“I’ll get them,” Setsuna muttered darkly. “Just like I got that self-righteous prick who had the balls to call Pluto a ‘dwarf planet.’” She smirked gruesomely. “Emphasis on ‘had.’”
“I enjoy a good castration story as much as the next girl,” replied Haruka, “but could you wait until after we get the Amulet to get us thrown out?”
Hotaru quietly enjoyed the novelty of Haruka-papa getting Setsuna-mama back on task. It was almost a shame to announce, “I see Motoko.”
“Great.” Haruka quickly strode to the kendoist. “Hey, we’ve got some work to do. Whip out the Crystal already!” There was no response. “Earth to sword girl,” coaxed the blonde, “Ground Control to Major Tom. We’ve lost your signal. Something wrong?”
Motoko noticed what appeared to be a fly buzzing in her ear. She waved her hand over the side of her head so she could continue her admiration of the blacksmith’s art undistracted.
Haruka’s patience and maturity reached their limits simultaneously. With a lecherous smirk, she put her mouth to Motoko’s ear and… Well, let’s just say the swordswoman most certainly did not mistake what happened next for a fly. Instead, she screamed in a pitch that threatened to shatter the display cases and jumped back a few yards, hand over the offended orifice and eyes staring in horror. Unnoticed by either of the involved, Setsuna sent a mental command to the Gates of Time to save her current timespace coordinates. This was one for the millennial highlight reel.
Elsewhere in the Smithsonian, Ami and Michiru were admiring the achievements of civilizations long dead. They were currently on ancient Egypt. After a giant bas-relief mural elicited twin cries of “Oh my God, a giant rock!” the two began examining the area more seriously.
Currently before Ami was a desiccated husk of a person, looking more than anything like a piece of bone-in human jerky. “A sand mummy,” the bluenette muttered to herself. “Buried in the sand, his body gradually dehydrated to this state without once feeling the ravages of microbes or predators. Only time and the desert heat made him as he is now.”
“I’ve never heard you wax poetic before,” mused Michiru.
Ami jumped. “H-how long have you been there?”
“Somewhere around ‘feeling the ravages.’ You do have a lovely voice.”
The younger girl blushed. “You’ve never heard me attempt karaoke.”
The violinist chuckled softly. “I meant as a poet.” She examined the natural mummy herself. “It is inspiring, isn’t it? This man helped inspire the intense process by which they prepared their nobles for the afterlife, and all he had to do was fall in the desert.”
“He probably wasn’t to happy about that part,” noted the genius.
“Ah, but it’s thanks to him we have the pyramids. The City of the Dead. The very idea of the mummy in popular culture.”
“True, but it doesn’t make him any less dead.”
Michiru pouted. “When did you get so cynical?”
Ami sighed. “I blame the jet lag.” She noticed something move in the corner of her eye. Turning, she gasped. “Oh no.”
The Senshi of Neptune stiffened, henshin wand already in hand. “What?”
“That same black cloud that possessed Motoko.” So it was. The smoky stuff wafted through the hallway amid a sea of panicking museum patrons. Those caught in the substance coughed as their eyes watered and their shoulders slumped. “Energy drain,” determined Ami from memory.
“We need to find somewhere private,” Michiru stated firmly. The sound of a loud klaxon drew her attention to a nearby emergency exit, the door of which her fellow Senshi had opened.
“I’d say this qualifies,” noted Ami, tongue at least partially in cheek. The musician nodded as they ducked into the stairwell.
After recovering from her latest Kinsey score increasing escapade and moving to an inconspicuous spot, Motoko did indeed utilize the Zodiac Crystal. The gem emitted a beam of green light, which pointed ahead and downward into the floor. Given that the party was on the ground floor, this seemed rather odd. “It must be in the basement,” surmised Setsuna.
“But that’s off-limits to the public,” Motoko noted. “How are we supposed to get to it?”
The Senshi of Time gave her inscrutable smile, manifested the Time Key Staff and raised it above their heads. “Observe. Pluto Disguise Power!”
After the brief obligatory light show, the disguise effect had made itself known. Haruka and Mokoto appeared to be security guards, Setsuna a researcher, and Hotaru…was oddly unchanged. “Why didn’t you disguise me, Setsuna-mama?”
Setsuna maintained her trademark grin and returned the Staff to subspace. “Because you, my dear daughter, are our ticket in.”
“Late ‘Take Your Daughter to Work Day,’ Mrs. Tomoe?” The guard was understandably skeptical.
“I was at a conference in Tokyo,” explained Setsuna. This was technically true, as there had been a “family” meeting of the Outers. That it was over whose turn it was to do the laundry was not something the security personnel needed to know. “Little Jenny insisted.”
“Jenny” merely smiled and exuded thought-deadening cuteness. She was quite good at this.
“Well…I suppose I can allow this. For a few minutes.” The guard turned to his apparent comrades-in-arms. “I want both of you keeping a close eye on them.” The two silently saluted. “No offense, Mrs. Tomoe, but we just can’t be too careful.”
Setsuna smiled and nodded. “Not a problem. I’d do the same, honestly.” The quartet descended the stairs.
“And this,” announced Strong Bad, “is Bubs’ Concession Stand. The go-to place for all your go-to needs. If you’ve got enough go-to 20s.” He paused and pondered for a moment. “Or go-to pencil shavings.”
Ryoga and Strong Sad, however, were engaged in a different conversation. “{I call them soolnds,}” concluded the monochromatic man-thing.
“{So your parents never dipped you in the Spring of Drowned Elephant?}” Ryoga was fascinated by this strange being.
“{Not to my knowledge. Just don’t mention the concept around Strong Bad in a language he understands, or he’ll try to replicate it.}”
“{Well, what about your parents themselves? Did either of them have…}” Ryoga forced the word through his Japanese-conditioned mouth. “Surunduus?”
“{Well, my father—}”
“Ay yi yi yi yi!” called the wrestleman. “Zip it, you two! How am I supposed to get that recompense if you keep jawin’ away in that crazy Moon language? And what was that crap Bandana Boy was saying about cylinders?”
“Well pardon us for having a pleasant conversation,” retorted Strong Sad.
“Pardon denied!’ The middle brother Strong whipped out a walky-talky from who-knew-whence. “The Cheat! Bombardment on coordinates Q-7-Monkeydude!” The reply came in the form of a muffled series of grunts and squeaks. “What? No, not Marzipan’s back porch! I meant coordinates G-X-ty seven-Jhonka!”
An affirmative Cheat noise was soon followed by a rapid salvo of water balloons directed at the precise point Ryoga and Strong Sad had been standing when Strong Bad phoned in the surgical strike. Of course, Ryoga had moved in the interim, with the pasty-faced besoolnded one quickly falling behind. Naturally, this unescorted dash resulted in Ryoga vanishing once more into the æther.
Strong Sad looked up from where he’d collapsed in his madcap 4 mph dash for freedom and not-wetness. “Did anyone to where my guest ran off?” he called out desperately.
The only witness to Ryoga’s planeshift gave a complete account of what he saw. “AaAaAaAaAaAaA! That egg roll was extra puffy!”
And the New Paper did descend from its timespace-transcending inkjet printer, and all was laid to burnination. Or, you know, something like that.
Read the comments on this episode
See other episodes by Animethropologist
(Posted Thu, 14 Feb 2008 04:54)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.