Chapter 4 – Scramble! Scramble!
Nobody needed to be told why, although it was abused daily (and more often than not, more than that), the grass in the Tendo property was lush and tall: Soun was all in himself a very effective sprinkler system. Since he mainly had two crying modes (the Twin Silent Rivers technique and the Full Blown Drowning Wail), his continuous training to perfect them and develop variations has entitled some to label them for each and all emotional situation (wail #74, My Little Girl is Mad at her Fiancé and Made me a new Skylight, for example).
Bullshit.
Simply put, Soun Tendo is a sensitive man with lachrymal glands disorder. Or, for the medically not inclined, Soun is a crybaby. Usually. Some times, he's not.
Now is NOT one of those times.
"WAAAH! My little girl is all grown-up and is leaving her old Daddy for her honeymoon! I'M SO HAPPY!"
To tell if Soun Tendo is happy or sad is a hard task. You have to wait for him to tell you, because the curtain of tears is the same one way or another.
This is the reason why it is stupid to label his wails: they're all so much alike you can't tell them apart.
However, you could try to label the different uses of such a cheap, regular and powerful water stream. In fact, Nabiki Tendo had thought about sell… renting her father to the electric company: cheaper than a hydroelectric dam, taking far less space and almost self maintaining, she had let this idea drop when Soun started on "WAAAH! My Daughter wants to get rid of me to make a few buck! I'M SO SAD!".
She wouldn't have minded doing it, if Kasumi hadn't scolded her for damaging the floor mats with Father's tears.
You just don't cross Kasumi. So, her project was dropped. A shame, really. But then, she would have had to install a regular sprinkler system in the backyard. So it wasn't a total loss.
Anyway, she now had another project. So she simply didn't care if her father drowned (literally) in his own tears. We shouldn't, either. Back to the cause of Soun's present wailing then.
So, Ranma and Akane were done packing for their honeymoon, and Nabiki was just done giving them her good-bye present (in exchange for a favor, of course). A (cheap) wallet with plane tickets (2nd class), passports and visas, some money (not too much, though), and a piece of nondescript paper smelling slightly like lemon.
A few rubbers, too. You never know, it could prove useful.
Strangely, nobody noticed the absence of a fat, bald martial artist with a fetish for old tires and beach balls. Or if they did, they thought he was off emptying bottle after bottle of sake, celebrating his now effective retirement. That would be so much like Genma Saotome…
Downtown Tokyo.
"Hey Eiji, call Greenpeace, we've got an endangered specie running wild."
Sgt. Eiji Taka shook his head.
"Seeing what it is, I think WWF (the nature protecting one, not the over-muscled cheap other) would be more appropriate here."
And so, a black and white furball was shipped back to China, letting many wonder how an animal as placid as a panda could cross the sea and all of Japan and get plastered in downtown Tokyo without anybody noticing a thing (all zoos, black market animal resellers and loony rich people were discretely interviewed on that one, and apart from an alligator called Mr. Turtle quoting Shakespeare, nothing out of the usual was reported).
Some emitted the theory that old tires in Tokyo are of better batting quality and that this panda was as set on the quality of his tires than a Frenchman on that of the bread making his sandwich. That would be ludicrous (not the part about the sandwich, though), if said panda hadn't whipped out a Toyota Camry tire out of thin air and started playing with it. So the matter was dropped, and the explanation accepted as being good enough.
After all, with what happens in some wards, a wild panda with a tire fetish is just plain ordinary.
Meanwhile, at Tokyo Airport...
"Chime Passengers for the JAL flight 8712, at destination to Hong-Kong, please present yourselves at gate 12 to register your luggage."
"Why are you so tense Ranma?"
"Oh... no reason. I'm not tense not at all nope nope nope! Why would I be tense?! Me, tense? Bwahahahaha!" The silliness etched upon Ranma was perfectly balanced by the shadow on his brow and the cold sweat drops running along his temples.
"Say... come to think of it, it may just be your first time aboard a plane."
"Me? Don't be dumb Akane, I'm not scared of no crappy plane!"
"You said it, not me. Let's hurry up to our gate, or we're going to miss our flight, and these tickets don't allow for a refund or exchange."
While our young couple was going (or more precisely, Akane dragged a very reluctant Ranma) to the passenger gate, an official was watching the boarding of a very special piece of wildlife in the luggage compartment of an old plane headed towards the closest airport to the Bayankala mountain range.
"I wonder why they decided on that place over all the others. Maybe you're a very rare and special stain from that area... or the genetic engineering facility the Chinese 'secretly' installed there need another test subject," the official told the animal.
Said animal was still batting a Toyota Camry tire, obviously unconcerned by the hastily scratched 'Nerima Zoo' replaced by 'Bayankala Mountains, China' on its paperwork. The comment about the facility made it almost miss a bat though.
Once loaded aboard, things started getting weird: every time a syringe containing a narcotic approached the cage the panda would growl at it, and attempts at covertly putting it to sleep using a dart gun ended in the dart being embedded in the tire. After the tenth failed attempt, and seeing that the beast was otherwise peaceful, they decided to leave it at that.
If somebody had looked at the panda at the time of take-off, they would have seen it biting hard on its nails. Of course, pandas don't take planes, and it was obviously this one's first time.
"Come ON, Ranma! Stop being so childish! Plenty of people take planes, and it's in fact statistically safer than driving a car!" Akane almost yelled.
"Yeah, but in a car you don't fall from as high as this!" Ranma shakily answered.
"Okay, do you want something to help you calm down? I can ask for some tablets, I think they may make you some good." Akane gestured to the stewardess.
"No! No tablets! They don't work on me none! Kodachi has me immune to most drugs now anyway! And I don't like the taste, and it gives me stomach aches, and..."
WHAMMO!
The stewardess finally showed up, and blinked at the slumped Ranma.
"Are our newlyweds alright?"
"Well, he had a bad case of first flight fright, but I managed to calm him down." So saying, Akane caressed almost lovingly the handle of her travel mallet (smaller than her normal one and easier to use than a shinai in a cramped space; ideal for knocking out wayward boyfriends, fiancés and husbands during stressing trips).
The stewardess blinked, sweat-dropped and left it at that. Of all the luck, 1st class had to be almost empty today, and the couple got upgraded to HER 1st class, with congratulations from the staff. It was time she got herself a new job; traveling the world is nice, but the literal shock of cultures was a bit... unsettling sometimes.
Both flights went pretty much eventless from then on.
Nobody needed to be told why, although it was abused daily (and more often than not, more than that), the grass in the Tendo property was lush and tall: Soun was all in himself a very effective sprinkler system. Since he mainly had two crying modes (the Twin Silent Rivers technique and the Full Blown Drowning Wail), his continuous training to perfect them and develop variations has entitled some to label them for each and all emotional situation (wail #74, My Little Girl is Mad at her Fiancé and Made me a new Skylight, for example).
Bullshit.
Simply put, Soun Tendo is a sensitive man with lachrymal glands disorder. Or, for the medically not inclined, Soun is a crybaby. Usually. Some times, he's not.
Now is NOT one of those times.
"WAAAH! My little girl is all grown-up and is leaving her old Daddy for her honeymoon! I'M SO HAPPY!"
To tell if Soun Tendo is happy or sad is a hard task. You have to wait for him to tell you, because the curtain of tears is the same one way or another.
This is the reason why it is stupid to label his wails: they're all so much alike you can't tell them apart.
However, you could try to label the different uses of such a cheap, regular and powerful water stream. In fact, Nabiki Tendo had thought about sell… renting her father to the electric company: cheaper than a hydroelectric dam, taking far less space and almost self maintaining, she had let this idea drop when Soun started on "WAAAH! My Daughter wants to get rid of me to make a few buck! I'M SO SAD!".
She wouldn't have minded doing it, if Kasumi hadn't scolded her for damaging the floor mats with Father's tears.
You just don't cross Kasumi. So, her project was dropped. A shame, really. But then, she would have had to install a regular sprinkler system in the backyard. So it wasn't a total loss.
Anyway, she now had another project. So she simply didn't care if her father drowned (literally) in his own tears. We shouldn't, either. Back to the cause of Soun's present wailing then.
So, Ranma and Akane were done packing for their honeymoon, and Nabiki was just done giving them her good-bye present (in exchange for a favor, of course). A (cheap) wallet with plane tickets (2nd class), passports and visas, some money (not too much, though), and a piece of nondescript paper smelling slightly like lemon.
A few rubbers, too. You never know, it could prove useful.
Strangely, nobody noticed the absence of a fat, bald martial artist with a fetish for old tires and beach balls. Or if they did, they thought he was off emptying bottle after bottle of sake, celebrating his now effective retirement. That would be so much like Genma Saotome…
Downtown Tokyo.
"Hey Eiji, call Greenpeace, we've got an endangered specie running wild."
Sgt. Eiji Taka shook his head.
"Seeing what it is, I think WWF (the nature protecting one, not the over-muscled cheap other) would be more appropriate here."
And so, a black and white furball was shipped back to China, letting many wonder how an animal as placid as a panda could cross the sea and all of Japan and get plastered in downtown Tokyo without anybody noticing a thing (all zoos, black market animal resellers and loony rich people were discretely interviewed on that one, and apart from an alligator called Mr. Turtle quoting Shakespeare, nothing out of the usual was reported).
Some emitted the theory that old tires in Tokyo are of better batting quality and that this panda was as set on the quality of his tires than a Frenchman on that of the bread making his sandwich. That would be ludicrous (not the part about the sandwich, though), if said panda hadn't whipped out a Toyota Camry tire out of thin air and started playing with it. So the matter was dropped, and the explanation accepted as being good enough.
After all, with what happens in some wards, a wild panda with a tire fetish is just plain ordinary.
Meanwhile, at Tokyo Airport...
"Chime Passengers for the JAL flight 8712, at destination to Hong-Kong, please present yourselves at gate 12 to register your luggage."
"Why are you so tense Ranma?"
"Oh... no reason. I'm not tense not at all nope nope nope! Why would I be tense?! Me, tense? Bwahahahaha!" The silliness etched upon Ranma was perfectly balanced by the shadow on his brow and the cold sweat drops running along his temples.
"Say... come to think of it, it may just be your first time aboard a plane."
"Me? Don't be dumb Akane, I'm not scared of no crappy plane!"
"You said it, not me. Let's hurry up to our gate, or we're going to miss our flight, and these tickets don't allow for a refund or exchange."
While our young couple was going (or more precisely, Akane dragged a very reluctant Ranma) to the passenger gate, an official was watching the boarding of a very special piece of wildlife in the luggage compartment of an old plane headed towards the closest airport to the Bayankala mountain range.
"I wonder why they decided on that place over all the others. Maybe you're a very rare and special stain from that area... or the genetic engineering facility the Chinese 'secretly' installed there need another test subject," the official told the animal.
Said animal was still batting a Toyota Camry tire, obviously unconcerned by the hastily scratched 'Nerima Zoo' replaced by 'Bayankala Mountains, China' on its paperwork. The comment about the facility made it almost miss a bat though.
Once loaded aboard, things started getting weird: every time a syringe containing a narcotic approached the cage the panda would growl at it, and attempts at covertly putting it to sleep using a dart gun ended in the dart being embedded in the tire. After the tenth failed attempt, and seeing that the beast was otherwise peaceful, they decided to leave it at that.
If somebody had looked at the panda at the time of take-off, they would have seen it biting hard on its nails. Of course, pandas don't take planes, and it was obviously this one's first time.
"Come ON, Ranma! Stop being so childish! Plenty of people take planes, and it's in fact statistically safer than driving a car!" Akane almost yelled.
"Yeah, but in a car you don't fall from as high as this!" Ranma shakily answered.
"Okay, do you want something to help you calm down? I can ask for some tablets, I think they may make you some good." Akane gestured to the stewardess.
"No! No tablets! They don't work on me none! Kodachi has me immune to most drugs now anyway! And I don't like the taste, and it gives me stomach aches, and..."
WHAMMO!
The stewardess finally showed up, and blinked at the slumped Ranma.
"Are our newlyweds alright?"
"Well, he had a bad case of first flight fright, but I managed to calm him down." So saying, Akane caressed almost lovingly the handle of her travel mallet (smaller than her normal one and easier to use than a shinai in a cramped space; ideal for knocking out wayward boyfriends, fiancés and husbands during stressing trips).
The stewardess blinked, sweat-dropped and left it at that. Of all the luck, 1st class had to be almost empty today, and the couple got upgraded to HER 1st class, with congratulations from the staff. It was time she got herself a new job; traveling the world is nice, but the literal shock of cultures was a bit... unsettling sometimes.
Both flights went pretty much eventless from then on.