Grayson Towler <grayson@rigroup.net> wrote:
"But anyway, it had to be pretty terrible. Big sister was up all
day and all through the night, forcing herself to read every word.
When I came to check on her in the morning, I found her on the
floor, like that," she said, indicating the lawn where Natsume had
been so recently writhing. "Ever since then, she's been vulnerable
to bad poetry."
Genma coughed violently and mopped the sweat from his brow. Tendou
Soun looked rather thoughtful. "Well," he said. "Every great
martial artist has a secret weakness, I suppose."
In my experience, few if any kids the age that Nats must've been would
know good poetry from bad poetry. In fact, for most of them the worse it
is, the better they'll like it. :) Genma's reaction to this makes it
pretty obvious to me where this subplot is going, though maybe there'll
be some twist ahead.
Nabiki smirked. "So all it takes is a little bad verse, and you're
history," she observed. "Hmm...
Pointy birds, pointy, pointy,
Anoint my head, anointy-nointy..."
Uh oh... Nabzy just cast a "Summon Turd" spell on herself....
The teenager showed all the expression of a stone slab. If she
hadn't been visibly breathing, Ukyou could've sworn she was no more
Suggest 'Ukyou would've sworn'
<Hospitable place,> Ukyou thought sourly. It was likely that the
kid didn't speak Japanese, but it probably made no difference. The
reactions she'd endured in the past two days from the Amazon
villagers had been varied, but on the whole the attitudes of the
women conveyed a single message, loud and clear: she was not wanted
here. The men, it seemed, weren't allowed anywhere near her; she
hadn't seen an Amazon male come within twenty meters. It figured
that a tribe with such extreme laws about outsiders would cultivate
a rather phobic nature towards anybody not native to this little
valley. Perhaps they were kinder to other Chinese.
<I don't care,> she thought. <Ban Dai Du has been nice enough, and
if she takes care of Ryouga, that's all that matters.>
Yes, and Ban Daidu is very persistent. When she starts working on
something, she really sticks to it. (You get points for using syllables
that are actually found in Mandarin, BTW.)
The news was good, but the healer's voice was laced with flat
anger. Ukyou didn't understand. "I... that's great," she said.
"Then you think we can..."
"In fact," the elder woman interrupted sharply, "I've only seen a
I didn't know she was an elder until this point.
Ukyou's fear was strong now, but her own anger could not be kept
in check. "Look, damn it," she shot back, "all I wanted was some
help for Ryouga. I didn't think you'd care if he was a boy or a
girl. You're a doctor, right?"
"Stupid girl," the healer hissed. "Men have their own healers in
our village. You have no idea what you've done."
Ban Daidu, of course, strictly adheres to Amazon law....
Ban Dai Du took a measured step back and composed her expression.
"No, we aren't going to do any of that," she informed Ukyou
clinically. "The men shall see to your friend's recovery, but
I suspect he shall be conscious by tomorrow, perhaps even tonight.
When he wakes, I want you both gone. I don't want to see your
lying face in this village ever again."
Ahhh, Ban Daidu's just afraid of getting ripped off. (Thank Megane 6.7
for that one. :)
It became clear as the day wore on that it was not going to be so
easy to get away from the Amazon village unscathed. Where she has
Where she had
The manga versions of these characters were Pink and Link, and Ranma
purists might wonder why I didn't use them (and their biochemical
arsenal). I plead ignorance - I confess that I haven't actually
seen those issues first hand, and as nice as the translations on the
web are, I didn't feel comfortable enough with the characters to
write them. Truth be told, I had a hell of a time settling on
someone to make trouble with Ukyou in this chapter (do I use Pink
and Link, their anime counterparts, or do I make someone up with a
silly name... decisions, decisions!), which is one of the reasons
this chapter has taken a bit of time.
P&L would probably be unliklely to attack Ukyo without some more
motivation than just xenophobia/bullying the foriegners. They only
attacked Ranma because they thought he was Shampoo's husband. As it was,
this fight itself wasn't all that interesting to me, but the development
of Ukyo's character was.
Looking forward to the rest of the chapter. Don't lose that paper copy.
:)
Gary Kleppe
http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics.html