Either way, Ranma was just realizing that she’d been tackled to the ground by the boy as she saw two overlapping blue cars race toward them. Of course, she only realized this due to the slow lifting sensation she felt as her skewed view of the world crept upward a few feet. To be honest with herself, Ranma honestly couldn’t understand how she could be this far out of it and still not be unconscious. Worse it was embarrassing because it was making her look all helpless and stuff.
The blue cars screeched noisily to a halt just a few steps away from them, forcing Ranma’s limited focus back outside herself and onto the world around her. The doors nearest them popped open and two identical ladies leaned toward them to get better views. “Sorry! Am I real late?” they asked in a singular voice, with none of the overlap their cars had. “Who’s your girlfriend by the way?” they added in a mock accusatory tone.
Another nearby explosion cut off any attempts at a reply as more shrapnel flew their way. Ranma dutifully deflected it with her shield again, noting that the explosion had been a little closer than the last one. “Never mind, just get in! Move it!” the two women yelled in their single voice again.
In a rush that almost had her vomiting, Ranma was half pushed half pulled into the double interior of the partly merged cars and stuffed into a back seat. Her supporter received little better treatment as the lady driving that car smashed the car into reverse before he could even close his door. Two giant left feet just barely missed them as the car’s engine revved into the redline in reverse. A second later the world wrenched around sickeningly as the car spun around to race away from the creature at full speed.
“Ugh, who the hell taught you how to drive, lady,” Ranma groaned, then had to choke down the urge to vomit yet again. “Pick one of those two roads and drive straight damn it,” she added as soon as she could speak again. It was bad enough that Ranma couldn’t focus her eyes on anything, so why did she have to keep swaying back and forth between roads.
“I am driving straight, Princess. Just how hard of a hit did you take anyway?” retorted the woman driving the car. She still looked like she was half merged with her twin sister, but at least she was close enough not to look like two different people anymore.
“She crashed into the concrete wall next to the phone I was using, Ma’am. It’s a miracle she’s alive at all, never mind being conscious,” the boys sharing the front passenger seat answered for her. They kept glancing back at Ranma as if they expected her to keel over dead any second.
“Woah, that must have hurt! In that case I wouldn’t be surprised if you really do have a concussion, Princess. You still remember your name and stuff at least, don’t you?” the woman asked her. She sounded impressed, but thankfully she kept her eyes on the roads. Ranma didn’t even want to think about how much worse her driving might get if she did look away from the dual roads.
“I’m Ranma Saotome, and if you call me princess one more time, you’re next in line for a beat down after that ugly giant out there. Oh, man I hate concussions,” Ranma half growled, half groaned in response to the question. She also hated girly nicknames, especially when she was feeling sick like this.
“I’ll be nice and contribute that to your concussion, kid. I doubt you want me to start driving bad on purpose right now,” the driver shot back. Her threat only sounded half serious, but Ranma wasn’t really in the mood to find out otherwise. She just didn’t think her stomach could take it.
“Well, now that we know who our unexpected guest is, why don’t we introduce ourselves properly too? I’m Captain Katsuragi, but you can just call me Misato,” the woman added to her front seat passenger. Despite their situation, the woman managed to sound both warm and friendly, as if they weren’t practically fleeing for their lives right now.
“I’m Shinji Ikari. It’s nice to meet you. But— . . . what about Ranma, don’t you think we should get her to a hospital or something?” the boy asked, identifying himself in turn. He sounded genuinely concerned, despite having met Ranma only a few minutes ago.
“Don’t worry, Shinji; there’s a hospital at the place we’re headed to. I’ll have someone take her there just as soon as we arrive,” Misasto assured him, pulling over to the side of the road.
“Wha- why are we stopping, Ms. Misato?” Shinji asked as they rolled to an easy stop. Ranma saw him glance concernedly in her direction as the car stopped moving. He might sound wimpy, but at least he seemed to be the caring sort.
“Something about the way the UN forces are clustering around the enemy is bothering me. I just want to see if I can figure out what it is real quick,” she explained, retrieving a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment. Neither of Ranma’s companions said much after that for several seconds. It was like they were holding their breath as they waited to see what would happen next.
In the silence that followed, Ranma noted that her vision had cleared a lot since her initial impact with the road and that building. It hadn’t fully cleared by any means, but Ranma was certain she could stand on her own feet without help now at least. Her nausea hadn’t dissipated any, but it was comforting to know that Washu’s improvements hadn’t slowed her usual recovery rate too much.
“You know, I think I’m actually starting to feel a bit better now. I’m still pretty sick to my stomach, but at least my vision’s almost back to normal now. I think I should be okay in another hour or so, two at the most,” Ranma announced to no one in particular.
“You’d better let a doctor make that call for you, tough girl. Concussions aren’t something you just shake off and forget about the second you start feeling better,” Misato retorted in a lecturing tone. She was also leaning past Shinji as she stared at the attack craft hovering around the giant some miles off.
“What the . . . ? Oh no! They’re going to use an N2 mine! Everyone get down!” she announced a second later. She immediately forced Shinji down at the waist and covered him with her own body.
“What the hell’s an N2 mine? Is it some kind of bomb or something?” Ranma asked in open confusion. She’d never heard the term before, it sounded like a bomb of some kind at least.
“Only the biggest one ever made, Princess! So get down, Now!” Misato swore at her desperately, never once looking up from her huddled position atop Shinji. Whatever it was, the woman obviously considered it very bad news.
In the distance, something white flashed near the giant, bright enough to obscure it from view. Understanding hit her like a hammer blow, and Ranma instantly understood what was going on. This N2 mine was nothing less than a nuclear bomb.
That realization sent her flying into immediate action as the world around Ranma seemed to freeze for a second. Her feet dropped down through the car, phasing through it without a thought. Two quick steps placed Ranma squarely between the rushing wave of destruction and the car with its fragile occupants.
Both of her hands shot out and a shimmering bubble of silver blue energy coalesced around her. Through force of will alone, she managed to warp the bubble’s usual sphere shape into an oval long enough to protect both Ranma and the car behind her. Ranma poured as much power into her warped shield as she could muster, willing it to withstand the oncoming wave of destructive power.
Time unstuck itself, and the wave washed over all of them immediately like a solid wall of just pressure. Rocks and sand flew past them, bouncing and grinding against Ranma’s shield as the pressure wave pushed unrelentingly past them. The five seconds it took to pass them by seemed to stretch into infinity as Ranma forced her shield to hold its unnatural shape. A distant part of her noticed it was harder to hold the shield’s new shape than it was to make it withstand the pressurized wave of air and debris. But the rest of Ranma’s mind was too bent on making sure the shield did hold its shape to care.
Then, just as suddenly as it hit, the pressure against her shield suddenly stopped and reversed as the back pressure of returning air hit. The second, unexpected hammer blow of the returning air made Ranma stagger forward a step at the sudden reversal, but she managed to keep the barrier up until it too passed them by. Numbly realizing that the threat was gone, Ranma allowed her energy shield to snap back into its default shape and wink out of existence without even a thought. On her way back to the car Ranma’s vision blurred again slightly and her nausea returned as well, stronger than ever.
Ranma desperately phased through the car again and curled up into her seat to try and escape the gut wrenching feeling taking over her stomach. She was fairly certain by now that her stomach was too empty to do anything. But the fact that her stomach was empty completely failed to make Ranma feel any better about her condition.
Laying as still as she possibly could seemed to alleviate her nausea, but it also made Ranma feel a bit sleepy for some reason. She knew she should fight it, for reasons she couldn’t quite remember anymore. But she just felt so comfortable laying still there that it was hard to justify putting up much of a fight.
Ranma was just starting to drift off when one of her companions, the woman, seemed to remember she was there. “Hey, wake up! Hey, Princes! I said wake up!” Misato insisted, using that irritating girly name on her again.
“Don call me dat,” Ranma muttered irritably, unintentionally slurring her words. She roused a bit and tried vainly to glare at the woman. Only to have her divide into two different women again. She couldn’t tell which was which though, so Ranma tried just glaring at both of them equally.
“Oh hell, you’re in bad shape! Shinji, keep talking to her, and whatever you do, don’t let her fall asleep!” Misato ordered the two boys beside her. With a deft shifting of the gears, the car’s tires squealed for a second before shooting forward again. The momentum caused Ranma to lurch in place a little and upset her stomach some more.
“Wuz ga her pannies in a twizt? I protected uz din I? S’ wuz et ta ‘er if I wunna tek a nap, inji?” Ranma protested the woman’s demand. She knew her impaired speech was a bad thing, but at the moment Ranma just couldn’t bring herself to care.
“Protected us? How? I want you to tell me and Shinji all about it, okay Ranma?” Misato interjected, cutting off any reply Shinji might have given then. Ranma just shook her head slowly and tried to force her eyes back into synch.
“Yu wudn believe meh evan ‘f I splained eh ‘t yu,” Ranma retorted, her words almost incomprehensible even to herself. If she had the energy to care right now she would have been embarrassed by her current disability.
“We just had an N2 mine’s pressure wave pass over us without so much as scratching my car’s paint, Princess. I’m willing to believe just about anything at this point, girlfriend,” Misato retorted irritably at her denial.
“Dun sah I din’nt warn yu,” Ranma shot back just as irritably. “S’m kazy scytist sukt me owt ‘f my wirld an inta ‘erz. Cept ze ony ga alf ‘me. Ze di ompthin ta meh ta sayv teh alf me ze di git fom dyn. Ze gayv meh s’m kine ‘f pers ina pra’sess, sed deyd mayk meh stong nough ‘t suvive go’n hum. Ih usd un ‘f ‘m ta mayk a shild n frun ‘f da cer ta ke’p ‘t blun way. Tuk m’r ou ‘f meh tan ‘t suld’uv doh, ‘s la ard’r ta tink strayt den afor. Cen’t f’ger ou wye,” Ranma attempted to explain. Even to her it only sounded like so much gibberish.
“Strong enough to go home? What does that mean?” Shinji asked in confusion, apparently understanding some of Ranma’s slurred speech.
“Don’t know. But if I’m understanding her right, only half of Ranma’s body made it where ever she got sent to. Then something was done to her to keep her alive. So I’d assume that ‘strong enough to go home’ means strong enough to make it back in one piece. Is that right, Ranma?” Misato asked, sounding more confused than skeptical at the moment.
“Ya. S’mting lyk da,” Ranma slurred back. She was honestly beginning to get annoyed with her inability to either talk or see straight. It was like she could barely function at all.
“So just how recently did you get sent back here, Ranma? Did it leave you feeling weak or anything?” Misato asked her, obviously just humoring Ranma’s supposed delusion. It’s what she would have done herself if their situations had been reversed after all.
“I su’pose so. Din’t illy notiz. Why?” Ranma acknowledged her as curiosity began to out weigh her grogginess.
“Well, if you really did need those powers to survive being sent back here, don’t you think that would have drained you a bit, Ranma?” Misato asked her reasonably.
“You mean it might not have been that monster that threw her into that wall?” Shinji interjected, trying to follow the conversation as well. He wasn’t even close to right, but he was trying at least.
“Maybe, Shinji, maybe. That’s what I’m trying to find out after all,” Misato replied placatingly. She then directed her question at Ranma again. “So tell us, Ranma. Do you think your trip here could have weakened you a bit, even if just temporarily?”
“Ah geuzzo,” Ranma slurred back, unable to comprehend what Misato was trying to get at right now.
“You don’t suppose Ranma using her powers like that could have made her concussion worse, do you Ms. Misato?” Shinji worried allowed. Even if the woman was only pretending to buy Ranma’s story, this Shinji kid sounded like he definitely bought it.
“Well–, it would definitely make sense if it had. I mean, concussions are suppose to affect the brain temporarily, right? So if Ranma had to focus on something really, really hard for even just a few seconds, I suppose that could mess her up more than she already was. I’ll have to ask Ritsuko about it; that kind of thing’s her field of expertise, not mine,” she responded after thinking it over for a moment.
After a moment’s silence, the woman seemed to think of something else to add to that. “Hey, Ranma. This crazy scientist of yours; she didn’t give you any kind of instructions about how to recover from the trauma of getting sent back home or anything, did she? You never know, if she was able to give you weird powers and stuff, maybe her advice will actually work? Couldn’t really hurt to try now, could it?” she suggested helpfully.
For perhaps the first time since starting this conversation, Ranma was actually convinced that this Misato woman wasn’t simply humoring her story. “She said I shud eat; eat ‘s much az I can. Su’pose ta r’place ost b’dy mass ‘r s’mting,” Ranma slurred out. She was beginning to feel tired again, and it was affecting her speech even more now.
“Shinji! I’ve got a candy bar and some pocky in my purse, find them and give them to Ranma. And if you’ve got anything edible on you, give that to her too. Maybe it’ll tide her over until we can make it to headquarters,” Misato ordered her other passenger again.
“Right!” Shinji responded immediately. Somehow he seemed really happy to have something useful to do. Well, aside from being responsible for making sure Ranma didn’t fall asleep that is.
The boy quickly rifled through the woman’s slim purse and found the mentioned candy. He also produced some hard candy that Misato had failed to mention, most likely because she hadn’t remembered them being there. He immediately pressed the candy on Ranma, urging her to eat it.
Ranma stared balefully at the offered food, wishing that the very thought of it wasn’t upsetting her stomach. After a moment of staring at the offering, she reluctantly pulled a stick of pocky out of the box and nibbled at it tentatively. After finishing it, Ranma waited hesitantly to see if it would stay down. But instead of feeling worse like she’d been afraid of, she actually felt just the tiniest bit better after eating the pocky stick.
With her confidence bolstered, Ranma quickly downed the half box of pocky with nearly feverish speed. The candy bar went down next in three bites; Ranma barely even bothered chewing it as she swallowed it down. Next came the hard candy, and Ranma swallowed them whole instead of waiting for them to melt in her mouth. She was feeling noticeably better now, and was glad that Misato had made her surprisingly helpful suggestion.
“Um, Ranma . . . I think those might taste better if you took the wrappers off before eating them,” Shinji noted, pointing at Ranma’s empty hands. Ranma also noticed that the boy looked like he wanted to count his fingers to make sure that they were all still attached.
“Oops. I guess I just got a little bit carried away there,” Ranma acknowledged, feeling a little bit sheepish. Embarrassment quickly turned into shock however as Ranma realized that she wasn’t slurring her words anymore. Her vision was almost perfectly clear now too.
“Um, I don’t suppose you’ve got anything else to eat on you, Shinji,” Ranma asked him after a tense moment of silence. Now that she knew that at least part of her nausea was due to hunger, Ranma was practically dying to get something else to eat.
“Not much, I ate most of my snacks on the train ride over here,” Shinji admitted, producing a nearly empty bag of gummi candy, a snack cake, and some jerky. He offered all of them to Ranma, his gaze dipping down to Ranma’s waist for some reason.
Ranma barely noticed as she accepted the meager offering gratefully. She tore into them immediately, almost eating the jerky, wrappers and all, like she had the hard candy. Ranma honestly couldn’t believe just how hungry she was, she hadn’t even been this hungry during the Picholette incident.
“Um, Misato? Just a little while ago, Ranma had this nasty scrape just above her right hip. But it seems to have disappeared somehow. Even the hole in the fabric around it seems to be smaller now,” Shinji told his older companion while Ranma scarfed down the junk food in her hands.
While having him stare at her strangely for a few seconds hadn’t caught Ranma’s attention, his comment definitely did. She looked down to confirm it and was surprised to see that he was right. The only evidence that she’d been hurt there at all was the hole in her suit and a generous blood smear covering portions of the back seat. “Whoa, I’ve never healed that fast before. This is kinda cool,” Ranma agreed, poking her missing wound a few times just to be certain it was gone.
“More weird powers? Are you sure you’re not an angel, Ranma? I’d hate to find out I’m driving one of the enemy around in my car, never mind taking them into headquarters with me,” Misato asked her, sounding half suspicious of Ranma now.
“Maybe I’m not in the right world after all,” Ranma muttered to herself before answering the question directly. “You know, where I come form angels are supposed to be the good guys. I’ve never met one, but that’s just what I’ve always heard. As for being one, I can tell you right now that I’d barely make a good monk, never mind an angel,” she told the woman frankly.
Misato seemed to relax in her seat at the answer, apparently trusting her for now. “Well that’s not the case here anymore. You know that giant that nearly squashed us earlier? The one you said you wanted to beat down, Ranma?” Ranma acknowledged her with a quick affirmative. “Well, that’s an angel, or at least the kind I’m talking about. If you’re not one of them, or on their side, then you’re okay in my book,” Misato informed her, still only half joking about what she said.
Ranma let out a sigh in relief at her last comment. “Good, because wether this is home or not, I’m kinda stuck here. The last thing I need is to have a bunch of people bent on trying to kill me because they think I’m something I’m not. Being needed to get rid of monsters is one thing, but being hunted down like one would really suck, you know?” Ranma replied, feeling immensely better now that she’d had something to eat. She was still hungry, but at least she felt like she was over her concussion now.
“Glad to hear it, princess. But I’m afraid that Commander Ikari at headquarters will probably insist we conduct a few tests on you just to make sure. The angels are trying to exterminate mankind after all. You do understand that we can’t afford to risk them planting a spy on us to see what we’re up to, don’t you, Ranma?” Misato replied, weighing her reaction, yet sounding like she already trusted Ranma so far.
“No problem, just so long as they don’t plan on dissecting me to do it,” Ranma half joked in reply. Her attempt at humor fell a little flat as her driver began to look just a little nervous.
Ranma was about to ask her for confirmation that her life wasn’t in any danger when what sounded like a phone ringing came from Misato’s purse. The woman quickly fished out what looked like a small, high tech walkie talky and opened it. The ringing stopped immediately and she answered it with a simple, “hello?” Apparently it really was a high-tech walkie talky of some kind.
“Oh, it’s you, Ritsuko. Yes we’re en route now, we just had to take a little detour due to some road damage.” “No, don’t worry; I got to him in time. The boy’s perfectly safe with me now. Although he did stumble across someone really interesting just before I got there.” “No, I don’t mean the angel, or at least she says she’s not one anyway.” “Well, she looks human at least, but she’s got some really . . . let’s say, odd, quirks about her.” “No, Ritsuko, more like she managed to shield my entire car from that N2 mine’s concussion blast without any of us taking so much as a scratch. It wore her out though, and aggravated a concussion she already had. Don’t ask me why but she got a lot better after eating some candy Shinji and I had, along with a few of the wrappers.”
There was a long pause after Misato’s last response before the woman spoke into her walkie talky again. “I figured you’d feel that way. So no, I don’t mind bringing them both in. Just don’t work her over too bad, she did volunteer to help us get rid of the angel after all. I mean, who knows, maybe she’ll end up being the fourth child or something. By the way, can you prepare a car train for us? Express of course,” she added mischievously.
Before Ranma could begin to worry about wether or not going along with this was such a good idea, Misato put away her walkie talky and turned to Shinji. “Sorry about ignoring you for a while back there, Shinji. But your girlfriend in the back seat there was in pretty bad shape for a while. Anyway, getting her into the hospital at headquarters shouldn’t be a problem now. So tell me, did your father send you an ID card with his letter? You’ll need it to get in without raising a fuss with security,” she said to him.
“Er, yeah. It’s right here,” Shinji replied readily, pulling something out of his backpack. It was a sheet of paper heavily blotted out with lines of black ink. Red, hand written lettering summarized the whole blotted out message into a single short sentence, ‘Come to Tokyo 3'. An ID card was attached to part of it with Shinji’s name and picture on it. Ranma was actually surprised that she could read it so well from the back seet, she knew her vision was supposed to be better than before. But she hadn’t thought it would be that much better, especially not after her recent concussion.
“Good, keep it handy. Oh, and you’ll want to read this, it’ll help you familiarize yourself with the layout and operational procedures at headquarters,” Misato replied handing him a medium sized book.
“Sorry, Ranma. But technically you’re not authorized to know anything about us yet, so I can’t let you read over it with Shinji. I’m afraid that you’ll just have to trust us for now. Look on the bright side though, at least you should be able to count on getting fed some real food soon. Stuff that doesn’t come in wrappers for example,” she teased Ranma after Shinji started reading through his book.
Read the comments on this episode
See other episodes by Shadowelf1
(Posted Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:49)
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.