"Shinobu-san. I must speak with you."
Shinobu blinked as she heard that most unwelcome voice, and then she turned to look into the face of Mendou Shuutarou. She was quick to notice the look of determination in his eyes, though there was a flash of disbelief and fear etched on his face. Taking a moment to remember what she learned when she had gone to Tomobiki General Hospital to say good-bye to Ataru, Shinobu's eyes then clouded over as she turned away to continue eating her ramen. "I have nothing to say to you, Mendou-san" she flatly declared, the venom in her voice on her saying the honorific noticeable to the two other girls seated with her. "Leave and never darken my sight again."
Mendou gasped, he stunned speechless by the sharp rebuttal his former girlfriend had just delivered to him. However, given the urgency of what he had to now do for Lum-san's sake, he had to ignore that. "Shinobu-san, you don't understand . . .!"
"Understand what?" she then growled as she levelled a stare that could melt pure neutronium on the young scion of Japan's richest family. "That you deliberately attempted to ensure that the truth behind Ataru-kun's death would remain a mystery?" A snort escaped her as she added, "All, no doubt, because you probably were afraid of the fact that if something amiss was discovered, it might have then finally been concluded that your precious 'Lum-san' was responsible for Ataru-kun's death, even by proxy thanks to all those stupid 'worshippers' of hers the Canadians were so very nice to take away from this place!"
"I would think he's pissed off at the fact that a real army, one that could whip the frickin' hell out of his private militia of yakuza, decided to show Moroboshi Ataru the respect he deserved when he died," Kagura added as she and Tomo stared contemptuously at the person currently harassing their new friend. "I gotta admit, presenting arms when they took him onta that plane of theirs, then carryin' arms when they followed him aboard for the trip back to Canada. That was class!"
"Or maybe he's pissed off at the fact that a foreign country chose to honour Ataru-kun when everyone in the town he lived in -- the town he managed to save when he did those tag races with the little Oni bitch -- did not," Tomo added.
Shocked to hear those words from these strange girls, Mendou spun on them, he quickly switching on his charm to win them over and -- hopefully -- force Shinobu to finally see the light. "Ladies, please! You don't understand . . . "
CRUNCH!
"ITTE!"
Heads near the ramen yatai snapped around on hearing Mendou's shriek as Tomo's hand came out from under him to grab him by the crotch and squeeze tight! As the feeling of his testicles being squashed by her Yizibajohei-enhanced strength swamped his mind, Mendou collapsed to the ground, his hands gripping his wounded privates as a pained moan escaped him. Seeing him fall, the two Kuromegane cried out as they rushed over to aid him. Watching that, Tomo and Kagura exchanged a knowing look, and then their hands snapped out in knife-strikes to catch both bodyguards' in the neck. The blows nearly snapped their necks as they were dropped to the ground to either side of their fallen master. Once that was done, Shinobu then stood up, she reaching into her wallet to draw out some cash to pay for the meals.
The yatai owner chuckled as he shook his head, waving her down. "It's on the house, Miyake-san," he then declared before pointing down to Mendou. "Seeing your friend do that to this arrogant fool is simply worth it."
Shinobu stared wide-eyed at him. "Why?"
"What your friend just called his people," he explained with a nod to Kagura. "Yakuza. This fool's men act as if they're king-shit all over us normal folks in this town. Coming down and eating us out of our wares, charging it to the Conglomerate's accounts -- and when we try to get our money finally, the people who dish it out tell us they won't pay since they never authorized it." A shake of his head. "Just like the samurai back in the old days before the black ships came. Lords of the freakin' manor lording it over decent folk only wanting to earn a living."
Shinobu blinked. "Really?" she then wondered before her fists clenched.
Reaching down to grab her former boyfriend by his shirt, she then hauled back, and then, with strength which she had often showed before when she lost control of herself, she slammed a punch into his jaw so hard, it sent him sailing through the sky right back towards the Mendou estate, a stream of blood marking his flight path thanks to a shattered jaw and broken teeth. "HOME RUN!" nearby patrons chanted out as they watched Mendou disappear into the early afternoon sky, and then they rose to applaud, bow and toast half-empty glasses of beer and liquor at Shinobu.
"Maybe folks in this place ain't as pig-headed as we've heard," Tomo whispered to her classmate.
"Maybe," Kagura ventured with a shrug . . .
Later, at the Dobu Salada inn . . .
"SHINOBU DID WHAT TO MENDOU-SAN?!"
if there was one thing people could say about the citizens of Tomobiki, it was this: the rumour mill in this town worked faster than the speed of light!
"It's true," Marubeya Momoe said, her arms crossed as an emergency meeting of the "Rosebuds" was being convened. "She hit him with enough force to send him flying back home from the Ginza -- and that left him with a shattered jaw and broken teeth. He'll be in surgery for the rest of the day and he might not be able to eat normally for a couple of weeks." A pause as she closed her eyes -- Shinobu was both a friend and a classmate, so this was doubly hard for her to try to comprehend -- and then she added, "What's worse, all the witnesses who saw this -- and there were many of them -- are ready to swear in court that Mendou-san went so far as to sexually assault one of the two girls who were with Shinobu-chan at the time. And that they clearly overheard Shinobu-chan tell Mendou-san to leave and never darken her sight again."
Silence fell over the room as the other nominal leaders of Mendou's town-wide fan club took that in, and then Ogin Haniko, the Sanrinbou Institute senior who was seen as nominally in charge of the whole group, breathed out, "Why . . .?" A pause as she tried to wrap her mind around the concept of one of the people who had helped found their group actually doing that to the man they loved, and then she sputtered out, "I mean, I know she once had feelings for Moroboshi before Lum came . . . "
"Maybe her feelings for Ataru-kun were stronger than any of us suspected," Gekasawa Kumiko, Momoe's best friend and another of Shinobu's classmates, spoke up.
"There's something else, too."
Eyes locked on Takudo Reika, the Rosebuds' senior representative from Butsumetsu High School. "What did you find out?" Ogin demanded.
"As soon as those Canadian soldiers left, people went down to ask the coroner what was going on," Reika explained. "He reported that, just before those soldiers came up, two of Mendou-san's Kuromegane showed up, they delivering a message to ensure that no autopsy was ever done on Moroboshi." A pause as the others in the room gaped in shocked disbelief at Reika's report, and then she added, "And when the leader of those Canadian troops showed up minutes later, she carried a letter from the Emperor himself stating that Moroboshi's body was to be turned over to the Canadians to ensure that a thorough and proper autopsy was done on him."
More silence reigned over the group, and then Ogin demanded, "Why on Earth would the Emperor suddenly get involved? And ask the Canadians to handle this problem, anyway? Who were those soldiers, anyway?!"
"No one knows. At least not at my school," Ibuka Yuuko, the senior representative of the Rosebuds from the Shakkou Institute, reported. "Those planes they flew are totally unknown to all of the military otaku I spoke to. And the weapons they had? Unheard of anywhere!" A pause, and then she added, "The only possible conclusion they could make was that whatever unit this was, it's no different than that top-secret American agency the Justice League tends to butt heads with!"
"The Cademus Project?" Momoe wondered aloud, and then she whistled. "You mean to say that the Canadians . . .?! Hey! Wait a minute!" she then gasped.
"What?!" the others demanded.
"Don't you remember those other heroes who showed up to help the Justice League fight Gojira and those Niphentaxians?!" Momoe asked. "Those other heroes who came down here to flush out all those spies the Canadians picked up at the Mizunokooji estate?! They're all Japanese! That Rampage girl's from Tomobiki, in fact!"
"Hey, that's right!" Yuuko mused. "She even looked a little bit like Shinobu-chan . . . "
"Oh, please, Yuuko-san! Are you proposing that Shinobu actually is this Rampage girl?! Don't be ridiculous!" Ogin spat out. "We all know Shinobu's very strong when she gets angry, but not at the strength level that Rampage girl showed! You heard what that Windtalker girl said on TV, didn't you?! Rampage is as strong as Wonder Woman, maybe even at the level of Superman and Captain Marvel! Shinobu couldn't do anything close to that!"
"That's true," Kumiko noted.
"Still, she is a girl from Tomobiki, even if she was alien-born," Momoe added. "She must have feelings for Mendou-san just like we all do. And when she and her friends found out about those Niphentaxians, she went totally hog-wild over them! Maybe she was actually . . . " Her eyes widened for a moment. "Hey, wait . . .!"
"What?!" Reika demanded.
"Maybe she was trying to help out so she could join the Justice League!"
"Huh?!" the other Rosebuds chanted out in confusion.
"Think about it!" Momoe urged. "What better way to ensure Lum never comes back to Earth?! The Justice League were able to stop those other aliens when they first formed . . . " A curious look crossed her face as she added, "Still, I don't know why it was that the League didn't sweep in to settle matters when that alien prince Rupa showed up and his stupid girlfriend dumped all those mushrooms on us!"
"Hey! She's right!" Reika said with a snap of her fingers. "By getting the League interested here, Rampage-san's probably trying to make sure that if Lum ever does come back, she won't be allowed to get away with what she did in the past!"
"That's true!" Yuuko noted.
The others in the room quickly nodded to that suggestion. "Maybe that's why those troops showed up to take Ataru-kun's body away!" Kumiko proposed.
"What do you mean?" Momoe gazed on her friend.
"Of course! I understand!" Ogin declared. "What better way to make that Oni bitch behave herself for a change?! They're holding Moroboshi's body 'hostage!' If Lum steps out of line, they'll make sure she'll have no mortal remains of her precious 'Darling' to bury back on her homeworld!"
"And if she or that fat lummox she calls a father tries to force it?" Momoe asked.
"The League -- with all their friends here -- will send them all packing back to their hellhole of a home planet, once and for all time!" Kumiko finished for her best friend. "And when that happens . . . "
"No more Megane and his stupid friends!" Momoe asserted.
"And Mendou-san . . .!"
The others paused on hearing Yuuko speak up, and then they nodded. "Yes! After all this time, Mendou-san will be finally free of that witch's influence," Ogin asserted for them all as they gazed heavenward . . .
"To paraphrase the great cartoon . . . 'what a bunch of maroons!'"
The person gazing into the crystal ball image could only snort in disgust as the show of hormone-driven stupidity back in Tomobiki played itself out before the eyes of none other than . . .
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(Posted Fri, 22 Sep 2006 14:17)
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