Watching events unfold at the Tendo compound was proving quite amusing for a certain pink haired alien. Ran was grinning ear to ear at the sight, knowing full well what was going to come next. "Yes!" she said, fangs showing in the corner of her mouth. The anticipation rises like steam boiling in a kettle. "Yes, that's it! Now you will suffer under the weight of not one, but two Tatewaki Kunos! Suffer under my fun older brother who only knows how to spoil li'l Ran and Ran alone!"
A burst of fire flashed across the monitor, and - oh dear, it seemed as though the copy was on fire.
"No matter! I shall proceed with my scheme even so!" Ran raised her hands into the air, as if trying to summon lightning. Then, from the depths of her lungs, from the pit of her stomach, she let loose an ominous cackle. "Mwahahahahahaha!"
"No, no, no! That's all wrong, dear sister!"
Enter Kodachi Kuno, whose ribbon wrapped neatly around Ran's wide open gob. The slender gymnast strode in elegantly, like a swan trying to sneak past a slumbering predator. Or more accurately, a predator creeping up on a sleeping swan. She twirled around Ran playfully, used the ribbon to spin her around and left her quite dizzy for a moment.
"That is not the way that a Kuno woman laughs," Kodachi said. She put her back straight, then the back of her hand against her mouth, and let loose a familiar sounding "Ohohohohohoho! You hear that? This is the sound of a dignified, regal laugh. The sort that one of our family must surely adjust to."
Now, a reasonable person would right themselves, look Kodachi in the eye, and then advise her to please leave for a few minutes as she has an evil plan going on. Actually, a reasonable person wouldn't have an evil plan going on in the first place, so never mind that.
“What do you mean Kochan?” Ran asked. “Mother said this laugh was demonic!” Ran paused, “Though she said that any time I laughed no matter what…”
"Nonsense! All around have the right to know that you are present and pleased with your current circumstances," Kodachi said. "It will help remind them of their place in the world, beneath your contempt. Ohohohohohohoho! Give it a try!"
Now, Ran really should be keeping an eye on things. But... you know what, she was sure it would play out fine without her supervision. After all her entire plan revolved around not one but two copies of Tatewaki Kuno, how could it possibly fail?
... Here's some advice, if you ever find yourself in a position where you think the words "it will be fine without supervision," please slap yourself and get back to supervising, because - by god - no matter how hard you slap you'll suffer less pain in the long run.
"Ahahahahahaha!" Ran attempted.
"No, no. It's ohohohohohoho!" Kodachi corrected.
Ran stared intensely at Kodachi as she let out the trademark ojou-sama laugh that she was well known for. Which seems fair enough, as there's a pretty good chance that Kodachi was the first example of this kind of laugh in anime.
"Olololololololo!" Ran attempted to mimic Kodachi's stance, complete with her hand to her mouth. Alas, she had the front side rather than the back. Needless to say, but this might take a little while, and as it could get a little repetitive, let's look elsewhere for a little bit.
<hr>
Man oh man, there was nothing like munching on popcorn while watching someone else deal with the stupid bullshit that you normally have to put up with. Case in point, Ranma didn't even have to fight that idiot Kuno today because Akane and Ten were all up on that.
"Leave cousin Akane alone!" Ten yelled, belching flames all over Kuno's hair. Leaving the doofus scorch faced and blinking inanely.
"Away, foul demon! I know! You have been summoned as Ranma's familiar! Away with you!"
"Upperclassman Kuno! Stop bullying a toddler!" Akane yelled, and gave him a nice hard thunder kick that sent the boy flying back.
"You know, I could grow to like that squirt a little better after all," Ranma mused, tossing a kernel into his mouth. "I mean, so long as he keeps aiming at Kuno, no problems here!"
"Harumph, foul knave! You would send an infant to battle on your behalf?!"
Something crashed down right onto where Ranma was sitting, and all of a sudden he was squatting on a wooden sword, staring at a guy in full kendo gear. Mask included. Peering closely, Ranma caught sight of a certain ugly mug peering out at him with the kind of disgust he normally reserved for when Akane had a new recipe idea.
"Oh hell," Ranma groaned. "Don't tell me, you got lost in the rain and found this big mansion with a curtain over a giant mirror?" Honestly Ranma couldn’t know how’d you even be able to tell the difference between Kuno and an incredibly thirsty copy of him.
"Fool!" Kuno yelled, raised his bokken hard into the air. Trying to shake Ranma off. Yeah, whatever. It gave him enough of a boost to easily flip up onto the roof. "What nonsense do you speak of?"
"Yeah, you're right!" Ranma yelled back down at the idiot picking a fight with him. "If you'd looked in a mirror that big, you might not leave." Which might make even more copies of - Nope, not finishing that thought, Ranma enjoyed the idea of sleep too much.
“Fool! Do you not recognize me for what I am! I am Tatewaki Kuno II, Age 30 Minutes! Created thanks to a gift from my lovely and cute little sister!”
“Kodachi knows human cloning?” Ranma asked. The horror in his voice reached a palpable form. Kodachi Kuno... numerous Kodachis laughing and prancing after him, laughing in unison. An army of gymnasts in pursuit of his eligible bachelorhood... Yep, no sleep for him tonight!
"I said my lovely and cute little sister!"
“...oh wait. Right. That Ran chick, she’s related to you.” And from space. So who knows what sort of nonsense that pink haired girl had access to.
Oh, and here came the violent thrusting air strikes. You know, back when Kuno had done that whole watermelon island training thing this had been really tricky to deal with, but Ranma was nothing if not adaptable. I mean, you fight lunatics like Herb and Saffron, tango with a multiheaded dragon, and all the other bullshit he's dealt with... this kind of attack kind of doesn't have as much of a threat level as usual.
As such, while they came at him like raindrops falling from the sky, it didn't really matter. Ranma was practically dancing among them. Imagine a storm, imagine a figure standing in the middle of the rain moving so precisely and so quickly that not a single drop hits him. That's Ranma at this point. He's so far above Tatewaki Kuno that it's not even funny -
"Waaaaaah!"
Nor was it especially funny when one of the air blasts hit Ten, sending him tumbling through the air at quite a fast speed.
"... Say, Saotome?" the Kuno copy asked. "Is it perhaps my imagination, or is it suddenly a lot more overcast than it was a moment ago?"
"Nay, my errant copy!" the original added, looking up. "It is strange, there were no clouds in the sky before. What could it be that has blocked out the - "
<b>”YOU IDIOT! THAT WAS A TODDLER I WAS BABYSITTING! LUM’S GOING TO KILL ME IF HE’S HURT!”<b> A very angry voice shouted. And suddenly Akane had glowing eyes and much larger canines than she had five seconds ago.
Worth noting. It wasn't so much Akane that said that. It was the battle aura shaped like Akane's head. Floating right over her, staring down and looking more pissed off than the time she'd walked into Ranma's room and found him with both Shampoo and Ukyo sleeping on top of him. Stupid sleeping draft in the stupid ramen, she didn't talk to him for a week after that... not that he minded! Okay... okay, he minded a bit.
Electricity struck the ground. Not anywhere near Ranma. It barely missed the feet of the Kuno copy. That, it turned out, was a warning shot, as a lightning bolt struck the copy square in the forehead, lighting him up so brightly that Ranma could swear he could see the boy's skeleton for a moment.
"I... I fight on..." the copy said, still on his feet. As he was about to learn Akane was only getting warmed up.
"Popcorn, where's my popcorn?!" Ranma yelled, scrambling around in search of that bag.
"You think of buttery goodness at a time like this?!" the original Kuno yelled, then got slammed in the face by electricity shaped like a fist.
Ranma let out a whistle. You know what they say about electricity, right? It turns things on? Well, it was sure working for him right about now!
<hr>
Outside the Kuno compound, a flock of birds were in the midst of their annual migration pattern. Alas, it is a tragedy of evolution, a quirk that had brought them on this route on this day, for while they were hardy enough to survive one bout of ojou sama laughter -
"Ohohohohohoho!"
The echoing reverb of two of them at once was enough to bring them to the ground, and then retreat in justified mortal terror. Can you blame them? Can anyone? A pair of laughing ojou samas is surely a portent of doom.
"By jove, I think she has it!" Kodachi said in between bouts of laughter. "Ohohohoho! Now, my dear sister! You can express the proper amount of joy when all goes well for you! Show the proper disdain for your adversaries!"
"Thank you Ko-chan!" Ran said, putting the back of her hand to her mouth all haughty and stuffy and superior seeming. "Ohohohoho! Yes, indeed! Those ingrates shall rue the day they tangled with me!"
"Ohohohohohohoho!" both sisters laughed.
"Waaaaah! I can't stooooop!" a certain Oni toddler wailed, tumbling in through the window.
"Ohohohohohoho!" both sisters continued, oblivious to the new arrival in the room.
"Is that a copy machine?! No! I don't wanna be -"
"Ohohohohohohoho!" both sisters continued, though Ran at least stopped on noticing the copy machine light up.
"Uh... Who set it to make ten copies? What's even in there?!" Ran asked. But don't worry. She soon found out.
- Akane continues punishing the Kunos.
- Akane decides it's more important to find Ten.
- Meanwhile, let's look in on Lum.
- Ran and Kodachi versus ten Tens.
- Something else
No comments:
Post a Comment