The convention looked like it was still in the midst of being set up to open that evening. The thing that was already set up was the lost, found and help desk where something that looked like a small red cross between an aardvark and a shrew was busy sprucing things up. The word ‘lost’ had a large red X painted over it.
There was the little red being that was flying with his two ears and after he finished putting up the banner in front of the desk advertising what it was there for, he turned around and saw Bonnie. He immediately shot for her and gave her a big hug.
“He seems really happy to see you.” Fluttershy thought Finder looked cute even though she was unsure how spinning his ears helped him achieve flight.
“He should be happy to see me, me and Clyde are the reason he exists in the first place. This is my little brother One Five Eight otherwise known as Finder or in the Japanese language his name is literally ‘Find it’. He can find whatever you want.” Bonnie gave her little brother a pat on his small head. “Unfortunately his powers don’t work so well when in outer space, compared to what you told me of the Star Nomads he can’t actually find his way around to any planet in existence. While in the atmosphere of a planet he can find anything provided that the thing you want him to find actually exists and is on that planet. If you need something to help you out with any situation he can find and quickly provide something that would be the most useful in that given circumstance.”
“Like say a cure for the Jusenkyo Curse, can he find that?” A curse of that hadn’t activated, especially since Ranma met Fluttershy who kept stopping any cold water from striking him.
Finder looked at Ranma for a moment before pointing in a direction. Then he motioned to Bonnie with several bits of sign language, he obviously wasn’t one of the experiments that could talk or if he could he just chose not to.
“He says the cure is easier to find somewhere to the East. He doesn’t know what the exact form of the cure is, only where it is at the moment. He can’t exactly leave Japan as he promised a friend of his that he’d help out with the convention.” After Bonnie finished translating for Finder, he nodded to Ranma.
“So there is a cure… huh… it’s not a pipe dream after all, I’ve just been looking in all the wrong places.” Ranma slumped at hearing that his trips to China were kind of pointless when it came to looking for a cure. “Now I know how Ryoga feels, I’ve seen hell.”
“Um, how are you responsible for Finder’s existence?” They needed a distraction and Fluttershy was going to provide it since she didn’t like the idea of Ranma falling into a huge bout of depression.
“It’s not a long story, but me and Clyde kept stealing and hiding things from our father and he got really tired of it. So he created Finder to find the stuff we kept stashing away, along with his keys. It took him a while to think up an experiment idea to counter our thieving ways, so he figured why not something that can easily find what is lost or stolen?” Bonnie put an arm around Finder and gave him a friendly hug which he accepted with great enthusiasm. “Anyway, it wasn’t until later that Finders combat ability showed up and that was quite a while after having met Lilo. He’s very accurate with projectile weapons. Instead of being a sniper, he’s perfectly friendly and helpful. Little to no evil about him and he hates hurting people or getting violent, so he has a lot in common with you Sweet Cheeks. He’s one of fathers perfectly good experiments.”
Finder looked rather sheepish and then eyed Fluttershy for a bit, then after eyeing Bonnie for a bit he started signing something out to Bonnie causing her to blush.
“Eh, I’ve told her how I feel, but we’re not exactly ready for anything yet and are just good friends at the moment. Anyway, we came here for a reason and not just to see you! Though it is very nice to see you’re doing okay Finder, we really need your help.” Bonnie saw the friendly look on Finder’s face as he signed to her that he was always ready to help family.
Before Bonnie could respond, Finder noticed it for himself and started to sign in a panicked manner to Bonnie. He had finally noticed that the brother and sister pair weren’t in the same place; he didn’t even see Clyde lifting anything in the background anywhere while they were all distracted. He immediately knew something was entirely wrong when Bonnie just gave him a weak smile, the time he didn’t see his brother or sister up to something together was rare and they hadn’t been on the planet in quite a while.
“Yeah, about that… we’ll do lunch with Fluttershy’s family and our friend and then we’ll get to business. So if you could find out where her daughter is currently for us? She should be with a puppy and a magical talking bat.” While Bonnie’s brother didn’t entirely calm down, he did immediately start looking around and after putting up a sign that he was ‘out to lunch’, he then pointed in a direction before going to the doors and motioning for them to follow him.
“We’re not in any hurry, but it would be nice to fix the problem in a timely manner. I think I’m losing my mind from being here in Nerima.” Fluttershy followed after the slow flying master of finding things that was one of Bonnie’s little brothers. “So can he find places he hasn’t been to before?”
“He can find buried treasure without knowing beforehand where it was buried and without a map, he’s just that good.” Bonnie just got a cheerful smile and wave from Finder for the acknowledgement of his abilities as he led them to where Soft Echo and the others went to.
Ranma just took on an intrigued look as he followed the flying weird animal, he did say he was going to show them where lunch was.
-
Finder landed on the ground and pointed out a completely destroyed part of a daikon field, upon which at the edges sat Soft Echo and Foxglove looking into a crater that Donnabelle was stuck in the middle of with the rear half of her body in the ground.
“What happened?” Shying away a bit as she had spooked the bat, Fluttershy gave her a small shy smile. “Sorry for scaring you Foxglove, I didn’t mean to.”
“Oh, hello Fluttershy, Donna just went a bit overboard and destroyed this section of field she rented out.” Foxglove had her ears back and down since she hoped Fluttershy never found out what happened here.
“Nice to see the Daikon Brothers are doing something with their field aside from causing trouble.” Ranma commented blandly with his arms behind his head.
“Can someone help me out here? I can’t dig my way out!” Donna started whining after that and Fluttershy sighed. The pony started to move forward to dig her out when Soft Echo did something surprising.
Soft Echo knew her puppy was having problems getting out of the hole in the ground and she wanted to help. Holding up both her little hooves after rubbing them together, a buildup of energy started sparking between her hooves until she was holding a growing orb of crackling electricity. The rhizome suit seemed to be preventing her from hurting herself while doing this.
Everyone watched the filly Jump up in the air, she slammed the orb into the ground and a crack ran all the way over to Donnabelle. A moment later the ground erupted beneath her in a jolt of energy sending a bolt of lightning straight to the cloudless sky.
Donna came back to the ground flopping in boneless manner while groaning in pain, Fluttershy was about to move over to her only for a steaming daikon to land on the puppies face.
“Ouch, well that stung quite a bit. Where in the hell did the tick learn to do that?” Donna tossed the daikon over her shoulder while Fluttershy moved in to check on her injuries, she looked to be perfectly fine if slightly scorched. Soft Echo ran up to Donna to snuggle her all better from her boo-boos.
“She got into your manga stash while you were experimenting, I didn’t really think much of it at the time.” Foxglove didn’t think Soft Echo would be able do things like that. Looking at the manga in question nearby that Soft had perused, one had a man who held a ball of lightning above his head on the cover. Donna had said it was something about a guy with the title of Blue Thunder.
“I’m so glad that you didn’t hurt yourself.” Fluttershy tickled the filly on the belly after picking her up with a hoof, the filly squealed and giggled. Then she reprimanded the filly in an equally soft manner. “Now never do something so dangerous like that again!”
“What am I, chopped liver?” Donna said still slightly fried and coughing up a bit of smoke. Sure the short snuggle from Soft made her feel better, but it didn’t take away the stinging sensation.
“Hey your okay and you have your manga don’t you? Now come on it’s time for lunch.” Bonnie picked up the puppies bag of manga and swung it left to right in front of Donna getting her heel immediately.
-
“Here we are, Ucchans!” Ranma was still thinking about looking up manga as a source of creating new techniques after seeing what Soft Echo could do, though he was suspicious that the Blue Thunder manga had something to do with someone he knew. She looked so innocent despite being able to draw electricity out of the air itself which was likely a trait she had acquired from Fluttershy. “Hopefully Ukyo won’t try anything; she makes the best okonomiyaki in Japan and it’s been a good day for me so far.”
“What is okonomiyaki exactly?” Having been eating strange foods since she got to Earth, Fluttershy wanted to know if it was healthy to be eating out so much. She at least knew that Soft Echo was in good health so far because she refused to let her daughter get pudgy on too much fattening stuff.
“It’s a form of Japan style pizza or pancake with stuff on it. That’s at least what Finder is signing to me.” Understanding her silent brother wasn’t hard for Bonnie, he seemed rather excited to try something new.
“Hey Konatsu, Ucchan, I’ve got some hungry customers for you!” Ranma entered first followed by the group of travelers.
“Hey Ranma-kun, so who are these? Please tell me that they aren’t trouble or new fiancés.” Konatsu was a guy who looked really girly; he was raised as a kunoichi and could look rather feminine thanks to being raised by some ugly stepsisters. He introduced himself in a polite manner as the waitress of the restaurant that Ukyo ran. Fluttershy had no trouble with his cross dressing tendencies, even though it had confused Soft Echo quite a bit.
“Oh, so you’re actually paying for once Ran-chan? Hi I’m Kuonji Ukyo, owner of Ucchans. Who are you?” Ukyo was a girl that tended to cross dress as much as Konatsu seemed to do; it was an earned personality quirk as she introduced herself to the strange beings following Ranma around. She had longer hair than Kasumi and she befriended Soft Echo and followed that up by giving them some food on the house since the filly was adorable, Bonnie at least paid for a second round.
The food was good and the people here were genial, Fluttershy pretty much stated that none of them had any attraction to Ranma whatsoever and were just using him as a friendly tour guide until they met Finder who could get them around just as well.
-
“That was delicious Miss Kuonji, thank you very much for a wonderful lunch but we really have to get going. Finder, do you think you can find and direct us to Clyde?” For whatever reason Fluttershy had somehow upset Finder by asking that and he sniffed derisively. “Why is he angry with me?”
“Of course he can, he just doesn’t like anyone doubting his abilities as he knows exactly where to find Clyde-kun, right brother?” The aardvark shrew nodded to Bonnie and left through the door of the restaurant and hopped into the air while pointing in a direction to go. “Say Ranma, since you’re a martial artist do you think you can fight off multiple sumo ninjas? The guys are pretty darn fast and we can use all the help we can get for this, plus they use these glowing sword things.”
“I haven’t had a decent challenge all day; I have to admit it’s been pretty therapeutic for nothing crazy to happen to me for once.” Ranma was pretty sure that something had to happen soon as Nerima wasn’t a place where things were peaceful like this. It was kind of unnaturally peaceful. “I’m really good at fighting, if you don’t mind my continued help now that you don’t need a tour guide.”
“Thanks for continuing to help us Ranma, you’re a really nice person.” With that said, Fluttershy and the rest of the group followed Finder along with a slightly flustered Ranma.
Finder led them inside and around to the anime and martial arts section of the convention that had been fully set up, it looked like things were almost ready to go and he was looking towards the martial arts area that was set up. He lowered himself to the ground and led them in that direction while snuffling at the ground.
Finder’s ability worked in mysterious ways, Clyde was in this direction and there was something odd about the size as he detected him getting closer. It seemed as if Clyde was both frozen and reduced somehow… was he death knelled? He stopped and looked to Bonnie with worry and signed something out to her.
“Yeah, but he’s in stasis thanks to the bats magic tutor. Just hurry up and find him. The sooner we get to Hawaii, the quicker we can fix him.” Something flipped like a switch in her brother and Bonnie knew that Finder was taking this twice as seriously as he was before as he started moving all that much faster.
Finder had led them all over the martial arts portion of the convention looking around for something and he stopped at a nondescript wall. Staring at it and sniffing slightly, he started flying and hit a small spot high on it that no normal person would be able to reach. The wall slid out of the way revealing a secret entrance.
“Yeah, that looks like something a ninja would put into a building.” Ranma commented having followed them all this way; nobody would really suspect the sumo ninjas to have a headquarters in a convention center.
Finder motioned them forward and flew in, Fluttershy frowned and slowly trotted forward while warily looking around for danger as they descended down a set of stairs into the basement level that the convention center didn’t have normally.
Eventually they ended up in a hallway and Finder pointed at a doorway, he turned to Bonnie and pointed at the lock on the door. Bonnie nodded and flicked a hairpin out of her ear and started working the lock, once she got the door open they walked into a locker room and Finder eventually pointed out a specific locker. Bonnie went to work on it because if this was where Finder said Clyde was, then she was going to eventually break the lock on this locker to get at him.
“Doesn’t it concern anyone that we haven’t seen any of the sumo ninjas?” Fluttershy was shivering because those guys were stealthy and fast despite their sizes.
“It does, but I’m not seeing anyone. I don’t smell any sumo ninjas present either, got a whiff of them back at Beach City. They are spirit energy users and have this really annoying smell which is powerful around here, but not fresh as in the last three hours.” Donna yawned and got a pat to the head by Soft Echo; she smiled some at the affection.
“As long as they aren’t here I don’t care. Now quiet! I need to concentrate.” Bonnie first took to figuring out the combination on the locker by pressing an ear against the lock. The entrance was incredibly secure as people wouldn’t find it as easily and if what she was hearing was true, the rest of their security was low level because of the obscurity surrounding the entrance to their place of operations. After a moment she heard a click and several other clicks as well. That didn’t sound natural at all. “Back away from the locker. Since we are dealing with ninjas, they likely have these things booby trapped.”
Everyone backed well away from the locker and Bonnie clung to the lock next to it and quickly opened and jumped away. A flamethrower popped out of it and spewed a quick burst of fire which was followed by ten flaming ninja stars launching out in a spread.
Ranma quickly kicked up and caught the nearby bench, which he used to deflect two of the stars that came at the rest of the group before anyone could get hurt.
“Okay, I think that might have been it.” Looking into the locker Bonnie started to quickly disable the bomb at the bottom of the locker that was about to go off in the next twenty seconds. She did it by stealing the parts that would make it explode. “Then again, these guys are nuts and paranoid.”
Searching the locker, she eventually came upon a box of smoke pellets. Lo and behold, within the box they found Clyde’s pod still in stasis. Sighing with relief Bonnie took the pod and then the whole box and started pulling out some of the other stuff in the locker, a spool of wire, several kunai and a packet of throwing stars.
“Who dares invades the locker room of the Saotome Sumo Ninja Clan?” The group jumped and turned to the large heavy set man who led several other ninjas into the room, they had snuck in so easily without being heard despite their large statures.
“Wait, did you just say Saotome? Well that explains so much about why I could never find my father’s family history and why so many people were interested in making a deal with him to marry me.” Ranma just shook his head despairingly and then realized that this was his first time meeting this particular part of his family. “This really explains a lot about my father. Um… would you attack us or do something horrible if I were to say that Genma Saotome is my father?”
“…” The large figure had managed to get closer to them without anyone noticing, he chuckled slightly while leaning forward. “Ah yes, he is the bastard who has no honor. So you’re his son. We’ve heard many great things about you. What are you doing here with one of our prior targets, the one who wears the Lunar Locket?”
Fluttershy, despite being frightened and cornered, shyly moved forward and held out a pamphlet printed in Japanese to the sumo ninja. It now came with an added section about Bonnie’s brother being taken by sumo ninjas. The large man read it over quickly and then nodded.
“Hmm… we know just how to deal with you.” The sumo ninjas moved for the group at the large ninjas words.
-
Soft Echo sucked on a fruit flavored lollipop as she was sitting with the rest of sumo ninjas who were busy eating massive quantities of food.
The ninjas had kindly offered Fluttershy’s group a free pass to the convention if they had time to join in the festivities.
Ranma was having a good time talking with his family. Apparently the head sumo ninjas name was Choji, which meant ‘butterfly’ in Japanese and Fluttershy thought it was a nice name for a big guy.
“We are sorry for incidentally taking your brother Jookiba-san. Our contract to steal the locket has expired and we are sorry for the inconvenience at that time. However unlike the black horse, we are not without honor and we welcome Ranma to the clan. He may never be sumo, but he is an honorable martial artist of great renown throughout Nerima. We would have eventually attacked the Tendo Dojo, but we were gathering information before following through on rescuing you from Genma’s machinations.” Choji was of a friendly jovial sort, he had fought the likes of Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable personally. If he weren’t so ticklish he wouldn’t have lost that fight.
“Yeah well, where were you guys? You know, in concerns to your location for the most of my life?” Ranma was surprised things didn’t end up in a fight; he usually got into a vicious life or death struggle and had to do something crazy to survive. Only now he was finding out about Genma’s side of the family, he already knew his mother’s side had lots of noble samurai in it. That he had some ninja heritage was a bit much to take in.
“Genma, while not the greatest at being a sumo ninja, is in fact incredibly crafty in his ways. He knew we wouldn’t go anywhere near the Amazon tribe or Jusenkyo in China, we had lost track of you and or had other prior arrangements and contracts to deal with. We of the clan have to make a living after all and we consume lots of food, which is quite costly and a usual thing for those born of our blood.” Choji had a large rice bowl with several steaks in it and was eating at a quick pace. “Incidentally spirit energy attacks come to us easily and it is how we learn to cut through almost anything with our swords.”
“I’m so glad things didn’t end in violence and thank you very much for the tea and the offer of a free pass to the convention for all of us Choji-san.” Sipping on some tea, Fluttershy thought that these people were actually a friendly jolly lot when they weren’t actively attacking her and her friends.