[Episode 216956] [Episode 216956]"I uh... Don't want to put you out of business."
"Nonsense. I'd be fired if I didn't let you eat the food for free. Besides, we had placed it on the corporate budget on the off-chance that you did show up. Knowing how much you eat, Madam Kuonji put three-hundred-million yen in the 'Ranma's Free Dinner' account. As long as your order is under that much, you'll be fine."
"Three-hundred-million!?"
"Hai. What do you want your first okonomiyaki to be? Or would you rather start with a side? May I suggest the new octopus soup?"
Ranma, was flabbergasted. But, how could he refuse free food? He decided to try out the octopus soup. Since his father wasn't around, he'd be able to eat it slowly, like most of the other customers were.
Speaking of which, they ignored him once they heard he was from the Nerima district - after all, weird shit happens there all the time, why not a boy with bunny ears and pink hair?
Ranma savored his food. The recipes of her family were supposed to be a closely guarded secret, but it seems that since going corporate, Ukyou simply improved them by experimentation. As he slowly ate his food, he vaguely remembered Willing his childhood friend to have a successful restaurant. Seems the Great Will didn't do anything half-way!
:::
Meanwhile, while Ranma ate and ate and ate, Konatsu called Ukyou's cell phone. While dialing, Konatsu was mildly jealous that Ranma, a complete stranger to him, had enough familiarity to be able to call Madam Kuonji by her given name rather than her self-imposed title.
"Come on. Pick up. Please don't be busy..."
The other end finally picked up.
"Hello Madam Kuonji!"
Ukyou sounded angry. Apparently their second shop overseas in California wasn't doing well due to bad publicity and false accusations that they were copying pizza. And their Hawaiian branch (their first overseas location) was doing well, but was coming up a hundred-thousand dollars short of projected sales.
"Actually, I do have some good news for you. I've found him!"
A five-second pregnant pause. Ukyou asked if it was the pig-tailed martial artist who was her friend in her youth.
"Yes, him. He is happily eating at the Itabashi branch. Do you wish for me to detain him here? Doing so will not be too difficult. He obviously wishes to savor his food and has ordered one of everything non-alcoholic. He should be here for the next four hours. Longer, if he decides he wants seconds on any number of dishes. For the most part, he seems to like everything I've put before him."
Ukyou said that she'd try to be over after the meeting she had in five minutes to try and figure out an ad campaign for the United States. But, if he were to leave before she could arrive, Konatsu was to find out where he lived, get the address and possibly the phone number, and find out if he was dating anyone (that last order was optional).
:::
Three hours later, Nabiki was getting worried. She needed to hire someone to track him down. Most martial artists in the area were written off as they'd refuse to kill anybody if Ranma had gotten captured by the wrong sorts of people. Also, as it was likely that nothing physical could contain Ranma, it probably was a magical restraint, if that. Or Ranma could be seriously injured, unconscious, and/or lost. That narrowed things down to just one person: Voodoo Spike. He was competent at what he did, which was all sorts of things. He was an accomplished hit-wizard, at the age of sixteen no less! Also, he could track nigh anything down, be it magical, secretive, complex, etc. in nature.
Nabiki had used his services before, especially when an all martial-artist yakuza decided to set up shop in Nerima. Gosunkugi Hikaru hated such scum and came to Nabiki to find out what information she could get on the leader of the yakuza. The fact that there was a yakuza moving into the Nerima district wasn't news to Nabiki, but the fact that they were all martial artists was shocking. Nabiki and Hikaru worked out a deal after she discovered that the boy was really Voodoo Spike.
She gave him information and money while he rid Nerima of the yakuza and protected her family from any ramifications. They worked well together, and discovered that the leader was also a witch who used most of her magic to change her voice and appearance so that most people thought she was male and she used what was left to influence her lackeys so that they'd do what she wanted even if they would never do so otherwise. She was subtle, but she squandered most of her magical abilities on the glamor and mind-prodding.
Hikaru, on the other hand, had been self-taught in stealth and assassination spells, and had even had some ninja training from someone. Whoever he had trained under was a mystery, and Voodoo Spike was under oath to never reveal them to anyone. Since part of Voodoo Spike's stealth training involved some things that people would immediately associate with Obi-Wan Kenobi from that Star Wars movie that had been made about eight years previous, the ninja/wizard had used a bit of his magic to seal off the description and name of his ninja master into the depths of his psyche, amid a myriad of mental traps. Since he didn't want to draw attention to it, he used a bit of his magic to place similar traps all over his mind.
One would normally think that all the traps and the sealing would take out most of his magic, and it truly did take a size-able chunk out of his available power, but Voodoo Spike was not like other magicians. His father was a collector of strange artifacts. Though his father knew nothing of how to read Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, or any of the other languages that usually covered the books and objects that the man bought for a hobby, Voodoo Spike had studied hard to be able to read such things previous to his mother's death. He learned from an old, black-leather-bound book how to harvest the spiritual and magical energy that was released when someone was born or when someone died.
Tragically, Hikaru's mother died in childbirth. Hikaru's baby sister died soon after. Though he felt guilty for not knowing enough to save either of them, he still harvested the energies. First, since he was in the waiting room alone while his mother was in labor and therefore close enough to be able to trap the energy during his arcane ritual, from the death of his mother. This surprised him, but he continued the ritual as he knew his sister was still alive. He harnessed the energy from his sister's birth, as well as the births of all three of the other children who were being born in the few minutes afterwards. Exhaustion set in, and the boy stored the energy into a small crystalline pyramid with Aztec Hieroglyphs on it that his father had given him, not knowing that it was actually magical in nature.
When his sister was diagnosed with a plethora of birth defects, the doctors did some tests. They found massive amounts of nicotine and other dangerous chemicals all throughout her body - the same chemicals found in tobacco. The doctors asked if Mrs. Gosunkugi had been a smoker. Mr. Gosunkugi said that he was certain she wasn't, but with science and logic claiming that she had been, began to doubt his memories of her.
Confused, Hikaru used some detection and diagnosis spells he had learned from a druid's book, found near Stonehenge, to determine the real cause. True enough, dangerous toxins had spread throughout her body, but they had remnants of magic on them. Using a combination of detection spells from the druid's book and a stone tablet from the African Congo his father had bought, he finally found the cause. A small grain of granite had somehow been ingested by his mother. Upon the pebble were complex and almost infinitesimal runes or symbols. Hikaru realized that they were Greek in origin. With his probing he found that the small rock's magic was spent, but it was designed to be ingested. From the remnants of the activation spell, it had been planted in Mrs. Gosunkugi's food no more than four months previous. It was designed to slowly inject her with toxins, to be specified upon activation, as well as remain in her stomach and resist being dissolved, worn down, or passed out of the body. Since it was stock in the lining of the stomach near the top of the abdomen, it had functioned fairly well.
Additionally, the small poisonous rock was to release twice the lethal dose all throughout the body during extreme strenuous activity, such as sex or childbirth. Since his sister was still in the womb, but starting to come out, the umbilical cord had not yet been cut, and the infant was also poisoned, though not as much.
Hikaru now knew the cause, but was still confused. Why would someone poison his mother? Had he or his father done something wrong to the wrong person? Or was there some sick, homicidal maniac on the loose?
Soon, he discovered the reason why while scrying on his father when he said he'd be home later than normal. Apparently, the very glass pyramid his father had brought home from his favorite auctionhouse and Hikaru had used for storing immense magical and spiritual energies had been wanted by a local yakuza leader. As Hikaru continued to listen in, the leader wanted it because he wanted to make a gift of it to one of his mistresses, but when he was outbid by some idiot collector (Mr. Gosunkugi), he decided to have his sorcerer help him get revenge. So he had the collector meet him in a random alley near a strip club to "explain" why his wife had died and his daughter was dying and what would happen to his son if he didn't hand over the pyramid.
Hikaru found out what details he could from the meeting. And he was pissed. But, rather than summon a demon to kill them, or some other similarly effective-but-as-subtle-as-a-freight-train method, Hikaru decided to pull an assassination. After spending a whole day near the maternity ward at the hospital while also being in range of his sister when she died (and she did on that day), the pyramid was glowing orange. The only reason why Hikaru didn't collapse from exhaustion was the fact that he was so determined to finish the ritual to be able to beat the powerful and subtle yakuza sorcerer. Since it was finally at full power, it could finally be used to strengthen Hikaru's magical reserves and control.
For comparison of how much power Hikaru gained, think of a large bowl of rice. That bowl was Hikaru's original level of power and a fairly average amount among magicians. After absorbing the energy from the pyramid, take a fifty-pound sack of rice and dump it onto the bowl. That was how much power he had gained. And the pyramid's powers were spent, and it was essentially just an overly-ornate glass paperweight, especially after Hikaru cleaned it of all magical residue.
Hikaru gave the pyramid to his father when asked, then used a druid spell to cloak himself from sight (unless they saw him through the corner of their eye), an Egyptian spell to eliminate all of his bodily sounds, a Tibetan spell to mask his magical aura, and an Aztec spell to make anybody who only barely noticed him, such as through the corner of their eye, to forget about him (so as to cover the weakness of the druid spell). The only thing he didn't mask was his ki, which he didn't even know he had.
He followed his father to the meeting place. He then followed the thug who accepted the glass pyramid to the hideout. Unknown to Hikaru, it was about this time that he began to be followed by a ki master.
Needless to say, the yakuza boss, his mistress, and his thugs were quickly eliminated by an Egyptian spell designed to instigate a heart attack. The sorcerer only barely sensed the spell in time and used his Greek magic to put up a shield which blocked the boy's spell. However, the shield shattered from that one simple attack. Using a powerful Greek lightning spell, the sorcerer flooded the room with electricity, but Hikaru dropped his stealth spells to form a druid shield barely in time. The shield barely held, but it took about half of his power to stop the lightning spell. Realizing that the Greek spells seemed to overpower the druid spells, Hikaru again assaulted with an Egyptian spell, this time creating a scarab out of fire and shooting it forward. The sorcerer's eyes grew wide as he created a Greek shield as well as a Roman shield covering only his front (for added defense ability). The scarab tore through the Greek shield like a wet tissue paper, but bounced off of the Roman shield. Realizing that Roman magic overpowered the Egyptian magic, the sorcerer dropped his shield and prepared to fire a ball of compressed air at the young wizard.
However, luckily for Hikaru, the scarab had not dissipated and the sorcerer hadn't noticed. What neither mage, nor the hidden watcher, knew was that the scarab spell was designed to continue to batter at a shield until it fell. Though it bounced off of the sorcerer's shield, it simply turned around and zipped towards the yakuza's mage a second time. Since there was no shield, it hit the man in the chest, buried itself withing his heart and lungs, and detonated.
Exhausted, Hikaru had passed out. When he awoke, he was in a strange room with a strange man dressed as a ninja.
That was when he met his ninja master. They trained three times a week, after school. Hikaru told his dad that it was Karate Club. Mr. Gosunkugi believed his son. Besides, he was much to busy going to work and then spending his free time drowning his sorrows in sake to really care. But he did make sure that the boy had food on the table, had all his studying done, and bathed regularly as he was honor-bound as the head of his household to do.
Hikaru, once he completed his training at the age of eleven, moved with his father to Nerima only a month after his birthday. He used the name that had become a term of endearment from his ninja master when dealing with criminals and took out contracts on yakuza and drug lords. Soon, the underworld of Tokyo came to fear the name "Voodoo Spike". Hikaru's father didn't know where all the extra money was coming from, but he was too depressed to care. Besides, if his son had found a way to earn some money on the side, even if it was insane amounts of it, why should he complain? Or even report it?
Much of that story Nabiki had learned from the young hit-wizard and other parts she deduced, but she still didn't know all the details. Still, the boy owed her a couple favors as she always provided him information free of charge.
Nabiki picked up the phone and dialed the hit-wizard's "business" cell, rather than call his regular phone or personal cell.
It rang twice before the feared mage picked up the line.
"Hello, VS-baby," cooed the girl into the phone, teasing him a bit like she always did to her only actual friend. She also liked to call him VS, but only did when no one else would hear.
The boy greeted her. There was no emotion in his voice as this was a business call. He then asked her a question which he usually asked her first.
"Yes, I am in fact calling in one of my favors."
He asked if it was the usual gathering of new blackmail material that the Ice Queen hadn't been able to acquire.
"No, I simply need you to locate someone."
Hikaru inquired as to whether he'd need to pull a hit on said person.
"No, I don't want him dead! He's my fiance. He's been missing for the past three hours. My sister, Akane, had gotten angry at him."
VS asked if a mallet or hammer was involved.
"Yes. She malleted him into the air. Northeastward, I think."
He asked for her boyfriend's description.
"He won't be too hard to find. His name is Saotome Ranma. He's the only teenage boy with pink hair in a pigtail and functioning rabbit ears rather than human ears that I know of. His eyes are a grayish blue and he usually wears a red silk Chinese shirt and black silk pants with cloth slippers. Also, he's got a curse that turns him into an un-cute, but still funny, pink rabbit that screams at the top of its lungs. If you find him like that, splash him with warm or hot water, which will change him back."
Finally, Hikaru had enough information to start a search, but he'd need an object of the boy's as well as know the exact location that he'd been standing and how Akane had malleted him.
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(Posted Sat, 14 Mar 2009 22:21)
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