“Shampoo!” Mousse cried as he glomped onto an innocent passer-by. “You’re not my Shampoo.”
Shampoo rolled her eyes before hitting Mousse upside the head. “Stupid duck, put glasses on. You shame me with too too foolish glomps. Now, Shampoo go find Airen and go on date.” With out looking backwards, she turned and walked away from the near-sighted admirer.
“Shampoo, no! I won’t let you!” Mousse let loose with a barrage of chains to wrap up and entangle the young amazon. However, he didn’t know he was aiming at a light pole.
On a nearby rooftop, Ranma hid and watched what occurred below. “Whew, safe. They didn’t see me.” He was also interested in observing Mousse’s Hidden Weapon style. Ranma had already figured out the technique. Starting at the initiate level of how to carry things in your clothes without it appearing like you were carrying things in your clothes. From there, Ranma worked out how to fold space using chi manipulation. With more practice, he was able to fold space around larger and larger objects, adding them to his stuff-space pocket. Ranma merely wanted to gauge Mousse’s mastery and estimate how big of an object the male amazon could store. “Hmm ... I’d thought his chi work would be better, maybe he hasn’t tried to hide anything larger than he has needed.”
Slipping off the roof, Ranma stealthily made his way home. However, before he could make it home, he heard the despairing cry of “Where the Hell am I now?” that announced Ryoga's imminent arrival.
Ryouga was marching along at a furious pace, matching his furious demeanor. “I’ll get you this time, you dishonorable coward,” he grumbled to himself. Stomping down the sidewalk, passing over a canal, Ryouga continued to complain. “Once I find the Tendo home, I’ll pound that creep into paste.” Grumbling on and on, Ryouga didn’t even register the other pedestrians giving him a wide birth.
“Well,” Ranma thought from his impromptu hiding place, dangling from the edge of the bridge over the canal by his fingertips, “at least I won’t have to worry about Ryouga for another week, no way he’s finding the dojo any sooner then that.” Ranma started to pull himself up, happy he hadn’t fallen into the canal by some freak occurrence, when cold water cascaded down over his head. “Figures.” Pulling himself up and then climbing over the chain-link fence, Ranma dropped to street level. Trudging down the street was a broken street cleaner that had sprung a water leak. Ranma sighed and continued his journey back home.
“I’m home,” Ranma called out as he entered the house. Kasumi’s half-hearted reply from the other room puzzled Ranma until he noticed she was staring at the kitchen in concern. A loud racket issued forth from the kitchen, like pans waging war on pots. “The ol’ tomboy must be at it again,” Ranma thought to himself in realization. “I’ll be in the dojo.” Ranma made a hasty retreat, anxious to put distance between himself and Akane’s cooking.
In the dojo, Ranma decided to empty out his stuff space. He was training by trying to carry more and bigger stuff. He also would practice by just putting stuff in and pulling it out repeatedly. Starting small, he extracted a pair of slippers from stuff-space. Next, he pulled out a pair of chopsticks followed by a tanto. School textbooks joined the pile. A couple boken confiscated from Kuno were placed on top of the heap. Rocks from a field came out next. One of Mousse’s chains started to appear, with Ranma feeding the length of it out hand over hand. The chain ended up being over twelve feet long and had a hook attached to the end. Next came a handful of steel spikes and chalk. A bedroll followed after, succeeded by Ranma’s pack. Last, Ranma removed some clean clothes.
Ranma sighed. “I need to find more things to carry. Something bigger. But what?”
His musings were interrupted by his fiancée’s voice. “Ranma! I made you a snack.”
Not even taking the time to repack, Ranma quickly dove out of the window. A quick leap brought him up to the roof where he landed with cat like silence. A nervous scamper brought him over the peak where he laid down to hopefully escape being spotted. And all not too soon, as he immediately heard the door to the dojo get slammed open. Ranma winced at the disrespect shown to the training hall.
“Ranma!” Ranma heard Akane bellow. “You’re here somewhere and I’ll find you,” she screamed out. “You are out here somewhere.”
Carefully, Ranma inched down the roof, away from the screaming. Checking the windows, he saw that the one to Nabiki’s room was open. Ranma did not hesitate a moment as he took his option for escape, and swung silently through the open window into the room beyond.
“Well, Ranma-baby, decided to just drop on by while in the area?” A cool and humorless voice greeted the young martial artists as he cast his eyes about the room for a hiding place.
“No time, Nabiki,” Ranma answered as he started to slide under her bed. “It be a good night for you to eat out. And if Akane asks, you didn’t see me.” Ranma, by now, had slid completely under the bed, but he stuck a hand out from underneath, clutching a few crumpled one-hundred yen notes.
Nabiki smirked. “You know me so well, Ranma-baby.” She took the proffered cash and counted it as the hand retracted once more into its hiding place.
Nabiki returned to sitting back upon her bed, reading a manga. The room was quiet and peaceful for some minutes until the door was violently opened. In the doorway stood Akane, one hand on her hip and the other resting on the doorframe. Nabiki eyed her recent visitor with a raised eyebrow. “Want something, Akane?”
Akane scanned the room with a scowl on her face. Not seeing who she was looking for, she pasted an insincere smile onto her own face. “Have you seen Ranma anywhere, Nabiki?”
Nabiki didn’t reply right away, seemingly lost in thought as the silence dragged on. Finally, she spoke. “What did he do this time? Was it with Ukyo or Shampoo?”
“Nothing, ... I just wanted to give him something, is all?”
Nabiki smirked. “Oh? Growing soft on the big lug? You know, if you want to give it up, it’s none of my business, but do use some protection.”
Akane went white and spluttered. “Wha – wa – what?! It’s not like that! Me and that pervert? Never!”
Nabiki shrugged. “I haven’t seen him. Did you look in the dojo?”
“Yeah. Kasumi said he would be in there. But all I found was a mess. Lazy jerk didn’t even clean up after himself.”
“He’s probably at the Cat Cafe or Ucchan’s, then.” A crafty smile crossed Nabiki’s face. “Maybe in a backroom getting frisky with one of his fiancées.”
Akane growled as her grip crushed the molding of the doorframe. “When I get my hands on that ... that ... idiot pervert!” She left the rest of her thoughts unsaid, but the way she flexed her arms and grunted clearly showed what she had in mind. Turning around, Akane stormed off to try to find her errant fiancée.
Nabiki got up and closed her room door once more. “Thanks, Nabs” was muttered from below her bed. Nabiki wasn’t sure, as muffled as it was, if it was sincere or sarcastic.
“Just doing what you paid me for,” she replied lightly as she sat back down on her bed.
Ranma extracted himself from his hiding place. “That’ll buy me some time. Maybe Pops will wanna go on a trainin’ trip.”
“Big, bad martial artist afraid of some food,” Nabiki snorted.
“Damn straight! Maybe Kasumi will have ‘cleaned’ away dinner while Akane is out?”
Nabiki shook her head in amusement. “Keep dreaming, Ranma-baby.”
“Well, maybe ...” Ranma trailed off. Through the open window, the sound of the gate being opened forcibly was heard. But it was the sounds that followed that sent a chill up Ranma’s spine.
“You!” Akane’s voice accused an unseen person.
“Shampoo no have time for Kitchen-destroyer. Airen take me on too too good date.” The angry sound of a duck quacking accompanied the lilting Chinese accent of the visitor’s voice.
“That two-timing, good-for-nothing, sorry excuse for a man, pervert!” Akane’s screams rose from the front yard. “When I get my hands on him...” Akane punctuated her sentiment with a growl of deep resentment.
“Hey y’all, is Ranma in the dojo? I brought him an Ucchan special,” Ukyo’s voice joined the others.
Ranma whimpered.
Nabiki smiled and fought to contain her chuckles. “Now, don’t get caught in my room. I’d hate for a fight to break out in here and break my things.”
Ranma shot Nabiki a hang-dog expression. “Nowhere left to hide.”
“Well, you can’t stay here. I’m not running some halfway house for losers.”
Suddenly, Akane’s yell of “Ranma!” echoed about the house, indicating she was once more inside. “Ranma, I know you’re here somewhere.”
“Airen no play Hidey-Seekey games. Time to take Shampoo out on date, no?” Shampoo’s voiced followed Akane’s.
“Hey, Ranma is my fiancée. If he’s taking anyone out on a date, it’ll be me,” Ukyo’s voice retorted at Shampoo’s voice.
Ranma cringed as the noise indicated the trio of girls were escalating their hostilities. “Trapped like a rat.”
Nabiki frowned. “Really, Ranma. Go! Now! You can’t hide in here.”
“But, but – but Nabiki!” Ranma whined.
“No whining, it makes me less willing to deal with you.”
Ranma sighed and his shoulders fell as he turned to leave. As he brought his hand up to open Nabiki’s door, he heard a commotion in the hallway and suddenly his face went all white. He backed away from the door, gulping in fear. Without wasting anymore time, Ranma dashed and slid under Nabiki’s bed.
“I’ll just tell them where to find you, you know,” Nabiki threatened the boy.
An arm reached up, grabbed her by the wrist, and yanked her off the top of her bed. Before Nabiki could even scream, Ranma suddenly stuffed her into stuff space. Not having tried putting something alive into stuff space before, Ranma kept a hold of Nabiki’s wrist so he could feel her pulse.
The door to Nabiki’s room was suddenly yanked open, and three angry teenagers tried to squeeze through first. “Huh?” Akane stopped trying to squirm past the others. “But she was just in here.” The girls finally stopped struggling to notice the room seemed empty.
“Sneaky-girl no here. Shampoo go find Airen now.”
Ukyo agreed.. “Ran-chan is probably in the dojo.”
After the door was closed and Ranma was sure they were gone, he peeked out from under the bed. Seeing no-one, he slipped out again before removing Nabiki from stuff-space. She looked frazzled and angry.
“What the hell do you think you were doing?” she scolded the boy.
Ranma shrugged. “Hey, I was desperate. I did the first thing that came to mind.”
Nabiki glared at him. “Don’t do that again. What the hell was that place?”
“That? Just where I keep stuff. Why?”
“Where you keep stuff?” Nabiki sounded skeptical. “What the hell did you do?”
“It’s just a chi technique. Like a pocket.”
“That was not like any pocket. Do you even know where it is?”
Ranma shrugged. “It’s sorta here, isn’t it?”
“No, Ranma, I don’t think that was here.”
“Hmm, let me see.” Ranma then grabbed Nabiki again and before she could protest, he stuffed her into his other-space pocket. This time, however, he followed the rest of his arm in, tumbling in space and falling into the other-space where stuff gets stored. He and Nabiki landed clumsily in a depression of sorts. The ground was a nondescript gray, whorled and mottled with darker gray. The surface above them, which might or might not have been a sky, was a marbled off-white streaked with buttery-yellow. Standing up, Ranma could see over the lip off the depression they were in. A plain of the same strange gray stretched ever onward in all directions, frequently dotted with depressions and hollows like the one he was standing in.
“Where do you think we are?” Ranma asked Nabiki as he looked down to her.
She was busy banging her head on the ground. “I have no idea. Can we go back now?”
Ranma noticed the depressions were shifting about gently, like the milling of ants in slow-motion. “Come on, let’s explore.” Ranma clambered up the slope and hoisted himself out onto the plain.
“Hey, where do you think you’re going? You better be able to undo this or I am so going to own your ass. Once I’m done with you, you’ll beg for death.”
“Yadda, yadda. Quit gripin’ and come on already. You sound like the Tomboy.”
Ranma strolled over to a neighboring depression as Nabiki scrambled to catch up. “Hey, what’s with all the junk? What a dump!” Nabiki mused from Ranma’s side. Ahead, was a depression full of random objects. Rope, trinkets, jewelry, makeup, receipts, blankets, a jacket, and some half-covered and unidentifiable junk topped a heap of objects.
Ranma shrugged and wandered over to another depression, looking to verify a suspicion. It too was full of personal objects. “I think these are the pockets where people store there stuff. Hmm, I wonder which one is Mousse’s?”
“How is that important?”
Ranma smirked at Nabiki. “Imagine his expression the next time he goes to attack and nothing comes to hand.”
Nabiki rolled her eyes. “Pranks! All you can think about is pranks. We’re stuck in some alien place, who knows where, surrounded by ...” Nabiki trailed off as a thought occurred to her. “Wait a minute. This is great! You can tell so much about a person by what they keep. Plus I bet there’s lots of valuables around. Come on, let’s go look.” Nabiki started heading off toward another pocket well.
“Nabiki,” Ranma voiced in disappointment, “you can’t just steal from others.”
“It’s okay, how’d they know I did it?”
Ranma shook his head. “That’s not the point.” He followed the girl, hoping to dissuade her.
Nabiki soon reached yet another depression. She looked in briefly before sliding down the slope into it. “Not as much junk in this one. Let’s see what kind of person this is.”
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Ranma called down from the edge. “We should go back now.”
Nabiki waved him off, distractedly, as she rummaged around in the pile of goods. “How does anyone grab what they need efficiently? There’s no organization; they seem to just stuff it all into a big pile.”
“It’s not too hard to get what you want. Dun’ know why it’s all messy.”
“Compact mirror, firewood, matches, banged-up pot, a hatchet, tent pegs ... man, what a bunch of useless junk.”
Ranma sighed. “We can go now, right?”
“Onward to the next pocket, McDuffin,” Nabiki exclaimed as she pulled herself out of the dimpled ground.
Ranma groaned and rubbed his head, but followed dutifully so he wouldn’t lose Nabiki. “Man, the Tendos would explode if I lost Nabiki,” Ranma thought to himself in resignation.
“Hey, looks like gems.” Nabiki jumped into a pit in her haste and landed heavily. “Oof!” She started to sort through the pile of colored rocks, finding gold and silver trinkets.
Ranma frowned. “I’m getting a bad vibe from those, ‘Biki. I think we should go now.”
Nabiki snorted. “Pish-posh, stop being such a weenie, Ranma-baby. Just give me a moment and we’ll go.” Nabiki knew the chances of Ranma willing bringing her back was slim, and as such, she was determined to not leave empty handed. A thought passed through her head, “If I can get Ranma desperate enough, I could make him bring me back here.”
Busy rifling through the valuables, Nabiki was surprised when a withered hand and forearm shot out of nowhere to grasp her own wrist firmly. The skin was pasty, yet mottled in dark liver spots. The bony fingers seemed claw like. A peculiar smell arose from the elderly limb, causing Nabiki to gag. While the hand seemed old and frail, it possessed surprising strength and held her firmly in a grasp like iron.
“So, a thief has found his way to my belongings,” a dangerous sounding voice spoke from somewhere. The voice was raspy yet intelligible, aged yet firm, and full of malice. “It’ll be the last mistake you’ll ever make. I wonder which spell of gruesome death would be more fitting?”
Nabiki screamed. Ranma was suddenly behind her, left arm around her waist as his right hand grabbed her own arm just above the strange hand. With a sudden powerful jerk of his arm and concomitant flex of his legs, Ranma ripped Nabiki’s arm free and leaped to safely out of the pit. A sense of building energy accompanied an angry and guttural bellow. Not waiting around any longer, Ranma leaped and ran away as fast as his chi-enhanced legs would go. A brilliant gout of flames erupted behind them, out of the pit, as Ranma safely put distance between himself, carrying Nabiki, and the angry wizard. Nabiki’s eyes went wide seeing how close they came to being charred. Ranma didn’t stop running, dodging around wells like a ball in a pinko machine, until he felt he had put enough distance between them and whomever that was.
“What the hell was that?” Nabiki accosted him.
Ranma rolled his eyes. “I told you that was a bad idea. Come on, lets go home. After that, The Tomboy’s cooking doesn’t seem so scary anymore.”
Nabiki shrugged. “Sure. I can find something else to make this trip worth it on our way back.”
“Didn’t you learn anything?”
“Once in a lifetime event, nothing to worry about occurring again.” Nabiki waved off Ranma’s objection. “So, lead the way back to your pocket.”
Ranma became nervous. “Uh ... back to my pocket?”
“Yeah, do you think we need to leave the same way we came in? Or can you go from anywhere?”
Ranma shrugged, sheepishly. “About that. See ... I never came here before. I’m not sure how to get back, now that I think about it.”
Nabiki glared at Ranma. “I’m giving you to the count of three to get me home, Saotome, or there will be Hell to pay.”
Ranma chuckled anxiously. “Sure ... how about we stand in one of these pockets?”
“Whatever you want, Saotome. Just don’t fail.”
Ranma led the way to a near-by pocket. It was empty. “Ready?” Ranma took gentle hold of Nabiki’s wrist, and then hesitated. “I know how to pull out. But if I am here, do I still pull out or stuff in?”
“In, out, just do both. The longer I am standing here, the more trouble you will be in.”
Ranma took a deep breath, steadied his nerves, and did something which resulted in a loud popping noise. The two teenagers were dismayed to find that they were not back in Nabiki’s room.
“You are so going to die, Saotome, once we get back home.”
It was then when a large ball of yellow light slammed into the pair. A voice that the duo recognized from the pit as belonging to the hand spoke from the air, “Did you think you could escape so easily from me, thief. I have cut off your strange ability to teleport. I shall also hunt you down; there is no place safe from me. And when I find you, your death shall be most delectably painful and torturous. Until I come to collect you, enjoy your new curse. It does more than just keep you in one place.”
As the voice faded, Nabiki and Ranma turned to share a look. “I think going home is the least of our problems. But there is nothing more to do now than to find out where we are.”
Nabiki nodded. “Hopefully, not very far from Nerima.”
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See other episodes by Errol Peregrinus
(Posted Mon, 18 Oct 2010 01:20)
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