The trip had been long, but not as long as it might have been if they’d driven the whole way. Not long after leaving Tokyo proper, they’d gotten off the road at a rail station, the limo had been driven onto a car-carrier train car, and they’d debarked to be escorted to a private cabin on the high speed train. The ultramodern bullet train would make much better time to Okayama prefecture, Ranma learned was their destination, than going over the roads would have taken.
Mistress Akiko was right; flying would have been faster, but who was Ranma to argue with her masters’ decisions?
The basket Mistress Meioh had brought along turned out to be an expensive picnic dinner, a high-class version of a bento, shared out among them all, Ranma being served last, as was her status. The contents of the basket were quickly devoured, Ranma checking her normal eating speed to something more polite. Still, she’d discovered her appetite had returned and, fortunately, seeing Ranma eyeing her unfinished portions, Hotaru had smilingly offered her the remainder. Ranma gratefully gobbled up the offering.
Her appetite both restored and assuaged by dinner(though it wasn’t the equal of Kasumi’s home cooking) and some degree of normality restored to Ranma’s recently and dramatically altered life, Ranma was feeling a lot better than she had previously. Seeing as Master Masaki and Mistress Meioh were again deep in their private conversation, Ranma had relaxed and made some progress in actually enjoying the trip. She’d even assayed an attempt at conversation again with the shy girl. That attempt ahd gone over more easily than the first efforts after the auction, and she soon found herself relaxing more.
More importantly, it had helped pass the time, and took the edge off the anxiety that had been squirming inside Ranma since the moment she realized she WASN’T going to Tatewaki Kuno’s bedroom that evening.
WHOSE bedroom, though, was still a matter of conjecture. Ranma tried to quash the thought; she was enjoying her after-meal glow too much to want to lose it. Still, a momentary flash of bed sheets and naked limbs, though male or female, younger or older, was unclear, managed to get through her frayed mental defenses.
Ranma shook her head, and tried to get back into the good mood she’d been having. What comes, will come. No point in thinking about it before then.
It had been late evening when they’d finally reached their destination just outside the city of Okayama, Mistress Meioh’s limo making the last leg of the trip through local roads up to Master Masaki’s property, but there was enough light in the day left that Ranma had made out a small but elaborate residential compound in the fading light. Old style three-story building nestled in among some dense forest, and Ranko thought she’d seen a substantial-sized lake through the trees as they drove up. Judging from the distance between the front gate and the residence, Master Masaki owned a sizable spread of land. Probably the shrine proper was behind the house, up that hill. Yep, could just make out the outlines of a building up there on the ridge crest.
On their training trip, he and his father had passed through the Okayama region. The terrain looked familiar enough, but she wasn’t certain if they’d ever visited this particular place; he’d been quite young at the time. Though, knowing the way Genma had traveled from place to place, it might be for the better if they HADN’T visited this shrine on their training trip; there might be an angry monk disgruntled over a missing scroll or food, or a marriage agreement lurking around someplace. Even if Ranma was now ‘Ranko’.
When Mistress Meioh’s driver had opened the trunk of the car and begun removing bags, Ranma had automatically moved to assist. It was a slave’s place, after all, right? But Mistress Meioh had gestured her to accompany them instead. Ranma found herself trailing along behind her two owners, and the younger girl Hotaru, when the party went forward to meet the greeting party at the residence.
They’d been greeted and escorted in when they arrived by a young man who’d introduced himself as Tenchi Masaki, the Master’s grandson. Ranma also noticed a tall, whippish-looking young woman with the wildest green-tinted hair she’d seen outside the Amazons standing nearby watching the new arrivals.
Strong young stud! came the unbidden evaluation of the young man. He moved with confidence that hinted at some martial arts training to Ranma’s experienced eye, but it was her recently over-tweaked libido that got in the first word.
Shut up!Shut up!Shut up! Ranma gritted her teeth and clamped down on the line of thought, focusing on the other woman. Something about her was setting off alarm bells in Ranma’s fortunately undulled senses, the sort of alarms that went off when encountering some absurdly powerful martial arts type or other strangeness.
Noticing the slave girl’s gaze, the woman’s disturbingly catlike yellow eyes narrowed, and she smiled impishly.
Oh, not good. Not good at all.Ranma mentally groaned. That just INSURED there was going to be, at some point in the future, a fight or a chase between the two.And me being a slave, I doubt that’s going to go over well with Master Masaki if we wreck the place!
Apparently unaware of the looming confrontation, Master Masaki turned around and, with a gesture that included them all, addressed his guests.
“Welcome to my humble abode, the Masaki Shrine. Do all come in!”
They’d had enough time in the evening for introductions; young Tenchi had already introduced himself, and the young woman was Ryoko. There was an older woman who insisted on being called ‘Auntie’, as she was Tenchi’s aunt, and Ranma got the impression she was something of a live-in housekeeper at the place.
They’d settled in for a quick, simple meal. To Ranma’s pleasant surprise there had been no mention made of her slave status, and she’d been accepted at the table without reservation or comment.
Afterwards hosts and company had fallen in for the night. They’d put Ranma and Hotaru together in a guest room for the night. Mistress Meioh’s driver had hauled out several duffel bags from the trunk of the car, one of which must have been put in when they’d stopped at Mistress’s offices on the way here, as it turned out to packed with a selection of clothing in Ranma’s size, including sleepwear.
Again, part of Ranma’s mind had objected; she was perfectly comfortable sleeping nude, thank you, Mistress, no need to go to any trouble, while another part had countered that Mistress had included those pajamas for a REASON, thank you, and she wasn’t supposed to disappoint! Somehow, though, the mental committee managed to get their mutual body into a slip and onto the futon at the foot of Hotaru’s bed.
Hotaru had dropped right off to sleep within minutes of hitting the sack.
That left Ranma wide awake wondering what she was supposed to do. Wait until she was certain the young girl was definitely asleep before nodding off herself? Sit watch? Cuddle up to her? Wait for Mistress Meioh’s or Master Masaki’s call?
However, physical exhaustion had won out over mental turmoil and, knowing what it had to do, Ranma’s body had oh-so-politely told her arguing mind that it was lights out now and promptly shut consciousness down.
It had been a long day for Ranma.
It was quiet in the library, a comfortable companionable silence of old books and of two old souls.
Inevitably, though, someone had to break the silence.
“I still need to understand, Setsuna. I’m all for taking away a Kuno’s toys. The younger is no better than the older from what I’ve seen and heard. But why were you so insistent on this, convening an impromptu alliance? If anything, we are all the weaker financially for the purchase, even with the cost spread about, and the Kuno coffers are still untouched. Using her as bait to get Kuno to do something over the line that we can retaliate against with impunity is taking a very large chance with the Kuno strengths undiminished.”
“I know, but Ranma is important, and the last chance for something to be salvaged of the future. I cannot emphasize that enough.”
“So why didn’t YOU do anything before now? If she, or he, is so important, why didn’t you intervene before? Why did Soun Tendo have to die and Ranko Tendo be Adjusted and put up for sale before you became involved, or any of us, for that matter?”
“Her power is chaos. She was invisible to me until something immediate and substantial took place that directly affected her, and by then it was too late to change the events leading up to this. Otherwise, I would have acted. But I couldn’t even stop the Kunos’ actions in Juuban, or what happened afterwards! How was I to anticipate the Tendo debt situation in time to stop it?”
“But I still don’t understand. How would you know her impact if she was invisible to your seeing?“
“I shouldn’t have been able to see her at ALL, Katsuhito! That’s the point! But when she began appearing in the time stream at all, in person, I knew something was wrong! Not her effects, but I could see HER directly! In another time and place I would have let Kuno buy her, damning himself in the process, and planting that focus of chaos directly in the middle of his ordered little delusional world and let it work its course! But in THIS time and place, in the next five years, something happens, and Ranma Saotome dies inside, that power broken, with only a pretty-looking shell called Ranko left fawning at Kuno’s knee and drooling at his crotch. He’s more arrogant and influential than ever, worse even than his father, whatever he started out as, firmly entrenched among the Conservatives, and the future is more screwed up than ever in that picture! I couldn’t let that happen! This world NEEDS Ranma Saotome for what’s ahead!”
“Okay, okay! I’m convinced! I’m not regretting my decision to go ahead with this, but what does your farseeing say about what Kuno is likely to do? His family’s had the devil’s own luck when it comes to being delusionally clever and at avoiding the consequences of their actions. They have adept, if twisted, people working for them to cover for their weaknesses. Is there any reason not to expect that they’ll do the same? Our alliance with Mendo, Mishima, and the Sanzenins is still young, for all our long-standing grudges with the Kunos.”
“The Kuno organization is only as strong as the head at the top, and when that head is proven weak, loyalty will flag. For all their strengths, they still look to their lord for inspiration and direction, and that reliance will lead them to disaster for them. We just have to keep Ranma out of their paws, but not out of their sight. The rest should fall into place.”
“That I think we can do. However, that’s the LEAST of Ranma’s problems.”
Getting into the property had been easy. The old man didn’t even have a decent fence, let alone a security system, watching the borders.
Yota Shingani had decided to get an early start on scoping out the grounds while his partner slept off the trip down at their ‘base camp’.
It had been a long drive out here, trailing the Meioh party; they’d managed to hop on the same train just in time. As it was, they’d had to abandon their company car at the train station. The final leg of the trip had to be by rental car. Well, once they got a rough idea of what they would need, they’d have the required gear sent down with reinforcements.
Yota and his partner had tucked their car away in a grove of trees down the road, out of sight of the locals, before they’d begun reconnoitering the Masaki property. He really wasn’t used to operating out in the country, more senior personnel like Crabe and Goyle being on some other assignment for the young lord, but all the same he and Hyusha were glad to be out of the city. The thundering tongue-lashing that the factor who’d represented Lord Kuno at the slave auction had gotten from the outraged young aristocrat had been audible throughout the entire compound, and Yota could have sworn he saw dust popping out of the cracks in the woodwork with every exclamation of disbelief and dissatisfaction.
No, Yota thought, remembering the mad scramble of everybody to get out of the way of the angry young lord, there were worse things than being stuck out in the country, sneaking around in the dark. Why they hadn’t simply contacted a Kuno office in Okayama and sent somebody local out to do this, Yota didn’t understand, but at the moment he didn’t care. Maybe the Kunos didn’t have any interests out here in the middle of nowhere? Didn’t seem likely, but as long as he got out of the madhouse that was Nerima.
Yota began assessing the territory and comparing it with what they’d data-mined on the way down. Old family spread, a lot larger than the Kuno properties in Tokyo, but as they were farther from the Imperial capitol, neither developed, nor portioned off to other purposes. Heavily forested, private lake, steep local terrain. It would take some legwork to get around, but the forestation also promised to hold lots of good sites for surveillance. Could be worse.
He looked through his nightvison goggles. Ah, main property should be right about---There! Yep, just as the aerial photos he’d skimmed showed. Nice place. Dense woods all around. Lots of cover.
Time to get closer. Yeah, the young lord would be happiest if he knew his people were on top of the situation, and knowing EXACTLY where his ‘fiery-haired love’ was would go a long way to placating him.
Well, well, what do we have here?
Golden eyes glowed in the darkness.
Tenchi blinked awake in irritation, listened for a moment, then rolled back over (grateful that he didn’t find an unexpected bedmate as had been the case of late) and tried to get sleep again. Coulda sworn I heard somebody howling out there. Must have been somebody’s loose dog.
Not far away, another dark clad figure, this one safely OUTSIDE the Masaki properties, glanced up briefly at the distant sound, listened for a moment, then went back to perusing his magazine in the comfort of his room on the bordering property.
Unlike the Kuno agents, the assigned officer of domestic intelligence in Okayama Prefecture WAS a local lad, and knew all the local legends about the ‘Masaki Ghost’, having on more than one occasion run through the shrineland’s woods in the dark on a youthful dare. He knew better than to do that ever again. The ghost was bad enough, but once Old Man Katsuhito himself had been out prowling the woods.
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(Posted Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:52)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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