Much-needed break – Chap. 5, Act 3, Strip 25

Plot speed should pick up considerably from this point on, because this is now truly the endpoint of the armaments race on the mountain six times higher than Silhouette Mountain. With the plans to build a Death Star so casually dismissed by the White House, the humble old aircraft carrier is allowed to maintain its reign as the heaviest piece of military equipment in existence.

And furthermore, the Professor should find climbing to go much easier and faster, now that he’s rid of the weight of all that equipment he carried. Especially the aircraft carrier. Lugging an aircraft carrier around while climbing a mountain can really make you feel your years, and he’s got a lot of those to feel. And it was even worse because they’re stuck in 16th century Japan – for normally, he could have lightened the carrier by telling the Air Group to fly off and ahead to the summit, but that would have drawn undue attention in medieval Japan. And the aircraft carrier is bad enough, in that regard, even just lying around. Good thing it isn’t black, but more kinda dark grey-ish. The landing of a black ship that early in Japanese history could really have changed everything, even for those people it didn’t land on. For the latter group, it changed everything, anyway.

(Not)Snuka’s extended bathroom break might seem to endanger rapid progress, but don’t worry – I’m sure there are ninja tricks to deal with that kind of situation more quickly than a normal person could. They’ve got jutsus for everything, I’m sure they’ve got one for that. It’s probably just not mentioned around outsiders that often. You’ve got to keep a few techniques secret, just to be able to say you’ve got secret techniques. And of course they’d use all of the kinda embarrassing techniques for that, elegantly solving two problems at once.

More on Thursday.

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