Akane floated in her personal mindscape. That said mindscape currently resembled interstellar space was not reflective of the youngest Tendo’s intelligence. This mental void was the clarity of thought she’d enforced on herself as she meditated, aided by the mystic vibrations, intersecting leylines, and other New Age-y psychographic landmarks of the point where her body sat. Her mental avatar, a slightly more mature and decidedly bustier version of herself, opened her eyes (or at least an idea of eyes,) and examined her surroundings with a tranquil calm few would associate with Akane.
Twenty subjective seconds later, this calm had become impatient foot tapping. Akane’s astral sole smacking the psychic firmament that was solidified specifically for that purpose. “Well?” she demanded. “Show me the past already! Stupid myth…”
When the landscape has aided you, it is always a good idea to pay the proper respect to it. Akane learned this lesson the hard way as she was shoved in a direction perpendicular to all her familiar spatial axes, Her sudden hyperspatial transit was interrupted by hitting something soft and pliable with her back.
“Oof!” cried a voice from above the softness. “Careful there, Miss!”
Akane looked up. She saw a smiling face framed in golden blonde hair, a wide-brimmed hat positioned jauntily atop it. Then she moved off the woman, turned, and felt her fists begin to shake. Even with the enhancements of her idealized mental form, she was still smaller than this girl!
Said girl frowned and tilted her head. “I know you from somewhere… Ah! Grandma!” She grabbed Akane in a bear hug that gave the martial artist a distressingly detailed analysis of her alleged descendant’s, ahem, “assets.”
“'Grandma?'” cried Akane, muffled somewhat by her surroundings.
“Yup! It’s me, Rushuna!”
“But I’m only fifteen!”
“I thought you looked different.”
Akane managed to extricate herself from the choking cleavage enclosure. “Why are you here, anyway? I’m supposed to be talking with past lives, not future granddaughters!”
“Ohhh…” Rushuna considered this. “In that case, you should go that way.” She pointed at a door that was inexplicably standing in the middle of the otherwise ill-defined area,
“Was that always there?” Akane examined the door. Sure enough, the legend on the bronze plate affixed to it read “Past Life Communion. Beware of the Leopard.” Shrugging, Akane opened the door, revealing an opalescent octarine vortex. An eyebrow raised, she peeked at the other side of the door, only to find that from that perspective, the thing didn’t seem to exist. “Huh.”
She shrugged again turned and bowed to the blonde. “Thank you for your assistance, granddaughter. I look forward to meeting you again.” She paused. “But please, put on some decent clothes. You look like a tramp.” This said, Akane dove into the swirling energies.
Rushuna sighed. “Sixty years younger and she still won’t stop commenting on my outfit.”
The vortex tossed Akane about, giving her naught but glimpses of experiences she’d had in previous lives. There was a blinding flash in what she supposed was Hiroshima. A brief instance of repeatedly beating a redhead with a scar on his cheek with a bokken. A rush of joy from one life spent as a dolphin. An instant between swings of a frying pan at a fleeing redhead. A sudden drop in the swirl of memories briefly brought her eye-to-muzzle with a very perturbed-looking leopard before a psychic updraft gave her a moment of throwing rocks at a rather Neanderthalic redhead.
Those few thoughts that could decisively pinned down as Akane Tendo’s were as follows: ‘This isn’t what I expected.’ ‘I’m going to be sick.’ ‘What is it with my past lives and beating up redheads?’
Finally, the torrent of previous incarnations settled down, leaving Akane near the bottom of the well of lives. Unfortunately, this was the same level as that leopard.
“N-nice kitty…” Akane said hesitantly. She wasn’t ailurophobic, but she was human. That meant the presence of a large, angry, hungry-looking carnivore was setting off a vital ancestral instinct. Not “fight or flight,” but rather “run up a tree and throw poo at it until it goes away.”
Much to Akane’s credit, she acted on neither aspect of this impulse. “Just think of it as another member of the Hentai Horde,” she said to herself. “It can’t be any worse than that linebacker Watanabe.”
Then the leopard pounced. Akane rushed forward, slid under the wicked claws, and delivered an uppercut to the beast’s passing underbelly.
The cat tilted forward and its neck, rather than its forepaws, took the landing impact. The leopard’s neck gave a nasty crunch and stuck out at an unpleasant-looking angle.
Akane breathed hard as the adrenaline spike faded. She honestly hadn’t meant to kill the thing. Heck, it was already technically dead, wasn’t it? She couldn’t help but feel some remorse at her lack of control.
This bout of ennui was short-lived, as the leopard began to stir. Akane stood enthralled as the creature seemed to ripple, the leopard changing spots and species. The restored and transformed lioness turned back towards Akane and growled anew.
The girl returned the intimidation tactic with a glare. “This is my mind now. You had your turn, Missy.” She extended her palms and focused her chi. “Moko Takibisha!” It would never have worked in real life, not without months of intense training Akane had not undergone. But as she’d said, this world was not real in many senses of the word. This environment was under her control. What she said, went.
Of course, this depended on what one’s definition of “her” was. “PROUD CORONA!”
The orb of confidence met the ring of luminous energy in an impressive explosion. The force sent both combatants up into the levels of consciousness.
Akane awoke with a shudder and a gasp. “Whoa…” Her head pounded. She held it wearily. “That…was intense.”
You ain’t kiddin’, new girl.
The Tendo heiress’s eyes widened. She frantically searched for the source of the voice. “Who said that?” she whispered, fearing she already knew the answer.
You, from several millennia ago.
Akane decided to try non-verbal communication. She’d already attracted a few stares. ‘Shouldn’t you be a caveperson or something?’
Had I been an Earth native, perhaps. Still, even this backwater had a few passable civilizations here and there.
‘“Earth native”? You’re an alien?’ Akane got up and began to move for somewhere more comfortable. It hadn’t felt like she’d taken long in her mind, but her rear said otherwise.
In a manner of speakin’.
‘In a manner of speaking?’
That’s Mysterious Advisor fer “The full story would, at this point in your training, make your head explode.”
“Oh… Wait, training?”
There was a mental chuckle. Yep, training. Ya weren’t too shabby, kid, but if I’d been takin’ things seriously, you’d’ve been gutted ‘fore you could blink.
Akane harrumphed. ‘Prove it.’
If I ever get into another body, maybe I will. In the meantime, yer organs are more useful t’ both of us where they are.
‘Right.’ The current Akane swallowed. This earlier her was…intimidating. Not scary. No, of course not. But she did sound…formidable. Probably best to steer the conversation away from disembowelment. ‘So, what should I call you? I can’t just say “Hey, voice in my head!”’
Good point. There was a pause, then the psychic impression of a smile. Tell ya what. Fer now, call me Apollo.
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(Posted Sun, 09 Dec 2007 04:59)
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