Here we go again!
 
=====================
The Far Island Scroll
=====================
 
Ranma reminded himself once again that what had happened was an inevitable
part of life and living. He had not been ready for it even though he had
looked forward to it on more than once in his youth. Happosai was gone. The
old man was gone never to return, having made that one-way trip into the
great beyond. 
 
Perhaps more surprising for him than the old codger's death had been the
numbers of people who came to the funeral. Ranma smiled grimly to himself as
he remembered that more than one attendee had attended for the sole purpose
of assuring themselves that the gnomish old panty thief was "most sincerely
dead" as one wag had put it. There had been another unanticipated event at
the funeral. Much to Ranma's shock, surprise and dismay, he had broken down
into tears as they laid the old man to rest.
 
Ranma heaved a deep sigh, which got his wife's attention. She turned to him
and stared at him in silence for a moment, her nose wrinkled at the dust and
clutter in the old man's treasure room.
 
"You know, Ranma, I hate to say this, but I am going to miss the old monster
now that he's gone. Things will never be the same again."
 
"Yeah, I know what you mean, Akane. I never expected to be sad about this."
 
"Yeah, well, you trained with him a lot more than I did."
 
"Training? You call we did training?"
 
"You did learn a lot from him."
 
"Hah! Mostly what I did was learn every technique I could find in hopes of
defeatin' the old freak."
 
"Sounds like pretty good training to me," Akane said. "I wonder if he was
telling the truth about having the scrolls for thousands of sealed up
techniques stashed in here?"
 
"We won't know until we look, Akane."
 
"Well, before we can find anything, we will have to do something with all
this lingerie."
 
"Yeesh!"
 
"Ranma?" a deep male voice called out from downstairs.
 
"Up here, Pops! In Happosai's cache!"
 
"Be careful up there, boy! That's a place where even the gods have to be
cautious."
 
"So that's why you won't come up here and give us a hand, huh?"
 
"Why don't you just start throwing the master's collection down here so that
we can start stuffing it into bags," Genma shouted back. "That would be the
simplest for all concerned."
 
Ranma cast a glance at his wife. She smirked and shook her head.
 
"Some things never change, Ranma. You couldn't get dad and your father up
here at gunpoint."
 
"Yeah, I guess you're right," Ranma said in a normal tone of voice, then
shouted, "Okay, Pop's, but you and Oji-san will hafta to carry it all off to
tha dump, too, okay?"
 
"That's more than acceptable, son," Soun Tendo called back.
 
"Akane, have ya ever noticed that your dad calls me son more often than Pops
does?"
 
Akane snorted derisively then asked, "How often do you call your dad
anything other than shit-daddy?"
 
"Well, hey, he's got it comin' most times."
 
"Oh, my!" Kasumi said as she worked her way up through the trapdoor and into
Happosai's inner lair. "This is going to be quite a job, isn't it?"
 
"You got that right, Kasumi," Akane said, with a note of concern in her
voice. "You shouldn't have to mess with this though, not until Ranma and I
get the worst of it out of the way, anyway."
 
"Oh, Akane, I don't mind, besides, there's no telling how many of my things
we'll find up here."
 
The three of them set about gathering up armful after armful of lingerie,
most of it clean, thank heavens, and dropping the bundles of orphaned linen
down to Soun and Genma.
 
"That's mine!" Nodoka shouted.
 
Akane and Kasumi tittered at this while Ranma made a sour face. Kasumi
picked up a brassiere by one strap saying, "This looks like one of my
miss..." Kasumi fell silent as whatever the bra had been wrapped around fell
to the floor with a clatter.
 
"What's this, I wonder?" Akane said as she picked the object up. It was a
bamboo tube. One of the end caps was missing.
 
"There's something inside this thing," Akane said.
 
"Akane, be careful!" Ranma exclaimed. "There's no tellin' what..."
 
"It's just a scroll, Ranma. Relax!" Akane chided her husband.
 
"Ranma is right, you know, Akane," Kasumi said in her tones of gentle
admonition. "In your condition you should be more cautious!"
 
Akane rolled her eyes at this while she tried to get a grip on the scroll
with her fingernails. "I'm just a little pregnant, Kasumi. I wish everyone
would quit treating me as though I have a terminal disease."
 
"Kasumi's right, Akane," Ranma said. "There's no tellin' what the old man
left lying around up here."
 
"Got it!" Akane cried out with satisfaction as the scroll reluctantly slid
out of its tube. She unrolled it part way, then her eyes widened with shock.
"The handwriting is beautiful!"
 
"Oh, yeah?" Ranma said. He started moving toward his wife, but banged his
head on one of the exposed rafters. "Ow!"
 
Kasumi joined Akane and began looking at the scroll over her younger
sister's shoulder.
 
"Oh, my it is beautiful! And look! Some of it is illuminated! I never heard
of such a thing in the orient."
 
"Illuminated?" Ranma asked with a note of alarm. He was still rubbing the
top of his head. "What language is it written in?"
 
"Very old Japanese, I think, Ranma. Have you ever heard of such a scroll
being illuminated before?"
 
"Only once," Ranma said, sounding grim. "Put it back into the tube."
 
"Why?" Akane asked as she unrolled more of the scroll.
 
"If it's that fancy it has somethin' ta do with..."
 
"What's that shiny patch, Akane?" Kasumi asked with a gasp, interrupting
Ranma. 
 
Ranma was now well and truly alarmed and hastened toward his wife again,
only to once again hit his head on yet another rafter.
 
"I don't know, Kasumi-Look! A picture is starting to form in it!"
 
"Oh, what a beautiful landscape!" Kasumi exclaimed.
 
"It's...it's like a movie!" Akane exclaimed. "Almost as though a camera were
flown around that tall building in the center of the picture."
 
"Akane, roll that thing up!" Ranma shouted as he again tried to make his way
towards his wife and sister-in-law. "It's danger-Gah!" The big toe on
Ranma's right foot had gotten tangled in the strap of a brassiere that his
left foot was standing on. He tripped and popped his chin on the hardwood
floor of the attic. "Ouch!"
 
"What could this be made of, I wonder," Akane said as she put out her hand
to touch the glowing patch of light on the scroll.
 
"No!" Ranma shouted. "Don't touch it. There's no tellin' what might happen!"
 
Heedless of her husband's concerns, Akane gently placed the tips of her
fingers on the scroll. Kasumi grabbed her arm in an attempt to stop her.
 
"NO!" Ranma shouted as both his wife and sister-in-law began to
dematerialize before his eyes. "NO-0-O-O-O!"
 
But it was too late. Both Akane and Kasumi disappeared while Ranma watched
in horror. The scroll gently wafted to the floor, like a falling leaf.
 
"Dammit!" Ranma shouted. "Hard-headed, un-cute Tomboy!"
 
"Ranma, what's wrong?" Genma shouted up from the room below. "What's going
on up there?"
 
"I dunno, Pop! One of the old freak's scrolls turns out to have been a booby
trap of some kind.
 
Ranma rolled his eyes as he heard Soun Tendo inhale sharply, then begin
crying.
 
"Ranma how could you?" Soun shouted. A ghastly green light burst through the
trapdoor opening, warning Ranma of terrible wrath to come.
 
"Calm down will ya?" Ranma shouted as he tried to cover his face and head
with his hands. "I gotta think and you ain't helpin' any!"
 
There was as surprising period silence, followed by the whispery dry voice
of a woman that had lived far longer than most, some would complain far
longer than she should have.
 
"What happened, Great-grandson?"
 
Ranma opened one eye and looked upwards. Sure enough, it was Cologne. He
breathed a sigh of relief and sat up.
 
"I ain't sure," Ranma said in an aggravated voice as he pointed at the heavy
parchment lying on the floor. "Akane found this scroll and touched it even
though I was tellin' her not to and ta put it back in its tube."
 
"Hmm, pick it up very carefully by its edges, Great-grandson," Cologne said.
"Let's get into better light. My eyes aren't what they used to be."
 
Then, without further ado, Cologne made a little hop on her staff and
disappeared through the trap door. Ranma sighed and shrugged his shoulders.
He carefully pinched one edge of the scroll between the tips of his
forefinger and thumb, then gingerly made his way down the ladder with the
potent parchment. He exercised great care to avoid letting it touch his body
as he did so.
 
The room below was empty. With an aggravated grimace, Ranma made his way
downstairs and into the main room of the house. Everyone was gathered around
the table and Shampoo was already serving tea. Ranma gingerly laid the
scroll out on the tabletop.
 
"Can you read any of this, Great-grandson?" Cologne asked.
 
"I dunno, maybe. The writin's real clear but the characters look like the
ones used back during the Warring States period.
 
"That would be my guess as well," Cologne said with a nod of her head. "It's
too small for me to read easily."
 
"It's illuminated, like one of those European manuscripts," Nabiki said,
sounding surprise. "I've never seen that before."
 
"I have," Ranma said with a grim look on his face.
 
"Where?" Nabiki asked.
 
Genma splashed himself with water, thereby turning panda. This earned him a
poisonous stare from Soun.
 
"What does it say?" Cologne asked, sounding peeved.
 
"This is the Far Island Scroll," Ranma said, reading aloud. "Gimme a minute
to make some more of this out. The characters they used back then were a lot
different from the ones we use today."
 
Cologne gave out an exasperated sigh then said, "The Legendary Far Island
Scroll. This is going to be a very sore trial for you, Great-grandson."
 
"Look!" Shampoo exclaimed. "It making picture like movie!"
 
"Whatever ya do, don't touch it!" Ranma shouted.


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