Chapter 23
Stopping to catch her breath, Akane rested at
the top of shrine's strenuous staircase. Just how many steps had there
been? She'd quit counting at two hundred seventy-six. Squaring her
shoulders she marched up to the house and pounded on the door.
An
immaculately dressed, russet haired young man in a dark business suit
opened the door, his eyebrow quirking upwards when he saw the odd-ball
crowd gathered outside the door. "Yes. How may I help you?"
"I want to talk with Saotome Ranma." Akane said through gritted teeth.
He
opened the door wider and stepped back, "Please follow me, I'll see if
he's available." As soon as they had all filled in, he shut the door and
turned down the hall, gesturing for them to follow.
Pausing he
motioned for them to wait as he entered a room, from within they could
hear him speak. "Father, some people are here to see you."
"Oh," Everyone heard Ranma's voice answer in annoyance. "Well come in than."
Stiffly
they entered the room. The occupants re-seated themselves to make room
for the new numbers. A stunningly handsome man, wearing glasses with
short-cropped white haired in a charcoal suit sat beside an equally
beautiful woman who was dressed in a soft pink blouse and skirt, her
long black hair elegantly restrained atop her head in a chignon.
Beside
the woman was the youngest Higurashi child, the boy Souta. A rather
ordinary teenager wearing the navy coloured uniform of a private high
school. Too his left was his grandfather, in his usual Shinto priest
garments, as well as his mother. Matching dark brown hair and dark eyes,
she wore a blue sweater and floral print skirt.
Beside the eldest
Higurashi woman was her daughter, the young woman named Kagome. She was
wearing a green turtleneck and black slacks. Beside her was Ranma, in his customary kung-fu pants and Chinese-style shirt.
It
was at Ranma's side that the man who'd answered the door seated himself
beside another lovely black haired and eyed woman whose hair was
confined in a single long braid that hung down her back. She was dressed
in a woman's business suit that was a warm golden-brown.
"Good evening," Mrs. Higurashi greeted cheerfully, giving them a smile reminiscent of Kasumi's.
"Good
evening," Akane returned stiffly, "I am Tendo Akane, and this is my
father Soun and my sister, Nabiki. With me are Hibiki Ryoga, Kuonji
Ukyo, Shampoo, and Mousse, as well as Kuno Tatewaki and his sister
Kodachi. And this is Saotome Genma."
With each introduction, a
name was attached to a face in memory, and a thorough and brutal
inspection made. Each member of the Nerima Wrecking Crew had to fight
the urge to fidget when they were evaluated in turn.
"As I'm sure
you already know," Ranma drawled as he looked pointedly at Nabiki, "This
is Seibuinutaiso Sesshoumaru and his wife Rin. This is the Higurashi
family, Higurashi Asami, her father, and her two children Kagome and
Souta. And these two are Toyota Shippou and his wife Souten."
"Excuse me for a moment," Kagome murmured as she stood, "I have to go make a phone call."
Ranma gave a brief nod as he continued to eye his visitors. "Well what do you wish to talk about?"
"You're disgraceful attitude and recent actions my son!" Genma began angrily. "It's time you come home and do your duty!"
Ranma
merely gave a humph of amusement as his lips almost twitched into a
smile. His answer was bland and toneless, "I have done my duty."
"How dare you make such a claim! You—"
"Well
if it isn't 'father abuse'," Sesshoumaru interrupted smoothly as he
leaned forward, the room in the temperature seemed to drop visually. The
martial artists quelled beneath the most brutal Soul-of-Ice
Technique(1) they'd ever had the misfortune to encounter.
"Enough," Ranma said softly, his demeanour unruffled as he flicked a sudden rim of hoarfrost from his glass.
"As you wish… brother."
The man settled back, his frozen gold eyes never leaving Genma's face.
Giving the man a definite hunted feeling. Everyone else blinked at the
man's deliberate statement.
"Thank-you. I have no wish to clean up your mess."
"Ah… but that's what one's employees are for," came they very urban reply.
Kagome
chuckled softly as she re-entered the room and took her seat beside
Ranma once again, as she had caught the last of the two brother's
comments. "I think that a more detailed explanation is needed by many of
them. Ranma's never been really good with words and that seems to be
the problem here. Now where to begin? Three months ago… or five hundred
years?"
"I think you better start with your first meeting,"
Shippou suggested, eying the confused expressions before them, "I don't
think they're really ready for the extended version but there doesn't
seem to be much choice."
"Okay, here goes. One day on a girl's
fifteenth birthday she fell through a magical well located on a shrine
grounds. The well was a time travel portal between two periods, Japan's
Feudal Era and the present day 20th Century. While there she meet a
half-breed dog demon named Inuyasha and learned she was the
reincarnation of a priestess. Also during her first visit she broke a
magical item and soon she and Inuyasha had to travel about Japan
collecting all of the pieces. During their travels they were joined
first by a fox demon, than a Buddhist monk, and lastly a demon
exterminator and her two-tail cat demon hunting companion." Kagome took a
sip of water before continuing.
"They had trouble along the way
though, as a half-breed Inuyasha was ostracised, especially by his pure
demon brother. The brother was after the sword their father had left
Inuyasha because it was capable of slaying a thousand demons with one
blow. There was also an evil demon that was seeking the pieces of the
magical item and he would stop at nothing to collect them. Soon, their
quest became more of a battle between the friends and the evil demon
than a search of the item's pieces. But in the end they managed to kill
the evil demon, reassemble and purify the item and fall in love in the
process."
"Who did?" Mousse asked eagerly, he rather enjoyed this rushed story and wanted to hear the detailed version.
"The
girl from the future fell in love with Inuyasha. And trust me, that was
really bizarre than, as religious people and demons were constantly
trying to kill each other. It took her a while to convince him she was
telling the truth. However, she was from the future and thus had no
place among the past so the gods sent her home. But not before promising
the two lovers they would be together again."
"That's so sad," Kodatchi murmured as she passed a tissue to her snuffling brother.
"Yes
well," Kagome said with a dismissive shrug, "Three months ago I bumped
into Ranma on the street and when he returned my purse to me we actually
started talking about his Jusenkyo Curse. Anyway I mentioned an
exorcism and started talking about performing one for him—"
"I'll
just bet you did you bitch!" Akane snapped, angry at the woman's
pointless story and craving to take a swing at both her and Ranma.
"Pardon me?" Kagome said with a surprised blink.
Footnote:
(1)
Soul-of-Ice Technique: one extreme end of the "Hiryu Shoten Ha" or
"Dragon's Heaven Blast" technique which was taught to Ranma when he
became weak due to Happosai's Moxibustion technique. The manoeuvre is
executed by allowing the opponent to have a "hot" battle aura, while
Ranma's aura remains "cool." Ranma then draws the opponent in a
spiralling path and executes a punch. The resulting collision of hot and
cold plus the spiral creates a tornado. (Cited from "Ranma ½: Perfect Edition.")
No comments:
Post a Comment