer, the pedestal lit up.
"AGHHH!" yelled her father as a rumble sounded and the ceiling began to collapse.
Pluto watched, fascinated. According to the writings on the wall, the boy had been found with barely any power - survivor of a war on another world entirely. He had spoken of a wondrous land, and bitterly of his forced service as a weapon of mass destruction tasked to destroy parts of such.
He was met fairly by the people of the kingdom, and when his power at last failed, seized and hidden away here.
He had thought he had found friends in a land he was not to be forced to destroy. In truth, he'd only really met one. A young girl who herself would later die so that she did not awaken as the Soldier Of Destruction.
The armor, and its carvings, were a hope for the future. That he could eventually become a guardian of the world instead of a weapon to be used against it.
So Ranma, no longer Saotome, was in fact a superpowerful android. Fortunately, there was no way that he could do anything as he was locked away under a mountain. Hotaru would find a way out though admittedly without her father and things would return to a semblence of normalcy.
Hotaru coughed at all the dust in the air, and saw her father pinned by the rubble of the wall. After trying to free him at first, she was forced to conclude that she just wasn't strong enough to do anything.
Unable to escape, and not knowing how to get help even if she did make it back out of the cave, Hotaru tried looking for another exit.
What she found was a long coffin-like thing.
Slumped at the front, sprawled like a marionette whose strings had been cut, was a boy.
Nearby was a staff.
Hotaru looked at the spot on the boy's back, then at the staff, realizing that there was a corresponding area on each. Thinking that this might be like in a Final Fantasy or Dragonquest game, and that winding up the boy might have him speak some clue as to finding the exit, Hotaru inserted the key-staff and began winding him up.
"You are her, but you are not her," said Ranma.
"I don't know what you mean," admitted Hotaru, a little surprised that the boy she'd wound up was moving and talking to her. Okay, make that a LOT surprised.
The boy looked over a set of armor, but then moved past it to the boulders holding her father in place.
"I can't move them," said Hotaru.
"I can," said Ranma simply, hefting one that Hotaru estimated weighing more than twice what her father did. He worked quickly and efficiently. "You are the holder of the key-staff. What else do you wish of me?"
Hotaru saw the sad and lonely expression on the boy's face even as he worked on freeing her poppa. She often was lonely herself, so...
"Well, can you be my friend?" asked Hotaru.
Ranma paused as he removed the last rock pinning the unconscious man. He regarded the young girl briefly before taking her hand in his own. "I'm not sure. I can try."
Sailor Pluto twitched at her Time Gate.
Ranma had superhuman strength and speed and flying ability?!
Well, at least there was nothing else he could do. Right?
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(Posted Wed, 08 Feb 2006 17:11)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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