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The search for non-touristy ryokans in Kyushu was tough for Mum-raa cos he/she/it never read reviews

and

when he/she/it did accidentally they were never trusted cos he/she/it didn’t know who glassslipper27 really was and his/her/its henchmen [ex-henchmen] couldn’t hear any good or bad about them no matter how many times they smashed the funny-looking robot with letters that were not the same letters they learnt as a kid.

What was an acer?

Mum-raa knew but he/she/it was not telling.

not telling the henchmen

they were too malleable, both ways,

and besides, Mum-Raa was

too busy staring at pictures of the island volcano that everyone else in Japan seemed to ignore.

Good base, good slope, hard for hybrids to attack unless they had plot on their side.

Fucking lion looking cunt fucker ugly spotty little

Mum-raa bookmarked the island volcano with ‘potential home’ in his/her/its own language and moved back to ryokans cos he/she/it couldn’t sleep on the street, it was too dirty.

The site looked dated, like wordpress, but could still function

There were still pictures with 1980’s Japanese faces

It was something

Ah, this ryokan, not bad, like a videogame version of a drowned temple

No poetics, really, it looked like a drowned temple

was this thing real?

[sorry island volcano, you’re good, but this one’s progression

and my new favourite word is progression

or progressivist]

There was a review below the drowned temple ryokan that mentioned something called gender and a link to an article that disembowelled it and Mum-Raa didn’t understand a word of the thing [naked Cheetara on spycam in episode 1 had no effect on MR] so from this point on he/she/it would become an it.

Wait

The Drowned temple looked like a Blake’s 7 set

No good.

Back to the homepage.

Mum-Raa picked at its bandages, thinking of other times when it was easier to grab something alive and pick at that instead

like one of those jungle creatures

but that was then

and now they had democracy so

Fucking cockless bland panther fixing shitty cunt engines

Mum-Raa scrolled down the page cos it knew how to do that

it had read a book on it

two books

just in case the first was wrong

which was pretty smart for an alien that didn’t even know the word for bandage

in any language

yup, that’s what Mum Raa was

smart and psychopathic

or ex-psychopathic

or still psychopathic but smart enough to adapt

it was hard to really classify

and a waste of time too cos

who was watching or listening, not those cats, and even if

they were they wouldn’t care, they were

even worse than Mum-Raa in that way

ultra implacable with stress on the negative ‘im’

 smug panther twat tiger lion cheetah cunt twin kid cat fucks meddling getting in my fucking face every fucking episode and

God, why am I even thinking of them, thought Mum-Raa

picking at an imaginary democratic jungle creature

dead in its hand

Past is past, present is this

internet machine and these

Japan things

all named ryokan

Ryokan of Beppu: ‘beautiful onsens, beautiful view, beautiful place to celebrate the tradition before militarism.’

Ryokan of Kagoshima: ‘beautiful view of Mum-Raa’s future home, volcano still active.’

Ryokan of Kumamoto: ‘Nothing much to do here except have a bath.’

Man, they all look so good, so right

thought Mum-Raa

in which case, I’ll take them all.

It laughed cautiously, expecting counter-bids

or counter espionage

or counter words from arrogant lions

with a speech centre and a

surprisingly strong grasp of timing

but nothing came

and nothing would cos it’d already been

twelve years and twenty seven days

Overkill, thought Mum-Raa

is accepted on this world

Bandaged aliens too

Not that these are bandages

not really

not if you can think up more than skin and bone

which they couldn’t

cat or alien

none of these fuckers could

not even that thing who’d installed its internet connection

the day before.

That thing wasn’t smart at all

it didn’t innovate or

do anything unexpected, it just

stuck the wires in and pressed a button and

ah, forget it

no one’s listening

there aren’t even any cameras.

Mum-Raa put its thumb between its fangs and bit down hard.

Mission time, five days early, who cares

let’s just go my

flying friend.

The falcon operating as Mum-Raa’s pet and also without gender crashed through the window, plucked Mum-Raa out of pale animated air – in a move that took four days to draw – and piggybacked the Jetstream of a China Eastern flight towards the land of weirdness, Fukuoka, as the weirdos called it.

I like this land, said Mum-Raa pinning a flower in its bandages and one in the falcon too before the wind dragged them both back out again. The same wind that had crushed the Chinese and the Koreans and the fratellis before they’d had a chance to pull out their killing sticks and shout hey chaka chaka…ba!

Mum-Raa pulled out its killing stick and threw it into the sea.

Peace was the way forward, not kill sticks.

Fukuoka sucked Mum-Raa in before there was time to change its mind. The city was bland, buildings called building, glass and grass, parks without sentient wildcats or panther engineers or whatever it was the other ones did…no volcanos, no 20 minute schemes, no jungle cattle…none of it worth conquering even when it…no, wait, there was a dome.

Execution ground, hurrah.

The falcon landed on mathematically cut grass and Mum-Raa rolled off, soaking up the dry blood of centuries-old beheadings.

Ah, murder…murrrr der.

It was history, there was no need to say sorry.

Besides, thought Mum-Raa, I sent them an e-mail.

and none of them died

and it was a good e-mail, wasn’t it?

The falcon nodded, remembering the documentary the silver mouse had sent that time. What the Indonesian falcons had done, back in the 60’s. But those mice were communists. And it wasn’t me. It wasn’t us. Falcons never did that, and even if we did, we did it quick. We didn’t boast about it. Ever. And those falcons were Indonesian anyway. And the mice were communists. And it wasn’t me.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Mum-Raa, patting the falcon on the head. ‘I don’t know the details, I only hired you two days ago, but it’s not your fault.’

The falcon let itself be rubbed cos why not, the words were nice and comfirming.

The sky turned black and the stars too hot to hold executions came out and said hey, we’re older than you and smarter than you and hotter than you, fuck your bandages.

‘Fuck you too, hydrogen,’ said Mum-Raa shaking its fist in the air, feeling the old scripted anger once more.

The falcon nodded, beak pointy.

‘I did what I felt at the time,’ continued Mum-Raa.

The falcon frowned.

‘And now I’m alone.’

The falcon did something non-anthropomorphic [sic].

‘Kind of.’

Some humans ran out and started playing baseball around them, and an audience appeared in the stands, but they weren’t there to see a reformed cartoon villain, they were there to see the ball flying about so Mum-Raa waved a bandaged arm and sped up time until they were gone and the grass was still again.

‘Better. Empty but better. But not lonely. Empty, better and definitely not lonely. Right, Falcon?’

No answer.

‘Falcon?’

Mum Raa looked up to the stands and the sky but falcon was gone

written out

because the character was going nowhere except

maybe

an Indonesian prison cell.

The air turned cold and dry and Fukuoka lost its spark because everyone Mum-Raa had known before had gone…gone a long time ago.

Things are so dull now, it thought

So dull that the only thing left to do

is relax

in my new island base

which probably doesn’t even have the option to buy

but never mind

I’ll just squat and

see who they send to uproot me.

Even if it’s those cats, and they yap about all the trouble I caused

I’ll just point to Shredder and say

he never apologised either.

Now, please, look around

Take your time and look, Lion-o

Look at my beautiful new volcano.

and let’s move on.