((Going to leave out the set-up snips for now...suffice to say, this is 16 years after Ranma vanished from the Tendo dojo. Accumulated Maximum Addventure Episodes 17 total...also note, that there is a definite possibility of an OMG cross later, but would like to leave that mostly cameo...I posted this in the Ranma previews too, hope that's okay.))
"This looks like a safe neighborhood," the red-headed Japanese woman remarked as she looked out from the old warehouse.
There was a long way to go before she could make a decent home out of the refitted building, not to mention a training and equipment center. But the local crime was low so at least they wouldn't have to deal with anything other than the oddness that followed them.
And it was easy to fade out of and back to, leaving her still able to act as a mercenary without worrying much about her children.
Ranma nodded again as she looked out over the neighborhood of Jindai High School.
***********
Ranma looked down the hilly path toward Jindai high school with a little trepidition. She wasn't certain about this recent move. Her children hadn't had the most normal of educations, and they'd probably have trouble adjusting to norm...mundane society. She certainly remembered her own problems in that regard.
Ranma had trained them as she could, even in the sealed arts. In addition she'd traded her services as a warrior for training and introduction in any thing she thought would give them an edge when "they" came back.
Despite the obscured memories of the day she'd ceased to be a man, a further cruel joke by whatever had attacked her, Ranma wasn't to be lulled into believing it was gone. They'd be back, if they'd ever really left, and she wanted her children ready for whatever they would bring.
But she also wanted them to have an easier time with the "real" world than she had. Which was why she tried to enroll them in schools whenever possible, and why she picked schools like Jindai with very little history of weirdness. Enough weirdness would follow her and her children as it was.
She'd originally planned on Nekomi, but there was something there that seemed bitterly familiar. She'd investigate herself later, but for now, it was better to leave her children away from it.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her, a certain Sosuke Sagara was being flown in for his first day of classes.
***********
"Do you have the necessary documents Satomi-san?" the secretary asked as teachers and staff moved about from office to room and room to office.
The secretary glanced curiously past the woman to her children. Each had a unique appearance that made them stand out more than a little.
The boy out of the three already stood six foot tall, his blonde hair would have been thick and curly if he didn't keep it cropped short. The secretary couldn't help but whistle slightly in appreciation at the young man's well-defined muscles and easy grace. The charming, boyish smile on his face added to the overall attractiveness.
(Deimosu(Deimos) Satomi
Martial Skill: Too good for his own good - Anything Goes preferred
Magic Skill: ...could be better... - Hermetic Magic preferred)
Already the secretary was expecting to hear a great deal of problems dealing with this boy and the various girls around the school.
Of the two sisters, one could hardly sit still. Her long, braided green hair was constantly jinking one way or another as she looked about like a creature in a cage, trying not to tap her feet. She loudly sighed and commented about wanting to get on with classes under her breath every couple of seconds.
(Naiki(Nike) Satomi
Martial Skill: Ryouga-esque - Loud Thief style preferred
Magic Skill: fluctuates with mood - Elemental Magic preferred)
The last sister just outright set the secretary on edge. She was polite and attractive, like the others, but something about the black-haired girl just felt creepy. Her skin was so pale that she was almost an albino, and the secretary knew there were bright red-eyes under those sunglasses. So, even though it made her feel guilty to wince at the genuine friendliness the girl quietly radiated, she still couldn't help it.
(Eija(Asia) Satomi
Martial Skill: ...Ranma refused commentary... - Quiet Theif style preferred
Magic Skill: Exceptional - Faith-based magic preferred)
The gruff sound of a clearing throat took the secretary's attention back to the children's mother, who was apparently displeased by the obvious inspection of her offspring.
"I have the documents here," Ranma noted coldly.
"Uh...yes ma'am..." the secretary said, feeling somehow that if any of the four were people not to upset, the mother was the one.
**************
"Where'd my angel go?" Kurtz Webber moaned as Kaname Chidori went off on her tirade about boring rich kids.
Cramped in his AS cockpit, the rather downward directed mercenary was too busy sighing over the loss of his perfect image of Kaname to notice the ballastic path his computers were tracing away from the school. A solid thunk radiating downward through the vehicle was his first clue that something had been on a direct path to land on him.
"What the heck was that?" Kurtz snapped, sitting up and scanning the area outside the cockpit.
Similarly, Ranma landed lightly on a roof-top across the street, looking back toward the clump of trees she had just jumped off of. A scowl crawled over her face as she tried to puzzle out why the tree branch she had just bounced off of sounded metallic.
Originally, she had been aiming for the street and hadn't even seen a branch. The surprising contact with a hard surface caught her unprepared and she'd landed with an embarrassingly solid impact and hadn't managed to get more than a short hop out of it.
Looking back, however, all she could see were trees and, further onward the school she'd just left her children at. There was nothing that she could see there, and no spirits she could feel in the area.
Reluctantly and very slowly she turned away from the empty street and continued back to the warehouse she'd purchased. There was still some work to be done to make it livable, and secure.
Meanwhile Kurtz glanced down to the view screen for his external camera and blinked. Quickly, his eyes lifted from the screen, to the actual building outside of the cockpit, but there was no sign of the woman he thought he'd glimpsed in the camera.
By the time he looked down, she'd already leaped away.
After a moment, he shook his head clear of the whole thing and looked for a source of caffeine.
****
Meanwhile, Kagurazaka-Sensei was staring at the unusual selection of books in front of her. She couldn't even recognize some of the languages on some of them.
The owner of the books, which looked a lot like some sort of spellbook or fantasy game, was currently exchanging words with some other students, her brother and sister if the teacher remembered correctly. What exactly they were saying, she couldn't understand, but others passing through did.
None of them were speaking Japanese at the moment.
"I told you not to bring the books," Naiki snapped irritably,
"But we might need -" Eija started.
"Nothing's going to happen here," Deimosu assured her brightly. "This is the modern world, not another backwater with a bunch of mumbo-jumbo."
Sousuke listened to the Greek conversation and noted it down in his memory, making some basic deductions.
The three other new students were foreign-educated and raised, like him. Judging by several similarities, he assumed them to be siblings. They appeared to have had past difficulties, probably with some sort of cult or another, based on their choice of reading material. It was also apparent that they believed in such superstitions, but the boy did not apparently have much respect for it.
If their difficulties followed, then his objective might be complicated, but it did not appear that they ahd anything directly to do with his mission. He shrugged and started to make an attempt to use this as a distraction to get past the teachers inspecting backpacks.
"Hey!" a voice cried out as Kagurazaka-sensei hurriedly rushed past the three Satomi's to intercept him. "Young man! These kind of toys are not acceptable in any way shape or form."
Sousuke blinked in moderate surprise, trying to figure out just how this civilian had managed to detect his weapons so easily, and then to mistake them for toys.
"Ma'am, I assure you," he said seriously. "That is no toy, and you really shouldn't be handling it that way."
All eyes were on him as he continued to argue with the teacher about the nature of the item in her hand. It was also confusing that he had not yet been taken into a more severe form of custody. Given the surprising skill of this security staff in detecting weapons, he would have thought there'd be much more severe reprecussions for being caught.
"Great, another military maniac," Kaname said, then her eyes wandered to the other three new students as a pentagram marked book was slipped back into a backpack. "And a creepy, goth kid. Just what we need."
"Hey," Kyouko said cheerfully. "At least one of them is cute."
****************
"Class," the teacher said cheerfully, "we have two new students today."
Kaname looked up toward the two mentioned students and inwardly groaned, recognizing them from earlier in the day.
Standing up front was the creepy goth girl and the military nut from earlier.
"Would you please introduce yourselves, students?" Kagurazaka-sensei suggested strongly to the two new students.
Sousuke nodded crisply as, standing at attention, he introduced himself to the class.
"I'm Sergeant Sagara Sousuke," he declared proudly, and things went down from there.
Kaname groaned as the self-proclaimed sergeant went on a long description of his interest in reading lots and lots of military stuff. She rolled her eyes and shook her head at the performance. There was no way the guy could get any weirder.
Sousuke, meanwhile ended his introduction wondering just how reliable his comrade's advice had been. He stepped back away from the class, clearing the way for the next new student to introduce herself.
Eija smiled brightly as she stepped forward, eyes obscured behind the dark lenses of her sunglasses.
"Excuse me, Satomi-san," Kagurazaka-sensei insisted as the girl started to open her mouth. "Could you first remove your sunglasses?"
"Oh no," Eija said, looking toward the teacher. "I have to wear these during the day. My eyes don't handle daytime very well."
"I see," the teacher said, mentally making a note to check with the nurse on that. "Well, please continue."
Kaname arched an eyebrow as the girl behind the sunglasses, expensive looking things that included sides along the frames that made them almost look like stylish goggles. Except for the black hair, Kaname would have thought the girl was an albino what with all the pale skin and the bad eyes.
Sousuke, meanwhile, was politely filing the information away while observing Chidori's fidgety reactions to the introductions.
"My name is Satomi Eija," the dark-haired girl said politely, bowing cheerfully and smiling brightly.
As she flashed the perfectly white teeth, the audience felt a chill work up their spines that was made worse by the fact that she honestly seemed to be friendly.
"Hello, little miss Dracula," Kaname muttered under her breath.
"I think she's cute," Kyuoko said brightly, apparently the only one that seemed unaffected by the creep factor radiating out of Eija.
"I've also travelled to many places," she said. "I was born in Greece with my brother and sister, but my mother started taking jobs in various places, so we had to travel a lot with her."
"So what hobbies do you have?" one boy asked, with a slightly snide tone of voice. "Drinking blood and turning into bats?"
"Tanaka-san!" Kagurazaka snapped. "Behave yourself."
Eija, however, ignored or failed to notice the commentary and continued on anyway.
"I like herbology and painting, actually," Eija said. "I don't know much about blood rites and it isn't safe to dabble."
The teacher, the students and even Sousuke took a long moment to stare at her nervously.
"Did I say something wrong?" she asked, confused.
*****************
Eija may have had a rather interesting introduction, but her siblings weren't far behind the scale.
********
"I am Satomi Naiki," the green-haired girl said, somewhat rolling her eyes. "I like swimming and rock climbing and heavy metal music. Can I sit down and get on with ignoring you now?"
The other students widened there eyes at this remark and the teacher glared at the young woman.
********
"I am a very astute student of the human body," Deimosu was saying amiably. "My mother, you see, insists that I always improve upon my already masterful level of such anatomical knowledge so that I can produce the most amazing results from the most subtle of..."
"Excuse me, Satomi-san," the teacher said irritably. "But we need to get on with class."
"Uh, right," Deimosu said as he started to walk to his seat.
Some of the students were imagining that he was on his way to being a doctor, and others were imagining impressive skill in the bedroom.
This was mostly split down gender lines.
Strangely enough, so were the longing gazes and angry glares.
*****************
Ranma paused her work as the butterfly flittered past her eyes and landed upon the windowsill in front of her. Frowning, she waited a moment before watching it fold into a piece of inert parchment.
As useful as it was, especially in her line of work, magic always somewhat disturbed her. Her curse and much of what followed from that definitely had a hand in her opinions.
She never used magic directly, sticking to tools and items, and she only used those when she had to. Most of the time, her martial skills were plenty for the jobs. Still, there were times that specific items were necessary.
As it stood, there was only one source of magic that did not make her flinch at least a little: her children.
Grumbling, she set down her building supplies and gingerly picked up the magical message.
She especially hated the way hire requests showed up at her door like this.
Opening the message she skimmed over it somewhat hesitantly before reaching the location.
"Ah, crap," she muttered, quickly moving to a large, iron-bound wood chest and throwing it open.
**********
Meanwhile, a silent figure looked over the scenes going on below in the schoolyard, watching everything carefully. A semi-psychotic grin covered his face as he noted his objective out on the field below enjoying her lunch.
**********
"And what did Sousuke do this time?" Kyouko asked with a light step as she pursued what was quickly becoming her favorite topic: the Kaname and Sousuke soap opera.
Kaname was somewhat tight-lipped this morning, not wanting to say that the military maniac had saved her life from a speeding truck. If she said it, Kyouko would just start gushing about how he obviously was attracted to her and stuff like that. Then Kaname would shoot back something about how gross that was and start pointing out reasons why and all that would do would be to convince Kyouko that Kaname was attracted to Sousuke.
As if.
"Hey," Kyouko said. "What's that over there?"
Kaname looked in the direction Kyouko was pointing, thanking the heavens above for sending the distraction (unaware of the irony of that thought), and saw three large high school boys in karate gis standing around Naiki Satomi.
Eija was to the green-haired girl's side quietly trying to calm her sister down, but not having much luck. As she started to get close enough to hear what was going on, Kaname didn't much blame Naiki for her anger. Their brother was standing off to the side, arms crossed over his chest and a disapproving look on his face.
"You are going to apologize to my sister and I," Naiki said harshly. "Then you are going let us get back to practicing our katas."
"Such women as yourselves should not be polluting the fine art of karate in such a way," one of the boys said arrogantly. "Playing at practice without even a proper dojo. You should join us, the Amateur Karate Club, and then you could watch real men practice the art as it should be practiced."
"I mastered karate by kindergarten," Naiki responded, not alltogether accurately. "Just try something and we'll see who the weakling is."
"Sister, please," Eija said, before turning toward the men. "Please excuse my sister, she is prideful and I'm sure she would not to participate in such a one-sided match."
"Hey, if they want to commit suicide," Naiki said angrily.
"Sister!" Eija snapped in disappointment. "Brother, please, don't just stand there."
"Don't look at me," Deimosu said shrugging irritably. "Any girl but Naiki I would already be teaching these thugs a lesson."
Eija sighed helplessly and turned to her sister to argue farther, this time speaking animatedly in Greek, Naiki answering back just as vehemently and with the occasional comment from Deimosu.
"Hey," the central member of the karate club said. "Don't just ignore us. You want to play martial artist, then you have to accept the challenges."
All three Satomi kids stopped arguing then and turned to look at the man with a serious expression on their face.
"Uh oh," Kyouko said. "Looks like something happened."
"Eija Satomi was trying to remind her sister that they were not supposed to be fighting at school if they could help it," Sousuke said, coming up behind Kaname and Kyouko silently. Both girls jumped slightly at his sudden appearance. "However, now that the Karate club has made the challenge official, even she seems to be dropping her argument."
"You mean Naiki is actually going to fight that big monster," Kaname asked, looking from the five foot six girl to the bulky, over-muscled guy that could barely be still considered adult.
Before Sousuke could answer, Eija sighed and stepped out of the way of her sister, who now grinned with shark-like display of white teeth.
"What are your terms?" Naiki asked in sinister tone.
"If you lose," the leader of the more or less identical trio said. "Then you must become our girlfriends and stop pretending to practice the martial arts." His tone certainly implied that he expected to win hands down.
"When I win," Naiki responded, still smiling. "Not only do you leave us alone, but you admit that women can be just as good martial artists as men."
"We'll need a referee," the karate clubber said eagerly. Looking around, he scanned the crowd and snapped out a finger to point at Kaname. "You, the student council vice president! You'll be our referee."
"Me?" Kaname said in shock. "What do I know about being a referee for a martial arts competition."
"It's easy," Deimosu said. "When Naiki has knocked out all three of them, you declare her the winenr."
"What did you say?" half the field of gathered students asked, including the karate club.
Eija blinked in moderate confusion as she looked over her sister's soon to be opponents.
"You don't mean you want to fight her one on one," she asked somewhat quietly.
"Well, of course," the karate club said, confused. "We want to give her some chance."
"Are you sure about this?" Kaname asked. "What if one of the teachers or someone comes around?"
"Nevermind, Miss Chidori," a cultured voice said from behind an embroidered fan. "The challenge has been made and it must be resolved, and the teachers will not move to impose upon our autonomy."
"Uh, right," Kaname said, wondering again at the president's rather blase response to everything that should have seen as being on outward side of insanity.
"I'm ready whenever they are," Naiki said.
"This little girl can't be thinking to take all three of us at the same time," the Karate club said.
"Are you backing out on the challenge then?" Eija asked hopefully.
"Never," another member said. "No member of the Amateur Karate Club would ever so dishonor the honor of our group."
"Then come on," Naiki said waving for the karate club to attack.
"We're waiting for Vice President Chidori to start the match," the third member said.
"Well, um..." Kaname said hesitantly. "Is everybody ready?"
"Hai!" the karate club members declared.
"Oh yeah," Naiki said confidentally.
"Oh kay," Kaname said, shrugging. "Begin!"
At the sound of the word, Naiki launched herself forward, grinning as widely as a shark.
"Now you'll see why I'm named after the goddess of victory," she shouted loudly as she charged into the karate club, her hand flashing out to make her first strike. "Dokuja Tanketsu Shou!"
Her hand snaked past the first fighter's guard to strike him, slightly off target, in the abdomen. Instantly, the huge fighter was doubled over in surprised agony as Naiki, ignoring her accuracy problem on that strike, whirled about in a flashing roundhouse strike that her next target barely ducked under.
The third fighter, no longer hesitating to attack launched forward at the airborne and therefore, to his mind, vulnerable Naiki. Unleashing his foot in an efficient and power-building arc, he smirked as he imagined this girl and her sister serving him and his compatriots everything they requested.
To his surprise, Naiki threw herself upward, anchoring against her own forward momentum. The heavy roundhouse didn't hit solidly, but it still hit.
Grunting as the impact threw her off course, Naiki brought herself to the ground in as graceful a manner as she could before launching back into the fight.
The first fighter was still recovering, and she had to press her advantage now, before they geared up.
One of the two still active karate club members came into her moving low with a feinted snap kick that provoked Naiki into jumping up off the ground and into the path of the reverse backfist.
Eija winced as her sister was slammed in the jaw and forced down into the dirt. Instantly, Naiki was rolling back to her feet, but she was getting angry.
"Oh no," Eija said. "They're better than she thought they'd be."
"She's getting reckless again," Deimosu agreed, sighing.
Eija gave him a look that spoke volumes about what she thought about the irony of him making that comment.
A near-perfect sidekick from Naiki projected the third karate club member more than half the courtyard away, and she followed it up with a flipping dodge leading into a sweep that was geared to take the feet out from under her opponent, but, in her anger, she telegraphed her intent and the karata-ka was out of the way well before she landed.
Then her first opponent was moving into the fight, reaching out to grab Naiki's arms in an attempt to grapple with and nail down the fighting girl's motion.
Naiki growled, and started to pull out of the hold, but immediately noticed that she was going to be too slow to avoid whatever attacks the other two would be coming in with.
"I can't lose!" she thought to herself. "Then Eija and I would be at their command."
Her eyes flashed watery blue as she roared.
"She's not..." Eija said, sighing.
"She is..." Deimosu said nervously. "Hope Mom's nowhere nearby."
Kaname had been watching in outright shock as the girl had been manhandling the three huge fighters, not easily, but certainly showing that she had more skill and power than any one of them. Now, however, as the karate-ka's converged on the momentarily restrained Satomi, something clouded her vision...
~hybrid biological system, intense psychokinetic potential.~
...then she shook her head and it was gone.
"What did you sa..." Kyouko started to ask when it happened.
A quick flash of liquid blue energy erupted outward from Naiki, throwing back all three of the karate-kas and half-blinding all the witnesses.
Immediately in the aftermath, Naiki was standing in the middle of a small circle of charred ground and the three karate-club members were laid out around her.
****
"What was that?" Gauron wondered curiously as he watched the result of the fight.
****
"Ummm," Kagome said, uncertain what to do at this point.
"I believe now is the point that you should call the match," Sousuke said politely.
"Right," Kagome said, getting a bit nervous again as she remembered that the military maniac was right there. "Winner, Naiki."
"She...cheated," one of the karate-kas moaned before passing at.
"Like hell I did," Naiki said, taking a moment to spit some blood out of her mouth. "Now, let's get to class."
Gauron waited quietly and patiently as the students filtered inside and then moved stealthily down to the courtyard, aware of the invisible AS that was somewhere nearby. Acting as quickly as he could, he bent down to take a sample of the blood he'd seen the green-haired girl spit out.
"Could be interesting," Gauron said, leaving the area as quickly as could do so without attracting attention. "But can't get distracted from the Whispered."
**************
Ranma looked down the hill towards the school and just barely caught the flash of light that told her that one of her children had gotten careless. A hint of worry crossed her face and she started to turn back down the path, but no, it was only one of them. If something very bad had happened she'd have felt a lot more power from all three of her children.
No, this was just a behavior breach. Naiki would be getting a lecture later, but that was about it.
Which left her to her job at hand. Looking back up the hill, she analyzed the chi she was feeling.
This hill was not the most unusual of places she had been, but it wasn't ordinary either. Under the grass a path cut a rivelet in the rise of the hill through which yin travelled in a swift current that was shielded by a crust of yang. Somewhere up in this little wooded hill, someone had built a reservoir of darkness that looked up toward the sun.
Ranma was mildly impressed. Unfortunately, it sounded like someone or something was misusing it.
The morning's message still stuck in Ranma's mind. That a new job would come only days after moving to this new place, and that the hunt was to take place in that same neighborhood. It raised Ranma's hackles even if the situation seemed straightforward.
Two nights ago someone had made off with an American exchange student. The police found witness reports that did not seem to make sense, at least not to normal investigation reports. Some of the weirdness had started to leak to the press, otherwise Ranma might never have been called in.
The information Ranma had said that witnesses had seen the girl taken away East by a "giant insect-man." Of course the police had searched, but Ranma wasn't surprised that they hadn't found this overgrown path. She herself had barely found it with chi-senses, the entire hill seemed to be designed to not be noticed, in fact.
As for the giant-insect man, like the police, Ranma didn't think there was a demon involved here. More likely, it was just an ugly and very skinny guy in some sort of tattered overcoat who had stumbled on this old refuge. There were a lot of people like that out there, with the instinct to draw them to such places without knowing why they were drawn.
If a kid's life wasn't at stake, she'd have never accepted the assignment. The police would have found this eventually, probably with only a little more trouble, and Ranma didn't like getting involved in police matters if she could avoid it.
She took a sniff of the air and kept her eyes open as she climbed and moved deeper into the flow of yin chi. She shivered a bit against the instinct to feel a calming sensation as she hit the deeper chi.
It was a reminder. Something that happened anytime she came to a place of heavy and pure chi, yang or yin.
A reminder that she wasn't unmagical anymore herself. Years of chi-mastery, the neko-ken, Jusenkyo and her....unwilling liasions with a trio of spirits had had in many ways forced her to become a creature of magic herself. It had been getting worse since only a little after her children were born. She had to deal with it, but she didn't have to like it.
Then she found what she was looking for.
A veritable pool of dark chi in a little bowl surrounded by foreign-planted grey oaks and looking up into the sky. In the center of the little bowl was a hole in the ground down into which a ladder descended.
Ranma didn't wait before diving down into that hole and instantly a sickening sensation drifted through the, until then pure chi. She covered her mouth and shook her head clear, taking in the darkness as she considred what she faced.
Someone had desecrated this holy site with blood in order to shield it against exorcists.
Most exorcists, that is.
Exorcists that dealt mainly in yang probably wouldn't have the experience to filter out the corrupted yin from blinding their senses and hampering their powers. Fortunately, the red-head wasn't just an exorcist. She was a chi-master, both in yin and yang, and she wasn't going to be stopped just by a little booby trap like this.
As she regained her balance, she took in the trap and sighed in relief.
It was old, very old, left over from some past evil and Ranma was probably still looking at a common sicko with sharp instincts.
She moved forward, wrapping herself in the umisenken and searching for any more signs of other chi-traps.
The long underground cooridor pushed downward further into the hill, finally coming out in large underground room that shocked Ranma's senses again.
He stood in an ancient lava-chamber, among walls that were virtually glowing with yang while yin seethed in center until it was forced back through the tunnel and up into the hill.
In her shock at the triple blind, Ranma dropped the umisenken and almost missed the incoming motion.
At the last moment she dodged aside and the knife slashed through where her neck had been just a moment before.
"What demon comes to this holy place?" her attacker demanded.
As Ranma had expected, the man was long and spindly, almost anorexic, with deep, sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. His jaw standing out against his skin could certainly look almost insectile in the wrong light. And those long strands of standing hair looked something like antennae.
"Shut up," Ranma said slashing forward with a simple strike into the man's face.
The man tried to dodge aside, but Ranma was more than ready for it and casually swiped across with his fist to complete the strike anyway and send the predicted sicko sprawling to the floor insensate.
That left just finding the girl.
The first alcove held a girl, indeed, but she had been dead for at least a month. She hung from the wall in chains that held her tight against the wall. A host of little cuts were slashed into her body through the tatters of her clothing and her cloudy, half-rotted eyes stared outward.
Ranma wasn't surprised that the girl's body was still heavy with chi, or the two tails that hung limply from her lower back. A sicko with chi instincts wouldn't just hunt average people, after all. Those instincts would draw him to weirdos, like her and her kids. Another reason she had taken this job so quickly.
"We got him for you kid," Ranma whispered, closing the girl's eyes and moving to the next alcove and the next until she found the girl she was looking for.
Katrina Strnad, the missing girl was weak and barely conscious, mouth open and breathing tiredly. Ranma immediately noted what had drawn the sicko to this one: she was a vampyr, girl probably didn't know it even.
"Don't worry," Ranma said softly, reaching up to pull the chains out of the wall and moving to carry the girl.
Miss Strnad slumped heavily over Ranma's shoulder and the red-haired girl made for the exit.
"You will not take that demon from this place!" a voice demanded angrily as the thin man charged forward at the woman freeing his prisoner.
Said-prisoner woke up and flinched fearfully at the sound of that voice, and then it was cut off with a bone-crunching thud.
"You should have stayed down, freak," Ranma said as the body of the serial killer crumpled to the ground, neck snapping at an unnatural angle from the impact of Ranma's foot.
From there it was simple to leave the descrated site and soon she was depositing the little girl at a Catholic church she knew of that was friendly and knowledgable towards the living version of their traditional foe.
"Might want to mention the place to someone who can purify it too," Ranma muttered, mostly satisfied that the job was done.
Still, it was rare that things went so exactly as she expected them to, and that was bothering her.
************
As Sousuke walked into the school, he considered the exchange he had just seen with what he had gotten on the Satomi's background check.
On the front, there wasn't too much to raise eyes. The mother's stated profession was "mystical consultant," which Sousuke took to mean some sort of fortune teller or other such thing. She'd moved around the world a lot similar to Sousuke himself, though she seemed to be living in places that weren't exactly in the middle of the wars, but on the edges.
Her childhood, education and career seemed very upfront. Just as upfront as Sousuke's own background. In fact, he saw some of the same names as references that he himself had, meaning that the Satomi's and mithril shared a forger of records somewhere and maybe some financial backings.
Thinking back, Sousuke thought he vaguely remembered hearing of a freelancer named Satomi. Took specialized jobs of some kind. That made him some what nervous. If she was a freelancer, then she could be working with their enemies.
He'd have to keep a tighter watch on the Satomis from now on.
As he said that he kneeled down to open his shoe locker and noticed the hair he had placed there was broken.
****
"I don't know what you're talking about, Kyouko," Kaname said irritably.
"You got all spooky and said something like 'hybrid gas pumps are psychotic' or something like that," Kyouko insisted.
"What?" Kaname demanded, confused. "That doesn't make any...."
And that's when the side of the building ahead of them exploded outward in a rain of debris.
Students screamed and ran for cover as a select few just stared in outright shock.
"Sa...sa...sa..SAGARA!!!!" Kaname roared outloud.
Kneeling behind the blast shield, Sousuke watched the smoke billow up and considered what may or may not have been placed inside his footlocker. His analysis was interrupted by the impact of Kaname's harisen over the side of his head.
"What the hell are you doing you maniac?" she demanded bitterly.
"Someone had tampered with my shoe locker," Sousuke said calmly.
"Well," Kaname said. "Obviously that explains everything."
"I'm glad you understand, Miss Chidori," Sousuke continued, moving to stand up.
Then he was flattened by the harisen again.
"It doesn't explain anything!" Kaname snapped angrily.
Sousuke looked up from his position on the ground more than a little confused at the situation. He kept quiet a moment, blinking, as he tried to figure out how to best explain what to him was a given fact.
"It was possibly a bomb or other such trap," Sousuke said. "Detonation was the only option."
"And what if it was gas?" Kaname asked in a tone that would have read to a normal person as "you expect me to believe that?"
"I made sure to use an explosive that would burn hot enough to eliminate any biological or chemical waepons," Sousuke assured her.
"Wait a minute," Kaname said, taking her turn to be confused. "You thought I was serious?!!"
"AAHHH!" Kyouko shrieked. "What's that?"
Whatever Sousuke's response would have been was interrupted as a blackened wraith radiating fear and woe stumbled out of the area of the explosion and moved in a zig zag towards Kaname and the others mouth open-wide to reveal sharp, pearly white teeth...
"Shoes go boom," the shape said dizzily.
...and collapsed in front of them.
"Oh crap," Kaname said. "I think that's Eija."
"Hmm," Sousuke said. "I thought for sure I checked for any civilians before I detonated that."
"Hey!" a voice called out from behind them. Turning back, they saw Deimosu heading their direction looking concerned.
Immediately Kaname scooped up Eija and hid the small girl in a little crevice behind some of the debris.
"What's going on over here?" Deimosu demanded urgently.
"There has been a serious acci..." Sousuke started urgently.
"The military maniac here just blew up the lockers because he thought someone planted a bomb in it," Kaname said, cutting off Sousuke. "We got this handled."
"But..." Sousuke started.
"Don't try to deny it, you idiot," Kaname said somewhat crazily.
"But..." Sousuke tried to say again.
"We'll just have to clean this up," Kaname said.
"Kaname, what about..." Kyouko started to say, sort of pointing.
"We'll take care of it, Kyouko," Kaname assured her.
Deimosu looked from Sousuke to Kyouko, both looking worried and confused, and back to Kaname, who seemed more than a little on edge, and shrugged.
"Whatever," he said. "At least I'm not involved in this." Putting his hands up behind his head, he started to walk off.
"Okay," Kaname said, grabbing up the unconscious Satomi. "To the nurse's office."
"Miss Chidori," Sousuke started to inquire as they started moving for the nurse's office. "Why did we not tell Satomi about his sister?"
"Yeah, Kaname," Kyouko said. "What if she's really hurt?"
"Why did the shoes go boom?" Eija asked again, muttering from on Kyouko's back.
"Because then he would have killed us," Kaname said. "Have you seen what that family can do?"
"I am more than capable of taking care of my...urk," Sagara found his forward motion cut off as Kaname pulled him back around the corner they had just been about to turn.
Peeking around the corner, they stared at Naiki Satomi sniffing the air and turning about in confusion. She started to look back at them, and the three ducked around the corner. She looked away and thye looked back around the corner.
Carefully, at Kaname's insistence, the three carrying a fourth crept forward cautiously, watching Naiki all the way. The green-haired girl sniffed the air again and whipped her head about, just missing it as the other three teenagers past her around the other direction with nary a sound.
Scratching her head, Naiki sniffed again and, twisting about, she barely missed the three people carrying her sister disappearing around another corner.
"Eija forgot her sunscreen again," Naiki said. "Wonder how bad the sunburn is this time?"
"I'm really not understanding the point behind this, Miss Chidori," Sousuke said, nevertheless moving as quietly as he could. "The Satomis would certainly not react badly to us trying to help their sister."
He was somewhat embarrassed that this untrained civilian had apparently been paying more attention to their route than he was, but, then again she seemed to be more worried about encounters with other students than he was.
"Whew," Kaname said as they came to a stop in front of the nurse's station. "Made it. Now, listen, Sousuke. I'm not sure what you saw this morning, but I saw a near-monster take apart three people."
"She was very skilled," Sousuke admitted. "But she could have ended that much sooner and without whatever weapon she used at the end if she had been less reckless."
"Huh? Weapon?" Kyouko asked confused. "Sorry, I couldn't see anything, I was too busy listening to Kaname mutter about hybrid theory."
"I've been telling you all day," Kaname said. "I never said anything like that, look, school's almost out, let's just get Eija to the nurse's office patched up and out of here before her brother or sister show up."
"Or mother."
"Or mother," Kaname agreed.
All three teenagers froze and turned around to see the red-headed thirty-something standing behind them.
***********
Ranma shook her head as she looked over her daughter, the youngest of her children by several minutes. The girl had a real problem with handling impacts. That had forced Ranma to take her slowly through the various body-hardening techniques, making the difference between her and her siblings that much more extreme.
Given a choice, Ranma wouldn't even be forcing martial instruction on the scholarly girl, but their life didn't allow for much leeway. Demons, sorcerers and monsters of all stripes were drawn to her children. Some were simply curious, others sought to make use of or destroy them.
"Are you going to explain what happened?" Ranma asked the three teens standing before her with an arched eyebrow.
"Boom! Weee!" Eija said dizzily, drawing sweat from everybody present.
"Ma'am!" Sousuke said stepping forward a crisp manner that proudly screamed soldier to Ranma. "If I may explain."
She took a moment to take the boy's measure and liked what she saw. He held himself like a warrior, and she could see by his face that he'd seen battle. Raw, unchecked battle the likes of which she usually tried to ghost past. There was no hint of chi mastery in his aura, but there was a good potential.
He'd seen a lot and done a lot, but he was no burn out. His stance spoke of military discipline, something Ranma had precious little of, but had learned to respect. This was an active soldier.
Ranma was very curious about just why such a person was here, of all places.
"Go ahead," Ranma said, moving to take Eija from Kyouko and lay her gently on the ground so she could check her daughter over as he talked.
"What, but..." the blue-haired girl started to demand.
"Excuse me," Ranma said sharply, turning to look at Kaname. "But the kid said he'd give me an answer already, so wait your turn."
Ranma felt the edge of a headache as she looked at the girl. There was something about her that seemed to distort her chi field in little spatters of static throughout her aura.
She'd felt this before, usually when she was encountering something new and her senses hadn't figured out how to handle it just yet. Looking back at the soldier, she arched an eyebrow and nodded in what she considered a subtle display of realization.
Ranma's legendary poker face had never really left her, though, and several sets of thoughts were going through the heads of the teenagers.
"What the hell is she smiling at him like that for," Kaname wondered. "Oh hell, is she some sort of cradle robbing old woman?"
"She's made me," Sousuke said. "And Kaname? How could she be so quick?"
"Wow, Kaname and Sousuke are so obvious even perfect strangers can figure it out," Kyouko said.
"She's got a good hand, fold," Eija mumbled.
Ranma turned attention back to her daughter and was pleased to note that there seemed to be no major injuries, just the concussion which she could deal with easily enough, starting with some light shiatsu.
"I was recovering my shoes from the foot-locker when I noticed that someone had tampered with my locker," Sousuke explained. "As I could not be certain of what had been placed in my locker..."
"Oh hell, you blew it up, didna ya?" Ranma asked as she continued to massage Eija's temple.
"Affirmative, Ma'am," Sousuke said.
"Oww, my head..." Eija muttered.
"Shhh," Ranma said. "Ya gotta a concussion, Eija-chan, just lay down and don' try nothing and I'll take care of it."
"I could..." Eija started to say.
"The last time ya tried to cast any spell like this," Ranma interrupted in Greek. "You puked your guts out and ended up stuck in bed for two days. Healer, let someone else heal ya." The last was said with a bit of good humor and ended with a friendly thump on the injured girl's arm.
"Hai, Mother," Eija said in frustration, rubbing at her arm.
"That should do it, now just sit there," Ranma said. "We'll be going home in a moment. Now, you wanted to say something?"
Ranma turned from her crouch to look up at Kaname expectantly, trying not to blink at the continuing headache that looking at her caused.
"Well...ummm..." Kaname said, trying to find a way to dig out of the hole Sousuke just put them in.
"Now, why were ya not talking to my other kids?" Ranma asked again, arching an eyebrow.
"Well...they're ummm," Kaname said nervously. "They probably would have killed us..." she didn't sound half so certain as she had a moment ago.
"Deimosu and Naiki?" Ranma asked with a laugh, then seemed to think again. "Well, maybe Naiki. What about you, pigtails?"
"Oh, I was just helping my friend," Kyouko said.
"Anyway, don't let me hear about this again, or whoever's responsible for each of ya is gonna hear about it."
She reached down to help up her daughter, frowned meaningfully at each of them before walking away.
"Bai bai," Eija said tiredly, waving from on Ranma's back.
"Spells?" Sousuke said in curiosity.
****
"This DNA strand is amazing," the tech said to Gauron. "It's holds layer upon layer of coding, like one of the geometrics that seems to hold more space than it takes up. Every time we think we've hit the end of it, there's more coding."
"Is it something we can use?" Gauron asked. "Like the Whispered."
"Maybe with a living example," the tech said. "But this isn't a repository of knowledge like the Whispered, this is all stuff that is built into the organism."
"How about brainwashing?" the pyschotic asked.
"How old are we talking about?" the tech asked. "I wouldn't want to play games with the person behind this past a few years old."
"So we'd need infants is what your saying," Gauron concluded. "That could be fun."
**********
"Hey, Deimosu," Naiki called out waving her hand. "What's up?"
"Have you seen Eija anywhere?" Deimosu asked in response.
"I smelled her in halls," his sharkish sister said, pointing back over her shoulder. "Think she was heading to the nurse's office. Smelled like a sunburn."
"Oh good, I was worried," the brother said, breathing a sigh of relief. "There was some sort of accident in the shoe lockers where she was supposed to be. I'll head ba...uh oh."
Deimosu had been turning about to head back into the school when he saw who was coming out of it.
"What?" Naiki asked, turning about...to the sight of her mother walking up towards them carrying their sister on her back.
"Umm, Mom, what are you doing here?" Deimosu asked. "What happened to Eija?"
"There was an accident," Ranma said.
"The shoe lockers blew up," Eija muttered, pantomiming an explosion. "Boom."
"What?" the male Saotome said. "Those...those..."
"I already talked to them, Dei-chan," Ranma said. "Now other issues...Naiki!"
Naiki flinched aside at the tone of voice.
"Hai, Okaasan!" Naiki said swiftly.
"You were fighting, and you used your powers," Ranma said. "I'm assuming something nasty and supernatural attacked the school and you were the only one to notice it, right?"
"Uh...uh...well, there was a challenge..." Naiki said, blushing.
"Oh, well you can't ignore a challenge," Ranma agreed seriously. "It must have been extremely tough opponent."
"There were three of them..." Naiki noted.
"And they had excellent teamwork?" Ranma asked.
"Not exactly..."
"So your reasons for blasting away on your first day of school?"
"They said girls couldn't be martial artists and said Eija and I had to give up if they won," Naiki protested.
"And you decide to disprove them by going overboard like some untrained pk-kid or waking latent?" Ranma demanded. "What do I track down those gurus, priests and mystics for if not to teach not to go Akira?"
"Sumimasen," Naiki said, embarrassed.
"We'll see about that," Ranma said, smirking.
**********
"...and so I reasoned that I should detonate the shoe lockers," Sousuke explained to Mao. "Unfortunately there was a civilian that apparently did not hear instructions to clear out. Injuries were, fortunately, minor and we left her in the care of her mother. The individual who tampered with the locker is still unknown."
"You blew up a civilian?" Mao asked, vaguely amused given the fact that it appeared the situation was resolved.
"Yes, one Eija Satomi," Sousuke said.
"Oh, one of the kids you asked the background check on?" Mao asked, a little more interested in that. "That means you had contact with her mother. Our suspected freelancer."
"Is she as hot as her picture?" Kurz asked.
"Yes, also..." and here Sousuke gritted his teeth for a moment. "...I believe that she may have recognized my purpose here in school."
Even Kurz turned a bit cautious at that.
"Are you sure about that?" Mao asked.
"This isn't some sort of paranoia, is it?" Kurz asked. "Like the plaster bust you shattered? Or the guy who couldn't hold a scalpel straight in biology class?"
"No, I am quite certain she knows what I am here for," the sergeant said. "She stated that if anything else threatened her children that 'the people responsible for each of us' would hear about it. If she assumed I was a normal high school student, wouldn't she have said 'parents' instead?"
"That is an odd phrasing," Mao said. "I guess we'll have to look into it."
"Don't worry, you have just the man for the job," Kurz said, smiling. "I'll have her wrapped around my finger and telling everything she knows before you know it."
The blonde sniper's grin could almost light up the room on its own, so brimming was it with confidence.
****
Sixteen hours later.
"Lesbian," a certain red-head said to a flabbergasted blonde smooth-talker, her hand held out in a stop gesture inches from his face. "Go away."
And then Ranma walked out of the supermarket, grumbling.
Over the radio, Kurz could hear Mao chortling hysterically.
"Laugh it up, Sergeant Major," Kurz said. "But who does this leave to figure out what she's doing?"
The laughing stopped.
"This looks like a safe neighborhood," the red-headed Japanese woman remarked as she looked out from the old warehouse.
There was a long way to go before she could make a decent home out of the refitted building, not to mention a training and equipment center. But the local crime was low so at least they wouldn't have to deal with anything other than the oddness that followed them.
And it was easy to fade out of and back to, leaving her still able to act as a mercenary without worrying much about her children.
Ranma nodded again as she looked out over the neighborhood of Jindai High School.
***********
Ranma looked down the hilly path toward Jindai high school with a little trepidition. She wasn't certain about this recent move. Her children hadn't had the most normal of educations, and they'd probably have trouble adjusting to norm...mundane society. She certainly remembered her own problems in that regard.
Ranma had trained them as she could, even in the sealed arts. In addition she'd traded her services as a warrior for training and introduction in any thing she thought would give them an edge when "they" came back.
Despite the obscured memories of the day she'd ceased to be a man, a further cruel joke by whatever had attacked her, Ranma wasn't to be lulled into believing it was gone. They'd be back, if they'd ever really left, and she wanted her children ready for whatever they would bring.
But she also wanted them to have an easier time with the "real" world than she had. Which was why she tried to enroll them in schools whenever possible, and why she picked schools like Jindai with very little history of weirdness. Enough weirdness would follow her and her children as it was.
She'd originally planned on Nekomi, but there was something there that seemed bitterly familiar. She'd investigate herself later, but for now, it was better to leave her children away from it.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her, a certain Sosuke Sagara was being flown in for his first day of classes.
***********
"Do you have the necessary documents Satomi-san?" the secretary asked as teachers and staff moved about from office to room and room to office.
The secretary glanced curiously past the woman to her children. Each had a unique appearance that made them stand out more than a little.
The boy out of the three already stood six foot tall, his blonde hair would have been thick and curly if he didn't keep it cropped short. The secretary couldn't help but whistle slightly in appreciation at the young man's well-defined muscles and easy grace. The charming, boyish smile on his face added to the overall attractiveness.
(Deimosu(Deimos) Satomi
Martial Skill: Too good for his own good - Anything Goes preferred
Magic Skill: ...could be better... - Hermetic Magic preferred)
Already the secretary was expecting to hear a great deal of problems dealing with this boy and the various girls around the school.
Of the two sisters, one could hardly sit still. Her long, braided green hair was constantly jinking one way or another as she looked about like a creature in a cage, trying not to tap her feet. She loudly sighed and commented about wanting to get on with classes under her breath every couple of seconds.
(Naiki(Nike) Satomi
Martial Skill: Ryouga-esque - Loud Thief style preferred
Magic Skill: fluctuates with mood - Elemental Magic preferred)
The last sister just outright set the secretary on edge. She was polite and attractive, like the others, but something about the black-haired girl just felt creepy. Her skin was so pale that she was almost an albino, and the secretary knew there were bright red-eyes under those sunglasses. So, even though it made her feel guilty to wince at the genuine friendliness the girl quietly radiated, she still couldn't help it.
(Eija(Asia) Satomi
Martial Skill: ...Ranma refused commentary... - Quiet Theif style preferred
Magic Skill: Exceptional - Faith-based magic preferred)
The gruff sound of a clearing throat took the secretary's attention back to the children's mother, who was apparently displeased by the obvious inspection of her offspring.
"I have the documents here," Ranma noted coldly.
"Uh...yes ma'am..." the secretary said, feeling somehow that if any of the four were people not to upset, the mother was the one.
**************
"Where'd my angel go?" Kurtz Webber moaned as Kaname Chidori went off on her tirade about boring rich kids.
Cramped in his AS cockpit, the rather downward directed mercenary was too busy sighing over the loss of his perfect image of Kaname to notice the ballastic path his computers were tracing away from the school. A solid thunk radiating downward through the vehicle was his first clue that something had been on a direct path to land on him.
"What the heck was that?" Kurtz snapped, sitting up and scanning the area outside the cockpit.
Similarly, Ranma landed lightly on a roof-top across the street, looking back toward the clump of trees she had just jumped off of. A scowl crawled over her face as she tried to puzzle out why the tree branch she had just bounced off of sounded metallic.
Originally, she had been aiming for the street and hadn't even seen a branch. The surprising contact with a hard surface caught her unprepared and she'd landed with an embarrassingly solid impact and hadn't managed to get more than a short hop out of it.
Looking back, however, all she could see were trees and, further onward the school she'd just left her children at. There was nothing that she could see there, and no spirits she could feel in the area.
Reluctantly and very slowly she turned away from the empty street and continued back to the warehouse she'd purchased. There was still some work to be done to make it livable, and secure.
Meanwhile Kurtz glanced down to the view screen for his external camera and blinked. Quickly, his eyes lifted from the screen, to the actual building outside of the cockpit, but there was no sign of the woman he thought he'd glimpsed in the camera.
By the time he looked down, she'd already leaped away.
After a moment, he shook his head clear of the whole thing and looked for a source of caffeine.
****
Meanwhile, Kagurazaka-Sensei was staring at the unusual selection of books in front of her. She couldn't even recognize some of the languages on some of them.
The owner of the books, which looked a lot like some sort of spellbook or fantasy game, was currently exchanging words with some other students, her brother and sister if the teacher remembered correctly. What exactly they were saying, she couldn't understand, but others passing through did.
None of them were speaking Japanese at the moment.
"I told you not to bring the books," Naiki snapped irritably,
"But we might need -" Eija started.
"Nothing's going to happen here," Deimosu assured her brightly. "This is the modern world, not another backwater with a bunch of mumbo-jumbo."
Sousuke listened to the Greek conversation and noted it down in his memory, making some basic deductions.
The three other new students were foreign-educated and raised, like him. Judging by several similarities, he assumed them to be siblings. They appeared to have had past difficulties, probably with some sort of cult or another, based on their choice of reading material. It was also apparent that they believed in such superstitions, but the boy did not apparently have much respect for it.
If their difficulties followed, then his objective might be complicated, but it did not appear that they ahd anything directly to do with his mission. He shrugged and started to make an attempt to use this as a distraction to get past the teachers inspecting backpacks.
"Hey!" a voice cried out as Kagurazaka-sensei hurriedly rushed past the three Satomi's to intercept him. "Young man! These kind of toys are not acceptable in any way shape or form."
Sousuke blinked in moderate surprise, trying to figure out just how this civilian had managed to detect his weapons so easily, and then to mistake them for toys.
"Ma'am, I assure you," he said seriously. "That is no toy, and you really shouldn't be handling it that way."
All eyes were on him as he continued to argue with the teacher about the nature of the item in her hand. It was also confusing that he had not yet been taken into a more severe form of custody. Given the surprising skill of this security staff in detecting weapons, he would have thought there'd be much more severe reprecussions for being caught.
"Great, another military maniac," Kaname said, then her eyes wandered to the other three new students as a pentagram marked book was slipped back into a backpack. "And a creepy, goth kid. Just what we need."
"Hey," Kyouko said cheerfully. "At least one of them is cute."
****************
"Class," the teacher said cheerfully, "we have two new students today."
Kaname looked up toward the two mentioned students and inwardly groaned, recognizing them from earlier in the day.
Standing up front was the creepy goth girl and the military nut from earlier.
"Would you please introduce yourselves, students?" Kagurazaka-sensei suggested strongly to the two new students.
Sousuke nodded crisply as, standing at attention, he introduced himself to the class.
"I'm Sergeant Sagara Sousuke," he declared proudly, and things went down from there.
Kaname groaned as the self-proclaimed sergeant went on a long description of his interest in reading lots and lots of military stuff. She rolled her eyes and shook her head at the performance. There was no way the guy could get any weirder.
Sousuke, meanwhile ended his introduction wondering just how reliable his comrade's advice had been. He stepped back away from the class, clearing the way for the next new student to introduce herself.
Eija smiled brightly as she stepped forward, eyes obscured behind the dark lenses of her sunglasses.
"Excuse me, Satomi-san," Kagurazaka-sensei insisted as the girl started to open her mouth. "Could you first remove your sunglasses?"
"Oh no," Eija said, looking toward the teacher. "I have to wear these during the day. My eyes don't handle daytime very well."
"I see," the teacher said, mentally making a note to check with the nurse on that. "Well, please continue."
Kaname arched an eyebrow as the girl behind the sunglasses, expensive looking things that included sides along the frames that made them almost look like stylish goggles. Except for the black hair, Kaname would have thought the girl was an albino what with all the pale skin and the bad eyes.
Sousuke, meanwhile, was politely filing the information away while observing Chidori's fidgety reactions to the introductions.
"My name is Satomi Eija," the dark-haired girl said politely, bowing cheerfully and smiling brightly.
As she flashed the perfectly white teeth, the audience felt a chill work up their spines that was made worse by the fact that she honestly seemed to be friendly.
"Hello, little miss Dracula," Kaname muttered under her breath.
"I think she's cute," Kyuoko said brightly, apparently the only one that seemed unaffected by the creep factor radiating out of Eija.
"I've also travelled to many places," she said. "I was born in Greece with my brother and sister, but my mother started taking jobs in various places, so we had to travel a lot with her."
"So what hobbies do you have?" one boy asked, with a slightly snide tone of voice. "Drinking blood and turning into bats?"
"Tanaka-san!" Kagurazaka snapped. "Behave yourself."
Eija, however, ignored or failed to notice the commentary and continued on anyway.
"I like herbology and painting, actually," Eija said. "I don't know much about blood rites and it isn't safe to dabble."
The teacher, the students and even Sousuke took a long moment to stare at her nervously.
"Did I say something wrong?" she asked, confused.
*****************
Eija may have had a rather interesting introduction, but her siblings weren't far behind the scale.
********
"I am Satomi Naiki," the green-haired girl said, somewhat rolling her eyes. "I like swimming and rock climbing and heavy metal music. Can I sit down and get on with ignoring you now?"
The other students widened there eyes at this remark and the teacher glared at the young woman.
********
"I am a very astute student of the human body," Deimosu was saying amiably. "My mother, you see, insists that I always improve upon my already masterful level of such anatomical knowledge so that I can produce the most amazing results from the most subtle of..."
"Excuse me, Satomi-san," the teacher said irritably. "But we need to get on with class."
"Uh, right," Deimosu said as he started to walk to his seat.
Some of the students were imagining that he was on his way to being a doctor, and others were imagining impressive skill in the bedroom.
This was mostly split down gender lines.
Strangely enough, so were the longing gazes and angry glares.
*****************
Ranma paused her work as the butterfly flittered past her eyes and landed upon the windowsill in front of her. Frowning, she waited a moment before watching it fold into a piece of inert parchment.
As useful as it was, especially in her line of work, magic always somewhat disturbed her. Her curse and much of what followed from that definitely had a hand in her opinions.
She never used magic directly, sticking to tools and items, and she only used those when she had to. Most of the time, her martial skills were plenty for the jobs. Still, there were times that specific items were necessary.
As it stood, there was only one source of magic that did not make her flinch at least a little: her children.
Grumbling, she set down her building supplies and gingerly picked up the magical message.
She especially hated the way hire requests showed up at her door like this.
Opening the message she skimmed over it somewhat hesitantly before reaching the location.
"Ah, crap," she muttered, quickly moving to a large, iron-bound wood chest and throwing it open.
**********
Meanwhile, a silent figure looked over the scenes going on below in the schoolyard, watching everything carefully. A semi-psychotic grin covered his face as he noted his objective out on the field below enjoying her lunch.
**********
"And what did Sousuke do this time?" Kyouko asked with a light step as she pursued what was quickly becoming her favorite topic: the Kaname and Sousuke soap opera.
Kaname was somewhat tight-lipped this morning, not wanting to say that the military maniac had saved her life from a speeding truck. If she said it, Kyouko would just start gushing about how he obviously was attracted to her and stuff like that. Then Kaname would shoot back something about how gross that was and start pointing out reasons why and all that would do would be to convince Kyouko that Kaname was attracted to Sousuke.
As if.
"Hey," Kyouko said. "What's that over there?"
Kaname looked in the direction Kyouko was pointing, thanking the heavens above for sending the distraction (unaware of the irony of that thought), and saw three large high school boys in karate gis standing around Naiki Satomi.
Eija was to the green-haired girl's side quietly trying to calm her sister down, but not having much luck. As she started to get close enough to hear what was going on, Kaname didn't much blame Naiki for her anger. Their brother was standing off to the side, arms crossed over his chest and a disapproving look on his face.
"You are going to apologize to my sister and I," Naiki said harshly. "Then you are going let us get back to practicing our katas."
"Such women as yourselves should not be polluting the fine art of karate in such a way," one of the boys said arrogantly. "Playing at practice without even a proper dojo. You should join us, the Amateur Karate Club, and then you could watch real men practice the art as it should be practiced."
"I mastered karate by kindergarten," Naiki responded, not alltogether accurately. "Just try something and we'll see who the weakling is."
"Sister, please," Eija said, before turning toward the men. "Please excuse my sister, she is prideful and I'm sure she would not to participate in such a one-sided match."
"Hey, if they want to commit suicide," Naiki said angrily.
"Sister!" Eija snapped in disappointment. "Brother, please, don't just stand there."
"Don't look at me," Deimosu said shrugging irritably. "Any girl but Naiki I would already be teaching these thugs a lesson."
Eija sighed helplessly and turned to her sister to argue farther, this time speaking animatedly in Greek, Naiki answering back just as vehemently and with the occasional comment from Deimosu.
"Hey," the central member of the karate club said. "Don't just ignore us. You want to play martial artist, then you have to accept the challenges."
All three Satomi kids stopped arguing then and turned to look at the man with a serious expression on their face.
"Uh oh," Kyouko said. "Looks like something happened."
"Eija Satomi was trying to remind her sister that they were not supposed to be fighting at school if they could help it," Sousuke said, coming up behind Kaname and Kyouko silently. Both girls jumped slightly at his sudden appearance. "However, now that the Karate club has made the challenge official, even she seems to be dropping her argument."
"You mean Naiki is actually going to fight that big monster," Kaname asked, looking from the five foot six girl to the bulky, over-muscled guy that could barely be still considered adult.
Before Sousuke could answer, Eija sighed and stepped out of the way of her sister, who now grinned with shark-like display of white teeth.
"What are your terms?" Naiki asked in sinister tone.
"If you lose," the leader of the more or less identical trio said. "Then you must become our girlfriends and stop pretending to practice the martial arts." His tone certainly implied that he expected to win hands down.
"When I win," Naiki responded, still smiling. "Not only do you leave us alone, but you admit that women can be just as good martial artists as men."
"We'll need a referee," the karate clubber said eagerly. Looking around, he scanned the crowd and snapped out a finger to point at Kaname. "You, the student council vice president! You'll be our referee."
"Me?" Kaname said in shock. "What do I know about being a referee for a martial arts competition."
"It's easy," Deimosu said. "When Naiki has knocked out all three of them, you declare her the winenr."
"What did you say?" half the field of gathered students asked, including the karate club.
Eija blinked in moderate confusion as she looked over her sister's soon to be opponents.
"You don't mean you want to fight her one on one," she asked somewhat quietly.
"Well, of course," the karate club said, confused. "We want to give her some chance."
"Are you sure about this?" Kaname asked. "What if one of the teachers or someone comes around?"
"Nevermind, Miss Chidori," a cultured voice said from behind an embroidered fan. "The challenge has been made and it must be resolved, and the teachers will not move to impose upon our autonomy."
"Uh, right," Kaname said, wondering again at the president's rather blase response to everything that should have seen as being on outward side of insanity.
"I'm ready whenever they are," Naiki said.
"This little girl can't be thinking to take all three of us at the same time," the Karate club said.
"Are you backing out on the challenge then?" Eija asked hopefully.
"Never," another member said. "No member of the Amateur Karate Club would ever so dishonor the honor of our group."
"Then come on," Naiki said waving for the karate club to attack.
"We're waiting for Vice President Chidori to start the match," the third member said.
"Well, um..." Kaname said hesitantly. "Is everybody ready?"
"Hai!" the karate club members declared.
"Oh yeah," Naiki said confidentally.
"Oh kay," Kaname said, shrugging. "Begin!"
At the sound of the word, Naiki launched herself forward, grinning as widely as a shark.
"Now you'll see why I'm named after the goddess of victory," she shouted loudly as she charged into the karate club, her hand flashing out to make her first strike. "Dokuja Tanketsu Shou!"
Her hand snaked past the first fighter's guard to strike him, slightly off target, in the abdomen. Instantly, the huge fighter was doubled over in surprised agony as Naiki, ignoring her accuracy problem on that strike, whirled about in a flashing roundhouse strike that her next target barely ducked under.
The third fighter, no longer hesitating to attack launched forward at the airborne and therefore, to his mind, vulnerable Naiki. Unleashing his foot in an efficient and power-building arc, he smirked as he imagined this girl and her sister serving him and his compatriots everything they requested.
To his surprise, Naiki threw herself upward, anchoring against her own forward momentum. The heavy roundhouse didn't hit solidly, but it still hit.
Grunting as the impact threw her off course, Naiki brought herself to the ground in as graceful a manner as she could before launching back into the fight.
The first fighter was still recovering, and she had to press her advantage now, before they geared up.
One of the two still active karate club members came into her moving low with a feinted snap kick that provoked Naiki into jumping up off the ground and into the path of the reverse backfist.
Eija winced as her sister was slammed in the jaw and forced down into the dirt. Instantly, Naiki was rolling back to her feet, but she was getting angry.
"Oh no," Eija said. "They're better than she thought they'd be."
"She's getting reckless again," Deimosu agreed, sighing.
Eija gave him a look that spoke volumes about what she thought about the irony of him making that comment.
A near-perfect sidekick from Naiki projected the third karate club member more than half the courtyard away, and she followed it up with a flipping dodge leading into a sweep that was geared to take the feet out from under her opponent, but, in her anger, she telegraphed her intent and the karata-ka was out of the way well before she landed.
Then her first opponent was moving into the fight, reaching out to grab Naiki's arms in an attempt to grapple with and nail down the fighting girl's motion.
Naiki growled, and started to pull out of the hold, but immediately noticed that she was going to be too slow to avoid whatever attacks the other two would be coming in with.
"I can't lose!" she thought to herself. "Then Eija and I would be at their command."
Her eyes flashed watery blue as she roared.
"She's not..." Eija said, sighing.
"She is..." Deimosu said nervously. "Hope Mom's nowhere nearby."
Kaname had been watching in outright shock as the girl had been manhandling the three huge fighters, not easily, but certainly showing that she had more skill and power than any one of them. Now, however, as the karate-ka's converged on the momentarily restrained Satomi, something clouded her vision...
~hybrid biological system, intense psychokinetic potential.~
...then she shook her head and it was gone.
"What did you sa..." Kyouko started to ask when it happened.
A quick flash of liquid blue energy erupted outward from Naiki, throwing back all three of the karate-kas and half-blinding all the witnesses.
Immediately in the aftermath, Naiki was standing in the middle of a small circle of charred ground and the three karate-club members were laid out around her.
****
"What was that?" Gauron wondered curiously as he watched the result of the fight.
****
"Ummm," Kagome said, uncertain what to do at this point.
"I believe now is the point that you should call the match," Sousuke said politely.
"Right," Kagome said, getting a bit nervous again as she remembered that the military maniac was right there. "Winner, Naiki."
"She...cheated," one of the karate-kas moaned before passing at.
"Like hell I did," Naiki said, taking a moment to spit some blood out of her mouth. "Now, let's get to class."
Gauron waited quietly and patiently as the students filtered inside and then moved stealthily down to the courtyard, aware of the invisible AS that was somewhere nearby. Acting as quickly as he could, he bent down to take a sample of the blood he'd seen the green-haired girl spit out.
"Could be interesting," Gauron said, leaving the area as quickly as could do so without attracting attention. "But can't get distracted from the Whispered."
**************
Ranma looked down the hill towards the school and just barely caught the flash of light that told her that one of her children had gotten careless. A hint of worry crossed her face and she started to turn back down the path, but no, it was only one of them. If something very bad had happened she'd have felt a lot more power from all three of her children.
No, this was just a behavior breach. Naiki would be getting a lecture later, but that was about it.
Which left her to her job at hand. Looking back up the hill, she analyzed the chi she was feeling.
This hill was not the most unusual of places she had been, but it wasn't ordinary either. Under the grass a path cut a rivelet in the rise of the hill through which yin travelled in a swift current that was shielded by a crust of yang. Somewhere up in this little wooded hill, someone had built a reservoir of darkness that looked up toward the sun.
Ranma was mildly impressed. Unfortunately, it sounded like someone or something was misusing it.
The morning's message still stuck in Ranma's mind. That a new job would come only days after moving to this new place, and that the hunt was to take place in that same neighborhood. It raised Ranma's hackles even if the situation seemed straightforward.
Two nights ago someone had made off with an American exchange student. The police found witness reports that did not seem to make sense, at least not to normal investigation reports. Some of the weirdness had started to leak to the press, otherwise Ranma might never have been called in.
The information Ranma had said that witnesses had seen the girl taken away East by a "giant insect-man." Of course the police had searched, but Ranma wasn't surprised that they hadn't found this overgrown path. She herself had barely found it with chi-senses, the entire hill seemed to be designed to not be noticed, in fact.
As for the giant-insect man, like the police, Ranma didn't think there was a demon involved here. More likely, it was just an ugly and very skinny guy in some sort of tattered overcoat who had stumbled on this old refuge. There were a lot of people like that out there, with the instinct to draw them to such places without knowing why they were drawn.
If a kid's life wasn't at stake, she'd have never accepted the assignment. The police would have found this eventually, probably with only a little more trouble, and Ranma didn't like getting involved in police matters if she could avoid it.
She took a sniff of the air and kept her eyes open as she climbed and moved deeper into the flow of yin chi. She shivered a bit against the instinct to feel a calming sensation as she hit the deeper chi.
It was a reminder. Something that happened anytime she came to a place of heavy and pure chi, yang or yin.
A reminder that she wasn't unmagical anymore herself. Years of chi-mastery, the neko-ken, Jusenkyo and her....unwilling liasions with a trio of spirits had had in many ways forced her to become a creature of magic herself. It had been getting worse since only a little after her children were born. She had to deal with it, but she didn't have to like it.
Then she found what she was looking for.
A veritable pool of dark chi in a little bowl surrounded by foreign-planted grey oaks and looking up into the sky. In the center of the little bowl was a hole in the ground down into which a ladder descended.
Ranma didn't wait before diving down into that hole and instantly a sickening sensation drifted through the, until then pure chi. She covered her mouth and shook her head clear, taking in the darkness as she considred what she faced.
Someone had desecrated this holy site with blood in order to shield it against exorcists.
Most exorcists, that is.
Exorcists that dealt mainly in yang probably wouldn't have the experience to filter out the corrupted yin from blinding their senses and hampering their powers. Fortunately, the red-head wasn't just an exorcist. She was a chi-master, both in yin and yang, and she wasn't going to be stopped just by a little booby trap like this.
As she regained her balance, she took in the trap and sighed in relief.
It was old, very old, left over from some past evil and Ranma was probably still looking at a common sicko with sharp instincts.
She moved forward, wrapping herself in the umisenken and searching for any more signs of other chi-traps.
The long underground cooridor pushed downward further into the hill, finally coming out in large underground room that shocked Ranma's senses again.
He stood in an ancient lava-chamber, among walls that were virtually glowing with yang while yin seethed in center until it was forced back through the tunnel and up into the hill.
In her shock at the triple blind, Ranma dropped the umisenken and almost missed the incoming motion.
At the last moment she dodged aside and the knife slashed through where her neck had been just a moment before.
"What demon comes to this holy place?" her attacker demanded.
As Ranma had expected, the man was long and spindly, almost anorexic, with deep, sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. His jaw standing out against his skin could certainly look almost insectile in the wrong light. And those long strands of standing hair looked something like antennae.
"Shut up," Ranma said slashing forward with a simple strike into the man's face.
The man tried to dodge aside, but Ranma was more than ready for it and casually swiped across with his fist to complete the strike anyway and send the predicted sicko sprawling to the floor insensate.
That left just finding the girl.
The first alcove held a girl, indeed, but she had been dead for at least a month. She hung from the wall in chains that held her tight against the wall. A host of little cuts were slashed into her body through the tatters of her clothing and her cloudy, half-rotted eyes stared outward.
Ranma wasn't surprised that the girl's body was still heavy with chi, or the two tails that hung limply from her lower back. A sicko with chi instincts wouldn't just hunt average people, after all. Those instincts would draw him to weirdos, like her and her kids. Another reason she had taken this job so quickly.
"We got him for you kid," Ranma whispered, closing the girl's eyes and moving to the next alcove and the next until she found the girl she was looking for.
Katrina Strnad, the missing girl was weak and barely conscious, mouth open and breathing tiredly. Ranma immediately noted what had drawn the sicko to this one: she was a vampyr, girl probably didn't know it even.
"Don't worry," Ranma said softly, reaching up to pull the chains out of the wall and moving to carry the girl.
Miss Strnad slumped heavily over Ranma's shoulder and the red-haired girl made for the exit.
"You will not take that demon from this place!" a voice demanded angrily as the thin man charged forward at the woman freeing his prisoner.
Said-prisoner woke up and flinched fearfully at the sound of that voice, and then it was cut off with a bone-crunching thud.
"You should have stayed down, freak," Ranma said as the body of the serial killer crumpled to the ground, neck snapping at an unnatural angle from the impact of Ranma's foot.
From there it was simple to leave the descrated site and soon she was depositing the little girl at a Catholic church she knew of that was friendly and knowledgable towards the living version of their traditional foe.
"Might want to mention the place to someone who can purify it too," Ranma muttered, mostly satisfied that the job was done.
Still, it was rare that things went so exactly as she expected them to, and that was bothering her.
************
As Sousuke walked into the school, he considered the exchange he had just seen with what he had gotten on the Satomi's background check.
On the front, there wasn't too much to raise eyes. The mother's stated profession was "mystical consultant," which Sousuke took to mean some sort of fortune teller or other such thing. She'd moved around the world a lot similar to Sousuke himself, though she seemed to be living in places that weren't exactly in the middle of the wars, but on the edges.
Her childhood, education and career seemed very upfront. Just as upfront as Sousuke's own background. In fact, he saw some of the same names as references that he himself had, meaning that the Satomi's and mithril shared a forger of records somewhere and maybe some financial backings.
Thinking back, Sousuke thought he vaguely remembered hearing of a freelancer named Satomi. Took specialized jobs of some kind. That made him some what nervous. If she was a freelancer, then she could be working with their enemies.
He'd have to keep a tighter watch on the Satomis from now on.
As he said that he kneeled down to open his shoe locker and noticed the hair he had placed there was broken.
****
"I don't know what you're talking about, Kyouko," Kaname said irritably.
"You got all spooky and said something like 'hybrid gas pumps are psychotic' or something like that," Kyouko insisted.
"What?" Kaname demanded, confused. "That doesn't make any...."
And that's when the side of the building ahead of them exploded outward in a rain of debris.
Students screamed and ran for cover as a select few just stared in outright shock.
"Sa...sa...sa..SAGARA!!!!" Kaname roared outloud.
Kneeling behind the blast shield, Sousuke watched the smoke billow up and considered what may or may not have been placed inside his footlocker. His analysis was interrupted by the impact of Kaname's harisen over the side of his head.
"What the hell are you doing you maniac?" she demanded bitterly.
"Someone had tampered with my shoe locker," Sousuke said calmly.
"Well," Kaname said. "Obviously that explains everything."
"I'm glad you understand, Miss Chidori," Sousuke continued, moving to stand up.
Then he was flattened by the harisen again.
"It doesn't explain anything!" Kaname snapped angrily.
Sousuke looked up from his position on the ground more than a little confused at the situation. He kept quiet a moment, blinking, as he tried to figure out how to best explain what to him was a given fact.
"It was possibly a bomb or other such trap," Sousuke said. "Detonation was the only option."
"And what if it was gas?" Kaname asked in a tone that would have read to a normal person as "you expect me to believe that?"
"I made sure to use an explosive that would burn hot enough to eliminate any biological or chemical waepons," Sousuke assured her.
"Wait a minute," Kaname said, taking her turn to be confused. "You thought I was serious?!!"
"AAHHH!" Kyouko shrieked. "What's that?"
Whatever Sousuke's response would have been was interrupted as a blackened wraith radiating fear and woe stumbled out of the area of the explosion and moved in a zig zag towards Kaname and the others mouth open-wide to reveal sharp, pearly white teeth...
"Shoes go boom," the shape said dizzily.
...and collapsed in front of them.
"Oh crap," Kaname said. "I think that's Eija."
"Hmm," Sousuke said. "I thought for sure I checked for any civilians before I detonated that."
"Hey!" a voice called out from behind them. Turning back, they saw Deimosu heading their direction looking concerned.
Immediately Kaname scooped up Eija and hid the small girl in a little crevice behind some of the debris.
"What's going on over here?" Deimosu demanded urgently.
"There has been a serious acci..." Sousuke started urgently.
"The military maniac here just blew up the lockers because he thought someone planted a bomb in it," Kaname said, cutting off Sousuke. "We got this handled."
"But..." Sousuke started.
"Don't try to deny it, you idiot," Kaname said somewhat crazily.
"But..." Sousuke tried to say again.
"We'll just have to clean this up," Kaname said.
"Kaname, what about..." Kyouko started to say, sort of pointing.
"We'll take care of it, Kyouko," Kaname assured her.
Deimosu looked from Sousuke to Kyouko, both looking worried and confused, and back to Kaname, who seemed more than a little on edge, and shrugged.
"Whatever," he said. "At least I'm not involved in this." Putting his hands up behind his head, he started to walk off.
"Okay," Kaname said, grabbing up the unconscious Satomi. "To the nurse's office."
"Miss Chidori," Sousuke started to inquire as they started moving for the nurse's office. "Why did we not tell Satomi about his sister?"
"Yeah, Kaname," Kyouko said. "What if she's really hurt?"
"Why did the shoes go boom?" Eija asked again, muttering from on Kyouko's back.
"Because then he would have killed us," Kaname said. "Have you seen what that family can do?"
"I am more than capable of taking care of my...urk," Sagara found his forward motion cut off as Kaname pulled him back around the corner they had just been about to turn.
Peeking around the corner, they stared at Naiki Satomi sniffing the air and turning about in confusion. She started to look back at them, and the three ducked around the corner. She looked away and thye looked back around the corner.
Carefully, at Kaname's insistence, the three carrying a fourth crept forward cautiously, watching Naiki all the way. The green-haired girl sniffed the air again and whipped her head about, just missing it as the other three teenagers past her around the other direction with nary a sound.
Scratching her head, Naiki sniffed again and, twisting about, she barely missed the three people carrying her sister disappearing around another corner.
"Eija forgot her sunscreen again," Naiki said. "Wonder how bad the sunburn is this time?"
"I'm really not understanding the point behind this, Miss Chidori," Sousuke said, nevertheless moving as quietly as he could. "The Satomis would certainly not react badly to us trying to help their sister."
He was somewhat embarrassed that this untrained civilian had apparently been paying more attention to their route than he was, but, then again she seemed to be more worried about encounters with other students than he was.
"Whew," Kaname said as they came to a stop in front of the nurse's station. "Made it. Now, listen, Sousuke. I'm not sure what you saw this morning, but I saw a near-monster take apart three people."
"She was very skilled," Sousuke admitted. "But she could have ended that much sooner and without whatever weapon she used at the end if she had been less reckless."
"Huh? Weapon?" Kyouko asked confused. "Sorry, I couldn't see anything, I was too busy listening to Kaname mutter about hybrid theory."
"I've been telling you all day," Kaname said. "I never said anything like that, look, school's almost out, let's just get Eija to the nurse's office patched up and out of here before her brother or sister show up."
"Or mother."
"Or mother," Kaname agreed.
All three teenagers froze and turned around to see the red-headed thirty-something standing behind them.
***********
Ranma shook her head as she looked over her daughter, the youngest of her children by several minutes. The girl had a real problem with handling impacts. That had forced Ranma to take her slowly through the various body-hardening techniques, making the difference between her and her siblings that much more extreme.
Given a choice, Ranma wouldn't even be forcing martial instruction on the scholarly girl, but their life didn't allow for much leeway. Demons, sorcerers and monsters of all stripes were drawn to her children. Some were simply curious, others sought to make use of or destroy them.
"Are you going to explain what happened?" Ranma asked the three teens standing before her with an arched eyebrow.
"Boom! Weee!" Eija said dizzily, drawing sweat from everybody present.
"Ma'am!" Sousuke said stepping forward a crisp manner that proudly screamed soldier to Ranma. "If I may explain."
She took a moment to take the boy's measure and liked what she saw. He held himself like a warrior, and she could see by his face that he'd seen battle. Raw, unchecked battle the likes of which she usually tried to ghost past. There was no hint of chi mastery in his aura, but there was a good potential.
He'd seen a lot and done a lot, but he was no burn out. His stance spoke of military discipline, something Ranma had precious little of, but had learned to respect. This was an active soldier.
Ranma was very curious about just why such a person was here, of all places.
"Go ahead," Ranma said, moving to take Eija from Kyouko and lay her gently on the ground so she could check her daughter over as he talked.
"What, but..." the blue-haired girl started to demand.
"Excuse me," Ranma said sharply, turning to look at Kaname. "But the kid said he'd give me an answer already, so wait your turn."
Ranma felt the edge of a headache as she looked at the girl. There was something about her that seemed to distort her chi field in little spatters of static throughout her aura.
She'd felt this before, usually when she was encountering something new and her senses hadn't figured out how to handle it just yet. Looking back at the soldier, she arched an eyebrow and nodded in what she considered a subtle display of realization.
Ranma's legendary poker face had never really left her, though, and several sets of thoughts were going through the heads of the teenagers.
"What the hell is she smiling at him like that for," Kaname wondered. "Oh hell, is she some sort of cradle robbing old woman?"
"She's made me," Sousuke said. "And Kaname? How could she be so quick?"
"Wow, Kaname and Sousuke are so obvious even perfect strangers can figure it out," Kyouko said.
"She's got a good hand, fold," Eija mumbled.
Ranma turned attention back to her daughter and was pleased to note that there seemed to be no major injuries, just the concussion which she could deal with easily enough, starting with some light shiatsu.
"I was recovering my shoes from the foot-locker when I noticed that someone had tampered with my locker," Sousuke explained. "As I could not be certain of what had been placed in my locker..."
"Oh hell, you blew it up, didna ya?" Ranma asked as she continued to massage Eija's temple.
"Affirmative, Ma'am," Sousuke said.
"Oww, my head..." Eija muttered.
"Shhh," Ranma said. "Ya gotta a concussion, Eija-chan, just lay down and don' try nothing and I'll take care of it."
"I could..." Eija started to say.
"The last time ya tried to cast any spell like this," Ranma interrupted in Greek. "You puked your guts out and ended up stuck in bed for two days. Healer, let someone else heal ya." The last was said with a bit of good humor and ended with a friendly thump on the injured girl's arm.
"Hai, Mother," Eija said in frustration, rubbing at her arm.
"That should do it, now just sit there," Ranma said. "We'll be going home in a moment. Now, you wanted to say something?"
Ranma turned from her crouch to look up at Kaname expectantly, trying not to blink at the continuing headache that looking at her caused.
"Well...ummm..." Kaname said, trying to find a way to dig out of the hole Sousuke just put them in.
"Now, why were ya not talking to my other kids?" Ranma asked again, arching an eyebrow.
"Well...they're ummm," Kaname said nervously. "They probably would have killed us..." she didn't sound half so certain as she had a moment ago.
"Deimosu and Naiki?" Ranma asked with a laugh, then seemed to think again. "Well, maybe Naiki. What about you, pigtails?"
"Oh, I was just helping my friend," Kyouko said.
"Anyway, don't let me hear about this again, or whoever's responsible for each of ya is gonna hear about it."
She reached down to help up her daughter, frowned meaningfully at each of them before walking away.
"Bai bai," Eija said tiredly, waving from on Ranma's back.
"Spells?" Sousuke said in curiosity.
****
"This DNA strand is amazing," the tech said to Gauron. "It's holds layer upon layer of coding, like one of the geometrics that seems to hold more space than it takes up. Every time we think we've hit the end of it, there's more coding."
"Is it something we can use?" Gauron asked. "Like the Whispered."
"Maybe with a living example," the tech said. "But this isn't a repository of knowledge like the Whispered, this is all stuff that is built into the organism."
"How about brainwashing?" the pyschotic asked.
"How old are we talking about?" the tech asked. "I wouldn't want to play games with the person behind this past a few years old."
"So we'd need infants is what your saying," Gauron concluded. "That could be fun."
**********
"Hey, Deimosu," Naiki called out waving her hand. "What's up?"
"Have you seen Eija anywhere?" Deimosu asked in response.
"I smelled her in halls," his sharkish sister said, pointing back over her shoulder. "Think she was heading to the nurse's office. Smelled like a sunburn."
"Oh good, I was worried," the brother said, breathing a sigh of relief. "There was some sort of accident in the shoe lockers where she was supposed to be. I'll head ba...uh oh."
Deimosu had been turning about to head back into the school when he saw who was coming out of it.
"What?" Naiki asked, turning about...to the sight of her mother walking up towards them carrying their sister on her back.
"Umm, Mom, what are you doing here?" Deimosu asked. "What happened to Eija?"
"There was an accident," Ranma said.
"The shoe lockers blew up," Eija muttered, pantomiming an explosion. "Boom."
"What?" the male Saotome said. "Those...those..."
"I already talked to them, Dei-chan," Ranma said. "Now other issues...Naiki!"
Naiki flinched aside at the tone of voice.
"Hai, Okaasan!" Naiki said swiftly.
"You were fighting, and you used your powers," Ranma said. "I'm assuming something nasty and supernatural attacked the school and you were the only one to notice it, right?"
"Uh...uh...well, there was a challenge..." Naiki said, blushing.
"Oh, well you can't ignore a challenge," Ranma agreed seriously. "It must have been extremely tough opponent."
"There were three of them..." Naiki noted.
"And they had excellent teamwork?" Ranma asked.
"Not exactly..."
"So your reasons for blasting away on your first day of school?"
"They said girls couldn't be martial artists and said Eija and I had to give up if they won," Naiki protested.
"And you decide to disprove them by going overboard like some untrained pk-kid or waking latent?" Ranma demanded. "What do I track down those gurus, priests and mystics for if not to teach not to go Akira?"
"Sumimasen," Naiki said, embarrassed.
"We'll see about that," Ranma said, smirking.
**********
"...and so I reasoned that I should detonate the shoe lockers," Sousuke explained to Mao. "Unfortunately there was a civilian that apparently did not hear instructions to clear out. Injuries were, fortunately, minor and we left her in the care of her mother. The individual who tampered with the locker is still unknown."
"You blew up a civilian?" Mao asked, vaguely amused given the fact that it appeared the situation was resolved.
"Yes, one Eija Satomi," Sousuke said.
"Oh, one of the kids you asked the background check on?" Mao asked, a little more interested in that. "That means you had contact with her mother. Our suspected freelancer."
"Is she as hot as her picture?" Kurz asked.
"Yes, also..." and here Sousuke gritted his teeth for a moment. "...I believe that she may have recognized my purpose here in school."
Even Kurz turned a bit cautious at that.
"Are you sure about that?" Mao asked.
"This isn't some sort of paranoia, is it?" Kurz asked. "Like the plaster bust you shattered? Or the guy who couldn't hold a scalpel straight in biology class?"
"No, I am quite certain she knows what I am here for," the sergeant said. "She stated that if anything else threatened her children that 'the people responsible for each of us' would hear about it. If she assumed I was a normal high school student, wouldn't she have said 'parents' instead?"
"That is an odd phrasing," Mao said. "I guess we'll have to look into it."
"Don't worry, you have just the man for the job," Kurz said, smiling. "I'll have her wrapped around my finger and telling everything she knows before you know it."
The blonde sniper's grin could almost light up the room on its own, so brimming was it with confidence.
****
Sixteen hours later.
"Lesbian," a certain red-head said to a flabbergasted blonde smooth-talker, her hand held out in a stop gesture inches from his face. "Go away."
And then Ranma walked out of the supermarket, grumbling.
Over the radio, Kurz could hear Mao chortling hysterically.
"Laugh it up, Sergeant Major," Kurz said. "But who does this leave to figure out what she's doing?"
The laughing stopped.