The Eye of God watches over all. Even over a walking plague of filthy heathen like the Japanese.
Ranma steamed a bit at the memory of hearing those words directed toward him. Archbishop Maxwell had been in one foul mood when he gave the mission orders to Ranma. A prime chance to strike a blow at the impudent Brits and the stupid boy had let it slip through his fingers! The superintendant priest had been even less restrained with his rhetoric that day than he usually was, and no one who spent any considerable amount of time in Enrico Maxwell's presence would call the man's rants on Church dogma politically correct, even on the best of days. And that's coming from inside Section XIII, where the people agreed with him.
As it was, Rome had a number of footholds in Japan. Most of them were in well established, Westernized areas of major cites like Tokyo or Osaka. There were a few smaller areas (chapels, missions, and the like) in the sticks as well. Those small sites of worship weren't great for finding new converts; they were too localized and undermanned, and couldn't expand their influence far away, not compared to the large urban churches. Nor were they good for collections either; the communities they served were too small and not prosperous enough to support much more than self-sufficiency for the single church and maybe a few charity works a year. They performed the sacraments for their flocks and had modest holiday celebrations, and that was pretty much it.
Ranma stepped through the outer garden of the lavishly constructed Tokyo Church of Christ, moving past the outer offices and up the grand staircase to the inner chapel of the church, all the while idly gazing out at the city skyline through the windows on the way. No, a few small houses of worship scattered about the agricultural fields around the Japanese coast weren't really going to pull in converts or enlarge the Papal coffers on a grand scale.
Not that Maxwell cared, of course. Promoting the expansion of the faith wasn't Iscariot's business anyway. And as far as the man was concerned, the Order's charter (secret as it was to most of the Church hierarchy) amply provided him with an assured influx of funding from the Vatican treasury to use as deemed fit. As long as the Archbishop's subordinates did their job of killing everything that threatened the welfare and authority of the Church, Section XIII would never be lacking the resources it needed to kill everything that threatened the welfare and authority of the Church some more.
Amen.
But what a bunch of small chapels in the less developed areas of Japan were useful for was keeping an eye out for the supernatural. Out in the country, there were always some brand or other of putrid "bakemono" looking to prey on the innocent, where the harsh electric lights and sterile, structured environment of the city didn't reach. Every so often reports of bizarre incidents and odd occurances would flow out of the Japanese countryside and join their brethren from across the globe in a pile on top of Father Renaldo's desk, to be reviewed and filtered and put in Enrico Maxwell's little To-Do box every morning bright and early 6:00 A.M. Roman time, where they would be reviewed some more and then be placed into queue for distribution to the field agents for disposition.
Ranma absently dropped some coins into the collection plate by the door to the chapel proper, before approaching the cross at the front of the nave and kneeling in prayer to the Lord for strength in his upcoming trials. Most of the reports that Iscariot received weren't worth bothering with. Hoaxes and pranks, false alarms and wild stories, those were easy to identify and toss out, especially for a man who had been doing it for as many years as Father Renaldo. Of the few that were deemed important enough for the Order's head himself to see, it was a simple matter to call up one of the Order's knights or paladins, load him down with blessed ordinance, hand him a plane ticket, and a week or so later, hey! Problem's dead.
This particular mission that the Archbishop had given to Ranma was quite a routine one. A small prefectural parish had reported that the local population had been disturbed lately by sightings of a mysterious figure, not human by most accounts. When local law enforcement (such as it was in the area) failed to find and apprehend the figure, a group of locals went searching for it themselves. When they came back a bloody mess, screaming about demonic attacks, a troupe of native Shinto priests were dispatched, with the same result. Beaten and apparently humiliated by this supernatural power, the locals relayed the incident to the nearest mission in desperation, and lo and behold, it wound up on Iscariot's doorstep.
From the sound of it, that was nothing incredibly special. Numerous creatures of the Oriental traditions were known to be powerful, reclusive, and violently intolerant of humans searching for them. This sort of thing happened often enough, and was hardly unique to Japan, or even to Asia.
Maxwell had thought it an excellent mission for Ranma. It was a simple investigate and exterminate mission, the kind that Ranma excelled at and was most experienced with. It got Ranma out into the countryside by himself where he could reflect on the consequences of his recent failure to adhere to Iscariot policy (death to every and all midians, in case it needed to be said). He would be in his own country, where he had claimed to have wanted to return to and get some off time for quite a while. And it got him far, far away from Maxwell, before the Archbishop gave into temptation and sentenced him to indefinite Vatican janitorial duty.
So here Ranma was, back in his homeland, waiting for his guide to pick him up so he could get on with his task.
Seeing that he was still quite a bit early for the meeting with his contact, Ranma sat down in a convenient pew and started thumbing through his personal pocket Bible, readying himself for a good hour's worth of waiting. After all, one never knew when one could snatch a moment of peace as a paladin of Section XIII.
Ah, but wasn't this mission both simple and complex? What's so complex about such an ordinary mission? Why would Iscariot even bother with such a problem, when they typically dealt with far more belligerent monsters? A solitary creature that didn't even kill the seekers that irritated it? Why send a paladin of Ranma's caliber?
Well, it turns out that a member of the original group of villagers who were attacked, one of the less physical types who tended to stay toward the back of a mob, had had the forethought to bring along a camera. The report sent in by the local priest had included a rather blurry, but still somewhat useful photo of the creature in question.
The thing in the picture was:
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(Posted Sat, 14 Feb 2004 09:08)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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