All others in the room turned to look at Motoko. The Senshi were considering their new ally. The Hinata Sou tenants’ reactions ran from fearful awe to blasé expressions that all but screamed, “Saw it coming.” Su happily glomped the swordswoman, proclaiming “Fuku buddies!”
Motoko summed up her reaction in a simple sentence. “Do I have to wear the short skirt?”
Rei and Haruka looked sympathetic. “Kind of an occupational hazard,” said the Senshi of Immature Puns.
Setsuna rose from her seat. “Uniform issues aside, once Su’s magical disruption dissipates, you’ll need to protect yourself. Therefore, we must locate your Amulet.”
“And which would that be?” asked Motoko. “If I recall correctly, the Western zodiac has twelve signs, and only one has been accounted for.”
The Senshi of Time’s expression, while impenetrable as ever, developed a small smirk. “Tell me, does anyone recall what Ms. Aoyama’s monster form looked like?”
“How could I forget?” This came from Ranma, who had been lying on the floor with an icepack after the sound thwomping he had received. As he convalesced from what Haitani and Shirai liked to call the “Hinata Welcome Wagon,” he had remained silent, as speaking tended to worsen his headache. However, between the ice and Ranma’s own ridiculous healing factor, this was no longer much of a factor.
He continued, “She was a foot or two taller, had big curly horns, hair down t’ her butt, and her legs were all scaly.”
Ami raised an eyebrow at this. “The youma gave her eczema?”
Ranma would’ve done a spit take had he been drinking anything. “What!? Who said anything ‘bout squirtin’ stuff up yer—”
“Eczema, not enema, dork.” Sarah delivered a carefully aimed kick to the martial artist’s head. “It means dry skin.”
“Uncute little brat…” the aquatransexual darkly muttered, unknowingly making a certain fiancée currently passing through the Seikan Tunnel sneeze. Taking a deep breath, Ranma continued. “No, I mean scales. Like a lizard or—”
“A fish,” Setsuna finished. “And I suppose her feet were hooves.”
“That’s right.” Ranma looked to the woman in wonder. “How’d ya…”
“You get used to it,” Minako commented. “Birds gotta swim, pigs gotta fly, Setsuna knows what you’re thinking before you do.”
“And you mangle proverbs beyond recognition,” Makoto noted.
“That’s righ—Hey!”
Setsuna longed for the Time Key Staff, either to fast forward through the banter or to just bonk those two on the head. “I was able to figure it out from the curled horns. Ms. Aoyama’s monstrous form was a scaled satyr, a fish-goat.”
“Hmm, fish-goat.” Su drooled at the thought. “Yummy…” Understandably, Motoko edged away from the voracious girl as best she could on the crowded couch.
“Therefore,” Setsuna continued undeterred, “this proves my original guess from tracing her family line that she is Sailor Capricorn.”
“What powers does that grant me?” Motoko inquired.
“I can’t say for certain until you transform and demonstrate them. You can exert them to a rather minor degree now, much like Su could design and construct her advanced technology prior to receiving the Aquarius Amulet, so any exceptional skills you have may hint at their nature.”
“Her sword skills are incredible,” Shinobu noted.
Haruka snorted. “We’ve got a swordsman, thank you.”
“She’s quite the prolific author,” said Mutsumi, much to the mortification of said pulp writer.
“I don’t really see how writing can be used as a weapon,” Usagi admitted.
“She never, ever gives up.”
All present turned to look at the speaker. “Urashima…” said Motoko, a bit more breathily than she intended.
“I thought you were entertaining the others, Sempai.” The Inners involuntarily glanced at Makoto after hearing Shinobu’s usual manner of addressing Keitaro.
“You stuck me in a room with Kanako, Nyamo, and Motoko’s oler sister!” cried the landlord. “I’m lucky to still be alive! They think I’m going to the bathroom.”
“Onii-chaaaan.” Keitaro visibly paled as his sister’s voice drifted from upstairs. “Are you trying to sneak out on meeeeee?”
“Run.” This came from Ranma. “Run far. Run fast. Do not look back. If you know another language, go to another country and change your name.”
“Well, there is America…” This line of thought was quickly terminated by a number of blows and Kanako coming down to hogtie her brother and drag him back to his doom…I mean, to escort him back to where he was entertaining guests.
“If we may continue,” said a tensing Setsuna, who was growing impatient with all the interruptions; “there is an easy way to locate the Capricorn Amulet without waiting for a pigtailed boy to arrive on the wings of a deus ex machina.” She looked to Ranma, who was silently praying for the other boy with an overenthusiastic harem. “Ranma, as the official advisor for the Zodiac Senshi, you possess and protect their associated items of power. Fortunately, Su’s earlier experiment with improbability physics released the seal on those items, so you should be able to access them.”
While internally, Ranma was thinking, ‘Just what I need. Twelve more girls I gotta deal with. I wonder how many of ‘em Oyaji engaged me to,’ his spoken response was a bit less self-pitying. “How do I access ‘em?”
“Luna always did a cute little backflip when she made a henshin pen appear,” Usagi recalled.
The martial artist’s face soured at this idea. “I ain’t doin’ no cute backflips.”
“While that technically means you will do backflips,” noted Setsuna, “since you have opposable thumbs, you won’t have to. The technique may seem somewhat odd, but you must focus your own energy to pierce space and access a subspace dimension filled with these items.”
“Oh, Hidden Weapons Style. No problem.” Ranma dug into the rather small pockets of his pants and extricated a spare shirt, a bra, a bottle of currently lukewarm water, a map of Tokyo, a card with a five-by-five grid labeled “Fiancée Crisis Bingo,” a small book entitled “Spring of Yeti-Riding-Bull-Holding-Eel-And-Crane Victim to Japanese Pocket Dictionary,” and several other items, a few even Ranma seemed surprised to find. The smiling photograph of a certain allegedly uncute fiancée and a small lock of black hair were hastily reinserted into the surprisingly capacious pockets.
Ranma sat up and sorted through the items with which he was unfamiliar. Su’s eyes lit up as she say what appeared to be a pair of earmuffs emblazoned with the Aquarius symbol, which she quickly grabbed. Setsuna, however, took hold of a pineapple-sized crystal. It gleamed like a diamond, and was carved with twelve facets. Its shape was two regular hexagonal pyramids joined at the base. “This,” she said, “is the Zodiac Crystal. It isn’t a massive mana battery like the Ginzushou or even the Golden Earth Crystal, but when held by a Zodiac Senshi, it can locate her Amulet flawlessly. When held by the Herald, it will indicate the location of the nearest Zodiac Senshi.”
“How convenient!” Mutsumi exclaimed excitedly.
“No kiddin’,” Ranma concurred, grabbing the stone to hand to Motoko. As advertised, the moment he touched the gem a beam of light shot out from it.
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(Posted Sun, 02 Sep 2007 19:13)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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