"I have to say, we really started off on the wrong foot here, and it's just getting worse," Ranma said as he walked along the hallway, hands in the air. Half a dozen katana blades were all drawn around him, ready to cut him apart if he tried to dash in any direction. His guards all moved carefully along with him, except for a young woman behind him prodding him forward.
Ranma grit his teeth as he felt a small, sharp pain in his butt cheek that he assumed was from the girl's naginata. He was moving along as quickly as the damn guards would let him; couldn't she stop jabbing him in the ass?
The guards, meanwhile, tried to remain serious and angry and not sweatdrop as the female of their number once again pinched the pigtailed boy's butt while grinning like a madwoman. It was a near thing, but stoiciscm won the day.
Orion, meanwhile, was being transported in an equally humiliating fashion, as a man held the cat up by the scruff of his neck. The man was also evidently a wizard (which brought mixed feelings from the moon cat at this point), seeing as how he had earlier frozen Ranma in place with a spell.
Both of them had tricks that probably would have allowed them to escape this debacle relatively unharmed, but both elected to wait patiently for now. This was (more or less) the audience they'd come for in the first place, and it wouldn't do to antagonize the people they were going to ask for help any further.
Pinch. "Would ya knock it off, ya crazy chick?" Ranma growled, not QUITE as concerned about pissing off their hosts as one might expect. For all his rudeness, however, the girl merely giggled and slapped him on the rear.
Ranma groaned. Now she was smacking him with that stupid weapon of hers instead of just poking him. Crazy women.
Before long they arrived in a formal meeting hall, and Ranma sighed as he got a look at a gentle-looking middle-aged man sitting at the end of the hall in formal robes; obvious the master of this mansion. Not out of resignation, but relief; all pressure on his butt had vanished once they entered this room.
"Ah, so these are the intruders," the man said, smiling in a way that wasn't particularly condescending or sadistic. "They don't seem like burglars, do they?"
"Hey! We 'aint no thieves!" Ranma shouted indignantly.
Orion remained silent, and not because he didn't want to reveal he could talk. He HAD done some burglarly lately (unauthorized borrowing! Really!) and he didn't know if they had some magical lie detector established.
"We caught them tromping around the main yard, spying on the mansion," the wizard holding Orion explained.
"Oh? So what reason do you two have for trespassing?" Master Konoe said calmly.
Orion spoke up. "We were scouting for mages. We heard we might find one here."
The man turned toward the cat without even so much as a raised eyebrow. Apparently they were used to the idea of talking animals. "Oh? And what made you think there were mages here?"
"Ya mean before or after this clown trapped me in some kinda force field?" Ranma snapped, jerking his head at the mage with his pet/commander.
Though the mage glared at him, Konoe chuckled. "Very well. Let's say you've... caught us. By the looks of things you two are already fairly well-versed in the existence of magic, so there's no need for secrecy or memory manipulation here. And it seems you haven't come to do anyone harm."
"The boy knocked out two of our guards before I could stop him," the mage growled.
"They attacked ME with swords swingin', and I didn't hurt 'em near as bad as they tried ta hurt me," Ranma growled back. 'Whatever happens here, I hope we don't get stuck with this dork working for us.'
"Enough," Konoe said, and the mage lowered his head. Ranma kept his chin up, but remained silent. "I would know what your story is, if you desire our help."
"Ah, yeah. About that..." Orion looked about at the numerous servants and attendant family members that were present to witness the spectacle. "This matter is fairly... sensitive and rather a secret. Perhaps we could speak more privately."
The mage scoffed and shook him slightly. "Everyone in attendance here knows about magic, mundanes and all."
'Mundanes, huh? Interesting term...' Orion thought. "Irrelevant. I don't care if everyone here is a graduate archmage from the Silver Millennium itself. My mission is too sensitive to blab to anyone who doesn't absolutely need to know." He jabbed a paw at the Konoe patriarch. "As far as I can tell, that would be him and no one else here. If you don't wish to talk to me in private, then let us go and we won't bother you anymore."
Several of the other individuals in the hall began to get restless at this, and the mage bristled. Orion got worried the mage was going to try something and readied himself. All he had to do was slam his head back and cast a bit bomb, and then he'd be released and could provide enough of a distraction for Ranma to get free. Of course, the poor mage would likely lose most of his hand in the escape attempt, but Orion was living proof that an intelligent being could get along just fine without opposable thumbs.
Konoe, however, was looking at the cat with an amused glint in his eyes. "Very well. I will talk with the cat personally. Alone."
The mage hesitated. "Master Konoe?"
"Come now, let the poor creature down. Do you think so little of me that I can't defend myself from a housecat?" Not that anybody in particular really wanted the Eastern mage dead badly enough to send an assassin, but the wizard was still extremely reluctant in dropping the gray tomcat onto the floor.
Orion ruffled a bit, and took a moment to crane his neck back and lick the spot where he had been gripped. Dropping a glare at the mage, Orion trotted off toward Konoe, who gestured into the next room and let the moon cat enter first.
Ranma looked around, noting with a growing sense of boredom that everybody seemed to be getting up and leaving after the anticlimactic finish. Except him, obviously, since he was still surrounded at swordpoint.
Pinch. "Ow!" He turned his neck to glare at the wildly grinning woman.
"So big boy, what's your sign?"
_______________________
"Ah, yes. We've had some limited contact with the youma," Konoe said a bit sadly. "Several of our trainee demon hunters encountered one quite by accident a few days ago. The trainees were all drained of energy and several were killed. Luckily one of our mages arrived in time to drive the beast off. It had apparently been stealing people's life energy and bending them to its will for weeks."
Orion bristled. "They've made it this far? Damn..." He shook his head. "Still, Sailor Moon, and from what I've read recently, Mercury are making decent progress in slowing their point operation in Tokyo. Because these monsters are particularly embittered with us, we've been doing our best to contain them with what limited resources we have. If you'd like to mobilize your own forces to deal with the threat, I could coordinate the efforts, but I must ask that all information pertaining to the Senshi beyond that which escapes to the local media be kept secret."
"Oh, that won't be a problem," Konoe assured him. "And actually, I think I WILL leave it to you."
Orion blinked. Twice. "Really? Did I forget to describe Sailor Moon to you? She literally trips over her OWN HAIR."
"No, I got that," the councilman mumbled with a sweatdrop. "Tell me, you said you were a military advisor, correct?"
"Yeah..."
"Are you familiar with the difficulties of convincing a policital council of... say... anything that isn't as obvious as the sun itself?" Konoe sighed. "You see, the only evidence I have of this 'infestation' of youma is a single encounter, the testimony of a magic cat and maybe that young man that Hanabe is feeling up right now, and dozens of news articles and stories from entirely reputable media sources."
"By Serenity's fuzzy bunny slippers..." Orion breathed, "you're completely S.O.L. aren't you?"
"Yeah. Pretty much," Konoe mumbled, his face darkening. "The Kansai Mage Council wouldn't believe a growing threat from within Japan without months of hearings and probably a youma itself to testify and give a confession in person. On the other hand, if you whispered to one in the bathroom that Merlin had risen from the dead and was planning to take Hokkaido, you'd see every magic-user and half-way competent fighter gathered in the snow drifts."
Orion blinked, not understanding the hatred between some of the Western and Eastern mages, and thus not appreciating the hyperbole. "But is it possible for me to inquire about hiring a combat mage to assist the Senshi?"
Konoe nodded hesitantly. "I don't have high hopes for the response, but you came to the right place. I don't have the authority to assign magi employers or long-term missions, and there are no qualified combat magi on my property anyway; my family specializes in healing, you see."
Orion nodded, but said nothing. While a healing mage might be useful, they'd be a liability in combat and drag down his team. In addition, he recalled that the Senshi had their own healing magic; he could leave it to them.
"I can put in a request for you to the Kansai Magic Council. As it will bear my name, I can guarantee that they'll actually read the entire thing." Konoe then shrugged, crushing Orion's hopes for that being an incomplete sentence.
"Well, whatever the result, I thank you humbly for your assistance," Orion said, bowing as best a cat could.
Crash! "Hanabe!" Came a shout from outside, "that is NOT a proper use of the ancient blade techniques of our ancestors!"
"Hee hee!"
"GIVE ME BACK MY PANTS!!" Came Ranma's voice, followed by more loud noises.
Konoe sweatdropped. "You keep some... interesting company."
Orion sighed. "Right back atcha."
_______________________
The Eastern Conclave of Magi were known for many things.
Efficiency, competence, swiftness, and rationality... were not among them.
This was the same council that would have, in another timeline, sat around twiddling its thumbs as one of their agents went tromping around in Japan turning people to stone, disrupting fairs with open, wide-ranging displays of magic power, kidnapping a certain council member's daughter, and summoning an oni the size of the Empire State Building that would have certainly gone on a complete rampage had it not been for the timely (if not coerced) intervention of an equally evil force of magic.
Their response: "What? It all worked out fine in the end, didn't it?"
Yes, with all the bickering and in-fighting and political intrigue and xenophobia, the Easter Mage Councils had become roughly the equivalent of backwater police forces awaiting the arrival of Scooby-Doo.
As a certain magic school dropout once said of them: "They're like the UN, except instead of being powerless they're just lazy."
When the request for a combat magi reached a couple of council members on the committee to decide upon the members of the committee that would confirm this particular order for consideration, they did, indeed, read the entire thing after seeing Master Konoe's signature.
"Bah! You gotta be kidding me! MORE help for those stupid magical girls? We already have so many demon hunters out there we're practically tripping over them! Why do we have to send MORE of our people out to stir up trouble among the mundanes?" The first man griped.
The second man, being relatively new, did not follow his companion's attitude. "Send MORE? Who have we already sent?"
"What? You don't remember? I cleared that Azusa girl myself for that Mamono Hunter broad!"
"You keep bringing that up. That's the only time you've ever cleared a request. And she wasn't even a mage; you just drove up to a foster home and asked the girl running a lemonade stand if she'd 'like a better job'."
"Hey, that request specifically said 'on-the-job training'. She was every bit as qualified as the first two brats I tried to sucker into it."
"ANYWAY, this request came from Master Konoe himself. We can't just ignore it."
"Bah. He gets along too well with those xenophiles in the Kanto council."
Sigh. "Who get along too well with the Western magi, right?"
"Yeah! Why can't THOSE barbarians deal with this kind of crap?"
"Hmmmm... you know... we have Konoe's name on this request... he DOES get along well with the Westerners... well enough to apply for a job from their council, even..."
"Really? So, we can just start sending them our paperwork whenever it has 'Konoe' signed on it?"
"I'm thinking so."
"Sweet! You go do that! I'm going to go take a nap."
_______________________
International politics are a funny thing. They're even funnier when magic is involved and none of those holding talks have the power to ignite the entire planet into a nuclear bonfire.
A job request for a combat magi was sent to England, coincidentally alongside a specific request for one Negi Springfield to come to Mahora private school to teach English. The man to receive both holographic magic letters tapped his pencil against his cheek and smirked at the ludicrousness of the message, not to mention how silly Headmaster Konoe looked with that skull that stretched out behind him like some kind of squash.
Shaking his head, the young magic intern started filling out the appropriate forms, mumbling to himself as he did so.
"Okay... employer request... Orion Halinshor... organization... Sailor Senshi and Associates... Snicker! Man, what are they thinkin' getting some ten year-old kid to teach an English class. Crazy Japs." In his amusement, he didn't notice he had accidentally filled in the name of said kid in the field that should have been left blank on this document.
Two requests were submitted with Negi's name as the requested applicant. An uninformed advisor who had better things to do looked at both the requests and concluded that the position as English teacher was obviously the wrong one, since Negi Springfield was so young and he had requested a great deal of focus in combat magic. The paperwork was corrected and moved on behind the prying eyes of those who knew better.
Ah, gotta love the bearuocracy.
_______________________
"Goodbye sister! Goodbye Anya!" A child with reddish-brown hair done in a bristly ponytail hugged his childhood friend goodbye and waved to a blonde young woman standing behind her.
"Negi, are you sure about this? It's going to be awfully dangerous, you know?" Nekane Springfield, Negi's cousin and adoptive sister, looked worried. "I mean, demon hunting? It's a bit much to give to anyone so young..."
Negi suddenly clenched his fists and looked determined. "Maybe so. But I have to be strong and succeed. If I want to be a Magister Magi, this is what I have to do." Then he smiled. "Besides, I'm rather GLAD it's something important and serious like demon hunting. I was afraid I'd have a task to do something silly." He leaned in closer. "For example, I heard that Keitaro Urashima is being sent back home to teach English! Hardly a job for a wizard, don't you think?"
Anya snorted. "For him, it's appropriate. That guy's got about as much wizarding potential as Chamo."
"Well, I wished him luck anyway, since I was glad I didn't stuck with a job like that," Negi confided. "I even heard it was an all-girls school. I hope Urashima gets along well with women."
Meanwhile, at the other end of the train, Keitaro Urashima suddenly looked up into the sky and frowned, wondering why he felt as if destiny was flipping him off.
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(Posted Fri, 10 Nov 2006 06:42)
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