"Different customs?" asked Sanri.
Unri nodded. "Expect so. I'm a little more concerned that our Master didn't react in the ways that males are supposed to. Perhaps he's not into dancing?"
"Might still be a cultural thing," pointed out Sanri.
Kasumi said something then, long and involved.
Sanri nodded and replied back in the same language before translating for Unri.
"I don't trust the girl there, she reminds me of some of the Matron's friends," Unri told her sister. "She's staring at us as if wondering how much we would fetch on the open market."
Nabiki eyed the gold (real gold!) decorating the visible portions of flesh. The twins were dressed nearly identically. The two were dark skinned and white haired and (as near as Nabiki could tell) identical from the tips of their pointed ears to their thin sandals.
They were dressed in cloaks and carrying something like backpacks. Under the cloaks they were wearing darn little, thin bits of ripped fabric for the most part.
Then there was the important stuff. The jewelry.
Both were wearing identical jewelry except that the color of the stones were different. One had reddish-purple stones, the other had stones in shades of green. They were in the elaborate earrings. They were in the elaborate collars. They were in the clasps that held the cloaks in place. They were in the rings that adorned their middle finger and middle toe that had chains to the cuffs at wrist and ankle. The stones were not present on the gold bands decorating thumb and the other fingers. The stones glittered on the armbands.
Gold! Not only gold but artistically worked gold!
Much much money in her future.
"(You come Ranma from where?)" Kasumi asked in Elvish.
"(We two come Underdark Ranma with,)" said Sanri in equally clumsy Elvish. Actually it was Auld High Aelvish, but close enough.
"(You is...)" Kasumi tried to find a word from the Tolkein Elvish that meant 'fiancee' or maybe... "(friend is of Ranma?)"
"(Know word, not know meaning,)" said Sanri. "(We be raised as slave for sacrifice. Ranma find and save we. We now slave for Ranma.)"
"(Not know words,)" confessed Kasumi. "(What mean 'slave' and 'sacrifice'?)"
"(Sacrifice what old... Lord want do,)" said Sanri. Which was followed with a brief explanation of ritual torture followed by the ripping out of their hearts and presenting them on an alter for a dark goddess.
Kasumi twitched and was considerably paler. "(That is... not goodly.)"
"(Then,)" began Sanri, giving the details of their capture, eminent torture and likely inclusion on the dinner menu.
"(Pardon my leaves be brown,)" said a severely rattled Kasumi.
"(Then Ranma-lord save us, so we swear serve him,)" finished Sanri.
Nabiki was still staring at the gold and imagining all sorts of ways of parting the obviously idiotic elves from that gold.
Genma, Soun, and Ranma had all been noticing how pale and sick Kasumi had begun looking during her conversation with the one elf girl.
"So what did they say?" Soun asked, ready to throw the little monsters out if they were a threat to the union of the two schools.
Akane came out and sat FAR away from the two girls, eyeing them distrustfully.
"Okay," said Kasumi, not wanting to mess this up and understanding the situation somewhat now. She still had some details wrong, but she had a better grasp of this than she had had when Shampoo's introductions were being held.
"Okay?" Ranma asked.
Kasumi began speaking with only the occasional break for breath or take a drink of tea and steady herself.
"These two are Sanri and Unri, they were the household servants of a Lady whose name I couldn't catch. They are identical twins except for the eye color, and they were due to be sacrificed to some sort of spider-goddess in a little over a week. Said sacrifice to start off with their eyes being put out, their faces scarred, knives driven through their limbs into the altar to hold them in place, and eventually to having their hearts cut out of their bodies."
Soun swallowed nervously. "Truly?"
Kasumi nodded. "They staged an escape and planned on making their way to the surface world where they'd heard some priestesses of a dancing elf were supposedly operating. When they reached the surface they were attacked by uruk-hai who would have tortured them with hot irons and then minced them up to make a stew out of their flesh and decorative objects from their bones."
"Which is when I found them," guessed Ranma.
"Yes. They have now sworn themselves to be your clan retainers," said Kasumi.
"So, is that real gold?" Nabiki asked.
Kasumi asked a question. Sanri answered. Kasumi nodded at several points.
"Well?" Nabiki asked.
"It's real gold, some of it enchanted, that they stole in order to buy passage once they'd reached the surface world," said Kasumi.
(Posted Tue, 02 Sep 2003 12:43)
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.