Ranma ½ Divine Blood
- Thread starter Thrythlind
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Daedalus built the damn thing, and if that wasn't enough, he had Athena's favor, so that out's a little hard to get to, since Deimosu's still off the divine radar.
The other one was Theseus, and while he was a demigod, his divine parent- Poseidon- was actively assisting in that little escapade. Zeus is kind of all tied up right now, and even if he wasn't, he rarely seems to get directly involved in his kids' life.
Mostly because Hera tries to kill them.
Both of them had help, though. Theseus, as mentioned above, had Poseidon's. Theseus also seduced one of Minos's daughters- Ariadne, if I remember right- who gave him a ball of string to mark the entrance.
They just kind of noticed that something was up, and unless one of them's got the ability to exactly trace their steps, they're going to be stuck for a while.
The other one was Theseus, and while he was a demigod, his divine parent- Poseidon- was actively assisting in that little escapade. Zeus is kind of all tied up right now, and even if he wasn't, he rarely seems to get directly involved in his kids' life.
Mostly because Hera tries to kill them.
Both of them had help, though. Theseus, as mentioned above, had Poseidon's. Theseus also seduced one of Minos's daughters- Ariadne, if I remember right- who gave him a ball of string to mark the entrance.
They just kind of noticed that something was up, and unless one of them's got the ability to exactly trace their steps, they're going to be stuck for a while.
A blinking of lights was filtering through Yonjuu's eyelids. They weren't thick enough to shut out so much light that her sensitive eyes couldn't make out general shapes through them. Even normal humans could perceive small traces of light through their lids. Yonjuu could tell a small amount more, making out general shapes and directions of motion for instance.
There was also a gentle sense of motion and warmth around her. Someone or something was carrying her, and whoever they are were a lot larger than her sisters got. Slowly, her consciousness worked ever more awake and started to process what was going on.
Her eyes snapped open and took in the long, bone-strewn dusty hallway lit by a floating ball of electricity.
"What?!" she called, trying to stand up, forgetting she was being carried.
The young man beneath her stumbled forward before she clumisly fell backwards out of his grip. Then both were scattered across the floor. The young man stood up quickly placing himself between a child, THE child, and Yonjuu as the tracker stood up in a much less graceful manner.
"Where have you taken us?" Yonjuu demanded.
"We haven't figured that out yet," the young man said cautiously. "Somewhere underground."
"I have to get out of here," she protested.
"Yeah, well we wouldn't be here if it weren't for you trying to chase Yaku down," the blonde noted.
"But she belongs to the Mistress," Yonjuu said. "We can't say no."
"You can always say no," Deimosu responded. "Now, I'm going to get Yaku and me out of here, if you want to help good. If not good luck to you."
He started to turn and walk away, keeping Yaku ahead of him.
Yonjuu looked around at the walls and darkness and the chewed on bones for several brief seconds.
"Wait," she called out. "You're going the wrong way."
"What do you mean?" Deimosu said, turning back around.
"The air is moving from this direction," she said, pointing down another corridor.
"There's no air moving," Yaku whispered from behind Deimosu, before hiding again.
"Yes it is," Yonjuu said. "Trust me on this."
"Trust the akira kidnapper," Deimosu said.
"Do you have any other choice?" Yonjuu asked.
Deimosu grimaced silently. He didn't really, he was just going in random directions himself. And this girl wanted to get out, and get Yaku out, just as badly. He'd just have to watch her when they started getting close.
"Good," Yonjuu said, "Then we go this way."
She walked a few feet down the indicated corridor and then paused.
"What's an akira?" she asked.
"It means you're stupid," Yaku declared, sticking her tongue out at her elder sister.
"Wh..where did you learn that?" Deimosu asked.
"There was a boy at the festival who did it," Yaku said simply as Deimosu sighed.
There was also a gentle sense of motion and warmth around her. Someone or something was carrying her, and whoever they are were a lot larger than her sisters got. Slowly, her consciousness worked ever more awake and started to process what was going on.
Her eyes snapped open and took in the long, bone-strewn dusty hallway lit by a floating ball of electricity.
"What?!" she called, trying to stand up, forgetting she was being carried.
The young man beneath her stumbled forward before she clumisly fell backwards out of his grip. Then both were scattered across the floor. The young man stood up quickly placing himself between a child, THE child, and Yonjuu as the tracker stood up in a much less graceful manner.
"Where have you taken us?" Yonjuu demanded.
"We haven't figured that out yet," the young man said cautiously. "Somewhere underground."
"I have to get out of here," she protested.
"Yeah, well we wouldn't be here if it weren't for you trying to chase Yaku down," the blonde noted.
"But she belongs to the Mistress," Yonjuu said. "We can't say no."
"You can always say no," Deimosu responded. "Now, I'm going to get Yaku and me out of here, if you want to help good. If not good luck to you."
He started to turn and walk away, keeping Yaku ahead of him.
Yonjuu looked around at the walls and darkness and the chewed on bones for several brief seconds.
"Wait," she called out. "You're going the wrong way."
"What do you mean?" Deimosu said, turning back around.
"The air is moving from this direction," she said, pointing down another corridor.
"There's no air moving," Yaku whispered from behind Deimosu, before hiding again.
"Yes it is," Yonjuu said. "Trust me on this."
"Trust the akira kidnapper," Deimosu said.
"Do you have any other choice?" Yonjuu asked.
Deimosu grimaced silently. He didn't really, he was just going in random directions himself. And this girl wanted to get out, and get Yaku out, just as badly. He'd just have to watch her when they started getting close.
"Good," Yonjuu said, "Then we go this way."
She walked a few feet down the indicated corridor and then paused.
"What's an akira?" she asked.
"It means you're stupid," Yaku declared, sticking her tongue out at her elder sister.
"Wh..where did you learn that?" Deimosu asked.
"There was a boy at the festival who did it," Yaku said simply as Deimosu sighed.
Question: Is "Yonjuu" her name, a title or both?
If it's a name, then the first two instances here need to be capitalized:
and
If it's not, a little standardization would help. Like I said, I need to go back and re-read this. It's been too long... :sweat:
Out of curiousity, at this point, what does "akira" mean?
If it's a name, then the first two instances here need to be capitalized:
and
If it's not, a little standardization would help. Like I said, I need to go back and re-read this. It's been too long... :sweat:
Out of curiousity, at this point, what does "akira" mean?
It was hard to guess the amount of time that passed after Yonjuu woke up before they started talking.
"What's your name?" Deimosu asked finally.
"What?" the girl asked.
"We're going to be stuck here for some time," Deimosu said. "We might as well know each other's names. I'm Deimosu Satomi, son of Ranma Satomi. You?"
"She's a Ni," Yaku said quietly, pointing to her elder sister's chest.
"Stop pointing, it's not funny," Yonjuu said, crossing her slender arms over her chest.
Deimosu kept his thoughts to himself, but he couldn't help thinking that "Ni" in addition to meaning "two" could also mean "load or baggage" and that this "Ni" had more frontal baggage than either his mother or Naiki.
She likewise had a broader shouldered build much less slender than what he saw Yaku growing into, but there was no doubt that they were at least partially related.
"So, your name is 'Ni'?" he asked. "This girl you're trying to kidnap is Yaku."
"It means 'benefit'," she said proudly.
"No it doesn't," Yonjuu said quickly. "It means you're the..."
Deimosu cleared his throat and attracted Yonjuu's attention before darting her eyes toward the crackling ball of electricity giving them light. It fluctuated momentarily and Deimosu crossed his arms."
"Okay, it means benefit," she said, smiling nervously. "My name is Yonjuu, can you tell me what that means?"
She sounded a bit doubtful and sarcastic.
Deimosu took a deep breath, and decided to try one more time, not thinking it would work too much with this older girl, but it might help.
"Four tools," he said after a little bit of thought. He hesitated a moment and looked down toward Yaku trying to think how to continue that. "Your mind, your body, your soul and your senses."
Yonjuu blinked and stepped back a bit, looking a bit less doubtful now.
"And...'ni'?" she asked. "Does that mean anything besides..." she looked at Yaku, "you know."
"Baggage," Deimosu said without thinking as his eyes drifted down.
Yonjuu stared at him with her mouth hanging open and turned about on her heels, nose in the air as Yaku giggled at her.
"Older sister has baggage," she said.
"Wait...wait," Deimosu said, rolling his eyes as he followed the girl. "Should have said 'red earth'...maybe 'takes after mother'. No I don't think they want to be like 'mother'."
She stopped after two minutes of quick walking and back to Deimosu. In front of her was a seemingly blank wall.
"Here," she said abruptly.
"The dead end?" he said.
"The air is coming from here," she said. "This isn't a dead end. There are cracks here that's letting air out. Even you should feel it right now."
It did feel slightly less stagnant now that he thought about it.
"You're saying there's a hidden door here?" Deimosu asked.
"Or just cracks in the rock bringing air down to this place from outside," she said.
"Either way," he said. "Okay, let's...go back around that last corner."
"Why?" Yonjuu asked.
"Because I'm not as tough as my sister," he said, backing down the hall carrying Yaku with him.
Curious, Yonjuu followed along and took a position covered by the as she watched Deimosu stand in the cooridor and concentrate.
Her eyes widened as an arcing blast of electricity whipped out from the young man towards the wall. She knew he was electrokinetic, but the amount of ozone she was smelling said that he was capable of more power than she had thought.
She started to peek around the corner to see what was happening when an explosion ripped upward from the corridor. A large chunk of stone slamming into her face and sending her sprawling across the floor and dazed.
Yaku shrieked as it happened and, despite her fear of the older girl, darted over to see if her sister was okay.
After all, she had a real name now too, so maybe she'd be nice now.
Yonjuu blinked awake as she was helped to her feet by the tall blonde young man and steadied until she was able to stand mostly on her own.
"Concussion," she heard drearily. "You're going to need to rest but not sleep. Maybe inside there'll be something to sit down on."
"He said stay behind wall," Yaku said, teasing toned down a bit by the cut on the other girl's head.
Supporting the injured girl who was still trying to shake her head clear as she stumbled forward.
Then came the light as they walked into the chamber that had been hidden by the solid rock door.
Above them was a large open space looking out into the daylit but darkening sky. Everywhere about were schematics and old parchments showing a sort of winged backpack. Tools and items of all sorts, mostly ancient, but not all such.
As Yaku darted forward, she found a curiously marked stone and picked it up, eyes drifting into a sort of trance.
"Trinary matter-state computer interface," she muttered under her breath, only audible to the others by the lack of other sound.
Then a hologram image of a keyboard and several floating screens popped up out of the small rock around her. It flickered erratically, obviously long neglected, but it worked.
On the screens were the same sorts of schematics as were on the papers and parchments about the room, only far more detailed.
Yaku shook her head and looked around herself at the images, before stepping away, still holding the rock, and crying out as the images followed her and the stuffed shark she still held from the festival.
"Brother...what's this?" she asked.
"What's your name?" Deimosu asked finally.
"What?" the girl asked.
"We're going to be stuck here for some time," Deimosu said. "We might as well know each other's names. I'm Deimosu Satomi, son of Ranma Satomi. You?"
"She's a Ni," Yaku said quietly, pointing to her elder sister's chest.
"Stop pointing, it's not funny," Yonjuu said, crossing her slender arms over her chest.
Deimosu kept his thoughts to himself, but he couldn't help thinking that "Ni" in addition to meaning "two" could also mean "load or baggage" and that this "Ni" had more frontal baggage than either his mother or Naiki.
She likewise had a broader shouldered build much less slender than what he saw Yaku growing into, but there was no doubt that they were at least partially related.
"So, your name is 'Ni'?" he asked. "This girl you're trying to kidnap is Yaku."
"It means 'benefit'," she said proudly.
"No it doesn't," Yonjuu said quickly. "It means you're the..."
Deimosu cleared his throat and attracted Yonjuu's attention before darting her eyes toward the crackling ball of electricity giving them light. It fluctuated momentarily and Deimosu crossed his arms."
"Okay, it means benefit," she said, smiling nervously. "My name is Yonjuu, can you tell me what that means?"
She sounded a bit doubtful and sarcastic.
Deimosu took a deep breath, and decided to try one more time, not thinking it would work too much with this older girl, but it might help.
"Four tools," he said after a little bit of thought. He hesitated a moment and looked down toward Yaku trying to think how to continue that. "Your mind, your body, your soul and your senses."
Yonjuu blinked and stepped back a bit, looking a bit less doubtful now.
"And...'ni'?" she asked. "Does that mean anything besides..." she looked at Yaku, "you know."
"Baggage," Deimosu said without thinking as his eyes drifted down.
Yonjuu stared at him with her mouth hanging open and turned about on her heels, nose in the air as Yaku giggled at her.
"Older sister has baggage," she said.
"Wait...wait," Deimosu said, rolling his eyes as he followed the girl. "Should have said 'red earth'...maybe 'takes after mother'. No I don't think they want to be like 'mother'."
She stopped after two minutes of quick walking and back to Deimosu. In front of her was a seemingly blank wall.
"Here," she said abruptly.
"The dead end?" he said.
"The air is coming from here," she said. "This isn't a dead end. There are cracks here that's letting air out. Even you should feel it right now."
It did feel slightly less stagnant now that he thought about it.
"You're saying there's a hidden door here?" Deimosu asked.
"Or just cracks in the rock bringing air down to this place from outside," she said.
"Either way," he said. "Okay, let's...go back around that last corner."
"Why?" Yonjuu asked.
"Because I'm not as tough as my sister," he said, backing down the hall carrying Yaku with him.
Curious, Yonjuu followed along and took a position covered by the as she watched Deimosu stand in the cooridor and concentrate.
Her eyes widened as an arcing blast of electricity whipped out from the young man towards the wall. She knew he was electrokinetic, but the amount of ozone she was smelling said that he was capable of more power than she had thought.
She started to peek around the corner to see what was happening when an explosion ripped upward from the corridor. A large chunk of stone slamming into her face and sending her sprawling across the floor and dazed.
Yaku shrieked as it happened and, despite her fear of the older girl, darted over to see if her sister was okay.
After all, she had a real name now too, so maybe she'd be nice now.
Yonjuu blinked awake as she was helped to her feet by the tall blonde young man and steadied until she was able to stand mostly on her own.
"Concussion," she heard drearily. "You're going to need to rest but not sleep. Maybe inside there'll be something to sit down on."
"He said stay behind wall," Yaku said, teasing toned down a bit by the cut on the other girl's head.
Supporting the injured girl who was still trying to shake her head clear as she stumbled forward.
Then came the light as they walked into the chamber that had been hidden by the solid rock door.
Above them was a large open space looking out into the daylit but darkening sky. Everywhere about were schematics and old parchments showing a sort of winged backpack. Tools and items of all sorts, mostly ancient, but not all such.
As Yaku darted forward, she found a curiously marked stone and picked it up, eyes drifting into a sort of trance.
"Trinary matter-state computer interface," she muttered under her breath, only audible to the others by the lack of other sound.
Then a hologram image of a keyboard and several floating screens popped up out of the small rock around her. It flickered erratically, obviously long neglected, but it worked.
On the screens were the same sorts of schematics as were on the papers and parchments about the room, only far more detailed.
Yaku shook her head and looked around herself at the images, before stepping away, still holding the rock, and crying out as the images followed her and the stuffed shark she still held from the festival.
"Brother...what's this?" she asked.
not a whispered, "just" a genius.
Sort of like Keiichi, and he had some limited access to divine tech via his patroness: Athena.
The Whispered come about their intuitive understandings of things because of the conduit to a time period in the future that one of their number has and is filtered through the network.
Not the same as being a raw genius in a field.
Sort of like Keiichi, and he had some limited access to divine tech via his patroness: Athena.
The Whispered come about their intuitive understandings of things because of the conduit to a time period in the future that one of their number has and is filtered through the network.
Not the same as being a raw genius in a field.
As her world started to come more into focus around her, Yonjuu looked up toward the open sky and then toward Yaku. She was a bit out of her depth here, but at the very least she could make a jump out of this pit and into the world and...maybe escape Deimosu's reach.
She wasn't thinking too clearly yet, obviously.
As Deimosu was picking up the stone that the little girl had found, Yonjuu darted forward and scooped up the girl before leaping dazedly to the edge of the pit they were in.
"Brother!" Yaku shouted outloud.
"Damn it," Deimosu grumbled, leaping up in pursuit.
Yonjuu glanced back over her shoulder as she tried to navigate the rocks and gaps in the terrain. In so doing she failed to note as the rocks dropped off into a yawning cliff. Right up until Yaku screamed bringing her to turn around.
"Oh no," she muttered upon seeing her second towering depths in as many days.
Her progress forward, however, was stopped abruptly by a hand that roughly dragged her back away from the edge. She landed roughly, her butt scrapping across some rocks, as Deimosu turned around to face her.
"Girl," he said. "If you want to kill yourself, that's fine, but don't take anybody else with you."
Yonjuu responded by turning over and throwing up.
"Eww," the youngest of the three said, standing up and backing away from her elder sister.
Deimosu shook his head and looked around.
"We should be on Crete, but there's...." his eyes widened and a smile worked itself over his face. "It's hidden."
"What?" Yonjuu asked wearily.
"One of our tutors told us that the old powers hid most of the sites of ancient legend," Deimosu said. "To preserve them from the tampering of mortals that would show no respect."
"So?" Yonjuu said.
"So," he said smiling. "We're between the worlds. Exactly where I need to be."
"Can you just get me back in the room away from the gaping falls to nowhere?" Yonjuu whimpered pleadingly.
"Yeah," Deimosu said after picking up Yaku, not noticing as the younger girl stuck her tongue out at Yonjuu. "Right after I bring Yaku back."
She wasn't thinking too clearly yet, obviously.
As Deimosu was picking up the stone that the little girl had found, Yonjuu darted forward and scooped up the girl before leaping dazedly to the edge of the pit they were in.
"Brother!" Yaku shouted outloud.
"Damn it," Deimosu grumbled, leaping up in pursuit.
Yonjuu glanced back over her shoulder as she tried to navigate the rocks and gaps in the terrain. In so doing she failed to note as the rocks dropped off into a yawning cliff. Right up until Yaku screamed bringing her to turn around.
"Oh no," she muttered upon seeing her second towering depths in as many days.
Her progress forward, however, was stopped abruptly by a hand that roughly dragged her back away from the edge. She landed roughly, her butt scrapping across some rocks, as Deimosu turned around to face her.
"Girl," he said. "If you want to kill yourself, that's fine, but don't take anybody else with you."
Yonjuu responded by turning over and throwing up.
"Eww," the youngest of the three said, standing up and backing away from her elder sister.
Deimosu shook his head and looked around.
"We should be on Crete, but there's...." his eyes widened and a smile worked itself over his face. "It's hidden."
"What?" Yonjuu asked wearily.
"One of our tutors told us that the old powers hid most of the sites of ancient legend," Deimosu said. "To preserve them from the tampering of mortals that would show no respect."
"So?" Yonjuu said.
"So," he said smiling. "We're between the worlds. Exactly where I need to be."
"Can you just get me back in the room away from the gaping falls to nowhere?" Yonjuu whimpered pleadingly.
"Yeah," Deimosu said after picking up Yaku, not noticing as the younger girl stuck her tongue out at Yonjuu. "Right after I bring Yaku back."
Mao looked around the office building she'd been instructed to come to. It was fairly simple and not nearly as ostentatious as she had come to expect of many Mithril front businesses. The Captain hadn't been quite clear on the nature of the mission she'd be undertaking. Had been rather circumspect about it actually, which made Melissa more than a little curious.
The room was pretty sparse, with only a single desk in the front room. It looked like it had only been recently established and, as yet, had little to no staff.
"Hello," she called out.
"In here," a familiar voice called out from the main office in the next room.
Arching an eyebrow Mao crossed her arms and walked into the office and found a thirty-something red-head in the midst of a collection of papers. A scroll of paper or parchment, she wasn't sure which, sat on her desk.
"I'm supposed to do some decoration to 'blend in'," Ranma said over her shoulder. "But I think I'll save that for now."
"What's going on Satomi?" Mao asked. "The Captain asked me to report to a Mithril agent and I find you here?"
"Yes, somewhat new," Ranma noted, frowning as he looked over a pair of photographs in her hands. "I took the position two weeks ago."
"Right after the Behemoth incident," Mao said, frowning. "What is the position by the way?"
"That'll be in the file," he said. "And I'd rather discuss the mission first."
"And that is?" Mao asked.
Ranma walked over and handed her a file folder.
"We think we found a whispered," Ranma said. "Or at the very least a place that might soon have a whispered. Some of the situation leaves the mission in my lap rather than tactical's and I requested you."
The red-head perfunctorily gestured for Mao to follow her to a table where she started layout her own copies of the information.
"This facility is staffed by a collection of what seem to be teenagers and young women," Ranma said. "And they're rather a strange bunch."
Mao looked up from her bundle down to the pictures and noted multiple pictures of what seemed to be the same set of three different girls. A closer look showed her that some of the pictures showed sets of twins or even triplets. There were minute differences between the girls, small scars, a freckle out of place and the like.
"Clones?" Mao asked in semi-disbelief.
"It's the first I heard of it," Ranma said. "Not even magic has made that work right."
"So why does a bunch of xerox kids make this your backyard instead of ours?" Mao asked.
"Well, no one's gotten video," Ranma said, spreading out another set of pictures. "The ones with the chests seem to be the oldest, maybe seventeen. The reports imply they have sensory abilities. The short slender ones," he pointed to several girls that appeared to be fourteen or fifteen years old, "seem mostly to have enhanced abilities. The youngest blast stuff, fire, wind, lightning and all that."
These last appeared to be no older than thirteen.
"And just a day ago, I got this," Ranma said placing another photograph down.
Mao arched an eyebrow in surprise as she recognized Ranma's son in the photograph with two girls like the sets already pointed to and a third who looked related, but was older than any of them. Probably twenty years old or so.
"That's..."
"A fourth type, abilities unknown," she said. "Yes and I know, and that's my son yes, but this picture is from a few days ago and nowhere near where we're going. And they've already left the area they were seen in."
The tightness of emotion was buried under the words, but it wasn't hard to miss.
Not at all.
Mao looked around and realized that access to information might, no might about it really, have been part of why Ranma accepted this job.
"Where'd these pictures come from?" she asked.
"The last, some kid's cell phone that got posted online," Ranma said. "The others, Intelligence Division, I'm told. I'm also told that Intelligence Division doesn't really get information like this in the end."
Mao nodded, thinking about Tessa's warning about how classified this mission was.
"So we're supposed to sneak into a facility run by a bunch of kids with supernatural abilities," Mao said. "What if they feel us coming or something."
"I've got ways around telepaths and such," Ranma noted. "And I don't think these girls have training."
"How do you know that?" Mao asked.
"Been looking at these pictures a lot," Ranma said. "They're really undisciplined. The stuff that's got us the information are stupid mistakes."
"Okay, so we're trying to sneak past a bunch of akiras," Mao said. "Wonderful, they could blow everything up around us and not even know we were there when they did."
"Yep," Ranma said with a grimace. "That's right. We're going in to figure out what's going on. If there's a whispered, we're supposed to get them out."
"And if we find any sign of your son there?" Mao asked.
"Then I have no orders forbidding me from burning the place down," Ranma said matter of factly.
The room was pretty sparse, with only a single desk in the front room. It looked like it had only been recently established and, as yet, had little to no staff.
"Hello," she called out.
"In here," a familiar voice called out from the main office in the next room.
Arching an eyebrow Mao crossed her arms and walked into the office and found a thirty-something red-head in the midst of a collection of papers. A scroll of paper or parchment, she wasn't sure which, sat on her desk.
"I'm supposed to do some decoration to 'blend in'," Ranma said over her shoulder. "But I think I'll save that for now."
"What's going on Satomi?" Mao asked. "The Captain asked me to report to a Mithril agent and I find you here?"
"Yes, somewhat new," Ranma noted, frowning as he looked over a pair of photographs in her hands. "I took the position two weeks ago."
"Right after the Behemoth incident," Mao said, frowning. "What is the position by the way?"
"That'll be in the file," he said. "And I'd rather discuss the mission first."
"And that is?" Mao asked.
Ranma walked over and handed her a file folder.
"We think we found a whispered," Ranma said. "Or at the very least a place that might soon have a whispered. Some of the situation leaves the mission in my lap rather than tactical's and I requested you."
The red-head perfunctorily gestured for Mao to follow her to a table where she started layout her own copies of the information.
"This facility is staffed by a collection of what seem to be teenagers and young women," Ranma said. "And they're rather a strange bunch."
Mao looked up from her bundle down to the pictures and noted multiple pictures of what seemed to be the same set of three different girls. A closer look showed her that some of the pictures showed sets of twins or even triplets. There were minute differences between the girls, small scars, a freckle out of place and the like.
"Clones?" Mao asked in semi-disbelief.
"It's the first I heard of it," Ranma said. "Not even magic has made that work right."
"So why does a bunch of xerox kids make this your backyard instead of ours?" Mao asked.
"Well, no one's gotten video," Ranma said, spreading out another set of pictures. "The ones with the chests seem to be the oldest, maybe seventeen. The reports imply they have sensory abilities. The short slender ones," he pointed to several girls that appeared to be fourteen or fifteen years old, "seem mostly to have enhanced abilities. The youngest blast stuff, fire, wind, lightning and all that."
These last appeared to be no older than thirteen.
"And just a day ago, I got this," Ranma said placing another photograph down.
Mao arched an eyebrow in surprise as she recognized Ranma's son in the photograph with two girls like the sets already pointed to and a third who looked related, but was older than any of them. Probably twenty years old or so.
"That's..."
"A fourth type, abilities unknown," she said. "Yes and I know, and that's my son yes, but this picture is from a few days ago and nowhere near where we're going. And they've already left the area they were seen in."
The tightness of emotion was buried under the words, but it wasn't hard to miss.
Not at all.
Mao looked around and realized that access to information might, no might about it really, have been part of why Ranma accepted this job.
"Where'd these pictures come from?" she asked.
"The last, some kid's cell phone that got posted online," Ranma said. "The others, Intelligence Division, I'm told. I'm also told that Intelligence Division doesn't really get information like this in the end."
Mao nodded, thinking about Tessa's warning about how classified this mission was.
"So we're supposed to sneak into a facility run by a bunch of kids with supernatural abilities," Mao said. "What if they feel us coming or something."
"I've got ways around telepaths and such," Ranma noted. "And I don't think these girls have training."
"How do you know that?" Mao asked.
"Been looking at these pictures a lot," Ranma said. "They're really undisciplined. The stuff that's got us the information are stupid mistakes."
"Okay, so we're trying to sneak past a bunch of akiras," Mao said. "Wonderful, they could blow everything up around us and not even know we were there when they did."
"Yep," Ranma said with a grimace. "That's right. We're going in to figure out what's going on. If there's a whispered, we're supposed to get them out."
"And if we find any sign of your son there?" Mao asked.
"Then I have no orders forbidding me from burning the place down," Ranma said matter of factly.
Eija hesitated briefly outside the elevator, staring down the hallway toward Kaname's apartment. Any closer and she was certain Kaname would know how close she was, and she wasn't quite psyched up to the conversation Kaname wanted to have with her and Sousuke.
Are you almost here? Kaname's mental voice asked, slightly distracted, and a bit hesitant herself.
I'm...on my way, Eija returned.
Should...should we have this discussion privately first? Kaname asked, apparently noticing the nervousness in Eija's thoughts.
There is nothing we can keep private from each other for long, Eija said reluctantly.
We could talk to each other first, and talk to Sousuke later, Kaname said. If that'll make you more comfortable.
He leaves tomorrow, Eija noted, even her thoughts quiet.
We can always talk to him after, Kaname said comfortingly.
Eija stayed quiet for a long moment.
Eija?
Kaname...there might not be an after, Eija responded grimmly.
The impression that came back through the link was one of stopped motion and a deep breath.
I know.
There was an extended silence.
The elevator behind Eija beeped in announcement of disgorging another passenger, and the young goddess stepped forward quickly and turned about to find Sousuke stepping out of the door with an curious expression.
"Satomi-san," he said with a trace of something that may have been surprise or may have been a simple greeting.
"Oh, Sousuke-kun," Eija said quickly. "I didn't mean to be in the..."
Wait a minute, Kaname thought.
"Oh dear," Eija said.
"Is something wrong?" Sousuke asked.
Down the hall, the door to Kaname's apartment slammed open.
"Eija-chan," Kaname said with a feral smirk and an uplifting tone to the honorific. "Did you plan to stand out there and chat with me until I finished making dinner?"
"Of course not," Eija said as she stepped forward quickly, ducking around the glaring Kaname.
The glare was rounded up as Eija moved into the apartment, turning toward a new target. Sousuke flinching at the look.
"Are you coming in Sousuke?" she asked. "Or did you plan on just standing there all evening?"
"No ma'am," Sousuke said abruptly.
"Then get in here Sergeant Sagara!" she snapped. "On the double."
"Yes ma'am!" Sousuke agreed, snapping a salute and moving in past her.
"And none of that 'ma'am' stuff," the blue-haired dynamo insisted.
"Yes ma...Understood, Chidori-san," Sousuke said.
****
It was fifteen minutes later that the three had sat down at Kaname's table and started to eat the dinner. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence before they started up a conversation that moved across some minor topics.
The challenge to take on Megumi in a battle-tech match, something the girls were for once more enthusiastic about than Sousuke was.
A question about how the repairs in Sousuke's apartment had worked out.
Discussion of the meal.
A talk about Naiki and the takeout race.
Eventually, however, the topics wore down.
"I believe that you said you wanted to talk to us about something important," Sousuke said finally during one of the lulls.
Kaname set down her chopsticks and fidgited a bit.
"Well," she said. "I...feel that you're..."
Important.
"Important," Kaname said quickly. "To me...and Eija."
"Chidori-san?" Sousuke said.
"I mean, you...we...uh," Kaname stuttered.
He's our bodyguard.
"He'...You're our bodyguard. So we, uh should know more about you. And you...should know more about us."
"I see," Sousuke said. "This is rather forward thinking of you."
Kaname and Eija both flushed at the comment, each thinking a different meaning of "forward thinking" than what Sousuke was.
"Really?" Kaname asked.
"Indeed," Sousuke noted with a nod. "It is a good idea to have a full accounting of my skills for future situations."
"That's not a bad idea," Eija noted, turning toward Kaname and catching her eye. "We shoul...erm, later."
"Later?" Sousuke asked, a bit confused. "Then what do you mean?"
"What was your childhood like?" Kaname asked.
Sousuke turned silent and sat up a bit straighter as he took in the question. Though it seemed to be more a confusion as to the importance of the question than anything else.
"I spent most of my childhood in Helmjastad," Sousuke noted.
"Oh, right," Kaname said
Kaname remembered some of the side comments he'd made in the past that she'd once taken to be otaku fantasizing or descriptions of some video game.
"It was memorable time," Sousuke said. "I met many worthy comrades and learned much about how to fight."
"Was it hard to leave them behind when you went to Mithril?" Kaname asked.
Sousuke opened his mouth and then closed it.
"I did not go immediately to Mithril from Helmjastad," Sousuke said.
Kaname looked like she was about to push the issue of her original question, but was interrupted by Sousuke's next word.
"How about your childhoods?" he asked. "I've read your files, but I would be curious to hear more first hand intelligence."
Eija started to look toward Kaname and noted the blue-haired girl was already looking toward her, and sighed.
"I come from a martial artist family," Eija said. "So I've also trained since childhood. We've always been on the move, I'm afraid, so we've never had many permanent relationships outside of family."
She took a deep breath.
"Yeah, we moved around a lot too," Kaname said. "My father works for the UN. Lost a lot of friends."
"Lost?" Eija asked.
"Left behind," Kaname corrected. "Moved away from."
"Oh, I see," Eija noted
Despite the way she was behaving, the blue-haired girl knew both Eija and Sousuke were holding back, trying to avoid touching on bad memories perhaps. Or trying to avoid laying too much on Kaname.
Kaname grimaced and bit her tongue, not wanting to yell at them for once, though a large part of her disagreed heavily. She didn't have much other way to convince them to share though, as much as Eija seemed to agree they needed to.
She needed a way to see what they didn't...
"Say, Eija," Kaname asked. "Didn't those goddesses say something about how goddesses could share powers."
"Yes, through spells," Eija said. "Though apparently that was less necessary before the safeguards were added, but I don't see what that has to do with what we're..."
Eija froze as she realized what Kaname was thinking of doing.
"Please don't do that," the dark haired goddess said.
"What is she thinking of doing?" Sousuke asked.
"I want to borrow Eija's sight," Kaname explained.
"Don't look at me like that, please," Eija said.
Sousuke thought back to the airplane when he briefly shared in Eija's unique sensory abilities.
"Perhaps it is best to avoid that," Sousuke said quietly.
"I can't," Kaname said. "I have to know. I don't know if I could do it without help, and I don't want to. But please, I need to know everything about you...both of you. Before...just in case."
Sousuke and Eija understood "just in case" and shifted uncomfortably as they shared a look. Slowly, Eija took a breath and retreated into herself as she nodded.
"Go ahead and try," the goddess said.
Sousuke stood stoically, the nervousness clear in how his muscles were all tensing up.
Kaname tried to remember what it was like when she last drew information from Eija, but that hadn't been a conscious thing. It had been just a flood of information. This time she was looking for something specific. Eija had given her permission, but Kaname didn't think she was helping.
She paused and shook her head.
"Well, I suppose..." Eija started to say, relieved.
And Kaname fell into a Whispered trance and the vast information available in the flow of things within the words. The process of accessing a pool of abilities came to her what seemed to be slowly, as Eija's lips slowed down in mid sentence.
Her link with Eija made it possible, even though she still had to rework some of what the Whispered trance was instructing her to do, and eventually, she found what she wanted.
"...that's for the...oh dear," Eija finished as she saw the blood spread through Kaname's eyes.
"Miss Chidori?" Sousuke said, concerned. "Are you all right."
Kaname meanwhile stared at the two people in front of her, red eyes wide as she took in what her borrowed vision showed her.
Both were stained with many red splotches and a heavy dark mist that clung close to them. They had both dealt and been touched by death many times in their lives.
"Oh my god," Kaname whispered in shock, letting the borrowed vision slip away.
Eija was right, she really hadn't wanted to see that, but she had now. Right now, the goddess was morosely staring down at her own lap, and waiting.
"Are you all right, Kaname?" Sousuke asked, standing up and reaching out toward her.
Eija closed her eyes, feeling the discord in Kaname's mind and expecting, dreading the girl's probable reaction to the gesture. She reluctantly shut out the emotions as well as possible, not wanting to hear the coming rejection in both the physical and mental worlds.
She heard the clattering of dishes and silverware, obviously from Kaname flinching away.
"Chidori-san!?" Sousuke gasped.
"I'm so sorry," Kaname returned loudly.
"Eh?" Eija wondered, opening her eyes in confusion and tentatively letting herself open back up to Kaname's mind.
Which was when she found herself grabbed up into Kaname's headlock flavored hug along with Sousuke.
"Chidori-san," Sousuke said again, futilely trying to resist the grip of the sympathetic tomboy.
"Kaname..." Eija added, likewise drawn unresistably in.
Are you almost here? Kaname's mental voice asked, slightly distracted, and a bit hesitant herself.
I'm...on my way, Eija returned.
Should...should we have this discussion privately first? Kaname asked, apparently noticing the nervousness in Eija's thoughts.
There is nothing we can keep private from each other for long, Eija said reluctantly.
We could talk to each other first, and talk to Sousuke later, Kaname said. If that'll make you more comfortable.
He leaves tomorrow, Eija noted, even her thoughts quiet.
We can always talk to him after, Kaname said comfortingly.
Eija stayed quiet for a long moment.
Eija?
Kaname...there might not be an after, Eija responded grimmly.
The impression that came back through the link was one of stopped motion and a deep breath.
I know.
There was an extended silence.
The elevator behind Eija beeped in announcement of disgorging another passenger, and the young goddess stepped forward quickly and turned about to find Sousuke stepping out of the door with an curious expression.
"Satomi-san," he said with a trace of something that may have been surprise or may have been a simple greeting.
"Oh, Sousuke-kun," Eija said quickly. "I didn't mean to be in the..."
Wait a minute, Kaname thought.
"Oh dear," Eija said.
"Is something wrong?" Sousuke asked.
Down the hall, the door to Kaname's apartment slammed open.
"Eija-chan," Kaname said with a feral smirk and an uplifting tone to the honorific. "Did you plan to stand out there and chat with me until I finished making dinner?"
"Of course not," Eija said as she stepped forward quickly, ducking around the glaring Kaname.
The glare was rounded up as Eija moved into the apartment, turning toward a new target. Sousuke flinching at the look.
"Are you coming in Sousuke?" she asked. "Or did you plan on just standing there all evening?"
"No ma'am," Sousuke said abruptly.
"Then get in here Sergeant Sagara!" she snapped. "On the double."
"Yes ma'am!" Sousuke agreed, snapping a salute and moving in past her.
"And none of that 'ma'am' stuff," the blue-haired dynamo insisted.
"Yes ma...Understood, Chidori-san," Sousuke said.
****
It was fifteen minutes later that the three had sat down at Kaname's table and started to eat the dinner. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence before they started up a conversation that moved across some minor topics.
The challenge to take on Megumi in a battle-tech match, something the girls were for once more enthusiastic about than Sousuke was.
A question about how the repairs in Sousuke's apartment had worked out.
Discussion of the meal.
A talk about Naiki and the takeout race.
Eventually, however, the topics wore down.
"I believe that you said you wanted to talk to us about something important," Sousuke said finally during one of the lulls.
Kaname set down her chopsticks and fidgited a bit.
"Well," she said. "I...feel that you're..."
Important.
"Important," Kaname said quickly. "To me...and Eija."
"Chidori-san?" Sousuke said.
"I mean, you...we...uh," Kaname stuttered.
He's our bodyguard.
"He'...You're our bodyguard. So we, uh should know more about you. And you...should know more about us."
"I see," Sousuke said. "This is rather forward thinking of you."
Kaname and Eija both flushed at the comment, each thinking a different meaning of "forward thinking" than what Sousuke was.
"Really?" Kaname asked.
"Indeed," Sousuke noted with a nod. "It is a good idea to have a full accounting of my skills for future situations."
"That's not a bad idea," Eija noted, turning toward Kaname and catching her eye. "We shoul...erm, later."
"Later?" Sousuke asked, a bit confused. "Then what do you mean?"
"What was your childhood like?" Kaname asked.
Sousuke turned silent and sat up a bit straighter as he took in the question. Though it seemed to be more a confusion as to the importance of the question than anything else.
"I spent most of my childhood in Helmjastad," Sousuke noted.
"Oh, right," Kaname said
Kaname remembered some of the side comments he'd made in the past that she'd once taken to be otaku fantasizing or descriptions of some video game.
"It was memorable time," Sousuke said. "I met many worthy comrades and learned much about how to fight."
"Was it hard to leave them behind when you went to Mithril?" Kaname asked.
Sousuke opened his mouth and then closed it.
"I did not go immediately to Mithril from Helmjastad," Sousuke said.
Kaname looked like she was about to push the issue of her original question, but was interrupted by Sousuke's next word.
"How about your childhoods?" he asked. "I've read your files, but I would be curious to hear more first hand intelligence."
Eija started to look toward Kaname and noted the blue-haired girl was already looking toward her, and sighed.
"I come from a martial artist family," Eija said. "So I've also trained since childhood. We've always been on the move, I'm afraid, so we've never had many permanent relationships outside of family."
She took a deep breath.
"Yeah, we moved around a lot too," Kaname said. "My father works for the UN. Lost a lot of friends."
"Lost?" Eija asked.
"Left behind," Kaname corrected. "Moved away from."
"Oh, I see," Eija noted
Despite the way she was behaving, the blue-haired girl knew both Eija and Sousuke were holding back, trying to avoid touching on bad memories perhaps. Or trying to avoid laying too much on Kaname.
Kaname grimaced and bit her tongue, not wanting to yell at them for once, though a large part of her disagreed heavily. She didn't have much other way to convince them to share though, as much as Eija seemed to agree they needed to.
She needed a way to see what they didn't...
"Say, Eija," Kaname asked. "Didn't those goddesses say something about how goddesses could share powers."
"Yes, through spells," Eija said. "Though apparently that was less necessary before the safeguards were added, but I don't see what that has to do with what we're..."
Eija froze as she realized what Kaname was thinking of doing.
"Please don't do that," the dark haired goddess said.
"What is she thinking of doing?" Sousuke asked.
"I want to borrow Eija's sight," Kaname explained.
"Don't look at me like that, please," Eija said.
Sousuke thought back to the airplane when he briefly shared in Eija's unique sensory abilities.
"Perhaps it is best to avoid that," Sousuke said quietly.
"I can't," Kaname said. "I have to know. I don't know if I could do it without help, and I don't want to. But please, I need to know everything about you...both of you. Before...just in case."
Sousuke and Eija understood "just in case" and shifted uncomfortably as they shared a look. Slowly, Eija took a breath and retreated into herself as she nodded.
"Go ahead and try," the goddess said.
Sousuke stood stoically, the nervousness clear in how his muscles were all tensing up.
Kaname tried to remember what it was like when she last drew information from Eija, but that hadn't been a conscious thing. It had been just a flood of information. This time she was looking for something specific. Eija had given her permission, but Kaname didn't think she was helping.
She paused and shook her head.
"Well, I suppose..." Eija started to say, relieved.
And Kaname fell into a Whispered trance and the vast information available in the flow of things within the words. The process of accessing a pool of abilities came to her what seemed to be slowly, as Eija's lips slowed down in mid sentence.
Her link with Eija made it possible, even though she still had to rework some of what the Whispered trance was instructing her to do, and eventually, she found what she wanted.
"...that's for the...oh dear," Eija finished as she saw the blood spread through Kaname's eyes.
"Miss Chidori?" Sousuke said, concerned. "Are you all right."
Kaname meanwhile stared at the two people in front of her, red eyes wide as she took in what her borrowed vision showed her.
Both were stained with many red splotches and a heavy dark mist that clung close to them. They had both dealt and been touched by death many times in their lives.
"Oh my god," Kaname whispered in shock, letting the borrowed vision slip away.
Eija was right, she really hadn't wanted to see that, but she had now. Right now, the goddess was morosely staring down at her own lap, and waiting.
"Are you all right, Kaname?" Sousuke asked, standing up and reaching out toward her.
Eija closed her eyes, feeling the discord in Kaname's mind and expecting, dreading the girl's probable reaction to the gesture. She reluctantly shut out the emotions as well as possible, not wanting to hear the coming rejection in both the physical and mental worlds.
She heard the clattering of dishes and silverware, obviously from Kaname flinching away.
"Chidori-san!?" Sousuke gasped.
"I'm so sorry," Kaname returned loudly.
"Eh?" Eija wondered, opening her eyes in confusion and tentatively letting herself open back up to Kaname's mind.
Which was when she found herself grabbed up into Kaname's headlock flavored hug along with Sousuke.
"Chidori-san," Sousuke said again, futilely trying to resist the grip of the sympathetic tomboy.
"Kaname..." Eija added, likewise drawn unresistably in.
Nimu stared out of the window as she and Sanya waited to be seen and to report. She looked over at Sanya and noted the girl's hand shaking a bit.
Symptoms were starting.
Of course, the Mistress only sent girls out if they were getting close to needing their "vitamin supplement". She and Sanya had a good week, and, assuming the Mistress did not punish them for their failure, that was plenty of time to get an injection.
Yonjuu, however. Yonjuu was off on her own who knew where. And if she was injured...
If she was injured, then she was even closer to her "expiration date" as "Mother" liked to call it.
****
Deimosu looked out from the edge of the cliff out into the open air, frowning.
When he'd first realized where he was, he'd been ecstatic.
He was that much closer to taking out his revenge on the gods that had attacked his mother.
Now, however, he was feeling more than a little...concerned.
He put that aside, however, and concentrated instead on the auras of white magic he sensed out past the cliffs. The elements of the spells that held this place between worlds.
Deimosu didn't want to break the spell, of course. He needed this place to remain between worlds so he could use it to access the truce world. However, he also needed to know how to get in and out of the place.
First he needed to get back to Earth for three reasons.
The first was that he didn't have the equipment he wanted yet. The chi-enhancing devices Sousuke's people and their enemies had.
The second was a bit more of an immediate concern. They needed food and water, because he was running out of trail bars and there was nothing to hunt in the labyrinth.
And the third: he needed a safe place to put Yaku and perhaps Yonjuu as well.
Nodding he turned back toward the lab and leaped.
Yonjuu was sitting morosely at a table, her face still a collection of rather vivid bruises from the rock that had slammed into her. That had Deimosu more than a little concerned, even if she was nominally an enemy. The bruises should have been healing quicker.
Yaku was on the other side of the lab, messing around with the computer now that she knew what it was. Every once in a while the girl gave her elder sister a cautious look, just in case their current trapped status was forgotten and Yonjuu tried to make off with her again.
"Brother," Yaku called out happily on seeing he was back. "Is there a way out?"
Deimosu frowned and shook his head as he looked to Yonjuu nibbling on one of the ration bars.
"How much have you eaten?" he asked, with narrowed eyes.
"I'm not really hungry," Yonjuu said, crossing her arms. "I just have this one."
She'd barely started eating that one.
"Maybe you'd heal faster if you ate more than a bar a day," the demi-god noted.
"I'm conserving the food," Yonjuu protested. "We only have so much, and she needs to live."
"Right," Deimosu said.
He walked over to see what Yaku was doing and found her playing some sort of computer game on the hologram. Looking closely, it looked at the very least extremely similar to Starcraft.
"Was that on the computer?" he asked.
"No," Yaku said, legs shaking back and forth out underneath her and the chair she was sitting on.
"Where'd you get it?" he asked.
"I made it, Brother," she said cheerfully.
"You made it?" Deimosu said in surprise.
She nodded firmly and turned back to her game.
"It took me all night," she said.
"Can I play?" Yonjuu asked curiously.
"No," Yaku said, turning about with sticking her tongue out at Yonjuu.
"How the he...heck did you make a video game in one night?" Deimosu asked, ignoring the interchange briefly.
"She's a Go," Yonjuu said. "Mistress wanted assistants in her research, so they're all hyper-intelligent in some way or another."
"Go means skillful," Yaku said proudly as something bright and colorful exploded on her hologram screen.
"Is there anything else on that computer?" Deimosu asked.
"MmmHmm," Yaku said. "But I can't read it. It's all funny letters."
"Can you show me?" Deimosu asked.
"Can I finish?" Yaku asked hopefully.
Deimosu took a deep breath and shrugged.
"Fine, I need to go look for water again," he said. "When I get back, we're looking at the funny letters, okay?"
"Okay," Yaku said proudly.
"You come with me," Deimosu said pointing toward Yonjuu. "I need someone with a nose and my sister isn't available."
"Right," Yonjuu said, standing up. "And are we blowing up anymore walls?"
"Not unless we have to," Deimosu said. "I've been marking paths. I'm sure the gods will get annoyed when they come back here, but I don't really care."
"Gods, old powers," Yonjuu said as she followed behind Deimosu into the hallways of the labyrinth. "Between worlds, what are you talking about? You just say nonsense."
"Stay here, Yaku," Deimosu said.
"I will," Yaku promised.
They were well into the labryinth when Deimosu turned toward the bosom akira.
"So if there's more than one like her, why is she so important?" Deimosu asked.
Yonjuu hesitated to answer.
"Not every Go is the same," Yonjuu said. "And she's more important than most."
"Why?" the blonde Satomi asked.
"Every batch produces some psychics," Yonjuu said. "I...had a sister that was an object reader."
"And what happens to these psychics?" Deimosu asked.
"They...they go to Mother...the Mistress," Yonjuu said. "And we don't see them again."
"And you want that for her?" Deimosu asked.
"It's not a matter of what I want," the bruised girl said. "I don't have a choice."
"Everyone has a choice," Deimosu said.
They travelled several more minutes before he spoke up again.
"Smell anything yet?"
"Yes, I smell Yaku," Yonjuu said. "All the air is coming from behind us. We're looking for stuff upwind of where we are I probably won't smell anything until we're right on top of it."
The demi-god nodded and then turned to the side to burn a mark on the wall with a electrical discharge.
They turned about a corner several minutes later when Yonjuu perked up.
"I can smell something now," she said. "There's water...and mushrooms this way!"
The girl shuffled ahead swiftly and eagerly, Deimosu behind her, marking paths as quickly as he could while keeping up.
"Slow down," Deimosu instructed. "We really don't want to get lost here."
"We won't get lost as long as I can smell out the exit," she protested.
"And what if you try to lose me," Deimosu said, pulling her back. "Stay close."
"You have to take care of Yaku," Yonjuu protested, slowing down despite that.
"And you can't?" Deimosu asked.
"For a little while maybe," she said. "But I...wouldn't last long."
Deimosu frowned at that statement, before he could press the issue however, they turned the corner onto a large pool of still water fringed by an extensive growth of mushrooms. Water was gathering up on the ceiling and then dripping down into the pool, forming numerous rock formations.
And with it all, the first sign of chi that he'd found in the labyrinth aside from them. In fact, while the chi elsewhere seemed non-existant, here it was practically glowing.
Moving off to the wall as Yonjuu moved into the mushrooms and started to sort between which ones were poisonous and which weren't. It was quickly easy to find that, under the grey shell of limestone, that the walls of this chamber were built of thick crystals.
He didn't know the kind of crystal, but he did see the potential. The teen silently thanked his mother for taking the time to make them all learn at least the basics of crystal cutting. He could do some basic chi-enhancing crystals from the walls here. Especially since it looked like the crystals had been growing rampantly for a long time.
He was turning about towards Yonjuu with his water bag, ready to tell her to start grabbing stuff and getting ready to go back.
What came to his eyes was the girl sprawled over the ground, her fall softened by the mushrooms about her.
"Damn it," he snapped. "What did you eat?"
Moving to her side, however, found that there was no sign she'd eaten any of the mushrooms that fallen out of her hands. She was just unconscious for no apparent reason.
She woke up as he started to lift her off the floor and gasped, backing away from him quickly.
"Sorry," she said, embarrassed. "I must have slipped."
"Then I would have seen signs," Deimosu said. "This is what you mean that you'd only last a little while taking care of Yaku. What's killing you?"
She crossed her arms.
"The mistress needs to give me a vitamin shot," Yonjuu said after a long silence.
"Or you die, right?" Deimosu asked.
"I said we don't have a choice," Yonjuu explained hollowly. "Without her, we all die."
"We'll see about that," Deimosu said. "Let's go back.
****
Naiki stared across at Mara and Mara stared back.
"I told you," Mara said finally. "The rules don't work, so we don't use them."
"You mean the end justifies the means and it doesn't matter if people get hurt?" Naiki asked.
"Of course it matters," the older demoness said. "But sometimes its unavoidable. And sometimes...we do lose control."
"So how many times have you almost destroyed the world?" Naiki asked.
"Err, let's talk about something else," Mara said.
"And you're supposed to be the good guys?" Naiki shouted.
Mara sighed and took a deep breath.
"It's perspective," the blonde demoness noted soberly. "We were here first. We don't deserve to be shunted off to the side by anybody. Gods or Humans. Used to be we tried to eliminate you and the Gods. The demons that believed in that are mostly locked away now. What we do instead is...make ourselves room. If we have to eliminate the poisonous parts of their people to do it, that's just beneficial to both us and them."
"Make yourselves room," Naiki said. "What about Nifelheim? Isn't that enough room?"
"For a quarter of a million, ideally. Thankfully not many of us are born every century, but even so, there's twice as many demons and others living in Nifelheim than it should hold," Mara explained. "It's artificial, it doesn't hold or support as much as Earth. It was only supposed to be a shelter through the latter days of fire, after what you call the KT event. When we stepped out, the Gods were picking the remains of our cities and our dead. Then came the war."
"They stole the secrets of dimensional crafting from us, and they built Asgard, which is built with more long-term goals in mind," Mara continued. "We stole the secrets of how to create a central processor to enhance the available energy, which is how we built Nidhog. It went on and on until we both retreated and when we came back, humans were here."
"So everything you told me about punishing evil, that's just...propaganda?" Naiki said.
"No," Mara said. "Not entirely. Many of us Believe. Just there's more than one motive. Everything is complex. Nothing is black and white. When we thought black and white, that's when we started the first war."
"You shouldn't have lied to me," Naiki protested.
"Yeah, well, deal with that later," Mara said. "Right now, we have a job to do."
"A job?" Naiki asked.
"We need you to talk to Persephone," Mara said. "Coming down from Hild. We need to find Hecate and whatever demons she's allied with before her plans take off."
"You want me to hunt down the bitch who hurt my mother?" Naiki said firmly. "I'm in."
"Hecate is a first class goddess, Naiki," Mara said. "Even without Yggdrasil, she's more than you can take. And she's war-trained, unlike me. We just find her. Let other people handle the taking her down."
"Try and stop me," Naiki protested.
As she posed, she felt a thought filter in from outside and realized that Tessa had dropped the privacy screens that she usually maintained.
Err, Naiki, I keep letting myself get distracted from asking you this, but would you be able to help me with so... the thought paused. Is something wrong? You feel like you're angry.
****
Tessa stared out at the gym several hours later.
Okay, and for once the irritated side of their link was Naiki. We got that you can't handle the five pound hand weights...or the two pounders...let's try ONE pound.
One pound, is that enough to build anything? Tessa asked.
At your level, yes, came Naiki's response. Now, again, you want to hold it out in your hand straight out for about five seconds, then bend your elbow all the way hold it there for five seconds, straighten your arm. Do that ten times, rest, and ten more times, five rests, five sets and then switch arms.
Okay, Tessa noted. So what are you up to?
So is that a question from a friend or from an officer in Mithril asking about a demon recruit?
It can be both Tessa said.
It's private, Naiki said in response. Are you making sure to hold five seconds each time?
I am, Tessa assured her. I might be able to help you.
It's nothing, okay? I'm just supposed to talk to my sister's 'grandmother'. Focus on your exercises.
Your grand...oh, Tessa grimaced, she figured that talking to her godly relatives would be...trying on Naiki.
Oh, get on with it! Oh, get on with it!
Excuse me? Tessa asked.
The threesome are getting sappy, Sousuke's off to his plane.
The thre... And she realized who Naiki was talking about and the weight slipped out of her hand. Oww!
Did you drop ANOTHER weight?
****
Ukyou, Konatsu, Mousse and Naoko looked across at each other as they discussed the situation before them.
"Okay," Ukyou said. "Ranchan's daughter is a demon, and he...she wants us to train her."
"A demon?" Naoko said, surprised. "She seemed a bit rough, but not that bad."
"Ukyou means literally a demon," Konatsu said. "It would explain why can feel no chi from her. Still, Ranma-san would not support anything evil."
"The Ranma we knew perhaps," Mousse said. "If she's had truck with demons?"
"The chi I feel from Ranma is strong, and touched by white magic," Konatsu said. "Surely she is blessed and someone blessed would not support someone evil."
"If a demon is not necessarily evil, then are gods necessarily good?" Mousse asked.
"How about you train her first and if you decide she's good, then bring Issei and Kouta into it," Naoko suggested.
"I can go out on a limb for Ranchan that much," Ukyou agreed after a moment.
"It'll be some time for us to think," Mousse noted. "As I heard, Ranma's daughters will be sent somewhere else while she's...out on business for the next few weeks."
*****
"Okay, Sergeant Sagara," Kaname said. "I'll see you when you get back. And you'd better get back on time so that I don't have to kill Kurz."
"Understood, Chidori, Ma..." Sousuke said crisply.
"Enough of that 'ma'am' stuff, I keep telling you!" Kaname snapped playfully, enjoying the power of the moment. "And definitely no 'sirs' either."
"Of course, Chidori-san," Sousuke said. "Satomi-san, I expect you to make sure Kaname is safe."
"Hai, Sousuke," Eija said with a bow and a smile. "I shall watch Weber-san constantly. If he must be punished, I will see to it."
"Please," Kurz said at the doorway. "I'm not freaking pervert after all."
"All evidence points to the contrary," Sousuke noted with sage nods from Kaname and Eija.
More seriously she followed that up.
"I won't let her be...touched," she said quietly, drawing a look from Kaname and an understanding nod from Sousuke.
"Oh, get on with it," Naiki demanded from where she was leaning against a pillar.
"You're going to be late, Sousuke," Kurz said irritably.
"Understood," Sousuke noted, turning about to shake Eija and Kaname's hands.
When Kaname grasped his hand she drew him into a headlock and growled quietly.
"If you don't come back in one piece, you'll be sorry," she said firmly before letting him go and watching him walk down toward the exit ramps for the small private jets.
That left Eija and Kaname behind and the waiting started.
I wish he had longer to talk about...things with Sousuke, Kaname thought quietly.
It was rather...abrupt, Eija noted. But I think you managed to get across that you accepted...what we were.
What did you think I'd do? Run screaming from the building? Kaname asked with a slightly angry frown. Do you think I'm some sort of insensitive jerk?
I have blood on my hands, Eija said. You can't know how it got there.
Oh, would you quit being stupid? Kaname demanded. We're in each other's heads. We've been through life and death situations. I know the difference between a cold killer and someone...whose had an unpleasant life.
Kaname gave exaggerated breath that attracted Kurz's moderately confused attention.
And what was all that about "she won't be touched" Kaname asked.
Well...
Eija, spill it!
Sousuke and I agreed, Eija finally answered. If there's killing to be done, we'll do it for you. No reason you have to...
"What the hell does that mean?!" Kaname shouted out loud.
Kurz shook his head and sighed.
"Would you two not do the creepy mind meld thing, please?" he asked. "Anyway, here comes everybody else."
"Kaname!" Kyoko shouted out waving as she ran up to greet them. "Isn't this great?! We're going to see Okinawa after all! And we get to meet Eija and Naiki's family! Too bad Deimosu is still...you know...missing."
She waved at Naiki, and failed to notice as the demoness immediately straightened and started to preen herself.
Behind Kyoko a few other people were coming, Mizuki and Shinji among them.
As the kids gathered, Kurz dialed out on his cell phone.
****
Ranma closed her cell phone and turned toward Melissa.
"Okay, Kurz is off with the kids," Ranma said. "Akane said they'd be safe over there. Are you ready for this?"
Melissa went over her gear, taser, stun rod, a pistol and four clips, lockpicks, PDA of pertinent information and a small tiara with a crystal that Ranma had provided for her to shield against casual telepathy.
"This is a bit risky for you, isn't it?" Melissa asked. "Your cover is near here, isn't it?"
"I've got a way around that now," Ranma said with a smirk.
"What's that?" Melissa asked.
"Someone fixed a problem I've had for the last sixteen years," Ranma explained. "So I've now got two faces to use."
"Two faces, what do you mean?" the Sergeant Major asked, turning about to face the red-head.
The older woman smirked at her and stretched out her fingers as a change started to work over her body. The woman grew a little more than a foot and bulked out as her features became distinctly male...and not a bad looking male either.
"Uhhh," Melissa said, her jaw dropping. "Wha..."
"Now, I haven't been in this body for a long time," Ranma said. "So I ain't going to be top form."
"Are you a man or a woman?" Melissa asked.
"So, are we thinking about our first attempt to seduce me as a young woman way back when, now?" Ranma asked with a bit of a smirk.
Melissa noted sh...he didn't really answer the question and decided not to press the issue, instead taking on the joke Ranma had offered.
"Are you still attracted to women, or does that change too?" she asked tartly.
"Male, female," Ranma said, shrugging. "Doesn't change my mind. Are we ready for this?"
Symptoms were starting.
Of course, the Mistress only sent girls out if they were getting close to needing their "vitamin supplement". She and Sanya had a good week, and, assuming the Mistress did not punish them for their failure, that was plenty of time to get an injection.
Yonjuu, however. Yonjuu was off on her own who knew where. And if she was injured...
If she was injured, then she was even closer to her "expiration date" as "Mother" liked to call it.
****
Deimosu looked out from the edge of the cliff out into the open air, frowning.
When he'd first realized where he was, he'd been ecstatic.
He was that much closer to taking out his revenge on the gods that had attacked his mother.
Now, however, he was feeling more than a little...concerned.
He put that aside, however, and concentrated instead on the auras of white magic he sensed out past the cliffs. The elements of the spells that held this place between worlds.
Deimosu didn't want to break the spell, of course. He needed this place to remain between worlds so he could use it to access the truce world. However, he also needed to know how to get in and out of the place.
First he needed to get back to Earth for three reasons.
The first was that he didn't have the equipment he wanted yet. The chi-enhancing devices Sousuke's people and their enemies had.
The second was a bit more of an immediate concern. They needed food and water, because he was running out of trail bars and there was nothing to hunt in the labyrinth.
And the third: he needed a safe place to put Yaku and perhaps Yonjuu as well.
Nodding he turned back toward the lab and leaped.
Yonjuu was sitting morosely at a table, her face still a collection of rather vivid bruises from the rock that had slammed into her. That had Deimosu more than a little concerned, even if she was nominally an enemy. The bruises should have been healing quicker.
Yaku was on the other side of the lab, messing around with the computer now that she knew what it was. Every once in a while the girl gave her elder sister a cautious look, just in case their current trapped status was forgotten and Yonjuu tried to make off with her again.
"Brother," Yaku called out happily on seeing he was back. "Is there a way out?"
Deimosu frowned and shook his head as he looked to Yonjuu nibbling on one of the ration bars.
"How much have you eaten?" he asked, with narrowed eyes.
"I'm not really hungry," Yonjuu said, crossing her arms. "I just have this one."
She'd barely started eating that one.
"Maybe you'd heal faster if you ate more than a bar a day," the demi-god noted.
"I'm conserving the food," Yonjuu protested. "We only have so much, and she needs to live."
"Right," Deimosu said.
He walked over to see what Yaku was doing and found her playing some sort of computer game on the hologram. Looking closely, it looked at the very least extremely similar to Starcraft.
"Was that on the computer?" he asked.
"No," Yaku said, legs shaking back and forth out underneath her and the chair she was sitting on.
"Where'd you get it?" he asked.
"I made it, Brother," she said cheerfully.
"You made it?" Deimosu said in surprise.
She nodded firmly and turned back to her game.
"It took me all night," she said.
"Can I play?" Yonjuu asked curiously.
"No," Yaku said, turning about with sticking her tongue out at Yonjuu.
"How the he...heck did you make a video game in one night?" Deimosu asked, ignoring the interchange briefly.
"She's a Go," Yonjuu said. "Mistress wanted assistants in her research, so they're all hyper-intelligent in some way or another."
"Go means skillful," Yaku said proudly as something bright and colorful exploded on her hologram screen.
"Is there anything else on that computer?" Deimosu asked.
"MmmHmm," Yaku said. "But I can't read it. It's all funny letters."
"Can you show me?" Deimosu asked.
"Can I finish?" Yaku asked hopefully.
Deimosu took a deep breath and shrugged.
"Fine, I need to go look for water again," he said. "When I get back, we're looking at the funny letters, okay?"
"Okay," Yaku said proudly.
"You come with me," Deimosu said pointing toward Yonjuu. "I need someone with a nose and my sister isn't available."
"Right," Yonjuu said, standing up. "And are we blowing up anymore walls?"
"Not unless we have to," Deimosu said. "I've been marking paths. I'm sure the gods will get annoyed when they come back here, but I don't really care."
"Gods, old powers," Yonjuu said as she followed behind Deimosu into the hallways of the labyrinth. "Between worlds, what are you talking about? You just say nonsense."
"Stay here, Yaku," Deimosu said.
"I will," Yaku promised.
They were well into the labryinth when Deimosu turned toward the bosom akira.
"So if there's more than one like her, why is she so important?" Deimosu asked.
Yonjuu hesitated to answer.
"Not every Go is the same," Yonjuu said. "And she's more important than most."
"Why?" the blonde Satomi asked.
"Every batch produces some psychics," Yonjuu said. "I...had a sister that was an object reader."
"And what happens to these psychics?" Deimosu asked.
"They...they go to Mother...the Mistress," Yonjuu said. "And we don't see them again."
"And you want that for her?" Deimosu asked.
"It's not a matter of what I want," the bruised girl said. "I don't have a choice."
"Everyone has a choice," Deimosu said.
They travelled several more minutes before he spoke up again.
"Smell anything yet?"
"Yes, I smell Yaku," Yonjuu said. "All the air is coming from behind us. We're looking for stuff upwind of where we are I probably won't smell anything until we're right on top of it."
The demi-god nodded and then turned to the side to burn a mark on the wall with a electrical discharge.
They turned about a corner several minutes later when Yonjuu perked up.
"I can smell something now," she said. "There's water...and mushrooms this way!"
The girl shuffled ahead swiftly and eagerly, Deimosu behind her, marking paths as quickly as he could while keeping up.
"Slow down," Deimosu instructed. "We really don't want to get lost here."
"We won't get lost as long as I can smell out the exit," she protested.
"And what if you try to lose me," Deimosu said, pulling her back. "Stay close."
"You have to take care of Yaku," Yonjuu protested, slowing down despite that.
"And you can't?" Deimosu asked.
"For a little while maybe," she said. "But I...wouldn't last long."
Deimosu frowned at that statement, before he could press the issue however, they turned the corner onto a large pool of still water fringed by an extensive growth of mushrooms. Water was gathering up on the ceiling and then dripping down into the pool, forming numerous rock formations.
And with it all, the first sign of chi that he'd found in the labyrinth aside from them. In fact, while the chi elsewhere seemed non-existant, here it was practically glowing.
Moving off to the wall as Yonjuu moved into the mushrooms and started to sort between which ones were poisonous and which weren't. It was quickly easy to find that, under the grey shell of limestone, that the walls of this chamber were built of thick crystals.
He didn't know the kind of crystal, but he did see the potential. The teen silently thanked his mother for taking the time to make them all learn at least the basics of crystal cutting. He could do some basic chi-enhancing crystals from the walls here. Especially since it looked like the crystals had been growing rampantly for a long time.
He was turning about towards Yonjuu with his water bag, ready to tell her to start grabbing stuff and getting ready to go back.
What came to his eyes was the girl sprawled over the ground, her fall softened by the mushrooms about her.
"Damn it," he snapped. "What did you eat?"
Moving to her side, however, found that there was no sign she'd eaten any of the mushrooms that fallen out of her hands. She was just unconscious for no apparent reason.
She woke up as he started to lift her off the floor and gasped, backing away from him quickly.
"Sorry," she said, embarrassed. "I must have slipped."
"Then I would have seen signs," Deimosu said. "This is what you mean that you'd only last a little while taking care of Yaku. What's killing you?"
She crossed her arms.
"The mistress needs to give me a vitamin shot," Yonjuu said after a long silence.
"Or you die, right?" Deimosu asked.
"I said we don't have a choice," Yonjuu explained hollowly. "Without her, we all die."
"We'll see about that," Deimosu said. "Let's go back.
****
Naiki stared across at Mara and Mara stared back.
"I told you," Mara said finally. "The rules don't work, so we don't use them."
"You mean the end justifies the means and it doesn't matter if people get hurt?" Naiki asked.
"Of course it matters," the older demoness said. "But sometimes its unavoidable. And sometimes...we do lose control."
"So how many times have you almost destroyed the world?" Naiki asked.
"Err, let's talk about something else," Mara said.
"And you're supposed to be the good guys?" Naiki shouted.
Mara sighed and took a deep breath.
"It's perspective," the blonde demoness noted soberly. "We were here first. We don't deserve to be shunted off to the side by anybody. Gods or Humans. Used to be we tried to eliminate you and the Gods. The demons that believed in that are mostly locked away now. What we do instead is...make ourselves room. If we have to eliminate the poisonous parts of their people to do it, that's just beneficial to both us and them."
"Make yourselves room," Naiki said. "What about Nifelheim? Isn't that enough room?"
"For a quarter of a million, ideally. Thankfully not many of us are born every century, but even so, there's twice as many demons and others living in Nifelheim than it should hold," Mara explained. "It's artificial, it doesn't hold or support as much as Earth. It was only supposed to be a shelter through the latter days of fire, after what you call the KT event. When we stepped out, the Gods were picking the remains of our cities and our dead. Then came the war."
"They stole the secrets of dimensional crafting from us, and they built Asgard, which is built with more long-term goals in mind," Mara continued. "We stole the secrets of how to create a central processor to enhance the available energy, which is how we built Nidhog. It went on and on until we both retreated and when we came back, humans were here."
"So everything you told me about punishing evil, that's just...propaganda?" Naiki said.
"No," Mara said. "Not entirely. Many of us Believe. Just there's more than one motive. Everything is complex. Nothing is black and white. When we thought black and white, that's when we started the first war."
"You shouldn't have lied to me," Naiki protested.
"Yeah, well, deal with that later," Mara said. "Right now, we have a job to do."
"A job?" Naiki asked.
"We need you to talk to Persephone," Mara said. "Coming down from Hild. We need to find Hecate and whatever demons she's allied with before her plans take off."
"You want me to hunt down the bitch who hurt my mother?" Naiki said firmly. "I'm in."
"Hecate is a first class goddess, Naiki," Mara said. "Even without Yggdrasil, she's more than you can take. And she's war-trained, unlike me. We just find her. Let other people handle the taking her down."
"Try and stop me," Naiki protested.
As she posed, she felt a thought filter in from outside and realized that Tessa had dropped the privacy screens that she usually maintained.
Err, Naiki, I keep letting myself get distracted from asking you this, but would you be able to help me with so... the thought paused. Is something wrong? You feel like you're angry.
****
Tessa stared out at the gym several hours later.
Okay, and for once the irritated side of their link was Naiki. We got that you can't handle the five pound hand weights...or the two pounders...let's try ONE pound.
One pound, is that enough to build anything? Tessa asked.
At your level, yes, came Naiki's response. Now, again, you want to hold it out in your hand straight out for about five seconds, then bend your elbow all the way hold it there for five seconds, straighten your arm. Do that ten times, rest, and ten more times, five rests, five sets and then switch arms.
Okay, Tessa noted. So what are you up to?
So is that a question from a friend or from an officer in Mithril asking about a demon recruit?
It can be both Tessa said.
It's private, Naiki said in response. Are you making sure to hold five seconds each time?
I am, Tessa assured her. I might be able to help you.
It's nothing, okay? I'm just supposed to talk to my sister's 'grandmother'. Focus on your exercises.
Your grand...oh, Tessa grimaced, she figured that talking to her godly relatives would be...trying on Naiki.
Oh, get on with it! Oh, get on with it!
Excuse me? Tessa asked.
The threesome are getting sappy, Sousuke's off to his plane.
The thre... And she realized who Naiki was talking about and the weight slipped out of her hand. Oww!
Did you drop ANOTHER weight?
****
Ukyou, Konatsu, Mousse and Naoko looked across at each other as they discussed the situation before them.
"Okay," Ukyou said. "Ranchan's daughter is a demon, and he...she wants us to train her."
"A demon?" Naoko said, surprised. "She seemed a bit rough, but not that bad."
"Ukyou means literally a demon," Konatsu said. "It would explain why can feel no chi from her. Still, Ranma-san would not support anything evil."
"The Ranma we knew perhaps," Mousse said. "If she's had truck with demons?"
"The chi I feel from Ranma is strong, and touched by white magic," Konatsu said. "Surely she is blessed and someone blessed would not support someone evil."
"If a demon is not necessarily evil, then are gods necessarily good?" Mousse asked.
"How about you train her first and if you decide she's good, then bring Issei and Kouta into it," Naoko suggested.
"I can go out on a limb for Ranchan that much," Ukyou agreed after a moment.
"It'll be some time for us to think," Mousse noted. "As I heard, Ranma's daughters will be sent somewhere else while she's...out on business for the next few weeks."
*****
"Okay, Sergeant Sagara," Kaname said. "I'll see you when you get back. And you'd better get back on time so that I don't have to kill Kurz."
"Understood, Chidori, Ma..." Sousuke said crisply.
"Enough of that 'ma'am' stuff, I keep telling you!" Kaname snapped playfully, enjoying the power of the moment. "And definitely no 'sirs' either."
"Of course, Chidori-san," Sousuke said. "Satomi-san, I expect you to make sure Kaname is safe."
"Hai, Sousuke," Eija said with a bow and a smile. "I shall watch Weber-san constantly. If he must be punished, I will see to it."
"Please," Kurz said at the doorway. "I'm not freaking pervert after all."
"All evidence points to the contrary," Sousuke noted with sage nods from Kaname and Eija.
More seriously she followed that up.
"I won't let her be...touched," she said quietly, drawing a look from Kaname and an understanding nod from Sousuke.
"Oh, get on with it," Naiki demanded from where she was leaning against a pillar.
"You're going to be late, Sousuke," Kurz said irritably.
"Understood," Sousuke noted, turning about to shake Eija and Kaname's hands.
When Kaname grasped his hand she drew him into a headlock and growled quietly.
"If you don't come back in one piece, you'll be sorry," she said firmly before letting him go and watching him walk down toward the exit ramps for the small private jets.
That left Eija and Kaname behind and the waiting started.
I wish he had longer to talk about...things with Sousuke, Kaname thought quietly.
It was rather...abrupt, Eija noted. But I think you managed to get across that you accepted...what we were.
What did you think I'd do? Run screaming from the building? Kaname asked with a slightly angry frown. Do you think I'm some sort of insensitive jerk?
I have blood on my hands, Eija said. You can't know how it got there.
Oh, would you quit being stupid? Kaname demanded. We're in each other's heads. We've been through life and death situations. I know the difference between a cold killer and someone...whose had an unpleasant life.
Kaname gave exaggerated breath that attracted Kurz's moderately confused attention.
And what was all that about "she won't be touched" Kaname asked.
Well...
Eija, spill it!
Sousuke and I agreed, Eija finally answered. If there's killing to be done, we'll do it for you. No reason you have to...
"What the hell does that mean?!" Kaname shouted out loud.
Kurz shook his head and sighed.
"Would you two not do the creepy mind meld thing, please?" he asked. "Anyway, here comes everybody else."
"Kaname!" Kyoko shouted out waving as she ran up to greet them. "Isn't this great?! We're going to see Okinawa after all! And we get to meet Eija and Naiki's family! Too bad Deimosu is still...you know...missing."
She waved at Naiki, and failed to notice as the demoness immediately straightened and started to preen herself.
Behind Kyoko a few other people were coming, Mizuki and Shinji among them.
As the kids gathered, Kurz dialed out on his cell phone.
****
Ranma closed her cell phone and turned toward Melissa.
"Okay, Kurz is off with the kids," Ranma said. "Akane said they'd be safe over there. Are you ready for this?"
Melissa went over her gear, taser, stun rod, a pistol and four clips, lockpicks, PDA of pertinent information and a small tiara with a crystal that Ranma had provided for her to shield against casual telepathy.
"This is a bit risky for you, isn't it?" Melissa asked. "Your cover is near here, isn't it?"
"I've got a way around that now," Ranma said with a smirk.
"What's that?" Melissa asked.
"Someone fixed a problem I've had for the last sixteen years," Ranma explained. "So I've now got two faces to use."
"Two faces, what do you mean?" the Sergeant Major asked, turning about to face the red-head.
The older woman smirked at her and stretched out her fingers as a change started to work over her body. The woman grew a little more than a foot and bulked out as her features became distinctly male...and not a bad looking male either.
"Uhhh," Melissa said, her jaw dropping. "Wha..."
"Now, I haven't been in this body for a long time," Ranma said. "So I ain't going to be top form."
"Are you a man or a woman?" Melissa asked.
"So, are we thinking about our first attempt to seduce me as a young woman way back when, now?" Ranma asked with a bit of a smirk.
Melissa noted sh...he didn't really answer the question and decided not to press the issue, instead taking on the joke Ranma had offered.
"Are you still attracted to women, or does that change too?" she asked tartly.
"Male, female," Ranma said, shrugging. "Doesn't change my mind. Are we ready for this?"
Yaku looked up from her game as Yonjuu and Deimosu returned from the labyrinth with water and a bunch of mushrooms.
"Go eat something and lie down," Deimosu told the older girl. She looked about ready to protest when Deimosu cut her off and repeated the instruction in a more forceful tone. "Eat something and lie down."
"If you really insist," Yonjuu said, rolling her eyes.
"What is that?" Yaku asked, pointing at the puffy fungus that Deimosu set on the table.
"It's going to be food," the blonde demi-god promised lightly. "Are you finished with the game?"
"Ummm," Yaku said, staring up toward the hologram screen showing her game still running. "No."
"Well, save it for now," Deimosu said.
"But," Yaku said.
"Save it, I want to see the funny letters you were talking about and maybe I can help you read it," he said.
"But..."
"It might help us find a way out of here," Deimosu said with exaggerated patience.
"But..."
"Turn off the game," he said firmly.
Pouting, the little girl pushed some buttons and the holographic warriors vanished to reveal the generic screen it had started with. Words streamed by showing a status window, all in ancient Greek.
Fortunately, that was one of the languages he knew how to speak and read.
Unfortunately, the files he found were a bit beyond his understanding. Some of it was related to the rules and equations found in hermetic magic, mostly white, but that was interpersed with stuff that looked like it might be chemistry or physics he wasn't sure.
He did get the basics of what the files were discussing based on some of the initial descriptions of goals. Sailing ships, something about oars, a "resevoir of energy" and more. Of course there were the multitude of sketches on birds and wings.
There was talk about using the crystals from the gave to give the extra power needed for lift with the rather primitive materials Daedalus was using for the basic structure, wax and feathers and bones out of the myths.
Still, he couldn't make much sense of it other than those basic goals.
Deimosu glanced down at Yaku and back toward the holographic screens. He thought about asking how she managed to program anything on a computer where the keys were still marked in ancient Greek, but he had a feeling that the answer would be something he wasn't going to quite understand anyway.
"Okay, I can teach you how to understand these words," Deimosu said. "But we don't really have much time, so I have to do it the quick way."
"Quick way?" Yaku asked.
Deimosu nodded and moved over to a clear spot on the ground.
"Put the computer on the table and come over here," Deimosu said. "Sit down over there."
Across the small lab, Yonjuu sat up to watch, curious as to what was going on.
The demigod frowned and considered what spell to use.
If Hecate was right and the demons knew about him, then he should be able to use black magic now no problem. Of course, then that might tell them where he was. And they might figure out what he was up to.
If he tried to use white magic, it would hurt, and he knew it would hurt. But it shouldn't tell people where he was, at least, that's what he thought.
Really, he didn't know if either had a way to track him, or if they would notice him among thousands or even hundreds of thousands of spells cast each day. Especially something so minor as this.
Still, better safe than sorry, white magic it was, and then he could take some time to recover afterward.
Yaku sat down across from him as he started marking the ritual circle with an electrically active hand. When he was done with the small circle he reached out with hands held open and gestured for the girl to place hers into his.
He was surprised when he found Yonjuu sitting down at the circle and putting her hand in one of his.
"What are you doing?" he asked, narrowly.
"Whatever happens to her, happens to me too," Yonjuu said firmly, holding out her hand to Yaku. "The only way you keep me out of this is if you use force, and I don't think you're going to do that...so."
The blonde glared at the busty girl but had to accept that there wasn't much of a way around pushing her out.
"Is this going to hurt?" Yaku asked as she looked at Deimosu's and Yonjuu's hands, especially Yonjoo's, cautiously.
"It's not going to hurt," Deimosu said, keeping the fact that it would hurt him.
Gingerly, Yaku put her hand in Deimosu's and then, sticking her tongue out, into Yonjuu's.
"Here we go," Deimosu said as he started to chant a spell drawing from one of the many gods of knowledge.
He felt his mind reach out toward Yonjuu's and then Yaku's, carrying with it the language he wanted to give the little girl. He'd experienced this spell once before, and everything was going as he remembered it at first.
He had a brief glimpse of the two girl's souls, noting that Yonjuu's looked tattered about the edges. As if she'd been walking through a thorn filled maze or the like. Yaku's was...very bright, almost like one of his or his sisters' auras in fact.
Yonjuu's reaction was predictable, she was half panicking, and only stayin in the circle of effect due to the tightness of Deimosu's grip on her. He couldn't have her breaking away before the spell was complete, he didn't want to try this twice.
The drain started to come quickly, and in the rush of words and growing pain, he discounted the whispers that he heard echoing outward from Yaku into both him and Yonjuu.
Then the spell was finished and he very gladly let go of the flow of magic.
Slumping over he ignored the sweat covering his body as he took in a deep breath. Yonjuu meanwhile skittered away from the circle and back to where she had been lying down earlier. The fear and surprise was so thick on her that Deimosu could almost still feel it.
Just like he could almost feel the excitement that shown on Yaku's face. For several minutes she chattered away in ancient Greek, generally just speaking nonsense like any child who was just enjoying talking for talking's sake.
"What was that?" Yonjuu asked. "I looked, you were...made out of lightning. And Yaku...glows."
"Yeah," Deimosu said, a bit curious about Yaku's strong aura himself. "You get used to it. Yaku, do you think you can look at that computer now...before the spell wears off?"
"Hai!" Yaku said, blinking as she heard the words "wears off", she practically bounced over to the computer and started moving about in its files.
She bounced from subject heading to subject heading, similar to what Deimosu had done, but different in that she wasn't stopped by a lack of understanding for the scientific elements, but just because of the childish desire to see pretty much everything all at once.
As she played around in the files, hopefully looking for a way out, Deimosu moved over toward Yonjuu and looked her over carefully, wishing that he had Eija on hand to do some healing, but he had to try, even if it was just the chiatsu techniques her mother had tried to teach them all.
"What are you doing over here?" the girl asked.
"Don't worry about it," Deimosu said, taking one of her hands and arms. "I want to see if I can find a way to treat what's broken in you."
"It won't..." Yonjuu stopped talking as Deimosu started to massage her wrist and arm and some of the subtle pain in her body slowly faded away.
"Ooh," she gasped, taking a deep breath as Deimosu moved around to her back. "That does feel better."
Unfortunately, as he continued the chiatsu massage, it was quite apparent that "feel" was the only thing being improved. Now that he'd seen what was wrong, he could clearly see her aura still unravelling. All he was doing was masking the symptoms.
But at least that was something.
"Hey, there are other computers here," Yaku said suddenly.
Deimosu looked to the sensor in front of him and reluctantly stood up away from her, drawing a half disappointed, half fearful look from the black-clad girl.
"Don't worry," he said to her before walking over to see what Yaku had found.
Up on the hologram was showing a series of icons identified as other nodes in the network. He didn't really understand some of the technical stuff, but he had used computers often enough to recognize the locations in a network.
As he watched, Yaku opened up one of the connections and up came a list of numbers that at first seemed to make no sense, until he remembered his mother teaching him about navigation and...
"Coordinates," he said with a smirk.
If he was between worlds, maybe it could open out anywhere in the world?
First things first.
"So where does your Mistress keep her 'vitamin supplements'?" Deimosu asked.
"Go eat something and lie down," Deimosu told the older girl. She looked about ready to protest when Deimosu cut her off and repeated the instruction in a more forceful tone. "Eat something and lie down."
"If you really insist," Yonjuu said, rolling her eyes.
"What is that?" Yaku asked, pointing at the puffy fungus that Deimosu set on the table.
"It's going to be food," the blonde demi-god promised lightly. "Are you finished with the game?"
"Ummm," Yaku said, staring up toward the hologram screen showing her game still running. "No."
"Well, save it for now," Deimosu said.
"But," Yaku said.
"Save it, I want to see the funny letters you were talking about and maybe I can help you read it," he said.
"But..."
"It might help us find a way out of here," Deimosu said with exaggerated patience.
"But..."
"Turn off the game," he said firmly.
Pouting, the little girl pushed some buttons and the holographic warriors vanished to reveal the generic screen it had started with. Words streamed by showing a status window, all in ancient Greek.
Fortunately, that was one of the languages he knew how to speak and read.
Unfortunately, the files he found were a bit beyond his understanding. Some of it was related to the rules and equations found in hermetic magic, mostly white, but that was interpersed with stuff that looked like it might be chemistry or physics he wasn't sure.
He did get the basics of what the files were discussing based on some of the initial descriptions of goals. Sailing ships, something about oars, a "resevoir of energy" and more. Of course there were the multitude of sketches on birds and wings.
There was talk about using the crystals from the gave to give the extra power needed for lift with the rather primitive materials Daedalus was using for the basic structure, wax and feathers and bones out of the myths.
Still, he couldn't make much sense of it other than those basic goals.
Deimosu glanced down at Yaku and back toward the holographic screens. He thought about asking how she managed to program anything on a computer where the keys were still marked in ancient Greek, but he had a feeling that the answer would be something he wasn't going to quite understand anyway.
"Okay, I can teach you how to understand these words," Deimosu said. "But we don't really have much time, so I have to do it the quick way."
"Quick way?" Yaku asked.
Deimosu nodded and moved over to a clear spot on the ground.
"Put the computer on the table and come over here," Deimosu said. "Sit down over there."
Across the small lab, Yonjuu sat up to watch, curious as to what was going on.
The demigod frowned and considered what spell to use.
If Hecate was right and the demons knew about him, then he should be able to use black magic now no problem. Of course, then that might tell them where he was. And they might figure out what he was up to.
If he tried to use white magic, it would hurt, and he knew it would hurt. But it shouldn't tell people where he was, at least, that's what he thought.
Really, he didn't know if either had a way to track him, or if they would notice him among thousands or even hundreds of thousands of spells cast each day. Especially something so minor as this.
Still, better safe than sorry, white magic it was, and then he could take some time to recover afterward.
Yaku sat down across from him as he started marking the ritual circle with an electrically active hand. When he was done with the small circle he reached out with hands held open and gestured for the girl to place hers into his.
He was surprised when he found Yonjuu sitting down at the circle and putting her hand in one of his.
"What are you doing?" he asked, narrowly.
"Whatever happens to her, happens to me too," Yonjuu said firmly, holding out her hand to Yaku. "The only way you keep me out of this is if you use force, and I don't think you're going to do that...so."
The blonde glared at the busty girl but had to accept that there wasn't much of a way around pushing her out.
"Is this going to hurt?" Yaku asked as she looked at Deimosu's and Yonjuu's hands, especially Yonjoo's, cautiously.
"It's not going to hurt," Deimosu said, keeping the fact that it would hurt him.
Gingerly, Yaku put her hand in Deimosu's and then, sticking her tongue out, into Yonjuu's.
"Here we go," Deimosu said as he started to chant a spell drawing from one of the many gods of knowledge.
He felt his mind reach out toward Yonjuu's and then Yaku's, carrying with it the language he wanted to give the little girl. He'd experienced this spell once before, and everything was going as he remembered it at first.
He had a brief glimpse of the two girl's souls, noting that Yonjuu's looked tattered about the edges. As if she'd been walking through a thorn filled maze or the like. Yaku's was...very bright, almost like one of his or his sisters' auras in fact.
Yonjuu's reaction was predictable, she was half panicking, and only stayin in the circle of effect due to the tightness of Deimosu's grip on her. He couldn't have her breaking away before the spell was complete, he didn't want to try this twice.
The drain started to come quickly, and in the rush of words and growing pain, he discounted the whispers that he heard echoing outward from Yaku into both him and Yonjuu.
Then the spell was finished and he very gladly let go of the flow of magic.
Slumping over he ignored the sweat covering his body as he took in a deep breath. Yonjuu meanwhile skittered away from the circle and back to where she had been lying down earlier. The fear and surprise was so thick on her that Deimosu could almost still feel it.
Just like he could almost feel the excitement that shown on Yaku's face. For several minutes she chattered away in ancient Greek, generally just speaking nonsense like any child who was just enjoying talking for talking's sake.
"What was that?" Yonjuu asked. "I looked, you were...made out of lightning. And Yaku...glows."
"Yeah," Deimosu said, a bit curious about Yaku's strong aura himself. "You get used to it. Yaku, do you think you can look at that computer now...before the spell wears off?"
"Hai!" Yaku said, blinking as she heard the words "wears off", she practically bounced over to the computer and started moving about in its files.
She bounced from subject heading to subject heading, similar to what Deimosu had done, but different in that she wasn't stopped by a lack of understanding for the scientific elements, but just because of the childish desire to see pretty much everything all at once.
As she played around in the files, hopefully looking for a way out, Deimosu moved over toward Yonjuu and looked her over carefully, wishing that he had Eija on hand to do some healing, but he had to try, even if it was just the chiatsu techniques her mother had tried to teach them all.
"What are you doing over here?" the girl asked.
"Don't worry about it," Deimosu said, taking one of her hands and arms. "I want to see if I can find a way to treat what's broken in you."
"It won't..." Yonjuu stopped talking as Deimosu started to massage her wrist and arm and some of the subtle pain in her body slowly faded away.
"Ooh," she gasped, taking a deep breath as Deimosu moved around to her back. "That does feel better."
Unfortunately, as he continued the chiatsu massage, it was quite apparent that "feel" was the only thing being improved. Now that he'd seen what was wrong, he could clearly see her aura still unravelling. All he was doing was masking the symptoms.
But at least that was something.
"Hey, there are other computers here," Yaku said suddenly.
Deimosu looked to the sensor in front of him and reluctantly stood up away from her, drawing a half disappointed, half fearful look from the black-clad girl.
"Don't worry," he said to her before walking over to see what Yaku had found.
Up on the hologram was showing a series of icons identified as other nodes in the network. He didn't really understand some of the technical stuff, but he had used computers often enough to recognize the locations in a network.
As he watched, Yaku opened up one of the connections and up came a list of numbers that at first seemed to make no sense, until he remembered his mother teaching him about navigation and...
"Coordinates," he said with a smirk.
If he was between worlds, maybe it could open out anywhere in the world?
First things first.
"So where does your Mistress keep her 'vitamin supplements'?" Deimosu asked.
So, as things are going right now, another trinity?
Hm. Doesn't look like the bond has really hit, though. How good are the odds Deimosu and Ranma are going to be in the same place at the same time, even if it's a near-miss?
Your keyboard ate a "g."
Is it "chiatsu" or "shiatsu?" I don't know enough to say either way, but I've only ever seen "shiatsu."
Hm. Doesn't look like the bond has really hit, though. How good are the odds Deimosu and Ranma are going to be in the same place at the same time, even if it's a near-miss?
Your keyboard ate a "g."
Is it "chiatsu" or "shiatsu?" I don't know enough to say either way, but I've only ever seen "shiatsu."
"What are we doing, Goshichi?" one of a pair of girls asked the other, older one. "Those are where Mistress keeps...you know."
"Nimu Ichi is 'reporting', Musan," Goshichi said. "If the Mistress...let's her expire, what will happen to the rest of us?"
"If we get caught here," the younger one asked. "We'll be set to expire too."
"Don't worry, I can see all the electrical currents," Goshichi said. "I know exactly where to cut to avoid triggering an alarm. You just watch my back and do...whatever it is you do to anybody that sees us."
"Doesn't the Mistress use alarms with mechanical triggers to?" Musan asked.
"That's stupid, why would you use two kinds of alarms?" Goshichi asked.
****
Mao and Ranma moved silently over the fence, Ranma tossing the Sergeant over and then leaping over himself. At the gate, they saw two perfectly normal human guards pacing on watch.
It seemed that whoever ran this facility didn't completely trust in their super-powered minions.
Soon they were at the doorway, Melissa working on the security lock as quickly as she could. Both had quicker ways in, but neither wanted their presence known just yet. The ex-Marine had the security cracked quickly and Ranma slipped in through the open door as Mao closed it behind them.
The snuck up quietly into a main room, listening as two girls ahead of them argued quietly.
"What are you doing?" the older, one of the sensory types asked in a harsh whisper as she looked around for cameras. "That's forbidden."
"The Ichi's say we need to learn," the younger said, a blaster by her age and looks.
"The Ichis went against the Mistress and now they're almost all gone," the other said. "We can't train."
"That explains the akiras," Melissa whispered. "This 'mistress' is afraid of a rebellion."
"Think you're up for a forced rescue?" Ranma asked.
"That depends," Melissa said, bringing up her taser. "Think the two of us can secure the entire place?"
They both walked out silently, eyes directed just past the shoulders of their targets.
"Something's moving," the sensor-girl said nervously.
She turned around to face Ranma and Melissa as the former went from a slow stalk to a swift lunge in a breath. Melissa simply pulled her trigger and winced as the electrical current flowed through the girl that it had hit, sending her into convulsions until Melissa cut the current and the girl slumped unconscious.
The blaster barely had time to exhale a blast of red fire which Ranma easily directed aside tapping the girl lightly in the throat and then the abdomen with just the right force to shut her breath down long enough to knock her out without permanent injury.
"I hate beating up on kids," Melissa said under her breath as they pulled the unconscious bodies aside and secured them with gags and zip-ties. "Why is it all these terrorists use kids?"
"Because people like us hate beating up on kids," Ranma said.
They were well into the building when the alarm started blaring and lights started filling the halls.
"The hell?" Melissa asked.
"Wasn't us," Ranma said confidentally.
Even so, several akiras and guards came flooding into the hallways, and surprised to see the two commando-garbed intruders in the hallway between them and their goal.
"Get them!"
Melissa's pistol was drawn in one hand as she flipped out the electrified stun rod in the other, at her back Ranma moved into stance.
They pushed forward slowly and confidentally, picking their targets professionally and dropping them in turn.
The guards on Melissa's side found themselves with holes in their shoulders or legs as the randomly dangerous girls found themselves taking the stun rod as she moved close.
On the other side, Ranma was pushing through Akira's and guards with similar non-lethal if painful methods.
One akira, about fourteen and proving insanely resistant to the electrical shock of Melissa's rod held off the soldier for several seconds.
"Ha!" the girl shouted. "You can't bring down Niya San the..."
"Out of the way!" one of the normal guards shouted as he let loose with a barrage automatic rifle fire that slammed into the girl's back clearing the way for him to target Melissa.
At least, if said soldier didn't just angrily empty her climp into the man.
Ranma, finished with his enemies at about the same time, came up to the side of the shot girl and caught her falling.
"I am unbreakable..." the girl whispered before the light faded out of her eyes and Ranma shut them closed with a bitter frown.
Turning her over, he found the girl had been shot more than fifteen times in that short burst. Almost none had penetrated to a dangerous level, the girl's skin was almost like kevlar, but all it had taken was one.
"Bastards," Melissa snapped bitterly.
*****
"Ooops," Goshichi said.
"I told you!" Musan shouted, looking about distractedly.
*****
Elsewhere, a sudden and brilliant display of energy opened up in a wide courtyard, drawing all manner of attention it's way. It held there for several seconds, a heavenly, radiant phenomena that accompanied an odd sound like the singing of a multitude of voices.
Several akira girls gathered around, watching wide-eyed and wondering as a smaller number of more conventional guards held their arms at the ready, feeling oddly ashamed of themselves.
Out of the blissfully serene energy came a blonde young man diving forward and leaping ahead of where the weapons were aimed. Far late, several sprays of gunfire struck the cement at the base of the portal.
Later than that, shards of ice slipped through the air, missing their target by a full foot.
Deimosu moved through the gathered akiras, all of whom had grown closer to the energy than was smart in their curiousity, like a reaper through wheat, being careful to merely incapacitate them as he moved.
He was approaching two of the last when the gunfire opened up again, cutting through the last two girls and driving the demi-god aside.
Deimosu watched from where he landed as the two girls he'd been about to merely paralyze danced under the bullets of their Mistress's own guards and roared in anger as their bodies crumpled.
A crackling burst of lightning thrust out from him and branched to catch the firearm packing guards, blowing the men off their feet and leaving them falling as charred corpses.
*****
"It seems we have intruders," a smooth, even voice said with a smirk as she turned toward a monitor.
Nimu was stunned as the smile on her Mistress's voice faded instantly on looking at the monitor. An obsessively greedy expression washed over her face as she looked at the man on the screen, and turned into an ugly sneer as he she looked to the woman.
"Well, well, my darling has finally come to find me," she said with an unbalanced tone unlike anything Nimu had heard from her before.
Fortunately, that monitor seemed to be distracting the Mistress from the others. With the impression of coming to the woman's side in support, she moved up on the monster's side and surreptitiously shut off one of the monitors showing a Ni and a Yon trying to break into the medical vaults where their "supplements" were kept.
Sanya looked up confused and then toward Nimu who gave a nod toward the normal guard in the room. The younger girl looked aghast and turned back to Nimu to confirm the instruction. When the young woman repeated the order, she swallowed nervously and cracked her knuckles.
Across the way, Ichi mouthed silently, "for our sisters".
"Maybe there's a way for you to gain forgiveness, Nimu," the woman said darkly. "Bring me that man, alive."
As she spoke, Sanya darted forward slamming into the guard and sending him hard into the wall.
The man dropped his gun to the ground and then it to darted across the room, into Nimu's hand.
"Not today, Mistress," Nimu said, firing out with her gun.
"Ooo, telekinesis," the woman said as she casually dodged aside. "How long have you been hiding that?"
Sanya moved in from the other side, wielding a baton she'd stripped from the unconscious guard. The girl swung out and her enemy easily dodged, swinging out with a length of what seemed to be simple ribbon, but which wrapped around the young girl's legs like steel.
Nimu shouted out as Sanya was swung across the room brutally and leaped past her target firing inaccurately to catch the girl before she could land wrong.
"And you've been training your sisters," the woman said, pulling out her ribbon to full length. "We've tried this before Nimu. Did you think this was going to go any better?"
Nimu and Sanya looked to the door behind them and backed out through it quickly as their Mistress followed cackling madly.
"What are we doing?" Sanya asked desperately as they turned a corner.
"Buying time," Nimu said. "They're robbing the supplements, if we can last long enough for them to get away..."
Sanya nodded.
*****
Deimosu was an unending blur of destruction, nowhere near as precise and professional as his mother and Sergeant Mao were being in their own assault.
He was not being careful more than that he was taking the time to identify whether or not the room he was heading for had what he wanted before tearing it to pieces.
The girls that came up in front of him he struck down relentlessly but softly. He was less calm about the gun-wielding men that came into his path.
Finally, he was standing out in front of the door Yonjuu had described, a refrigerated unit with an electronic security lock.
Of course, all he had to do was rip the door off.
He was moving to do so when a club of some sort whipped down the hall past him.
"Oh, I don't think so," a sinister voice said, the edge of cackle just behind the words.
He turned to see a tall, slender woman in her early thirties staring down the hallway at him twirling a ribbon dangerously.
"Rhythmic gymnastics martial arts," he said with narrowed eyes as he took in the woman's shape. "I think my mother told me about you."
"Your mother," the woman said, sounding surprised. "Let me guess, a red-haired slut of a girl?"
And with that, Deimosu charged in.
The ribbon lashed out and Deimosu caught sight of the threads of steel worked through the weapon. As it came in, he let loose with a discharge of electricity, watching as it slammed down the ribbon into the evil woman's body, disrupting her motion just long enough for him to reach her and break her neck.
There, all he had to now was get the medicine for Yonjuu and leave her with someone who could figure out how to reproduce it.
He was walking out of the facility with a bag full of vials as the loudspeaker came on in the building behind him.
*****
Ranma and Melissa pushed on through the hallways. The guards hadn't yet seemed to be alert to their presence, and as they came up behind patrols rushing onward, it was easy to incapacitate them completely.
They didn't wait for any of the guardsmen to become trigger happy, taking out the odd gunman that showed up for every five akira girls. The Akiras were oddly more dangerous, with unpredictable abilties poorly directed, sometimes more a danger to themselves than anything else.
"How many is that so far?" Melissa asked, picking up a new pistol from one of the guards.
Just in case she ran out of ammo.
"Fifteen," Ranma said. "Including the girl we couldn't save."
They turned a corner and found a large room with a plethora of strange medical equipment including a large tube, currently empty of any subject. But both recognized the sensory deprivation gear that the more unethical sorts used to test psychics, including the Whispered.
"No whispered," Ranma said.
As they determined that, a pair of girls came running back out onto a platform above them. Both readied for a fight, but it seemed the girls already had one.
Ranma's eyes widened as he saw the woman that followed the girls out, whip cracking out at them and clubs flying out trying to catch one of the two girls, both of whom seemed at least moderately better trained than any other of the girls in this facility.
As the clubs flew out, the oldest of the two girls gestured and the clubs seemed to redirect in mid-air back towards the woman that had first thrown them.
"Kodachi?" he said in surprise.
Kodachi dodged the redirected clubs and smirked as she had to dodge aside from the clumsy strike. She went to slash out with her ribbon only to find it tangled up in a belt at the hand of the older girl.
The woman snarled briefly before Sanya lashed out at the momentarily immobilized woman, sending her flying across the room and landing hard into the wall.
"You know her?" Melissa asked.
The answer came as Ranma leaped out toward Kodachi as she tried to recover and slammed her against the wall.
"This is your doing?" he demanded angrily.
"Ah, Ranma-darling," the woman said harshly, past injuries. "I know you couldn't stay away for long."
"What are you doing to these girls Kodachi?!" Ranma demanded.
"OhhhHOOHOHOHOHOHOHO!" Kodachi cackled, a sound cut off as a small length of metal lashed across the room and slammed through her throat.
Ranma and Melissa turned toward the twenty-year old aki..no, she obviously wasn't just an akira, the young warrior.
"For my sisters," she said proudly.
Almost immediately a loudspeaker opened up around them
*****
"My, my, my," A familiar voice cackled. "You just cost me two bodies. I shall have to make a replacement of those soon. Nimu and Yaku will do of course."
"OHhhhHOHOHOHOHO!" she cackled.
"Did you really think it was that easy to kill the Black Rose, girls?" Kodachi said. "The Ichi uprising at least managed to kill seven of me. You've only managed two."
"I can see the confusion on your faces below," Kodachi said to the people she was watching on the monitor. "What is going on, how is this possible? Truth be told, I've been waiting a long time to...explain matters. Yes, I beleive the term is monologuing."
"Well, first," Kodachi said. "The girls, you're thinking 'how can they be clones'. I can hear you over the microphones, Ranma-dear. Yes, cloning does not work, you just end up with a useless mess of biological trash. A person in image but not truth. However, were you aware that a woman was born with as many as two million follicles that could possibly mature into eggs?"
"Most of those die by the time we reach puberty, and of the hundreds of thousands that remain, only four hundred or so will successfully mature. Of those, only a rare few will be fertilized."
"That is, unless of course, you can come up with a process to...harvest those follicles, to mature them artificially," Kodachi noted. "Then all you have to do is inseminate them with some rather...choice material and wallah."
"And I may not be fully whispered, like those born on December 24, 1984 between a specific period lasting only minutes," Kodachi said. "But I am still partially whispered. I just have to readminister those same drugs again and the enlightenment comes. How to breed powers into my daughters. How to create what I needed."
"Just a dose and invention comes whenever I want," Kodachi snikcered. "Of course, I do have the most important part of being a whispered all the time. Your son is just precious by the way, Ranma-darling. He's invaded another of my facilities just to save the life of one of my soldiers, so noble."
"Oh yes, the most important thing," Kodachi noted. "Resonance."
"Resonance which lets me merge over into the minds of anyone able to contact my own mind," Kodachi said. "Which lets me insure that no one will ever see the last of me. I'll always be able to find or make a daughter with just the right touch of mental ability to hold my soul."
"So, revel in the fact that you've succeeded in freeing your sisters here," Nimu. "And rest assured, that I have all I need to make sure I have more. I suppose I could destroy both the facilities, but I much rather know you're all out there and aware of what I am doing. It is...poetic."
"OHHHHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!!!" the voice cackled loudly before the communication was cut off.
"Nimu Ichi is 'reporting', Musan," Goshichi said. "If the Mistress...let's her expire, what will happen to the rest of us?"
"If we get caught here," the younger one asked. "We'll be set to expire too."
"Don't worry, I can see all the electrical currents," Goshichi said. "I know exactly where to cut to avoid triggering an alarm. You just watch my back and do...whatever it is you do to anybody that sees us."
"Doesn't the Mistress use alarms with mechanical triggers to?" Musan asked.
"That's stupid, why would you use two kinds of alarms?" Goshichi asked.
****
Mao and Ranma moved silently over the fence, Ranma tossing the Sergeant over and then leaping over himself. At the gate, they saw two perfectly normal human guards pacing on watch.
It seemed that whoever ran this facility didn't completely trust in their super-powered minions.
Soon they were at the doorway, Melissa working on the security lock as quickly as she could. Both had quicker ways in, but neither wanted their presence known just yet. The ex-Marine had the security cracked quickly and Ranma slipped in through the open door as Mao closed it behind them.
The snuck up quietly into a main room, listening as two girls ahead of them argued quietly.
"What are you doing?" the older, one of the sensory types asked in a harsh whisper as she looked around for cameras. "That's forbidden."
"The Ichi's say we need to learn," the younger said, a blaster by her age and looks.
"The Ichis went against the Mistress and now they're almost all gone," the other said. "We can't train."
"That explains the akiras," Melissa whispered. "This 'mistress' is afraid of a rebellion."
"Think you're up for a forced rescue?" Ranma asked.
"That depends," Melissa said, bringing up her taser. "Think the two of us can secure the entire place?"
They both walked out silently, eyes directed just past the shoulders of their targets.
"Something's moving," the sensor-girl said nervously.
She turned around to face Ranma and Melissa as the former went from a slow stalk to a swift lunge in a breath. Melissa simply pulled her trigger and winced as the electrical current flowed through the girl that it had hit, sending her into convulsions until Melissa cut the current and the girl slumped unconscious.
The blaster barely had time to exhale a blast of red fire which Ranma easily directed aside tapping the girl lightly in the throat and then the abdomen with just the right force to shut her breath down long enough to knock her out without permanent injury.
"I hate beating up on kids," Melissa said under her breath as they pulled the unconscious bodies aside and secured them with gags and zip-ties. "Why is it all these terrorists use kids?"
"Because people like us hate beating up on kids," Ranma said.
They were well into the building when the alarm started blaring and lights started filling the halls.
"The hell?" Melissa asked.
"Wasn't us," Ranma said confidentally.
Even so, several akiras and guards came flooding into the hallways, and surprised to see the two commando-garbed intruders in the hallway between them and their goal.
"Get them!"
Melissa's pistol was drawn in one hand as she flipped out the electrified stun rod in the other, at her back Ranma moved into stance.
They pushed forward slowly and confidentally, picking their targets professionally and dropping them in turn.
The guards on Melissa's side found themselves with holes in their shoulders or legs as the randomly dangerous girls found themselves taking the stun rod as she moved close.
On the other side, Ranma was pushing through Akira's and guards with similar non-lethal if painful methods.
One akira, about fourteen and proving insanely resistant to the electrical shock of Melissa's rod held off the soldier for several seconds.
"Ha!" the girl shouted. "You can't bring down Niya San the..."
"Out of the way!" one of the normal guards shouted as he let loose with a barrage automatic rifle fire that slammed into the girl's back clearing the way for him to target Melissa.
At least, if said soldier didn't just angrily empty her climp into the man.
Ranma, finished with his enemies at about the same time, came up to the side of the shot girl and caught her falling.
"I am unbreakable..." the girl whispered before the light faded out of her eyes and Ranma shut them closed with a bitter frown.
Turning her over, he found the girl had been shot more than fifteen times in that short burst. Almost none had penetrated to a dangerous level, the girl's skin was almost like kevlar, but all it had taken was one.
"Bastards," Melissa snapped bitterly.
*****
"Ooops," Goshichi said.
"I told you!" Musan shouted, looking about distractedly.
*****
Elsewhere, a sudden and brilliant display of energy opened up in a wide courtyard, drawing all manner of attention it's way. It held there for several seconds, a heavenly, radiant phenomena that accompanied an odd sound like the singing of a multitude of voices.
Several akira girls gathered around, watching wide-eyed and wondering as a smaller number of more conventional guards held their arms at the ready, feeling oddly ashamed of themselves.
Out of the blissfully serene energy came a blonde young man diving forward and leaping ahead of where the weapons were aimed. Far late, several sprays of gunfire struck the cement at the base of the portal.
Later than that, shards of ice slipped through the air, missing their target by a full foot.
Deimosu moved through the gathered akiras, all of whom had grown closer to the energy than was smart in their curiousity, like a reaper through wheat, being careful to merely incapacitate them as he moved.
He was approaching two of the last when the gunfire opened up again, cutting through the last two girls and driving the demi-god aside.
Deimosu watched from where he landed as the two girls he'd been about to merely paralyze danced under the bullets of their Mistress's own guards and roared in anger as their bodies crumpled.
A crackling burst of lightning thrust out from him and branched to catch the firearm packing guards, blowing the men off their feet and leaving them falling as charred corpses.
*****
"It seems we have intruders," a smooth, even voice said with a smirk as she turned toward a monitor.
Nimu was stunned as the smile on her Mistress's voice faded instantly on looking at the monitor. An obsessively greedy expression washed over her face as she looked at the man on the screen, and turned into an ugly sneer as he she looked to the woman.
"Well, well, my darling has finally come to find me," she said with an unbalanced tone unlike anything Nimu had heard from her before.
Fortunately, that monitor seemed to be distracting the Mistress from the others. With the impression of coming to the woman's side in support, she moved up on the monster's side and surreptitiously shut off one of the monitors showing a Ni and a Yon trying to break into the medical vaults where their "supplements" were kept.
Sanya looked up confused and then toward Nimu who gave a nod toward the normal guard in the room. The younger girl looked aghast and turned back to Nimu to confirm the instruction. When the young woman repeated the order, she swallowed nervously and cracked her knuckles.
Across the way, Ichi mouthed silently, "for our sisters".
"Maybe there's a way for you to gain forgiveness, Nimu," the woman said darkly. "Bring me that man, alive."
As she spoke, Sanya darted forward slamming into the guard and sending him hard into the wall.
The man dropped his gun to the ground and then it to darted across the room, into Nimu's hand.
"Not today, Mistress," Nimu said, firing out with her gun.
"Ooo, telekinesis," the woman said as she casually dodged aside. "How long have you been hiding that?"
Sanya moved in from the other side, wielding a baton she'd stripped from the unconscious guard. The girl swung out and her enemy easily dodged, swinging out with a length of what seemed to be simple ribbon, but which wrapped around the young girl's legs like steel.
Nimu shouted out as Sanya was swung across the room brutally and leaped past her target firing inaccurately to catch the girl before she could land wrong.
"And you've been training your sisters," the woman said, pulling out her ribbon to full length. "We've tried this before Nimu. Did you think this was going to go any better?"
Nimu and Sanya looked to the door behind them and backed out through it quickly as their Mistress followed cackling madly.
"What are we doing?" Sanya asked desperately as they turned a corner.
"Buying time," Nimu said. "They're robbing the supplements, if we can last long enough for them to get away..."
Sanya nodded.
*****
Deimosu was an unending blur of destruction, nowhere near as precise and professional as his mother and Sergeant Mao were being in their own assault.
He was not being careful more than that he was taking the time to identify whether or not the room he was heading for had what he wanted before tearing it to pieces.
The girls that came up in front of him he struck down relentlessly but softly. He was less calm about the gun-wielding men that came into his path.
Finally, he was standing out in front of the door Yonjuu had described, a refrigerated unit with an electronic security lock.
Of course, all he had to do was rip the door off.
He was moving to do so when a club of some sort whipped down the hall past him.
"Oh, I don't think so," a sinister voice said, the edge of cackle just behind the words.
He turned to see a tall, slender woman in her early thirties staring down the hallway at him twirling a ribbon dangerously.
"Rhythmic gymnastics martial arts," he said with narrowed eyes as he took in the woman's shape. "I think my mother told me about you."
"Your mother," the woman said, sounding surprised. "Let me guess, a red-haired slut of a girl?"
And with that, Deimosu charged in.
The ribbon lashed out and Deimosu caught sight of the threads of steel worked through the weapon. As it came in, he let loose with a discharge of electricity, watching as it slammed down the ribbon into the evil woman's body, disrupting her motion just long enough for him to reach her and break her neck.
There, all he had to now was get the medicine for Yonjuu and leave her with someone who could figure out how to reproduce it.
He was walking out of the facility with a bag full of vials as the loudspeaker came on in the building behind him.
*****
Ranma and Melissa pushed on through the hallways. The guards hadn't yet seemed to be alert to their presence, and as they came up behind patrols rushing onward, it was easy to incapacitate them completely.
They didn't wait for any of the guardsmen to become trigger happy, taking out the odd gunman that showed up for every five akira girls. The Akiras were oddly more dangerous, with unpredictable abilties poorly directed, sometimes more a danger to themselves than anything else.
"How many is that so far?" Melissa asked, picking up a new pistol from one of the guards.
Just in case she ran out of ammo.
"Fifteen," Ranma said. "Including the girl we couldn't save."
They turned a corner and found a large room with a plethora of strange medical equipment including a large tube, currently empty of any subject. But both recognized the sensory deprivation gear that the more unethical sorts used to test psychics, including the Whispered.
"No whispered," Ranma said.
As they determined that, a pair of girls came running back out onto a platform above them. Both readied for a fight, but it seemed the girls already had one.
Ranma's eyes widened as he saw the woman that followed the girls out, whip cracking out at them and clubs flying out trying to catch one of the two girls, both of whom seemed at least moderately better trained than any other of the girls in this facility.
As the clubs flew out, the oldest of the two girls gestured and the clubs seemed to redirect in mid-air back towards the woman that had first thrown them.
"Kodachi?" he said in surprise.
Kodachi dodged the redirected clubs and smirked as she had to dodge aside from the clumsy strike. She went to slash out with her ribbon only to find it tangled up in a belt at the hand of the older girl.
The woman snarled briefly before Sanya lashed out at the momentarily immobilized woman, sending her flying across the room and landing hard into the wall.
"You know her?" Melissa asked.
The answer came as Ranma leaped out toward Kodachi as she tried to recover and slammed her against the wall.
"This is your doing?" he demanded angrily.
"Ah, Ranma-darling," the woman said harshly, past injuries. "I know you couldn't stay away for long."
"What are you doing to these girls Kodachi?!" Ranma demanded.
"OhhhHOOHOHOHOHOHOHO!" Kodachi cackled, a sound cut off as a small length of metal lashed across the room and slammed through her throat.
Ranma and Melissa turned toward the twenty-year old aki..no, she obviously wasn't just an akira, the young warrior.
"For my sisters," she said proudly.
Almost immediately a loudspeaker opened up around them
*****
"My, my, my," A familiar voice cackled. "You just cost me two bodies. I shall have to make a replacement of those soon. Nimu and Yaku will do of course."
"OHhhhHOHOHOHOHO!" she cackled.
"Did you really think it was that easy to kill the Black Rose, girls?" Kodachi said. "The Ichi uprising at least managed to kill seven of me. You've only managed two."
"I can see the confusion on your faces below," Kodachi said to the people she was watching on the monitor. "What is going on, how is this possible? Truth be told, I've been waiting a long time to...explain matters. Yes, I beleive the term is monologuing."
"Well, first," Kodachi said. "The girls, you're thinking 'how can they be clones'. I can hear you over the microphones, Ranma-dear. Yes, cloning does not work, you just end up with a useless mess of biological trash. A person in image but not truth. However, were you aware that a woman was born with as many as two million follicles that could possibly mature into eggs?"
"Most of those die by the time we reach puberty, and of the hundreds of thousands that remain, only four hundred or so will successfully mature. Of those, only a rare few will be fertilized."
"That is, unless of course, you can come up with a process to...harvest those follicles, to mature them artificially," Kodachi noted. "Then all you have to do is inseminate them with some rather...choice material and wallah."
"And I may not be fully whispered, like those born on December 24, 1984 between a specific period lasting only minutes," Kodachi said. "But I am still partially whispered. I just have to readminister those same drugs again and the enlightenment comes. How to breed powers into my daughters. How to create what I needed."
"Just a dose and invention comes whenever I want," Kodachi snikcered. "Of course, I do have the most important part of being a whispered all the time. Your son is just precious by the way, Ranma-darling. He's invaded another of my facilities just to save the life of one of my soldiers, so noble."
"Oh yes, the most important thing," Kodachi noted. "Resonance."
"Resonance which lets me merge over into the minds of anyone able to contact my own mind," Kodachi said. "Which lets me insure that no one will ever see the last of me. I'll always be able to find or make a daughter with just the right touch of mental ability to hold my soul."
"So, revel in the fact that you've succeeded in freeing your sisters here," Nimu. "And rest assured, that I have all I need to make sure I have more. I suppose I could destroy both the facilities, but I much rather know you're all out there and aware of what I am doing. It is...poetic."
"OHHHHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!!!" the voice cackled loudly before the communication was cut off.
"This feels a bit like overkill," the intelligence operator said. "Sending six of our SRT Operators to eliminate one man. I'm sure you'll be seeing your Sgt. Sagara back here soon."
Captain Testarossa nodded quietly as she looked down at the folder on her desk. It was the training report from the newly appointed J-K Regional Operations Coordinator for Psyche Division, one Ranma Saotome.
Sagara, Sousuke: Sergeant
I've made progress on training the Sergeant to access his chi. As of now, he can produce a fluctuation in his chi that can be observed with the proper gear, and once managed a barely visible aura.
This should translate into at least being reliably able to produce a battle aura in the Arbalest, though I suspect he will still require an emotional high to achieve full power. It is difficult to maintain both an emotional high and the meditative mindset required for chi control.
I've started Sagara on some basic chi-use exercises for speed and strength enhancement. Unfortunately, I am consistantly having to re-clarify the limits of a particular exercise, Soldier-boy is very clever at finding alternate methods of achieving the same goal. Unfortunately, the goal is often only a means to focus one on the method.
His previous training has focused him on the end goal and avoiding target fixation on any one particular method. I had the opposite problem as a student, fixating on the instructed method even when it was impossible. Neither manner of thought is impossible to get past, however.
I've explained to him the differences in thinking required for these exercises and tried to define the end goal as the ability to be acquired rather than the traditional "take the stone from my hand" style kung fu sensei method.
At this stage in his training, if the lambda driver operates as I suspect, then he'll find it usable, just not to it's full potential. He is still at the very least a year away from practical chi use without enhancing tools or devices.
As such, I spent most of the last lesson telling him how to disrupt another person's control. If he does not have full control himself, it is best if he focus instead on weakening his opponent's resolve. I don't know how well it will work given what the dossier on this Gauron person says about his personality, but any port in a storm.
Hopefully, Sagara would be able to find a way to work around his limited use of the lambda driver's energy well enough to take on Gauron in the enemy's own suit. Or, better yet, strike without Gauron being able to reach the suit.
"I hope you're right," Tessa said.
"Captain," the intelligence officer said, eyeing the folder himself and quite obviously wondering what it said. "If I may, what were in the briefcase Sagara brought in with him?"
"Sensory equipment," the Captain said simply.
Captain Testarossa nodded quietly as she looked down at the folder on her desk. It was the training report from the newly appointed J-K Regional Operations Coordinator for Psyche Division, one Ranma Saotome.
Sagara, Sousuke: Sergeant
I've made progress on training the Sergeant to access his chi. As of now, he can produce a fluctuation in his chi that can be observed with the proper gear, and once managed a barely visible aura.
This should translate into at least being reliably able to produce a battle aura in the Arbalest, though I suspect he will still require an emotional high to achieve full power. It is difficult to maintain both an emotional high and the meditative mindset required for chi control.
I've started Sagara on some basic chi-use exercises for speed and strength enhancement. Unfortunately, I am consistantly having to re-clarify the limits of a particular exercise, Soldier-boy is very clever at finding alternate methods of achieving the same goal. Unfortunately, the goal is often only a means to focus one on the method.
His previous training has focused him on the end goal and avoiding target fixation on any one particular method. I had the opposite problem as a student, fixating on the instructed method even when it was impossible. Neither manner of thought is impossible to get past, however.
I've explained to him the differences in thinking required for these exercises and tried to define the end goal as the ability to be acquired rather than the traditional "take the stone from my hand" style kung fu sensei method.
At this stage in his training, if the lambda driver operates as I suspect, then he'll find it usable, just not to it's full potential. He is still at the very least a year away from practical chi use without enhancing tools or devices.
As such, I spent most of the last lesson telling him how to disrupt another person's control. If he does not have full control himself, it is best if he focus instead on weakening his opponent's resolve. I don't know how well it will work given what the dossier on this Gauron person says about his personality, but any port in a storm.
Hopefully, Sagara would be able to find a way to work around his limited use of the lambda driver's energy well enough to take on Gauron in the enemy's own suit. Or, better yet, strike without Gauron being able to reach the suit.
"I hope you're right," Tessa said.
"Captain," the intelligence officer said, eyeing the folder himself and quite obviously wondering what it said. "If I may, what were in the briefcase Sagara brought in with him?"
"Sensory equipment," the Captain said simply.
Four men and a woman in Mithril SRT uniforms walked along the tarmac of the Indian Ocean Fleet's headquarters. They carried with them dufflebags holding their clothes and a few personal oddiments.
They were an assorted bunch, three were certainly American. One was a loudmouthed man named Jackson with dreadlocks and an accent that came out of the streets. Another was a burly man named Andy with a hick's speech and a cowboy hat. The third, Bill, wore lieutenant's bars and sported a stylish handlebar mustache.
The other two operators were an older man named Baptiste and a woman that the others referred to as Gray. Baptiste might also have been American, but he could just as easily been English or otherwise. Gray spoke with a definite European accent and, judging by her rank, was obviously the second in command under Bill.
"I don't like this," Baptiste said. "Why are they pulling so many of us out just to say we offed one man?"
"Oh quit worrying," Jackson said with a smirk. "Just be glad for an easy job for once."
Their leader was silent as they walked up into the transport plane that already carried their Arm-Slaves.
Most of them were surprised to find a teenager already sitting in the plane and waiting quietly.
"What's this?" Andy asked, frowning suspiciously.
"This is Sergeant Sousuke Sagara," Gray said. "He's had previous experience with the target and the area, so he's been given us on loan from the Pacific Fleet."
"They're making kids sergeants now?" Jackson called out, offended. He moved around to lean his head into Sagara's face and thrust a lolipop at him. "Hey kid, want some candy?"
"Stow it, Jackson," Bill said, not adding anything about Sagara's credentials.
"I'm just fooling around, sir," Jackson said, standing up to walk around to Sagara. "Hey, we'll be working together so let's be friends. What do you say, Tom Sawyer?"
"Sit down and shut up," Grey said, pushing the irritating guy aside as Sagara quietly spit the lolipop out of his mouth. "I'm sorry he's being so rude."
"It's not a problem," Sagara said.
Gray looked down at the amulet he wore around his neck and furrowed her eyebrows. The small crystal looked out of place given what she'd read in the soldier's dossier.
"What's that?" she asked.
"It is a training tool," Sagara said, simply.
"So, you used to live in this area, right?" Gray asked. "That you know the area inside and out."
"Affirmative," Sousuke noted.
"Then we'll be counting on your advice in this operation," she said.
She reached out to shake his hand, but another of her comrades seemed to object as he slammed his foot between them.
"Listen you little fart," he said. "This is our mission, and we don't intend on asking your advice. Got it?"
"Okay, settle down," Bill said sharply. "We have a few pieces of information to layout."
He waited for them to calm down before speaking.
"First, our Arm-Slave units have been installed with a new sensory equipment," he said. "It is supposed to be able to register the energy signature of a new class of experimental AS system. Sagara's machine is fitted with our version of the same system, so we'll be calibrating sensors based on his machine immediately after drop."
"Damn Pacifics, always getting the newest toys," Andy muttered. "Bunch of spoiled brats."
"Do I have to repeat myself?" Bill asked, waiting for Andy to settle down. "Good. Now, the second thing. Apparently, this new system requires a lot of focus and concentration to use effectively. If we want to get around it, we'll have to attack the enemy's mindset. And that's not going to be easy given the pysch profile we have on the target."
"What kind of system is dependent on the operator's mental state?" Grey wondered.
"Trust me, if it's the same system I've heard rumors about," Bill said. "We've got our hands full on this one. The very fact they're giving us information and sensors that seem to be built directly to counter it makes the hair on my neck stand out."
****
"Wow, this is so cool," Kyoko said as she set her bags down in the entry way and turning about to look at the wide, landscaped grounds, camera clicking.
Several of those pictures ended up with a posing Naiki in them.
Kaname, Shinji and Mizuki were similarly impressed with the island's beauty.
Akane Saotome, dressed in a naval t-shirt and work-slacks stepped out into the doorway to watch the teenagers gawk with a smile. Behind her, Kurz was speaking to the woman's husband.
"First trip to Okinawa, I guess?" she asked Eija as the calmer girl set aside her bags.
"No, we stopped here for a few months while Mother sought property in Tokyo," Eija said.
"You were so close, huh?" Akane said, shaking her head.
Akane glanced back toward Kurz and her husband and then turned to Eija curiously. She wasn't going to ask the kids, but there was some curiosity on her part.
Akane'd been out on the water with her ship dealing with a small fleet of pirates that had taken residence on one of the local islands. Twelve battle converted civilian vessels of various sizes against one Japanese cruiser with its complement, an AS and two ASW helicopters retro-fitted as pirate hunters with minigun emplacements on either side of the craft.
It hadn't been a battle. It had been a mop up.
As it ended, her captain received orders for her to be granted leave, despite having just returned from a vacation. And then, quite coincidentally, Ranma called her asking if she and Ryuu could watch some kids for a week or so. With special focus on protecting her own kids and one other.
Said kids arrive, not with Ranma, but a mercenary who was doing a good job of looking very civilian. Akane and Ryuu had seen too many people like him during the worst days of the Chinese Civil War not to recognize what he was.
Ranma had contacts apparently.
She looked back to the children investigating her home, where they'd stay for the next week, and shrugged it off for now. Her own children, the oldest of the two being ten years old, were still finishing chores but she'd seen their faces in the window a couple of times.
Masaru had something of a pouty look as he took in the "horde of girls" that looked to be taking over his family home, discounting Shinji as a "nerd". He was still in that "cootie" phase which both amused and annoyed Akane thoroughly.
Izumi, the younger sister, had heard that some of the girls were martial artists though, and was eager to see if she could get them to show her some stuff. Quite a hyperactive and talkative one, she was. Rather strange, Akane thought, given that didn't think of either her or Ryuu as talkative or hyperactive.
Some who'd known them both in youth would at least partially disagree with that self-assessment.
Akane was about to walk out to collect the teens and take them to the guest rooms, when an unexpected visitor arrived. She froze quietly at the sight.
A tall, stately woman with dark red hair, well on to her fifties now, though it took a close look to see that. She walked onto the property, entirely self-assured despite not having received an invitiation to arrive at the home of her children by adoption and marriage.
"Oh," Nodoka said as she looked about at the children. "Am I interrupting some school event?"
"No, these aren't students," Akane said. "I'm watching some kids for...for a friend of mine."
"Saotome-san," Eija said, walking up to her host. "Who is this?"
"This is the clan matriarch," Akane said.
"Come now, Akane-chan," Nodoka said. "Don't be so formal, call me 'Mother' now, I keep telling you."
"Then...your my other grandmother?" Eija asked, recognizing the implications of the name and position and unaware of the dangers involved here.
"Excuse me," Nodoka said as Akane flinched. "Could you repeat that?"
The naval officier had an urge to pull Eija aside now, and probably would have quite aggressively had she been younger, but it was too late now.
Why hadn't Ranma warned them about this?
"I am Eija Satomi," she said. "My mother is Ranma Sat.."
"Ranma is your mother?!" Nodoka repeated aghast.
They were an assorted bunch, three were certainly American. One was a loudmouthed man named Jackson with dreadlocks and an accent that came out of the streets. Another was a burly man named Andy with a hick's speech and a cowboy hat. The third, Bill, wore lieutenant's bars and sported a stylish handlebar mustache.
The other two operators were an older man named Baptiste and a woman that the others referred to as Gray. Baptiste might also have been American, but he could just as easily been English or otherwise. Gray spoke with a definite European accent and, judging by her rank, was obviously the second in command under Bill.
"I don't like this," Baptiste said. "Why are they pulling so many of us out just to say we offed one man?"
"Oh quit worrying," Jackson said with a smirk. "Just be glad for an easy job for once."
Their leader was silent as they walked up into the transport plane that already carried their Arm-Slaves.
Most of them were surprised to find a teenager already sitting in the plane and waiting quietly.
"What's this?" Andy asked, frowning suspiciously.
"This is Sergeant Sousuke Sagara," Gray said. "He's had previous experience with the target and the area, so he's been given us on loan from the Pacific Fleet."
"They're making kids sergeants now?" Jackson called out, offended. He moved around to lean his head into Sagara's face and thrust a lolipop at him. "Hey kid, want some candy?"
"Stow it, Jackson," Bill said, not adding anything about Sagara's credentials.
"I'm just fooling around, sir," Jackson said, standing up to walk around to Sagara. "Hey, we'll be working together so let's be friends. What do you say, Tom Sawyer?"
"Sit down and shut up," Grey said, pushing the irritating guy aside as Sagara quietly spit the lolipop out of his mouth. "I'm sorry he's being so rude."
"It's not a problem," Sagara said.
Gray looked down at the amulet he wore around his neck and furrowed her eyebrows. The small crystal looked out of place given what she'd read in the soldier's dossier.
"What's that?" she asked.
"It is a training tool," Sagara said, simply.
"So, you used to live in this area, right?" Gray asked. "That you know the area inside and out."
"Affirmative," Sousuke noted.
"Then we'll be counting on your advice in this operation," she said.
She reached out to shake his hand, but another of her comrades seemed to object as he slammed his foot between them.
"Listen you little fart," he said. "This is our mission, and we don't intend on asking your advice. Got it?"
"Okay, settle down," Bill said sharply. "We have a few pieces of information to layout."
He waited for them to calm down before speaking.
"First, our Arm-Slave units have been installed with a new sensory equipment," he said. "It is supposed to be able to register the energy signature of a new class of experimental AS system. Sagara's machine is fitted with our version of the same system, so we'll be calibrating sensors based on his machine immediately after drop."
"Damn Pacifics, always getting the newest toys," Andy muttered. "Bunch of spoiled brats."
"Do I have to repeat myself?" Bill asked, waiting for Andy to settle down. "Good. Now, the second thing. Apparently, this new system requires a lot of focus and concentration to use effectively. If we want to get around it, we'll have to attack the enemy's mindset. And that's not going to be easy given the pysch profile we have on the target."
"What kind of system is dependent on the operator's mental state?" Grey wondered.
"Trust me, if it's the same system I've heard rumors about," Bill said. "We've got our hands full on this one. The very fact they're giving us information and sensors that seem to be built directly to counter it makes the hair on my neck stand out."
****
"Wow, this is so cool," Kyoko said as she set her bags down in the entry way and turning about to look at the wide, landscaped grounds, camera clicking.
Several of those pictures ended up with a posing Naiki in them.
Kaname, Shinji and Mizuki were similarly impressed with the island's beauty.
Akane Saotome, dressed in a naval t-shirt and work-slacks stepped out into the doorway to watch the teenagers gawk with a smile. Behind her, Kurz was speaking to the woman's husband.
"First trip to Okinawa, I guess?" she asked Eija as the calmer girl set aside her bags.
"No, we stopped here for a few months while Mother sought property in Tokyo," Eija said.
"You were so close, huh?" Akane said, shaking her head.
Akane glanced back toward Kurz and her husband and then turned to Eija curiously. She wasn't going to ask the kids, but there was some curiosity on her part.
Akane'd been out on the water with her ship dealing with a small fleet of pirates that had taken residence on one of the local islands. Twelve battle converted civilian vessels of various sizes against one Japanese cruiser with its complement, an AS and two ASW helicopters retro-fitted as pirate hunters with minigun emplacements on either side of the craft.
It hadn't been a battle. It had been a mop up.
As it ended, her captain received orders for her to be granted leave, despite having just returned from a vacation. And then, quite coincidentally, Ranma called her asking if she and Ryuu could watch some kids for a week or so. With special focus on protecting her own kids and one other.
Said kids arrive, not with Ranma, but a mercenary who was doing a good job of looking very civilian. Akane and Ryuu had seen too many people like him during the worst days of the Chinese Civil War not to recognize what he was.
Ranma had contacts apparently.
She looked back to the children investigating her home, where they'd stay for the next week, and shrugged it off for now. Her own children, the oldest of the two being ten years old, were still finishing chores but she'd seen their faces in the window a couple of times.
Masaru had something of a pouty look as he took in the "horde of girls" that looked to be taking over his family home, discounting Shinji as a "nerd". He was still in that "cootie" phase which both amused and annoyed Akane thoroughly.
Izumi, the younger sister, had heard that some of the girls were martial artists though, and was eager to see if she could get them to show her some stuff. Quite a hyperactive and talkative one, she was. Rather strange, Akane thought, given that didn't think of either her or Ryuu as talkative or hyperactive.
Some who'd known them both in youth would at least partially disagree with that self-assessment.
Akane was about to walk out to collect the teens and take them to the guest rooms, when an unexpected visitor arrived. She froze quietly at the sight.
A tall, stately woman with dark red hair, well on to her fifties now, though it took a close look to see that. She walked onto the property, entirely self-assured despite not having received an invitiation to arrive at the home of her children by adoption and marriage.
"Oh," Nodoka said as she looked about at the children. "Am I interrupting some school event?"
"No, these aren't students," Akane said. "I'm watching some kids for...for a friend of mine."
"Saotome-san," Eija said, walking up to her host. "Who is this?"
"This is the clan matriarch," Akane said.
"Come now, Akane-chan," Nodoka said. "Don't be so formal, call me 'Mother' now, I keep telling you."
"Then...your my other grandmother?" Eija asked, recognizing the implications of the name and position and unaware of the dangers involved here.
"Excuse me," Nodoka said as Akane flinched. "Could you repeat that?"
The naval officier had an urge to pull Eija aside now, and probably would have quite aggressively had she been younger, but it was too late now.
Why hadn't Ranma warned them about this?
"I am Eija Satomi," she said. "My mother is Ranma Sat.."
"Ranma is your mother?!" Nodoka repeated aghast.