As Jane carried him and Sue through the night sky, Ranma couldn’t help but feel a little nervous. It had nothing to do with the giant lizard holding him in her hand as she broke the air speed records for fastest animal alive, using wings that looked more like engines off a Star Trek ship than the ones he had. It wasn’t their conversation either…
“Okay so he’s on the bottom, and I’m on top,” Jane repeated for the fourth time since this trip started while Sue took mental notes.
It was the fact that he was going to America. It was the fact that up ahead was probably the job trial that was coming. After what had happened back in Japan, Ranma was pretty sure the option of sticking around and opening a dojo was out. Unless something else just fell into his lap, Ranma was pretty sure this was what he was going to be doing for the rest of his life.
He really didn’t want to screw this up.
“Hey Jane do you feel that?” Sue asked.
The dragon looked down at her friend and skidded to a stop. She swung around and looked towards the ground. “Now that you mention it. Yeah.” A deep chuckle came out of her throat. Now that she was looking at it, the aura she detected, it was a lair guardian. They had just stumbled across a lair guardian!
First the legendary draconic artifact that was thought to have been lost forever, and now this! Jane looked over to the boy in her hand and wondered if he was like a lucky rabbits foot or something. Either that or, fate had decided to reward all her restraint as of the past few days.
Whatever was going on, one thing was clear. “We have to harvest this thing Sue.”
With the sun back up to just before sunset thanks to the group’s change of position, Ranma was just wanting for all of them to get to the city, find a hotel, have the girls pay for it, and go to bed. But then, when did any of his plan ever work out?
“Huh?” Ranma asked as he looked back at the girl and over to the… well, he supposed Jane was still a girl too despite being a monster at the moment. “What’s going on?”
Both of the girls looked over to him, and Jane rolled her eyes. “I know you’re an Iron, but you should be feeling something down on the ground!”
Sue was a less critical, and more helpful. “It’s not like he’s seen a lair guardian before Jane. He wouldn’t know how the aura of one feels,” she told the dragon before looking over to Ranma. “Lair guardian’s are… well, they’re basically homemade monster slaves that dragons create to keep people out of our homes when we’re gone, or to deal with guests we really don‘t want to bother with.” After a moment, Sue decided a visual aid would help and created an illusion of the last one they had run into. “Here’s an example.”
A transparent picture of a rather large and grotesque monster filled the air in front of them. For any American citizen, they would take one look at the creature’s mouth, and the various appendages waving around and immediately link it to the leviathan legends of old. However, as Ranma was from Japan, and thus had never seen Pirates of the Caribbean, his mind linked it to something in the modern Japanese mythos.
“A tentacle porn monster?” he asked as the image faded.
“Yeah sure, whatever,” Jane told him. Not all lair guardians were that kind of thing, but she had long since learned that when explaining things to her husband it was usually best for time to just let him have a few misconceptions that could be cleared up later than trying to make sure he understood every detail. Besides, she was tired and wanted to get this over with.
Ranma looked over to Sue, then back to Jane as he asked a question to help with the severe amount of confusion in his head. “And you two want to go save people from it or something?” The whole idea of the two of them actually helping people… well, Sue saving people was a definite maybe, she did have that cuteness thing going that told Ranma she really was a good person, but Jane was the very definition of selfish and rude.
Then again, so am I… a little, Ranma admitted. So he was a little extreme when it came to a few things.
Plus, Jane was from America. Ranma had seen a movie or two from there. He knew everyone in America carried two guns, took at least three different kinds of drugs, and showed no manners whatsoever. Then there was the way they dressed, Sue was actually pretty modest in comparison.
Of course Ranma’s views on this subject were somewhat slanted, as the two American moves he had ever watched were Die Hard III (that Hiroshi showed him one night) and Girls Gone Wild IV (Daisuke showed him that one, Ranma decided to head home early that time).
The dragons shared a look. With just a glance the two knew what the other wanted. They wanted to tear the thing apart and snatch up whatever spell blueprints were used in its construction. Plus, it would be a nice model for making their own guardian slave when the day came for them to get a real place to live.
But Jane figured that as long as it shut him up… “Yeah sure.” She liked the kid a little, but he really needed to learn violence was a good thing when used on other people. Then again, she was a little tired for full on mass destruction. Maybe it would be better to hold back a little this time and just concentrate on the target.
A few seconds later the dragons dropped from their high altitude position and Jane made a hard landing in front of the human fortresses wall. Alarms went off as Sue got down to set up the defenses to protect her husband from any stray bullets, explosions, or whatever else came there way. Ranma looked over to the nearby sign and saw that this was a woman’s prison and wondered if the monster had just come here after it was built, or if the universe was just really cruel that way. As for Jane…
“FEAR ME PUNY HUMANS! RUN! RUN FOR YOUR MISERABLE LITTLE LIVES! HAHAHA!”
The dragon knocked down the wall into the empty exercise yard while numerous bullets harmlessly bounced off of her skin.
Ranma sighed as he watched Jane tear down walls, snatch up people to put into a magical cage that Sue created for her, and terrorize the local populace. “This is going to be the Musk all over again, isn’t it?”
A collapsing guard tower held Sue’s attention for a moment as Jane jumped to the top, grabbed the people inside, and completely destroyed the thing by sliding down it with her claws imbedded in the stone. “Nah,” Sue assured him. “She knows how you feel about casualties. There’s too many people inside, so this fortress will be standing when we’re done.”
Meanwhile, Jane jumped to the top of another guard tower and ripped the roof off, then threw it into the power lines like a frisbee. She then started punching holes in the tower from the top down, following the humans as they ran down the stairs. Although, something distracted her at the bottom, allowing the humans to run out the door and to freedom.
“Oh, potato chips.”
“Well, most of it anyway. She has to scare the humans off after all,” Sue admitted as Jane emptied the bag into her mouth, then tossed aside the garbage before continuing her rampage while the swiss-cheesed tower collapsed under its own weight.
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(Posted Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:20)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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