Jeddite stood before the throne, his head up, alert and confident without appearing strong enough to tempt Beryl to make an example of him. Politely, he waited as she manipulated her scrying crystal.
“…have a dabbadoo-time, we’ll have a gay old time!”
As the pattern of flickering light from the small globe changed, she looked up at the General she had summoned. “There have been unanticipated delays in General Yosamite Sam’s plan to terrorise Tokyo with giant monsters.”
Jeddite nodded silently. He had stepped over the modified youma’s forearms as he crossed the throne room.
“Our reserves of power are growing thin,” she continued. Jeddite’s eyes hooded as she persisted in stating the obvious. “Execute the first of the plans you proposed to obtain the power we need.”
“Of course, my Queen,” he said with an obsequious bow. When she turned her attention back to the little scrying globe, he turned on his heel and strode for the doors.
“dinnerdinnerdinnerdinnerdinner BatMan!”
“And Do Not Fail!”
“Yes, My Queen,” replied Jeddite, pausing in the middle of the floor until his eyes adjusted to the stygian darkness left in the wake of the new brownout.
“Fifteen seconds to curtain, Miss Meiou.”
Setsuna gave the orange teen a jaundiced look. She had already endured a flight on the Swinetrek, and being an ingredient for the Swedish Chef. “Aren’t you supposed to say that before the show starts?”
“I did,” asserted Scooter. “You hadn’t arrived yet. Thinking of which, have you read the script?”
“There’s a script?”
“This is a theatre – everything’s done to the script. Your copy is probably in your dressing room.” He saluted her jauntily, adding, “Gotta go – we need a herring for Veterinarian’s Hospital. Oh, and two seconds to curtain.” He ducked back out of sight.
“We’ve already established you’re,” began Setsuna. A heavy bolt of cloth draped itself around her shoulders, followed by a long rail knocking her to the floor.
“…late for that,” she sighed.
Nephrite levelled a considering look at the shorter youma, and recalled why he generally preferred to operate alone. That thought wandered into brief consideration of what, exactly, had happened to the few youma he had personally handpicked to assist him when necessary – he had suspected that they were shanghaied by one of the other generals due to the training (and competence) he insisted upon, but the sudden appearance of the additional dark generals so soon upon their making contact with the world outside the dark kingdom suggested they had somehow used the intelligence he insisted on to engineer their own departure. If that were the case, he wished them luck.
However, their absence left him with bottom-of the-barrel individuals like the industrious pair currently rearranging his outpost in the American desert. They would have been an exceptionally industrious pair, except that one of them hadn’t done anything except press his finger to his lips and say, “Hmmm…?” for the last five minutes.
Deciding that the more mobile minion was incapable of the level of complex thought necessary to inconvenience a Dark General in such a fashion deliberately, he turned the look back on the cask of water. It was, on the whole, an inoffensive object, save that it contained the water he wanted to drink and lacked the facility to yield said water on demand. Made of wood, it was simply shaped as barrels had been for centuries… millennia, in fact, since such vessels had been known in the Silver Millenium.
Wood, of course, even the peculiar forms grown in the Dark Kingdom, is not fantastically durable. There was no reason to believe that it could resist a master of powers such as wielded by any Dark General. Nephrite considered the methods available to him, and, lacking any obviously applicable powers, decided to improvise a suitable exercise of magic. What he wanted to do was open the barrel so he could pour some of the water out into a suitable drinking vessel; a small hole was all that was required. It was a moment’s work to focus some power in the tip of a finger, and a moment’s more to locate a suitably weak point in the fabric of the barrel. He extended the empowered finger, and tapped the barrel in the appropriate place.
It should be noted that he was aware of neither the existence, effects, or method of the martial arts technique known as the ‘Bakusai Tenketsu’.
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(Posted Fri, 21 Mar 2008 23:05)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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