[Ranma][FanFic] Biker 1/2 chapter 28
Doghead Thirteen
I didn't do it, there's no proof I was involved, I wasn't even in the
country at the time, you can't prove I had anything to do with it.
Words in "{this}" kind of brackets are spoken in Cantonese. Those in
"[this]" are in wolf-speak.
Chapter 28: Death and destruction for fun and profit.
"Usta do a little but the little wouldn't do it so the little got more and
more. Just can't seem to get a little better said the little bitter country
boy" - Guns 'N' Roses, 'Country Boy' (as far as I can remember)
"My dad was always there fer me. Always... Th' world just ain't th' same
without Dad, without his weird advice." - Ranma Saotome, remembering his
father.
***********************************
Akane stared at the blazing shape. Nabiki was somewhere in that mess.
Then she noticed the growing noise.
A gas turbine spooling up?
The burning tarp was shredded by what had been lurking under it - rotor
blades. Six very large rotor blades.
Akane gasped.
"Holy shit, it's a Hind D!"
The flying tank finished warming its engines up and took to the air with a
deafening roar.
***********************************
Nabiki eased the coaxial over, edging the Russian gunship sideways. She
grinned. All that simulator time wouldn't go to waste. Anyway, this felt so
much more than the flight simulator. She could feel the torque of the two
hefty gas turbines spinning away above and behind her, forcing the chopper's
rotor blades through the air with no regard for things like inertia.
Plus there was the multitude of green 'weapon ready' lights on the HUD.
The Americans built their helicopters to loiter around for ages waiting for
targets. The Russians used a satellite to find targets then sent the copter
to introduce said target to Mr. Firepower.
In general this meant that a Hind had a shitload more munitions than, for
example, an Apache. Sure, she couldn't stay in the air so long without
running out of fuel. But while she was up there she could cause an
incredible amount of damage.
She took note of Herb ki blast duelling with a guy she didn't recognise and
started pinging the stranger with a laser designator. After checking her
lock twice she launched an anti-tank missile. Said missiles didn't care if
you misapplied them as long as you gave them a laser beam to follow.
Herb nearly lost concentration as he spotted the ugly shape of a Russian
helicopter gunship popping out of the blazing tarp that Nabiki had
disappeared under. The source of the fire was easily apparent - the missile
had struck a fuel drum. Talking of missiles, one chose that moment to
corkscrew off the Hind's left weapons pylon and smash into the small of
Flange's back.
This wasn't enough to kill a Musk prince. But it was enough to completely
break his focus. Distracted by the explosion he glanced over his shoulder.
Herb didn't waste the opportunity. Another massive ki blast burst from his
hands and smashed into Flange's face. The Hind roared past Herb's ear.
Prince Herb smirked as bits of Flange rained onto the street below.
Scratch one renegade Musk.
Nabiki tugged back on the stick and gunned up the chopper's throttle,
lifting its nose well above the raging firefight on the streets below. She
left the throttle at full power and fished her handheld radio out of her
pocket.
***********************************
Dajiko stuck her head out of the turret hatch, FN-FAL ready. But she wasn't
expecting what had caused the noise.
"WHAT THE HELL?"
The Hind D didn't remark on that; it just swept past, ignoring the LAV-25.
Nabiki snorted as she noticed the eight wheeled IFV. Sweet fuck all good
that thing would be. The static on her radio finally cleared up a couple of
moments later.
***********************************
Mortise snarled. He had been transformed back to human by a well-aimed
thermos flask of coffee and was now being boxed in by nearly thirty enemy
vampires. And he was running low on ki.
He was in trouble and he knew it. A fist burst out of his chest, spraying
bits of his insides across the street. They vanished in puffs of dust and
wasted ki before they hit the ground
"Shit!"
He tried to get hold of his attacker but it was no good; his left arm came
off then everything went black.
***********************************
Ranma was starting to get worried. He and Nodoka had been separated in the
melee. His mother was still holding her own, but only just. He himself was
starting to get boxed in. His father had been pulled down and was no longer
visible. Akira and Mi Soon were both frenetically battering away at their
opponents. For every vampire that went down there seemed to be another two
waiting to get at him and his friends, and the only way he could get them to
stay down was by separating their heads from their bodies by a large
distance before they collapsed into dust. Mortise seemed to have lost his
fight - there was no longer any sign of combat where he had last seen the
vampire boy.
There was a massive 'Clump' noise. He spun round, kicking three enemies out
the way as he did so.
Herb smirked at him.
"Need a hand, Ranma?"
***********************************
Genma lay and stared at the varied vampires who were no longer paying the
battered werebear any attention, merely walking over him to get at their
other enemies. What a way to go. He could feel the lump of rock one of them
had rammed into his lungs.
Nodoka was fairly near to him. Maybe he'd be able to say goodbye before he
drowned in his own blood. Oh, and there was Akira.
Genma knew he was dying and really didn't give a shit any more.
Hang on, what the hell was Akira doing? The old werewolf couldn't see Genma.
Akira had just levelled a gun at the back of Nodoka's head from about six
inches away. When Genma had told Ranma about instincts he hadn't been
joking. His adrenaline glands kicked in for one final burst.
He may not like Nodoka much but she was still *his* lady.
"GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"
***********************************
Akira smirked to himself. He had seen Genma go down, he didn't need to worry
about that misguided fool influencing Ranma any more. And the fight gave him
the perfect opportunity to get rid of the other obstruction - the boy's
mother.
He ignored the roar until the person it belonged to grabbed him. There was a
bloody mess of foam on Genma's snarling face. Akira saw this with startling
clarity as Genma grabbed his arm, wrenched it back, ripped the Beretta out
of his hand and gobbled the gun. Then he had a very close up view of Genma's
tongue as the dying werebear literally bit his head off.
***********************************
Nodoka heard the roar. She spun round. For half a second she had a view down
the barrel of Akira's handgun then Genma hit the older man like an express
train.
There was a flurry of motion then Akira's headless body slumped onto the
road. Genma stared straight into her eyes for an interminable instant then
collapsed on top of Akira. His eyes closed then rolled open again, staring
sightlessly at Nodoka out of the still snarling face of the werebear matial
artist. The wound that had killed him was easily visible - someone had
ripped up half a paving slab and rammed it right through his chest. She went
cold. She hadn't known her erstwhile husband very well and now she never
would. A layer of frost appeared all over her sword, clothes and body. No
one had the right to take that away from her.
And whoever had was about to pay with whatever they used for a life.
***********************************
Happosai jumped, landing on the T-Rex's back once more. He scurried up it's
neck and bit into the back of it's head, chewing frantically.
There was a cross between a bellow and a howl from the direction of the
house. Whatever caused it was very, very pissed off. Velociraptor and
tyrannosaurus both looked round.
Tiger stepped out of the garden and screamed again.
Then she shapeshifted. No longer was her battle form a large ugly bird -
instead she had looked at Happosai's 'modifications' and gone completely
overkill.
The end result was eighty feet of wolfwoman / apatosaur / horrible twisted
thing that looked like it'd crawled out of a Lovecraft novel hybrid.
Tiger grinned (with all three mouths) at the T-Rex, revealing the most
impressive set of dentistry ever seen the Nerima side of Jurassic Park.
Then she charged.
The T-Rex did it's damnedest to get the hell out the way.
***********************************
Something inside Ranma snapped as he saw his father go over.
"DAD!"
His aura lit up, casting a sickly greenish glow across the street. It roiled
around him like a sheet of flame. He only had one goal in mind - to get to
his dad.
Soun too was struggling to get to the same destination. Herb hung just
behind Ranma and blew anything stupid enough to attack the Saotome boy into
their component atoms.
Ranma knelt down beside the battered corpse of his werebear father.
"Dad... an' I never even got ta say goodbye..."
He yanked the chunk of paving slab out of Genma's chest and threw it away,
propelling it with a huge gout of ki. It ripped straight through the melee,
clearing a wide path as the vampires in it's way exploded into dust.
Ranma looked up. His eyes started glowing with an intense blue light as he
came to his decision.
"It's payback time."
***********************************
Nodoka whirled round, eviscerating another three vampires.
Her sword was stopped with a ringing clang and a huge spray of sparks before
it could hit the forth. She looked the leech in the eye.
A similar katana was gripped in the undead woman's hands.
The vampiress smiled.
"Interesting. I never dreamt I would face a blade capable of surviving
contact with my own." She gestured and the vampires surrounding her and
Nodoka stepped back.
Nodoka snorted.
"You took the words right out of my mouth. I trust you are aware of who you
face?"
"Indeed; Nodoka Saotome, the present Champion of the Moroboshi line, is it
not?"
"Correct. And you might be...?"
"I am Morranion S'Ket, bloodheir of Damien K'Gar and Mistress of the S'Vek
line. And I must say I am not impressed."
Nodoka snorted.
"Nor am I. You know, I never thought I would see the day the S'Veks acted
lackey to filth like the Joketsuzo Conservatives."
"But how would a Mundane, even one as powerful as yourself, understand our
plan? A plan that has lasted six thousand years, and has another five
millennia before it comes to frutiation?"
"Enough with this. I did not come here to talk."
***********************************
Mi Soon shook her head as she spotted Nodoka facing down the wily old leech.
Ah well, she wasn't about to interrupt another woman's fight. Anyway, she
had problems of her own. The white-haired and very familiar figure at the
back of the melee was one such problem.
She dropped out of the air twenty feet from Kou Loun, brutally demolishing
six Conservative warriors as she landed.
"You're not welcome in this city, Kou Loun. Not until you stop your crap. I
thought we made that clear last time you attacked us."
"Ah, the old bitch herself. I hope you are prepared."
"Prepared? You're six hundred years too soon to defeat me, girl!"
"We can find out."
Much to Kou Loun's surprise Mi Soon assumed a very basic defensive stance.
Kou Loun was old enough, skilled enough and wise enough to know that meant
she was in very, very deep shit.
***********************************
Nabiki set the radio aside. She glanced back towards the Nerima suburbs.
"Hang on in there, people... the cavalry's coming."
She eased the stick over; the flying tank circled back towards the battle.
Massive blue flashes and the stark white light of gunfire was still
illuminating the city. The battle was beginning to spread from the confines
of the Amazon's defensive cordon; half of Nerima was going to get trashed if
things continued the way they were going. She narrowed her eyes as she
spotted the tight group of hastily camouflaged vans and trucks on the edge
of a nearby park. Spotting them was so easy with the infrared sights it was
sad, and they almost screamed 'Reserves' at her. She lost a bit of altitude
and roared up the street, the chopper's floodlights half blinding varied
drivers in the mob of traffic that was frantically trying to escape from
Nerima. People used to call this part of Tokyo 'Weirdness City'. If Ranma
gained any more heavily armed enemies they'd start calling it 'detonation
boulevard' or something, there was certainly enough unscheduled demolition
happening down there.
She selected the multiple rocket pods from her available firepower and bore
down on the vehicles in a manner reminiscent of Nodoka's truck. Rotor blades
replaced flame belching exhausts, searchlights replaced headlamps, miniguns
replaced large chrome bumpers and a pissed off five foot eight weretiger
replaced a pissed off five foot four demon hunter but the effect on the
people she had rightly guessed to be Conservative Amazon reserves was to all
intents and purposes the same
"Okay, you shitheads! Attack my family on THIS!"
***********************************
Ranma winced as another series of massive explosions echoed across Nerima.
He didn't have time to do much more than that and hope it wasn't any of his
people.
He, Herb and Soun were now forming a triangle. They were completely boxed
in, they could no longer see or hear any other friendlies and the supply of
attacking vampires wasn't diminishing.
The three of them were no longer starting to get worried; the had finished
doing that a while back and were now getting extremely worried.
Kick, duck, triple punch combo, plant boot in available groin, sweep kick,
quickie ki blast into the interruption - the hot ki used for that attack was
too violent for a vampire to digest - follow that up with a couple of vacuum
blades, grab up a fallen AK47 and empty the clip into the crowd, block an
inbound attack with the gun and dump what was left of it... Ranma was
marginally above autopilot.
Herb had stopped enjoying himself a while back; the war of attrition the
undead scum were playing had become very obvious. He would have completely
exhausted his reserves of ki in another four to six minutes, and by that
time Ranma and Soun would be completely out of it. Well, maybe not Ranma -
that boy had serious potential. If he survived this fight.
It looked like a big 'If'.
As for Soun, he had gone into a Zen-like state most warriors only ever
dreamed of; completely focused, completely set on the task and slicing the
opposition into very small pieces. The vampires were only stopping him
breaking away from Ranma and Herb by sheer weight of numbers.
***********************************
Kas couldn't believe his eyes; werewolf-bashing was supposed to be easy,
even for vermin like his troops. He was starting to admire the two
werewolves and the half-dragon a *lot*. Between the three of them they had
already dusted over a hundred of his troops including his lieutenant
Hakamori.
He glanced around, trying to see who he could call on for assistance. His
old friend Morag was directing the scum Morranion had given her command of
forwards.
"Hey, fang-face! Over here!"
"Howdy, Kas? Having a little trouble I see?"
Kas snorted as he casually disembowelled a Reformist Amazon who hadn't got
the message about not interrupting.
"I am impressed by those people. The Musk guy was bound to cause problems,
but I never expected those two werewolves to kick up such a fuss."
"You're not the only one they've managed to impress, Kas. Not by any stretch
of the imagination. The boy's mother is presently holding her own against
Lady Morranion herself."
"God damn..."
There was a clump as a Conservative Amazon elder landed by the two of them.
"Good work, they're almost in position. We only need to move them about six
feet further before the trap is sprung."
"We S'Vek keep our word. As long as you mutts stick to your side of the
bargain. I hope you don't 'accidentally' use the wrong spell, little
werewolf. Because if you do our contract with you will be null and void, at
which stage the battle will be over for you."
"Lord Kas, we are women of honour. We do not break our promises."
Kas accepted that with a brief nod. "Then get your magus into position."
"Already done, you are presently speaking to her."
***********************************
"Shit!"
Akane dived behind an overturned car as the Conservative troops hosed the
street with fire. The burning wreck didn't offer much in the way of
protection but at least it was cover of a sort. Shampoo hit the ground
beside her as Mao returned fire, the thump of the 25mm cannon echoing down
the street. Lin-Lin had taken up a position on the roof of Nodoka's trailer
some time ago and didn't show any sign of leaving. The crack of her sniper
rifle could be heard over the background clatter of AK fire every so often.
Akane waited until Mao had drawn the incoming fire away from the car, spun
her minigun up then rolled to her feet. She levelled the gun down the street
then hit the trigger. Shampoo's M60 could just be heard over the deafening
bellow of fire.
Another minigun came to life off down the street behind them; Akane
instantly recognised the note.
"Oh, hell - spider tanks! Come on!"
The three of them sprinted off towards the rampaging machine.
***********************************
"MOTHERFUCKER!"
Ranko crouched behind the remains of the wall. Ryoga kept ducking up,
spraying the spider tank with bullets and dropping back down; she chose a
different place to pop up each time. Each time her attack was answered by a
withering hail of fire. Mint and Lime were the other side of the wall,
desperately trying to lure the four spider machines away from the girls.
The rapidly growing howl of a fusion turbine announced the arrival of
assistance. Mi Soon had given Mao a rundown of the capabilities and optional
extras his mecha carried. Things like how to use it's flight mode.
He entered the fight by bodyslamming the nearest spider tank; considering
his powersuit was careening down the street at 93 miles per hour with it's
feet six inches off the ground at this point the result was impressive to
say the least. The spider tank was lifted clean off it's feet and landed
flat on it's back.
Before Mao could start pummelling it Lime grabbed it by the hindlegs and
started whirling six tons of spider tank round his head.
There was a massive SLAM as he brought it down on another one.
At this point Mint made a mistake. He stopped to watch. He had time to shout
"Holy sh-" before one of the two remaining spiders got a bead on him.
Mint dropped like a rock, a bloody hole where the left side of his face used
to be. The remaining duo of spider tanks broke in opposite directions; one
reversed past Mao Xing and the other zoomed off down the street.
Lime screamed and threw his handful of spider tank. It crashed down on the
one that had killed Mint then violently exploded.
He and Mao turned to deal with the final spider tank.
They were just in time to see it reverse straight over Shampoo. Akane, who
had been off to one side, proceeded to empty her remaining minigun ammo into
it. Considering the gun was loaded with two inch long tungsten carbide
penetrators this had an impressive and downright explosive result.
***********************************
"They're tryin' ta move us somewhere."
Herb acknowledged Ranma's shout with a sharp nod. He had seen the pattern a
minute before.
"Spotted already, Saotome."
Ranma saw the growing field of magical power long before Herb did.
"SHIT! MOVE!"
But he spotted it far, far too late.
***********************************
Akane heard Ranma's yell as she was beginning to close on the melee with
Lime, Ryoga and Ranko; it was the biggest area of fighting therefore the
place they could do most good.
She had a clear view of what happened next.
***********************************
Nabiki was wheeling the Hind for another attack run when the flash lit half
the city. The melee she had last seen Ranma in the middle of vanished up
into a seven hundred foot tall mushroom cloud.
It couldn't be nuclear; there was no shockwave to speak of and no wall of
fire. Just the flash and the cloud of smoke.
Nabiki suddenly noticed she could no longer hear the Hind's engines. She
panicked for a moment then realised that they were still running as her
hearing began to recover from the incredible detonation.
***********************************
Mi Soon felt the burst of high-charge magical energy an instant before the
wall of sound hit; she was already on the ground as the hellish noise rolled
over her. So was Kou Loun.
Off to her left at the site of the other duel neither Nodoka nor Morranion
were prepared for the boom. Both of them were knocked flat.
The first thing anyone within half a mile heard after that incredible,
eardrum-bursting bang was Akane's scream.
"RANMA!"
And that's another one done.
NOTES
Next - Not much left to happen in this book.
Something I think I'd better say; if at any stage during this story you
don't understand some of my terminology (I'd expect this to be technical
details about bikes and guns or obscure Scottish slang) PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
email me so I can put an explanation in the next chapter. After all, if one
person doesn't understand thing like chatter about carb jets then there's
sure to be a hundred who can't make head or tail of it...
Now, I must once again publicly thank/attempt to embarrass two people (ya,
this is copy-paste from a whole rake of other chapters...)
Firstly, thanks must go to my wonderful pre reader Paula Gray. Thankyou,
Paula. Your suggestions have been a great help since I am shite at plotting
battle scenes.
Biker 1/2 has been given a home on the web! Go to
http://www.kistunesden.com
to find the archive; it's in the 'hosted' section of the site (in fact last
time I looked it *was* the Hosted section!)
Thanks must go to the lovely Carrie for her good work HTMLising Biker 1/2
and setting up the web page; she requested my permission to host the fic.
This request was gratefully received since I know nothing about HTML...
Thankyou, Carrie. Without you Biker 1/2 would have probably been relegated
to the bottom of the TASS archive for years.
Finally, I've been told I misspelled two names in Biker 1/2 - Nodoko (should
be Nodoka) and Jusenkyu (should be Jusenkyo). All I can say is D'OH! I'll
stick with the spellings I've used previously for future chapters of this
fic; other fics will contain the correct spelling. Eh - oops. My dyslexia
shows once again - man I love spellcheckers, but why couldn't Apple make the
AppleWorks spell checker understand Ranma 1/2 terms? Whine whine.
I plan to compile Book 1 when I finish it and post the compilation as one
fic; I will correct aforesaid names when I do so.
Please send any C&C to dog...@ratbike.org - my phone line is down once more
thus I can only access the freeserve email address once a week at most.
Thanks.
Calum.
I am hereforth putting character descriptions at the end of each episode,
hopefully eventually forming a 'who's who' of Biker 1/2. This is an idea I
got from reading the fics of Greg Sharp (i pray i spelt it right)
Next up are Mi Soon, Akira Saotome and Kasumi.
MI SOON
Introduced - Chapter 18 (This time it's war)
Role - Walking encyclopaedia and mentor.
Species - Amerai.
Special powers / abilities - More martial arts than a shelf full of Jackie
Chan movies and a whole slew of really cool powers.
Motivation - To prevent her young(er) friends getting themselves killed.
Appearance - Mi Soon did look like a pickled monkey, however she's now
changed her appearance back to what it should be, making her a blue-haired
and youthful looking woman with a distinct familial resemblance to Shampoo,
Akira and Kou Loun. She normally wears combats these days.
Personality at introduction - Mi Soon comes across as a cunning old bat.
That's not so far from the truth - she is an extremely intelligent old lady
- but unlike Kou Loun (her daughter) she is a kindly soul who wouldn't hurt
a fly unless it gave her a damn good reason, in which case she'd liquidate
it.
AKIRA SAOTOME
Introduced - Chapter 13 (Drinking blood is not a crime)
Role - Failing Machiavelli impressionist
Species - Amerai
Special powers / abilities - Akira is A) a werewolf, B) a skilled martial
artist and C) in command of a large and heavily equipped army of
shapeshifters.
Motivation - To get the Hell rid of Clan leadership.
Appearance - Akira is a tall and heavily built man with long black hair and
a moustache. He normally dresses in a black karate gi and heavy boots. His
face normally wears a 'Why me' kind of expression.
Personality at introduction - Akira wants to die. No, really. He hates
himself and utterly detests the rest of the world.
KASUMI TENDO
Introduced - Chapter 1 (In a world gone bad)
Role - Stoner, hot-rodder and surrogate mum to half the cast.
Species - Amerai.
Special powers/abilities - Kasumi can consume an incredible amount of
cannabis without it having any major effect. She's also a damn good - if
completely crazy - driver.
Motivation - Like, wow, man...
Appearance - Kasumi has two general modes of appearance. In mode 1 she looks
like a teenage version of someone's mum, with a vague familial resemblance
to her sisters. In mode 2 she retains the Tendo look but the floral dress is
replaced with a large brown trenchcoat, mirrorshades, a white T-shirt and
denim jeans, in which case watch out because she's about to start driving.
Personality at introduction - Most people pass Kasumi off as being a fairly
ordinary (if young) Japanese housewife. She's not. Kasumi is as smart as her
sisters and the fact she spends her time housewifing only proves it - she
happens to like looking after people. To cut a long story short, Kasumi
Tendo is a genuinely nice person. The only things that detract from that
image are her dope smoking, her obsession with 1960's American muscle cars
and her deep-seated love of industrial heavy metal music.
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Alternator - Higher tech version of a generator.
Artic - The UK term for a semi truck. Short for 'articulated lorry'.
Binned - crashed. Normally means written off. Derived from 'bin' as in
'rubbish bin' (the British term for a trash can)
Chain lube - Motorbike chain lubrication oil. Comes in a spray can and
lookes a bit like snot.
Conrod (connecting rod) - The bit of metal that connects the piston to the
crankshaft. Shaped approximately like a flat dumbbell.
Engine clicking - An internal combustion engine heats up when run. Run it
hard and it heats up more, then when you switch off the engine will start
emitting a series of sharp clicks as the metal cools and contracts.
Final drive - the drive chain that goes from the gearbox to the back wheel
and the cogs (final drive sprockets) that it runs on. Not to be confused
with the primary drive - the chain/sprocket or belt/pulleys between the
engine and gearbox.
Gasflowing - trimming off excess metal from inside the cylinder heads to aid
the burn rate of fuel within the engine. Gives a small horsepower boost.
Gixer - Slang for a Suzuki GSXR (one of the craziest bikes they make).
Header tank - Tank that contains the spare water for the radiator on a
sealed cooling system as found in most cars and some high performance bikes.
Honda CG125 - Small single - cylinder 4-stroke road bike. Not very much of
anything but supremely reliable and dirt cheap. It's reliability stems from
having very little to go wrong and a low - revving 4-stroke engine.
Honda 250 Superdream - CB250. The next up the Honda model range from the
CG125 and just a bigger version of the same.
Honda 500 Superdream - CB500. A CB250 with a bigger bore and heavier frame.
Honda Fireblade - Insane Honda sportsbike. Mad but beginning to show it's
age.
Kill switch - The engine's 'off' switch. Turns off power to the ignition.
Lid / skidlid - Slang for a crash helmet.
Nitrous oxide - Laughing gas. A petrol - nitrous mix burns faster than a
petrol - air mix therefore produces more horsepower and more wear in the
engine.
Ratbike - A motorbike made to look as fucked up and unroadworthy as possible
while still being street legal. Normally painted flat black.
Steering damper - a long, thin shock absorber that fits between the forks
and the frame. Helps steady the steering. A steering damper is essential for
disabled bikers who have lost the use of one arm as without it there's no
way you'd be able to steer at low speed or pull away one armed.
Stocker - unmodified factory-built vehicle; I think this comes from the term
'sales stock'.
Supercharger - A pump driven off the crank that forces more air into the
engine thus forcing it to run faster.
Toby - An Inverness Collegeism; slang meaning something along the lines of
widget, gizmo or thingy. Derived from angling parlarance (toby = a small
wooden fish used as a lure.) May be related to the epithet 'Toby Tishbein'
and can be said 'Tobyracho' for no apparent reason. (I'm not making this up!
Honest!)
Top yoke - The yokes are two pieces of metal that hold the front forks
together and to the bike. The top yoke is the upper one. Known as triple
clamps in the US.
JASDF - Japanese Air Self Defence Force. The Japanese air force.
JGSDF - Japanese Ground Self Defence Force. The ground forces arm of the
Japanese military.
JSDF - Japanese Self Defence Force. The collective Japanese armed forces.
What likes - Slack Scottish grammar. Means something along the lines of
'please could you explain that'. Only considerably less posh.
Wheelie bin - a square green plastic trashcan about the size of a normal
bin, with a flip top and two wheels.