"R-r-Ryūnosuke-kun…?!"
Carcajou perked on hearing that trembling voice, and then she turned before a tired sigh escaped her. "Shinobu, would you PLEASE not use '-kun' with me?! I'm a chick, damnit! And I really don't like people who can't see otherwise!"
Hearing the slight growl in the voice of the transformed beach teashop owner's "son," Miyake Shinobu winced as she gave her an apologetic look. She then perked as Wolverine walked around his friend to gaze intently at her for a moment…and then she blushed as a fatherly smile crossed the scrappy Canadian warrior's face. "I'd almost swear that you were a mutant or a meta yourself, Shinobu-chan," he said in his nearly accent-less Japanese. "If you were a mutant, we X-Men'd be probably knocking at your door inviting you to join us. But Cerebro — that's the equipment we use to find young mutants — didn't get a sniff from you or anyone else in this town."
Carcajou blinked. "Did whatever it was that blanked out our minds last year before Ataru faced Lum in the Tag Race affect that damned thing?"
A shake of the head. "Nah. Chuck called me after he woke up to his memories of meeting Ataru and Negako-sama earlier tonight, 'round the time Wyszynski came by to take him back to Yiziba. He checked all of Cerebro's functions. It's working perfect." Wolverine then gazed on Shinobu. "Your powers are probably ki-based, Shinobu-chan. Same with that Mizunokōji girl that lives at the north end of town, not to mention that retarded mother of hers. You ever thought of doing martial arts?"
"Me?" she asked before giggling. "Oh, good God, no!" A sigh. "Wolverine-san…"
"Logan."
Shinobu blinked, and then her blush deepened as she sensed what the Canadian had just done for her. "Logan-san, until an hour ago, I always dreamt of simple things. Finding a nice man, getting married and starting a family. It was once centred on Ataru-kun. Lum then came to take him away. Then I started dating Mendō-san. He then was engaged to marry Mizunokōji Asuka. I then met Inaba-kun. But I've always doubted deep in my heart that something with him wouldn't work out." A sigh. "And then Infinity-san did what she did and I realised that a good portion of my memories from ten years ago to just before the Tag Race were all LIES!" She then gazed on Carcajou, who was giving her a sympathetic look. "I can't imagine what you went through…"
"I was one of the early ones," Carcajou confessed. "Ever since he got Negako outta his head when he was six, Ataru went crazy travellin' from Yiziba to Earth and back findin' girls to take them to the Crystal to give them all Gifts. But even if he was as energetic as the damned Energizer Bunny at the time, he had to take a break every once in a while. One day — this was just after my seventh birthday — he was on the Kujūkuri Beach near the Hamachaya enjoyin' the waves and the clean air. That's when we met."
Shinobu gaped. "Ryūnosuke, your birthday's in JANUARY! You were…!"
A shake of the head. "Remember what I told you when we first met," the girl born as Fujinami Ryūnosuke cautioned. "Rain or shine, winter or summer, the Hamachaya stayed open!" As Shinobu giggled on hearing that and Wolverine muttered something about gutting old fools who couldn't clue into reality, Carcajou added, "Well, back then, I was as cold as could be. Moanin' to Oyaji that I didn't want to be out into the cold like that. And he beat me around like he always did…" A wink. "But he did it THAT time in front of a guy my age who was practically a GRANDMASTER in martial arts!"
Ataru's would-be girlfriend gaped. "Like Saotome Ranma, you mean!"
A nod. "Yeah, about the same. But Ataru doesn't shove his skills into your face unless you really piss him off. As Oyaji did that day!" Carcajou laughed. "Well, after Oyaji got sent for a swim, Ataru put a jacket on me and asked if I wanted to go someplace warm. He actually said, 'Pretty girls don't deserve to be cold!'" As Wolverine — not to mention Windtalker (who was filming this), Terra and Aisaka Sayo — laughed on hearing that and Shinobu giggled, Carcajou shrugged. "So he hit his teleport device and BOOM! I was right in front of the Great Crystal of Power! I touched it…" She waved to herself. "And voilą! Instant human shredding machine, complete with ever-sharp claws!" She held up her left hand to allow burning ki to form around the fingers, each of them projecting energy blades out to about the same length as Wolverine's sextet of adamantium-coated bone claws.
"And she can use 'em good!" Wolverine added.
Both of them chuckled as Carcajou allowed the energy around her hand to dissipate. "Weren't you angry?!" a wide-eyed Shinobu then demanded. "He literally KIDNAPPED you from the PLANET, then took you to another PLANET and made you a metahuman!"
"Darlin', Ataru was just six at the time," Wolverine cut in. "What the hell does a six year-old know about things like that? He just got away from borderline-abusive parents, was taken to a neat place where he got a very nice older sister out of the deal and — after learnin' what the Crystal of Power decided to do, not to mention how bad the population of Yiziba had fallen by then — he decided a little payback was required to help the Yizibajohei get back on their feet again. So he did it!" A shrug. "Yeah, in our eyes, it sounds pretty dicey and downright illegal dependin' on where you're from. But given that the Gifts people like Ryū-chan here got never really hurt anyone — and the parents were clued into it by Doc Wyszynski shortly after it happened — there was really no harm and no foul. Besides, you remember four years ago, don't you? When Galactus came by to eat all of Earth's life energy?"
Shinobu looked confused for a moment…and then she breathed out. "Right! That was Infinity-san and…" She blinked. "Who was the other one?"
"Weaver," Carcajou supplied. "Real name is Suzumiya Haruhi. She's from out in Hyōgo Prefecture near Kōbe. She's got the power to literally affect alternate histories and parallel dimensions. That's how she made sure Vicki-chan and her friends were able to stay in this time period when they came up from their own future timeline in hopes of killing Troia's kid before he became some real jackass heel named 'Lord Chaos.'" She thumbed Terra in emphasis. "In Galactus' case, she went to the Shi'ar Empire — that's in another galaxy; I think it's the M33 galaxy — to obtain a reality nexus trapped in a huge block of dark meson the Shi'ar called the 'M'Kraan Crystal.' Trapped inside the Crystal was a neutron galaxy with loads of planets for the big guy to feed on…"
"And no sentient races for him to render extinct when he does feed on a planet," Windtalker added. "So Haruhi-sempai and Ayumu-chan — that's Infinity — created a pocket dimension to put the Crystal into and allowed it to break open and expand to full size. A gateway was open for Galactus to sail his Taa II world-ship into it and he went, ready to feast down and not have to worry about all the consequences."
"Yeah! Like they almost did to Reed Richards that one time," Carcajou added.
Shinobu was trying not to collapse to the ground because of the information onslaught her classmate and her friends were dumping on her. "My God…"
Wolverine gently grasped her shoulder. "Look, Shinobu-chan. We can question what Ataru did all those years to our heart's content. But look at what happened thanks to what Ataru did." He nodded to Terra. "When Black Adam nearly punched her heart out and Negako-sama cut his powers out of him with the soulsword, Ataru got Vicki here back to Yiziba to help her heal. And she got a Gift along the way." As Terra gaped at him, he winked at her. "It's the tint of meson that I'm smellin', darling. Can't miss it."
Ataru's would-be girlfriend sighed. "Well, I suppose that's always been a good point about Ataru-kun," she then used. "Before his disappeared, he was always so kind to girls. Right up to about what Sakura-sensei would have been at the time, I think." She then stared at Carcajou. "Did you and Ataru-kun ever…well…?"
The transformed Ryūnosuke's eyebrow arched. "Date?" A shake of the head. "Nah! I didn't see him that much after I got my Gift! And even if I can't stand Oyaji's idiot ideas about me being his 'son' and all that, I didn't want Ataru to come back and finish the job he stated before I went to Yiziba!" She then thumbed Rampage, who was standing just beyond the outer stone wall of Tomobiki High School with several of her friends from Sweet Valley as they gossiped with each other and Prodigy, with Caltrop standing nearby keeping an eye on her classmate. "'Sides, Jess Wakefield and Molly Hecht over there want the chance to do a pillow-scene with him. Loads of others want to do it with him, too. I always kinda suspected that Ayumu-chan and Haruhi-san might want to double-team him. Ditto with one of Ayumu-chan's friends from Nakano, Takino Tomo. Some other girls Ataru's met over the years…" A knowing smirk then crossed her face as she gazed on Terra. "And Vicki-chan's twin sister Tara's already done a few pillow-scenes with the guy! If anyone gets to marry him, it'll be her!"
As Shinobu gasped in shock and Sayo huffed up in righteous indignation at the idea of a young man actually deflowering a young girl the age of Victoria Markova, the others laughed. "Well, you can't blame Ataru-kun," Windtalker then stated. "Much less Tara-chan. If he didn't cut in when he did, she would've gone insane and probably helped Slade Wilson kill off the Titans two years ago!" As Shinobu gaped, the metahuman reporter added, "She's the original Terra. The girl who smokes all the time."
"What's the matter with smokin'?" Wolverine — who had drawn out a cigar from a cargo pocket on his belt — then asked as he lit up, and then he offered another one to Carcajou. "Need a light?" he asked as she took it, and then bit off the tip.
As she leaned in to get her cigar lit up, Shinobu just shook her head…
Nearby…
"So what do you think, Megane?"
Aisuru Satoshi — known to all his friends as "Megane," the bespectacled leader of Lum's Stormtroopers — shook his head. He and the other core members of the group — along with several other schoolmates from Tomobiki High and other schools — had gathered together near the place where the Second Tag Race had been run from over the previous five days. And no doubt would never be finished thanks to this evening's events. "I don't know, Chibi," he said as he gazed on the smallest of the quartet of alien otaku, Urayamu Akira, known as "Chibi." "I mean, part of me still can remember all the times we hung out with Ataru before Lum-san came into our lives, but now…"
"There's the part of me — and all of us, I'll bet — that knows it was all a damned lie!" Shitto Kōsuke — "Perm" — stated. "Ataru disappeared back before we even got into Onigakkō Elementary School! And he never came back until just a month before the First Tag Race! And then we…" A shudder shook his body before he breathed out. "Why the fuck did that happen to us, man?! WHO the fuck did that to us?!"
"Definitely the Men In Black were involved," Daremo Hiroyuki — "Kakugari" — added. "That's what I remember the day it happened. One guy in a black suit — lookin' like one of Mendō's Kuromegane — callin' out to everyone nearby…and then ZAP!"
"Nothing really changed," Perm noted. "Save for the fact…"
"We were all made to believe Ataru had always lived with his parents in Tomobiki," Megane finished. "Shinobu started dating him right away. How did THAT happen?"
"Could she have been forced?" Koi Shinjin — a classmate of the Stormtroopers who was believed to be as passionate towards Lum as Megane himself was — then asked.
A sigh. "I dunno, Shinjin. Hopefully, someone's going to come by and explain this whole mess to us. I sure as hell would like to know what was really going on!" Megane then gazed on his friends. "You remember what those Amerikajin metas said when they came here and met up with Wolverine! Ataru actually HELPED get them to this Yiziba place to help them all get super powers!" He then gazed on the school grounds…and the girl in the black-and-grey jumpsuit with fur tufts on her wrists and ankles, now sharing a cigar with one of the most famous of the X-Men. "Not to mention her."
The others looked. "Ryū-chan's friends with Wolverine," Kakugari said. "Man, that must have really thrown off Ryū-chan's old man at times! Actually getting his ass whipped by a guy who's got freakin' metal CLAWS in his arms?!"
Laughter filled the crowd…which was then interrupted by a moaning sniff which made all the boys turn to see one of the then-unknown alien girls — dressed in the Tomobiki High summer seifuku though they all knew she wasn't a student there — standing nearby, virtually on the verge of tears. "Hey! You okay?!" Perm asked as he walked over to place comforting hands on her shoulders, which made her gasp as she stared wide-eyed at him before she moved to shy away from him. "Hey…!"
A gulp. "Please forgive me, Kōsuke-sama…it's not permitted for us to interact with the Goddess' Holy Apostles or Holy Company…" She then turned to stare helplessly at the transformed Fujinami Ryūnosuke. "To believe…"
"Believe what?" Megane urged.
Another gulp. "That the Holy Friend Ryūnosuke-sama…she was actually…"
"Turned into a Yizibajohei."
Hearing that name, the girl turned as white as a ghost, screamed out in horror, and then took off in a cloud of dust and smoke down the street. As the Stormtroopers and their friends all blinked in shock on seeing THAT reaction from the alien girl on hearing the name of the people who had adopted Ryūnosuke — and most likely Ataru as well — into their society, a tired voice then trilled out, "Typical sames! Say a simple name and they think the Mother of All Fight Scenes was about to hit them!" A chuckle as the boys all turned to gaze at the Mistress of Time and Space, accompanied by the Goddess Who Walked Amongst Men. "Not that they're gonna be facing a planet-wide DEATH-SCENE if they don't wake up and smell the jasmine finally!"
"Holy shit…!"
Everyone turned to Mifune Hideyuki. Another member of the Stormtroopers' class, he had been a massive metahuman otaku before the memory-wipe made him a prime candidate to become part of Lum's unofficial fan-club when the Oni came to Earth full-time. "What?!" Megane demanded. "What the hell is it, Hideyuki?!"
"You're the Teens That Saved Earth!" Hideyuki declared. Noting the others blinking in confusion, he explained: "Four years ago, Galactus came here to consume all the life energy of the planet. All the heroes who lived in and around New York ganged up to stop him. They weren't getting anywhere, but then these two young girls — THESE TWO!" — he said as he pointed at Infinity and the Weaver — "Came outta NOWHERE to somehow talk that guy into leaving Earth once and for all! Don't you remember?!"
The others gaped. "Holy shit…" Chibi breathed out. "You did THAT?!"
"Well, it would'a been a really 'bleh' day if he did eat all of Earth's life energy!" Infinity said with a nonchalant shrug. "But then again, you can't blame the poor guy! All those billions of years ago, he woke up on his ship that survived the freakin' BIG BANG of all things…and when he looked at himself in the mirror and saw that he had grown to nearly NINE METRES TALL, he thought, 'Boy! How the heck am I gonna get food to eat lookin' like I do now?!'" As the Weaver started to giggle and all the boys — save for Hideyuki, who was looking on Infinity with awe — gaped, the transformed Kasuga Ayumu then said, "Next thing he knows, he heard this BIG growl from his stomach! 'Uh-oh!' he said. 'I better have something to eat!' Problem was, he didn't have any food on his ship at the time — replicators probably got wrecked when it got sucked into the Primal Atom — and he started lookin' around before he starved!"
"Fortunately for the poor guy, there was a planet nearby named Archeopia," the Weaver added. "He sensed that he could only absorb pure life energy from a planet that was producing life, so he built his cosmic converter and sucked the place dry!"
"He probably burped after that happened," Infinity added.
All the boys save Hideyuki fell face-first into the ground on hearing that…
An in a pocket dimension…
"AH-CHOO!"
"Bless you, Master! Are you alright?!"
A certain Taaian explorer-turned-omnipotent devourer of worlds moaned as he reached up with a gloved hand to feel his nose. "It is nothing, Nova," Galactus said as he turned to gaze on his herald, the former Frankie Raye of Earth. "But I suspect…"
"What?" the golden-skinned girl with the flaming corona of hair asked.
"That Infinity is speaking about me in her rather irreverent way."
Nova blinked, and then she sighed. She had become Galactus' herald in the incident where the two young Japanese-born reality-warpers had popped onto the scene to persuade Galactus to turn away from Earth once and for all to feast on the planets of the neutron galaxy that had once been trapped within the M'Kraan Crystal. And while there were things about Earth she missed a lot — and she was wondering if she was actually finding herself attracted to the living god looming nearby — she sure as heck wouldn't want to confront the women born Kasuga Ayumu or Suzumiya Haruhi anytime soon.
"Well, let's hope it's good talk," she then cautioned…
Back in Tomobiki…
"Hey, Infy! Weavey-chan!"
"Ah!" Infinity said as she turned to raise her hand in greeting to two of her current classmates who had also received Gifts from the Great Crystal of Power. "Warwind-chan! Searcher-chan! Are the others come here too?!" she asked as the transformed Takino Tomo — Warwind — and her best friend Mizuhara Koyomi — Soul Searcher — came up.
Warwind had her hand raised in greeting to her fellow "bonkura" from Azuma High School. "So what's up?!" she asked. "We getting a good fight-scene going or what?!"
The Weaver moaned. "What the hell's the matter with you, anyway?! All you care about is fight-scenes and more fight-scenes! Can't you think of something better?!"
"Hey! I got all this pent-up energy from us being made to FORGET what Ataru-kun did for all of us!" Warwind exclaimed. "I gotta burn it off somehow!"
The Weaver and Soul Searcher moaned. Watching this quartet of superheroes discuss something like THAT from nearby, all the Tomobiki High students blinked. "Hey! Hideyuki! You know these two girls?!" Perm asked as he pointed at the newcomers.
"Yeah," Hideyuki said. "The girl in the leather one-piece is Warwind. She's like the Hulk; the more excited she gets, the stronger she gets. She even clocked Captain Marvel a good one — right into orbit in fact! — about three years ago!"
Everyone gaped. To believe this slender black-haired, brown-eyed Japanese girl in the black one-piece swimsuit-like uniform made of leather — topped with thigh-high boots with thick heels and bicep-high fingerless gloves, the boots and gloves decorated with silver bands at equidistant points over the leather — was strong enough to hit CAPTAIN MARVEL right into orbit! "And th-the other one…?" a sputtering Megane wondered as he tried to understand what possessed Ataru to help THIS wildcat to become THAT!
«Soul Searcher.»
Silence.
"Holy SHIT! You're a TELEPATH!" Kakugari gasped.
A nod. "Hai, Hiroyuki-kun, I am," Soul Searcher stated. "And believe me when I say this, Satoshi-kun: I often wonder what the hell Ataru-kun was thinking, too!"
Warwind perked as she gazed on her taller friend in the martial arts gi-like jumpsuit — the pattern seemed to be somewhat standard for Yizibajohei — that was black overall with white hourglass-shaped icons on the chest, arms and legs, the whole topped with safety goggles over her brown eyes and white slip-on shoes over her feet. "What?!" she demanded. "What the hell are you talking about?! What WAS Ataru-kun thinking?!"
The transformed Mizuhara Yomi grinned. "My secret."
She then headed off towards the school. Warwind blinked, and then she snarled before storming off after her childhood friend. As the Tomobiki High boys watched them go, Infinity blinked before she gazed on Weaver. "What was Ataru-kun thinking of?"
The transformed Suzumiya Haruhi blinked before she howled with laughter as we…
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Sun, 18 Mar 2012 04:13)
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.