[Episode 239698] [Episode 239698]"You took your posters down?" Sayuri said the next morning, glancing at the pale patches on Hiroshi's bedroom wall. "Just for us? How sweet."
"For Daisuke," Hiroshi corrected. "Remember the side effects of his telepathy?"
Yuka blushed, then looked round. "Why isn't he here? I thought-"
"Advertising posters."
"What?" Sayuri asked, frowning in confusion.
"He's trying to avoid seeing any with women on, so he can't go near the main roads. I told him he should just keep his eyes down, but he doesn't want to take any chances."
"Can't blame him," Yuka said. "If I had his problem ...."
Hiroshi nodded. "And I was the one who gave him the whole telepathy idea."
Sayuri smiled unconvincingly. "If he shows up desperate for lipstick, we'll-"
"Ten-to-one, he'll be play-acting."
Yuka shifted nervously, glancing at Hiroshi's radio clock. "Can we start without him, only, well, this is your bedroom. Your parents gave us both funny looks."
"We're going to need to find a better cover for our meetings," Hiroshi noted, and somewhere private to hold them. "Should be ok getting started. We can summarise when he gets here. Either of you thought of anything since yesterday."
Both girls shook their heads.
"And Daisuke told me he hadn't either, when he phoned," which was pretty much what Hiroshi had expected. The other three didn't have his mental enhancement: even a good nights sleep wouldn't help them come up with the brilliant ideas they needed to complete the kami's tasks, but he could. He-
"Hiroshi!" Sayuri shouted, then frowned. "Were you slipping?"
"A little, maybe," he admitted. "I did have a great idea though. There's not much we can do about the fiancées yet, but I've thought of a way to track down the other MasterPC user.”
Yuka leaned forwards attentively.
“Without using our copies?” Sayuri asked. “Um, I've got one too now.”
“Check the license terms?” Hiroshi asked. He had, and the evil bits had been replaced with approval from the kami, conditional on good behaviour.
Sayuri nodded. “But we still shouldn't use it too much. Temptation.”
“I had to use it a little,” Hiroshi said, “but not for anything major.”
“Hiroshi,” Sayuri said, shaking her head sadly. “You can't say-”
“What did you find out?” Yuka interrupted. “We got to stop him.”
“We will,” Hiroshi assured her. “I followed the money, back from the magazine where we saw your photo, and found an address.”
“You think it's him?” Sayuri said. “If he's trying to hide-”
“Everyone in that apartment block has a locked file, and they were all locked by the same user.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Yuka said. “Let's go.”
“You started without me?” Daisuke said, walking in. “What'd I miss?”
“He lives on the third floor,” Hiroshi said, looking up at the building, a newish five-storey apartment block, on the edge of Nerima.
“Looks filthy,” Yuka said nervously. “Don't they have window cleaners?”
Sayuri looked at her friend. “You'll be ok waiting outside, won't you?”
“He used me,” Yuka said, “and my parents. I should be doing something.”
“But he might recognise you,” Hiroshi said, for the tenth time. “Daisuke will wait with you.”
“I will?” he said, his surprise unconcealed, then smiled, possibilities dawning. “I will.”
“You two can be our backstop,” Hiroshi quickly explained, “if anything goes wrong.”
More importantly, Daisuke could stop Yuka from doing anything rash.
After a moment, Daisuke nodded. “There's a café two doors down. We'll keep an eye on the place from there.”
Sayuri watched him pull her friend away, smiling sadly. “Think he's realised he can't afford to 'get lucky', yet?”
“He's not a deep thinker,” Hiroshi said, crossing the road, Sayuri half a step behind him.
“How are we going to get in his apartment anyway?” Sayuri asked. “We can't just-”
“Apparently, we can,” Hiroshi said, staring at the building's front door, the wide-open front door.
Nerima didn't have much of a crime problem, not with all the marital artists, but still, no one would just leave the door open like that, not unattended.
Suspicion rising, Hiroshi glanced up and down the street. The other pavement was busy, busier than he would have expected, but this side of the street was totally deserted. Something was wrong.
“Hiroshi,” Sayuri said, tugging him. “Try not to think too much.”
He followed her inside, then sniffed. “What's that smell?”
“Rubbish?” Sayuri said, one hand covering their nose. “But there'd have to be piles-”
Sayuri stopped again, staring. All the apartment doors were wide open too, foul scents seeping out from within.
“Something is wrong here,” she said. “What are you doing?”
“Investigating,” Hiroshi said, stepping inside the nearest apartment.
It looked normal enough: living room, bedroom, and kitchen. Toys scattered over the floor, so they had a young child, but there was dirty laundry just lying around too, and the whole place looked like it hadn't been cleaned in weeks.
Hiroshi picked up some of the clothes: examining them thoughtfully: a woman's top with a tear across its front, a young boy's trousers, split down the seams, ripped underpants.
“Hiroshi,” Sayuri shouted, backing away from the kitchen, both hands over her mouth and nose. “Look.”
On his way to the kitchen, Hiroshi snatched up a cushion, pulling its cover off and wrapping it round his head. That should block out the smell.
Inside, the reek of rotting fish poured from the open fridge, the bin was smothered in mould, and on the kitchen counter maggots feasted on a half-made meal.
Almost certain now what had happened, Hiroshi hurried back to Sayuri, waiting by the door.
“What happened to them all?” she asked, her voice muffled by the handkerchief she'd fastened round her face.
Hiroshi pulled the door shut.
“Nothing good,” Hiroshi said, looking grimly at the other open doors. If he was right, they'd be just as bad.
“Why hasn't anyone noticed?” Sayuri demanded. “All these people, missing.”
“Magic,” Hiroshi said confidently. “People are being kept away. They can't even walk on the pavement outside.”
“I suppose he decided he wanted an harem,” Sayuri said, “but why – no! He couldn't have. Not the children.”
“You can go and wait with Yuka if you want,” Hiroshi said gently. “This might be bad.”
Sayuri looked briefly uncertain, then frowned. “You still want to investigate, don't you?”
“We need to know what happened,” Hiroshi explained, heading up the stairs.
“And I need to keep you from getting carried away by the side-effects,” she said, following him.
“OK,” Hiroshi said, as they approached the MasterPC user's apartment. “According to the official records, he's a 23-year-old single man. We just have to smash his computer, and he'll be powerless.”
Warily, Sayuri peered round the open door, then recoiled, shuddering.
Hiroshi didn't blame her. The pulsing ball of flesh dominating the room looked like something out of the kinkier animes, four dozen gorgeous women melded into a cage of perfect flesh, arms flowing into their neighbours' hips, legs merging into shoulders, and at the centre of the cage, a writhing nest of tentacles, slithering over the women, wrapping round them, penetrating them.
The whole room stank, of course, like the others they had passed, but beneath that reek Hiroshi could just detect another muskier scent: sex.
He blinked, his eyes watering. At its size, the creature should have burst through the ceiling, yet somehow, impossibly, it fit.
“Something he summoned?” Sayuri guessed.
“I hope so,” Hiroshi muttered, trying to look past the creature. Some of those women had over a dozen tentacles plugged into them, an anatomical impossibility, but the MasterPC laughed at natural law.
Sayuri looked at him strangely, but he ignored her, carefully edging round the room until he reached the computer in the corner, still switched on. A twitch of the mouse brought the screen to life, revealing the familiar menus of the MasterPC.
“What are you doing?” Sayuri asked indignantly.
“We need to know what happened,” Hiroshi explained, opening up the internal logs.
“You do know this insane curiosity isn't like you?” Sayuri said. “Think about what you're doing. Don't let it win.”
“I won't,” Hiroshi said, his face growing grim as he scanned the last entries, “but we need to know what we're fighting.”
Pressing print, he turned to face her. “He didn't summon that thing; he turned himself into it.”
“And everyone else in the building?” Sayuri said, her face a picture of dread.
“You already know the answer to that,” Hiroshi said softly, reluctant to speak the words.
“But some of them were children, even babies. You saw that pram.”
Hiroshi scooped up the printout, folding it inside his pockets. “This ... idiot decided he deserved sex twenty-fours hours a day, with all the women he could handle He got his wish, all right, and it destroyed him. The worst part is, he seems to have started out as a nice guy, even helping people. If it hadn't been for you...”
He trailed off, not even wanting to think about what the MasterPC might have made of him and Daisuke.
“There's no way of reversing it?” Sayuri asked hopefully.
Hiroshi shook his head, not quite truthfully. Everyone in the creature had had their minds destroyed, all thoughts washed away by endless orgasm, not easily reversed. He might be able to manage something, with the MasterPC, but it would be difficult, and mistakes would be ... deeply unpleasant.
“Then let him burn,” Sayuri snarled. “Burn the bastard, and set his victims free.”
“My plan exactly,” Hiroshi said. “Turn the cookers on in all the apartments, and toss curtains on top of them. We'll burn this place to the ground.”
Thirty minutes later, Hiroshi walked into the café, looking round for Daisuke and Yuka, then groaned. Nabiki was sitting with them.
“What's she doing here,” Sayuri muttered behind him.
Hiroshi shrugged. “Let's find out.”
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Sun, 12 Sep 2010 19:19)
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.