Mousse’s day was only a few hours old, and already it was going sour. It had started that morning when the old mummy had awoken him from an extremely pleasant dream that prominently featured her great-granddaughter (as was the case with most of Mousse’s pleasant dreams) and informed him that he needed to do some errands for her. Specifically, she wanted to restock the Nekohanten’s supply of herbs and spices; apparently, Cologne had either run low on ingredients or snagged a major catering deal, because it had been a while since she’d sent him out for so many different things at once.
Of course, several of the ingredients were hard to come by, mostly because they didn’t feature prominently in Asian cuisine, if at all—allspice, for example, was generally associated with Caribbean food, being one of the main ingredients in Jamaican jerk seasoning. (Not that Mousse was an expert on food from the other side of the world—the only thing that mattered to him was the fact that allspice was hard to find.) Apparently, the mummy was thinking of experimenting with some new dishes, because that was the only reason Mousse could think of for the dozen or so unusual herbs and spices on the list. But what really threw Mousse for a loop was Cologne’s request for “genuine wasabi – no imitations!” as her handwritten list put it. Given how much the spice was associated with Japanese cuisine, the Amazon assumed that it would be relatively easy to come by.
This assumption turned out to be extremely naïve to say the least. While it was true that the flavor of wasabi was often used in Japanese cuisine, that was invariably imitation wasabi—the real stuff was so dang expensive that it was far beyond the price range of your average cook. It was so expensive, in fact, that many of the vendors Mousse went to didn’t bother stocking it precisely because it was out of their consumer base’s price range, and those that did have it didn’t stock it in the quantity that Cologne was asking for.
At least that explains why the crone gave me so much money, Mousse thought to himself. She knew this wasabi was going to take a bite out of her wallet. He’d ended up having to combine smaller orders by clearing out the wasabi supplies of four different vendors, all of whom took ten minutes to make sure that the gaijin customer understood that imitation wasabi was actually very good and could be substituted for real wasabi in many dishes with no noticeable reduction in flavor quality—apparently, they were all concerned that Mousse would feel ripped off when he discovered how cost-effective the fake stuff was, and as a result might take his obviously well-financed business elsewhere for his culinary needs.
But now, with all of his herbs and spices safely tucked away in one of his enormous pockets of ki, Mousse was finally on his way home, where he could once again gaze upon his lovely Xian Pu—well, when he was wearing his glasses, at least. Without his corrective lenses, he tended to gaze on other things that vaguely resembled the lavender-haired beauty. Like fire hydrants. Or support beams. Occasionally, he even mistook Ranma Saotome for his beloved, especially when the womanizing bastard was in his female form. And the son of a bitch has the nerve to complain about his curse. At least he gets to keep his opposable thumbs. Mousse did not particularly like turning into a duck whenever he was splashed with cold water, as it was much more difficult to pull stuff out of ki pockets when he didn’t have hands.
It wouldn’t be so bad if Shampoo was only pursuing him out of obedience to Amazon law. After all, in Mousse’s experience, laws always had loopholes, and if Shampoo had been willing to cooperate, he was sure the two of them could have been rid of Saotome’s specter ages ago. But it seemed that the warrior had completely fallen for the outsider’charm, though precisely what this alleged “charm” actually was continued to elude Mousse’s understanding.
But that did’t really matter at the moment; what was important was that he was finally home, and despite the delays in getting the mummy’s wasabi, he was actually fifteen minutes early. That in turn meant that he’d have fifteen more minutes to spend with the love of his life. Sighing contentedly at this prospect, he walked up to the door of the Nekohanten, turned the knob, and entered the restaurant.
“…and that should just about do it. I’ll get these down to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs right away, and they’ll take care of the processing. We’ll let you know if any problems occur, but that doesn’t seem very likely at this point.” The man in the suit gathered the piles of papers on the table, straightened them into a single neat stack, and put the forms into his briefcase. “So, if there are no further questions—”
“What the heck is going on here?!” Mousse shouted.
This caught Mr. Fushida off guard, as he really hadn’t been expecting any more questions. He turned to see a young man about the same age as the five persons at the table and drew what was as close to a logical conclusion as one could get, given the situation: “Ah… I’m sorry, I thought that only five people were involved in this…”
“That’s correct,” Cologne confirmed. “This is just one of my employees—he doesn’t have any part in this arrangement.”
“Arrangement? What the hell are you talking about, you old mummy? Is Saotome up to something again?”
Cologne chose to ignore the young man’s ranting. “You’ll have to forgive him for his outburst—it seems I’ve neglected to let him know what’s going on.”
This seemed to satisfy the government worker: “Oh, that’s quite alright. I can’t say I blame him for his confusion; after all it took me several minutes to figure out what was going on when I first heard about it, and it took my superiors nearly an hour to convince me that it was legitimate. I’m sure he’ll be as happy as I am for these youngsters once everything’s been explained to him. But I should really get these papers back to the office.” He stood up to put on his sport coat, and then turned back to the five teenagers sitting at the table. “Congratulations. I wish you all the best of luck.” He then picked up his briefcase and exited the building.
As soon as he left, Cologne sprang into action, locking every door and window in the Nekohanten and leaving the rest of its current occupants decidedly confused. Ranma was the first to respond when she was finished: “Uh, what the heck was all that for?”
“It’s quite simple, Son-in-law,” Cologne replied. “I am about to grant Mousse’s request for information on the situation, and as you can probably guess, I don’t expect him to take the news well. I’ve locked the doors as an extra precaution to make sure he doesn’t try to stop Mr. Fushida from doing his job.”
“Hey! Don’t talk about me as though I’m not here! And why go to all that trouble? Saotome is trying to pull something, isn’t he? You enemy of women! I&ll—oof!” Mousse was cut off as Cologne delivered a sharp kick to his abdomen, knocking the wind out of the young Amazon.
“No clonk upside the head?” Ukyo asked.
“No. That wasn’t about chastisement—there’s a very good chance he’ll try something dangerous.”
“Will you stop talking about what I might do and just tell me what’s going on?”
Akane cautiously tried to get the boy’s attention. “Um, Mousse? That isn’t Cologne, that’s an empty chair.”
It was then that the nearsighted Amazon realized that his glasses had come off when he’d toppled to the ground. He pulled out a spare pair before addressing the Matriarch again. “What is going on?”
Deciding that she’d beaten around the bush long enough, Cologne decided to answer that question directly. “Ranma has married Shampoo, and this time he was a willing participant.”
It was difficult to see behind his Coke-bottle lenses, but Mousse’s eyes went wide with shock. “Wh-What?! How… Why…” Mousse could barely process the information, and as a result couldn’t seem to find an idea he could latch on to for his next question, and when one did come out, it was completely out of left field. “Then what are they doing here?” he asked, flailing his arm in the general direction of Ranma’s other suitors. It actually sounded more like a plea for Cologne to reverse her previous statement than an a request for further information.
“They are here,” the Matriarch answered, “because the three of them have joined Ranma and Shampoo in a polygamous union, in accordance with our tribe’s customs and traditions.”
“What?!” The fiancée squad had been so possessive of Ranma that the idea that they would even think of sharing him seemed utterly ridiculous. “Why?!”
“It doesn’t matter why they did it, Mu Tsu. If they want you to know the details, they’ll tell you themselves. All you need to know is that I will no longer tolerate your continued pursuit of Xian Pu. She has given her heart to her husband and wives and you have no right to take or even to seek that which does not belong to you.”
By this point, however, Mousse was no longer listening to Cologne’s words; his initial shock and disbelief was rapidly giving way to a seething fury. All of his hopes that one of the other girls would lure Ranma away from his beloved were dashed—the womanizer actually had the gall to exploit a rarely-used loophole in Amazon law to get every single one of them. He turned towards the bastard and shouted at the top of his lungs: “Saotome! I’ll kill you!” Without a moment’s hesitation he let loose his chains, only to have them snag on an ancient walking stick. “What the—”
Cologne didn’t allow Mousse to finish what he was saying, as she launched into a series of punches and kicks, knocking the out of control Amazon about before launching into the Kachuu Tenshin Amaguriken, landing a hundreds of blows in the space of three seconds. Not surprisingly, this was more than Mousse could take, and he slumped to ground, unconscious.
“Shampoo, get some cold water on him and put him in his cage before he wakes up,” the Matriarch commanded her great-granddaughter, who quickly dragged Mousse off to comply.
Ranma seemed almost disappointed. “I coulda taken him.”
“Yes, you could have,” Cologne concurred, “but it wasn’t for your sake that I stopped him. If Mousse went after you, he would be in violation of several serious Amazon codes, most notably the prohibition against unprovoked attacks upon fellow tribe members. I’d turned a blind eye to it before because you had not yet accepted your membership in the tribe, but now that behavior has to stop.”
“I guess I understand,” Ranma replied. “Is he gonna be okay?”
Cologne sighed sadly. “I don’t know Ranma, but for his sake, I hope he will.”
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(Posted Thu, 02 Aug 2007 04:57)
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