”So, our ‘mad robot’ popped up in front of a crowd, caused a bit of a scare, then disappeared again?”
”According to the reports. It seemed to backtrack then ran back into the canal. Didn’t come up on the other side.”
”Great, so we still may have a piece of aberrant hardware running around.”
”Yep.”
”I’m beginning to agree with that man Cho; this situation mucks.”
”What are we going to do about it?”
”Well, you know, this is as good a time as any to hold an exercise. Turn out the troops and roll out the vehicles for some field work. Warm up all the copters and get them airborne.”
”Are you sure that’s such a good idea, sir? Those birds are over thirty years old!”
”They’re GMC-Sioux-40s! They’re built tough, and I haven’t heard any complaints from the crews! Shouldn’t be anything wrong with them.”
”Sir, I think you’re under the misassumption that they’re General Motors Corporation-build sir. They’re not. ‘GMC’ in this case stands for -Galactic Mining Corporation-, remember? They folded thirty years ago after ICC came down on them and Pyrite Corp for their little war? We bought their equipment because it was at liquidation sale prices?”
”Right. Well, they should still be good for a simple search and recon. It’s just one robot after all. The birds should be good for that at least, and they’ll look impressive to the civilians, especially if the racks are loaded.”
”I still think we should have bought Hornets or Hawks to replace those old eggbeaters. At least something from Militech or Araska!”
”Might as well wish for Vultures! At what Kessler’s laid out for our heavy equipment? We’re lucky they had copters here already. Get the boys and girls moving; I’ll phone the mayor-CEO and let her know we’ll be holding a full-dress hot-start exercise or something to cover the mad robot business. I’ll...I’ll tell her that the ED-290 was part of our preparedness exercises. We’ll put on a show for the civilians, get in some practice, scape some dust off the guns, and maybe find that piece of junk.”
Nanami hauled herself up the building cornice, chanced a look around...Nobody seemed to have followed her, or even noticed her, though a lack of streams of tracer fire homing in at her, or shouts to get the pitchforks and torches didn’t necessarily mean that she HADN’T been noticed.
She was ALMOST exhausted enough that the sudden apparent materialization of two presences next to her might have startled her into falling off the roof, if she hadn’t ‘felt’ them beforehand.
”You okay?” Ranma asked.
Next to him Kodachi looked at her with concern.
Nanami almost hated them for their seemingly fresh appearance and lack of fatigue for apparently having run all the way across town after her. Except that she could feel the real concern washing over her from them through their link.
”Yeah, I’m okay...had a run in with some hardware that was more perceptive than most. Look, let’s just get back to the ship; I’ll tell you all about it there. But we’re going to have to be REAL careful from here on out.”
*sniff*sniff* “Geez, you smell bad!”
The Jusenkyo curse might be gone, but there are other curses that apparently withstand the test of time; Saotome foot-in-mouth is apparently one of them.
Nanami whirled on the male hybrid with murder in her eyes. Instincts both human and alien had Ranma frantically backpedaling.
But Nanami’s ire subsided as her wit returned. “Yeah, thanks, but actually I’d rather smell of an open sewer than what I WAS smelling of. Look, let’s just go back to the ship...I need a beer in ten bottles and something to eat.”
Kodachi grinned at that.
”Hope you like fresh produce.”
”Right now I could bite through a Bug. And what’s with that roll of steel ribbon you got?”
"I'll show you later.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:18)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.