It reigned in the church interior as the small congregation stared in surprise at their new priest.
"Hello!"
Or at least it did until said priest decided that he might as well break the ice himself, since no one else was exactly volunteering. Then the silence made way for a good deal of noise.
"You're kidding me!"
"This kid's our new priest!?"
"He couldn't be older than seventeen!"
"How the heck did he get ordained?"
"Ya see, this was what I was talkin' about! Those officials at the Bishop's office are just doin' this to kind of thing to make fun of us small villages! This is going to far! To send to our parish a young boy!? This was just like that time when they-"
Ranma struggled to keep a straight face. In the end, it was a close thing.
The sun was high in the sky when the church doors opened up and the tiny congregation took its exit from the holy grounds. Bidding his new flock goodbye for the day, Ranma firmly shut and secured the gates and headed back into the church to unpack his things.
The church... well, it wasn't that great. Ranma had seen better, far better ones. Though that didn't mean much, since he had seen far worse ones as well, but that wasn't something he dwelled on for very long. It was a rather average size, nothing like the cathedrals in Italy, but far larger than he would have expected for something catering to a village as isolated as the one he was in. Sorta classical stoneworking from his rather inexpert eye, with some decent masonry ornamentation here and there. The whole thing was rather crumbly from a casual glance, but it had the usual house of worship itself, with a steepled roof and cross, and then a small living-structure connected to it for the use of the caretakers.
The caretakers being just Ranma, of course. The villagers had kept the place pretty well cleaned while they were waiting for their new priest to arrive, the inside if not the outside, but they foisted all the upkeep duties onto him the first chance they got. Though Ranma really couldn't fault them for it; the harvest season was starting and they really couldn't spare the time, he knew.
The inside of the church was rather spacious, which had surprised Ranma when he had first seen it, especially when it was filled by the congregation. Well, "filled" probably wasn't a good word, as far as he was concerned. There were only a bare handful of worshippers: three middle-aged couples, a younger family with a child, and a few men and women. It was hardly enough to fill up even a fourth of the pews. Apparently the place had been more successful in days gone by; now the congregation was dwindling to only a few families.
There wasn't much else: a basement for storage, a small garden outside, a smaller cemetery in the back. It was quite a humble little place.
Stepping inside his own room, Ranma started to go through his things, putting away his spare clothing and getting the documents he had brought with him in order. That was another thing, he'd have to look through the books to see what his income was in this place; it would be a hard job if he couldn't manage his finances. Not that there would be much of an income, he knew; there would have to be rationing of the meals until he got a handle on how the church expenses went from week to week.
What he wouldn't give for some sort of assistant right about now... but this church had been undermanned for years before the previous priest left. Ranma knew it wasn't his place to complain about such things.
Idly turning random thoughts in his head, Ranma collected his keys and left the grounds some time later. No trenchcoat or gloves - it wasn't that cold outside, yet - but with an extra sweater and his cross pendant hanging from his neck as it usually was, Ranma slowly walked down the forest path to the village proper. The church was at least a twenty minute walk away; it was on a wooded hill quite a ways from the village itself. The poor dirt path was crumbly and broken with roots and weeds, probably quite a chore to walk through on rainy days if it got muddy. The trees to either side of the path were old and misshapened, their branches reaching into the opened space of the path like sinister, gnarled fingers trying to grab passerby to drag them into the darkness of the forest beyond-- not that it mattered to him, sheesh. And besides, it's high noon on a bright sunny day. Kinda wrecks the whole creepiness thing.
Ranma scoffed. This was shaping up to one huge cliched horror movie setup. If he had to go off hunting, couldn't he do something new every once in a while? A small church in the woods? It's like all of his targets get their hideout ideas from Late-Nite horror B-movie marathons.
Ranma spent the rest of the walk thinking happy thoughts. Like getting into another eating contest with the kids when he got back. He always won those no matter how many challengers he had.
"Is there something wrong?" Ranma asked of the villagers standing in an encasing circle around him.
What strange circumstances. Apparently these country folk didn't take too well to his presence. Ranma had hardly stepped foot into the village when he had been surrounded and questioned.
"And just who the hell are you?" asked on particularly gruff man in front of him without the slightest effort to cover the hostility in his tone.
"Merely a humble servant of the Lord, I assure you," Ranma replied without seeming the least bit perturbed. "I'm the new priest that arrived today, and I thought I'd take a look around the village, that's all."
The surrounding villagers took in this information and muttered amongst themselves. Some grudgingly accepted the idea and lost interest, heading off to do whatever it was they were doing. Most stayed around, and Ranma carefully noted that the hostility in their eyes didn't lessen at all.
One of the remaining villagers spoke up: "So you're the new caretaker for that old dump on the hill, eh?"
"That's me."
The villager snorted. "Yeah, you Christians and your ilk, always coming along where you're not needed. You listen to me boy, you'd better mind your own business around here if you know what's good for yourself. Don't be going around and preaching in the damned street like the last guy. We don't need you and your religion around here, we got enough to worry about! You just keep to yourself and we won't drive you out like we did him, you got me?"
"I gotcha, sir," Ranma answered after making a show of musing it over, "I'll try not to be a bother while I'm here."
Glaring at the little twerp who was obviously not taking him seriously, the villager snapped out a "You'd better" before stalking off down the street, the rest of the crowd dispersing as he did so.
Ranma let out a sigh of relief as the villagers stopped focusing on him and started pointedly ignoring his existence. It wasn't as if he had expected to be welcomed with open arms or anything. If anything, that was a pretty tame welcome as far as such things went; small villages were like that.
And anyway, if he hadn't wanted to interact with the locals, he could have taken the 'basement window' approach.
"Father Saotome?"
Ranma turned toward the voice that called him and saw someone he recognized. It was one of his congregation from that morning, the mother of the young family. "Er, Yamanaka-san, wasn't it?"
The young woman nodded. "I'm sorry you had to go through that, Father, but really everyone's been very uptight lately. And the village has never really been taken with our church, so they might not be too friendly at first."
"It's perfectly fine," Ranma cheerily replied. "I'm sure they'll come around eventually. Oh! Isn't that your family over there?"
"Yes, would you like to join us for dinner tonight, Father? I'm sure you're not settled down at your quarters yet."
"Oh, I don't really want to impose on your kindness, Yamanaka-san."
"I insist! Come on, come on, join us!"
"Okay, but you don't have to drag me! Really!"
Ranma tiredly fell into bed as he finally finished checking through the church inventory. He had planned on doing all of that in the afternoon, but the Yamanakas had pulled him around the village the entire time, showing him the place, and at last finally fed him and turned him loose for the night. So he had to stay up long into the night, reading records and searching through storage rooms to make sure everything was where it should be.
At least going around the village with guides was better than trying to figure out everything by himself. He had almost ran into another two "situations" with the locals, but the Yamanakas were a well-liked family and they managed to head off any trouble. Ranma smiled to himself. There was a nice family. And the little girl that they had was certainly cute enough to sucker a poor priest into buying her some candy when her parents weren't looking.
The villagers still didn't like him at all. The husband had explained that the previous priest was rather overzealous in his preaching, just like that villager had claimed, and upset a local harvest ceremony some time back, so the villagers started becoming cold to the church and its congregation. Eventually the priest couldn't stay any longer in the face of such hostility (not actually driven off), and so now here he was. That and there was apparently some sort of trouble the villagers were having, but when he pushed the conversation in that direction, the Yamanakas started to stonewall. Village problem, they had said, and he needn't worry about it. Ranma hadn't pressed.
A plan. That's what he needed. He didn't know much about his target's nature. He knew even less about its abilities. How long should he wait for the villagers to get used to him before starting to poke around for clues? He could start hunting the woods soon enough, but he also had to be around to take care of any of his regular duties; the flock would become suspicious if he was never around, when he by all rights shouldn't be anywhere else. Where would be a good place to fight it out in case he ever confronted it? It was always better to choose the battlefield and stack the odds in his favor in these exorcisms.
Ranma's eyes fell on the pack at the foot of his bed, and his thoughts fell on the folder that was still in it.
No. No, he couldn't be absolutely certain about the information in it, and that might as well have made it useless. Besides, that information was more than a decade old, he couldn't trust that it would be useful, or even applicable now. He'd definitely have to churn up some more recent facts to get a working picture of his target.
Sliding off the bed, Ranma kneeled and performed his nightly prayer, then lied down on the bed again.
Too many unknowns. It would have been much easier if the villagers had simply accepted him easily into their fold... but there wasn't any point in wishing about that now. He'll have to think about it some more later.
With that, Ranma fell asleep.
The door to the nave opened, and a figure silently entered. Keeping to the shadows, it crossed the spacious room, reached into a small compartment under one of the pews and removed two items. Taking the items, it curled up on the pew, resting its head on one and draping the other over its shivering form.
With that, it fell asleep.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Mon, 20 Sep 2004 15:37)
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.