[An Auto-Parody of a Palmer Ranma 1/2 Fan fiction]
Hot
By Joseph Palmer
The war ignited near the bridge of his nose.
A singular bead of sweat had prospered, stretching
and expanding its borders until it had met another. The
two pushed, tested and probed each other, each seeking
advantage, each straining for dominance. Suddenly the
truce enforced by surface tension failed and armies of
water and salt molecules poured into each other, surging
and mixing. Then as suddenly as it began, it ended. The
armies were now united, the battle forgotten.
Ranma blinked his eyes.
The motion was only enough to cause the bead to slip a
tiny fraction of an inch, just enough to cause the drop
to encounter a new, isolated drop. The borders touched,
and a new battle was joined. The result was the same as
before, for in this war there were no casualties, only
courageous battles and glorious victories. Again and
again the war surged, the lines advancing down his nose.
Soon a new enemy was there, an irresistible enemy, an
enemy from the outside; gravity. For the bead of sweat,
its very success became its literal downfall.
It quavered at the tip of his nose, clinging valiantly
and defiantly, then fell. In the air it regrouped,
smoothing the shattered battle lines, withdrawing and
reinforcing, minimizing its borders into the perfect
fighting sphere.
Ranma watched as it fell, he thought briefly of flicking it with
his finger as a martial arts exercise, but decided instead to watch
it fall, as he had with all the others.
The drop hit squarely in the middle of one of the fir
floorboards, some splattered nearby, but in an instant
the wood pulled the drop apart, stretching and torturing
it with it's grain. In seconds the water was drawn into
the wood, the only memorial a tiny field of salt.
Ranma leaned back slowly, closing his eyes as they passed through
a ribbon of searing sunlight. He lay flat upon the floor, waiting.
Relief came as the fan finally turned his direction. The fast moving
air dried the sweat that glistened from every pore, cooling and
relaxing him. He stretched, bathing in the luxury of the breeze.
He heard bare feet padding up the hall, and lazily opened his eyes
to see who was coming. Nabiki approached, chopping up a bowl of
shaved ice with a long spoon. She carefully lifted a spoonful of the
green tinted ice and put it in her mouth. She sucked the spoon to
draw the coolness from it, closing her eyes in relief. When she
opened them, she noticed Ranma, and stopped. She was wearing her
short shorts, and a halter, which appeared to be woven from no more
cotton than is usualy found in a small Band Aid.
Ranma stared openly a moment. To call it a halter seemed so out of
place, since 'halt' neither described its apparent function, nor was
'halt' any part of the message it screamed in Ranma's mind. Nabiki
smiled innocently, and gently pulled he spoon from her mouth, leaving
her lips wet from the ice. Slowly she hid both the spoon and the bowl
behind her back, perilously testing the halter. Hiding her treat, she
stepped over him and sank to her normal place at the table.
She eyed Ranma warily, then placed her bowl close in front of her,
wrapping her arm around it protectively. She took a spoonful and ate
it, watching him the whole time.
Ranma sighed and looked outside. The top edge of the wall
shimmered in the heat. The pond looked refreshing, but the water had
become tepid and murky.
A second set of footsteps announced Akane's arrival. She carried
two bowls of ice, each sporting a long spoon at a jaunty angle. She
was dressed for the heat, in shorts and a crop top. It must have been
a bad crop this year, Ranma thought, for the makers to have run out
of cotton, leaving Akane's bikini top tan line clearly visible below
the billowy edge of her top.
She stepped over him, untanned skin flashing, and sat at the
table. She held one of the bowls out to Ranma, he stared past it as
the fan found Akane and rippled the edge of her top.
"C'mon Ranma, make up your mind. Do you want it, or don't you?"
Nabiki prompted from across the table.
Ranma blushed and shook his head in the affirmative, and to clear
it. He sat up and took the bowl of ice.
Akane took a spoonful of ice and munched it slowly.
"'Che, I can't believe this heat," she said. She rolled her head
then stretched, the fabric of the top lifting well above her tan
line. "So, what do you think, Ranma?"
The fan found Akane's top.
Border wars broke out all over Ranma.
"It's hot," he answered.
August 8, 1997
The characters and stories of Ranma 1/2 are Copyright Rumiko
Takahashi, and are used here without permission or license. No claims
to the above copyright are made by the author of this work. This work
is for non-commercial use ONLY, and is produced for the enjoyment of
fans only. This work is the expression of the author and the
depiction of the Ranma 1/2 characters herein are in no way
represented to be a part of Ranma 1/2 as depicted by the original
author and copyright holder(s).
"Hot" 1997 Joseph Palmer
A few week back White Wolf sent out a message asking if I might be
interested in doing a parody of my own work. I thought about it
while I took a lunchtime walk, and realized that it might be
pretty easy to do parody of my own stuff.
1. "Ninja no Himitsu" aside, the title should be one word.
2. It must be short. The truest parody would be a single
torturously long sentence.
3. Excruciatingly detailed descriptions of irrelevant events.
4. Twisted metaphors, like a raccoon with a hard hat.
5. Sporadic dialog of short utterances. In this case, I've
followed the example of "Red" and put all of the dialog at the
end.
6. Transparent to the reader, but true of my work, this story took
about 8 hours to write. No Joke.
I've had a couple of comments already and they hadn't even seen it
as a parody. I'd hoped that 5 paragraphs about a drop of sweat
might seem to meet #3 above, Oh well.
-- So, what do you think?
I honestly love to get Email from folks who have read my stories,
if you liked it, please drop me a little note:
jpalmer@best.com
My other stories can be found at my home page:
http://www.best.com/~jpalmer
-- This story was written on my beat up world traveling
-- Psion series 3A computer.
(
geocities.com/tokyo)