Ranma ½ Divine Blood
- Thread starter Thrythlind
- Start date
As before, the gate started to open up with the sound of many voices and a sparkling of lights. This time opening up over the wild spaces west of a certain military base Deimosu had been to once before.
The blonde demigod stepped out of the gate quickly and moved low, watching to see if anybody had been drawn to the sudden light show. Hopefully, the afternoon sun kept it unremarkable.
He glanced out and saw the outline of the base in the distance.
He waited for the gate behind him to close before standing up and then heard another set of steps coming out of the gate. Looking to the side, he saw Yonjuu come down the ground next to him, though she wasn't able to get quite as close to the dirt as Deimosu was.
"What are you doing here?" Deimosu asked. "Get back to..."
And then the gate closed.
"You might need help," Yonjuu said.
"I don't need help from an akira," Deimosu said. "You'll just get yourself killed."
"How about the help of someone that's been here before," the sensor asked. "I recognize that place. The Mistress sent me here with some product once before."
"Product?" Deimosu asked.
"Some drugs, a sensory deprivation tank," she said. "It was some months back."
"Right before the airplane that was taken hostage?" the demigod asked.
"What airplane?" Yonjuu asked.
"Never mind," Deimosu noted. "Did your Mistress say who it was for?"
"No," Yonjuu said. "But I overheard some chatter while I was here last. Nimu always said to listen to everything, because it all might become useful eventually."
"And what did you hear?" the demigod asked.
"This is a military base," the girl said. "But the people we were dealing with worked for some sort of mercenary group. Something called Amalgam."
"That might actually have been more useful before we left the labyrinth," Deimosu said, reaching into his clothes to draw out a handful of scrolls. "See these, at least one of them has a spell I could use to track down a name like that. I'd hate to think I stole from my mother for no reason."
"Why not use it now?" Yonjuu asked.
"Because I'm still cursed," Deimosu said. "You saw what happened last time I tried to cast that kind of spell. Yaku is supposed to open the gate in a couple of hours, assuming an eight year old girl can monitor time well enough to remember and we're not stuck here until she finishes playing computer games. Which is another reason you should have stayed back there."
"Umm, Yaku is about three years old," Yonjuu said. "I'm twelve by the way."
"Excuse me?" Deimosu asked.
"Well, we're about this tall before we wake up the first time," Yonjuu said, raising her hand to about the height of five year old child.
Deimosu buried his head in the dirt for a moment.
"I can just hear the pedophile jokes now," he said, shaking his head.
"Pardon me?" Yonjuu asked, frowning.
"Nothing," Deimosu said.
"By the way," Yonjuu said. "You still haven't really told me what an akira was."
"Akira, Carrie, Twitch, Firestarter," Deimosu said. "Untrained idiots who think that they can blast through anything because they were born 'special'."
"I'm not untrained," Yonjuu protested.
"Untrained enough," Deimosu muttered. "At least you're not a panda."
"I'm not that big!" Yonjuu responded sharply.
"A panda is someone who knows just enough to use a spell or stuff," Deimosu explained. "But doesn't really understand how it works. Though I've only heard my mom use it that way, so that just might be her term for it."
"I don't get it," the sensor said.
"Neither do any of my siblings," the demigod said. "When we head over there, stick with me."
Yonjuu nodded.
"Of course I'll stick with you," she muttered. "Until I get a weapon, all I can do is tell you when something's coming."
"Well, I can name at least two weapons you already have," Deimosu muttered, standing up.
"I am not smothering someone with my freakish chest," Yonjuu said as she stood up behind Deimosu.
"D-cups aren't freakish...just unusual," Deimosu said.
"But you should see my sisters!" Yonjuu said. "Slim shoulders, five foot two and five foot four when they finish. Long slender legs, perfect handful breasts. Not a single bit of wasted flesh or mass. Perfect elegant beauties."
"Meanwhile," Yonjuu continued. "My shoulders look like they belong on an AS, my hips and butt are huge and I'm just about four inches shorter than YOU and my legs aren't much longer than my sisters'."
"It's called a voluptuous build," Deimosu said. "If you were blonde, my sister would be all over you in a heartbeat."
"Well, I'm glad I'm attractive to lesbians at least," Yonjuu grumbled. "I suppose it makes sense that their tastes are somewhat less sophisticated."
"Let's just get on with this," the demigod said.
The blonde demigod stepped out of the gate quickly and moved low, watching to see if anybody had been drawn to the sudden light show. Hopefully, the afternoon sun kept it unremarkable.
He glanced out and saw the outline of the base in the distance.
He waited for the gate behind him to close before standing up and then heard another set of steps coming out of the gate. Looking to the side, he saw Yonjuu come down the ground next to him, though she wasn't able to get quite as close to the dirt as Deimosu was.
"What are you doing here?" Deimosu asked. "Get back to..."
And then the gate closed.
"You might need help," Yonjuu said.
"I don't need help from an akira," Deimosu said. "You'll just get yourself killed."
"How about the help of someone that's been here before," the sensor asked. "I recognize that place. The Mistress sent me here with some product once before."
"Product?" Deimosu asked.
"Some drugs, a sensory deprivation tank," she said. "It was some months back."
"Right before the airplane that was taken hostage?" the demigod asked.
"What airplane?" Yonjuu asked.
"Never mind," Deimosu noted. "Did your Mistress say who it was for?"
"No," Yonjuu said. "But I overheard some chatter while I was here last. Nimu always said to listen to everything, because it all might become useful eventually."
"And what did you hear?" the demigod asked.
"This is a military base," the girl said. "But the people we were dealing with worked for some sort of mercenary group. Something called Amalgam."
"That might actually have been more useful before we left the labyrinth," Deimosu said, reaching into his clothes to draw out a handful of scrolls. "See these, at least one of them has a spell I could use to track down a name like that. I'd hate to think I stole from my mother for no reason."
"Why not use it now?" Yonjuu asked.
"Because I'm still cursed," Deimosu said. "You saw what happened last time I tried to cast that kind of spell. Yaku is supposed to open the gate in a couple of hours, assuming an eight year old girl can monitor time well enough to remember and we're not stuck here until she finishes playing computer games. Which is another reason you should have stayed back there."
"Umm, Yaku is about three years old," Yonjuu said. "I'm twelve by the way."
"Excuse me?" Deimosu asked.
"Well, we're about this tall before we wake up the first time," Yonjuu said, raising her hand to about the height of five year old child.
Deimosu buried his head in the dirt for a moment.
"I can just hear the pedophile jokes now," he said, shaking his head.
"Pardon me?" Yonjuu asked, frowning.
"Nothing," Deimosu said.
"By the way," Yonjuu said. "You still haven't really told me what an akira was."
"Akira, Carrie, Twitch, Firestarter," Deimosu said. "Untrained idiots who think that they can blast through anything because they were born 'special'."
"I'm not untrained," Yonjuu protested.
"Untrained enough," Deimosu muttered. "At least you're not a panda."
"I'm not that big!" Yonjuu responded sharply.
"A panda is someone who knows just enough to use a spell or stuff," Deimosu explained. "But doesn't really understand how it works. Though I've only heard my mom use it that way, so that just might be her term for it."
"I don't get it," the sensor said.
"Neither do any of my siblings," the demigod said. "When we head over there, stick with me."
Yonjuu nodded.
"Of course I'll stick with you," she muttered. "Until I get a weapon, all I can do is tell you when something's coming."
"Well, I can name at least two weapons you already have," Deimosu muttered, standing up.
"I am not smothering someone with my freakish chest," Yonjuu said as she stood up behind Deimosu.
"D-cups aren't freakish...just unusual," Deimosu said.
"But you should see my sisters!" Yonjuu said. "Slim shoulders, five foot two and five foot four when they finish. Long slender legs, perfect handful breasts. Not a single bit of wasted flesh or mass. Perfect elegant beauties."
"Meanwhile," Yonjuu continued. "My shoulders look like they belong on an AS, my hips and butt are huge and I'm just about four inches shorter than YOU and my legs aren't much longer than my sisters'."
"It's called a voluptuous build," Deimosu said. "If you were blonde, my sister would be all over you in a heartbeat."
"Well, I'm glad I'm attractive to lesbians at least," Yonjuu grumbled. "I suppose it makes sense that their tastes are somewhat less sophisticated."
"Let's just get on with this," the demigod said.
"I don't know exactly what you're doing going so far around, but it's getting me downwind of the place, so I don't particularly care," Yonjuu said.
"That's the reason," Deimosu said. "My sister is sort of like you. She's got a bit of shark in her."
"Oh, I wish I had a shark's senses," Yonjuu said. "That's like the king of sensory platforms. Electrical, motion, smell across miles and miles, good vision. I can do just about everything except the electrical."
"You can detect motion?" Deimosu asked.
"Well, not directly," Yonjuu explained. "But I have a very good sense of touch and hearing, so I can fake it. One of my other sisters, from my batch, is a motion detector. She's pretty much impossible to sneak up on, but she gets headaches in the rain."
Yonjuu stopped and took in a deep breath.
"Smell something?" Deimosu asked.
"This is the edge of the wind coming off the base," Yonjuu said. "I can smell the Arms-Slaves and tanks. Gun oil. Something's missing, the machine that was here last time is gone. Never saw it, but it sort of smelled like an AS with something."
"Damn it," the blonde fighter said. "I think that's what I was looking for."
"How do you plan on stealing an AS?" Yonjuu asked. "Are you an AS pilot?"
"No," Deimosu said. "I only need part of it."
He started to move in closer to the base, moving cautiously. Yonjuu came in behind him, trying to copy his motions. As they moved closer, other smells started to slip out through the overpowering stench of the vehicles.
She started to smell the overall mass of people when they got within five hundred feet or so, when Deimosu started crawling along the ground and she as well. After that she quickly started distinguishing individual scents on the air.
"One of the Amalgam people is here," she whispered.
"Really?" the martial artist asked. "Can you describe him?"
"Not Korean," Yonjuu said with a shrug. "I can't get much more than that right now. I've smelled him before, but I haven't seen him before."
"Anybody else 'not korean'?" Deimosu asked with a sigh.
"No," Yonjuu said.
"All right," Deimosu said. "Go back to where you started smelling the base, I'll meet you there."
"And what are you planning on doing?" Yonjuu asked.
"Doesn't matter," Deimosu responded before slipping forward. "Just wish I was as good at this as Eija is."
With that statement he took a deep breath and stood up into a strange stance before he started to actually fade to Yonjuu's senses. He didn't vanish, but it was like every part of his signature was weaker than before.
Then he dashed forward, if Yonjuu didn't know he was there to be aware of, she might have actually overlooked him.
But only might.
Slowly, she backed away quietly and moved towards the spot he'd told her to wait at.
Deimosu himself moved up to the wall at a run, pausing and dropping to the ground any time he noticed an eye come his way. Eija could probably have walked the extent of the base without even breaking a sweat, but he'd never been one to hide his light under a bushel. At least he was better than Naiki was.
Then again, if Naiki wanted, she could have made an earthquake from further out. Of course, he had his own specialty and a bit of an idea how to make a bit larger bang than normal.
Getting over the wall was easy enough, with the umisen running, and then he had plenty of cover. This wasn't the first time he'd faced the effort of sneaking around an armed camp. Though this was the first time he'd had time to plan things out.
Hecate had said there was nothing that existed for enhancing chi yet, but he knew that was wrong. Crystals worked, granted, most of what people used crystals for was to convert chi into either mana or pishogue to make white or black magic easier, more efficient and less dangerous.
Using crystals just to enhance chi wasn't something often practiced. Martial artists and psionics were the only ones that made actual use of chi as the main source of power. Psionics wasn't something people taught much yet, hence the plethora of akiras, and martial artists for the most part hadn't thought much of crystals, mostly perceiving them as fragile or cheating.
Ranma Satomi was a rarity in that she'd looked for every tool possible and had made a habit of mixing them in ways not usually thought of.
And she'd passed that on.
Both black and white magic used circles in some of their rituals, and there were circles in the theory of chi as well. All he needed was a big empty space where nobody much was paying attention, and he knew where to find one of those.
Getting to the vehicle hangar was easy enough. He reached into his pocket and grabbed a bag of powdered crystal which he started using to draw the circle.
After the circle, came the hexagrams.
As it finished, he stood in the center of a crystalline design and looked about. Taking a deep breath, he called forth the touch of electricity that was his own.
He thrust it down into the circle, starting east in Zhen, the direction of excitation and the arousal of energies. From there he directed it southeast, watching it spark through the crystals. The powder was melting together into glass as the lightning spun around him, growing brighter and brighter.
Slowly, the lighting came back around to meet itself in the circle. He called it back into himself, briefly, wincing at how much the energy had been magnified by both the crystal and the circle. And then he thrust his hands upward, throwing the power up into the sky.
The power left him, and he gave a brief sigh of relief. For a few seconds it appeared that he had been wrong in his assumption that the basic concepts of circles would remain the same.
But then it came.
Roaring down out of the sky all across the camp surrounding Deimosu.
From a distance, Yonjuu jumped back as lightning cascaded downward, bolt after bolt into the base out of a clear blue sky. Ammo and fuel erupted all over the base and she could hear the alarms and chaos clearly.
"Did...did he do that?" she wondered.
Her wondering stopped as Deimosu came running to her position, carrying an unconscious man over his shoulder.
He slammed to a stop near her and turned about to look at the dwindling bolts of lightning.
"Okay, that worked a little bit better than I thought," Deimosu said.
"What did you do?" Yonjuu asked.
"I tried to combine a few processes," Deimosu said. "I wasn't sure how well it would work, so I put a bit of extra effort into."
"I daresay that you put a little too much extra effort into it," Yonjuu said, pointing toward the base.
She winced as a particularly large explosion ripped up into the darkening sky.
"It did send everybody running like rabbits," Deimosu said with a smirk. "And this rabbit came running out right in plain sight."
"Let's just go wait for Yaku," Yonjuu said. "And if I hear another remark about being an akira after that...performance"
"There's a difference," Deimosu protested.
"How about a 'panda' then?" the girl continued.
********************
Just to put it perspective. Urd and Belldandy both supposedly have world-destroying levels of power, probably Mara as well. With limiters that's quite a bit less, of course.
Also, this is probably comparable to the level of damage Ranma had managed under certain extreme circumstances in his/her own youth. Particularly the fight with saffron.
He's still basically wiped the base off the face of the map.
"That's the reason," Deimosu said. "My sister is sort of like you. She's got a bit of shark in her."
"Oh, I wish I had a shark's senses," Yonjuu said. "That's like the king of sensory platforms. Electrical, motion, smell across miles and miles, good vision. I can do just about everything except the electrical."
"You can detect motion?" Deimosu asked.
"Well, not directly," Yonjuu explained. "But I have a very good sense of touch and hearing, so I can fake it. One of my other sisters, from my batch, is a motion detector. She's pretty much impossible to sneak up on, but she gets headaches in the rain."
Yonjuu stopped and took in a deep breath.
"Smell something?" Deimosu asked.
"This is the edge of the wind coming off the base," Yonjuu said. "I can smell the Arms-Slaves and tanks. Gun oil. Something's missing, the machine that was here last time is gone. Never saw it, but it sort of smelled like an AS with something."
"Damn it," the blonde fighter said. "I think that's what I was looking for."
"How do you plan on stealing an AS?" Yonjuu asked. "Are you an AS pilot?"
"No," Deimosu said. "I only need part of it."
He started to move in closer to the base, moving cautiously. Yonjuu came in behind him, trying to copy his motions. As they moved closer, other smells started to slip out through the overpowering stench of the vehicles.
She started to smell the overall mass of people when they got within five hundred feet or so, when Deimosu started crawling along the ground and she as well. After that she quickly started distinguishing individual scents on the air.
"One of the Amalgam people is here," she whispered.
"Really?" the martial artist asked. "Can you describe him?"
"Not Korean," Yonjuu said with a shrug. "I can't get much more than that right now. I've smelled him before, but I haven't seen him before."
"Anybody else 'not korean'?" Deimosu asked with a sigh.
"No," Yonjuu said.
"All right," Deimosu said. "Go back to where you started smelling the base, I'll meet you there."
"And what are you planning on doing?" Yonjuu asked.
"Doesn't matter," Deimosu responded before slipping forward. "Just wish I was as good at this as Eija is."
With that statement he took a deep breath and stood up into a strange stance before he started to actually fade to Yonjuu's senses. He didn't vanish, but it was like every part of his signature was weaker than before.
Then he dashed forward, if Yonjuu didn't know he was there to be aware of, she might have actually overlooked him.
But only might.
Slowly, she backed away quietly and moved towards the spot he'd told her to wait at.
Deimosu himself moved up to the wall at a run, pausing and dropping to the ground any time he noticed an eye come his way. Eija could probably have walked the extent of the base without even breaking a sweat, but he'd never been one to hide his light under a bushel. At least he was better than Naiki was.
Then again, if Naiki wanted, she could have made an earthquake from further out. Of course, he had his own specialty and a bit of an idea how to make a bit larger bang than normal.
Getting over the wall was easy enough, with the umisen running, and then he had plenty of cover. This wasn't the first time he'd faced the effort of sneaking around an armed camp. Though this was the first time he'd had time to plan things out.
Hecate had said there was nothing that existed for enhancing chi yet, but he knew that was wrong. Crystals worked, granted, most of what people used crystals for was to convert chi into either mana or pishogue to make white or black magic easier, more efficient and less dangerous.
Using crystals just to enhance chi wasn't something often practiced. Martial artists and psionics were the only ones that made actual use of chi as the main source of power. Psionics wasn't something people taught much yet, hence the plethora of akiras, and martial artists for the most part hadn't thought much of crystals, mostly perceiving them as fragile or cheating.
Ranma Satomi was a rarity in that she'd looked for every tool possible and had made a habit of mixing them in ways not usually thought of.
And she'd passed that on.
Both black and white magic used circles in some of their rituals, and there were circles in the theory of chi as well. All he needed was a big empty space where nobody much was paying attention, and he knew where to find one of those.
Getting to the vehicle hangar was easy enough. He reached into his pocket and grabbed a bag of powdered crystal which he started using to draw the circle.
After the circle, came the hexagrams.
As it finished, he stood in the center of a crystalline design and looked about. Taking a deep breath, he called forth the touch of electricity that was his own.
He thrust it down into the circle, starting east in Zhen, the direction of excitation and the arousal of energies. From there he directed it southeast, watching it spark through the crystals. The powder was melting together into glass as the lightning spun around him, growing brighter and brighter.
Slowly, the lighting came back around to meet itself in the circle. He called it back into himself, briefly, wincing at how much the energy had been magnified by both the crystal and the circle. And then he thrust his hands upward, throwing the power up into the sky.
The power left him, and he gave a brief sigh of relief. For a few seconds it appeared that he had been wrong in his assumption that the basic concepts of circles would remain the same.
But then it came.
Roaring down out of the sky all across the camp surrounding Deimosu.
From a distance, Yonjuu jumped back as lightning cascaded downward, bolt after bolt into the base out of a clear blue sky. Ammo and fuel erupted all over the base and she could hear the alarms and chaos clearly.
"Did...did he do that?" she wondered.
Her wondering stopped as Deimosu came running to her position, carrying an unconscious man over his shoulder.
He slammed to a stop near her and turned about to look at the dwindling bolts of lightning.
"Okay, that worked a little bit better than I thought," Deimosu said.
"What did you do?" Yonjuu asked.
"I tried to combine a few processes," Deimosu said. "I wasn't sure how well it would work, so I put a bit of extra effort into."
"I daresay that you put a little too much extra effort into it," Yonjuu said, pointing toward the base.
She winced as a particularly large explosion ripped up into the darkening sky.
"It did send everybody running like rabbits," Deimosu said with a smirk. "And this rabbit came running out right in plain sight."
"Let's just go wait for Yaku," Yonjuu said. "And if I hear another remark about being an akira after that...performance"
"There's a difference," Deimosu protested.
"How about a 'panda' then?" the girl continued.
********************
Just to put it perspective. Urd and Belldandy both supposedly have world-destroying levels of power, probably Mara as well. With limiters that's quite a bit less, of course.
Also, this is probably comparable to the level of damage Ranma had managed under certain extreme circumstances in his/her own youth. Particularly the fight with saffron.
He's still basically wiped the base off the face of the map.
"Yaku." Deimosu noted more than an hour later. "Is late."
"I was useful," Yonjuu pointed out.
"That's fine," the martial artist said, moving toward their prisoner. "I think I'll do this here, no need for Yaku to see this."
"Yes, interrogation," Yonjuu said distastefully. "I've...seen them. I've never done one before."
"Let me handle it," Deimosu said, nudging the prisoner.
"You've interrogated people before?" the dark-haired sensor asked.
"Yes," the blonde said, frowning. "If you don't want to watch."
"I've probably seen worse," the girl answered. "What do you need him for anyway?"
"I need to find a way to increase my chi for a fight," he answered.
"You need to be more powerful than that?!" Yonjuu asked, pointing out toward the smoking, smoldering ruins.
"I need to be more powerful than I am personally and able to access that power in something a lot less than ten minutes," Deimosu explained.
"Oh, yes, I can see where that time limit might be a problem," Yonjuu said.
"Stay quiet now," the martial artist warned her.
Deimosu nodded and bent over his prisoner, reaching out a hand with splayed fingers. Yonjuu smelled the ozone and saw the momentary flash as electricity arched into the unconscious man's body.
He awoke with a shriek of pain and then glanced around to see Deimosu and Yonjuu sitting and watching him.
"What the hell is this?" he demanded. "I'm surrounded by a bunch of kids."
"Are you part of Amalgam?" Deimosu asked.
Instantly, the man's eyes widened fractionally as he looked between the two.
"You work for Kuno," he said, growing more than a little nervous. "Did one of your freaks pull off that sudden lightning storm?"
He looked over toward Yonjuu nervously.
"Actually," Deimosu said. "That was me."
To illustrate the point, he sent another jolt of electricity into the man's body. He winced and jumped in pain, but then he laughed.
"So, what're you going to do?" the man asked. "Kuno doesn't teach you freaks anything, you're cannon fodder. Byproduct in her private experiments. So I'm not afraid of your amateurish attempts."
"I'm not one of Kodachi Kuno's people," the martial artist said quietly.
An arc of electricity ripped out from Deimosu's finger into the man again. This time there was more than just pain. For a brief moment the man's vision stopped. He flailed about, backing away from Deimosu in panic until his vision started to clear.
"The nervous system runs on electricity," the martial artist said. "It runs the rest of the body. I'm electro-kinetic. And I'm no akira I can short out any part of you I want. Temporarily or permanently."
A small burst of electricity ripped from his hand into the prisoner and the man felt his arm go numb for a moment.
"So what," the prisoner said, much less sure. "Are you going to shut down my lungs or heart if I don't talk?"
"I'm not going to kill you until I'm done," Deimosu said. "That wouldn't do me any good. I want to know where I can find one of your special machines."
"Special machines?" the prisoner asked.
"It's a machine that lets an AS pilot turn emotion into power," the martial artist noted.
"You want a lambda driver," the man asked. "I don't care what you do to me, it's not enough to get me turn that over."
A zap of lightning shocked into the prisoner's abdomen, making him dance with obvious jittering pain.
Yonjuu, from where she watched, wrinkled her nose in disgust as the scent of urine reached her.
The prisoner shuffled uncomfortably and swallowed as he took in the teenager that seemed to have so much control over what his body did.
Another zap of electricity and this time some of the pain didn't go away. He looked down at his arm and lifted it gingerly, waiting for the burning pain to fade away as it did before.
"I just killed the nerve at your elbow," Deimosu said.
"Why don't you target something more vital to the male ego?" Yonjuu asked.
The prisoner looked down toward his waste and crossed his legs desperately. Looking from Yonjuu to Deimosu. The demigod glanced toward Yonjuu himself and shrugged at her suggestion. Then returned to looking at the prisoner and held out both his hands, letting electricity arc between them.
"Her idea sounds pretty good," Deimosu noted. "There's more I could do, of course. Burn out part of the spinal column, take away a sense."
At this, he noticed Yonjuu uncomfortably back away from him.
"I can give you a facial twitch if I wanted," the martial artist bragged.
That was a bit of an exaggeration. He couldn't really do that on purpose, he was stretching the limits of his control as it was. Mostly what he was doing was waiting to see what the effect was based on how the man reacted. He did know the difference between disabling and killing a nerve, but like stealth, anatomy and careful knowledge of bodily systems was Eija's field.
However, the issue here wasn't what he could really do, it was what he believed that Deimosu could do. What he imagined. As soon as Deimosu's limits became defined, then the impact was dulled.
"I just need to know where to find a lambda driver or the plans," Deimosu said. "The longer it takes for me to get that answer, the closer you get to spending your life as an incontinent, impotent, crippled lump of meat."
A stroke of lightning reached out toward the man then, and this time he lost feeling in his left foot.
The look of fear that came with this most recent shock disgusted Deimosu. It was never something he liked to see, but it did say that he was meeting his goal.
*****
Yonjuu watched as the finally light display faded away and Deimosu was left standing over a body. She'd seen a rather large cascade of lightning running through the guys head and body.
"Did you have to do that?" Yonjuu asked.
"If were just the possibility of them telling someone what I'm doing, I'd let him live," Deimosu said. "But last time we were here, they almost killed one sister, and the other almost killed herself healing us. Amalgam hurt my family, intentionally."
Deimosu didn't bother to say that the fact she and Yaku refused to leave was also a deciding factor in that. He wasn't going to have an unnecessary risk to either of them.
"Where did you learn to interrogate like that?" Yonjuu asked.
"Most of the hand to hand physical techniques in our fighting style comes from other styles," the demigod said. "The basis of the Satomi style is getting in your opponent's head and using his mind against you. My mother tried to keep us out of harm's way and out of battle, but there was too much around us to avoid."
He sighed and shook his head.
"You're saying that she trained you," Yonjuu said. "But she didn't want you to fight for her?"
"No," Deimosu said. "She fought for us. Now it's my turn to fight for her."
*****
Yaku watched as Yonjuu and Deimosu came back in through the gate, having remembered when she stopped to get some water.
Both looked rather upset, so she guessed that things must not have gone well.
"Big brother, did you find anything?" Yaku asked.
"Yeah," Deimosu said. "Someone gave me some directions."
****************************
Decided to show something of what the Satomi's are capable of in the name of family and when the future risk is high.
I actually figure the one who would be the best at such torture is Eija given her greater healing knowledge.
"I was useful," Yonjuu pointed out.
"That's fine," the martial artist said, moving toward their prisoner. "I think I'll do this here, no need for Yaku to see this."
"Yes, interrogation," Yonjuu said distastefully. "I've...seen them. I've never done one before."
"Let me handle it," Deimosu said, nudging the prisoner.
"You've interrogated people before?" the dark-haired sensor asked.
"Yes," the blonde said, frowning. "If you don't want to watch."
"I've probably seen worse," the girl answered. "What do you need him for anyway?"
"I need to find a way to increase my chi for a fight," he answered.
"You need to be more powerful than that?!" Yonjuu asked, pointing out toward the smoking, smoldering ruins.
"I need to be more powerful than I am personally and able to access that power in something a lot less than ten minutes," Deimosu explained.
"Oh, yes, I can see where that time limit might be a problem," Yonjuu said.
"Stay quiet now," the martial artist warned her.
Deimosu nodded and bent over his prisoner, reaching out a hand with splayed fingers. Yonjuu smelled the ozone and saw the momentary flash as electricity arched into the unconscious man's body.
He awoke with a shriek of pain and then glanced around to see Deimosu and Yonjuu sitting and watching him.
"What the hell is this?" he demanded. "I'm surrounded by a bunch of kids."
"Are you part of Amalgam?" Deimosu asked.
Instantly, the man's eyes widened fractionally as he looked between the two.
"You work for Kuno," he said, growing more than a little nervous. "Did one of your freaks pull off that sudden lightning storm?"
He looked over toward Yonjuu nervously.
"Actually," Deimosu said. "That was me."
To illustrate the point, he sent another jolt of electricity into the man's body. He winced and jumped in pain, but then he laughed.
"So, what're you going to do?" the man asked. "Kuno doesn't teach you freaks anything, you're cannon fodder. Byproduct in her private experiments. So I'm not afraid of your amateurish attempts."
"I'm not one of Kodachi Kuno's people," the martial artist said quietly.
An arc of electricity ripped out from Deimosu's finger into the man again. This time there was more than just pain. For a brief moment the man's vision stopped. He flailed about, backing away from Deimosu in panic until his vision started to clear.
"The nervous system runs on electricity," the martial artist said. "It runs the rest of the body. I'm electro-kinetic. And I'm no akira I can short out any part of you I want. Temporarily or permanently."
A small burst of electricity ripped from his hand into the prisoner and the man felt his arm go numb for a moment.
"So what," the prisoner said, much less sure. "Are you going to shut down my lungs or heart if I don't talk?"
"I'm not going to kill you until I'm done," Deimosu said. "That wouldn't do me any good. I want to know where I can find one of your special machines."
"Special machines?" the prisoner asked.
"It's a machine that lets an AS pilot turn emotion into power," the martial artist noted.
"You want a lambda driver," the man asked. "I don't care what you do to me, it's not enough to get me turn that over."
A zap of lightning shocked into the prisoner's abdomen, making him dance with obvious jittering pain.
Yonjuu, from where she watched, wrinkled her nose in disgust as the scent of urine reached her.
The prisoner shuffled uncomfortably and swallowed as he took in the teenager that seemed to have so much control over what his body did.
Another zap of electricity and this time some of the pain didn't go away. He looked down at his arm and lifted it gingerly, waiting for the burning pain to fade away as it did before.
"I just killed the nerve at your elbow," Deimosu said.
"Why don't you target something more vital to the male ego?" Yonjuu asked.
The prisoner looked down toward his waste and crossed his legs desperately. Looking from Yonjuu to Deimosu. The demigod glanced toward Yonjuu himself and shrugged at her suggestion. Then returned to looking at the prisoner and held out both his hands, letting electricity arc between them.
"Her idea sounds pretty good," Deimosu noted. "There's more I could do, of course. Burn out part of the spinal column, take away a sense."
At this, he noticed Yonjuu uncomfortably back away from him.
"I can give you a facial twitch if I wanted," the martial artist bragged.
That was a bit of an exaggeration. He couldn't really do that on purpose, he was stretching the limits of his control as it was. Mostly what he was doing was waiting to see what the effect was based on how the man reacted. He did know the difference between disabling and killing a nerve, but like stealth, anatomy and careful knowledge of bodily systems was Eija's field.
However, the issue here wasn't what he could really do, it was what he believed that Deimosu could do. What he imagined. As soon as Deimosu's limits became defined, then the impact was dulled.
"I just need to know where to find a lambda driver or the plans," Deimosu said. "The longer it takes for me to get that answer, the closer you get to spending your life as an incontinent, impotent, crippled lump of meat."
A stroke of lightning reached out toward the man then, and this time he lost feeling in his left foot.
The look of fear that came with this most recent shock disgusted Deimosu. It was never something he liked to see, but it did say that he was meeting his goal.
*****
Yonjuu watched as the finally light display faded away and Deimosu was left standing over a body. She'd seen a rather large cascade of lightning running through the guys head and body.
"Did you have to do that?" Yonjuu asked.
"If were just the possibility of them telling someone what I'm doing, I'd let him live," Deimosu said. "But last time we were here, they almost killed one sister, and the other almost killed herself healing us. Amalgam hurt my family, intentionally."
Deimosu didn't bother to say that the fact she and Yaku refused to leave was also a deciding factor in that. He wasn't going to have an unnecessary risk to either of them.
"Where did you learn to interrogate like that?" Yonjuu asked.
"Most of the hand to hand physical techniques in our fighting style comes from other styles," the demigod said. "The basis of the Satomi style is getting in your opponent's head and using his mind against you. My mother tried to keep us out of harm's way and out of battle, but there was too much around us to avoid."
He sighed and shook his head.
"You're saying that she trained you," Yonjuu said. "But she didn't want you to fight for her?"
"No," Deimosu said. "She fought for us. Now it's my turn to fight for her."
*****
Yaku watched as Yonjuu and Deimosu came back in through the gate, having remembered when she stopped to get some water.
Both looked rather upset, so she guessed that things must not have gone well.
"Big brother, did you find anything?" Yaku asked.
"Yeah," Deimosu said. "Someone gave me some directions."
****************************
Decided to show something of what the Satomi's are capable of in the name of family and when the future risk is high.
I actually figure the one who would be the best at such torture is Eija given her greater healing knowledge.
Melissa walked up to the auditorium room, aware that there fifty girls beyond that door. Outside stood a Mithril intelligence division officer and one of tactical's officers from headquarters. She could tell what they were going to ask just by the frustrated look on their face.
"Sergeant Major Melissa Mao," the tactical officer. "I was wondering if you could tell us what's going on here."
"The Captain asked me to brief these girls on what's coming from here," Mao said. "Commander Mardukas and Lt. Commander Kalinin have their own concerns and..."
"And you're the only remaining person on base cleared to have the full story on these girls," the intelligence operative finished for her with a smile.
"I was going to say, I wasn't busy because my team is on other assignments," Mao noted.
"Sergeant Major," the tactical officer said questioningly. "Who requested the operation to rescue these girls?"
"Intelligence," Mao said. "Don't you have the proposal and field reports?"
"Yes, we do," the intelligence man said. "But those weren't in until after the operation came down."
"That's not a first," the sergeant major said. "There's always off the books ops."
"But there've been a lot more recently," tactical said. "And curiously, it's hard to find who in either intelligence or tactical ordered these to begin with."
"That's the point of an off the books op, isn't it?" Mao asked. "Now I have a briefing to give."
"The briefing can wait," the tactical officer said. "There's another whole division of Mithril that's being kept off the books, isn't their Sergeant Major?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Mao said firmly.
"Oh good," a peppy new voice said. "I'm not late."
The three turned to see a cheerful seeming Japanese woman walking down the hallway. Her long black hair hung around her face as she pushed up the large glasses onto her nose. She was wearing a civilian uniform of some sort, long black skirt, white shirt and brown vest with a red necktie. Over that she had a tan overcoat.
"Who are you?" the tactical officer asked.
"I know you," the intelligence operative noted. "You were an agent for the British, some sort of retrieval specialist. Aren't you retired."
"Just like Commander Mardukas," the woman said with a smile. "Now, Commander Trautman and Mr. Graves, I have communiques here from Lord Malloy. You are both to report to headquarters immediately."
She handed each of them a folded sheet of paper and smiled, waiting for the two men to respond. As they looked over the messages, they came down to the end and frowned as they looked up at the newcomer.
"Are there any questions?" the woman asked.
"I suppose not," Mr. Graves said reluctantly, starting to walk away. Trautman was not far behind him.
"And you are?" Mao asked as they left.
"Yomiko Readman," the girl said turning toward Mao. "Psyche Division. Secretary to the Northeast Asian Regional Director."
"You're Miss Satomi's secretary," Melissa said with a smirk.
"That's right," Miss Readman said. "I have not yet met with Miss Satomi, so for the moment, I am here only to observe in her place or clarify any questions. This proceeding is under your command still."
"As long as you understand where things stand then," Mao said.
"I'm sorry about the problem earlier," Yomiko said. "We weren't aware that they were going to contact you until recently."
"Otherwise you'd have cut them off first so they couldn't give me any ideas," Mao asked noting the secretary's embarrassed smile. "Let's go, we have a room full of genetically engineered super-girls to talk to."
"Let's get to it," Yomiko said with a smile.
Mao and Yomiko walked into the auditorium, closing the door behind them and sealing it. Yomiko took a few sheets of blank paper from somewhere and tossed them at the door. Mao and the other girls watched as the paper stuck the door, holding tight to it.
Clearing her throat as Yomiko sat down to the side, Mao walked to the podium.
"Well," Mao said. "Here's the situation. We don't think we can place you all in the same place."
There was a small rumble of assent to that comment.
"We have foster families ready to take you in throughout the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Japan and Australia," Mao said. "Some are willing to take in three of you, but for most it is in ones or twos. I've been assured that these are families with a history of paranormal abilities and they will be able to help you learn about how to properly make use of your gifts."
"We don't already?" one of the girls asked.
"Teach you better," Mao clarified. "As to the medical situation. We've figured out what was done to the older of you."
She looked down at her papers and read them over.
"The docs say you're suffering from hyperthyroidism," Melissa said, reading the word carefully. "You've got too many thyroid hormones in your system and it's making your body tear itself apart. There's a permanent treatment, but you will have to take a pill once a day for the rest of your life."
A girl raised her hand and Mao pointed at her.
"Why would we go from once a month to once a day?" she asked.
"Because the treatment you're taking right now is expensive to make and expensive to keep," Mao said simply. "And from what I'm seeing here, it'll get less effective, so it'll kill you eventually anyway. Basically, it's easier to control a lack of a hormone than it is too much of something."
"The doctors are going to speak to each of you individually before you leave or have the surgery," Mao explained. "So you'll get all the real details then. Now, on to what I'm here for. I'm here to extend an offer of joining Mithril to Nimu Ichi and any of the Ni's who desire to join."
"What about the rest of us!" Sanya San asked, standing up. Other Sans stood up across the area. "The San batch are supreme in ability, unmatched in physicality. We are the best..."
"You're physically fourteen or fifteen," Mao said. "But I hear you're all no more than ten. That was a lot of debate over giving the Ni's and Ichi this offer. We don't send children into battle if we can avoid it. It doesn't mean you can't join later, and we'll be keeping tabs of you and providing tutors, but for now. Go be kids."
Reluctantly, the Sans sat down, crossing her arm.
"Now, let's get to the families available to take you in," Mao said.
It was sometime later as the briefing came to a close that Nimu started to walk up to Mao.
"If I accept the offer to join," she said. "Will you be sending me against Kodachi?"
"I can't say for sure," Mao said. "I don't make missions, but I can't help but assume that your experience in studying her organization will be considered."
Nimu nodded and started to turn away, but Mao stopped her.
"Nimu," she said. "They're trying to clear some red-tape. If you want, you can be cleared as guardian for three of your sisters."
"What would happen if I'm their guardian and I decide to join Mithril," she asked.
"Then I think Tessa is going to provide living quarters on base here for now," Mao said.
"From everything I can tell," Nimu said. "You've done well by me and my sisters. Thank you."
"It's what we're here for," Melissa said with a smile.
"Sergeant Major Melissa Mao," the tactical officer. "I was wondering if you could tell us what's going on here."
"The Captain asked me to brief these girls on what's coming from here," Mao said. "Commander Mardukas and Lt. Commander Kalinin have their own concerns and..."
"And you're the only remaining person on base cleared to have the full story on these girls," the intelligence operative finished for her with a smile.
"I was going to say, I wasn't busy because my team is on other assignments," Mao noted.
"Sergeant Major," the tactical officer said questioningly. "Who requested the operation to rescue these girls?"
"Intelligence," Mao said. "Don't you have the proposal and field reports?"
"Yes, we do," the intelligence man said. "But those weren't in until after the operation came down."
"That's not a first," the sergeant major said. "There's always off the books ops."
"But there've been a lot more recently," tactical said. "And curiously, it's hard to find who in either intelligence or tactical ordered these to begin with."
"That's the point of an off the books op, isn't it?" Mao asked. "Now I have a briefing to give."
"The briefing can wait," the tactical officer said. "There's another whole division of Mithril that's being kept off the books, isn't their Sergeant Major?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Mao said firmly.
"Oh good," a peppy new voice said. "I'm not late."
The three turned to see a cheerful seeming Japanese woman walking down the hallway. Her long black hair hung around her face as she pushed up the large glasses onto her nose. She was wearing a civilian uniform of some sort, long black skirt, white shirt and brown vest with a red necktie. Over that she had a tan overcoat.
"Who are you?" the tactical officer asked.
"I know you," the intelligence operative noted. "You were an agent for the British, some sort of retrieval specialist. Aren't you retired."
"Just like Commander Mardukas," the woman said with a smile. "Now, Commander Trautman and Mr. Graves, I have communiques here from Lord Malloy. You are both to report to headquarters immediately."
She handed each of them a folded sheet of paper and smiled, waiting for the two men to respond. As they looked over the messages, they came down to the end and frowned as they looked up at the newcomer.
"Are there any questions?" the woman asked.
"I suppose not," Mr. Graves said reluctantly, starting to walk away. Trautman was not far behind him.
"And you are?" Mao asked as they left.
"Yomiko Readman," the girl said turning toward Mao. "Psyche Division. Secretary to the Northeast Asian Regional Director."
"You're Miss Satomi's secretary," Melissa said with a smirk.
"That's right," Miss Readman said. "I have not yet met with Miss Satomi, so for the moment, I am here only to observe in her place or clarify any questions. This proceeding is under your command still."
"As long as you understand where things stand then," Mao said.
"I'm sorry about the problem earlier," Yomiko said. "We weren't aware that they were going to contact you until recently."
"Otherwise you'd have cut them off first so they couldn't give me any ideas," Mao asked noting the secretary's embarrassed smile. "Let's go, we have a room full of genetically engineered super-girls to talk to."
"Let's get to it," Yomiko said with a smile.
Mao and Yomiko walked into the auditorium, closing the door behind them and sealing it. Yomiko took a few sheets of blank paper from somewhere and tossed them at the door. Mao and the other girls watched as the paper stuck the door, holding tight to it.
Clearing her throat as Yomiko sat down to the side, Mao walked to the podium.
"Well," Mao said. "Here's the situation. We don't think we can place you all in the same place."
There was a small rumble of assent to that comment.
"We have foster families ready to take you in throughout the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Japan and Australia," Mao said. "Some are willing to take in three of you, but for most it is in ones or twos. I've been assured that these are families with a history of paranormal abilities and they will be able to help you learn about how to properly make use of your gifts."
"We don't already?" one of the girls asked.
"Teach you better," Mao clarified. "As to the medical situation. We've figured out what was done to the older of you."
She looked down at her papers and read them over.
"The docs say you're suffering from hyperthyroidism," Melissa said, reading the word carefully. "You've got too many thyroid hormones in your system and it's making your body tear itself apart. There's a permanent treatment, but you will have to take a pill once a day for the rest of your life."
A girl raised her hand and Mao pointed at her.
"Why would we go from once a month to once a day?" she asked.
"Because the treatment you're taking right now is expensive to make and expensive to keep," Mao said simply. "And from what I'm seeing here, it'll get less effective, so it'll kill you eventually anyway. Basically, it's easier to control a lack of a hormone than it is too much of something."
"The doctors are going to speak to each of you individually before you leave or have the surgery," Mao explained. "So you'll get all the real details then. Now, on to what I'm here for. I'm here to extend an offer of joining Mithril to Nimu Ichi and any of the Ni's who desire to join."
"What about the rest of us!" Sanya San asked, standing up. Other Sans stood up across the area. "The San batch are supreme in ability, unmatched in physicality. We are the best..."
"You're physically fourteen or fifteen," Mao said. "But I hear you're all no more than ten. That was a lot of debate over giving the Ni's and Ichi this offer. We don't send children into battle if we can avoid it. It doesn't mean you can't join later, and we'll be keeping tabs of you and providing tutors, but for now. Go be kids."
Reluctantly, the Sans sat down, crossing her arm.
"Now, let's get to the families available to take you in," Mao said.
It was sometime later as the briefing came to a close that Nimu started to walk up to Mao.
"If I accept the offer to join," she said. "Will you be sending me against Kodachi?"
"I can't say for sure," Mao said. "I don't make missions, but I can't help but assume that your experience in studying her organization will be considered."
Nimu nodded and started to turn away, but Mao stopped her.
"Nimu," she said. "They're trying to clear some red-tape. If you want, you can be cleared as guardian for three of your sisters."
"What would happen if I'm their guardian and I decide to join Mithril," she asked.
"Then I think Tessa is going to provide living quarters on base here for now," Mao said.
"From everything I can tell," Nimu said. "You've done well by me and my sisters. Thank you."
"It's what we're here for," Melissa said with a smile.
Ranma looked down from the hotel balcony to see the teenagers moving down to the beach again Kurz and Sousuke were both there. She smelled a burst of sulfur and turned to look over at Mara appearing on the balcony.
"How long have you been here?" Ranma asked.
"Off and on," Mara said carefully. "Naiki's spoiling to go off hunting Hecate."
"I know," Ranma said, bitterly. "My kids are funny that way."
"That's why I'm here," Mara said. "A lightning storm wiped a military base in Korea off the map a few days ago. I understand your children were held there a few months ago."
Ranma sat down on the balcony railing.
"He attacked that base?" Ranma asked disappointed. "They don't present a threat. He has no reason to attack them."
"There's one reason," Mara said. "Your human carapaces, these machines you use to enhance your chi. We haven't used such weapons since the Doublet System was put into place. With such a thing, even a third category God or Demon can challenge the first category."
"And he saw one there," Ranma noted. "Thank you, Mara. And your reason for doing this?"
"Because I'm a little tired of walking on eggshells around you," Mara said honestly.
A knock came on the door and Ranma looked toward it, standing up from the balcony and walking across the room.
"Company calling?" Mara asked casually.
"I need to explain some things to some people," Ranma said, opening the door to reveal Akane and Ryuu.
Akane looked past Ranma to the blonde in the balcony and frowned.
"Are we interrupting something?" she asked with an arched eyebrow.
"I already have enough Satomi attention. Speaking of which," Mara said. "Is there a way to get your daughter to stop grabbing my butt? I'm supposed to be her teacher. not her squeeze toy."
"Dye your hair," Ranma said over her shoulder. "Akane, Ryuu, this is Mara."
"Ranma," Akane said. "She reeks of black magic."
"That's because she's a demon," the red-head said. "Mara, do you mind, this is private."
"Right, going," Mara said swiftly before vanishing in a puff of smoke. "I think Naiki's planning on visiting Persephone today, I'll go with her to make sure she comes right back."
"Thank you again," Ranma said.
"Why are you dealing with demons?" Akane demanded stepping forward.
"Naiki's a demon, isn't she," Ryuu said. "She has somewhat the same sort of aura."
"And Eija's a goddess," Ranma said. "I meant to tell you this before there was any issue. Things have...gotten in the way."
Ranma gestured for them to come and sit down.
Akane looked around and immediately noticed the paper charms on the wall securing privacy against eavesdropping. She moved to sit on one of the couches, Ryuu sitting beside her.
"I learned about all this a few weeks after we had dinner at Kasumi's," Ranma said. "So that's why I didn't tell you anything. I just didn't know."
"Didn't know what?" Akane asked.
"Who the fathers of my children were," Ranma said.
<HR>
Naiki paced a bit as she waited. Eija had given her the telephone number for the Temple of Fates, but she wanted to talk to Persephone face to face.
Mara had said she could help Naiki teleport there, especially since the young demoness needed to practice that anyway, but she hadn't told Naiki how yet. So she was stuck wasting her time with waiting.
Of course she knew why Mara was doing it this way. Her mentor didn't want her running off after Hecate when she got the information. Mara was as bad as her mother in that way.
The burst of smoke next to her announced the arrival of her mentor.
"Okay," Mara said. "We're ready to go."
"So, you're going to teach me how to teleport?" Naiki asked.
"Not yet," the older demoness said. "I'm just going to teleport you over there, so you know what it's like. I'll teach you later."
Naiki crossed her arms and pouted.
"Doesn't work kid," Mara said with a smirk. "Now, take my hand...and just my hand."
Mara gingerly held out her hand and arched the rest of her body away from it.
With a disappointed look, Naiki reached out to take Mara's hand. The martial artist opened her senses up and watched carefully how the other demon was about to work the pishogue.
"Here we go," Mara said.
The demonic energy twisted out, like it had when they'd come from Nifelheim to Earth. Only this time, instead of moving in a spiral through the barrier between the two realms, Mara and Naiki's energy twisted across the edge, skipping like a stone over a lake.
For a brief moment, she smelled the comfortable scent of Nifelheim's sulfurous air and then they were coming back into the thinner air of Earth. As smoke cleared the scene of a Tokyo street came into view around them.
Standing up above them was a hill with a walled compound carrying a shrine on top.
"This is the Temple of the Fates," Mara said. "It's not a place you and I can just walk into. There are wards, luck charms and a damn annoying robot."
"So we just sit out here and wait?" Naiki asked.
"There's a phone over there," Mara said, pointing down the street. "You have the number, call and tell them you're here."
That didn't seem necessary as the door opened and a tall, tanned woman with platinum hair walked out and froze on seeing Mara standing there.
"Mara, what in Kami-Sama's name are you doin...gack!" Urd declared as the other demon slipped up close to her.
"Mmmm, that scent," Naiki said. "You're related to Hild-sama aren't you."
"Urd is Hild's daughter," Mara said with a smirk as she watched Naiki inspect the confused goddess.
"Would you like a virgin sacrifice, Urd-sama?" Naiki asked sweetly.
"Passionate...little thing isn't she," Urd noted.
"Hild-sama said exactly the same thing," Naiki responded excitedly.
"Urd!" a childish voice declared. "What are you doing in the middle of the..."
Skuld stopped as she noticed Mara and immediately backed away reaching for a hammer.
"What are you doing here?" Skuld demanded.
Urd pushed Naiki away, or tried at least, finding the green-haired demoness somewhat flexible.
"I'm here with her," Mara said, pointing to Naiki. "She needs to talk to Persephone."
The last bit was emphasized loudly, bringing a sudden dawning expression to Naiki's face. Reluctantly, she stepped away from Urd and looked toward the little kid with the mechanical hammer.
"Well, later, Urd-san," Naiki said with a longing smile then turning toward Skuld. "Hey, kid, is Persephone here?"
Urd sidled over toward Mara and whispered toward her childhood friend turned rival agent.
"You enjoyed that, didn't you?" Urd accused.
"I'm looking at thirty minutes or more of her not pawing me," Mara said.
She frowned at that comment and started to work it out, she was a little bit behind Urd on that thought.
"That means you think I'm more attractive than you are," Urd said with a smirk.
Meanwhile, Skuld was trying to shift her hammer forward or back as Naiki held it solid in her hand and continued to talk to her.
Keiichi walked out to see what the disruption was about and sighed in frustration as he saw two demons standing past the gate.
"It's going to be one of those days," he said.
<HR>
Deimosu stepped out of the gate, alone this time. Yonjuu had stayed back to make sure Yaku was safe and opened the gate on time. Deimosu had to admit that he could actually have used her this time.
The factory in front of him was small compared to others he'd found himself sneaking through in the past. Abandoned factories were a favorite place for cultists to congregate and carry out their rituals.
It was almost familiar territory.
Deimosu doubted that this particular factory was on any address lists. It was rather deep in the mountains somewhere in Russia, next to a quarry or mine of some sort, another favorite of fanatics-r-we.
Like his mother, they had banked primarily on being unnoticed. There was security, but not much. From what he could tell, they probably ran a skeleton crew to keep the number of people that knew about this place to a minimum.
Which was just perfect for him.
He slipped down through the trees into the small valley, moving through the shadows.
<HR>
"Gods and demons," Akane said shaking her head. "Only you, Ranma."
"I think the problem is that it isn't only me," Ranma told them. "When it was Nerima, I was the focus. This time, I was just a stepping stone. I'm already discarded and forgotten."
She took a deep breath.
"There were times I hoped it would stay that way," Ranma muttered.
"Everybody who's ignored you has a tendency to lose," Ryuu reminded her.
Ranma nodded to that with a slight smile.
"That's still mostly true," she agreed. "And we'll see about that later."
"Eija's a goddess, Naiki's a demoness," Akane said. "What about Deimosu?"
Ranma leaned back.
"Deimosu's gone looking to avenge me," Ranma said. "He found out somehow. You can't find him with magic, though I still tried, and he's been trained to survive in the wild, so he's not going to show up on the grid."
"At least he can't get off the island without..." Akane started to say before stopping herself. "Wait, what am I saying. I'll bet he can swim across the Sea of Japan, can't he?"
"Possibly," Ranma noted.
"Are you just waiting then?" Ryuu asked. "If it was me..."
"Tell, me Ryuu," Ranma said. "You do work for Psyche, don't you?"
"I've freelanced a couple of times for them," Ryuu said. "Last thing I got from them was just to keep an eye out for..."
"A six-foot tall Greek-Japanese boy, about seventeen years old," Ranma said. "Right, I put that out."
"You're Psych?" Akane asked.
"Yeah, I handle the requests for this region now," Ranma said. "Moving up in the world. I've had some leads, but so far it's either been nothing or too late. He was in a town fair getting chased by some girls that ended up being Kodachi's daughters, then he vanished."
Ranma glanced toward where Mara had vanished.
"Mara told me that something that sounded like it could be him happened in North Korea a couple of days ago," Ranma said. "I'll be putting together a mission for that just now, but he'll probably be gone already."
Ranma sighed.
"I might be able to find him if I picked up and left," she said. "But I can't just pick up and leave anymore."
"I'll see if anybody has heard anything strange," Akane said. "I have decent clearance. I can get a look at some reports for you."
"Do that, please," Ranma said.
<HR>
Persephone vaguely remembered what a teenager was like. It had been more than fifty years since any of her children had been through that phase, but she was currently having less than fond memories of that time.
Naiki was here, on an important errand. An errand with personal importance to Naiki. And yet, she couldn't seem to take her eyes off of Urd.
"So, I understand you have an interest in Miss Tokiwa," Persephone said.
Attention was instantly off Urd. Persephone smiled knowingly. That would be a somewhat touchy situation.
"Who s...umm, what are you talking about?" Naiki asked.
Mara produced a notebook and started writing something down.
"Oh," Belldandy said. "Kyoko-chan? She was very nice."
The other goddess smiled as she passed out cups of tea to everybody at the table.
"Now, before we go on to the important information," Persephone said. "Naiki, do you have a telepathic link with someone the way Eija does."
"Yeah," the sea demoness said.
"Is she listening right now?" the Queen of the Dead asked.
"Let me check," Naiki said.
<HR>
TESSA! TESSA! I NEED YOU TO PAY ATTENTION TO SOMETHING! ARE YOU THERE?
Captain Testarossa picked up her head from her desk and rolled her eyes.
Naiki, remember what I said about volume control?
<HR>
"Nope, she's not listening," Naiki said bold-facedly.
Ah the youth who thought they could fool their elders.
"Well then," Persephone said, "I suppose it's safe to start dealing with your business then."
"That's it?" Naiki said. "You're just going to turn it over, just because I ask?"
The various goddesses at the table held an embarrassed silence and even Mara pretended not to here the question.
"Nifelheim and Asgard do not share information," Belldandy said with clear regret for the situation.
"But that's not what's happening here," Persephone said. "Right now, I'm sharing information with my granddaughter and her teacher."
"But, I'm a..." Naiki stopped as several people cleared their throats. "Could someone explain this to me?"
"Perhaps later," Persephone said, looking over toward Mara.
<HR>
Deimosu had been right about the security measures. And most, if not all, the security and workers were unconscious now. He had free run of the factory.
There were several papers and files about how the Arm-Slaves being put together in the factory. There were only two or three in the process of being completed right now. And it didn't look like assembly went quickly with the small group of techs and workers.
He saw some of the components for the lambda driver ready to place onto one of the ASes, great spikes of metal that were at least ten feet in length. He wasn't about to get those out of here.
Frowning, Deimosu looked to the schematics he found.
"I'll have to settle for these," he said frowning. "Though, I think I can spend some time on those..."
"How long have you been here?" Ranma asked.
"Off and on," Mara said carefully. "Naiki's spoiling to go off hunting Hecate."
"I know," Ranma said, bitterly. "My kids are funny that way."
"That's why I'm here," Mara said. "A lightning storm wiped a military base in Korea off the map a few days ago. I understand your children were held there a few months ago."
Ranma sat down on the balcony railing.
"He attacked that base?" Ranma asked disappointed. "They don't present a threat. He has no reason to attack them."
"There's one reason," Mara said. "Your human carapaces, these machines you use to enhance your chi. We haven't used such weapons since the Doublet System was put into place. With such a thing, even a third category God or Demon can challenge the first category."
"And he saw one there," Ranma noted. "Thank you, Mara. And your reason for doing this?"
"Because I'm a little tired of walking on eggshells around you," Mara said honestly.
A knock came on the door and Ranma looked toward it, standing up from the balcony and walking across the room.
"Company calling?" Mara asked casually.
"I need to explain some things to some people," Ranma said, opening the door to reveal Akane and Ryuu.
Akane looked past Ranma to the blonde in the balcony and frowned.
"Are we interrupting something?" she asked with an arched eyebrow.
"I already have enough Satomi attention. Speaking of which," Mara said. "Is there a way to get your daughter to stop grabbing my butt? I'm supposed to be her teacher. not her squeeze toy."
"Dye your hair," Ranma said over her shoulder. "Akane, Ryuu, this is Mara."
"Ranma," Akane said. "She reeks of black magic."
"That's because she's a demon," the red-head said. "Mara, do you mind, this is private."
"Right, going," Mara said swiftly before vanishing in a puff of smoke. "I think Naiki's planning on visiting Persephone today, I'll go with her to make sure she comes right back."
"Thank you again," Ranma said.
"Why are you dealing with demons?" Akane demanded stepping forward.
"Naiki's a demon, isn't she," Ryuu said. "She has somewhat the same sort of aura."
"And Eija's a goddess," Ranma said. "I meant to tell you this before there was any issue. Things have...gotten in the way."
Ranma gestured for them to come and sit down.
Akane looked around and immediately noticed the paper charms on the wall securing privacy against eavesdropping. She moved to sit on one of the couches, Ryuu sitting beside her.
"I learned about all this a few weeks after we had dinner at Kasumi's," Ranma said. "So that's why I didn't tell you anything. I just didn't know."
"Didn't know what?" Akane asked.
"Who the fathers of my children were," Ranma said.
<HR>
Naiki paced a bit as she waited. Eija had given her the telephone number for the Temple of Fates, but she wanted to talk to Persephone face to face.
Mara had said she could help Naiki teleport there, especially since the young demoness needed to practice that anyway, but she hadn't told Naiki how yet. So she was stuck wasting her time with waiting.
Of course she knew why Mara was doing it this way. Her mentor didn't want her running off after Hecate when she got the information. Mara was as bad as her mother in that way.
The burst of smoke next to her announced the arrival of her mentor.
"Okay," Mara said. "We're ready to go."
"So, you're going to teach me how to teleport?" Naiki asked.
"Not yet," the older demoness said. "I'm just going to teleport you over there, so you know what it's like. I'll teach you later."
Naiki crossed her arms and pouted.
"Doesn't work kid," Mara said with a smirk. "Now, take my hand...and just my hand."
Mara gingerly held out her hand and arched the rest of her body away from it.
With a disappointed look, Naiki reached out to take Mara's hand. The martial artist opened her senses up and watched carefully how the other demon was about to work the pishogue.
"Here we go," Mara said.
The demonic energy twisted out, like it had when they'd come from Nifelheim to Earth. Only this time, instead of moving in a spiral through the barrier between the two realms, Mara and Naiki's energy twisted across the edge, skipping like a stone over a lake.
For a brief moment, she smelled the comfortable scent of Nifelheim's sulfurous air and then they were coming back into the thinner air of Earth. As smoke cleared the scene of a Tokyo street came into view around them.
Standing up above them was a hill with a walled compound carrying a shrine on top.
"This is the Temple of the Fates," Mara said. "It's not a place you and I can just walk into. There are wards, luck charms and a damn annoying robot."
"So we just sit out here and wait?" Naiki asked.
"There's a phone over there," Mara said, pointing down the street. "You have the number, call and tell them you're here."
That didn't seem necessary as the door opened and a tall, tanned woman with platinum hair walked out and froze on seeing Mara standing there.
"Mara, what in Kami-Sama's name are you doin...gack!" Urd declared as the other demon slipped up close to her.
"Mmmm, that scent," Naiki said. "You're related to Hild-sama aren't you."
"Urd is Hild's daughter," Mara said with a smirk as she watched Naiki inspect the confused goddess.
"Would you like a virgin sacrifice, Urd-sama?" Naiki asked sweetly.
"Passionate...little thing isn't she," Urd noted.
"Hild-sama said exactly the same thing," Naiki responded excitedly.
"Urd!" a childish voice declared. "What are you doing in the middle of the..."
Skuld stopped as she noticed Mara and immediately backed away reaching for a hammer.
"What are you doing here?" Skuld demanded.
Urd pushed Naiki away, or tried at least, finding the green-haired demoness somewhat flexible.
"I'm here with her," Mara said, pointing to Naiki. "She needs to talk to Persephone."
The last bit was emphasized loudly, bringing a sudden dawning expression to Naiki's face. Reluctantly, she stepped away from Urd and looked toward the little kid with the mechanical hammer.
"Well, later, Urd-san," Naiki said with a longing smile then turning toward Skuld. "Hey, kid, is Persephone here?"
Urd sidled over toward Mara and whispered toward her childhood friend turned rival agent.
"You enjoyed that, didn't you?" Urd accused.
"I'm looking at thirty minutes or more of her not pawing me," Mara said.
She frowned at that comment and started to work it out, she was a little bit behind Urd on that thought.
"That means you think I'm more attractive than you are," Urd said with a smirk.
Meanwhile, Skuld was trying to shift her hammer forward or back as Naiki held it solid in her hand and continued to talk to her.
Keiichi walked out to see what the disruption was about and sighed in frustration as he saw two demons standing past the gate.
"It's going to be one of those days," he said.
<HR>
Deimosu stepped out of the gate, alone this time. Yonjuu had stayed back to make sure Yaku was safe and opened the gate on time. Deimosu had to admit that he could actually have used her this time.
The factory in front of him was small compared to others he'd found himself sneaking through in the past. Abandoned factories were a favorite place for cultists to congregate and carry out their rituals.
It was almost familiar territory.
Deimosu doubted that this particular factory was on any address lists. It was rather deep in the mountains somewhere in Russia, next to a quarry or mine of some sort, another favorite of fanatics-r-we.
Like his mother, they had banked primarily on being unnoticed. There was security, but not much. From what he could tell, they probably ran a skeleton crew to keep the number of people that knew about this place to a minimum.
Which was just perfect for him.
He slipped down through the trees into the small valley, moving through the shadows.
<HR>
"Gods and demons," Akane said shaking her head. "Only you, Ranma."
"I think the problem is that it isn't only me," Ranma told them. "When it was Nerima, I was the focus. This time, I was just a stepping stone. I'm already discarded and forgotten."
She took a deep breath.
"There were times I hoped it would stay that way," Ranma muttered.
"Everybody who's ignored you has a tendency to lose," Ryuu reminded her.
Ranma nodded to that with a slight smile.
"That's still mostly true," she agreed. "And we'll see about that later."
"Eija's a goddess, Naiki's a demoness," Akane said. "What about Deimosu?"
Ranma leaned back.
"Deimosu's gone looking to avenge me," Ranma said. "He found out somehow. You can't find him with magic, though I still tried, and he's been trained to survive in the wild, so he's not going to show up on the grid."
"At least he can't get off the island without..." Akane started to say before stopping herself. "Wait, what am I saying. I'll bet he can swim across the Sea of Japan, can't he?"
"Possibly," Ranma noted.
"Are you just waiting then?" Ryuu asked. "If it was me..."
"Tell, me Ryuu," Ranma said. "You do work for Psyche, don't you?"
"I've freelanced a couple of times for them," Ryuu said. "Last thing I got from them was just to keep an eye out for..."
"A six-foot tall Greek-Japanese boy, about seventeen years old," Ranma said. "Right, I put that out."
"You're Psych?" Akane asked.
"Yeah, I handle the requests for this region now," Ranma said. "Moving up in the world. I've had some leads, but so far it's either been nothing or too late. He was in a town fair getting chased by some girls that ended up being Kodachi's daughters, then he vanished."
Ranma glanced toward where Mara had vanished.
"Mara told me that something that sounded like it could be him happened in North Korea a couple of days ago," Ranma said. "I'll be putting together a mission for that just now, but he'll probably be gone already."
Ranma sighed.
"I might be able to find him if I picked up and left," she said. "But I can't just pick up and leave anymore."
"I'll see if anybody has heard anything strange," Akane said. "I have decent clearance. I can get a look at some reports for you."
"Do that, please," Ranma said.
<HR>
Persephone vaguely remembered what a teenager was like. It had been more than fifty years since any of her children had been through that phase, but she was currently having less than fond memories of that time.
Naiki was here, on an important errand. An errand with personal importance to Naiki. And yet, she couldn't seem to take her eyes off of Urd.
"So, I understand you have an interest in Miss Tokiwa," Persephone said.
Attention was instantly off Urd. Persephone smiled knowingly. That would be a somewhat touchy situation.
"Who s...umm, what are you talking about?" Naiki asked.
Mara produced a notebook and started writing something down.
"Oh," Belldandy said. "Kyoko-chan? She was very nice."
The other goddess smiled as she passed out cups of tea to everybody at the table.
"Now, before we go on to the important information," Persephone said. "Naiki, do you have a telepathic link with someone the way Eija does."
"Yeah," the sea demoness said.
"Is she listening right now?" the Queen of the Dead asked.
"Let me check," Naiki said.
<HR>
TESSA! TESSA! I NEED YOU TO PAY ATTENTION TO SOMETHING! ARE YOU THERE?
Captain Testarossa picked up her head from her desk and rolled her eyes.
Naiki, remember what I said about volume control?
<HR>
"Nope, she's not listening," Naiki said bold-facedly.
Ah the youth who thought they could fool their elders.
"Well then," Persephone said, "I suppose it's safe to start dealing with your business then."
"That's it?" Naiki said. "You're just going to turn it over, just because I ask?"
The various goddesses at the table held an embarrassed silence and even Mara pretended not to here the question.
"Nifelheim and Asgard do not share information," Belldandy said with clear regret for the situation.
"But that's not what's happening here," Persephone said. "Right now, I'm sharing information with my granddaughter and her teacher."
"But, I'm a..." Naiki stopped as several people cleared their throats. "Could someone explain this to me?"
"Perhaps later," Persephone said, looking over toward Mara.
<HR>
Deimosu had been right about the security measures. And most, if not all, the security and workers were unconscious now. He had free run of the factory.
There were several papers and files about how the Arm-Slaves being put together in the factory. There were only two or three in the process of being completed right now. And it didn't look like assembly went quickly with the small group of techs and workers.
He saw some of the components for the lambda driver ready to place onto one of the ASes, great spikes of metal that were at least ten feet in length. He wasn't about to get those out of here.
Frowning, Deimosu looked to the schematics he found.
"I'll have to settle for these," he said frowning. "Though, I think I can spend some time on those..."
Deimosu looked at the plans he'd grabbed and turned them one way or the other. A scroll showing martial arts techniques he could read without trouble. He had a little bit more trouble with magical diagrams or the Ba Gua chart.
Which probably gave Yonjuu's panda accusation more than a little credence. As much as he didn't want to admit it.
However, the engineering and circuitry schematics he couldn't make much sense out of. The similarities of lines of power between magic circles and the circuitry was about the only thing that made much sense.
He couldn't tell if he was looking at a computer system or the lambda driver or something else.
Yonjuu leaned over it with him was clearly looking knowing and interested only because she wanted to hide how lost she was.
"So...this is..." Yonjuu asked.
"There's power here," Deimosu said. "And it runs through these lines channeled one way or another dependent on what the machine's trying to accomplish."
"And that is?" Yonjuu asked.
"I don't really know," Deimosu grumbled. "Damn it, this is useless, a waste of time."
He tossed the blueprints aside irritably, not noticing as they landed behind him, covering the holodisplay coming off the Athenian computer, neatly interrupting Yaku's game.
"Hey," Yaku said, looking over at the two older kids with a pouting expression.
She moved to pull the blueprints off and get back to her game playing or otherwise fiddling about with the computer. However, as she looked over the plans, she paused.
"Cool," she said. "Is this what you want to make?"
She focused on the designs for a little bit, staring at them. And then the whispers started to come as her eyes faded out.
******
On Earth, in Meridia, Tessa had her own project. The Danaan had a transfer and response omni-sphere at it's heart. In extreme circumstances, she, or another Whispered, could take the place of the AI and control the ship directly, virtually become the ship's mind. That connection was accomplished by putting oneself into an immersion tube.
It was uncomfortable, especially for any Whispered that had forcibly spent time in a sensory deprivation tank to provoke a response of their abilities. However it was the best they had.
It was what she had to set up her little project.
She'd pulled one of the spare tubes out of supply and had been tinkering on it for
She was close to something, perhaps it was time for an extra perspective.
The Captain leaned back and reluctantly reached into the Whispers.
She had the mechanics mostly down, but there was a lot that she needed to be certain of. Software and genetics especially.
The world vanished around her as equations and numbers flowed past her mental avatar. Whispered words and phrases surrounded her in a confusing mass. However, she'd been in this state many times, and she knew how delve for the information she needed.
As usual, she had the feeling that she wasn't alone in the Whispers.
Tessa turned about as a sea-green form appeared next to her while she was sorting through the whispers. She was about to turn aside to warn Naiki to be quiet, but didn't have to for once.
I'll stay quiet and watch your back, Naiki sent her simply. Eija says theirs something nasty in here.
Thanks, Tessa said, turning back to her work.
******
Yonjuu and Deimosu turned to look at Yaku as she started mumbling quietly.
"Yaku, are you okay?" Deimosu asked, coming up to her side.
He turned to look at Yonjuu.
"Is this normal?" he asked.
"I don't know many Go's, but I've never seen this happen," the girl said.
"Interlinking energy matrix," she muttered. "Reserve energy build up, telepathic energy exchange. Crystalline structures of most compatible nature to hominid evolutionary paths."
As she spoke, she mechanically turned the blueprints over and started drawing.
"What the hell is going on?" Yonjuu asked.
"I don't know," Deimosu said, walking to his small collection of scrolls, "but I'm going to find out."
******
Sofia would have smiled if her body wasn't frozen in a crystal, dead for all intents and purposes. Only the crystal and the TAROS connected to it maintaining her mind and soul past that physical death.
There was no way Tessa could find what she wanted to find. Not by herself. Sofia had disconnected all the pieces of the device that the captain wanted to build. Only Kaname could find it alone, and that was because she was the keystone of the network.
Which is what Sofia wanted to be.
Sofia spent all her time in the Whispers that came from Chidori, she knew it better than any other Whispered. She knew it so well that she had been faking herself as the keystone. Even facing Chidori as such.
Then she noticed another presence in the Whispers, coming close to where Testarossa was.
The young one. Sofia smiled, she liked Yaku Go, such childish innocence. And she was never looking for anything that Sofia needed to worry about. Last time it was merely programming schematics. Sofia liked to help her.
Out of curiosity, she took a moment to see what Yaku was looking for.
And this time it wasn't anything harmless. And it was coming at just the wrong time. When Tessa was looking for the other half of the puzzle.
At any moment, the two would meet in the middle and the secret to blocking the negative aspects of Resonance would be in the hands of at least two Whispered. From there it would only spread.
Sofia couldn't have that until she'd taken Chidori's body and become the keystone.
She had to stop one of them, at least. Yaku Go, young, trusting and alone. Or Tessa Testarossa, guarded and experienced.
The bodiless spirit looked toward Yaku and then turned to face Testarossa.
******
Naiki flinched as a flurry of whispers surrounded her, growing louder and pushing in on her.
Tessa! Naiki snapped. Whatever you're doing, do it fast.
Tessa turned around and saw the swirling numbers and equations coming in around Naiki like antibodies trying to seal off a virus.
The demoness concentrated on herself and let loose a raw burst of energy, disrupting the swirling forms momentarily, but they reformed quickly.
You can't have this, Teletha Testarossa, a soft woman's voice said. Nobody can have this until I'm ready.
Another mental avatar appeared in front of Tessa, a slim, expressionless figure whose mouth did not open as her thoughts came out.
It reached out a hand toward Tessa a cold expression like a smile in her eyes.
I'm not new to this! Tessa responded calmly. A burst of mental energy formed out of her as she furrowed her brow and pushed Sofia away.
Naiki's sea green form, plastered with dark things from the Whispers rushed around to come between Tessa and Sofia.
I got this Naiki snapped.
What have you got, demon? Sofia asked, mouth still not moving. You are an unwanted element in this system. The antivirus will keep coming and coming until you are neutralized.
Yeah, it comes in violent, overwhelming and tumultuous flow, Naiki said wearily. And I'm the demon of Torrent.
Suddenly, the antivirus of attacking equations ripped past Naiki flowing forward and around Sofia in a cloud like that attacking the demoness.
Sofia's eyes reflected a grimace as she, arms crossed, focused her mind on diverting the flow of diverted antivirus at least a little. Some still flowed onto her in places. They didn't stick long, eventually recognizing Sofia as part of the system. However, as long as Naiki was still standing, Sofia was prevented from attacking Tessa.
But Tessa wouldn't finish before the anti-virals that were attacking Naiki took the demoness out of the fight.
Then Sofia noted one of the equations peel of Naiki and her eyes widened fractionally.
The demoness was part of the system somehow, but that was impossible.
It would also make the fight longer than it should be. She glanced back, further in the Whispers, to see how close Yaku was to reaching Tessa's position. She could still take the girl...if she had to.
Give the impression she was retreating and the demoness would back off, leaving her clear to destroy Yaku. Unfortunate though that was.
The first thing she saw however, wasn't Yaku but two other figures. Neither of them was an element, meaning they had come in the same way the demoness probably did at first, through a telepathic connection with a Whispered.
Naiki? the male figure, formed out of lightning from all appearances, declared.
Deimosu! the demoness responded, distracting her just long enough for Sofia to make another action.
The flow of antivirus erupted again, moving to attack the new figures. The demoness reacted, shifting from attacking Sofia to protecting herself and the others. Equations and numbers swirled around, not advancing or retreating.
What's going on? Deimosu asked, staying back from the cloud of equations.
Tessa's looking for something, Naiki said. This bitch doesn't want us to find whatever it is. A way to keep people from Resonating into each other.
The new female figure sat up at that.
Isn't that what you said let Kodachi eat us?</I> Yonjuu asked, she firmed up her face and didn't wait for an answer.
Diving forward through the cloud she winced as the antivirals latched onto her before she reached out and smashed her face into Sofia's expressionless image.
Don't touch her! Naiki shouted. That's how it starts.
Deimosu had already been moving and he barely reached Yonjuu in time to pull her away from the dark, gleeful look on the Sofia's face.
And then the demigod's lightning form lashed outward with a mental projection. It arched around Sofia, the smile in her eyes and arched toward Tessa, where the other two Whispereds were coming close to reaching each other.
And stopped by running into a wall of red blood that washed out over the area, pulling down to reveal a black figure with blood red eyes.
Naiki, Deimosu, Eija said. The spirits of the dead are my concern.
I am not dead, Sofia said, again her mouth not moving.
She flinched visibly then as Kaname's image appeared beside Tessa.
Eija reached out, ignoring the antivirals swarming toward her, Naiki already stretched at holding them off as it was. Then the bodiless Whispered felt the surge of power and invasion flow into her at Eija's will. All the whispers, all the equations and numbers. Everything she had known for all her existence was washed out in sea of red.
You're dead enough, Eija noted. And you will not hurt my friends.
Her mind clouded, Sofia lost direct control of the antivirals, and suddenly the demoness had full control of the torrent.
With a shriek of denial, Sofia fled and watched as Kaname moved to help Tessa and bridged the gap between Yaku Go and Tessa.
And then the secrets they needed came into piece.
******
Naiki came out of her trance and tumbled out of her seated position to the floor, panting and breathing heavily. She smelled her own blood covering her and coughed weakly.
"Naiki!" Eija gasped in her ear as the goddess came to her side. "Why did you take on a spirit without me? If I hadn't found you, I wouldn't have been able to help you."
"I thought I could handle it," Naiki muttered as she felt Eija's power reaching out to heal her.
Naiki, are you okay? Tessa's voice asked the demoness, for once echoing loudly through Naiki's pained mind.
"Am I fine?" Naiki asked Eija.
"No!" Eija snapped. "You're bleeding out of your eyes! But I think I can fix it."
Eija says I'm fine, Naiki sent Tessa.
Why are you such a terrible liar? Tessa demanded.
I'll be fine? Naiki asked.
Better
Kaname came running into the scene, Sousuke close behind her.
"What's going on?" she called. "I just barely caught the end of that. Is Naiki okay?"
"What is going on?" Sousuke asked. "Kaname said something about ghosts."
"Naiki was being reckless," Eija snapped. "They were in those...Whispers and whatever that ghost in there is attacked them. I hope it was worth it."
******
Yonjuu and Deimosu awoke from the mindscape and groaned as the pain came suddenly into awareness.
The sensor reached up to feel the trace of blood leaking from her nostrils and then lay back down groaning. Her head felt splitting and every muscle seemed sore and drained.
"I hate using magic," Deimosu groaned beside her. "At least I know what it looks like when my soul is attacked by antivirals now."
"Big Brother! Big Sister," Yaku gasped coming to their side and thumping them painfully in good cheer. "I know what to do to help Big Brother Deimosu!"
Apparently she was momentarily oblivious to the looks of pain on her elders' faces.
Which probably gave Yonjuu's panda accusation more than a little credence. As much as he didn't want to admit it.
However, the engineering and circuitry schematics he couldn't make much sense out of. The similarities of lines of power between magic circles and the circuitry was about the only thing that made much sense.
He couldn't tell if he was looking at a computer system or the lambda driver or something else.
Yonjuu leaned over it with him was clearly looking knowing and interested only because she wanted to hide how lost she was.
"So...this is..." Yonjuu asked.
"There's power here," Deimosu said. "And it runs through these lines channeled one way or another dependent on what the machine's trying to accomplish."
"And that is?" Yonjuu asked.
"I don't really know," Deimosu grumbled. "Damn it, this is useless, a waste of time."
He tossed the blueprints aside irritably, not noticing as they landed behind him, covering the holodisplay coming off the Athenian computer, neatly interrupting Yaku's game.
"Hey," Yaku said, looking over at the two older kids with a pouting expression.
She moved to pull the blueprints off and get back to her game playing or otherwise fiddling about with the computer. However, as she looked over the plans, she paused.
"Cool," she said. "Is this what you want to make?"
She focused on the designs for a little bit, staring at them. And then the whispers started to come as her eyes faded out.
******
On Earth, in Meridia, Tessa had her own project. The Danaan had a transfer and response omni-sphere at it's heart. In extreme circumstances, she, or another Whispered, could take the place of the AI and control the ship directly, virtually become the ship's mind. That connection was accomplished by putting oneself into an immersion tube.
It was uncomfortable, especially for any Whispered that had forcibly spent time in a sensory deprivation tank to provoke a response of their abilities. However it was the best they had.
It was what she had to set up her little project.
She'd pulled one of the spare tubes out of supply and had been tinkering on it for
She was close to something, perhaps it was time for an extra perspective.
The Captain leaned back and reluctantly reached into the Whispers.
She had the mechanics mostly down, but there was a lot that she needed to be certain of. Software and genetics especially.
The world vanished around her as equations and numbers flowed past her mental avatar. Whispered words and phrases surrounded her in a confusing mass. However, she'd been in this state many times, and she knew how delve for the information she needed.
As usual, she had the feeling that she wasn't alone in the Whispers.
Tessa turned about as a sea-green form appeared next to her while she was sorting through the whispers. She was about to turn aside to warn Naiki to be quiet, but didn't have to for once.
I'll stay quiet and watch your back, Naiki sent her simply. Eija says theirs something nasty in here.
Thanks, Tessa said, turning back to her work.
******
Yonjuu and Deimosu turned to look at Yaku as she started mumbling quietly.
"Yaku, are you okay?" Deimosu asked, coming up to her side.
He turned to look at Yonjuu.
"Is this normal?" he asked.
"I don't know many Go's, but I've never seen this happen," the girl said.
"Interlinking energy matrix," she muttered. "Reserve energy build up, telepathic energy exchange. Crystalline structures of most compatible nature to hominid evolutionary paths."
As she spoke, she mechanically turned the blueprints over and started drawing.
"What the hell is going on?" Yonjuu asked.
"I don't know," Deimosu said, walking to his small collection of scrolls, "but I'm going to find out."
******
Sofia would have smiled if her body wasn't frozen in a crystal, dead for all intents and purposes. Only the crystal and the TAROS connected to it maintaining her mind and soul past that physical death.
There was no way Tessa could find what she wanted to find. Not by herself. Sofia had disconnected all the pieces of the device that the captain wanted to build. Only Kaname could find it alone, and that was because she was the keystone of the network.
Which is what Sofia wanted to be.
Sofia spent all her time in the Whispers that came from Chidori, she knew it better than any other Whispered. She knew it so well that she had been faking herself as the keystone. Even facing Chidori as such.
Then she noticed another presence in the Whispers, coming close to where Testarossa was.
The young one. Sofia smiled, she liked Yaku Go, such childish innocence. And she was never looking for anything that Sofia needed to worry about. Last time it was merely programming schematics. Sofia liked to help her.
Out of curiosity, she took a moment to see what Yaku was looking for.
And this time it wasn't anything harmless. And it was coming at just the wrong time. When Tessa was looking for the other half of the puzzle.
At any moment, the two would meet in the middle and the secret to blocking the negative aspects of Resonance would be in the hands of at least two Whispered. From there it would only spread.
Sofia couldn't have that until she'd taken Chidori's body and become the keystone.
She had to stop one of them, at least. Yaku Go, young, trusting and alone. Or Tessa Testarossa, guarded and experienced.
The bodiless spirit looked toward Yaku and then turned to face Testarossa.
******
Naiki flinched as a flurry of whispers surrounded her, growing louder and pushing in on her.
Tessa! Naiki snapped. Whatever you're doing, do it fast.
Tessa turned around and saw the swirling numbers and equations coming in around Naiki like antibodies trying to seal off a virus.
The demoness concentrated on herself and let loose a raw burst of energy, disrupting the swirling forms momentarily, but they reformed quickly.
You can't have this, Teletha Testarossa, a soft woman's voice said. Nobody can have this until I'm ready.
Another mental avatar appeared in front of Tessa, a slim, expressionless figure whose mouth did not open as her thoughts came out.
It reached out a hand toward Tessa a cold expression like a smile in her eyes.
I'm not new to this! Tessa responded calmly. A burst of mental energy formed out of her as she furrowed her brow and pushed Sofia away.
Naiki's sea green form, plastered with dark things from the Whispers rushed around to come between Tessa and Sofia.
I got this Naiki snapped.
What have you got, demon? Sofia asked, mouth still not moving. You are an unwanted element in this system. The antivirus will keep coming and coming until you are neutralized.
Yeah, it comes in violent, overwhelming and tumultuous flow, Naiki said wearily. And I'm the demon of Torrent.
Suddenly, the antivirus of attacking equations ripped past Naiki flowing forward and around Sofia in a cloud like that attacking the demoness.
Sofia's eyes reflected a grimace as she, arms crossed, focused her mind on diverting the flow of diverted antivirus at least a little. Some still flowed onto her in places. They didn't stick long, eventually recognizing Sofia as part of the system. However, as long as Naiki was still standing, Sofia was prevented from attacking Tessa.
But Tessa wouldn't finish before the anti-virals that were attacking Naiki took the demoness out of the fight.
Then Sofia noted one of the equations peel of Naiki and her eyes widened fractionally.
The demoness was part of the system somehow, but that was impossible.
It would also make the fight longer than it should be. She glanced back, further in the Whispers, to see how close Yaku was to reaching Tessa's position. She could still take the girl...if she had to.
Give the impression she was retreating and the demoness would back off, leaving her clear to destroy Yaku. Unfortunate though that was.
The first thing she saw however, wasn't Yaku but two other figures. Neither of them was an element, meaning they had come in the same way the demoness probably did at first, through a telepathic connection with a Whispered.
Naiki? the male figure, formed out of lightning from all appearances, declared.
Deimosu! the demoness responded, distracting her just long enough for Sofia to make another action.
The flow of antivirus erupted again, moving to attack the new figures. The demoness reacted, shifting from attacking Sofia to protecting herself and the others. Equations and numbers swirled around, not advancing or retreating.
What's going on? Deimosu asked, staying back from the cloud of equations.
Tessa's looking for something, Naiki said. This bitch doesn't want us to find whatever it is. A way to keep people from Resonating into each other.
The new female figure sat up at that.
Isn't that what you said let Kodachi eat us?</I> Yonjuu asked, she firmed up her face and didn't wait for an answer.
Diving forward through the cloud she winced as the antivirals latched onto her before she reached out and smashed her face into Sofia's expressionless image.
Don't touch her! Naiki shouted. That's how it starts.
Deimosu had already been moving and he barely reached Yonjuu in time to pull her away from the dark, gleeful look on the Sofia's face.
And then the demigod's lightning form lashed outward with a mental projection. It arched around Sofia, the smile in her eyes and arched toward Tessa, where the other two Whispereds were coming close to reaching each other.
And stopped by running into a wall of red blood that washed out over the area, pulling down to reveal a black figure with blood red eyes.
Naiki, Deimosu, Eija said. The spirits of the dead are my concern.
I am not dead, Sofia said, again her mouth not moving.
She flinched visibly then as Kaname's image appeared beside Tessa.
Eija reached out, ignoring the antivirals swarming toward her, Naiki already stretched at holding them off as it was. Then the bodiless Whispered felt the surge of power and invasion flow into her at Eija's will. All the whispers, all the equations and numbers. Everything she had known for all her existence was washed out in sea of red.
You're dead enough, Eija noted. And you will not hurt my friends.
Her mind clouded, Sofia lost direct control of the antivirals, and suddenly the demoness had full control of the torrent.
With a shriek of denial, Sofia fled and watched as Kaname moved to help Tessa and bridged the gap between Yaku Go and Tessa.
And then the secrets they needed came into piece.
******
Naiki came out of her trance and tumbled out of her seated position to the floor, panting and breathing heavily. She smelled her own blood covering her and coughed weakly.
"Naiki!" Eija gasped in her ear as the goddess came to her side. "Why did you take on a spirit without me? If I hadn't found you, I wouldn't have been able to help you."
"I thought I could handle it," Naiki muttered as she felt Eija's power reaching out to heal her.
Naiki, are you okay? Tessa's voice asked the demoness, for once echoing loudly through Naiki's pained mind.
"Am I fine?" Naiki asked Eija.
"No!" Eija snapped. "You're bleeding out of your eyes! But I think I can fix it."
Eija says I'm fine, Naiki sent Tessa.
Why are you such a terrible liar? Tessa demanded.
I'll be fine? Naiki asked.
Better
Kaname came running into the scene, Sousuke close behind her.
"What's going on?" she called. "I just barely caught the end of that. Is Naiki okay?"
"What is going on?" Sousuke asked. "Kaname said something about ghosts."
"Naiki was being reckless," Eija snapped. "They were in those...Whispers and whatever that ghost in there is attacked them. I hope it was worth it."
******
Yonjuu and Deimosu awoke from the mindscape and groaned as the pain came suddenly into awareness.
The sensor reached up to feel the trace of blood leaking from her nostrils and then lay back down groaning. Her head felt splitting and every muscle seemed sore and drained.
"I hate using magic," Deimosu groaned beside her. "At least I know what it looks like when my soul is attacked by antivirals now."
"Big Brother! Big Sister," Yaku gasped coming to their side and thumping them painfully in good cheer. "I know what to do to help Big Brother Deimosu!"
Apparently she was momentarily oblivious to the looks of pain on her elders' faces.
Naiki lay back in bed, a warm damp cloth on her forehead as Ranma looked over her carefully.
"Looks like the same thing that used to happen when we cast spells," Ranma said. "The bleeding is new and worrying."
"I stopped the bleeding, Okaasan," Eija said.
Kyoko came back into the room, prompting Ranma to stop further diagnosis for the moment. The girl in the glasses sat at Naiki's side and replaced the cloth on Naiki's head.
"How'd you get so sick so fast?" Kyoko asked in a worried tone.
Outside, Ranma could hear Mizuki chatting with Kaname and Sousuke.
"This is like the worst vacation ever," she snapped. "Except for when we got hijacked by terrorists."
Kyoko started to pull a peach out of her bag and a small knife in the other hand.
"You'll be fine in little bit," Ranma told Naiki before turning toward Kyoko, who was now putting the peach and knife back in her bag.
"Can you give us..." Ranma started to say.
"Oh yes," Kyoko said. "Give me a moment and you can talk about being psychics and demigods."
Ranma, Eija and Naiki sat up straight and stared at Kyoko as she stood up and smiled at them before walking out of the room.
"She's...an interesting person," Eija said. "When did she figure out?"
"I'd like to know that as well, but I don't think it's something we'll figure out," Ranma said. "You said you saw Deimosu?"
"He was there," Naiki said, sitting up and groaning. "There was also a little girl and a girl with a big chest."
"I only caught the last part of the fight," Eija said.
"You were the last part of the fight," Naiki corrected.
"Yes, well," Eija said. "Anyway, I saw him too. He was a living spirit, all of them were."
Ranma took a deep, relieved breath.
"Anything saying where they were?" Ranma asked.
"Sorry, no," Eija said. "I was more concerned with the ghost. She was strong and she escaped. I had the sense that the attacks she was using were meant for me after our last encounter. She'll have something new next time."
"Combat doesn't leave much room for interrogation," Ranma agreed.
<I>I resonated with the girl briefly,</i> Tessa told Naiki, who winced at the headache. <I>I don't think they were on Earth.</I>
"Tessa says she doesn't think they were on Earth," Naiki said.
Ranma perked up at that and frowned.
"When he attacked Kodachi's facility, he came through some sort of flashing lights," Ranma said. "He'll have to open it again...and that I can watch for."
Ranma smiled at that. It was a smile of relief and eagerness.
<HR>
Yonjuu and Deimosu were both feeling a little bit better. The demigod was actually running through katas and keeping a calm face, though the sensor could smell the chemicals of a pain reaction despite the stoic attitude.
She would have stayed there watching Deimosu practicing and Yaku drawing, but then the little girl started walking straight into the labyrinth.
"What are you doing?" Yonjuu asked, standing up, a little too swiftly.
Deimosu stopped his katas and moved over as well, putting a hand on Yaku's shoulder.
"You can get lost in there," he warned.
"I want to see the crystal cave," Yaku said. "Then I can make this."
She showed them a drawing that looked like a bunch of childish blocks and circles.
"And that is?" Deimosu asked.
"It'll make Big Brother stronger!" Yaku said. "For a little bit...that other lady is making something better. But I can still help!"
"How much stronger?" Deimosu asked.
Yaku thought for a moment.
"A lot stronger!" she said finally.
"And how little bit will it last?" Yonjuu asked.
Yaku thought for a little longer.
"Just a little bit," she said.
"Is that more or less than a day?" the demigod asked.
"Ummm, yes," Yaku said.
"Our technical expert is a little girl," Yonjuu sighed. "Let's go, child, I'll take you to the crystal cave."
<HR>
"Might I ask what this is?" Commander Mardukas asked as he came into the workshop to see Tessa tinkering with the computers attached to a TAROS immersion tube.
"This is a first step," Tessa said. "It won't bring us up to the Gods and Demons alone, but it'll get rid of a problem we've been having. The next part can be added later, when we find something suitable for a power source."
"We're expecting battle with them, then?" Mardukas asked.
"I hope not," Tessa said. "But always better to be prepared. What did you need, Commander?"
"There's been a report of a mysterious fire in the Russian wilds," Mardukas said. "We commandeered a satellite for a pass and found this."
He handed over the pictures to Tessa who looked at them and frowned as she saw the unmistakable silhouette of a lambda drive equipped AS, though it was in pieces.
"Those are Venoms," Tessa said. "They've moved out of prototypes."
"From a report we have from Sergeant Sagara," Mardukas said. "They're using a drug to put their pilots in the right frame of mind to use the lambda driver."
"That corresponds with what we learned from Taku...the autopsy of the Behemoth pilot," Tessa said with a moment of quiet regret. "They don't care if their pilots are little unstable. As long as they're stable enough to carry out orders."
"And how do we keep up?" Mardukas asked. "We've already decided the drugs are counterproductive in the long term, and we can't train people quickly to use a lambda driver. So we can build Arms-Slaves, but we can't put people in them."
"I'd say Sousuke is turning out well so far," Tessa said. "I'll have to talk to Lord Malloy, if we're going to keep up without using the same chemicals, we need to change the training program to produce lambda pilots. That might mean unclassifying Psyche."
She looked over the pictures a little bit more, frowning.
"Maybe we'll have a bit of an edge of our own," Tessa said, looking back to her project. "In the meantime, Commander, I have some information for you and Lt Commander Kalinin."
She pointed toward a file on the table across from her.
"Hecate DisPater," he read the tab.
He opened up the dossier and started flipping through it, eyes widening.
<HR>
Mara was in the process of shifting through the information Persephone had provided Naiki while she listened. Naiki had later typed it up, apparently with Captain Testarossa's advice on how to put it together.
It was a long file, which befit the age and activity of the goddess in question.
Demons sealed, major conflicts involved in, contacts among the Gods, enemies among the Demons. Domain, skills, preferred spells, innate abilities, spells that she powered. Personality profile.
She was cut off from Yggdrasil now, by her own decision, that meant she couldn't be more than a skilled category two in power. It also meant she couldn't use any spells to borrow power from any other God.
However, the list of artifacts she'd gotten away with were more than a little worrisome.
Mara glanced over some of the demon names.
"Vritra," she said. "Almost killed by Hecate in one of the last major battles before the truce was called."
She frowned and went to the list of sealed demons, noting a pattern.
Hecate had sealed an abnormal number of demons before the truce was formalized, especially for a Goddess who so hated demons. What was disturbing was that she had "almost killed" family members of several of those sealed demons.
Persephone's records said these hostages had been returned after the truce was called. However, several of the names were demons she knew hadn't been seen in thousand of years.
With that in mind, Hecate started putting together a list of names. Most of them not the sort of old scorched earth demons they were looking for as problems, but demons with hostages.
As she was listing the names, something bugged her about that first one, Vritra, but she couldn't quite peg down what bothered her.
<HR>
Hecate unrolled the scroll in her hand, delivered by one of her personal minions. A hell hound in this case. Apparently there were things of interest going on in the human world. She wasn't convinced, but supposed that the Gods and Demons could be trying to track her down.
Probably a good idea to at least check.
"Looks like the same thing that used to happen when we cast spells," Ranma said. "The bleeding is new and worrying."
"I stopped the bleeding, Okaasan," Eija said.
Kyoko came back into the room, prompting Ranma to stop further diagnosis for the moment. The girl in the glasses sat at Naiki's side and replaced the cloth on Naiki's head.
"How'd you get so sick so fast?" Kyoko asked in a worried tone.
Outside, Ranma could hear Mizuki chatting with Kaname and Sousuke.
"This is like the worst vacation ever," she snapped. "Except for when we got hijacked by terrorists."
Kyoko started to pull a peach out of her bag and a small knife in the other hand.
"You'll be fine in little bit," Ranma told Naiki before turning toward Kyoko, who was now putting the peach and knife back in her bag.
"Can you give us..." Ranma started to say.
"Oh yes," Kyoko said. "Give me a moment and you can talk about being psychics and demigods."
Ranma, Eija and Naiki sat up straight and stared at Kyoko as she stood up and smiled at them before walking out of the room.
"She's...an interesting person," Eija said. "When did she figure out?"
"I'd like to know that as well, but I don't think it's something we'll figure out," Ranma said. "You said you saw Deimosu?"
"He was there," Naiki said, sitting up and groaning. "There was also a little girl and a girl with a big chest."
"I only caught the last part of the fight," Eija said.
"You were the last part of the fight," Naiki corrected.
"Yes, well," Eija said. "Anyway, I saw him too. He was a living spirit, all of them were."
Ranma took a deep, relieved breath.
"Anything saying where they were?" Ranma asked.
"Sorry, no," Eija said. "I was more concerned with the ghost. She was strong and she escaped. I had the sense that the attacks she was using were meant for me after our last encounter. She'll have something new next time."
"Combat doesn't leave much room for interrogation," Ranma agreed.
<I>I resonated with the girl briefly,</i> Tessa told Naiki, who winced at the headache. <I>I don't think they were on Earth.</I>
"Tessa says she doesn't think they were on Earth," Naiki said.
Ranma perked up at that and frowned.
"When he attacked Kodachi's facility, he came through some sort of flashing lights," Ranma said. "He'll have to open it again...and that I can watch for."
Ranma smiled at that. It was a smile of relief and eagerness.
<HR>
Yonjuu and Deimosu were both feeling a little bit better. The demigod was actually running through katas and keeping a calm face, though the sensor could smell the chemicals of a pain reaction despite the stoic attitude.
She would have stayed there watching Deimosu practicing and Yaku drawing, but then the little girl started walking straight into the labyrinth.
"What are you doing?" Yonjuu asked, standing up, a little too swiftly.
Deimosu stopped his katas and moved over as well, putting a hand on Yaku's shoulder.
"You can get lost in there," he warned.
"I want to see the crystal cave," Yaku said. "Then I can make this."
She showed them a drawing that looked like a bunch of childish blocks and circles.
"And that is?" Deimosu asked.
"It'll make Big Brother stronger!" Yaku said. "For a little bit...that other lady is making something better. But I can still help!"
"How much stronger?" Deimosu asked.
Yaku thought for a moment.
"A lot stronger!" she said finally.
"And how little bit will it last?" Yonjuu asked.
Yaku thought for a little longer.
"Just a little bit," she said.
"Is that more or less than a day?" the demigod asked.
"Ummm, yes," Yaku said.
"Our technical expert is a little girl," Yonjuu sighed. "Let's go, child, I'll take you to the crystal cave."
<HR>
"Might I ask what this is?" Commander Mardukas asked as he came into the workshop to see Tessa tinkering with the computers attached to a TAROS immersion tube.
"This is a first step," Tessa said. "It won't bring us up to the Gods and Demons alone, but it'll get rid of a problem we've been having. The next part can be added later, when we find something suitable for a power source."
"We're expecting battle with them, then?" Mardukas asked.
"I hope not," Tessa said. "But always better to be prepared. What did you need, Commander?"
"There's been a report of a mysterious fire in the Russian wilds," Mardukas said. "We commandeered a satellite for a pass and found this."
He handed over the pictures to Tessa who looked at them and frowned as she saw the unmistakable silhouette of a lambda drive equipped AS, though it was in pieces.
"Those are Venoms," Tessa said. "They've moved out of prototypes."
"From a report we have from Sergeant Sagara," Mardukas said. "They're using a drug to put their pilots in the right frame of mind to use the lambda driver."
"That corresponds with what we learned from Taku...the autopsy of the Behemoth pilot," Tessa said with a moment of quiet regret. "They don't care if their pilots are little unstable. As long as they're stable enough to carry out orders."
"And how do we keep up?" Mardukas asked. "We've already decided the drugs are counterproductive in the long term, and we can't train people quickly to use a lambda driver. So we can build Arms-Slaves, but we can't put people in them."
"I'd say Sousuke is turning out well so far," Tessa said. "I'll have to talk to Lord Malloy, if we're going to keep up without using the same chemicals, we need to change the training program to produce lambda pilots. That might mean unclassifying Psyche."
She looked over the pictures a little bit more, frowning.
"Maybe we'll have a bit of an edge of our own," Tessa said, looking back to her project. "In the meantime, Commander, I have some information for you and Lt Commander Kalinin."
She pointed toward a file on the table across from her.
"Hecate DisPater," he read the tab.
He opened up the dossier and started flipping through it, eyes widening.
<HR>
Mara was in the process of shifting through the information Persephone had provided Naiki while she listened. Naiki had later typed it up, apparently with Captain Testarossa's advice on how to put it together.
It was a long file, which befit the age and activity of the goddess in question.
Demons sealed, major conflicts involved in, contacts among the Gods, enemies among the Demons. Domain, skills, preferred spells, innate abilities, spells that she powered. Personality profile.
She was cut off from Yggdrasil now, by her own decision, that meant she couldn't be more than a skilled category two in power. It also meant she couldn't use any spells to borrow power from any other God.
However, the list of artifacts she'd gotten away with were more than a little worrisome.
Mara glanced over some of the demon names.
"Vritra," she said. "Almost killed by Hecate in one of the last major battles before the truce was called."
She frowned and went to the list of sealed demons, noting a pattern.
Hecate had sealed an abnormal number of demons before the truce was formalized, especially for a Goddess who so hated demons. What was disturbing was that she had "almost killed" family members of several of those sealed demons.
Persephone's records said these hostages had been returned after the truce was called. However, several of the names were demons she knew hadn't been seen in thousand of years.
With that in mind, Hecate started putting together a list of names. Most of them not the sort of old scorched earth demons they were looking for as problems, but demons with hostages.
As she was listing the names, something bugged her about that first one, Vritra, but she couldn't quite peg down what bothered her.
<HR>
Hecate unrolled the scroll in her hand, delivered by one of her personal minions. A hell hound in this case. Apparently there were things of interest going on in the human world. She wasn't convinced, but supposed that the Gods and Demons could be trying to track her down.
Probably a good idea to at least check.
What?
In the context of the series, wouldn't Behemoth be a proper noun, like "Venom?"
You know, looking at the last two, I've got to wonder... Who's going to be the last leg of Naiki's trinity? Deimosu has the two girls he rescued, and Eija has Kaname and Sosuke- but all Naiki's got right now is Tessa.
In the context of the series, wouldn't Behemoth be a proper noun, like "Venom?"
You know, looking at the last two, I've got to wonder... Who's going to be the last leg of Naiki's trinity? Deimosu has the two girls he rescued, and Eija has Kaname and Sosuke- but all Naiki's got right now is Tessa.
'abnormal of' is missing a word
Wow... a goddess with a publicly known axe to grind against demons... and she secretly has had a bunch of them as hidden servets for thousands of years...
That I was not really expecting... but it does niely tie in with certain reasoning that she had allied with demons...
Wow... a goddess with a publicly known axe to grind against demons... and she secretly has had a bunch of them as hidden servets for thousands of years...
That I was not really expecting... but it does niely tie in with certain reasoning that she had allied with demons...
"We're going to visit the Satomis and their friends before they leave," Akane said pointedly to Nodoka as she and her family stood at the door. "Are you coming?"
Nodoka sat and sipped her tea calmly. It was the fourth day since her last discussion with Ranma or someone connected to him, and as of yet, nothing had happened to her despite that woman's threat. Of course it would be empty, just some sort of superstitious nonsense, like the fruit.
None of these barbarians knew much of Japanese or even Chinese ways. Though at least it was a peach and not an apple like most Europeans used to pass off as sacred fruit.
"All right then," Ryuu said. "Let's go, they'll be waiting for us."
"You'd better win, Ryuu," Akane said with a smirk.
"Oh, not rooting for Ranma?" Ryuu asked.
"I'd like to see her do well," Akane said. "But I'd still rather if you won."
Nodoka didn't react at all to the discussion.
"Daddy can beat everyone!" Izumi cheered.
"Except Mom," Masaru noted.
"Except Mommy!" Izumi echoed with a cheer.
Ryuu rolled his eyes and sighed as Akane smirked.
"She cheats," Ryuu protested.
<HR>
Tessa took a deep breath as the software compiled again and then ran a simulation. The simulation didn't seem to be able to reach a confirmed result, good or bad. A test run on sample DNA didn't show anything. Animal tests were no good, the machine required the base DNA of a human being.
Basically, every check she could run as to whether or not it work came across as inconclusive. She knew, somehow knew, it worked, but she had no proof. Of course, logically and scientifcally speaking, that was belief rather than knowledge, but she wasn't going to split that hair.
It came down to the fact that she either needed to mothball the project, something she was very unlikely to do given how much effort was put into keeping her away from it, or she needed to take a leap of faith.
There was no way that she could ask someone else to go through this first.
<HR>
Yaku fortunately didn't need much in the way of resources to do what she wanted. And she attacked this product with the same sort of gusto that she had spent on video games to that point. She was cutting the crystals in the cave carefully into specific shapes, altering the flow of water to encourage more crystal growth in places, slowing it others. She cut lines into the surfaces of the crystals.
Every time Deimosu or Yonjuu came to gather more mushrooms, the crystals were looking more and more like some sort of computer circuit or series of mystical circles, or a combination of the two. The crystals were actually starting to grow out of the cave in places.
The two older kids were ending up spending most of their time in the cave as well to make sure Yaku didn't get into any trouble or lost in the Labyrinth. Most of that was spent with Deimosu giving Yonjuu some lessons in how to take care of herself.
And finally.
"It's done!" Yaku declared. "Well, it's done for now."
"So what do we do now?" Yonjuu and Deimosu asked at once.
Yaku blinked at the two of them, that was getting more common. Something told her that was a bad thing, but she wasn't sure what yet.
"You have to connect with it," Yaku said. "With your mind, like when you did the thing where I could speak Greek for a while?"
"That'll take magic," Deimosu said. "Which is going to hurt."
"The other girl in the Whispers," Yuka said. "She has the other part."
"The other part?" Deimosu asked.
"Mmhmm," Yaku said. "I think I'll go make a new game now."
"Okay," Yonjuu said as she watched Yaku walk out of the cave with a skipping step. "What now?"
"Now I wait for twilight," Deimosu said simply.
<HR>
"So, is this going to be like the fight you had in front of the school?" Kaname asked Naiki, who seemed to be a little distracted.
"Actually," Eija said. "This is going to be more like the fight against the Behemoth if I read their respective chi correctly."
Kaname stared at her.
"If Saotome-san is of level with Satomi-sensai," Sousuke said. "Then this will be a most impressive display of power and skill."
"I'm looking forward to this too," Kurz said, stretching back. "Most of the time when you see this sort of the action, it's either a fake movie or your too stuck in the middle of it to enjoy it."
Eija looked around.
"Where are Shinji, Kyoko and Mizuki, by the way?" she asked.
"Kyoko wanted to go to a movie and they went with her," Kaname said with a smirk, then she turned a bit serious. "We're going to need to tell them about this eventually."
Eija nodded.
"Think about it later," Akane said as she arrived and sat down at the side lines to watch the coming fight.
Her children sat down beside her and yawned.
Down below, Ryuu Saotome was stepping onto the field where Ranma Satomi was sitting and waiting in meditation.
"Well, Ranma," Ryuu said, with a smirk. "Meditation?"
"It's relaxing," Ranma noted as she stretched and stood up.
For once, Ranma wasn't wearing her normal red business dress. Instead, she was wearing black tactical clothes. Sousuke and Kurz noted that they were carefully free of any insignia, though they matched the design of Mithril tactical uniforms.
Both turned to face each other.
"This is about the senken?" Ranma asked.
"I'd like to see your versions," Ryuu said. "But let's just cut loose." He looked toward the spectators. "Safely."
"Of course."
Ranma smiled.
There was a subtle shift in how the two presented themselves almost immediately. Nothing visibly physical, but the entire attitude shifted. A shift that everybody watching seemed to feel.
"Now it's going to get started," Kurz said with a smirk as he felt the change.
Kaname shivered at the feeling. This wasn't the first time she'd felt that change in feeling, though there was a subtle difference this time from the other times she'd felt things suddenly turn serious.
<I>They're serious about testing each other,</I> Eija explained to her. <I>They're not looking to hurt each other though.</I>
Kaname nodded, recognizing the distinction.
Then the first moves started.
Ranma snapped out with with a light jab which Ryuu blocked easily, but was immediately followed by a snap kick from the red-head to the shin which her opponent pulled his foot over.
Ryuu turned the avoidance into a shin kick himself which Ranma intercepted, turning aside the kick and dodging aside the Geimon Tessen Shi that came behind the kick.
Following the motion Ranma twisted on her foot into a position behind Ryuu, who pivoted and dropped into a sweep before Ranma could perform a Haku Dato Shin Sho, attacking the pressure points on her opponent's back.
She avoided the sweep by shifting into a back flip.
"You've gotten more aggressive," Ryuu commented as another exchange began.
"My opponents the past seventeen years have been out for blood," Ranma responded.
The testing exchanges continued as neither was able to get a solid hit on the other and the techniques escalated into an aerial display that was taking place ten feet or more off the ground most of the time.
Ranma lashed out with a twisting aerial roundhouse, which Ryuu intercepted. He intended to take her momentum and use it to push himself up higher as she toppled to the ground.
However,to his surprise the redhead merely smirked as she pivoted on his interception and thrust him uncontrollably upwards as she rolled down easily to the ground.
Ryuu gained control of his upward motion quickly enough, though he was limited by a lack of things to push off of. He'd never considered creating a counter to stealing the wind, which itself was supposed to be the ultimate aerial counter. And now he was going to be coming right down into Ranma's shooting gallery.
Best to start one of his own.
Twisting about, he swung open his arms unleashing a Kijin Raishu Dan downwards at Ranma. The red-head responded with her own vacuum blade, which held place in front of her instead of flying out.
Ryuu's blade struck Ranma's and was disrupted as Ranma's faded from view.
But it gave Ryuu a chance to land safely and then to experiment with a theory. A blast of pure chi erupted out of the martial artist, tearing at the dirt as it burst out toward Ranma who ripped her hands apart, forming an X-shaped shield of vacuum blades that diverted the chi around her.
"Defensive Yamasenken," he said approvingly. "Let me try something of my own."
He faded from view briefly, flashing back into sight just a moment later. Ryuu continued blinking in and out of sight as Ranma smirked at the rising challenge. The interspersed bursts of invisibility hid the body tells, making it hard to predict.
"Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken!" Ranma shouted, spreading the attack wide.
Ryuu stopped blinking as he seemed to twist aside, the multitude of Ranma's attacks seeming to pass through the martial artist's body. With widened eyes, Ranma leaped up into the air, spinning as the first Ryuu faded away and a second appeared some feet to the side, striking out and just missing.
Ranma landed immediately dodged aside again as a small burst of twisting air lashed out past her, coming off of Ryuu's arm as it twisted sharply.
Cartwheeling, heels over head, Ranma sent her own pair of mid-size tornadoes lashing outward toward Ryuu in a twisting path as she dodged aside of the small whirlwinds being sent outward by her opponent.
Ryuu flipped over the two tornadoes and came to a solid landing as Ranma returned to her feet and both turned to face each other again.
"Time for aces," Ranma said.
"Sounds about right," Ryuu agreed.
"Kijin Raishu Kami-Ken!" "Kachuu Tenshin Amaguriken Kansei!"
Ryuu shifted about at inhuman speeds that were visibly surpassed by Ranma's full body chest-net, but still let him compete. Every Ryuu moved, a shiver of darkness followed as her maintained a speed that produced a minimal vacuum along every edge of his body.
The action became nearly impossible for the spectators to follow as the two warriors blurred, the distinctive ripping sound of vacuum striking through the air with a machine gun like speed.
Kaname blinked and the fight was happening fifty feet away from where it had just been. Another blink and they moved even further away. They broke off and dark crescent blades ripped through the air between them before they clashed again.
Ranma fell out of the full body chestnut fist as she tired from its constant use, slowing down further and further until she was caught in the back of the legs by a vacuum edged leg, sending her to the ground with the sting of a blunted vacuum edge in her shins.
"Stamina," Ryuu told Ranma, with a smirk as he reached a hand out for Ranma to take.
"There'll be a rematch," Ranma said as she stood up with Ryuu's help.
"This," Kurz said to Sousuke. "This is what's been training you!"
"Yes," Sousuke said coolly.
"Can you do any of that?" Kurz asked.
"I'm working on the Kachuu Tenshin Amaguriken," Sousuke admitted.
"The Flash-imitation thing?" Kurz asked.
"Hand speed only," came the correction.
Akane stood up and walked down to the devastated fighting area and patted Ryuu on the back.
"Good job, dear," Akane said with a broad smile. "I knew you could win."
"Like I said, Akane," Ranma returned. "There'll be a rematch."
"Naiki, are feeling better yet?" Eija asked as they moved toward the two fighters. "You barely watched the fight."
"Tessa's doing something we..." Naiki stopped, eyes widening.
<HR>
Mara was about to go see Naiki, presuming that her mother's fight was over all ready. The demoness had little interest in watching two similarly powerful humans pound away at each other.
She stopped as she looked down at the notes Naiki had typed up for her.
"Vritra," she said. "He's one of the guards on the Doublet System."
<HR>
Hecate stared at the video she'd been directed to. She ran it back and started it over again.
Demons called them Juggernauts, Gods called them Titans and apparently humans called them Behemoths.
Hecate gritted her teeth angrily. How had this happened. How did the humans develop such devices so early? This was impossible.
Now it was even more important to proceed. This rise of these upstart humans needed to be put down quickly. Otherwise, the Gods would find them shoved aside as the Demons had been.
Two months, she told herself, and that demon would be finished doctoring the back-ups to the Doublet and she could send Deimosu into the realm that guarded the Doublet System.
Two months and millenia of going in the wrong direction would be corrected.
She took the moment to bring up one of the artifacts she'd carried with her, a mirror about the size of the palm of her hand.
"Show me where Deimosu has hidden," she said.
The mirror remained blank.
"Show me where Deimosu has hidden," Hecate repeated.
The mirror still did not change.
"Show me where..." Hecate stopped.
The only reason she wouldn't be able to find him was if he were outside the world.
"He found a hidden place," Hecate muttered, suddenly very concerned.
The Goddess of Vengeance paced for a moment uncertainly, glad there were no other Gods or Demons to see her so distressed. She could deal with this, she could still deal with all of this.
"What else can go wrong with this?" she wondered.
<HR>
Commander Mardukas walked into the lobby of Captain Testarossa's office to find Lt. Commander Kalinin already there.
"Lieutenant Commander," Mardukas said. "Did the Captain call you in here as well?"
"Yes," Andrei said, curiously. "But I'm told she's not here yet."
"That's odd," Mardukas said.
They turned toward the sound of an opening door and turned to see Tessa walking past them.
"Excuse me, Commander," Tessa said cheerfully as she walked into her office. "Lt Commander, I'm glad you're here. I was just finishing something that you should be apprised of."
She stood at the wall, facing out the window and her back to her subordinates.
They followed her in, a bit confused at the way she was acting. Her normal tone of voice was still there, the professional tone that seemed so innocent that only her immediate soldiers knew about the iron that was in her soul.
"What would that be, Captain?" Andrei asked.
Slowly, the Captain turned around, a victorious smile on her face.
Both officer's eyes widened as her face came fully into view.
In the center of her forehead was a green chevron and at the corner of each eye were a pair of green half circles.
"Gentlemen," she said. "Humanity has officially arrived on the block."
Nodoka sat and sipped her tea calmly. It was the fourth day since her last discussion with Ranma or someone connected to him, and as of yet, nothing had happened to her despite that woman's threat. Of course it would be empty, just some sort of superstitious nonsense, like the fruit.
None of these barbarians knew much of Japanese or even Chinese ways. Though at least it was a peach and not an apple like most Europeans used to pass off as sacred fruit.
"All right then," Ryuu said. "Let's go, they'll be waiting for us."
"You'd better win, Ryuu," Akane said with a smirk.
"Oh, not rooting for Ranma?" Ryuu asked.
"I'd like to see her do well," Akane said. "But I'd still rather if you won."
Nodoka didn't react at all to the discussion.
"Daddy can beat everyone!" Izumi cheered.
"Except Mom," Masaru noted.
"Except Mommy!" Izumi echoed with a cheer.
Ryuu rolled his eyes and sighed as Akane smirked.
"She cheats," Ryuu protested.
<HR>
Tessa took a deep breath as the software compiled again and then ran a simulation. The simulation didn't seem to be able to reach a confirmed result, good or bad. A test run on sample DNA didn't show anything. Animal tests were no good, the machine required the base DNA of a human being.
Basically, every check she could run as to whether or not it work came across as inconclusive. She knew, somehow knew, it worked, but she had no proof. Of course, logically and scientifcally speaking, that was belief rather than knowledge, but she wasn't going to split that hair.
It came down to the fact that she either needed to mothball the project, something she was very unlikely to do given how much effort was put into keeping her away from it, or she needed to take a leap of faith.
There was no way that she could ask someone else to go through this first.
<HR>
Yaku fortunately didn't need much in the way of resources to do what she wanted. And she attacked this product with the same sort of gusto that she had spent on video games to that point. She was cutting the crystals in the cave carefully into specific shapes, altering the flow of water to encourage more crystal growth in places, slowing it others. She cut lines into the surfaces of the crystals.
Every time Deimosu or Yonjuu came to gather more mushrooms, the crystals were looking more and more like some sort of computer circuit or series of mystical circles, or a combination of the two. The crystals were actually starting to grow out of the cave in places.
The two older kids were ending up spending most of their time in the cave as well to make sure Yaku didn't get into any trouble or lost in the Labyrinth. Most of that was spent with Deimosu giving Yonjuu some lessons in how to take care of herself.
And finally.
"It's done!" Yaku declared. "Well, it's done for now."
"So what do we do now?" Yonjuu and Deimosu asked at once.
Yaku blinked at the two of them, that was getting more common. Something told her that was a bad thing, but she wasn't sure what yet.
"You have to connect with it," Yaku said. "With your mind, like when you did the thing where I could speak Greek for a while?"
"That'll take magic," Deimosu said. "Which is going to hurt."
"The other girl in the Whispers," Yuka said. "She has the other part."
"The other part?" Deimosu asked.
"Mmhmm," Yaku said. "I think I'll go make a new game now."
"Okay," Yonjuu said as she watched Yaku walk out of the cave with a skipping step. "What now?"
"Now I wait for twilight," Deimosu said simply.
<HR>
"So, is this going to be like the fight you had in front of the school?" Kaname asked Naiki, who seemed to be a little distracted.
"Actually," Eija said. "This is going to be more like the fight against the Behemoth if I read their respective chi correctly."
Kaname stared at her.
"If Saotome-san is of level with Satomi-sensai," Sousuke said. "Then this will be a most impressive display of power and skill."
"I'm looking forward to this too," Kurz said, stretching back. "Most of the time when you see this sort of the action, it's either a fake movie or your too stuck in the middle of it to enjoy it."
Eija looked around.
"Where are Shinji, Kyoko and Mizuki, by the way?" she asked.
"Kyoko wanted to go to a movie and they went with her," Kaname said with a smirk, then she turned a bit serious. "We're going to need to tell them about this eventually."
Eija nodded.
"Think about it later," Akane said as she arrived and sat down at the side lines to watch the coming fight.
Her children sat down beside her and yawned.
Down below, Ryuu Saotome was stepping onto the field where Ranma Satomi was sitting and waiting in meditation.
"Well, Ranma," Ryuu said, with a smirk. "Meditation?"
"It's relaxing," Ranma noted as she stretched and stood up.
For once, Ranma wasn't wearing her normal red business dress. Instead, she was wearing black tactical clothes. Sousuke and Kurz noted that they were carefully free of any insignia, though they matched the design of Mithril tactical uniforms.
Both turned to face each other.
"This is about the senken?" Ranma asked.
"I'd like to see your versions," Ryuu said. "But let's just cut loose." He looked toward the spectators. "Safely."
"Of course."
Ranma smiled.
There was a subtle shift in how the two presented themselves almost immediately. Nothing visibly physical, but the entire attitude shifted. A shift that everybody watching seemed to feel.
"Now it's going to get started," Kurz said with a smirk as he felt the change.
Kaname shivered at the feeling. This wasn't the first time she'd felt that change in feeling, though there was a subtle difference this time from the other times she'd felt things suddenly turn serious.
<I>They're serious about testing each other,</I> Eija explained to her. <I>They're not looking to hurt each other though.</I>
Kaname nodded, recognizing the distinction.
Then the first moves started.
Ranma snapped out with with a light jab which Ryuu blocked easily, but was immediately followed by a snap kick from the red-head to the shin which her opponent pulled his foot over.
Ryuu turned the avoidance into a shin kick himself which Ranma intercepted, turning aside the kick and dodging aside the Geimon Tessen Shi that came behind the kick.
Following the motion Ranma twisted on her foot into a position behind Ryuu, who pivoted and dropped into a sweep before Ranma could perform a Haku Dato Shin Sho, attacking the pressure points on her opponent's back.
She avoided the sweep by shifting into a back flip.
"You've gotten more aggressive," Ryuu commented as another exchange began.
"My opponents the past seventeen years have been out for blood," Ranma responded.
The testing exchanges continued as neither was able to get a solid hit on the other and the techniques escalated into an aerial display that was taking place ten feet or more off the ground most of the time.
Ranma lashed out with a twisting aerial roundhouse, which Ryuu intercepted. He intended to take her momentum and use it to push himself up higher as she toppled to the ground.
However,to his surprise the redhead merely smirked as she pivoted on his interception and thrust him uncontrollably upwards as she rolled down easily to the ground.
Ryuu gained control of his upward motion quickly enough, though he was limited by a lack of things to push off of. He'd never considered creating a counter to stealing the wind, which itself was supposed to be the ultimate aerial counter. And now he was going to be coming right down into Ranma's shooting gallery.
Best to start one of his own.
Twisting about, he swung open his arms unleashing a Kijin Raishu Dan downwards at Ranma. The red-head responded with her own vacuum blade, which held place in front of her instead of flying out.
Ryuu's blade struck Ranma's and was disrupted as Ranma's faded from view.
But it gave Ryuu a chance to land safely and then to experiment with a theory. A blast of pure chi erupted out of the martial artist, tearing at the dirt as it burst out toward Ranma who ripped her hands apart, forming an X-shaped shield of vacuum blades that diverted the chi around her.
"Defensive Yamasenken," he said approvingly. "Let me try something of my own."
He faded from view briefly, flashing back into sight just a moment later. Ryuu continued blinking in and out of sight as Ranma smirked at the rising challenge. The interspersed bursts of invisibility hid the body tells, making it hard to predict.
"Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken!" Ranma shouted, spreading the attack wide.
Ryuu stopped blinking as he seemed to twist aside, the multitude of Ranma's attacks seeming to pass through the martial artist's body. With widened eyes, Ranma leaped up into the air, spinning as the first Ryuu faded away and a second appeared some feet to the side, striking out and just missing.
Ranma landed immediately dodged aside again as a small burst of twisting air lashed out past her, coming off of Ryuu's arm as it twisted sharply.
Cartwheeling, heels over head, Ranma sent her own pair of mid-size tornadoes lashing outward toward Ryuu in a twisting path as she dodged aside of the small whirlwinds being sent outward by her opponent.
Ryuu flipped over the two tornadoes and came to a solid landing as Ranma returned to her feet and both turned to face each other again.
"Time for aces," Ranma said.
"Sounds about right," Ryuu agreed.
"Kijin Raishu Kami-Ken!" "Kachuu Tenshin Amaguriken Kansei!"
Ryuu shifted about at inhuman speeds that were visibly surpassed by Ranma's full body chest-net, but still let him compete. Every Ryuu moved, a shiver of darkness followed as her maintained a speed that produced a minimal vacuum along every edge of his body.
The action became nearly impossible for the spectators to follow as the two warriors blurred, the distinctive ripping sound of vacuum striking through the air with a machine gun like speed.
Kaname blinked and the fight was happening fifty feet away from where it had just been. Another blink and they moved even further away. They broke off and dark crescent blades ripped through the air between them before they clashed again.
Ranma fell out of the full body chestnut fist as she tired from its constant use, slowing down further and further until she was caught in the back of the legs by a vacuum edged leg, sending her to the ground with the sting of a blunted vacuum edge in her shins.
"Stamina," Ryuu told Ranma, with a smirk as he reached a hand out for Ranma to take.
"There'll be a rematch," Ranma said as she stood up with Ryuu's help.
"This," Kurz said to Sousuke. "This is what's been training you!"
"Yes," Sousuke said coolly.
"Can you do any of that?" Kurz asked.
"I'm working on the Kachuu Tenshin Amaguriken," Sousuke admitted.
"The Flash-imitation thing?" Kurz asked.
"Hand speed only," came the correction.
Akane stood up and walked down to the devastated fighting area and patted Ryuu on the back.
"Good job, dear," Akane said with a broad smile. "I knew you could win."
"Like I said, Akane," Ranma returned. "There'll be a rematch."
"Naiki, are feeling better yet?" Eija asked as they moved toward the two fighters. "You barely watched the fight."
"Tessa's doing something we..." Naiki stopped, eyes widening.
<HR>
Mara was about to go see Naiki, presuming that her mother's fight was over all ready. The demoness had little interest in watching two similarly powerful humans pound away at each other.
She stopped as she looked down at the notes Naiki had typed up for her.
"Vritra," she said. "He's one of the guards on the Doublet System."
<HR>
Hecate stared at the video she'd been directed to. She ran it back and started it over again.
Demons called them Juggernauts, Gods called them Titans and apparently humans called them Behemoths.
Hecate gritted her teeth angrily. How had this happened. How did the humans develop such devices so early? This was impossible.
Now it was even more important to proceed. This rise of these upstart humans needed to be put down quickly. Otherwise, the Gods would find them shoved aside as the Demons had been.
Two months, she told herself, and that demon would be finished doctoring the back-ups to the Doublet and she could send Deimosu into the realm that guarded the Doublet System.
Two months and millenia of going in the wrong direction would be corrected.
She took the moment to bring up one of the artifacts she'd carried with her, a mirror about the size of the palm of her hand.
"Show me where Deimosu has hidden," she said.
The mirror remained blank.
"Show me where Deimosu has hidden," Hecate repeated.
The mirror still did not change.
"Show me where..." Hecate stopped.
The only reason she wouldn't be able to find him was if he were outside the world.
"He found a hidden place," Hecate muttered, suddenly very concerned.
The Goddess of Vengeance paced for a moment uncertainly, glad there were no other Gods or Demons to see her so distressed. She could deal with this, she could still deal with all of this.
"What else can go wrong with this?" she wondered.
<HR>
Commander Mardukas walked into the lobby of Captain Testarossa's office to find Lt. Commander Kalinin already there.
"Lieutenant Commander," Mardukas said. "Did the Captain call you in here as well?"
"Yes," Andrei said, curiously. "But I'm told she's not here yet."
"That's odd," Mardukas said.
They turned toward the sound of an opening door and turned to see Tessa walking past them.
"Excuse me, Commander," Tessa said cheerfully as she walked into her office. "Lt Commander, I'm glad you're here. I was just finishing something that you should be apprised of."
She stood at the wall, facing out the window and her back to her subordinates.
They followed her in, a bit confused at the way she was acting. Her normal tone of voice was still there, the professional tone that seemed so innocent that only her immediate soldiers knew about the iron that was in her soul.
"What would that be, Captain?" Andrei asked.
Slowly, the Captain turned around, a victorious smile on her face.
Both officer's eyes widened as her face came fully into view.
In the center of her forehead was a green chevron and at the corner of each eye were a pair of green half circles.
"Gentlemen," she said. "Humanity has officially arrived on the block."