XXX
Story: [To become a thief]
Summary: Freed from a Nerima that was growing boring by the magic of a cute girl, Ranma still dodges the kiss. Gratitude or not. He's not stupid.
Crossover: (Ranma½) / (Zero no Tsukaima)
Genre: Humor, Crack
XXX
To steal techniques from one's opponents, to mesh them together into an art-work of skill. That was what he'd been raised to do.
Obviously, he'd gotten bored after the first hundred-or-so martial arts, most of which barely managed to have even the slightest chance of furthering his abilities.
He was an artist running low on color, and the world was becoming a truly bleak place without them.
Genma hadn't really worried about it. He was someone who used martial arts to reach where he desired to go, never someone whose martial arts gave him the reason to go there. He'd taught his son well, he'd showed him a great many things, but now it was becoming quite obvious that there was something missing.
Ranma lived for his martial arts, and he was running out of techniques to develop.
See, the problem with someone who uses martial arts for the goal of using martial arts, is that beyond learning new things, there is no reason to be inventive. There is no necessity to give birth to an idea.
Genma had needed to sneak around undetected, and to break through defenses with absolute force. The necessity of a thief confronted with a problem.
Ranma defeated all who challenged him nowadays, and so there was no need to develop anything new specifically to deal with a situation. The only thing keeping him working at it was the old and weathered obsessive habit of trying to improve.
It was a bit like continuing to routinely polish a diamond which had already been shining clearer than glass for years.
Ranma might've focused on his fiancee situation, but there wasn't really any point in trying. The moment he focused his attention in one direction, everything would immediately go down in flames. His only real option was to play hard to get until everyone gave up on it and moved on with their lives without him.
Shampoo would continue trying until Cologne put her foot down, and the only reason the old crone would do that would be if she'd already figured out a way to keep her granddaughter from being punished too heavily by their village. If there wasn't a way, she'd simply let her live out her life here, effectively banished from her home, always forced into putting up at least a token effort into seducing him.
Ukyo would continue trying until her family pulled their heads out of their asses, or she simply decided to walk away from it all. Which could take everything from a month to a couple of decades, depending on how stubborn both sides of that scenario decided to be.
Akane would either stick around as an excuse to stay off the regular dating-stage for as long as possible, or she'd find someone else to fall in love with. It really came down to her in the end, because Soun would definitely bend under her decision, no matter how much he'd whine about it.
Kodachi would hopefully get distracted or arrested before she got desperate enough about pursuing him to actually do anything more than try getting into his pants. And Tatewaki might finally discover that there were some beautiful women out there who put a price-tag on their love, which ought to at least break him from his obsession about chasing down unwilling women.
It was kind of weird that Tatewaki probably classified easier as a love interest than as a rival, but then again he'd never been much of a challenge at all in a fight.
Beyond that, anyone else Genma had sold him off to had probably already stopped by in Nerima, and been soundly trounced by now. There were some definite benefits with having a bunch of fiancees already circling him like sharks smelling blood, mostly in how it tended to convince most of the new contestants that it was probably best to simply give up on him and move on with their lives.
Using fiancees to deflect more fiancees, whilst waiting for all of them to simply give up and go home.
That was his life, and as long as there'd been martial arts popping up out the woodwork to focus on, it'd been a very good one.
Except, now there wasn't anything around to distract him from getting bored with trying to out-wait the stubborn girls.
Thankfully, Ranma was spared the existential crisis when a green portal appeared out of nowhere one morning and swallowed him whole.
Funny how life works out, huh?
XXX
It'd taken him a little bit to realize his situation. Almost to the point where he'd allowed the girl to land a kiss on him. But then his reflexes kicked in, and with a maturity beyond most adults in his life, Ranma leapt onto a nearby roof.
"Nyeeh! It'll take more than that to catch me, flat-chest!" He stuck his tongue out at the pink-haired girl who was staring agape at him from the ground.
Pfft, as if he'd let some fiancee-wannabe get the drop on him, even if she'd summoned him to a planet with two moons and no apparent way home-...
Ranma paused, suddenly feeling vaguely impressed at the effort the girl must've gone to in order to grab him. Normally, all his fiancees did was track him down across the planet, yell at him, cook for him, and sneak into his bed at night. Summoning him to them across time and space and onto a new planet, well that was actually kind of impressive.
Nodding briefly to himself, Ranma acknowledged the girl as someone who was willing to go the extra mile.
That understandably didn't change anything at all, since he'd still refuse to let some new fiancee get the drop on him, but it was nice to see the effort some people put into trying to get into his pants. It was kind of flattering.
Having considered this for the brief moment of stunned silence below, Ranma came to a second realization as the children in the courtyard started babbling to themselves in a weird language.
If he was on a new planet, and his fiancees back home never bothered with doing something like this, then that probably meant that he was completely free from his fiancees.
Grinning wildly at the thought of being able to go wherever he wanted without being bogged down by trying to keep things reasonably safe for all the ones trying to follow him, Ranma's mood was boosted even further as he realized that a new world would probably both have new techniques to learn, but also a whole slew of places he'd never even heard of before to explore.
Why, this was really all kinds of fantastic, wasn't it?
Laughing gleefully, he waved at the girl who was responsible for his good fortune. "Thanks for the save, pinky!" Before cheerfully leaping off to land on the other side of the castle wall.
Life was pretty good.
XXX
Originally, they'd assumed that it must've been a commoner.
The Zero had summoned a commoner. How wonderfully ridiculous.
Except then he'd suddenly twisted away from her when she'd tried to seal the contract, and leapt onto the roof.
That wasn't possible. No way could something like that be done by a human. At least not without them being a mage and using their magic to assist them, and the boy had rather obviously kept his hands empty. So, clearly, whatever it was that Louise the Zero had summoned, it sure as hell wasn't human.
However, that raised the question of what he was, and how they were supposed to catch him when he rather obviously didn't have any intention to let his summoner bind him as a familiar.
XXX
If there was one thing that Ranma had learnt from all the time he'd spent with his father growing up, it was how to survive on the road.
The starry night sky was pretty impressive, though it was more than a bit strange to finding himself subconsciously searching for constellations that weren't there. The road was usually compressed dirt, though he'd caught glimpses of paved roads within cities and the like, which probably meant that wherever he was somebody had still not come up with the idea of pouring asphalt everywhere.
All in all, Ranma found himself quite content with this new world. Sure, it was filled with 'nobles' who – like the fiancee-wannabe – could do magic, which meant that most of the techniques around seemed to be based completely around something that he couldn't use. And that was kind of crappy, but it could've easily been worse.
Why, despite robbing nearly a dozen mansions of all their food, he hadn't been properly cursed even once.
It was kind of refreshing.
Then again, Ranma had only robbed those people because of karma. They were dicks, and they had a lot of food, so it stood to reason that he'd be allowed to bend his sense of honor enough that he could walk away with a full belly for the sake of petty vengeance.
Yes, life was really looking up for him.
XXX
There'd been a dozen cases of thefts suddenly cropping across the countryside. Nobles suddenly finding everything edible in their mansions missing.
Considering the timing, to Louise it was obvious who was behind it.
The familiar who could perform superhuman feats of agility, and managed to escape from an – admittedly mostly stunned silent and immovable – entire academy of nobles. The familiar that she'd summoned. The familiar that couldn't be human, but which had definitely spoken some kind of language as it'd taunted them and disappeared.
There were some rumors elsewhere however to lend credit to the connection. Rumors about a man in red, with his black hair in a braid, being sighted in the area before the thefts occurred.
On some level, the petty crime-spree was infuriating the capital with its apparent inability to actually put a stop to the perpetrator. On the other hand, at least he only seemed to be interested in what he could eat, rather than what was actually valuable, which was a big step up from the infamous Fouquet of the Crumbling Earth who'd also been sighted in Tristain.
Louise wasn't sure if she ought to be furious, embarrassed, or ashamed at what her almost-familiar was doing. She'd summoned him, and so she was responsible for binding him, but as he'd escaped before that had been a possibility – shameful as that was – it meant that she probably couldn't be classified as responsible for what he was now doing.
Not directly responsible anyway. There was still the fact that she'd unknowingly brought him within the borders of Tristain, even if it was only through a magical mishap.
Kirche was having a wonderful time needling her about it. Apparently greatly entertained by the thought that Louise had managed to summon some petty thief without any way of actually controlling him.
Well... she'd had a wonderful time up until she'd decided that such a man would be interesting enough to invite into her bed, and had promptly disappeared for about a month in order to track him down.
She'd returned with a severely bruised ego.
And Louise was glad that – whatever else could be said about her thieving would-be familiar – he was at the very least not some kind of dog in heat. Indeed, the only indication that he'd noticed Kirche's attempts to seduce him was that he'd ended up laughing at her, before continuing on his way.
Now if the thieving bastard of a humanoid familiar would actually return to her and submit to her binding-ritual properly, then everything would've really been kind of wonderful.
XXX
There was a trick to gambling for money. It could generally be summarized as 'find a way to cheat that nobody can discover, figure out, or prove'.
In some games, that just meant inhuman dexterity and a few cards up one's sleeves, but in some cases there was a need for something a lot more advanced than something like that.
Using ridiculously delicate chi-manipulation to cause a pair of dice to always end up how he wanted them to, to calculate the twists and turns of a coin being flipped through the air quickly enough to predict the end result, to catch the reflection of cards in the eyes of the person holding them-...
There were a lot of ways to cheat. Some of them were more dishonorable than others, some of them was simply common sense. Either way, the true trick always came down to how often you cheated.
Cheat to often, win too much, and people start growing suspicious, they start looking for ways to trip you up.
Ranma had never had that problem. He'd been taught how to gamble by his pops, when the panda had figured out that most people would let their guard down around a little kid, even if they didn't do it around an aged martial artist and semi-well-known thief.
Ranma knew how to cheat, and from what he'd seen of this new world so far, there wasn't anyone around who'd be able to catch him in the act. Not unless he started doing some stupid things, like pull cards out of his sleeves that somebody else already held in their hand.
So money wasn't really an issue, once he'd managed to acquire a bit of pocket-change from some dumbasses trying to mug him in a back-alley.
Still, he was a 'commoner' who only owned the clothes on his back, and his bone-structure was different enough from the norm that he had a tendency to stand out.
It wasn't the best of combinations, but it meant that he had good reason to continue walking before anyone looking to ask some pointed questions about some nobles' foodstuff going missing showed up.
He liked wandering around the countryside.
No, the problem was that this world he'd showed up in was teetering dangerously close to a war, with some kind of revolution going down in a neighboring country, and the Princess being about to be married off to some other country's Emperor in order to fortify an alliance. And besides that, Tristain was a very small country.
Tristain was in fact so small that there was no way that Ranma would be able to wander around in it indefinitely. Not with how much he stood out from the crowd, and already being wanted for 'questioning' by a lot of very upset folks.
So, the only sensible option was to cross the border. The problem stemmed in 'into which country?'.
Albion was right out, with its civil war and general level of chaos. Ranma might be convinced that he could dodge around the patrols who might take offense to him, he didn't really want to get involved with a place where people were fighting for their lives. It felt dirty.
Germania was a possibility, even if their darker skin-tones would likely make it difficult to slip through the cracks as easily as he'd like. Not to mention that as they'd soon be allying themselves with Tristain, he wouldn't be surprised in the least for the people hunting him following after him even once he'd skipped country.
Romalia was even smaller than Tristain, and gave Ranma the distinct impression that it was filled with people that he didn't want to meet. So he'd rather avoid it if at all possible.
Gallia on the other hand was ruled by some crazy guy that nobody wanted to deal with, was reasonably sizable, and probably not shock-full of soldiers. The only problem would be crossing the border.
Which was why Ranma was casually wandering past a guard-patrol, cloaked in the Umisenken, and not overly bothered about his new technical status as an illegal immigrant.
XXX
Ranma wasn't new to the concept of corruption.
Ignoring his own father's shady dealings and rather dubious sense of morality, he'd known the Kuno family for too long to not be aware of the old adage of money greasing the gears. But the more he traveled this new world, the more he was coming to realize that there was something truly rotten in Halkeginia.
Civilians who lived in fear, 'bodyguards' who acted more like bandits, and nobles whose main concern seemed to entirely revolve around who to blame for their own mistakes.
The Kuno family was twisted, and bizarre, and crazier than a squirrel on caffeine, but they didn't go after innocents. Innocents could get caught in the crossfire, innocents could be roped into their plots through their convoluted sense of logic, but that was rare. The Kuno family protected its 'subjects', even if they went about it like complete morons.
The nobles of Halkeginia didn't.
Pretty girls wiped themselves in mud when nobles happened to be passing by – which might've actually saved Ranma a lot of problems if he could've figured out to do it before he'd caught Tatewaki's eye – children were pulled out of the way, and more than anything else, it was being done because of fear.
Not out of wariness. Not out of a desire to avoid an exasperating incident with an idiot, not out of a desire to avoid having to listen to a lecture about children being allowed to run around freely. No, it was being done because civilians feared nobles.
It was disturbing, and kind of disgusting, and Ranma didn't know what to think of it.
On the one hand, this wasn't really his world and he shouldn't be trying to force modern Japanese values on it. On the other, the thought of innocents being targeted was grating at his sense of honor. A martial artist protects the weak. And these 'commoners' were apparently ridiculously weak.
There were no martial artists around, no police, and no military outside of the ones already in the employ of the nobles. The commoners had nothing, and the nobles were bullying them almost as much for their own amusement as any actual desire to see them improving whatever it was that they'd decided to complain about at the time.
Back in Tristain, Ranma had simply declared the first few nobles he'd run into as dicks and continued onwards, but it was the same in Gallia. Actually, it was quite possibly even worse.
The Mad King they called the guy in charge, and if this was how he allowed people to treat his own subjects, Ranma could understand why.
Taking a deep breath, Ranma watched as the noble whom he'd casually liberated of his foodstuff decided to take that theft out on the innocent townsfolk.
And he decided that enough was enough.
XXX
Being on the run from the law was both very different and much the same as being on the road with his father.
Ranma had long since grown used to running away from people who were upset at him. Sometimes it seemed as if half of everything they'd done during that ten-year long training-trip had been running away from people.
Still, actually being on the run from the law was different. It required a certain degree of subterfuge, even when the angry people had been outrun, because the 'angry people' could also be read as 'the entire country'.
Then again, with a brief application of cold water, Ranma had a perfect disguise, even if he got more than a few scandalized looks from his surroundings. Apparently, a woman wearing pants was both a perfectly legitimate source of gossip, and a good cause for grabbing people's attention, even if his skeletal structure hadn't already labeled his female form as 'exotic'.
So again, it was a lot like being on the road with Genma. Except, with his father, Ranma had grown used to the aggravating feeling of exasperated frustration, always getting them into trouble with his stupidly sticky fingers. But now that it was Ranma himself who was doing the trouble-causing, there was a peculiar sense of smug satisfaction at throwing things into chaos.
It was odd, that Ranma would start associating being chased out of towns by raging nobles with the wonderful feeling of a job well done.
There were eye-witnesses now, people who remembered his face, people who remembered him introducing himself with a challenging grin, people who knew exactly who was responsible for the attacks on the nobles. People who'd be able to aim the nobles' ire away from the civilians with honest truth.
It wasn't an ideal solution, but Ranma Saotome cleaned up after his own messes.
Also, there was something viciously delightful about beating a few nobles into the ground, taunting them and their 'silly little magic' all the while.
Ranma briefly considered whether or not that last jab was really necessary, before shrugging.
Necessary or not, it'd been hilarious watching them work themselves into outraged fury over his 'blaspheme' towards some guy called 'Brimir'.
XXX
Superhuman abilities, blasphemous attitude, and impossibly capable of defeating mages as if he was brushing off flies.
The 'commoner' that Louise had summoned was making a name for himself, and it was the source of much gossip.
He was somewhere in Gallia, and there were rumors that he'd brought down an entire castle with his bare hands. Having grown up with Karin of the Heavy Wind as a mother, Louise was both willing to attribute that particular rumor to this 'Ranma Saotome' destroying a shed or something and then having it grow out of proportions, but she knew enough about castles to know that they most certainly could be brought down.
Ranma had demonstrated that he could do superhuman things. That was fact. He wasn't an elf, and he wasn't a mage, but he most certainly wasn't a commoner either. All that anybody knew about him was that he had absolutely no regard for the proper way of things, would stoop to petty theft on whims, and was completely impervious to anyone's attempts into getting into his pants.
That was it. That was all anyone knew about him.
However, Louise had managed to pick up some rumors from the commoners at the academy that didn't quite follow the pattern of 'outrageous behavior' that she'd come to expect from the nobles' point of view.
Ranma Saotome would gleefully interfere wherever a noble tried to harass the commoners, he'd come out of nowhere and – in plain sight of everyone involved – would steal random things from the noble in question. Sometimes pickpocketing items straight off their very person, and other times simply wandering out into the middle of the altercation carrying a mountain worth of food from their stocks, eating it even as he walked.
He was someone who drew the eye of everyone around him. He was someone who mocked the Founder and laughed at the nobles' magic. He was someone who'd play a distraction for all who might've drawn the ire of a passing noble. He was someone who protected the innocents. And nobody could catch him.
Louise was eerily reminded of Reconquista for a moment, before she realized that Ranma truly didn't seem to have any intention to start riots. He wandered around, angered a great deal of powerful people, wandered around some more, disappeared out of an ambush without a trace, and was considered something of a guardian angel underneath the Mad King's rule.
But he wasn't inciting riots, or fanning the flames of revolution. And Reconquista – despite their claims to the contrary – had never actually been all that big on relinquishing the powers of nobles over commoners. The civil war in Albion was fought between nobles, even if the commoners more often than not flocked to Reconquista's banner rather than the Royalists.
Nobles turning on their king, and fanning the fury of the downtrodden commoners until they rebelled without much thought of how their own positions had never actually changed at all, Reconquista or no.
It was disgusting, and it was infuriating. And it wasn't at all what Ranma was doing.
But still, the comparison was there, and there was no doubt that the scoundrel of an almost-familiar would become a rallying point for the commoners, should a rebellion ever manage to dethrone Gallia's Mad King.
XXX
In hindsight, it should've been obvious that sooner or later even a Mad King would send someone out to deal with him.
Unfortunately for the woman in question, Ranma had been surrounded by a great deal of magical artifacts over the years, and he'd learned a few tricks about keeping himself safe from them.
One of the first rules read 'don't let anyone else have any'. Another one read 'destroy it whilst you're still well out of its blast-radius'.
All in all, it could be translated as 'pickpocket them off the enemy, then hurriedly explode them elsewhere'.
The look on her face was kind of funny, even as the strange runes across his forehead stopped glowing. Ranma simply grinned at her.
"That's all you've got?"
The woman made a sound that might've been a despairing whimper, but Ranma kind of stopped paying attention when she fell to her knees in defeat.
She was one of those people who simply grabbed a bunch of magical-things and then threw them at people and pretended that it was her own ability, rather than that of her artifacts. And those guys weren't any fun to fight.
Sighing in disappointment, Ranma just knocked her out cold.
It was so difficult to find a decent challenge these days.
XXX
Ranma hadn't actually seen any particularly bullying type of nobles emerge from this particular mansion, but considering the country's track-record, he was guessing that that was more to do with his recent arrival than any actual decency on their part.
And he was hungry, so he decided to just go ahead and empty their larder preemptively.
After a few minutes of wandering the corridors however, Ranma came to the frustrating conclusion that the architect of this particular mansion had decided to get inventive with where exactly the kitchen ought to be.
It wasn't much of a problem with the Umisenken and the confident certainty that there wouldn't actually be anyone around capable of stopping him even if they did manage to discover him in the act. But it was still annoying.
Silently opening another door, Ranma found himself staring at what could only be a bedchamber – even if it was a rather extravagant such. He was halfway into backing out, with an unheard sigh of disappointment at once again failing to find any clue to the kitchens, when he saw the woman inside.
She was clutching a doll to her chest, and was mumbling something to herself.
Vaguely curious despite himself, Ranma decided that he was indeed rude enough to listen in on a woman even when she was alone in her own room.
"-keep you safe. My beautiful daughter. Always so bright, so brave. Won't let them poison you. Even if I have to drink it all again. My beautiful Charlotte." The words were stilted and awkward and half-slurred, and utterly mad.
But there was a spark there as well, vicious as a cornered animal, and warm with love even through her obvious insanity.
She was talking to the doll as if it was her daughter, and seemed wholly convinced that someone was trying to kill her, and that she needed to 'drink poison again' to stop them from hurting her.
The 'again' part was bothering Ranma a bit. He'd seen plenty of crazies in his day, but there was something truly... damaged about the woman in front of him. Something desperate and hopeless, that didn't quite match with the impassioned madness of the Kuno family.
And Ranma had some very distinct memories of various things being used to make people 'go mad'. He'd personally mostly been exposed to magical ones, artifacts of various kinds, but he'd heard enough about medicine to know that it could happen through more mundane means as well. Such as poison.
Had this woman drunk poison meant for her daughter, and been driven mad in her stead?
It sounded disturbingly plausible, and it made Ranma feel a tiny bit guilty about his original plans to empty the mansion of all the food he could carry – and possibly more, depending on how much he could eat before he'd run the risk of being interrupted mid-chew.
Face scrunching together into an uncomfortable frown, Ranma retreated from the room with a silent, annoyed sigh. He'd need to find the servants in this place, try to get them to explain the situation to him.
Maybe point him in the direction for whichever bastard needed his face rearranged by Ranma's fists.
The woman didn't look particularly old, but the doll did, so in all likelihood the woman's daughter would've been very young indeed when someone had tried to poison her. And going after children with lethal intent was an entirely new level of low, even for this world.
XXX
It was weird. For the first time in his life, Ranma – outside of the times when he'd been grouped together with his father – was on the wrong side of the law, and yet, people – and not just his crazy fiancees – actually seemed to be happy to see him now.
Admittedly, it likely had a lot more to do with him pissing off people nobody liked, than anything to do with criminals being more appreciated than decent folk, but it was still oddly jarring.
The man he'd managed to track down was old, and almost painfully cliched in how butler-like he looked, but after an initial confrontation about who he was and why he was there – Ranma couldn't lie to save his life, and he couldn't really be bothered to try it – he was more than happy to tell the woman's story.
Turns out, Ranma had pretty much hit the nail on the head.
Young girl is offered a drink; mother grabs it and drinks it instead, fearing that it's poisoned; mother goes insane, believing that a doll is her daughter; daughter is horrified and traumatized; daughter is sent away on suicide-missions by her own uncle, who was likely behind the poison in the first place; daughter somehow manages to cling to life; and the mad mother is used as a hostage to force her into compliance.
It was just-... wow.
Yeah, there wasn't really any point in trying to explain what exactly it was. It was wrong, and it was more than enough justification for going over there and beating the girl's uncle into a pulp.
The servant who'd told him the story kept trying to convince him that it was a fool's errand however, continuously pointing out how 'he was the king', and really powerful.
Ranma didn't feel particularly impressed with it though. He'd beaten Herb, and he was a prince. Heck, he'd beaten Saffron, and that guy was technically a god – recently ascended though he might've been. So he didn't really feel all that worried about going over there and just punching some crazy king in the face a few times.
XXX
Louise was barely aware of Tabitha being called away from the academy, not particularly interested in the actions of the quiet girl.
No, she didn't pay it much thought at all until the secretive Princess Charlotte of Gallia arrived at her doorstep and took a knee before her.
As in, Louise kind of stared in confusion at the quiet Tabitha who was now suddenly wearing the clothes of royalty, and who was for some inexplicable reason kneeling in front of her – always the failure, Louise the Zero, her of all people – and declaring in a voice that carried across the courtyard that she was personally indebted to Louise.
Much stammering, and even more confusing attempts to get the princess to stop kneeling, later and suddenly Louise had a headache.
Ranma Saotome had overthrown the Mad King of Gallia.
Apparently, he'd done so because 'he was kind of a dick', and had done so by 'punching him a few times in the noggin'.
The actual fight was supposed to have been a great deal more impressive than Ranma's 'retelling' of it had been, but that might've been because he'd been too busy guzzling down everything edible in the castle at the time, and not had time to concentrate on telling the story.
The end result however was that the Mad King and those who'd support him had all ended up locked in a dungeon, which was why 'Tabitha' had been called back to Gallia. Of course, she was actually well liked, and since nobody really wanted to go against the Mad King's usurper and bust the madman out of his own dungeons – even if they legally probably should – they'd decided to simply cut their losses and crowned Charlotte as the Princess Regent, effective immediately.
And since apparently the Mad King in question had been sending the Princess off on suicide-missions whenever it struck his fancy to do so, she was very grateful to Ranma for his action.
But Ranma had more or less wandered out the front door one random day, not particularly bothered by his actions one way or the other, and Charlotte kind of wanted to thank someone, so she'd decided to thank Louise for summoning the crazy commoner.
Louise wasn't sure if she ought to laugh or cry about that, but she figured that she should at least try to be graceful in accepting Charlotte's earnest thanks, where her 'familiar' had managed to be so crudely dismissive to the Princess' attempts to thank him.
Really, what kind of rude individual must he be anyway, to not appreciate the gratefulness of royalty? Was he raised in a barn by farm-animals or something?
... And why did she suddenly have a strange image appear in her head of a white-and-black bear playing around with a huge ball? She certainly couldn't think of any farm-animals that would look like that.
XXX
