[Episode 209330] [Episode 209330]Akane had been kidnapped many times in the past, and even been forcibly vacated from her body on a few occasions. But the Leo Amulet was bound to her soul, and when it had been sealed and locked within Sailor Eris’s cannon, her mind had been similarly subdued. While Carmellia, another awareness who had conveniently been active at the time, had risen to fill the resulting psychic void, Akane herself was briefly banished to the nothingness of Mu.
Mu, afterlife of atheists and non-shinigami Death Note users, is nothing. In fact, it is less than nothing, as even nothingness implies a blank area in which something could eventually occur or exist. Mu is without space or time, gods or demons, matter or energy. It is the logical conclusion of sensory deprivation, the pinnacle of fugue, the result of creating a perfect vacuum, then removing what’s left. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. Needless to say, it is not a pleasant place. It isn’t a place, nor is it pleasant.
Fortunately, once Carmellia had touched the Leo Amulet it had been, to continue the Monopoly metaphor, the equivalent of rolling doubles. The last Sailor Leo returned to her postmortem dormancy, while the current one returned to active duty.
This is how Akane found herself back in her body and why ever since then, she had been clinging to Ranma like a barnacle with separation anxiety, tears streaming down her face as desperate affection streamed from her mouth. Repeatedly, Akane entreated her fiancé to forgive her, to love her, to protect her, and so forth. In short, Akane had gotten the tsundere knocked out of her.
Ranma simply held her, letting the frightened, loving babble gradually come to a close. Finally, he delivered a small kiss to her forehead and spoke a sentence some believed he could never utter: “I love you too, Akane.”
A passing troupe of Martial Arts Background Music performer/practitioners, detecting an opening, stopped and played an appropriately sappy tune.
“Ow!”
“You OK, Mina-chan?” asked Usagi.
“Fine, fine.” The Senshi of Love and Lasers rubbed her jaw. “Just a toothache.”
“I keep telling you to cut back your sugar intake,” admonished Ami as she typed away at the Mercury Computer.
“It’s not my fault,” declared Minako. “It’s those darn ice cream shops! How am I, the consumer, supposed to keep my teeth healthy if they insist on offering cheap and plentiful frozen treats?”
“By exerting even the slightest bit of self-control?”
“Bah.”
Osaka, though amused by the Tomo/Yomi-esque exchange, interrupted to sate her curiosity. “What’re ya doin’ Ami-san?”
“I’m looking for Saotome Ranma. He’s your magical advisor.”
“So he’s a cute animal?”
“A martial artist, actually.”
Osaka pondered this, then forced it into her mental framework of How Magical Girls Work. “A cute martial arts animal?”
“He’s human,” said the bluenette, with just a hint of terseness. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Osaka, it’s just that the girl did things to logical thought that would make Intelligent Design supporters cringe.
“He is cute, though,” noted Makoto. “Reminds me of—”
“Your old sempai,”chorused the other Inners.
As the Jupiter Senshi glowered, Ami continued. “In any case, Saotome-san likely possesses the item you’ll need to locate your transformation device.”
“Any luck?” This came from Sakaki, who was still ambivalent about the whole Senshi thing.
“It’s proving tricky. I was able to track Pluto’s energy signature to a specific ward of Tokyo, but once I try to get more detail, the tracking becomes horrendously inaccurate. It’s like quantum uncertainty on a macroscopic scale. I’m trying to reroute the signal through a slapdash Heisenbergian dampener, but I keep getting Divide By Cucumber errors.”
This was followed by an uncomprehending silence. Then Osaka cut through with Occam’s Razor. “Didja try usin’ a phonebook?”
Another silent pause, this one embarrassed. 'Alright,' Ami mentally admitted, 'maybe there are benefits to that sort of thought process.' Aloud, she simply said, “Or that.”
“I’ll get it,” offered Rei, rising to do so.
"It's really not necessary," said the Ice Senshi. "I can just look it up online."
"Yeah, but this way I can go make sure Grandpa isn’t trying to sneak back in."
The others shuddered a bit. The old priest meant well, but had tried getting a bit too...familiar with everyone, on the pretense of better feeling out their chi lines. And curves. Oh yes, very important the chi curves...
"By all means, then," said Ami.
Subject has been placed in universe Kagesaki-KAS0497. Local sentient races are human variant 010 and vampire variant 026.
/pause
Report paused. Awaiting command.
/tembahisarmsopen human variant 010
Standard Homo sapiens sapiens, excepting an increased variety of possible hair coloration. Mostly harmless.
/tembahisarmsopen vampire variant 026
Homo hemovoria kagesaki. Physiologically, almost identical to humans, excepting pronounced upper canines. Diet consists normal human food until maturation, at which point it changes to the blood and psychic energy of humans. Each individual of variant 026 drains a specific emotional or behavioral frequency and has an innate ability to sense those who emit this frequency at high levels. Those exsanguinated find themselves unable to express the drained emotion or behavior until their psychic energy and blood supply regenerate, a process which typically takes one to three weeks. Other psionic abilities include selective and total memory wiping, often used to maintain humanity’s unawareness of variant 026’s presence, and chiropterakinesis, the ability to summon and control bats. Bats are often used as foci for more complex psionics, including scrying and SEP fields, especially by the prepubescent.
Variant 026, after the first consumption of blood, loses any and all defense against ultraviolet light, and will carbonize if exposed to it for more than a few minutes. Sanctified artifacts and fluids, moving water, scattered minutae, and many other traditional anti-vampiric techniques do not deter them. In many cases, these alleged weaknesses have been invented and/or perpetuated by the vampires themselves. Garlic will deter them, but only because of olfactory capabilities superior to those of humans. Onions and other pungent vegetables work equally well.
A rare mutation of of variant 026, vampire variant 027, has been documented. Variant 027 is even less distinguishable from humans, one of few exceptions being its ability to inject blood and psychic energy. Variant 027’s emotional/behavioral “preference” runs counter to the injected energy frequency. One which injects sloth, for example, is drawn to the physically active. Blood type of the injected is immaterial, as the blood of variant 027 lacks the antigens that result in lethal clotting, like human blood type O negative.
/resume
Resuming status report.
Subject has been placed near family of vampire variant 026. (Two parents, (one male, one female), three children (one male, two females (one variant 027))) Family’s preferences are pride, dishonesty, stress, unhappiness, and jealousy, all major elements of subject’s psyche. This unit will observe how subject reacts to the inability to lie, envy, stress, sorrow, or feel pride.
See other episodes by Animethropologist
(Posted Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:31)
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