“Give up yet you stubborn bitch?” Ranma asked and he prepared to strike her again.
Cologne gritted her teeth in anger at the way the boy spoke to her. A male saying such things to the leader of an Amazon tribe was such an insult to her honor that she trembled with rage. It was an act that demanded vengeance the likes of which that child had never seen!
She gave the boy his answer.
“DIE!”
Cologne slammed her fingers into the ground at a diagonal angle and sent multiple bursts of ki into the ground. The shockwave made the earth beneath his feet erupt to break Ranma’s footing while a veritable tsunami of stone and dirt came to bury him in a diagonal geyser while he tried to beat back the tide.
Since she couldn’t risk going into that storm of dirt and attacking blindly, Cologne rushed around the mound of earth before the attack had finished and towards the blonde girl leaning over the cooking pot. Completely oblivious to her situation, Ranma’s latest suitor only had enough time to taste from the spoon in her hand before the Amazon monarch struck at the girl with her nails that glowed with ki.
BOOM!
The tickle on the back of her neck made Miu look back in confusion. The sight of the whole thing made her cry out in surprise. “AHHHHH! Don’t you know you shouldn’t attack people from behind?” she screeched at the old woman.
From her place imbedded in a rock several meters away from the girl, Cologne tried to get up. Her body refused to move. “Wha… what the hell just happened?” she mumbled before having to spit out the blood that was filling her mouth.
It was at that moment that Ranma dug himself out of the loosely packed dirt and got a breath of fresh air before trying to spit the dirt out of his mouth. “You freaking old bitch, I’m gonna-uglch!” he managed get out before the remaining flakes of earth made him retch.
By the time Ranma managed to spit out enough dirt to be rid of the taste for another minute, someone handed him a damp towel to run across his face. “Miu?” before waiting a moment, then taking the thing and wiping away the stuff that covered his eyes.
“Yeah, it’s me,” the young woman replied.
With his face somewhat cleaner, Ranma looked up to see his wife, and then glanced around the battlefield. “Uh… where’s the old ghoul?”
Miu’s hair twinged out of place as her face took on a nervous look. “I-It’s not my fault!” she professed with waving arms. “That mean old woman hit me from behind when in I was distracted, and you know what happens!”
When Miu went from overemotional explanation mode to teary-eyed face of sorrow, she pointed over to a small bolder that Cologne had been knocked into. “If you want to blame someone then blame her!”
“He..hehe…hahahahahaha,” Ranma laughed as he looked at the old crone. He couldn’t believe that the old woman was stupid enough to attack Miu from behind!
Ever since Miu had been a kid, she had developed an uncontrollable reflex that made her kick the crap out of anyone that touched her from behind. It had started out as just kick to the knee or punch to the groin in the case of grown men when she was in single in digit years, then turned into throws when she got into high school.
After her ki started developing, Miu’s grandfather had taught her how to use some sort of aura bursting technique as a means of defense when someone got past her guard. It was meant to stop attacks from firearms. However, what he hadn’t foreseen was that Miu eventually got good enough at her defense that she able to mold it into an offensive move. Then, it became an automatic reaction when she mastered the technique.
Though Miu had gotten a better handle on the whole thing as to not send people to the hospital simply for tapping her on the shoulder from behind, it still kicked in when anything moving faster than a good baseball player’s pitch pierced her unfocused aura; which extended a few centimeters away from her skin. The response was also relative. The more power someone attacked her with, the more they got hit with in return.
“Hey don’t laugh!” Miu yelled at her husband. What if she’d killed the old woman? No, Miu told herself. Cologne had been the one who attacked; it was her own fault for getting pounded.
Ranma rolled his eyes at Miu’s reaction. “Oh please.” Annoying people like Cologne didn’t die that easily.
To remove Miu’s worries, Ranma walked over to Cologne and poked her in the face a few times with one of the discarded staffs on the ground.
An instant later, Cologne surged forward in an all-out attack with her remaining strength… and fell to the dirt two centimeters away from her landing place; well short of where the Japanese couple was standing.
“See? Still alive,” Ranma told his wife.
Miu sighed relief, then looked down at the old crone with a frown. “How dare you try and attack me like that!” Miu shouted while pointing an accusing finger at he woman. The fact that she actually managed to touch Miu despite her defenses kicking in, and feeling where the scratch had landed… “You tried to kill an innocent bystander? What happened to your honor, huh?”
The fact that this outsider child was berating her honor made Cologne frown in anger. How dare that an outside judge her in such a way! Still, she was too hurt to do anything else other than frown and seethe.
Now, Cologne carried the shame of loosing to this outsider on top of everything else.
“We should take her back to the village,” Miu told Ranma.
“What?” the young man replied in surprise.
Miu frowned and pointed to the old woman. “We can’t just leave her out here! She’ll die!” Miu shouted.
“She just tried to kill you,” Ranma told her with a frown on his face. Besides, like Miu had said, it was Cologne’s own fault. People didn’t blame the conductor when idiots stepped in front of trains.
“Half the people we know try to kill us!” Miu replied in a louder voice.
Ranma frowned at the assessment, and crouched down on his heels. “Okay then old hag. You tell me what I want to know. Then, we’ll take you back to your village.”
The proposition made Cologne smile. She couldn’t believe it was so simple. “Then… I win.”
“What?” Ranma and Miu mumbled together.
Cologne cackled at their confused faces. “That’s right; you need to know where the Musk are. Well, I’m not telling you. I’ll die, and the two of you will never get what you need. In that, I will have victory over you.”
Despite being behind Ranma, Miu had known him long enough to read his body language very well. She knew he had surprise written all over his face, and a slowly building anger at the old woman for her foolish stubbornness.
“Like hell you are!” Miu shouted before she reached down to yank Cologne up by her robe. The old woman was willing to let herself die rather than admit defeat? Willing to make Miu a murderer over something like her own pride?
No, this was more than that. This wasn’t about honor. The way she laughed… it was almost like she was willing to die, just to make sure Ranma didn’t get what he wanted. She couldn’t believe this old woman was… was… being such a bitch!
“You stay here,” Miu told Ranma in a voice that didn’t allow argument. Then, she quickly marched off with Cologne in her grasp, threatening the old hag all the way.
“I’m going to drag you back to your stupid little village,” the woman continued. “Then I’m going to march all around it shouting about how I beat you! Then I’m going to beat the snot of your little granddaughter where everyone can see, and in the most humiliating way I can! Then I’m going to start pounding the rest of your stupid village into the ground until they’re ALL seeing stars and wanting revenge, or whatever the hell you people’s stupid laws say! Then I’m going to do it again, and again, and again! And I’ll keep doing it till all the fighting smashed your village to RUBBLE!” Miu shouted as she became surrounded by a fiery golden aura.
Cologne raised an eyebrow at the woman’s reaction. “Well, someone has anger issues.”
In response, Miu glared at Cologne with a look that would have caused heart attacks in normal people. “OH SHUT UP!” she ordered. “This is supposed to be my honeymoon! I’m SUPPOSED to be on an expensive cruise ship somewhere in the South Seas! I’m SUPPOSED to be in a luxurious hotel getting fucked by my husband morning, noon, and night! I’m SUPPOSED to be relaxing!
“But noooooooooo! I’m here in this toilet of a backwater country because my husband doesn’t feel like a man without his penis!” she continued before taking a breath to try and calm down before really going off.
She understood Ranma’s unease with the whole thing… hell, if Miu turned into a man, she’d search high and low for a cure day and night! “But then you, the only real clue we have to fixing Ranma’s problem has to be a complete bitch about it!”
With all the running and screaming, Miu found herself having to slow down to get some breaths in as they approached the village. She hefted Cologne up to her face, and frowned at the wrinkled old face. “Now tell me what I want to know, or kiss your whole society goodbye!”
“… go right ahead,” Cologne replied.
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(Posted Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:47)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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