"Sensei was involved?"
The woman now calling herself Tanenobu Tariko -- or Corsair, depending on whether or not she was tapping into the Power Jewel given to her a couple hours before back in the Doctor's base in southwest Québec -- couldn't believe what she had just been told.
"Hai," Chikage answered.
Tariko then stared down at the device sitting above the top of her cleavage. "Then if that's true, why did the Jewel still accept me?"
At the time I acknowledged you as the Host, you were not aware of your past-self's relationship with his sibling and half-siblings, the Jewel replied. Had you been aware of such a relationship, my acknowledging you as Host might have become problematic. But the bond has been made and only you can decide to revoke it. A pause, and then it helpfully added, Of course, my creators were not so heartless as to realise that, on occasion, a Jewel Warrior might desire to 'adopt' in a family she could see as her own after a Bonding occurred. I can ensure that you will, for as long as you elect to be my Host, enjoy the benefits of your siblings' company when during your first life, for whatever reasons, you could not.
"Um . . . th-thanks," Tariko sputtered on hearing that.
A knock echoed at the doorway. "Who is it?" Chikage called out.
"It's me, Chikage-chan," a girl called from the hallway. "You alone?"
The sorceress smirked. "What do you think, Rinrin-chan?"
The door then opened to reveal a fifteen year-old girl in a lovely green cheongsam-like dress, welding goggles perched on her forehead. She stepped inside, and then she stopped on noting that her half-sister wasn't alone. "Oh, excuse me! I didn't know you . . .! Eh?!" she then gasped as her eyes widened.
Chikage whispered a spell that made the door close behind Hatoyama Rinrin. By then, Tariko was rubbing the back of her head, an embarrassed giggle escaping her. "It's b-been a wh-while since I l-last s-saw you, Rinrin-ch-chan," she sputtered out before she glanced down at the gi-like jumpsuit covering a body which was nowhere close to what any sister of Moroboshi Ataru should expect of "him." "Ah! S-sorry about th-this, Rinrin-chan! Had a little accident yesterday . . .!"
"ANEKI!"
One Minagi Mikoto-style glomp later found Tariko flat on her butt, Rinrin hugging her with all her strength -- and since the young teen genius was now Tinkerer, the master inventor whose skills were the equal of Hakubi Washuu herself, that strength was a lot more than a normal Earth girl her age could demonstrate.
"I believe Rinrin-chan doesn't mind the changes, Ane-kun," Chikage noted. "Neither will the others once they see you."
"WHAT?!"
Her life had always seemed to go from one hardship to the next.
Over the last year, she had endured something few mothers anywhere in the world would never dream of enduring.
Yet, despite it all, Moroboshi Kinshou always clung onto the hope that somehow, someway, things would get better.
The last twenty-four hours had literally destroyed that.
"But of course, Kinshou-chan," Tanenobu Ikuko, she currently seated beside Ataru's father Muchi -- he currently hiding himself behind his usual paper; he had gotten a day off work when the news of Ataru's death had got out -- replied, her voice dripping with scorn on her mentioning the honorific. "Did you honestly think that after Muchin asked me to be the mother of his child so you could raise him, I wouldn't take some sort of precaution to ensure you didn't step too far over the line concerning the baby I gave birth to? Even if you raised him -- and horribly at that! -- Ataru-chan is still my child! And since he didn't get any sort of decent help or respect while he was still alive, I'm going to make damn he'll get it now that he's become one of the kami."
Overhearing those words, Ataru's sister Karen and his half-sisters tried not to grin too much as they realised the irony of Ikuko's words. "Oh, do tell us, Ikuko-chan," Suzanne Dunn, mother of Ataru's part-English sibling Yotsuba -- the would-be detective was currently walking around the house doing a "check" of the premises to ensure that none of the usual problems which plagued her Ani-chama's life didn't show up to butt in when they were least wanted -- then asked, she adding a purr to her voice which she knew would drive Kinshou up the wall. "What wonderful thing did you do for Muchi-sweetum's baby boy?!"
Behind his newspaper, Muchi was desperately trying not to blush on hearing the nicknames his former classmates always addressed him by. "Well, much that we all had to agree in the long term to respect Muchin's desire to marry Kinshou-chan here, we all know what sort of selfish person she was. Her willingness to literally sell poor Ataru-chan off to that Oni monster proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt!"
"I NEVER SOLD ATARU OFF TO LUM-CHAN!" Kinshou shrieked out. "HE SAID HE WANTED TO MARRY HER! HE AGREED TO MARRY HER!"
"For what reason?!" Caroline des Beauchamps, mother of Aria, hotly demanded. She then leaned over to pull down the newspaper so she could stare pleadingly into Muchi's face. "Darling Muchi, tell us, please? What sort of 'orrible thing did this 'ideous woman make you do to literally give away your own son to that 'orrible, 'orrible Lum!"
"LUM-CHAN IS NOT HORRIBLE!" Kinshou howled, a volcano exploding behind her as she pointed threateningly at Caroline. "AND STOP CALLING ME 'HIDEOUS,' YOU FRENCH TART! HOW DARE YOU COME BACK INTO OUR LIVES AND TRY TO TAKE MY HUBBY AWAY FROM ME?!"
"Oh, really?!" Sukeyama Ryooko snapped. All of the women present knew that while Kinshou could talk the talk, she definitely could not walk the walk. "'Not horrible,' you say?! She never even once hinted about these Niphentaxian gaki who seemed to want to worship the very ground that Oni bitch walked on!"
"HOW DARE YOU CALL LUM-CHAN A 'BITCH,' YOU FASHION FREAK?!"
"I suppose we'll just have to call her what she proved herself to be in the long term," Itou Junko barked out. "An ecological terrorist!"
"Hear, hear!" Saeru Kyoomi acknowledged with a nod of approval.
"It's a good thing someone found a way to block those mushrooms from growing too far beyond Tomobiki and spreading out all over the Earth," Susumu Chizuru mused before she took a sip of her tea -- prepared by Osamu Makoto's daughter Shirayuki, she currently in the kitchen making snacks for everyone else -- and then she added, "It's a pity whoever they were, they didn't decide to move in and chase that Oni monster off this planet once and for all time!"
"Perhaps it was that nice Wysynski-sensei the girls know!" Eigo Minako proposed.
Hearing the words of Kaho's mother, the sisters all balked. Kaho herself slipped over to his into her mother's ear, "Okaa-chama, don't say Sensei's name!"
Minako balked, and then she blushed. "Ooops!"
"Well, at least that nice Doctor Destructo came along to chase that girl away," Tenhiro Sakurako then spoke up to divert attention from her friend's gaffe. Yes, Moroboshi Kinshou was an idiot most of the time, but she still had her moments. "Hopefully, if that Oni ever shows up again, Destructo-sensei will have the simple sense to kill her once and for all time!"
"Hear, hear!" Hatoyama Shizuya spoke out with a nod of approval.
Kinshou howled in pain . . .
"Our moms are having a field day picking on her!"
"Do you blame them?" Chikage wondered as she gazed knowingly at Rinrin. The two and Tariko had been watching events in the living room through the former's crystal ball, something she had fashioned for herself long before she became Shadow. "The man they all loved more than life itself taken away by a total stranger -- and then, cosmic joke of all, that stranger couldn't even turn around and give him a child he could call his own? Add that atop all the things she ended up doing to Ani-kun?"
Rinrin considered that, and then she nodded. "Right . . . "
"No wonder Mom . . . " Tariko then caught herself before she breathed out, "Sorry! I mean Kinshou! -- never wanted to come to the class reunion!"
Her sisters hummed knowingly.
A knock echoed from the front door. "I'll get it!" Karen called out as she walked over to open it. "Hai?" she then called out before she gasped. "Oh, my!"
"Good afternoon, miss," Windtalker announced with a grin. "I apologise for bothering you today, but a friend of mine just passed onto me the most incredible news about the late Moroboshi Ataru actually having twelve beautiful younger sisters, sisters that, for some reason, he was never made aware of! You wouldn't happen to be one of them, would you?"
Karen blinked, and then she smiled. "Hai, I am! I'm Tanenobu Karen! Why don't you come in?! We're all here right now to talk to our father!"
"Thank you kindly," Windtalker declared as she flicked on her webcam.
The Mahora Academy . . .
"Why did the transmission get cut?" Miyazaki Nodoka wondered as she and the others who currently had probationary magical contracts with Negi Springfield -- plus the wizard in question, Tatsumiya Mana, Aisaka Sayo, Evangeline McDowell and Karakuri Chachamaru -- watched the television mounted on the teacher's desk in Class 3-A.
"I hope Paparazzi Girl's alright," Kagurazaka Asuna mused.
"Wait!" Sakurazaki Setsuna called out. "It's come back on!"
"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen," the voice of Windtalker, a.k.a. Asakura Kazumi, spoke as the image of the living room of a normal home somewhere in Japan, it filled almost to the brim with young women and what appeared to be their mothers, began to display on the television screen. "Apologies to all you eager viewers for the interruption, but my friend Warwind, as she was passing through Tomobiki, found out something of, I believe, such great import, I realised I simply just had to drop everything and rush here right away to pass on the news!"
And with that, the young brown-haired, brown-eyed girl with the French braids held up a microphone. "Konnichi wa, minna-sama. My name is Tanenobu Karen. This house we're now in at present is the home of Moroboshi Ataru." A smile that shone like the sun then crossed her face, though tears were in her eyes as well. "And he is my one and only beloved Onii-chan!"
"Now, if I may interrupt, Tanenobu-san," Windtalker politely cut in. "But I need to ensure everyone watching this right now fully understands this: Moroboshi Ataru is your real brother? As in your blood brother?!"
Karen's smile grew wider. "Hai!" she replied with an eager nod. "Our father is Moroboshi Muchi. Our mother is Tanenobu Ikuko."
A scream echoed from somewhere nearby. "Sorry about that!" an older girl with pigtails as long as Asuna's then spoke up. "That was Onii-sama's stepmother, the woman Onii-sama's father actually married in the long term! And who wound up raising Onii-sama as her own son while Karen-chan here was raised by her mother!"
"And you are?" Windtalker then probed.
"Sukeyama Sakuya," she introduced herself. "And yes, Karen-chan's Onii-chan is also my darling, dearest Onii-sama! Although technically, Onii-sama and I are actually half-brother and half-sister. Same father, different mothers!"
"I see, then! And the rest of you girls?!"
"Are very much the same way," a girl who reminded everyone in class 3-A of Saotome Haruna -- save for round-frame glasses and wearing her hair in a thick French braid -- then spoke up with a timid voice. "Yes, that is correct."
"Well, then, why don't you introduce yourselves?!"
"Hai!" the girls chanted out before Kaho moved to introduce herself . . .
Itabashi, minutes later . . .
"One full sister and eleven half-sisters?!"
The crowd from Azabu-Juuban -- minus the Sailor Senshi (who had to get back to their school), Superman and Captain Marvel (who returned to the Watchtower) -- crowd around Mihama Chiyo's large television screen to watch Windtalker's latest show for her expanding audience of eager viewers. "And no one in Tomobiki had a clue about this happening, Shinobu-chan?!" Takino Tomo demanded. "NO ONE?!"
"None! I don't even think Mendou's intelligentsia got wind of this!" Shinobu asserted, she then shaking her head. "I mean, this is just . . . "
"If this was a time before the Meiji Restoration, this would actually be considered normal," Tanizaki Yukari then noted.
"No! I mean . . .!" Shinobu blurted out, and then she sighed, she slapping the top of her head. "Ataru-kun's father never ONCE struck me as the type! I always thought he got all his girl-chasing behaviour from his mother!"
"Where's Tariko now?" Mizuhara Koyomi asked.
"Don't know, but she'll be staying low," Shinobu noted. "It'll be a smart thing now that she's got something of family left to call on. Especially if Chikage there is Shadow. Chiyo-chan, can you tell if the others have been powered up, too?"
"Wait a minute," Chiyo said before she tapped a holographic keyboard floating before her, it sending out a secret message to Windtalker's webcam unit.
Seconds later, notations began to appear on the television screen, arrows pointing to the sisters. "Looks like Destructo-sensei got to them all," Kagura Michiko said.
"Shadow, Tinkerer, Speedster, Gumshoe, Toybox, Yodeller, Symphony, Gardenia, Touch-healer, Provider, Icefire and Princess Blade . . . " Chiyo read off the names, and then she whistled as her mind came up with all the statistics she could remember of those particular people's predecessors who had lived back on Yiziba. "That's quite a crowd! Corsair's got nothing to worry about now!"
"The question we gotta ask now is this: where does Tariko go?" Ranma then asked. "If she stays in Tomobiki, those dolts'll figure out pretty quick her connection to Ataru. Then it's one call back to Uru to get Lum back here . . . "
"And Lum walks back literally to her death," Shinobu finished. "Tariko knows about the Niphentaxians now, Ranma-kun. And she is not pleased at all about this!" A sigh. "Okay, Tomobiki's out. Where to . . .?"
"Why not our school?" Kurosawa Minamo then proposed.
"Nah! Too close to Tomobiki still!" Yukari objected. "Mahora, perhaps?"
"Still within Metro Tokyo," Tokiha Mai then spoke out, and then she snapped her fingers. "Hey, wait! I can ask the Headmistress if she can come down to Fuuwa!"
"You think that's wise?" Kuga Natsuki wondered as she looked on her fellow HiME.
Mai blinked, and then she breathed out. She had yet to tell Natsuki about what she had learned thanks to Shazam concerning what soon faced all twelve -- thirteen if Alyssa Searrs was counted in -- HiMEs. "Hai. It would be the best idea, I think. I'll talk to you about this later, Natsuki-san."
Natsuki stared at Mai, she surprised by the more personal form of address the latter had just taken with her. "Hey, someone's knocking at the door there!" Kasuga Ayumu then said as people turned back to watch the television screen.
Back in Tomobiki, Karen opened the front door. "Hai?!"
Awaiting her there was . . .
(Posted Thu, 28 Sep 2006 04:14)
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