Leaning against the rail of an airship as it took off from Crossport in the Shadarian Empire, he wondered what his future held.
His past? His past seemed to go further and further away from him the longer he spent here. It had been an entire day and a half, his reckoning. Ah, the pleasant memories of Furinkan.
"Pfeh, I must be getting sick or something, standing around philosophizing like that," complained Ranma.
"You say what?" said a three foot tall mouse wearing a vest and overcoat, with a truly ridiculous hat atop the whole thing.
"Just talking to myself," Ranma assured the mouseling. "This is my first airship trip, y'know. Not counting a blimp ride from Kirin's place."
"I hire you as bodyguard, young hume," said the mouseling. "I'm go my cabin and lock in for a rest. If you want wander and see ship, you can do so."
"Alright," said Ranma, his curiosity getting free rein now. The moment he'd seen one of these things he'd thought Miyazaki must have been here ahead of him. All sorts of weird shapes and turning propellers and he'd not seen how they'd stayed aloft. Magic, he supposed. Just a damn sight more useful than the sort he was used to.
He'd run across Heftanzer Selk, representive of a small group of mouseling farmers, while evading those gals in that race thing. Some of them had grabbed him, thrown a sack over him, then ran off with him, but he thought he'd escaped before they had crossed that finish line.
Least ways he hoped so. Otherwise it was Shampoo over again except that these gals apparently knew he was a guy even if he was a girl at the time.
Apparently it was dangerous to go abroad, and though he normally didn't use a weapon - people expected him to have a weapon anyway. Ranma didn't want to raise too much attention, so he found a nice bo staff that had iron caps at both ends and brass rings set every two hand widths across its length. Sturdy but flexible. That and a dagger were his weapons. Daggers were worn by darn near everyone, it being a multipurpose tool as well as weapon of last resort.
It was because of the danger that the three foot tall portly mouse (too much good food and ale, confessed the mouseling in question) wanted a bodyguard. Most trips were completely uneventful, in which case Ranma figured he'd made a little money the easy way. There were still pirates, flying monsters, the occasional storm, and the like. Guarding a farmer out to get his village a contract for supplying bottles of crescentfruit to some group in Nihon sounded like a way to not only make some of the local currency, but to see more of this world Akane had exiled him to. Not to mention he was making the acquaintance of farmers who apparently liked to strap on the old feedbag. His kinda folks - people who loved to eat prodigious amounts and wouldn't mind setting an extra place at dinner. Heh.
The airship was going up at a fairly quick pace, Ranma noted. He'd just gotten to the rail when the propellers had started turning fast and a weird vibration had passed through the ship. Now they'd left those cradle-things way down there. He figured they were maybe a thousand feet up so within a couple of minutes. It kinda felt like being in an elevator.
Ranma fished around in a pocket for a "copper piece" to get a mug full of some odd soup one of the waiter-types was wheeling around on the deck. Something hot to sip at while the temperature dropped on deck. In the city it had been kinda like May or so in Tokyo, kinda humid and warm. Now it felt more October from the temperature, kinda nippy.
The ship itself was wood for the most part and sort of resembled a dolphin or something. Big sucker though.
The people on the ship were kinda interesting too, Ranma thought.
Elves were among the most human-looking, except for the ears and the thin look to them. Most of them tended to cluster among themselves and ignore the other species, though Ranma thought a few of them looked a bit friendlier.
There were more of them halflings. Some were mouselings, some were more c-c-c-at-like. Some were kinda badger-ish. Others reminded him of orangutan or something.
"A human?"
Ranma rolled his eyes, someone'd figured out what he was.
Apparently humans were very very very rare. Out of a population of maybe four or five million beings in the Empire, there were maybe six humans. All from the past like himself. Most people saw him and thought he was one of those males of the Delphins who was out to prove himself. Some clued in that he wasn't of that race and not an elf.
"It is! It's a real human!"
Ranma groaned. He hadn't even gotten off the first deck and now he was gonna have to deal with this. Every human to come to this future world had made a reputation of some kind, the most famous being Mannin Shades, the Emperor who'd founded the Shadarian Empire and given the rest a reputation as uncommonly fertile, sexual dynamos, and full of odd talents and the ability to pull a victory out when everyone else was expecting painful death.
Ranma turned to see he was being hounded by:
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(Posted Sat, 21 Feb 2004 14:07)
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