Once upon a time, Ranma reflected, his life had been simple. In it's own fashion.
One big Flower Monster, check. Complete with very wavy... foliage.
Several oversized birdcages with people - mostly young woman, but not all - stuffed into them. Check.
Lots and lots of those annoyingly persistent energy-sucking doll-things, check. And...
(*Yo, Pops! Are all those people standing around like blank-faced rocks...*)
(*Half drained and ... "infested", yeah. Not really changed all that much, though. Yet.*)
Oh. ... Could've been worse, though. Ranma sighed.
(*Get the Flower first?*)
(*That's the idea, yeah. ... Hey, isn't that girl...*)
Ranma used his ki-senses. Ah, right. There was the girl he'd fought with that tournament - heavens, could it really be only 5 days ago? The girl his idiot of a father had... oh, what the hell, he'd talk to the Elder - whatshername, "Cologne"? - himself when this was done. Pops and his not-quite-engagements, baaaah. And anyway, what was her name... "Shampoo"? Something like that.
At least it didn't look like she'd been drained or "taken over" yet, from the way she was standing straight and glaring in that Biig bird-cage... but what now?
... Hmmmmm...
And in another place...
A man slowly looked up at the moon and clouds running across it.
"... Daddy?"
"... Oh, ah, yes. Here... I've gotten the daikons in!"
Big large juicy long and fat Japanese radishes, just what a "Nerima Daikon" was supposed to be.
"...bThat's good, dad. Why don't you come in now? It's getting cold..."
She could remember when her mother was alive, and the garden next to the Dojo had just been a normal small Japanese garden. Still.
Not that her father's crazy kitchen garden failed to produce fruits, flowers and veggies. Quite the contrary, in fact...
"... There're good daikons, you know. And the tomatoes are almost ripe!"
... If only it didn't look so... messy. And overgrown.
With thorns.
"... Did something good happen, dad? You look happy."
Well, a little, anyway.
"... I... have a feeling."
"Was it a good feeling?"
"... Ah, yes, it was. I feel that an old friend of mine is coming to see us soon, in fact..."
"That's good, I suppose. ...Do I know him?"
"Well, I don't think you remember him or his son...you were pretty little, after all. ... Eh, um, Akane? ... Is something on my forehead?"
Akane took her hand away.
"... I don't think so."
It had to be a trick of the moonlight, then.
But this was an entire different flavor of WTF-ness, even for him.
He was getting pretty used to all kinds of fucked-up critters whose entire purpose in existence seemed to circle around draining people's energies dry - ever since a Certain Incident, he'd been brushing up against them every two weeks, or something, so he'd really had no choice about the matter, but -
Things that morphed into pretty good replicas of his own parents?
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shiiiteee -
And worse, these particular things seemed to have just drained a whole bus-full of people dry. Peaky.
He'd already discovered that his knack of getting lost like a space-time hopping lost thing did not seem to work at all when the critters were near, to his displeasure. Not to they got dealt with, anyhow.
Which meant that, yeah, that.
Ryouga closed his eyes and tried to steel himself. The damn things were even doing a good job of copying his parents aura patterns, damnit -
Which probably did mean they were mind-readers, which meant even more shit, thanks truly.
Ahh, well. At least she didn't seem to be here, now. He - He didn't want her to see him like this. Not like -
But then. The wind blew soft whippy clouds across the skies...
And there was a figure. Slim, feminine, and to him at least, beautiful beyond words, long black hair whipping in the wind -
"Halt, there, minions of darkness and doom! I am the Pretty Soldier Sailor Neptune, and in the name of all that is elegant and beautiful, I shall not let your depredations go unpunished!"
She was here. She was here...And Ryouga, for once, was not happy.
The things were turning away from him, already starting to morph again. A expression of utter horror was beginning to form on her beautiful face -
No. No, no, no -
They. Will. Not. Hurt. Her.
There is a small black piglet, dancing in the darkness. With the sign of Uranus on it's forehead, and wearing in some kind of halter that might conceivably look like some kind of Sailor suit, if one looked at it sideways and squinted a bit.
("Halt, there, things that try to hurt the incomparable Neptune - Pretty Porcine Sailor Uranus is here to rumble, you betcha!") "Bweeeee!"
They sliced through the enemies like butter that night, though they couldn't do much for the people of the bus but call an ambulance autonomously.
"...Oh, P-chan, P-chan, you always come to save me when I'm in trouble..."
Whoo, squishies. Ryouga couldn't help thinking that it would have been even nicer if he hadn't been a female Minipig - or something very much like that, anyhow - at the moment, but it still was very nice indeed.
Now if only he could avoid getting lost for long enough to actually figure out who she really was...
Setsuna Meiou sat at the Time Gate, and fidgeted.
She was being...drawn thin, seemed to be the only word to come to mind.
She would have to leave this place, she knew that, somehow. But when she did...
She thought about it. And thought about it some more.
And then, downloaded as much information as possible in as many of the Time Gate's functions as she could think of. Including her own memories, even though she knew that they'd just be a pale frozen shadow of the original.
And then, she took a deep breath.
And walked out of the Gate.
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(Posted Sat, 27 May 2006 16:41)
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