The universal law of mass chase scenes states that every chase must encounter one or more of the following:
Yoshie and Hikaru Mifuda were intimately familiar with this universal law, having run afoul of it many, many times during their career as fruit-and-vegetable merchants. They had just set up their cart at a convenient street corner in Nerima, when Hikaru felt his merchant-sense tingling. Did he just hear something?
"Is something the matter, Anata?" asked Yoshie, as she stacked the last squash onto the pile.
Hikaru tried to quantify his growing sense of unease. What was it that suddenly made him so tense? "I don't know. Do you hear... music?"
The couple strained their ears, and indeed - somewhere far in the distance faint strains of music disturbed the air. Faint strains that grew less and less faint by the second. With a sinking stomach Hikaru recognized the saxophone line. This wasn't just any kind of music - this was chase scene music!
Yoshie and Hikaru looked at each other, sweatdrops forming, then dove for cover as one, just as a marching band barrelled around the corner at full tilt, never pausing in belting out their raucous tune. They were accompanied by a classical progression of crazed people chasing each other with a variety of improvised blunt instruments, many of them in advanced stages of undress.
For one crazy moment Hikaru wondered how they had formed a marching band that included a full-size honky-tonk piano (the band leader would gladly have informed him, that this was what made it martial arts), but then the chase slammed into his cart, immediately triggering explosive decomposition.
It was a very classic shower of humorous fruit, containing just the right mixture of squashy pumpkins, heavy watermelons, and overripe tomatoes. Even the guy with the ladder had to admit that he'd rarely seen such quality in flying produce. Melons thumped onto heads, eliciting small clouds of stars and tweety birds; tomatoes clogged trombones and tubas, to be expelled again with humorous squawks and at high speeds; heads got stuck in pumpkins, leading to many a collision and pratfall; and when the shower of cucumbers hit the group of Busty Stripper Nymphomaniac Film Stars, spectators along the street covered the eyes of their children.
The whole collision lasted no more than ten or fifteen seconds, before the chase turned the next corner and the music faded into the distance once more. Left behind was a scene of devastation.
Hikaru crawled out of his cover with his wife and surveyed the remains of his cart, while absent-mindedly picking a stray cabbage leaf out of his hair. "All right," he said to Yoshie, "This is it. That was the final straw. As of today I'm finished with the humorous-fruit-and-vegetable business. That was the last time I had my day ruined by a mob chase scene. Tomorrow we're getting a market stall. My brother has been pestering me for years to join his excitable chicken sales business, and I already know where I can get a good deal on a bunch of rickety, easily breakable cages."
Yoshie just heaved a sigh and said, "Yes dear."
Akane was in a state of high agitation. Part of this was because she would notice her state of undress, if she allowed herself to stop and calm down even for a moment, and then she'd just die of shame. All the yelling, shoving and crazy music around her wasn't helping either. That pervert, Ryouga! she thought. I'll stomp him flat! I'll mallet him into next week! (Wow, Shampoo-chan sure looks hot in that ribbon) I'll moider da bum!
She wasn't really paying attention where she was chasing him - which meant that Ryouga was effectively leading the entire procession...
Kenichi Sato dusted off his hands and looked with pride over the preparations for the big day tomorrow. This was going to be the most spectacular opening of a Burger Barn™ franchise that Nerima had ever seen! Of course, it was also going to be the first opening of a Burger Barn™ franchise it had ever seen, but that was beside the point.
He had thought of everything. He had flyers printed and spread around town; he had tons of cheap merchandising to give away; he had underpaid students in hot, smelly costumes acting as the Burger Barn™ mascots; and most importantly he had the large plywood barn with the corporate logo splashed across the front set up on the square before the restaurant. Tomorrow, when the banners were up and the music was playing and the hot, smelly students were handing out the cheap merchandising, nobody could miss the fact that Burger Barn™ had come to Nerima!
Kenichi was about to call it a day and leave, when he became aware of a strange musical commotion that was rapidly growing louder. It sounded almost like a marching band proceeding at a flat-out run, while accompanied by large groups of angry, excited, and shouting people. Kenichi had to chuckle at his overactive imagination - what a ridiculous thought!
He turned around to leave, which allowed him to gasp and grow really wide-eyed with shock, before the marching band proceeding at a flat-out run, while accompanied by large groups of angry, excited, and shouting people slammed into him, trampling him to the ground. A loud crunch signalled that the chase had entered the barn, not bothering with opening the barn doors first.
As Kenichi painfully levered himself up from the ground, he saw his precious barn shudder and shake, while terrible and strange noises came from within. Finally with a loud crash the chase exited the barn on the opposite side of its new entrance. The naked boy with the bandanna was still in the lead, while the almost naked girl with the mallet was perched precariously on the back of a snorting bull, holding onto its horns for dear life. The shouting boy in the robes had been replaced by a quacking duck with glasses, while the topless girl and the gift-wrapped girl uneasily shared the back of a running jackass and the ninja girl was hanging onto its tail. The rest of the procession was liberally sprinkled with squawking, excitable chickens.
This would have been perfectly logical after rampaging through a barn - if Kenichi hadn't known for a fact that this was nothing more than a plywood shack, containing only some stacks of cheap merchandise. Through the gaping hole in the side wall, Kenichi could see said merchandise lying completely trampled all over the ground. One last chicken fluttered out of the hole and angrily pecked the wall. The barn collapsed.
Kenichi Sato looked at the wreckage of tomorrow's big day and started to cry.
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(Posted Fri, 21 Feb 2003 12:47)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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