She'd chosen the stool furthest from the door. The restaurant would look unbalanced if it was one of the stools in the middle that happened to be taken, and the spirit didn't seem to mind which of them it was. The deed only took a minute or so, and the stool would just have to remain up there, by the corner of her bedroom. And there it would remain until mother decided that the stupid panda had kept his promise. "Yeah, Genma keeping a promise," Ukyo mumbled while flipping the sign at the front. "Isn't that a sign of the end times or something?"
Under normal circumstances, whenever Ukyo thought about Genma Saotome for any reasonable length of time, she would hunt out her battle spatula and clean it with a thoughtfully murderous gleam in her eye. Today the process was interrupted. For as she unlocked the door, the other bane of her life tumbled on top of her with a panic stricken face, eyes as wide and terrified as can be imagined, and a scream of "Charge!"
"Tsubasa?"
"Ye-yes, dearest Ukyo?"
"Recent studies have shown that remaining in this position is extremely hazardous to your health."
Needing no further prompting, Tsubasa extracted himself off Ukyo as she in turn extracted herself from the floor. Reaching for her battle spatula, she prepared to beat what would no doubt serve Tsubasa as a long favoured memory for quite some time right back out of his head. "Oh, Ukyo darling! You've got to help me!"
She hadn't expected that response. "Help? What sort of help?"
"She's everywhere! One minute, I'm hiding as a post-box. Then she comes out, bounding around the corner, takes one look and starts screaming "OH! Mary-Anne! Come home with mommy!" Then she just picks me up, costume and all and takes me home! And the gods help me if she finds out I'm in the post-box! Disguises aren't enough here, I need a place to hide."
Ukyo blinked. For good measure, she blinked again. Then she smiled, nervously. Struggling to keep back laughter, she said "So... So you can't get rid of her no matter what you say or do?"
"She won't listen!" Tsubasa cried out.
Oh, if only she could bottle this flavour. She'd have it on the menu in a heartbeat. "Sweet irony". Had a nice ring to it. But still, this did give her an idea... "This way, there's this storage room I'm not using at the moment."
"I knew you cared!" Tsubasa said, as Ukyo resisted the urge to throw up on her nice, clean floor. "After all this time, you finally showed how you really feel about me!" Down, stomach. You shall not empty your contents this day. "Oh gosh, tomorrow we should go out for a picnic! We can sit outdoors and then-"
Ukyo cut off the cutesy babbling by pushing Tsubasa into the room and closed it. Just then, the strange girl from earlier rushed into the restaurant. "If you're looking for Tsubasa," Ukyo said, while pointing towards the door behind her, nodding her head and grinning like a maniac. "He ran straight right past not two minutes ago."
Azusa looked at the door, and smiled at her in understanding. Creeping up to the door as Ukyo walked quietly away, she slowly pulled it open and went inside. "Ukyo, darling? Is that- Ohgodno!"
"That'll teach you," Ukyo muttered.
"Noooooooo! St-stop! I- Oh, actually that's rather nice. Keep doing that."
After that, the sounds coming from the storage room took a distinctly different tone. Reaching for the mop, Ukyo tried to look on the bright side. At least there weren't any customers around to either hear the noise or see the mess on the floor. That sort of thing was typically not good for business.
"So what do you make of this whole mess Saotome's gotten himself into this time?" Nabiki asked hands behind head and staring up at the sky.
Kasumi turned to look at her little sister and raised an eyebrow. How best should she express herself? With each revelation about Genma's past decisions she was becoming more and more... what was the word? Oh yes, angry. Annoyed. Frustrated. Sympathetic for Ranma, who just seemed to take it in his stride. When she learned about Jusenkyo, the shock had caused her to lose composure and actually - heavens forbid - shout at the idiot. After that severe lapse of propriety she'd upped her game. She took the cat-fist in her stride, even as she began to imagine hitting Genma over the head repeatedly, deservedly, and angrily.
But that just wouldn't be proper.
And then Ukyo had shown up. As if making one his own child miserable for a lifetime wasn't good enough, he'd had to go out of his way to make someone else suffer needlessly. He could have refused the offer. He could have outright broken the Tendo arrangement. But instead, he tried to have his cake and eat it. An apt metaphor, given his tendency to steal food from - well, whoever he got the chance to. On hearing about this she had daydreamt of slipping the odd dash of curry powder to his meals, really teach him a lesson.
But still, that really would not be proper.
Now, with this business of a contract which essentially made it impossible for Ranma to ever meet his mother, she was seriously entertaining the thought of finding the poor woman, explaining the situation and persuading her to spare Ranma and gut Genma. Gut him like a fish. Preferably after scaring him oh so close to death first. But not quite. No, just let him try and beg for mercy when he saw that sharpened blade fall...
But no, that would be extremely improper.
Instead of saying all that she simply smiled sweetly, and said "I think that we should all do whatever is necessary to ensure Ranma's safety." But not Genma's. He should be left to rot. Preferably not on her nice, clean floors, but knowing him that's probably where he would choose to drop. Just for the sake of being inconvenient to the very end.
She shook her head clear of such improper thoughts, leaving Nabiki at the lottery stall outside the butchers as she went in. She was just going to pick up some pork, then hurry home and everything would turn out for the best. Ranma would be reunited with his mother, and there would be no bloodshed involved. Not any from either of them at least.
Except that wouldn't be the case. There seemed to be some sort of strange scene playing out in the middle of the shop.
"Why don't we try this again," said one voice, full of restrained politeness. "These are sausages. Correct?"
"Yep!" came the perky reply."The Unryu farm produces the best sausages in the region. We know our sausages like nobody else!"
Kasumi stopped and looked at the pair, arguing in front of the counter. One was a woman in a kimono, making every physical effort to remain polite. The other was a teenage girl, with green hair a blouse and a skirt. As far as Kasumi could tell, the pair were involved in an extremely polite argument on which neither would shift their ground.
"Sausages are made out of pigs, dear."
"No, no they're not. They look nothing like pigs! Pigs are so cute! Sausages aren't cute, they're delicious!"
"Yes, I'm afraid they are. They kill the pigs and then-"
"Now I'll have to stop you there. We love pigs at the Unryu farm! We'd never just kill our lovely, adorable piggy wiggies for no good reason!"
"But that's just the point, dear. Food is a good reason. After all, we need to eat something, don't we?"
"Oooh, you're heartless! Excuse me, miss?"
Kasumi had very nearly left with the pork, hoping that she wouldn't get caught up in the argument. But, alas, she was about to be pulled in whether she liked it or not. She turned around, hiding her unhappiness at the situation as best she could. Which, in different circumstances, would be a performance she'd win awards for.
"Could you help settle this argument? Nobody in their right mind would ever just needlessly slaughter a cute widdle helpless piggy for the sake of something to eat. Would they?"
Kasumi's first thoughts were that it was a mistake to look the girl directly in the eyes. For in those windows to the soul, she saw a pure love and adoration unmatched by any she had ever seen before. it took every ounce of willpower she had to resist siding with the girl, just to preserve that purity, just to keep one single place in the world that was left so perfectly untainted. But no, she knew it was unhealthy for this girl to maintain such a delusion. Closing her eyes tight and shaking her head, she responded. "While some sausages are made with the meat of other animals, the more common variety that people typically refer to is made from pigs."
"I can't believe you! Why would you lie like this?"
"They also kill them for ham, pork, bacon-"
"Well, now I know you're not being serious. How could all those things come from pigs? They're not even remotely the same thing."
Both Kasumi and the woman stared at this strange girl, and then renewed their argument. The three would be there for quite some time.
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(Posted Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:57)
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