“I demand you take immediate action!”
As a peer of the Empire, Lord Tatewaki Kuno could request an audience with the Imperial Court. As a peer of the Empire, he could DEMAND an audience of his fellow peers to seek redress.
”The police did NOTHING to impede the retreat of the invaders with their prize! They had them surrounded, but they lifted not a single finger to stop their cowardly exodus! Truly, our gendarmes have fallen in quality if they allow such a travesty, the invasion of streets, to go unchallenged in the very heart of Tokyo itself!”
(Loud Whisper) “I was under the impression the police were outgunned, outnumbered, and outmaneuvered. They were doing the best they could to KEEP the peace and contain the damage.”
”Such lawlessness can NOT go unanswered for!”
”I’m sure that the Tokyo Police are already answering to proper authority on their actions.” Lord Kurahita, a rather bland and monotone peer who made his fortune in banking and mercantile practices, and who somehow managed to take the Chair of the Peer Council, responded.
”And the military has NOT acted against this trespass on our sovereign territory!”
”Lord Kuno, the military falls outside the realm of this council. You should be talking to the Shogun.”
”I HAVE petitioned the Shogun! He has not answered!”
”I’m also sure he has other things on his mind right now, Lord Kuno. Such as making sure that the Islamics don’t take advantage of this...disturbance...to cause trouble for the Empire. I doubt it’s personal that he hasn’t yet returned your calls.”
Yes, Tatewaki Kuno considered Lord Kurahita something of an obstructionist and an ass. How a lowly banker and shipper had attained and held a seat on the Council was beyond Kuno.
”All the while that vile hadrian in human form does who knows what unspeakable acts upon one of the fairest blossoms of womanhood to grace the Land of the Rising Sun!”
(Loud Whisper)”Yeah, when you expected to be the one doing unspeakable acts upon that very same blossom!”
(Loud Whisper)”Quiet, Achi!
Kuno’s face purpled at the whispered exchange, but chose not to address it. Instead he pushed on.
”And then she DARES offer a price, a PRICE, on MY life! Like some common criminal or dishonorable cur! And NOBODY takes offense at that?!”
(Loud Whisper)”Kinda hard when she’s packing a small army with guns already aimed at people’s heads, not to mention that battlewagon overhead!”
(Loud Whisper)”Shut UP, Achi!
”Already, that CREATURE’S pronouncement has been re-aired across the nation! The Kuno name is being defamed and made to look as if we are kidnappers and slavers, when in fact it is this self-declared ‘Duchess’ who is the guilty party here, seeking to mislead the masses and turn them against the benign dynasty of Kunos! Already I have crowds, including the deranged Christians and Cat-Lovers, milling about outside my properties protesting and scorning my name! Does it not concern you that this interloper seems intent on corrupting the natural order of society? Does it not fill you with RAGE that this outsider dare openly impugn and threaten a fellow Lord without fear of retribution?!”
(Loud Whisper)”Actually I’m just glad it’s you, not me.”
Kuno whirled and glared threateningly at the wag. When no apology was forthcoming, he turned again to address the Council in complaint.
“Why, even this morning, vile miscreants attacked one of my family’s cars with a rocket launcher, no doubt thinking I was inside! Fortunately, t’was but two of my retainers going about their errands, and they were but mildly concussed and compressed, but this is a clear indication of fell intent towards my family, instigated by insidious outside forces!”
An old quavering voice creaked from the audience, “A rocket launcher? Aren’t they illegal in the Home Islands?”
Another Lord spoke up to answer the question; “Police report said it was a souvenir from the fighting in Malaysia with the Islamics, Lord Ishigo.”
”Oh. Thank you!...Can I get one too?”
Everybody sweatdropped at that question.
”And I’ve had at least seven different attacks on Kuno property!”
”Attacks?”
”Gunmen, petty opportunists of weak mind, harking to the spurious offers of that alien invader! The criminal element, surfacing in the belief that their time had come! Two of my family’s properties were firebombed, and several more shot up!”
”Shot up? What you got on that, Ishiki?”
The man who’d answered Lord Ishigo’s question previously, Lord Aida Ishiki, was known as something of a gun nut and military historian, when he wasn’t waxing wealthy off grain production on the Continent.
”Mostly sporting rifles, but somebody used an old Type 100, according to the police reports. Heh, lucky to have hit ANYTHING with those old underpowered Nambu cartridges!”
”ANYWAY! And to finish the indignities done my House, I am still in the holding of an outstanding debt owed me by the Tendo Family! But the police now prevent my agents from approaching them! ‘Protective custody’, they call it!”
”I imagine they want to question them about the alien living under their roof.”
”You believe and repeat that insane aspersion made by that gaijin that the fiery-haired one is like her an ALIEN?!”
”The evidence is hovering right over Tokyo Bay.”
”And no doubt you are taken in by a magician’s smoke and mirrors!”
”Careful, Kuno, you are but newly come to your station and still a Junior Peer. Speak disrespectfully at your own peril!”
”(grrrr...) My apologies for my outburst. I still appeal to you, however, for action in this case! Thus far, I have seen no motion on something that concerns us all!”
”Actually, we have taken your situation into consideration and have already decided to take action on it.”
”Excellent!”
”To be precise, we’re asking you to step back away from us at least fifty feet.”
Kuno hesitated, then stepped back...and back...and back, only to find himself in the hall.
*BANG*
Kuno stared at the closed doors of the audience chamber.
”YOU’LL REGRET THIS!!!”
Kuno thought of trying the door handles, but thought better of it; what he’d seen and heard in there made it clear to him what was going on. Instead he turned on his heel with as much affronted dignity as he could muster and strode away down the hall from the chambers, fuming all the way.
”Truly, I erred in thinking I would get support and action from my august peers, only to find them a collection of cowardly aged dotards and wrongly elevated cads jealous of my youthful energies and prowess!”
Lord Kuno Tatewaki glared out of the council building’s window at the cause of the Peer Council’s cowardice; the accursed alien craft that still hung like a cloud of blight over the Imperial City.
”Cowards, damnable cowards! While they cower behind closed doors, who knows what suffering my fair fiery haired goddess is suffering up there?!”
“Another serving, dear?”
Cima beamed as her daughter nodded enthusiastically and tucked into another helping of dinner. Aisha had come out from under Doctor Zura’s treatment with a ravenous appetite. The ship’s doctor had wholeheartedly approved a meal to restore balance and the nourishment deficit his medical scans had shown, and Cima had been all too happy to comply, dailing up a banquet from the ship’s autochefs.
Her daughter was yet to utter a word but was certainly amazing her mother with her appetite; the small girl had ripped through a five-course meal and was showing no signs of slowing. She was demolishing a spread of food with a speed and ferocity that a Kreeghor Bloodhound couldn’t match, cultivated manners all but falling by the wayside.
All further evidence that her child had suffered unspeakably at the hands of her captors. That cemented Cima’s resolve to stick around and see what her offer had stirred up; they were already monitoring several incidents of gunfire and chemical explosives use in the city below.
Not nearly enough in Cima’s opinion. Might have to stir things up a bit more.
“Hold it...stop.”
POW!
TING!
“Sniper up on the electronics shop roof. I’d say a twenty-two birding piece. Amateur.”
“How can you tell?”
“Opened fire the moment somebody came out the door. Didn’t wait to identify the target. We got a spur-of-the-moment assassin up there. Damn bounty fever; that’s the third one today!“
”Okay, same procedure?”
”Yeah, hold their attention and keep them in place while Ishi and Yota circle around and corner him. Lord Kuno’s already being taken out one of the other ways. Gimme the loudhailer.”
*Click*
”HALT, VILE MISCREANT! -DO NOT BAR MY WAY TO MY LOVES! -JUSTICE STRIKES SWIFT AND TRUE!”
POW!POW!
ZZZING! BEYOOOOWWWW!!
“There, that oughta convince him for a moment he’s got the right target.”
”Kuzo, you think maybe it’s disrespectful of our master using tape-recorded schoolyard audio of him like that?”
”Jiro, if Lord Kuno finds out and disapproves, I’ll stop. But I’ll also point out that it’s helping keep him alive.”
“Good point.”
“That’s why I wear the suit and dark glasses.”
BLAM!
TTTTING!
“Hey, Kuzo?”
”Eh?”
”You ever wonder why this sort of stuff happens to us?”
“I think about it a lot. I think about standing ready to throw myself between my sworn lord and master and danger because I’m expected to. I think about being the latest generation of my family to serve in undistinguished fashion as a spear carrier for somebody else in the limelight. I think about maybe that in another time and place we’d just be nameless mooks serving as background dressing, glorified gofers doing this to or for somebody, hated for our misdeeds, casual cruelty to people we come in contact with, or apparent apathy to the suffering of others, without the universe ever acknowledging that we have names, lives, or motivations of our own.”
“That’s....deep, Kuzo.”
“Yeah, well, there’s more behind these dark glasses than just a steely gaze.”
” Hey, Kuzo? If people knew our names, do you think it would be a good or a bad thing? Yah know, profession-wise?”
”Hmmm...tough call, Jiro. If this was a drama made of our times, I’d say getting to know little people like us could be just a literary device, or maybe a signifier of a fundamental shift in the course of events. Or, it could be a short-term humanization of the atypical goon stock we represent, an effort to build up our identities as people the reader can identify with, in order to generate pathos when we get wasted in some cinematic fashion. By the way, I like your red shirt, Jiro.”
“Thanks, it was a birthday gift from my daughter.”
”Awww...she’s what, seven this month?”
”Yep, cute as a button too!”
Consortium of Civilized Worlds Sector Patrol Base Grenadier Station:
“Commodore Velkun? Captain Evil Vardan reporting as ordered.”
The gray-haired, increasingly plump, old Wulfen fleet officer gestured to a chair in his office.
“Good, good, please sit down. How are the refits coming to your command?”
”The basic repairs have been completed. It’s the new systemry that’s being plugged in now and tested aboard.”
”Ah, yes. Doctor Vardan’s interesting new changes. Your wife has some intriguing theories on ship power systems. Intriguing enough that the CAF approved using your ship in refit as a testbed for them. Must make for interesting downtime conversation between you two, no? Any problems with them?”
”Hull’s sound and the engines have been balanced. The new power grid’s passed testing, and we’ve been working on the new secondary systems. Everything’s proceeding apace.”
”Splendid! Because we have an interesting new assignment for you and your ship.”
Even for a captain who’d recently pitted his ship against four larger pirate cruisers that each outweighed and outgunned his command by a better than four-to-one ratio, and had still managed to take down half of them, the word ‘interesting’ tacked to ‘ new assignment’ had a disturbing and worrying quality to it. Command instincts normally used for plotting evasive maneuvers kicked in.
“Sir? We’ve barely gotten past the new engine refit and testing. Not all the new weapons systems have been fitted or field-tested. As well, we haven’t gotten our full complement of fighters replaced. We’re nominally combat-ready, but I’d prefer more time to get the ship evened out and the crew familiarized with the changes.” Captain Vardan glanced out the Commodore’s office port, to the adjacent zero-gee slips where his Heavy Frigate Freedom Rising waited, its sleek lines wrapped in a thin veil of servicing scaffolding. Even from here he could see the changes to the practically rebuilt and redesigned Lassar-class HAFG; the longer, sleeker hull, the extra appendages, the gleaming scale-like armor plating. He could also see the gaping empty gun mounts, the missing countermeasure arrays, and the work that still needed to be done.
“There’s been reports of a surge in mercenary activity in the Dersal Sector. A lot of hireable guns and opportunists heading for a particular point there. Seems there’s a stable dimensional rift there, and here’s the interesting part; apparently an Altess Armoria officer put out a bounty on the head of someone named ‘Tatewaki Kuno’ on a planet called ‘Earth’“
”There’s a lot of planets called ‘Earth’, almost all of them claiming to be the ancestral homeworld of humans. New Earth, Nu Earth, Blue Earth, Ye Olde Earth-”
”This ‘Earth’ is -its- Earth. Intelligence states it’s a parallel Earth in a pocket universe, so I’ve received orders to send somebody to investigate the situation in detail. It’s not a particularly advanced planet by what few accounts we’ve gotten. What’s so damned fired important that an Altess commander is posting a price on some backwater worlder’s neck? You’re going to find out for us.”
“Sir, an alternate universe? You want me to go to an alternate universe to check on a hit an Altess has called? Begging your pardon, but don’t we have enough to do in THIS universe already? Freedom Rising’s supposed to go back on anti-piracy and slaver patrol. Shouldn’t this be kicked over to Exploration? Or send something like a Hunter destroyer or a Scimitar frigate?”
“The dimensional rift serving this particular alternate universe is relatively close by and apparently stable, well within our area of responsibility. High Command wants some experience in the extra-galactic-dimensional avenues just in case, and they want to keep an eye on the Altess. You’re just be there to monitor the situation. Besides, from what I’ve read about the refits your wife has overseen to your ship’s sensors, it will be a good overall live-fire test of its new capabilities, the way I see it. Your wife is making some bold claims about the new sensors?”
”Yes, Amia’s improved the sensor ranges by some forty percent and improved rhe resolution at closer ranges by a factor of twenty. We’re no longer looking at a need to ship the long range arrays when we’re under way either-”
”Excellent! Perfect for tracking all the contacts we’re seeing heading into that system! And ideal for planetary monitoring!”
”Yes, but-”
”And a ship of the Rising’s size and class should make much more of an impression than a smaller ship. Ought to impress the Altess. With your pirate-hunting experience and reputation, the mission is a perfect fit for your command!”
Captain Evil Vardan felt the acid-beetle scar under his right eye begin tingling as he considered those words.
”Hello, Ami?”
”Evil? That you? How’d your meeting with the old fuzzball go?”
Captain Evil Vardan looked at the (foreshadowingly familiar) features of his wife on the commscreen, and sighed.
”We’re going to have that extended shakedown cruise a lot sooner than expected. And we’re going out a lot farther than planned.”
”Any further developments?”
”None, Your Majesty. They’ve refused any further attempts at communication.”
”Well, at least they’ve backed off a ways. That’s promising.”
”They still have those big guns out, though.”
”True. The international response?”
”Aside from some initial protests, the Islamics are remaining quiet. I think they’re waiting to see if Tokyo is still standing by the end of the week.”
”Humph! I imagine we’d be doing the same if the aliens had appeared over Istanbul instead.”
”The Americans have offered their support, technical and military, to us.”
”That’s generous of them.”
”We’ve also detected at least three different attempts by them to contact the aliens directly.”
”That’s expected of them.”
”All in all, the people have been taking this remarkably well; there’s been very little unrest or hysteria.”
”Aside from the sudden boom in tourism to see the alien starship, the Christians protesting the enslavement of an alien citizen, the Children of Bastet setting up a giant Hello Kitty extraterrestrial greeting poster downtown, and twelve incidents of violence already around the Kuno residence?”
”Ah, yes. You heard about the Hello Kitty poster?”
”By the kami, man, you can see the downtown shopping district glowing PINK from here! Have they had any answer?”
”No, Your Majesty, but we’re keeping an eye on them just in case.”
Her ‘mother’ had left her alone, in a room that fairly radiated luxury, in a bed that was more comfortable than anything she’d ever been in before. So comfortable in fact that it was making her UNcomfortable. A tray of food lay close at hand, and a floating robot servent was hovering nearby, ready and able to attend to her needs and wants.
Except peace of mind.
She sat up in her bedclothes, silky voluminous things that felt finer on her skin than anything she’d ever felt, hugged her knees to her chest, and tried to make sense of her own mind.
Because there was a lot more in it than there had been before.
The truth was, coming out from under the brain-fuzz that doctor’s apparatus had put her in, she noticed a major difference right off when she noticed that the lady wasn’t doing that strange words-not-matching-her-lips talking; Ranma could UNDERSTAND her perfectly. Ranma also could recall speaking at least four other languages, only one of which bore any resemblance to a terrestrial language. She could remember learning them in class, and being just as bored then as she was in class in Furinkan High School. She could remember learning falconry on a world with seven moons, as clearly as he could remember learning balancing on the dock pilings at Hiroshima.
She could remember being Aisha Hama-Khan. And she could remember that Cima Hama-Khan was her mother. But she could also remember that Nodoka Saotome was her mother, remember her mother’s tears as she was taken away for Adjustment, remember her father’s brusque farewell.
She could even remember that damn/beloved Mister Bil, her favorite toy companion/fugliest damn thing he’d ever seen.
Idly, she reached over to the fruit bowl beside her bed and picked up one of the brightly-colored shapes there, then contemplating it.
I mean, I KNOW I’m still Ranma, but I’m also Aisha. I KNOW this is a -gershfruit-, but I also don’t know what the hell it is! I’ve never seen anything like it before but I also remember them being my favorite because the sap’s so sweet. It’s like the worst case of deja vu I’ve ever experienced!
She bit into the bright blue nubby rubbery-skinned fruit and let its sweet juices course down her throat, savoring its familiar/exotic taste as she stared out the window port of her room at Tokyo hanging far below, its lights coming on as dusk set in.
I remember leaving Altess space. I remember becoming lost. I remember being separated from my ship. Starship? I had a starship? I didn’t even have a tricycle growing up!
I remember falling and...and...dying?
But I also remember traveling with Pops, falling in Jusenkyo, meeting the Tendos for the first time. I remember falling in love with Akane.
That last brought her up short again, reminded her that this all started with her efforts to protect the Tendo girls.
Oh, this is all screwed up. I was expecting to be pawed over by Kuno by now to satisfy that debt-contract, but now Ma-ch-I mean Cima’s - not going to let THAT happen, no way! She’s going to be watching me like a hawk! And she’s made it perfectly clear she’d be more than happy to start blasting away if anybody so much as TRIES enslaving me again! And she’s got the means to do it, too!
And she already put a price on Kuno-Baka’s head. A big one from what little Ranma could pick up on.
Part of Ranma bristled at that; solicited assassinations were the province of ninja, or criminals, not true martial artists. It just wasn’t honorable!
But you were planning on killing Kuno yourself, weren’t you, when he broke his word, as you knew he would? Well, now you likely won’t have to! What’s bothering you more; the idea that somebody will kill him in your name for money, or that you might not get the chance to kill him yourself?
Ranma/Aisha looked out the window-port at where she thought Nerima lay.
I wonder how everybody’s making out back home?
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(Posted Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:26)
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