Shampoo stared out across the water, worry creasing her forehead. She remembered clearly the time just a few days before…
The Council House doors opened and a diminutive figure bounded out, pogoing down the steps to the dusty road. The figures around the building – no more elaborate or sophisticated than any other house in the village, despite its importance as the centre of village government – stirred, recognising an Elder. It was rare for council members to leave the Council House except when their deliberations were completed, and then they left together.
Shampoo had stood patiently, not even leaning against a spear as some did, waiting for word from inside. Most of the village knew the subjects of any given day’s discussions, and the curious often waited nearby to get the Elders’ decisions sooner. Others – young warriors especially – would wait in hopes of being picked for some errand – running across the village to get some craftsman or battleleader, running down the valley to deliver some message to a neighbour, anything that might bring them to the attention of the Council.
There weren’t many warriors younger than Shampoo. She had passed the Trials just half a year before, the youngest of her group to succeed – and the second youngest candidate. She wasn’t here out of curiosity, or hope. She was here because her great grandmother had discussed the possible decisions the Council could make with her, and told her to be ready to act at their direction to help her new friend Ranma.
Cologne stopped in front of her. “We have decided,” she said. Shampoo nodded respectfully, her eyes bright, and the rest of those waiting stretched their ears discretely. “We have their names, and we have those things that fell from the man’s pack as he ran.”
Shampoo nodded again. “I can find him,” she assured the Elder.
“We can find him,” corrected Cologne, frowning at the interruption. “Since I adopted him into my clan, the Council agreed that I should personally ensure his future safety, and also investigate his family. It will be interesting to see if he has any sisters, although I fear for their upbringing away from civilisation.” She sighed and turned towards her home. “Come, we must pack for some time away from home, and prepare some things to be sent after us once we have a base of operations. I expect they will have headed home to Japan. Should that be true, you shall track them directly – I shall seek out his mother…”
Great Grandmother had been right. The mismatched (and very destructive – oh, so very destructive, in so very many places) pair had headed in a nearly straight line from the Bayankala Mountains to the Sea of Japan, where the elder man had apparently attempted to swim to that far-off land. Like many other schemes the idiot had tried since visiting Jusenkyo (and, it seemed, well before), this went down like a lead balloon. Which didn’t (also like many of his previous schemes) stop him from trying again, secure in the rather improbable belief that it was the correct course of action.
Shampoo and her great-grandmother had tracked the pair through three fishing villages in varying stages of demolition before finally meeting with the captain of this rather ramshackle vessel. Ranma had worked passage on his last ‘fishing’ run (Cologne had explained that small ships like this often caught things that the People’s Republic didn’t really approve of, like Levis, Walkmans, and other such luxuries), and Captain Yang understood that the cute and sturdy redhead was intending to reunite with her father somewhere in Japan, after leaving him in a bruised heap on the quay in China.
Cologne had promptly chartered the battered little vessel to take the two Amazons to where Ranma had disembarked, the only delay being the canny captain’s insistence on payment in carved jade. Mere bronze trinkets of equivalent value were too bulky to conceal from interfering customs agents, it seemed.
Unfortunately, the captain had neglected to mention that Ranma had disembarked ten miles offshore, at their closest approach to the Japanese coast, after helping to retrieve a cache of DVDs. Apparently, ‘The little slip dived over the side like homesick dolphin.’
Since the Amazons had decided not to let the canny captain get one over them, Cologne had merely nodded calmly and instructed her great granddaughter to inflate the bladders Amazons used for keeping their travelling packs afloat when crossing rivers while she went back to winning her game of xiangqi with the mate.
Shampoo was just catching her breath before inflating the last bladder in her great-grandmother’s pack, and letting her mind run over her concerns before bending to the task was perfectly natural. She worried about the effort it would take to swim to shore – not that she couldn’t do it, and she suspected Ranma had swum much further on occasion if his father had tried swimming back to Japan. Shampoo, however, had never swum more than a mile and a half at a go, because that was the length of the nearest large lake to the village.
She worried about her great-grandmother swimming to shore – not because the old woman couldn’t do it, because she had a vast respect for her ancestress’s improbable vitality and knew the old woman was too sensible to propose doing such a thing knowing that she couldn’t manage it. However, she probably would insist on using it as a training exercise, so Shampoo expected to end up towing both packs, and possibly carrying Cologne as well.
Most of all, she worried about her adopted family member, alone in the strange land on the dark horizon – or worse, with his father in that strange land.
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(Posted Fri, 18 May 2007 21:50)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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