Jade. An entire world of beauty and adventure. A world torn from the best pages of the finest fantasy novels. Magic and sword, monster and legend all rub elbows in this place, separated only by force, and the will to use it.
Many people live here already, but more have just arrived from a little place called 'Earth'. A dimension door opened, allowing four figures to step through. Or limp through in the case of a certain pig-tailed man.
"Damn..." Ranma groaned as he stumbled forward from the disorientation from the teleport. He had seen better days, that was for sure. For some reason, Dr. Diggers didn't enjoy his ride on the 'Ranma Express' and showed his displeasure by repeatedly fireballing Ranma as he flailed around the compound. At least his jacket survived mostly unscathed. He really liked his jacket. "What was his problem, anyway?"
Brianna rolled her eyes. "You had him slung over your shoulder like a sack of potatoes, what did you expect to happen?"
"Master Julia carries him like that all the time!" Ranma argued.
The other people in the party could only shake their heads in amazement over Ranma's continued naiveté. One would think that spending that much time with Brianna would clue him in on a few truths in that area.
Brianna decided to move past that and looked around at the wide expanse of grassland they now stood in. "Séance? Where on Jade are we?"
"This is the middle of the Seer's Desert. My home."
Ranma straightened up and cricked his back. "Lotta grass for a desert, man." Although he had never actually been in a desert, he'd read about them. They were supposed to be all sand and cactuses and coyotes. Hmm... maybe that was a cartoon.
"Believe me, this is a desert, all right. Rain only falls here once every six years!"
Ranma looked up, fully expecting a sudden deluge from Séance’s prompting of the heavens. "Huh. Nothin'."
"Hmm?" Séance asked. "Of course not. I told you, it only rains every six years."
Brianna smirked at the pig-tailed man. "He's something of a water magnet, isn't that right, Ranma?"
"I still say there's something wrong with the sprinkler system in your place," Ranma insisted. While he had been living there, he could barely go a day without a water pipe leaking on him, or the sprinkler system going off, or some other water-related hazard blowing up in his face. In other words, business as usual.
"Anyway..." Brianna began. "So where's your place?"
"Actually, Seer's Hamlet is right in front of us." Séance reached out his hand and drew back an invisible curtain, revealing the huge tree house city of Seer's Hamlet. "There. Once you've lived here for a few years, you learn where the door is by heart."
The Earth natives oh'ed and ah'ed at the spectacle before them. "Wait a moment..." Séance said. "The writing says we have to pay a toll. Four coins are enough for us."
"Writing?" Brianna asked while glancing about for any sign of what Séance was talking about. "What writing?"
"Oh... You probably don't read Ribbon, do you?"
"Ribbon?"
"Instead of symbols or letters, ideas are represented in interwoven Ribbon images," Séance explained. "You'll find it everywhere on Jade... especially the old places."
Ranma studied the so-called "writing" carefully. Languages were never his strong suit, and it was only because he now had a permanent translation spell cast on him that he was able to speak English at a better than passing familiarity level. "This stuff kinda looks like those circuit boards in your peebos, Brianna."
Brianna nodded at that assertion. The Ribbon did in some ways resemble circuitry. But that was impossible. It wasn't like there was any technology on Jade requiring such a system of linkage.
After Séance loaded Brianna up with a few more useful nick-knacks, (and Ranma asked him where he learned the Hidden Weapons Technique from,) the group finally entered Seer's Hamlet, all the while unaware of the people watching them from a nearby treetop.
G'nolga, Weaponsmaster of the Dwarven people, stood on a balcony overlooking the entrance to Seer's Hamlet. She was on orders, no matter how distasteful those orders were, to watch out for possible mages that they could capture. Seeing the group that just entered, one of them wearing a mage suit, the chances were fairly good that she had just found at least one towards her quota.
Accompanying her was the Blister Titan Cruk, a living mountain of ugly muscle and a damn good fighter. Standing at the edge of the balcony was the last member of her little party, the mercenary Hanzo, a ninja with fairly good skills but a woefully poor taste in weapons for his chosen profession. Who had ever heard of a ninja using a five foot long, one foot wide sword?
"Hey, G'nolga. You saw something?" Hanzo asked.
"That I did, Hanzo. Cruk? Use that spyglass on the three newcomers at the north gate, please."
The massive ogre grunted and raised the telescope, which could read magical auras, to his eye and cast his gaze at the group. First, he took a look at Séance, who was wandering through the bazaar near the entrance. He grunted a few times, conveying more ideas and concepts than would have been possible using just words.
"Polished green-cyan glow with shimmers of bright wisps? That signifies great untapped magical ability. Good!"
Cruk analyzed Genn next, who had flopped down under the weight of her bag.
G'nolga translated Cruk's next series of grunts. "Red glow? Distant and Somewhat faded... That shows she's decently powerful, but very low on energy. Good!"
Brianna was next while she tried on a new hat. "Brown? With white glowy stuff? Unknown... doesn't matter anyway. What about the last guy?"
Cruk belted out a few grunts after spying Ranma, who was looking around in wonder next to a Rune artist's paintings.
When G'nolga heard Cruk's description of his aura, her head came up sharply. "What did you say?" Cruk repeated his report with a bit more emphasis while lowering the spyglass.
"Oh reeeeaaalllyyy..." G'nolga said slyly, a grin spreading over her face.
Hanzo, who had no idea what Cruk was saying, asked, "What'd he say?"
G'nolga looked directly at Hanzo, and her grin began to make him nervous. "You won't happen to know why that man's aura looks just... like... yours... would you?"
See other episodes by lil bunny MoFo
(Posted Sun, 06 Aug 2006 22:15)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.