Yes, it's back. ^_^
Yay!
It never really left; I just wanted to finish the
four-story arc before releasing it.
You mean three more chapters of THIS are awaiting posting?! Whee!
That, along with Real Life and my
project with Alan Harnum contributed to the delay (translation: it's all
Alan's fault. Blame him.)
Everything is always Alan's fault. :)
A note for new and old readers: This series chronicles the early years of
Soun, Genma, and various other ancestors of the current generation. You
should really probably read the previous parts, located at:
http://www.thekeep.org/~mike/pastpresent.html
...if you want to know who the heck all these people are, why this person
wants to kill Nodoka, and why that person is acting like some sort of
kami.
And you might want to visit the Transpacific Fanfiction homepage at:
http://www.thekeep.org/~mike/transp.html
Then again, after such a blatant plug, you might not. ^_^
Comments always appriciated.
All comments strictly my opinion, and offered in good spirit.
--------
Pastpresent 5 - Tourism, Part 1
All the same, money was a problem for both of us. I
was working to support two people, and Kiri's cash flow
took a dip at around the same time Misuto arrived.
{heheh!}
There were a lot of ways to make more money. Most
of them were illegal. Kiri and I each tried our hand at a
few of them; her more successfully and regularly than
me.
she more {...} than I. {? Not sure, and even if it is, this is
effectively "speech", so it could be ungrammatical anyway...}
"Yeesh, alright, just a minute..." Sighing, Genma rose
unsteadily to his feet and staggered down the center of the
tiny cargo plane. Pushing open the battered steel door, he
{More likely aluminum than steel in an aircraft...}
glanced into the cockpit. "We almost to Laos?"
Genma just stared. "Look, we're uh, not in any real
we're, uh, not
danger, are we?"
"If they hit us, we're all going to die," Kiri informed him.
"So that's a definite Yes."
{hehe! Kiri gets a lot of great lines in this, I notice.}
"It looked like the fastest route," the archeologist said
confusedly. "And Japan isn't at war with them. I still don't
understand why they're shooting at us."
Kiri yelped as a burst of flak sent bits of metal pattering
against the windscreen. "I thought you said this guy travels a
lot?!"
"He does," Genma said resignedly. "Korea, China, the
Philippines, Vietnam, Egypt, India..."
"I'm amazed he's lived this long."
"So am I," Genma agreed glumly.
{I'm not. :) }
Takashi smiled slightly. "Traveling is good for you."
"Well, flak is bad for you," Kiri irritably replied. "I wish
Misuto could survive outside of Japan. We could use some fog
right about now."
{Nice reminder of Misuto-no-kami and why she isn't present; I was just
wondering that. Well, I'll miss her for a while, but they can't all be
onscreen all the time...}
Nodding, Genma closed the cabin door and sighed. Takashi
paid well, but his expeditions seemed to involve not so much
flirting with death as buying it a dozen red roses and
proposing.
{On wonders whether this would later seep by cross-osmosis into Genma's
attitude towards women, as well. :) }
"Bad news is there's a SAM battery that's going to start
firing at us in about three minutes, if what Takashi picked up
on the shortband is accurate. Time to jump." She tightened her
{I assume "shortband" is terse Kiri-ese for "short-range waveband"
rather than "short-wave", which is long-range... but a pilot might say
"VHF".}
parachute straps, and began wrenching at the door.
"JUMP?" the other three screamed.
{heh. The Air Force refers to the Airborne as "soldiers dumb enough to
jump out of a perfectly good airplane". :) }
The mechanic's finger jabbed out. "This is your ripcord."
The cord was shoved into her unresisting hand. "This is your
{Suggest "handle" rather than "cord", since the thing on the end is what
you actually hold...}
backup ripcord." A second cord was shoved into her other hand.
{...and here.}
"And this is me tossing you out the door."
"NO! WAIT! AIIIIYYYYIIIIIIIIIEEEeeeeee....."
{heh. More description utterly unnecessary. :) }
"Never again, Kasigi."
"Never again, Tendo."
{Haven't they lerned yet that the probability of reoccurrence is
directly proportional to the fervency of the vow? :) }
"BANZAI!"
Five off-white parachutes wafted lazily down towards
the Laotian countryside. Roughly 90 seconds later, a barrage of
white smoke trails raced up from the ground towards the
plane, which exploded in a nicely spectacular fashion.
{What a great scene. Snappiest dialogue, many giggles. Applause.}
* * * *
On a nearby hilltop, a young man in a fedora and leather
jacket watched with interest through binoculars as flaming
wreckage fell from the sky.
He smiled slightly. "Very nice shooting, Mr. Ngyuen."
{The phone book here has about 300 Nguyens and exactly 1 Ngyuen, but up
to you...}
"Kuno Takashi? Archeologist. I'm not sure if he's an
incredibly lucky idiot or a cunning, dangerous man who just
acts like an incredibly lucky idiot. He's more than a little
crazy." As if reading Ngyuen's mind, the young man chuckled. "I
suppose I'm not a model of stability either. But who is?
Takashi has beaten me to the Bowl of the Sun, the Ebon Skewer
of Thoth, and the last bottle of the Wine of Pnoth left on earth.
This time, I win. The Sukhothai Tongs will be mine."
{"Pnoth"? Oh dear. :) BTW, I've been expecting this archaeological
adventure since Inji first appeared, and looking forward to it. Whee!}
Ngyuen chuckled, and motioned for his men to load the
disassembled rocket pipes into the jeep. "A better choice than
that guy made. He'll be lucky if he gets out of the Mekong
alive."
{This may be an anachronism; webpage says 1959, this seems to be
mid-60s, and shoulder-fired SAMs weren't available, let alone common,
until the late 70s, if memory serves. SAMs of the time were about the
size of telephone poles, and deployed and operated by many men and
trucks. Unguided rockets would be jeep-portable, but would have a very
low hit probability against an aircraft. Then again, this IS the
Ranmaverse, where unrealistic things happen every day... :) }
"Oh, I think he will," Kuonji Inji said, smiling coldly. "I
think he will."
{Good lord, the man has a grasp on reality.}
"I think this is a Laotian Water Oak," Takashi said
absently, peering at a fallen log. "This is a stroke of luck."
"Why's that?" Genma asked hopefully.
"They're supposed to be extinct. I'll have to tell the
botanical department back at the university..."
{giggle}
"I think that's probably the Mekong. If we make for it...
Takashi, are there any villages along the Mekong?"
"Oh, hundreds of them," the archeologist said cheerfully.
"The Mekong River Valley was a cradle of civilization in
Southeast Asia."
{One hopes that some of the villages he refers to still exist, because I
get the feeling his POV is not exactly restricted to this millenium, let
alone this moment. :) }
"Let me get this straight," Kiri slowly said. "We don't
have to worry about pirates because the Pathet Lao drove them
out, and we don't have to worry about the Pathet Lao because
they don't really exist. Isn't that sorta mutually
contradictory?"
Takashi frowned slightly. "I suppose it is. But it must be
true. It came from a very reputable journal."
{Aiyah. I hope you paid this character a lot, because he's sure doing a
good job for you. :) }
"These Pathet Lao," Nodoka slowly said. "They wear black
farmer's clothing, conical hats, and carry machine guns?"
{Uh oh.}
Takashi nodded. "And they wear a red strip of cloth."
"Over their left arm?"
"That's right."
"And they don't exist?" Nodoka said wearily.
"They're just a myth."
"Well," she said, pointing, "In that case, there are about a
dozen nonexistent people aiming guns at us."
They turned. The sound of roughly a dozen safeties
coming off echoed through the jungle.
{Classic, just classic.}
"He says that we might be spies," Genma translated. "I'm
going to tell him that we aren't." He shook his head vigorously.
[We are not eggplants. Let me impregnate your daughter.]
[Buddha preserve us. Let me shoot them, Jauing.]
{ ! }
The guerilla smiled sheepishly. "How do you do. We work
very hard. We like Japanese very much."
Soun beamed. "Excellent job, Kasigi! I don't know what
you said, but it seems to have worked."
"We not partisan. Yankee, French, they bad fellow."
"You just have to know how to talk to them," Genma said
proudly.
"We kill you all. Death to Japanese. Spit on Emperor. You
all die now."
[What are you telling them, Phred?]
{ Oh, my. }
"They're discussing whether or not they should kill us,"
Takashi told him. "Incidentally, Genma, while I'm sure this,
hmm, plan of yours of pretending to be a raving lunatic is very
good, I don't think it's working."
"You speak Laotian?" Genma hissed.
Takashi blinked. "Of course. I'd have to, you know, for an
expedition to Laos."
{hehehe!}
[There still _are_ pirates. In hordes, really. They
occasionally attack a Pathet Lao boat or a government ship,
and then a firefight breaks out. There's also local militia
fleets, opium smugglers, and I've heard some crazy rumor that
the Americans are going to start bombing Laos.] The guerillas
laughed. [Have you ever head anything so far-fetched? What are
they going to bomb, the Plain of Jars?]
{er... funny thing about that. :) }
"Or the supposedly mythical legend of the boiling flesh
curse."
"Or the 5-yard-long centipedes.
centipedes."
"Or the shoggo...."
"Please don't say that name, Kasigi."
"Right. Sorry."
{It was right around here that my sides started to hurt... and with
nearly half of the fic remaining. I think you might want to put a
warning from the Surgeon General, or whatever your equivalent is, in the
disclaimer. :) }
"Just as long as nobody throws me out of any more
airplanes."
"Oh, will you stop whining about that? Look, I'm sorry I
threw you out. Next time I'll let Genma do it. I'm sure it's
something he's fantasized about for years."
{Ow! What a shot!}
The dock area proved to be a mishmash of stubby wood-
and-bamboo piers jutting out into the river. Boats lined it. All
of them were painted various bright colors, and all of them
were peeling enough to show that they had been painted
various other bright colors in the past.
{Nice description.}
Genma glanced around, his gaze finally settling on at
on a
quonset hut with a decayed wooden signboard showing a bottle.
"I'm guessing that place would be the local hiring hall?"
{Either that or a wretched hive of scum and villainy. :) }
Kiri nodded. "Bingo. C'mon, let's go check it out."
The hut's occupants went quiet as they entered the door.
The crew inhabiting it seemed to fall into two categories -
{suggest} categories:
quiet, clean, and terrified, or quiet, filthy, and predatory.
Grinning broadly, Kiri walked over to a card table in the
center of the room, and slouched into a chair across from a
room and
large, somewhat commanding man. Taking out a handful of
coins, she tossed them into the pot and motioned for the dealer
to deal her in.
"You... don't... KNOW... that!" Soun snarled, his hands
flexing. "Nodoka-san is a refined, cultured maiden! How on
earth do you expect her to win a card game with that lot of
walking... depravity? Let me GO, Kasigi!"
"Kiri, this was a really stupid idea," Genma said,
struggling desperately to keep Soun from the mechanic's
throat. "I mean, maybe _you_ could sucker them, but Nodoka
doesn't stand a..."
{Living in a fantasy world, folks. :) }
"Yattai!" squealed Nodoka, waving four aces and a king. "I
"Yatta!" {J "I did it", right?}
win! Oh, what a lucky girl I am!"
Genma sighed. "That was unnecessarily brutal, Kiri."
"Thank you."
{You enjoyed that, didn't you? :) }
"You shouldn't judge people from other cultures," Takashi
said cheerfully. "For example, the Yamomano people of the
Yanomamo {well, that's the name of the actual Amazon people, anyway...}
Amazon basin consider hitting each other with large wooden
clubs to be a polite formality."
"That sounds plausible," Soun agreed. "Traveling with
thieves, terrorists, murderers, and Kiritsubo is the usual way
of things with Takashi's expeditions."
"You're slandering the thieves, terrorists, and
murderers," Nodoka muttered.
{heheh!}
Genma winced, and exchanged a fearful look with Soun.
This wasn't the way things were supposed to be going. On
Takashi's expeditions, fate only smiled on you to lull you into a
false sense of security.
{I was sort of thinking that myself...}
"We're all going to die."
{"And not pleasantly." :) }
Kuonji strode on board, glanced around, and then blinked
twice, slowly, like a snake noticing prey.
{Er. Snakes don't blink. They can't. No eyelids. Sorry... monitor
lizard, maybe? I can testify from personal experience that those DO
blink under those circumstances... :) }
"Subeta Kiritsubo.
Well. What an interesting surprise."
"Pleased to meet you," Inji said, voice friendly. "We'll be
going downriver to Luang Prabang. The former owner told you
that, right Kiri?"
right, Kiri?"
"Get the bag moved, Genma?" Kiri asked pointedly. He
{Boy, she never misses a chance, does she? :) }
nodded a reply, and she smiled in relief. "Good. Your new
quarters are this way, Kuonji-san."
No, the trip was far from over.
Good lord, what a ride. Relentless pacing, economical description,
tightly-packed action, characters pulling their hair out-- say, maybe
that's what happened to Genma. :) This has the feel of my favorite bits
of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Air America, and Romancing the Stone, while
differing significantly in detail, of course. Such a fun read, and I'm
looking forward to the next part.
Thanks for writing and sharing!
Vince Seifert Fanfic Analyst FFIRC Frog
Prime: seifertv@csus.edu
Backup: seifertv@myrealbox.com
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Fanfic: http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/seifertv/toth/
Ideas are worth their weight in gold.