In the end the mortal, named Ranma, had turned to Urd and pleaded, "Actually, I don't think I can make my wish right now, Urd-sama. How about I make it when I get back from my training trip?"
Urd had looked at the expression, that Ranma had turned upon her, and could not believe that she was being subjected to such an old trick. 'Surely he can't think that would work on me? I know every trick in the book and that has to be one of the oldest and most commonly used!' she had thought with a scoff.
Urd mentally cursed her earlier weakness as she floated alongside the bouncing martial artist. 'Memo to self: Be wary of other 'old' and 'common' tricks. They probably have been used so much because of how good they are. Puppy-dog-eyes-pleading.. how can anyone resist that..?'
Naturally, that mortal never stopped to think that his new companion was not enjoying their tour through nature. 'He probably thinks the whole world is full of demented grasshoppers on speed!' Urd grumbled again at her pitiful fate.
She had been following the boy for a while and had long ago gotten tired of the experience. She had a feeling that this was all some kind of demented punishment scheme by someone that she had tricked in the past, but there was nothing she could do about it. She was stuck.. bonded to the lamp as much as the lamp was bonded to its owner.
According to the wish granting laws, a substitution in wish granters could not be made once a contract had been initialized. From the moment Ranma had rubbed the lamp and freed its fill-in genie (her) to grant his wish, until the moment he actually made the wish, she could not leave Ranma's company.
Which in turn meant that, when Ranma went bouncing through the trees, she was dragged along for the ride. Her only choice was whether to let the bond keep her within acceptable range which would mean repeatedly receiving facefulls of trees, or willingly making a path herself under her own power at the same pace as the lamp's master.
Periodically Urd would lapse into either a mental or light mumble that the boy she was keeping even with couldn't overhear, but every so often she would shout outright at the sky.. which was in turn followed by a lightning bolt crashing nearby in warning to her from her father. Those shouts had become less frequent though after Urd figured out that the boy's fear of rain changing his body was making him speed up the pace with each lightning strike.
"Try to be nice and substitute in so someone can get their degree, and this is the thanks I get.. stuck having to tag along on some kind of a wilderness oddyssey like extra luggage," Urd grumbled.
The mortal she was following seemed almost determined to kill himself. Urd wished this was a goddess-type wish so she could have gotten the full file on the guy instead of just a brief list of possible things to wish for in case of requests.
'Stupid wish-granting rules. Stupid wish-delaying mortals.' Urd thought angrily while she was dragged hither and yon by the boy as he bounced in and out of the trees.
Urd groaned as she again misjudged the speed the boy was travelling at and floated smack into a tree she attempted to slalom past. 'How can this guy possibly be going this fast? There's no way a common mortal could move even half this fast with just their leg power.'
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(Posted Fri, 11 Jul 2003 03:28)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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