“I fight on!”
Or not.
Bob turned back to see his target trying to wring some of the water out of his clothes. “You shall pay for that dastardly attack, you… you…”
“I’m a youma.”
“Whatever! Prepare to face the wrath of the Blue Lightning! Rat-tat-tat… huh?” Kuno stared at his empty hands, wondering where his weapon had gone.
“Looking for this?” Bob brought his prehensile tail into full view. Kuno’s bokken was firmly in his grasp. A mild tittering came from the gathering crowd.
“You fiend! Return that at once!”
“Why?”
“Honor demands it!”
“And you really expect a youma to give a rat’s ass about honor?”
“No, but we do!”
Bob turned around to see a Deep Submerge heading straight for him. “Ah, shit.” He managed to brace himself for the impact, but that was a little like bracing for the impact of the entire offensive line of an American football team. In other words, it hurt. Bob was sent flying for almost 10 meters, skidding to a stop when he collided with an udon stand.
The pair of Senshi would have begun a variation of one of the Princess-approved dialogues, when they were interrupted by some very loud cursing.
“Damn Shit Fuck Shit Barbara Streisand! I did not agree to take on the Senshi when I accepted this job! FUCK!” He’d probably have had problems with one of the defenders of Love and Justice™, but now he’d have to face two of them! And not just any two, but Uranus and Neptune, whose reputations as loose cannons were very well documented!
“A-ha! These ‘Senshi’ have come to aid my defeat of this foul creature! While normally I would disapprove of such lovely young women rushing into danger when they could be performing some domestic action more befitting of the fairer sex, I am indeed glad to make an exception in this case, as this beast has used unethical tactics by disarming me of my weapon.”
The crowd reacted not by running away, nor by cheering the superheroines, but with a general groan of disappointment.
By this point, the two Senshi were thoroughly confused. Everybody seemed to be supporting the youma. Ordinarily, they’d just chalk this up to mind control, but if that were the case, these people probably would have shown more hostile reactions to their appearance than irritation. In addition, Hotaru (who had made no attempt to get away to transform) was blushing like a kid who’d been embarrassed by a pair of ignorant parents. Clearly, this was not a normal situation. “Uh, Neptune, why don’t you keep an eye on the youma while I figure out what’s going on.”
“Right.” Neptune strolled over to the spiky, purple demon. “I’d suggest you stay put and shut up unless you want another Deep Submerge in the face.”
Bob responded with some unintelligible mumbling.
Uranus walked over to Hotaru, whom Ranma and Akane were guarding they way a mother bear guards her cubs. “Uh, excuse me… Miss. But is there something going on here that we should know about?”
Of course, Hotaru wasn’t the only person in that group who answered to “Miss,” which was why Akane replied, “You bet something’s going on! That jerk was finally going to get what was coming to him, but you had to step in and ruin everything!”
“That jerk?”
“Yeah,” replied Ranma. “The guy in the kendo outfit. He’s an idiot who keeps on pesterin’ Akane here, pretty much tryin’ ta force her ta date him by threatenin’ anyone else who approaches her.”
“Well, why don’t you just tell him to back off?”
“I’ve been doing that for almost two years now! It didn’t even stop when he started attending college in Shinjuku.”
“Wait, you mean that he traveled across an entire ward just to bug you?”
“Travels. As in at least twice a week.”
“I see.” That certainly explained why the locals weren’t exactly showing any sympathy for the “victim.” Still, they had a job to do. “Well, I see your point, but we can’t very well allow this to continue. After all, the Senshi are charged with protecting the lives of all people, even the ones we don’t particularly like.” This was said with a subtle glare toward the temporarily rebellious Senshi of Saturn. “We can’t just let him be killed—”
“Who said I was going to kill him?”
“I thought I told you to be quiet,” growled Neptune.
“And so he should be,” said a nearly recovered Kuno. “For ’tis obvious that an evil mastermind is at work, plotting and scheming as we speak, and clearly, he recognizes that his dastardly plans require the demise of The Blue Thunder! And lo, that vile fiend’s name is Ranma Saotom—oof!” The kendoist’s rant was cut off when a ki blast the size of a golf ball hit him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him.
“Sorry about that, but I’m a little tired of bein’ accused of bein’ an evil demonic sorcerer hell-bent on world domination.”
Akane eyes went wide. “Since when could you throw a ki blast?”
“Ya know, it’s a real interestin’ story. Remind me ta tell it ta ya later.”
“Anyway,” continued Bob, who had used the distraction to stand up and brush the dust off his suit, “I’m not here to kill this Kuno character.”
“Then why did you attack him?” asked Uranus.
“Look, the guy who summoned told me this guy was basically a delusional jerk who thinks his status puts him above the everyday standards of common decency—and he’s right; we’ve got a file on him downstairs about a mile long—”
“Lies! The Blue Thunder stands for all that is pure and good—”
“Shut up!” shouted pretty much everyone else in the food court.
Bob continued, “—and I was ordered to make sure he wouldn’t bother anyone for a while. And before you ask, no, that’s not a euphemism; I was specifically instructed to make sure he survives this encounter.”
“So your goal is to just… beat him up?” asked Uranus, who had a hard time believing a youma would be sent on a mission that mounted to vigilantism.
“Enough so that he’s physically incapable of bothering anyone for a few weeks.”
“You aren’t going to drain his energy?”
“Nope.”
“Or pull out some physical representation of his soul to look for anything?”
“Uh-uh. Just a good old-fashioned ass-whoopin’.”
Uranus turned to the crowd. “And none of you have any problem with this?”
“Nope.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“I couldn’t care less.”
“Boy could use a slice of humble pie anyway.”
“No.”
Kuno was aghast. He stretched out his arms and implored, “Why have you forsaken me?” (It was a rather ironic action for someone who once publicly condemned Christianity as “the insidious pseudo-religious expression of Western imperialism.”)
“Maybe ’cuz yer an annoying nutjob?”
“I wasn’t talking to you, Saotome.”
This probably would have gone on indefinitely, had not the remaining Senshi (including a somewhat worried looking Sailor Pluto) chosen that moment to make their entrance.
Moon took one look at Bob, inhaled deeply, and began, “Food courts are for—”
“With all due respect, Princess, I am not in the mood to listen to dramatic speeches,” Uranus said, cutting off her leader.
Neptune nodded in agreement. “We have… an unusual situation here.”
After much conferencing, it was decided that the best way to handle this would be to let the youma and the jerk fight. The Senshi would act as referees, containing the property damage and making sure that Bob wasn’t pulling a fast one and only pretending that his task was merely that of administering a healthy dose of whoop-ass to his deluded opponent. Of course, not everyone agreed.
“I’m sorry, but I must insist that we not do this—working this closely with a youma sets a dangerous precedent,” Pluto said gravely.
“I understand your concerns,” responded Sailor Moon, whose Serenity persona was emerging once again. “but so far Bob has not really done anything beyond causing some property damage, and I really don’t think that warrants his destruction. We can’t hold youma to different standards than humans.”
“So you are determined to do this?”
“Yes. And we will require your assistance.”
“Very well. But I do this under protest.”
“Noted.”
The eight Senshi cleared out the area of the food court, forming a rough oval. (Hotaru had still not gotten away and transformed into Saturn, though this was more from her inability to escape the watchful eyes of Ranma and Akane than from any lingering hesitation.) They then took posts around the perimeter, both to contain the damage, as well as to hold back the eager crowd of spectators. Bob reluctantly returned Kuno’s bokken, and the terms of the fight were announced: the two combatants would fight to incapacitation, with Sailor Mercury (who had the most medical knowledge, as well as the ability to analyze the status of a youma with the Mercury Computer) serving as the final judge on the matter.
Thus, Bob and Kuno moved to their starting positions, while Mercury stood between them with her hand raised. After making sure that both combatants were prepared, she stepped back as she dropped her hand and shouted, “Begin!”
The fight lasted much longer than anyone in the audience expected—but then, when one considered the way Kuno inflates his ego, it was easy to forget that he really was a fairly skilled martial artist to begin with. Not as good as he claimed, mind you, but good enough to remind people why his threats were taken so seriously to begin with.
The main problem with his style was that he was totally dependent on his bokken for both offense and defense, and any skilled martial artist could see that—even Kuno himself. Of course, because of this, he believed that disarming him amounted to cheating, and therefore any opponent who used this tactic forfeited the match, making him the winner by default. (This was how he’d “won” most of his matches with Ranma.) Given all this, it wasn’t surprising that Bob’s strategy for most of the fight involved evading and blocking Kuno’s attacks (he used the largest horn on his forehead to parry his opponent’s strikes) while trying to snake his tail into the fray to grab the wooden sword again.
It was in the midst of this flurry that Kuno managed to draw blood (at least, it kind of reminded people of blood) when one of his ki-enhanced slashes managed to catch the tip of Bob’s tail, causing the youma to howl in pain.
Kuno gestured dramatically, holding out his weapon and pointing it at his foe. “Ha! Now, you no doubt begin to realize what a fool you were to assume you could—hey!” Kuno was so taken with his own eloquence that Bob had simply walked up and snatched his bokken away, using one of his hands this time. Then as Kuno looked on in horror, the youma proceeded to snap his weapon in two.
To the surprise of no one, Kuno was incensed. “This is an outrage! You would have the gall to disarm the Blue Thunder whilst he is in the midst of a soliloquy?! Clearly, you are not to be trusted. Attack, fellow doers of good!”
Bob just cocked an eyebrow and glanced over at to where Moon and Mercury were standing. “Judges?”
There were several minutes of low-voiced conferencing while the Senshi made their decision. Kuno tried to lean in to hear what they were saying, but since they were about five meters away, he just ended up looking ridiculous. “We’ve reached a verdict,” announced Mercury. “Bob committed no foul in taking advantage of his opponent’s egocentric stupidity. If Kuno didn’t want his weapon broken, he shouldn’t have made it so easy for his opponent to disarm him. Continue.”
“What?! Surely you cannot be serious—” THWACK!! Bob proceeded to nail Kuno with a left hook.
“Oh, they were serious, alright.” Fortunately, all of this dialogue was in Japanese, which meant that no one present though to follow Bob’s statement with “And don’t call me Shirley.” (Though Pluto was sorely tempted.)
From that point, it was simply a matter of making sure that Kuno’s convalescence lasted as long as possible. Three minutes later, Kuno’s face was puffing up from the bruises, he had a pair of dislocated shoulders, and countless broken bones, before he was given a kick that shattered one of his femurs, finally causing him to go down.
“I… fight… oonnnnn…” The deranged kendoist blacked out to the sound of cheers from the audience. That those cheers might not have been for him never crossed his mind.
“He’ll be fine—though he’ll probably be convalescing in the hospital for a few weeks. Has the ambulance arrived?”
“They should be here in a few minutes.”
“Alright. Then we just need to keep him still until the paramedics get here. Do we have anything we could use as a splint?”
Upon hearing this, Bob clapped his hands together. “Well, it looks like my job here’s done, so I’ll see you guys around—and by that, I mean that I hope I never see you again as long as I continue to exist.” And with that, Bob winked into another plane of existence, having made history as the first youma to successfully complete his assigned task with the assistance of the local magical girl squad.
As he lay upon his hospital bed, Tatewaki Kuno, the Blue Thunder of Waseda University, came to an important realization through his drug-induced haze. Unfortunately for all involved, this realization was not “I must respect the rights of Akane Tendo and stop my persistent harassment of her, for my actions have consequences,” nor was it the much simpler “Kuno bother girl, Kuno get hurt.” No, his realization was of the more “romantic” variety: for he was in love! And the lucky object of his affections? Why, it was none other than:
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(Posted Wed, 22 Feb 2006 03:29)
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