Chapter 15 was released online around March 30th. It went pretty
quickly mostly because I find action scenes the easiest to write. I'd also
gotten comments and reviews about people wanting Akane to play a
bigger role in the story, so I did some restructuring and moved forward
her character storyline (pushing Ryu's back a bit to what will have to be
around chapter 18 or 19). I like to think I'm of the more accommodating
sort of writer, who is willing to make these sorts of modifications to the
story if the readership wants it, and if it is warranted (and if it can
fit).
-----

For six years, mankind has waged a Secret War against an enemy from
Beyond the Stars. It was during the autumn of 2006 that the Unryu farm
was made the victim of these Visitors. Inadvertently leading the aliens
back to Nerima after the trauma of his abduction, Ryouga and Ranma got
their first taste of combat against the alien menace. Eventually rescued
from a crashed ship by XCOM, the extraterrestrial combat organization
branch of UNETCO, the Nerima Wrecking Crew has been conscripted into the
war as two special four man squads: India and Juliet.

The UNETCO timetable moves ever forward, but a new complication has
arisen as the alien forces in the Far East surge out in unexpected
numbers and with surprising fury.

-----

The Road to Cydonia
Chapter XV
Snake Hunter

-----

Written by:
Capn Chryssalid
jbraveboy@gmail.com

-----

All hell shall stir for this.

King Henry V. Act v. Sc. 1.

-----

They met in darkness, as came more naturally to them. They were blind,
but they saw all that transpired around them. They were deaf, but they
knew the words before they were even spoken. They were mute, but their
orders were followed without question. They were frail, but they were
feared by all.

So they met in darkness.

Hollow Eyes ranked third among them, though they were equals in the
impression of the Mind. His expertise and goals were, however,
considered outlandish and unorthodox, and so his standing among those
three 'equals' suffered. To his left floated Scarred Face, the unhealed
plasma burns that so marked him obvious even in his psionic extra-
sensory presence. He was old. He had seen much; done much, and he had
little to prove. He was first among them for this.

To Scarred Face's left, Wink floated, the strong reddish tinge of his
robes reflecting his fierce ambitions. He was physically deformed, not
that that mattered to an Ethereal, with one eye socket grown over by
bone and mottled flesh. Across from the three Ethereals, their servitors
stood, waiting. They, too, were three: Sectoid, Muton, Snakeman.

IT COMES

"They will intercept it." Zraz was the only one present with an actual
name. He, like his Snakemen comrades, remained primitive creatures who
clung to an individual identity as a reason for existence. They were
limited beasts, given paltry weapons and simple aims.

"We are also concerned," the Sectoid projected his thoughts as a proper
intelligent being should, though they were tentative and near muted
compared to an Ethereal's mental tempest. "Without sufficient Elerium,
we rely too heavily on infiltrates."

WE CAN NOT RELY ON THOSE

THEY ARE WEAK

Hollow Eyes disagreed with Wink, un-surprisingly.

THEY SERVE US WELL WE CAN MAKE MORE

UNTESTED

THE NEW BATCH OF SERVANTS ARE READY WE CAN USE THEM

MORE

Scarred Face needed think no more to prompt the Muton overseer.

"The new soldiers are unstable," the massive creature spoke in a
guttural tongue, for the benefit of Zraz. The Ethereals and the Sectoid
heard his thoughts clearly enough without the need for coarse sounds.
"They think about themselves. Two have self-executed. The new
programming is not being safely assimilated."

Hollow Eyes shared his thoughts before Wink got the chance to defend his
project.

THEY ARE LIMITED SERVANTS THESE THOUGHTS ARE NOT COMPATIBLE THEY CAN NOT
COMPREHEND OR FUNCTION WITH THEM

ITERATION WILL RESOLVE THE PROBLEMS UNDESIRABLE RESULTS WILL BE EXPENDED
ITERATION WILL BRING PERFECTION

As usual, it fell to Scarred Face to make the decision.

The Ethereal Commander's tiny golden eyes glowed hotly.

EXPEND THEM

Hollow Eyes was not pleased by the dictate. It was a waste of resources
to keep making new batches of mutons and floaters using hybridized
mental programming. They did not have the minds to process the
information properly. It was no surprise that they were unstable. The
waste, the inefficiency, made his thoughts sour. Even if he could
benefit from Wink's project being discredited, his priority was always
to serve the interests of the Mind.

But if he would not have proper soldiers to carry out his desires,
infiltrates would have to do. Scarred Face was not averse to the
prospect, and Wink was openly dismissive of it, but the Mind would
recognize Hollow Eyes' worth and ability.  The Mind would approve of
him, and his existence would be justified. He reached out with his
formidable mind, contacting one of his infiltrate thralls.

IT IS TIME

Hollow Eyes then added, for good measure.

DEMONSTRATE YOUR VALUE

The tiny trembling human mind replied with energetic acceptance. Just
like that, it was put into motion. Those of no use would be removed from
circulation. In time, it would be as if they never existed.

-----

November 29

The mission had gone belly up from almost the moment of insertion.

Ranma gritted his teeth and cringed as a flash of green light,
blindingly fast even to him, tore through the air. It eventually hit one
of a line of cherry trees flanking the inside of the villa driveway, and
an instant later the trunk exploded from the inside, spraying
charred-to-the-point-of-ash splinters in every direction. He was just
outside the residential home of Takashi Somei, Minister of Agriculture,
Forestry and Fisheries. It wasn't a social visit.

They'd been ambushed less than a minute after leaving the Lightning and
right from the get go these aliens had proven to be rather different
from the ones Juliet and India squad had faced before. Ranma tried to
calm himself after the near miss. They were up against Snakemen, and
good ones, too. Not that he had any personal experience with the breed
before, but he'd read plenty about them. They were soldiers, skilled,
practiced; dangerous.

"Saotome-taichou," Konatsu reported; Ranma heard him over their secure
intercom. "We've taken the last of the guards to a secure area. They
should be safe."

"Roger, Juliet Two. Juliet Three? Are you in position yet?"

Shampoo's reply belied her situation. She was breathing heavily, and not
from exhaustion. He'd heard an explosion off in her direction, but she'd
informed him then that she as unhurt. His HUD readout of all four Juliet
Squad members confirmed it. She'd obviously been rattled, however, and
was still recovering.

"Yes, but..." she managed to say, and her voice calmed somewhat. The
tension told in her speech, which began to revert more to what he was
used to from her Nerima days. "Not good. Not very good. They used
grenade, or maybe bomb. I need... need to find better position."

Ranma weighed his options.

"Alright," he decided. "Konatsu, leave the guards and back up Shampoo.
Move around to the south."

"Roger," Konatsu replied, his voice reserved as was his usual, even
under pressure. Shampoo replied with the same word, if not the same
tone. Ranma wasn't happy just leaving the guard's they'd recovered by
themselves, but there was no choice. They were running out of time,
plain and simple.

At exactly 7:12 PM, 29th of November, Radar and Hyperwave decoders
belonging to UNETCO Far East confirmed the incursion of two alien craft
in the upper atmosphere, flying side by side at around Mach 4.8. Three
minutes later, aircraft were scrambled to intercept the UFOs: a large
scout and a battleship. Four minutes after that, a UFO was detected
rising from the lower atmosphere, just as another dropped out of orbit.
Emergency reserve craft were routed to intercept.

By 7:29, the air battle had begun. Interceptors - Mach 3 fighter
aircraft using the finest Earth based fuels and technology - were busy
chasing down the weaker and smaller UFOs, trying to maneuver close
enough to engage with plasma beams. The ship mounted weapons had a fifty
two kilometer effective range, but against a speeding alien craft that
could maneuver in defiance of inertia and gravity, that was easier said
than done. The most powerful XCOM craft: an Avenger and two Firestorms
(the former being a large Earth-alien hybrid design, and the latter
simply Earth-built UFOs), concentrated on the battleship.

During the conflagration, at 7:31 PM, another large scout was detected
in the lower atmosphere. A minute and a half later, the ship's mission
profile was decoded: Alien Infiltration. Given the highly sensitive
nature of an infiltration mission, the only remaining reserve craft in
Seiran Mountain had been scrambled to shoot down the ship if possible,
or prevent the success of the alien's mission on the ground if
necessary. By 7:35 PM the Lightning (another Earth-built UFO, designed
as a fighter-transport) took off with the two remaining squads on the
base: India and Juliet. The others had already been loaded onto the
base's Skyranger and Avenger, to effect ground assault on one of the
supply ships and the battleship respectively.

During the flight, Ranma and Ryouga had tried to brief their squads.

Alien Infiltration, the most insidious of all activities: the aliens
were trying to either coerce or control a government official, or
covertly replace him with an alien hybrid or clone. More information
would have to be gleaned during and after combat. The enemies were
Snakemen, which meant a determined and organized resistance of the
second-to-worst sort. These aliens had no outstanding weaknesses, but
while bullets would be less than effective against them, lasers and
plasma would work just fine. Estimated opposition was between eight and
sixteen individuals, but probably twelve or fourteen.

On arrival, the Lightning had scanned the area. They had access to an up
to date map of the area, but alien interference was preventing real time
spy satellite updates. Immediately the signs of an Alien Infiltration
were obvious: the guards were all unconscious, either knocked out by the
gravitic distortion caused by the UFO as it landed or by the aliens
themselves. The moment the Squads had moved to secure the bodies and
move them out of the way, the aliens had opened fire.

Ranma could still remember the sound of one of the parked cars behind
them, as a stray blast turned it into a fireball. The frame was still a
molten mess, glowing red hot in the night like an ingot of gold.
Luckily, they had used Konatsu's ninjutsu clones to approach the area
first, and so no one 'real' had been killed in the ambush. Konatsu had
taken it like a fist to the gut, however, and Ranma had been reminded
once again that the agony the genius ninja had to endure in his role as
scout wasn't imaginable to someone like him.

"It feels like I'm dead," Konatsu had said once, about the experience.
"When I get shot, there's... just pain and light."

Ranma motioned to Ukyou, who was crouched behind a stone wall, her rifle
held tight to her chest. She nodded, and used one of her polished
spatulas to look over the top of the wall without exposing her body. He
gave her a few seconds, but it didn't look like she could see anything
about the alien (or aliens) pinning them down.

"Contact! Tango! No: two of them!" It was Ryu's voice. India Squad was
advancing towards the villa from the northwest, to get into the building
from the kitchen backdoor.

"Damnit, he's fast!" That was Mousse.

Suddenly, Ukyou all but screamed, "Grenade!"

A heartbeat later, Ranma's personal armor blared a proximity alert
warning, indicting the detection of an incoming known explosive device.
That warning didn't make it easier to see where the grenade was, not in
such a short span of time, so he fell to the ground and covered his
head. In the corner of his vision, he saw Ukyou doing shielding herself
with her giant spatula, a technique she had learned while training with
India Squad.

The grenade went off on the opposite side of the wall. It was much more
powerful than a conventional human grenade, like the M61 or Mk3A2, and
even going off five meters from the wall, it served to demolish the
cover. Bits of blasted stone flew through the air, with a large piece
hitting the ground with a thud right next to Ranma's left arm. Quickly
rolling aside, Ranma moved into a crouch and back under what was left of
the wall. A second later, the aliens opened fire again, plasma blasts
tearing into the ground.

Leaning out just enough to get a good line of sight on his enemy, Ranma
shouldered his T7A2 laser rifle and snapped off a trio of shots. It was
dark, but his Personal Armor's built in sensors included advanced night
vision equipment. The world was awash in shades of green, but amid the
confusion, there was some electronic assistance. The suit integrated
computer could recognize motion of sufficient dimensions (typically man-
sized), and highlight that object on his HUD. A beam of bright white
reached out across the battlefield, just missing the ducking alien,
cutting a hot red scar into the concrete wall of the villa.

Ranma quickly ducked back behind cover, as more return fire peppered the
area. The sound of the alien plasma weapons was very different than that
of his laser rifle, so he could tell just by hearing when Ukyou took a
few shots of her own. These Snakemen were giving them a tough time -
normally this would be the point where high explosives were used, but
the presence of human hostages (and one of them a member of the Japanese
Cabinet, no less) meant that just wasn't an option. Even an auto cannon
raised the possibility of killing someone inside the building, so a M-
144 missile was totally out of the question.

Then, to his surprised delight, the screech of a wounded (or maybe
killed) alien filled the air.

"Shampoo to Squad leader," the Amazon's voice was now cool and steady.
"In position. Attacking."

Ranma ventured to take a few shots of his own, while the aliens scurried
to find cover. Shampoo was using a heavy laser rifle, the T-8A1, which
could project a 1.3mm diameter laser beam over an effective distance of
two kilometers. Shampoo was still the best shot in both teams when she
wasn't being rushed or harried, a product of having learned to use a
rifle for hunting when she was younger. She was putting that old
training, and the new indoctrination she had received at Seiran, to good
effect.

He saw her beam fill the air. One moment there was nothing and the next
there was a solid line. She obviously had the tracer on to gauge the
dwell point of the beam as she raked it across a target. Unfortunately,
it also gave away her position. There was no scream that time, but Ranma
still saw movement, and he and Ukyou took aim and fired, leaving burning
furrows in the villa walls. The Snakeman kept low, however, and
slithered back into the house and out of view.

"Shampoo!" Ranma called over the intercom. "How many?"

"Two tangos down," she confirmed. "I'm moving. There's one in a window
and he sees me."

"They're falling back!" Ryouga's voice was tense, and hinted at his
perpetual anger towards the xenos. "Now! Now!"

"Got 'im!" That was Mousse, sounding more excited than usual. "Tango
down!"

"Roof!" Ryu yelled. "Roof! Get down!"

Ranma motioned to Ukyou to get up and cover him as he advanced. He was
tempted to try and Umisenken, but his blood was running pretty hot, and
he wasn't sure how effective it would be. The technique affected the
perception of those nearby, including any teammates, but tests showed
that he still gave off heat. He'd show up on an infrared sensor (just
like he's show up on a motion sensor), and Snakemen, like certain Earth
snakes, had a natural ability to sense the strength and distance of a
heat source.

The building up ahead was two stories high, built in the style of the
old Shusho Kantei (or Prime Minister's mansion). There was a courtyard
in the middle of the building, facing the curved driveway, and the house
itself surrounded the courtyard on three sides, like a big C. According
to schematics Intel had provided them (real spur of the moment, too;
those boys worked fast), there were five entrances on the first floor.
One on each side of the building where the courtyard merged into the
front lawn, one at the far side of the courtyard leading to the sitting
room facing the courtyard, one in the kitchen immediately north of the
sitting room facing the back yard, and another in the reading room
immediately south of the sitting room, also facing the back yard and the
pool there.

"I'm clearing the roof! Heads up!" Ryouga yelled, alerting everyone to a
thrown friendly grenade. A second later, a smaller explosion came from
the top of the building - a HG85 AP Frag grenade. Seiran had stocks of
both it and the M61, but HG85s were preferred for this mission because
of the smaller kill radius. Again, the hostages had hamstrung their
assault options. Ranma disliked the grenades intensely himself. They
seemed so... cheap a way of killing someone.

At that thought, his suit warned him again of an incoming explosive
device.

Falling onto his back, and knowing it came from above, Ranma placed both
of his palms upward and concentrated. It was just like knocking back a
Happodaikarin, just like dealing with one of Happosai's stupid
firecracker bombs, he reminded himself. He could do it! The ki of his
confidence ignited between his fingers and took form under his mental
command before escaping as a tide upwards.

"Moko Takabisha!"

The ki blast engulfed the alien grenade and the concussive force threw
it up and into the air, where it exploded a second and a half later.
Ukyou, meanwhile, seemed to have gotten a bead on the elusive alien
lurking on the roof. She was firing at it desperately, laser beams
raking savagely back and forth over the rooftop. On the third shot she
was awarded with a screech like a bat's.

"Tango down!" Ukyou announced, and then seemed to think twice about it.
"He's wounded, if not dead."

"Let's find out," Ranma replied, and flipped back onto his feet. Like
the rest of the Nerima Crew (well, except Kuno), he had an option that
wasn't available to most soldiers just wearing personal armor. Flexing
powerful leg muscles, and equally powerful ki, Ranma broke into a short
run and jumped. For comparative purposes, it could be pointed out that
while the average vertical jump height for a skilled volleyball player
was roughly 2.8 feet, Ranma in a single bound easily cleared two
stories. It was his innate telekinetic and psionic power that allowed
such a feat, the same essential mechanism that allowed an Ethereal to
float or "physically" lift many times its own weight.

Landing on the roof, Ranma quickly brought his rifle up to shoulder
level. "I'm on the roof. Check your fire."

Nearby, a Snakeman writhed, wounded but not dead, making a faint hissing
sound. Ukyou had hit it, cutting the alien's right arm clean off. It
occurred to Ranma then that the burned stump at its shoulder was what
was making the noise. Snakemen had unusual muscle and cardiovascular
systems that used the hydraulic principle to give them power. Air was
literally being forced out of the severed and mostly cauterized muscle.

It was an inhuman creature, especially this close up. There were no
legs, just a long snake-like foot. Ranma had seen a drawing of a snake
woman once, something Hiroshi had gotten from some online manga or card
game or something, and the body shape was similar to that. At some point
midway up the torso, the snake-like foot became replaced by a humanoid
chest with shoulders and muscular arms ending in four fingered hands.
The skin was a pale orange, and up close, Ranma could see that it was
smooth and scaly. The head and face resembled a skull with the skin
pulled back taut, a cluster of teeth met in the center of the jaws,
giving the appearance of smile or a grimace, depending on the angle. The
eyes were set in sockets lined with red scales, but the pupils were the
color of bright purple.

The alien reached for its fallen plasma rifle with its remaining arm.

Ranma took careful aim, but found himself hesitating just a bit. Ryouga
had killed wounded aliens before, and the lost boy had never seemed to
regret the act. Given the weapon he, or it (since Snakemen were asexual)
used, it was just a soldier. Command had said that there was some
benefit in taking a medic or engineer alive, but a common soldier would
just be executed. Space in Alien Containment cost money, after all. If
he stunned the creature here and now, most likely Ryouga would kill it
himself once the mission was over, or he would order someone else to do
the deed.

The alien had just brushed its fingers against its lost plasma rifle
when a bright light entered its skull and ended its life.

"Saotome!" That was Kuno. "Do you need assistance?"

"No," Ranma replied, hoping he sounded as indifferent and cool as he
wanted to actually feel. "Tango is down."

-----

Mousse swept out his hand, motioning for the rest of India Squad to
stop. They were divided into two man units: Ryouga and Kuno were
sweeping around to clear the northern face of the property, up to where
the UFO had landed, while Mousse and Ryu were tasked to make an initial
entry into the house, along with Ranma and Ukyou. When necessary, Ryouga
and Kuno would enter via one of the balconies. Shampoo and Konatsu were
best suited to covering the open spaces behind the house.

The Chinese martial artist had just been about to peek into the kitchen
through a window on the first floor when he saw a blip register on the
motion scanner attached to his laser carbine. Every primary weapon had
an attached motion sensor, and smart linked together they formed the
Platoon Advance Warning System (or PAWS). It was all part of a
coordinated data collection system spread out over both Squads designed
to give each individual soldier as much information as possible about
the location and disposition of the enemy.

At the moment, that system was warning him about the alien waiting in
the kitchen area of the villa, no doubt waiting for someone to stroll
past the window or enter through the door. Mousse knew he didn't look
it, but he was carrying the most gear of anyone on either of the two
squads; his mastery of Hidden Weapons made him a veritable walking
arsenal. That said it took only a second to reach into one of the folds
of his robe and retrieve a XM84 Diversionary Flashbang.

The window shattered as he threw the grenade right through it, whereupon
it hit the ceiling, bounced off a number of neatly arranged pots and
pans, and exploded several feet in the air filling the kitchen with
blinding light and deafening sound. While flashbangs were not as
effective against most sorts of alien as they were against humans, this
particular Snakeman happened to be right next to the grenade when it
went off. 180 decibels of sound and over one million candlepower were
more than enough to stun the creature, and a second later its top half
became neatly separated from its bottom.

Facing into the kitchen from the smashed window, Mousse scanned the
inside down the iron sights of his rifle, keeping the display terminal
of the attached motion sensor at the bottom of his line of sight. If
anything came rushing into the room, he'd have ample time to register
the incoming movement and its direction. With the room devoid of any
apparent hostiles, he nodded imperceptibly to himself.

"Tango down. Kitchen is clear," he said, a little cautiously. "No
movement."

"Hold position," Ryouga's orders were punctuated by a muted curse.
"There's at least one alien still guarding the UFO. Juliet Squad -
status?"

Ukyou replied first. "In position."

"Southern face is clear." Shampoo.

"No activity in the southeast." That was Konatsu. "I'm circling around
to the pool area."

"We're ready," Ranma confirmed. "There isn't much time left on the
clock."

"Ryu and I are ready," Mousse said, not needing to look in his
teammate's direction to know he was poised to pounce like a jungle cat.

"Alright. Remember the timing," Ranma reminded them. "We'll breech in
ten."

Mousse began the count down in his head. In ten seconds, Ranma and Ukyou
would enter the house through the southwest balcony. There was an
attached bedroom there, and possibly one of the human hostages. From
there they would head down the stairs, clear out one of the first floor
bathrooms and two storage areas while approaching the reading room from
behind. Around that time, Mousse and Ryu would enter to reinforce them.
Hitting the rooms from both approaches would prevent a potentially
deadly alien ambush.

In the meantime, there was nothing to do but count down, watch the
scopes, listen to the radio chatter, and wait. He heard the distant
sound of gunfire from behind, where Kuno and Ryouga were keeping the
aliens guarding the UFO under close watch. The alien ship itself was
still in perfect working order, and if it started to take off and bug
out, then it would be up to the Lightning fighter/transporter they had
arrived in to shoot it down. Near Ground Level Intercepts were generally
frowned on, as any misses would literally tear apart the landscape
nearby. XCOM air to air missiles were all armed with tactical nukes, and
ship-mounted plasma weapons were of the same level of potency. Fusion
Balls were directed explosions of incredible magnitude, but they weren't
safe to fire off near the ground either.

"Ryu, PDM!" Ryouga growled. "We're mining the ships' entrance."

"Right!"

Mousse found himself agreeing with the decision. PDMs, or M86 Pursuit-
Deterrent Munitions were also known as Proximity-Detonated Mines. One or
two thrown at the single functional airlock of the landed UFO would
bottle up the aliens inside pretty well. It would also kill off any
troublemaking alien that was too fond of peeking out through an open
doorway to get a cheap shot or two.

"Tango!" Ukyou's shout interrupted his thoughts.

"Got 'im!" Ranma answered, and Mousse could imagine the two of them
clearing the rooms. Ukyou would be acting as cover, using her large
exotic alloy spatula as an additional layer of protection from alien
fire, while Ranma quickly checked the rooms they had to secure.

"We found one of the hostages," Ranma continued, sounding hurried. "A
woman. Early twenties. Unconscious."

That would have had to be Minister Somei's youngest daughter, one of the
three hostages believed by Intel to be in the building (aside from the
contingent of guards). The others being the Minister's wife, and the man
himself.

"Now!" Mousse barked, reaching the end of his countdown. As one, he and
Ryu kicked in doors two and three, flashbang grenades already leading
the way into the kitchen and reading room respectively. Immediately, he
saw a flare of light and tried to cover himself with his rifle as he
spun back and out of the doorway. Splashes of plasma burned clean
through the wall to his left and right, disintegrating the brick and
glass nearby and turning the aluminum in the door into a fountain of
molten metal.

"Tango!" Ryu yelled, his voice already nearly drowned out by the whine
of cutting lasers. Mousse barely heard it. He had managed to escape the
worst of the first barrage, but another shot had hit the wall, gone
right through it, and struck him clean in the lower left chest. Any
other soldier in the world would have been cored - a basketball sized
hole burned from one side of the torso to the other - if not instantly
cremated. Fortunately, once again XCOM personal armor had proved its
worth... assisted in this by Mousse's own special hidden weapons
techniques and the metal wrapped around his body.

On impact, the alien plasma blast first encountered a coil of alien
alloy wrapped around Mousse's abdomen. Burning through that, what was
left hit a .22-inch thick alien alloy plate. The dispersed thermal
energy was then blocked by a layer of special heat-resistant areogel
that hardened instantly on exposure to atmosphere. A complex weave of
conductors and coolant fluids within that layer helped to dampen what
would otherwise have been a plasma inferno hotter than the sun. For a
second, Mousse felt like his body had been pressed against an oven, and
then the heat was gone - dissipated.

WARNING: plasma impact detected

MEDICAL ALERT!

He ignored the little diagram that popped up in the lower left corner of
his helmet HUD. The wound on his torso wasn't bad, but there'd also been
some serious damage to his armor both there, and to the armor around his
right forearm. Luckily there hadn't been any penetration there, and he
didn't feel any pain in his arm or hand. His robes had been mauled, but
they were made of fire resistant Nomex nylon, so there wasn't any danger
of them catching fire.

Scrambling along the outside wall of the living room, Mousse brought his
rifle back up to his shoulder and tried to get a bead on what had hit
him. He was too late, however; Ryu, Ranma and Ukyou had beaten him to
the target. Or targets, actually. Two of the Snakeman type aliens had
been lying in wait, silent and unmoving, waiting for him to enter the
room. The moment he'd thrown his flashbang into the doorway, they had
opened fire in his general direction, counting on the over penetration
of their plasma rifles to hit him through the wall and door.

Both were dead now.

One of the aliens lay slumped behind an overturned couch, both it and
the furniture having been sliced cleanly in half from top to bottom.
Another Snakeman had cleverly backed itself into the fireplace, having
also stacked up two chairs to give it more cover to fire behind. Both
chairs were on fire now, and what was left of the alien was also slowly
burning in the fireplace, having been nearly diced by three sets of
slicing laser beams. A few seconds later, the house smoke alarm went
off, and a sprinkler head built into the ceiling started to liberally
rain water down on the heads of the three XCOM soldiers.

Stepping through the ruined threshold of the door he had tried to go
through just a few seconds earlier, Mousse took in the sight of the
place.

"You ok, man?" Ranma asked. Mousse was still used to associating the
pigtailed fighter's voice with his unarmored self, and it was still
somewhat strange to see Ranma so thoroughly concealed by matte black
personal armor. He and Ryu and Ukyou looked nearly alike, except for
Ukyou having her giant spatula and Ryu wearing a white band around his
arm.

"I'm fine," Mousse assured Juliet's Squad's leader.

"Two tangos down," Ukyou confirmed for those not present but listening
over the group intercom. "The south side of the house is clear."

They were about to move onto the rest of the house, when the glass and
metal frame of the living room facing the courtyard exploded inward.
Shards of crystal filled the air, and would have surely savaged any
unprotected human (or alien) in the room. Without a word, without
prompting, all four soldiers ducked down and took cover. One of the
aliens had exited the house from the northernmost door facing the
courtyard, and was now opening up on them at full auto.

In seconds, it became a full fledged counter attack.

An explosion near the UFO, and the sounds of Kuno and Ryouga as they
opened fire made it clear that the aliens were trying to take the
offensive again. Whatever was going on near the landed alien ship was
obviously pretty brutal, as one and then two large explosions followed,
probably as the two parties exchanged more grenades. Mousse ducked low
as a plasma blast hit the large plasma TV he had knocked over and taken
cover behind. It instantly went up like a microwave filled with
silverware.

They were under fire from two aliens now, one at the other end of the
courtyard and another coming around from where the kitchen connected to
the northern one third of the house. Both were sticking under cover and
firing wildly, three shots, three shots, duck, three shots, three
shots... More experienced XCOM operatives would have had more luck
picking the aliens off, but gun duels weren't what either India or
Juliet Squads were geared (or trained) for.

"Mousse!" Ukyou prompted.

"Ryu!" Ranma did the same.

No more needed to be said. On an almost instinctive, almost telepathic
level, they had a grasp of what the other fighters were planning. It was
nearly impossible to understand or explain, the sort of parallel
synthesis of comprehension that martial artists who had fought against
each other, and fought side by side with each other, many times before
in life or death duels gained. It was most obvious when one watched
Ryouga and Ranma fight a common foe, but to some extent, they all
understood how their peers fought, and through that, how they thought.

Mousse didn't know it, but the aliens would have understood it
perfectly.

"Combination attacks!" Ranma rolled out from behind his cover, and he
and Ryu stood back to back, facing the alien across the courtyard.
Mousse meanwhile leapt out, spun around behind the protection of Ukyou's
battle spatula, and tucked his hands into his sleeves.

"Kijin Dai Ran Bu!"    (Demon God Big Mad Dance!) "Hiryu Shoten Ha!"
(Rising Dragon Heaven Blast!) "Kenran Hinode!"    (Brilliant Sunrise!)
"Karasu Sansai Ha!"    (Raven Storm Wave!)

Four special techniques were executed in the same split second. Ryu's
vacuum blades joined Ranma's horizontal tornado, channeling the deadly
projectiles into a funnel shaped spiral of doom. The courtyard, stones
and trees and bushes, was instantly turned into a giant chopped salad as
a long shallow trench tore into the ground. The alien, sensing danger
the moment the humans jumped out of cover, ducked behind the concrete
wall of the house and the metal and wood frame of the door. A second
later, both ceased to be. The twisting helix of vacuum blades neatly
removed a circular section of the first and second floor of the house -
the alien stood amid the ruined masonry for just a moment before the
first few blades bisected it, and then trisected it, and then
eviscerated it into a handful of pieces.

Inside the kitchen, meanwhile, the second alien wailed as a halo of
light engulfed it. Ukyou's ki attack was far more thermal in nature than
Ranma or Ryouga's emotion based techniques, which were primarily
concussive, and even the Snakeman's resilient hide blistered under the
heat. Blinded and stunned, it never saw the wave of killer flechettes
heading its way. A heartbeat later it was impaled in a hundred ways and
stapled to the wall behind it.

"I saw from here!" Shampoo interrupted, filling in that exhilarated
moment of silence after the execution of a good special technique.
"Great job, Ranma! You really are worthy of an Amazon bride!"

>From where he stood next to her, Mousse could all but see Ukyou's
expression turn dark even behind her helmet and facemask. Ryu didn't
give any outward appearance of annoyance that Ranma had gotten all the
credit, but Mousse himself was secretly a bit annoyed. True, his and
Ukyou's combined technique hadn't been as flashy as Ranma and Ryu's, but
still...! Why did Shampoo always have to fawn on Ranma?

"Two tangos down." Ryu remained professional, and all four quickly got
back to being focused on the duty at hand. Ranma patted him on the back
by way of thanks, both for the technique and for the reminder.

"Let's move!" Juliet Squad's Lieutenant barked, and all four advanced
into the northern part of the villa. Ukyou and Ranma took point, and
they quickly passed by a furnished but empty guest bedroom and a large
bathroom. At the extreme northwest of the house was a flight of stairs
leading up, and one leading down into the cellar. Ranma quickly motioned
for Ryu and Mousse to handle the basement while he and Ukyou went
upstairs.

"This is India Squad Leader," Ryouga spoke up, then. "We've taken down
one tango, and we're headed into the UFO after the second. Its wounded,
and probably trying to start the engines."

"Roger that." Ranma replied, leading Ukyou carefully up the stairs. "Be
careful in there."

"You, too."

At the top of the stairs, Ranma held up his hand, and he paused. There
was movement up ahead in the master bedroom, though it was impossible to
tell if it was human or alien. He showed Ukyou three fingers and pointed
at the door. She nodded. Squeezing the hilt of her battle spatula, the
heavy pommel detached and dangled several inches from a thin cord.

Ukyou spun around once, to build momentum, before snapping her weapon to
the side and sending the pommel crashing into the handle of the door.
The force was sufficient to knock the door open about half way, and the
second it did, plasma fire erupted from behind it. In such confined
quarters there was little that could be done to avoid the bursts of
white hot death. Luckily, Ukyou had already taken refuge behind the wide
flat face of her main weapon, and was already in a crouch with her rifle
leveled and about to return fire.

"Hold your fire!" He reminded her, and jumped forward, biting his lip as
a plasma blast passed right by his left shoulder. They couldn't risk
firing blindly into the bedroom when one or both remaining hostages
could be inside. Kicking the door off its hinges and pivoting on the
ball of his right foot, Ranma let his rifle leave his hands and swing
back and out of the way. He instantly took in the scene: a woman on the
floor next to the bed, dead or unconscious, two identical men on the
bed, both sitting upright at the edge. On the left side of the room was
another Snakeman, busy trying to knocking the door out of its way, and
on the right was a startled looking Sectoid.

The Sectoid could have some psi powers, but for the most part, the
biggest threat was the Snakeman. Ranma decided to leave the secondary
threat to Ukyou, who would be right on his heels, and concentrate on the
primary danger. By the time the Snakeman had started to nudge the door
out of its line of sight, Ranma was up close and personal. The alien
tried, desperately, to get the weapon up and on target, but Ranma
quickly grabbed the plasma rifle just above the grip, and twisted,
breaking the alien's wrist with an audible crack. He then introduced his
armored elbow to the creature's face, shattering its teeth and sending
it sprawling.

The Snakeman was beaten, but not down, and it tried valiantly to fight
back with its left arm. It had a hand with three claws probably well
suited to raking flesh, but what it hoped to achieve against the
personal armor Ranma wore, he couldn't imagine. With a single smooth
move, Ranma unclipped the stun baton strapped to his right leg, and
plunged the crackling electrical end into the Snakeman's gut. Its body
shook for a second and collapsed.

Behind him, Ranma heard a similar fate befall the Sectoid.

"Upper floor is clear," Ranma announced with a deep sigh of relief. "Two
tangos down but still breathing. Hostages recovered. Status?"

"This is Mousse. The cellar looks clear. Found two more unconscious
guards."

"Everything looks clear out here, Saotome-taichou."

"The ship is secure. There was only one tango left inside, and Kuno
finished it off."

"Good. Good!" Ranma then turned to the two identical Ministers of
Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. One was naked, the other still in
his night clothes. There seemed to be some sort of apparatus attached to
the side of their skulls, in roughly the same spot. Ranma approached,
getting a closer look at the alien duplicate. Really: it was uncanny.

"Kinda creepy, seeing that they can do that," Ukyou said, standing next
to him. "I mean, if they could replace someone in the Cabinet... where
would it stop? The Prime Minister? The Emperor himself?"

"That's why we're here," Ranma replied, not very comfortable with where
Ukyou's line of thought led. He wasn't the paranoid type by nature, but
if aliens could just pull a replacement job like this, then he could see
why some people would be.

"Ah, Lieutenant," Ukyou then asked, using his formal title now that the
heat of combat was slowly fading from their thoughts. "Which Minister
Somei is the real one?"

"The one wearing clothes, I'd assume..." Ranma frowned at that. "Unless
they already got the clone dressed. One way to find out, though."

Ukyou then leaned over and gently poked the naked version in the chest
with her index finger. When he didn't move, or give any indication of a
response, she tried again. After two more pokes, he teetered and fell
backwards onto the bed, where he started to drool.

"Would you please stop that?" Ranma sighed, and reached behind him and
into his haversack, eventually retrieving a large circular object. Ukyou
recognized it after only a moment.

"A mind probe!"

Ryouga obviously heard her.

"You better be careful using that, Ranma," he warned, sounding much like
he was in the room instead of a half mile away inside an alien UFO.

"Relax!" the pigtailed boy assured his friends. "I read the
instructions! I know what I'm doing!"

Ukyou cautiously took a step back.

"Let's see..." Ranma held up the mind probe, and fished around for a
small tag clipped to the underside. "Okay. 'The mind probe is an alien
communication device which is used to take information directly from
brain waves...' Here's what we want: step one, turn unit on."

He activated a small switch, and the mind probe began to ominously hum.

Ukyou took another step back.

"Step two," Ranma read off from the tag. "Identify subject. That's easy,
he's right here! Step three; 'conceptualize the existence of the mental
probe.' Hmm... Ah! Here we go!"

Along the outer rim of the mind probe, a line of dull green began to
glow.

"Are you interfaced with the mind probe?" he read, and then answered.
"Yes, I am. Do you see the display? Yes, I do."

"Now, for basic information gathering when in sight of the target," he
continued, oblivious to the odd stare Ukyou was giving him. "'Click on
the mind probe and the 'use' option. Then click on an alien with the
cursor.' Sounds pretty easy. Warning, do not use on conscious human
beings, side effects may include headache, nausea and/or disorientation.
See documentation for details."

"'Use' option?" Ukyou asked, incredulous. "Cursor?"

"It's just like a video game!" Ranma assured her, and then focused on
the man in front of him (that is: the one with clothes on). In his mind,
a little white cursor moved over the Minister and then a gold box
appeared around the older man. Prompting the device to activate, two
options appeared in front of him: "use" and "cancel."

Ranma selected "use."

Instantly, a wave of surface thoughts coagulated into a short burst of
information which the mind probe quickly sorted, organized, and
presented. The most important aspect of the information shown was a
number representing alien influenced thought mind waves compared to
baseline human ones. Highlighting and doing the same query for the naked
version of the Minister revealed much the same physical information. The
differences were solely in surface thought processes (the naked one had
none whatsoever), and the alien influence index (one being at near zero
and the other being over eighty percent).

"Ranma? ... Lieutenant?"

He quickly shook his head to clear his thoughts, and the information
disappeared. He couldn't even remember most of it, now that his mental
connection to the probe had broken. The whole experience had actually
been rather strange, now that he thought about it. Next time, for sure,
he'd really have to read the manual and not just browse through it.

"Mister birthday suit over there is a blank slate," Ranma said, pointing
to the naked old man with his thumb. "They didn't finish copying the
original's memories."

"So what do we do with it? Or him?" Ukyou asked, kneeling next to the
still unconscious man's wife. She seemed unhurt, and Ranma was briefly
tempted to mind scan her, too. The more he thought about it, the safer
he would feel just making sure. It wasn't like he was paranoid or
anything, just playing it safe. The Commander would be happier knowing
he'd done a thorough job.

"I dunno. That's not our department." He took out the mind probe a
second time, and quickly used it on the man's wife. The surface scan for
alien influence came back negative.

"Everything ok up there?" Ryu asked, standing at the bottom of the
stairs.

"I think this is a wrap," Ranma concluded. "Let's secure the area for
the cleanup crew. Juliet Squad will handle the house; India can take the
outside and the UFO."

"Ah, the fun part of every mission..." Mousse griped.

"I'm with ya on that," Ukyou seconded, hefting the unconscious Sectoid
under her arm and heading towards the Snakeman. "Dibs on the non-leaking
live ones."

Watching her leave, Ranma walked over to where the Cabinet Minister, one
of the most powerful men in Japan, sat limp and unmoving. Holding the
man's jaw, Ranma craned the older man's neck, and looked closely at the
small alien device dug into the side of his head. One of the clean up
techs would know what to do with it, and if it was safe to remove.

As for what the aliens had wanted with this man, it was a mystery as far
as he knew. But whatever their plans, XCOM would thwart them, as often
as necessary. Picking up the man's wife and gently laying her down on
the bed next to her husband's doppelganger, Ranma waited in the room,
watching over them until the clean up crew drove up to the damaged
country villa.

Elsewhere, the battle was not going as smoothly.

-----

It was Shirokuro who led her up the stairs and into the room looking out
into the base's main Hangar. Mitsuko, since getting the Hibiki curse,
had quickly learned to trust in the ever faithful family of canines of
which Shirokuro was a member. The black and white colored dog seemed to
be trying to manage time between Ryouga and her, and unexpectedly it
appeared that she was giving preference to the son over the mother.

Did Shirokuro somehow sense that Ryouga's work here was more important?

Holding onto the dog's collar, Mitsuko felt her pull towards a small
group of people. If she lost hold of Shirokuro now, it was without
question that's she'd be lost in the maze of corridors and walkways and
rooms that was this strange military base. Shirokuro looked back at her,
and kept pulling, insistent on heading towards the three people. Mitsuko
recognized one of them: Kounji Kazuo, who she had met before on the
flight to Seiran Mountain. The other two were unknown.

Together, they four (and one dog) were the only people in the small
observer room. The base was in a state of alert, and from the
announcements made over the base intercom, it seemed that there was some
sort of emergency that had called "combat teams" away on duty. That
meant that Ryouga was gone, too.

To her regret, they hadn't really spoken like mother and son when they
had met on the base, or before that back in Osaka. There was so much she
wanted to ask him about, to learn about her son, but when the chance
actually presented itself, she found it hard to actually give voice to
her concerns. When he was a child, she'd nearly had a heart attack when
he'd gotten lost for days at a time. Now, even knowing abstractly that
he was going off to fight some sort of evil creatures from another
world, she found plenty of worry, but not the same crushing grief.

She hadn't had to think about it in years, but she wondered often now if
that made her a terrible mother.

It was in the middle of that thought when a blaring alarm claxon
sounded, and red and white lights flashed beyond the transparent blast
shield that separated the room from the Hangar. Looking through, she
could easily see many people in the vast space - engineers moving
machinery and gesturing away from a large area. Past the activity, one
of the Hangar doors opened wide, like a gaping mouth, separating in both
a horizontal and vertical direction.

"Warning! Intense Gravitic Turbulence! Warning! Firestorm Landing
Procedures are in effect!"

The room's two heavy doors were both hanging open and unsealed, and
Mitsuko could hear voices coming from both sides of the place. To her
right, near the group of people, she could hear the voices coming from
people inside the Hangar. To her left was a small flight of stairs, and
what looked like a control room of sorts, judging by the blinking lights
and faint glow.

"Observer to Hangar Deck, Firestorm Two is on approach!" Mitsuko heard
the voices come from the room past the stairs. They were all in English,
like everything here was, but that wasn't a problem for her. She'd spent
three years in the States, and she already spoke and wrote English
fluently.

"ETA: 24 seconds, 28 miles. Landing Pad Two is clear!"

"She's coming in hot!"

"Routing emergency response team!"

"Alpha Two isn't responding. Thank God for the autopilot..."

Mitsuko was amazed by the implications of what had just been said: a
plane was coming in to land at more than a mile a second? It had to be
one of those strange saucer shaped craft she had seen yesterday. But was
there was a problem with it? Drawing closer to the small group with
Kazuo in it, she was about to introduce herself and ask what they were
doing and if they knew what was happening, when the automated intercom
voice began a countdown.

"Landing in Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three..."

It was only at "three" that a bright little speck of light became
visible far outside the Hangar doors. In was moving at an incredible
speed, even now, and in the blink of an eye it was just outside the
doors. It was one of the saucer shaped UFO-type craft, smooth and gray
in color, but with a faintly glowing concave area underneath, and a flat
silvery dome rounding out the top. This one also had a scar marring its
otherwise perfect surface - a jagged line of red and orange, like molten
lead, ran across it on one side.

Still, despite the wound it moved gracefully and with eerie ease,
gliding into the Hangar much more slowly that it had approached it. By
the end of the countdown it had settled above an area marked by crossing
warning lines of striped yellow and black. Part of the underside of the
surface of the UFO shifted, or morphed, forming prongs that attached
themselves to mechanical clasps that rose out of the floor. Above the
landing man-made UFO, two mechanical arms lowered, and began to hose
down the craft with white foam.

"Landing successful. Gravitation levels nominal." The voice that Mitsuko
identified as (almost certainly) synthetic announced. "Radiation levels
nominal. De Winter Barrier off line."

Immediately, men in bright orange protective full body suits ran towards
the damaged Firestorm. They turned a hose on the ship, washing away some
of the thick foam, while others quickly rolled a ladder and platform up
to the saucer. They were yelling, but their voices weren't clear,
muffled by distance and the transparent wall. With the ladder up against
the landed ship, one of the men climbed it and tried to move something
attached to the aircraft. Struggling visibly, he began to yell over his
shoulder.

"It's jammed!"

"...won't open!"

"...have to cut it!"

"...that plasma torch?"

Akane could clearly see as the chief hangar tech tried again to turn
something built into the underside of the XCOM craft, just a foot or so
from where the metal had been scarred by enemy fire. He obviously wasn't
strong enough so they were going to cut through. To her, the most likely
reason for the obvious hurry was because the pilot was injured in some
way. If that was the case... she looked to her left, at Nodoka and
Ukyou's father. He looked pretty strong, but no one there knew him.

Her mind quickly made up, Akane bolted for the open door leading to the
Hangar area, grabbing two heavy work gloves hanging from the wall. The
non-elevated part of the Observer area behind the transparent alien
alloy blast shields was designed as a waiting area for pilots and
maintenance personnel. As such, spare generic orange work clothes hung
freely from hooks near the door in case anyone needed them. They were
designed to be put on quickly over normal clothes, and in a few seconds
she had slipped her legs in, and zipped up the torso section.

"Akane-chan?" Nodoka questioned, still standing next to Kazuo. For his
part, he was watching with a little envy, probably wanting to go out and
help as well, but held back by not really knowing if they would let a
him interfere.

"Stay here, Auntie!" Akane pulled tight the straps around the wrist
section of the gloves. "I'll be right back!"

Heading out the door and into the Hangar itself, Akane tried to think of
just how she was going to convince the engineers around the ship to let
her help, much less get close enough to try. Ranma would probably have
just jumped across the room, landing on someone's head, and then done it
without even asking first. A part of her would have liked the confidence
and power to do that herself, but she knew how much behavior like that
aggravated people. She would just have to be honest and hope.

Running towards the landed ship, she passed a man holding some sort of
remote control. Above him was another large robotic arm mounted onto the
railing built into the ceiling. He was obviously moving the arm into
position near the landed ship from where it had been housed up against
one of the walls, and Akane could see the massive plasma torch on its
tip.

"Hey," the torch operator called, seeing her run part. "Who the
hell...?"

She ignored him, and headed towards the ship.

"Let me try and open it!" She yelled as half the men and women there
looked at her like she was some escaped mental patient. "I'm one of the
martial artists! Let me try and help!"

"Somebody get her out of here!" A dark haired man yelled, and tapped the
combination headset he wore over his ears. "Control, security team to
landing pad two!"

The other engineers looked between themselves and muttered.

"Let me try, please!" Akane pleaded, directing the question at the man
who had been struggling to open the landed ship's hatch. Nearby, the
robotic arm with the plasma cutter came silently to a stop, and started
to maneuver itself into position to cut into the ship. Finally, the
brown haired Caucasian man near the hatch sighed and motioned her over.

"One of those martial artists, huh?" he asked, as she ran up the steps
towards him.

"Sir!" the black haired man from before started to object.

"It won't hurt to let her try," the foreman cut him off. With Akane next
to him, and with her already suited up, he nodded and pointed to the
hatch built into the Firestorm. For the first time, Akane got a good
look at it. There was a circular handle of sorts, and the man had
already tried using a metal bar for better leverage.

"There are two magnetic seals," he quickly explained. "You need a
quarter turn clockwise, pull out, then a quarter turn clockwise again,
then press down. Got it?"

"Got it!" Akane replied and, taking a deep breath, she got a good grip
on the metal rod wedged into the handle, and began to try and turn it
clockwise. Struggling, she could see why the foreman had been having so
much trouble.  Gritting her teeth and squeezing her eyes shut, she
braced her feet against a nearby strut and kept up the pressure. She
could feel her confidence in herself waver as doubt, then insecurity,
then embarrassment began to rise up in her mind.

'No!' she hissed to herself. 'I can DO this!'

With a high pitched whine and a hiss of steam, the first seal broke as
the handle rotated the full ninety degrees. Quickly, she pulled out on
the metal bar until she felt the handle shift and lock into a new
position, and then she started again. The second seal was as difficult
to overcome as the first, even straining with all her strength and with
the metal rod as leverage.

'As strong as an ape!' Ranma had quipped often enough to that effect
over the years. 'An' built like one too!' he'd also been keen to add.
The memory of those words brought a fresh jolt of adrenalin to her
fatigued muscles. She had always been proud of her physical strength,
preferring to put her faith in a single powerful strike to down an
opponent rather than whittle away at them as was Ranma's habit. With a
strained cry, she finally rotated the bar the last ninety degrees, and
pushed it back in.

With a metallic hiss, like cooling steel in water, lines appeared in the
formerly seamless alien alloy hull. The hatch retracted and retreated,
releasing a gust of hot air. Akane stepped back, breathing heavily from
exhaustion, while the foreman nudged past her and stepped halfway inside
the ship. For a short while, no one said anything, as everyone present
simply waited. Then the foreman backed out, carrying in his arms the
limp body of the ship's pilot.

"He's alive!" The foreman yelled, looking over his shoulder at them.
"But he needs medical attention!"

Cries and sighs of relief came from the work crew below, and Akane felt
herself fill with pride and simultaneous relief. She remembered breaking
out of Taro's bindings to help Ranma in his fight against the monster
cursed martial artist. That was really why she had trained to become
strong for: to help those she cared about! Those important to her! And
while she didn't know this man, this pilot, getting him out of there had
made her feel better about herself than she had in a long time.

Without another word, Akane helped the foreman by picking up the pilot's
legs as they carried him down the steps to where the EMT was already
waiting. To her surprise, one of the medical techs was instantly
recognizable: Kasumi. The two sisters exchanged glances, and then the
pilot was on the stretcher and being wheeled away. Kasumi spared Akane a
quick nod and smile before resuming her work.

"Good job, kid," Akane heard the foreman say from next to her. The other
engineers and technicians also offered their appreciation, as a pat on
the back, a word of thanks, or just a smile and a nod. Even the black
haired man who had called for security slapped her on the shoulder.

"Now get outta here," the foreman continued, though his tone was still
friendly. "We got work to do!"

Akane nodded, understanding.

Taking a more leisurely pace back to the observation room, she started
to un-strap the work gloves, sparing one last look to her left at the
doors where Kasumi and the pilot had disappeared to. Kasumi rarely
talked about her work as a nurse, but Akane knew that her older sister
would be the last person to openly complain about their work. She seemed
content when the subject arose, and Akane had accepted that just as
Kasumi wasn't naturally one to complain, she wasn't by nature likely to
display her happiness openly either.

Having seen Kasumi, Akane briefly wondered how Nabiki was doing during
the crisis. The middle Tendo had somehow secured a transfer from simple
assistant accounting to some branch of the nebulous field of
'Intelligence.' When asked about her new work, Nabiki had simply (but
with a big smile) referred to it as "tip top secret" but "always
interesting." To an extent, Akane envied both her sisters for their
versatility in being able to adapt to the situation, and she wondered
when the chance would come for her to really prove herself in the field
she had chosen to pursue.

Not bothering to remove the hazmat suit, Akane noticed (for the first
time) the new comer in the observation room. She didn't recognize the
woman, but knew immediately from hearsay (actually just Ranma) and the
presence of Shirokuro that it had to be Ryouga's mother. Ranma hadn't
told her too much about that mission, in terms of the classified
specifics, but he had mentioned that this woman had given Mousse a good
fight before turning herself in. Like Nodoka, she looked younger than
she actually was, giving the appearance of a woman in her mid thirties
and not forties.

Akane was about to approach her when Nodoka walked up to offer her
approval.

"That was very bold, Akane-chan!" Ranma's mother spoke in Japanese,
since she hadn't shown an interest in spending some time under the psi-
knife. Akane suspected Nodoka was a little afraid or uncomfortable with
the idea of a machine jamming information into her brain, and if she
was, Akane couldn't really blame her for it. There were bound to be a
lot of people in the years after the war who resisted that particular
technology.

"You may have saved that man's life," Kazuo pointed out. "It's a good
thing you were here."

Akane suspected Ukyou's father was as strong as she was, but she took
the compliment for what it was at face value. After all, even though she
had just met him for the first time earlier today, Kazuo seemed like a
nice enough guy. In fact, he reminded her of Ukyou, in that sort of
friendly-to-strangers-and-customers attitude. Plus, he had a scruffy and
outgoing sort of personality, like a well traveled uncle.

"Thanks," Akane offered, not wanting to dwell in what she had done. She
was much more curious now of Ryouga's mother. As if sensing she was
being watched, and led on by Shirokuro (who Akane knew from back when
she had puppies), Mitsuko slowly approached them.

"Hi there," she began, and smiled easily as she bowed her head in
greeting. Shirokuro's welcome was less restrained, as she jumped up and
tried to lick Akane's face. Akane caught the friendly dog by the paws,
and ruffled the fur behind her ears.

"Allow me to make the introductions, ladies," Kazuo remarked with a
boyish grin, obviously not one for standing on formality. He inclined
his head to Nodoka, first. "Hibiki Mitsuko, this is Saotome Nodoka, the
mother of that Ranma boy. And this is Tendo Akane. You've probably heard
of her, too."

"Pleased to meet you," Nodoka spoke first, also bowing her head
slightly. "Your Ryouga is my son's best friend."

"I've been hoping to meet you since I heard about your coming here."
Akane chimed in.

"Thank you both," Mitsuko replied, and then addressed Kazuo. "And thank
you, Kazuo." She then turned to Akane. "I've heard so much from my son
about you, Akane. And about your boy, too, Nodoka. He must be quite the
martial artist to so frustrate my Ryouga. I'm so happy he's found a good
rival!"

Nodoka and Akane stared, speechless, at the sunny smile Mitsuko wore in
combination with what she had just said. Kazuo just laughed jovially.

"Did I say something strange?" Mitsuko asked, and a second later she
laughed nervously herself, one hand behind her head in a pose Akane
remembered seeing Ryouga assuming many times before in the past.

"They are very good friends!" Akane cheerfully said, borrowing a phrase
from Kasumi.

"A little manly competition is healthy between boys," Nodoka commented,
taking advantage of the shift in conversation. "Ryouga is a very polite
and dedicated young man. Did you know he was working here?"

"I had no idea until just a few days ago," Mitsuko replied, her mood
turning just a bit. "It came as quite a surprise as you can imagine."

"I didn't hear from Ukyou, either, and she usually calls me once a
week," Kazuo said with a sigh. "I guess they had to keep it under wraps.
But you know, it turns out we've all met before. Back in 1979. This was
when I first met Genma, too, during the Non-Stop Savage Battle
Tournament."

Mitsuko remembered it well. "You mean that UNICEF Fundraiser?"

"That's the one!" Kazuo snapped his fingers, and explained for Akane's
benefit, "Non Stop Savage Battle (for UNICEF) it was called. I was there
selling Okonomiyaki, and challenging fighters to steal it from me, to
test the strength of the Kounji Style. Mitsuko, you were there taking
part in the women's division..."

"Until I got lost..." she grumbled.

"Yes, you had a chance for the top spot, too!" Kazuo shook his head,
expressing his sympathy. "But Nodoka here was there, too."

"I don't remember her in the competition," Mitsuko said, facing Nodoka.
"Were you?"

"Oh no," Nodoka replied, waving her hand demurely. "I wasn't there to
fight... I was there to marry one of the finalists!"

"Hmm, probably a good thing Tetsuya didn't show up, then..." Ryouga's
mother quietly mused.

"Wait!" Akane blurted out. "That's how you met Mr. Saotome?"

"What better way to find a good man among men than a martial arts
Tournament?" Nodoka asked aloud. A sweat drop lazily formed down the
back of Akane's head - Genma had never really struck her as a 'man among
men,' and Nodoka's story was just a bit too Shampoo-ish for her liking.
At least her parents had met normally; falling in love and getting
married after high school.

"In fact," Nodoka continued, undeterred by Akane's incredulous looks.
"Our very first date was the day after the Tournament, when Genma took
me to the IMAX and paid for dinner."

"Stole dinner is more like it," Kazuo interrupted. "Still, those were
good times."

"We did raise a lot of money for a good cause," Mitsuko agreed. "I just
wish I'd been there for the end. To this day, I regret having to forfeit
my match with that annoying ninja girl... she probably went on to take
first place, too. But I do think I remember this Genma: long black hair,
right? Trying to grow a goatee? Kind of a pretty boy?"

"That was probably his friend Soun you're remembering," Nodoka said, and
Akane grimaced at the thought of her father as a long haired teen. "My
husband was the man wearing the white headscarf and glasses."

"Hmm, that guy...?" Mitsuko tried to remember, but really couldn't.
Luckily for her, Akane choose that moment to slip back into the
conversation.

"By the way, what style do you practice, Mrs. Hibiki?" Akane asked,
hoping Nodoka wouldn't mind the interruption.

"Oh," she replied, quickly looking Akane over any trying to gauge how
far she was along in the Art herself. "Well, my father taught me the
Goju-ryu karate that he learned as a boy. When I met Tetsuya, my
husband, in college, he started to teach me some of the martial arts
he'd developed. I guess by now you could call my style a mixture of
that: a very technique dependant fusion of karate and weapons handling.
You practice the 'Anything Goes' style, isn't that right?"

Akane nodded. "It's rooted in kenpo, but varies a lot from one
practitioner to another..."

It was casual conversation, just breaking the ice and getting those
often awkward introductions out of the way, but Akane was amazed by how
smoothly it went, and the contrasts between her friends' parents. This
was especially the case between Nodoka and Mitsuko. While they hadn't
broached the subject, Akane suspected they both had some notion that
they were similar in not seeing their respective children in years, and
that both harbored doubts as to whether they could pick up, as mothers,
where they had been forced to leave off.

The contrasts were as clear as their styles of dress. In the year or so
Akane had known her, Nodoka had always dressed in a conservative kimono.
Even here in Seiran, where she was the only one to dress that way, she
never wavered in trying to maintain that old fashioned decorum. Nodoka
was a kind and understanding woman, matronly even, and the seppuku
promise aside, she reminded Akane a lot of her own mother. There was an
obvious motherly and protective dignity to her... at least when she
wasn't mishandling the family sword and talking about ritual suicide.

Mitsuko, in contrast, wore a hodgepodge of different articles of
clothing. "From different adventures," she had said, offhand. Akane
could imagine her perfectly at home with a pith helmet on and layered in
stereotypical khaki, hacking through a jungle. It wasn't just that she
was a Hibiki, either; she actually seemed to like the explorer aspect of
getting chronically lost. She'd even made fun of it a few times when it
had come up ("For our honeymoon, we went backpacking across the United
States. We were supposed to have spent the three weeks in Bermuda!").
Not that she was undignified, exactly, but the impression from her
lifestyle was that it was too... unorthodox, in a way, to fit into
Akane's ideal of a mother figure.

The two women were becoming fast friends, and Akane was glad for that.
Nodoka was the most isolated out of all of them here in Seiran Mountain.
She had her family whole again, after a decade of being essentially
alone, but there was precious little to occupy her here. There were no
other families on the base (Akane suspected one of the reasons they were
really here was because they would stick out too much at one of the
hidden Sanctuary Communities XCOM had set up), and Nodoka didn't have
the pre-existing level of education to make her attractive in support
roles, like with Kasumi and Nabiki. What she did all day, Akane couldn't
imagine, but it could only be a good thing for her to find a friend she
could relate to.

Occupied in conversation, the four of them waited for their loved ones
to return.

Three hours later, the first of the wounded began to come in.

-----

They called it Command and Control.

Every soldier, every heavy weapons platform, every ship, every suit of
armor and every weapon... all were tied into a great interconnected
network. Through Command and Control, and given the right clearance, a
commander could see the location of all active duty soldiers in any
given area, as well as their physiological and combat status. Ranma and
Ryouga, thanks to their upgraded security clearance, now had near full
access to Command and Control.

They sat rigidly, side by side, and listened to the progress of the
other squads' battles. They were all inside the Lightning as it streaked
across the sky, covering a mile a second, but the inertia-less drive
absconded from alien technology made it seem from the inside as if the
ship wasn't moving at all. For those without access to the Command and
Control network, the grim look on the faces of the two Special
Lieutenants was all they needed to guess things weren't going smoothly.

Mousse grunted in discomfort as Konatsu helped to set his burns.

"Just another moment, please," the ninja boy said, wrapping another
meter of gauze around the Chinese fighter's torso. The pain killers
Mousse had applied to himself, using the standard UNETCO Medikit (or
ATRISK, short for Automated Trauma Response and Internal Surgery Kit),
had not only dulled the pain but had given a boost to his immune system,
so he wasn't bad off. Once they got back to base, they'd affect some
more permanent treatment, probably an artificial epithelial graft.
Having taken off his armor, Mousse had been rather surprised by the
extent of the injury.

Abstractly, he remembered that "Don't Get Hurt" video they'd been shown
during training. Clear as day, he could remember some of the footage of
people who'd been killed by plasma blasts: charred and scattered
remains, burnt to the consistency of charcoal and blown apart by all the
water in their bodies transitioning into steam... He hadn't really
thought of himself as lucky when he'd been hit, but as painful as it now
was, he'd gotten away with a literal cat scratch in comparison. It
hadn't seemed like much at first, but a large section of his midriff
more than twice the area of his hand had been burned pretty badly.

He gazed towards one of the Medkits hanging from the wall nearby.

The ATRISK or Medikit, was one of XCOM's most important tools. No
substitute for proper medical care, its function was to keep an injured
soldier conscious and alive long enough to survive combat and get back
to base. Painkillers were an essential ingredient in that formula, and
to that effect a Medikit could dispense a next generation
"hypermorphine" capable of blocking pain receptors but providing no
potentially adverse physical side effects such as euphoria or chemical
addiction. Less extreme painkillers, introduced to the body via a jet
injector, could block a person's ability to remember pain from moment to
moment, while the use of targeted anti-inflammatory medicines could be
used to treat pain only in affected areas.

At the moment, Mousse could feel those pain killers starting to wear
off.

"There, done!" Konatsu announced, keeping up his sunny disposition.
Mousse offered him a grateful look.

"Thanks."

"Stupid Mousse," Shampoo said, walking over after having been content to
watch him get bandaged up. She was holding onto one of the overhead
railings built into the ceiling, and like everyone else present, she had
taken off her torso armor. This left her wearing just a cotton t-shirt.
As always, the sight of her (on the occasion when he had his glasses on
anyway) left Mousse momentarily breathless.

She really was beautiful.

"You always were too clumsy," she went on, accentuating the statement
with a casual flick of her long violet hair. "When will you learn to be
more careful?"

Mousse's first impulse was to say something to the effect of "Shampoo!
You do care about me!" and then try and embrace her, but the lingering
pain encircling his lower body and five years of past precedent in that
not working cut him short. It wasn't unheard of for her to occasionally
be nice to him, at which point he typically ended up ruining things by
blowing them out of proportion. Hanging around with the others had
forced him to realize something he had begun to understand back at
Jusendo, when Shampoo had been controlled by Kiima.

She didn't love him.

Not yet, anyway.

But that could change. That would change! He had always sort of assumed
that Shampoo's affection would be a mirror of his own, but he understood
now that winning her over wouldn't be as straightforward as he assumed.
Ranma seemed to have won over Akane over the last two years, and he'd
seen how Ukyou had gained friends of her own over time. So Mousse
restrained himself from doing anything that would earn a swift beat
down, and instead offered the only woman he had ever loved a small
smile.

"Maybe I was a little too aggressive," Mousse admitted, gently patting
the white cloth around his stomach. "Those creatures were better than I
expected."

Shampoo seemed to agree with this assessment. "They almost hit me a few
times. If..."

She didn't voice that trail of thought, instead switching to another
topic.

"Does it hurt much?" she asked, trying to sound casual about her
curiosity.

Konatsu slipped away while Mousse and Shampoo talked, making his way to
the opposite end of the interior of the ship to put back the Medikit
he'd made use of. Kuno and Ukyou were there, the latter describing the
combination technique she and Mousse had pulled off during the mission.
Tatewaki actually seemed to be listening intently, and Konatsu guessed
he had a strong interest in improving his own repertoire of moves. They
seemed pretty friendly with one another, something that he attributed to
their time training together as the two main melee weapons users in
their respective squads.

Hanging up the Medikit, Konatsu looked around for the only other
remaining member of Juliet and India Squads. He saw Ryu near the back of
the Lightning. The Earth-built XCOM UFO was basically circular on the
inside, and composed of one main room, but there were a few alcoves that
branched off from it. One was the cockpit. Another was the alien
containment cell.

Ryu was standing in front of that area, staring at one of its occupants.

"Ryu-san," Konatsu said in greeting, walking up to the man.

"Konatsu," he said in reply, giving the ninja a quick look before
focusing again on the alien in lockup. "You know, you can call me Ryu if
you want."

He then amended that by adding, "Our rank's the same after all."

"I'll do that." Konatsu was actually quite happy Ryu had offered to let
him drop the 'san' and thus assume a more casual sort of relationship
between them. From the beginning, when Ryu had mistaken Konatsu for a
girl (as flattering as that had been), he sensed that they had gotten
off on the wrong foot. Kuno had assumed he was a woman as well, but
after giving found out the truth, the kendoist had almost seemed to have
forgotten about the whole incident.

Ryu, on the other hand, had at times seemed somewhat hostile. Konatsu
was no fool, and he strongly suspected the root of that dislike was his
manner of appearance. While he didn't think of his own behavior as such,
he knew cross-dressing wasn't exactly seen by most of mainstream society
in a positive light. Ryu appeared to be included in that mindset and
he'd passively avoided the male kunoichi as a result. It was a good sign
then that Ryu seemed to be becoming more comfortable in his presence.

After all, it wasn't like he cross-dressed because he was "gender
confused." Konatsu had no desire to actually be a woman, and he wasn't
gay. He did it because he was trained that way, because as a female
ninja - a kunoichi - his style of fighting and living took advantage of
the female appearance. A ninja who trained to imitate a tree didn't
necessarily want to be one, just as a martial artist who practiced snake
style kung fu probably had no burning desire to be a serpent.

He wondered if Ryu understood that about him.

"I see you're not wearing lipstick for once," Ryu quipped with a small
grin. Ranma often joked around, and everyone was pretty used to it, but
Ryu's barbs, while far less numerous, were generally delivered with a
bit more venom.

Konatsu tapped his lower lip with his middle finger.

"Oh!" he said with fake surprise. "I knew I forgot something!"

Ryu arched an eyebrow and stared at him for a second, before starting to
laugh.

"You're a weird one, you know that?" Ryu shook his head and his laughter
trailed off. "If I hadn't seen you ogling you-know-you so often..."

"We are who we were raised to be," Konatsu simply said. "And it's not
'ogling.'"

"Eyeing up, then?"

"Not that either."

Ryu smiled at the bit of back and forth banter, and Konatsu did as well.
The Kumon Dojo heir was fond of teasing Konatsu about his affection for
Ukyou, and after a while Konatsu had learned to find some amusement in
it, too. It was a nice easy topic to joke about, and for Ryu, it was
probably also a good way of reminding himself that Konatsu was a guy,
too, and one who could appreciate the looks of a cute girl.

"So what are you looking at here?" Konatsu asked, standing next to the
taller fighter and peering into the containment chamber. They'd taken
both a Sectoid and a Snakeman prisoner, and placed them in two of the
four containment cells. Both were awake, but securely strapped to the
wall. The Sectoid seemed to be limp, its head down. The Snakeman stood
straight, tiny eyes shining in the darkness.

"He's staring at us," Ryu replied, a little cryptically. After a second,
Konatsu realized that he had to be referring to the Snakeman.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "They don't have eyelids. He could be asleep
for all we know."

"No. He's staring right at us." Ryu said, utterly convinced. "And I
wonder... what he sees?"

Konatsu took a deep breath, and looking into the unblinking eyes of the
alien, he felt a chill run down his spine. There was something knowing
about those pale heliotrope orbs, something dark and removed from human
experience. It was something cold and indifferent, like light reflecting
off the butcher's knife. Konatsu felt it then, too. Deep down, he knew
that it was staring right at him.

"Where do you come from?" Ryu asked, from next to Konatsu, the other
Squaddie's voice reassuring under the gaze of those alien eyes. "Why are
you here? What did you hope to accomplish? Are we... anything...
alike...?"

He smirked.

"As humans, we stand in awe of what we do not understand, and we fear
death." Ryu placed his hand up against the transparent exotic alloy that
separated him from the alien. "What are you afraid of, I wonder?"

"It's really amazing, isn't it?" Konatsu asked, turning from the
Snakeman to the visibly less defiant Sectoid. "What we're looking at.
What we're doing."

"It is."

"ETA: one minute," the pilot announced over the ship's comm. system. At
the speeds the Lightning could travel at, it didn't take very long to
get to and from a combat zone. The entire length of Japan could be
crossed in less than a half hour.

Next to Ranma, Ryouga rested his chin on his cupped hands.

"This isn't good," he said slowly.

"I hate to say it," Ranma licked his dry lips anxiously. "But we got off
easy. If that had been us..."

The leader of India Squad just nodded. The other more experienced Squads
were having a tough time. The Battleship assault was going smoothly at
least, but the Supply Ship that had risen presumably from the alien base
in Korea had been a rude surprise. It had affected an emergency landing
before it could be shot down, and when the assault teams had arrived,
they'd discovered that the ship had been packed to the gills with alien
troops.

A running battle had broken out, and reinforcements had needed to be
redirected from other nearby bases. From reports over Command and
Control, a fishing village near where the ship had landed had been
essentially depopulated and half leveled in the fighting. The aliens had
been wild, erratic even, and taken to uncharacteristic guerilla fighting
in the countryside after the ship had been taken.

More shocking still was the unexpected speed, resilience and ferocity of
the Mutons, as well as their bizarre markings. Mutons were the shock
troops of the Ethereals, an army of castrated super soldiers,
genetically engineered and cybernetically enhanced solely to fight and
die for their masters. Already super strong and inhumanly fast, with
grafted armor replacing their skin, these new Mutons were proving even
more dangerous than the normal breed.

They had also exhibited unusual behavior, and soldiers had observed them
going berserk at even the slightest psionic persuasion. Only the
aggressive use of psionic attacks and mind control had been able to
contain the situation. For the first time since Ranma and Ryouga had
joined up, XCOM had taken losses. What ran over and over again through
the minds of the two Lieutenants was where the aliens had come from, and
where their squads were destined to assault.

Changbai.

"We'll train," Ranma said, finally. "That's all we can do."

In a few seconds, the Lightning landed effortlessly inside the Main
Hangar, and the gravity lift inside the ship reactivated. Similar to the
mechanism in the alien Abductor craft they had boarded, back in Nerima,
it allowed one to exit through the bottom of the UFO instead of walking
down the emergency ramp that retracted from the hull. It was a feature
not fully operational on older Lightning craft, and one much anticipated
by those attached to the ships. It also allowed the transport and
operation of a HWP (Heavy Weapons Platform), a feature the original
version had sorely lacked in its rush to be put into service.

Carrying their gear with them, the two Squads quickly assembled outside
the landed ship to discuss what they'd taken from the combat zone. Every
alien corpse, live captured alien, and every alien artifact had to be
recorded and accounted for. Anything missed by the combat teams would
have to be recovered by the post-combat clean up crews who sanitized the
area. Failure to clean up after a mission was looked on with a great
deal of disfavor by the brass. It was Ranma and Ryouga's responsibility
to make sure they didn't leave a littered battlefield in their wake.

As soon as that was out of the way, Ranma pointed over to where Akane,
Nodoka, Kazuo and Mitsuko were all waiting. Jogging over, the two groups
met near the edge of the Hangar, near the wall and out of the way.

"Welcome back," Akane was the first to speak, and she explicitly tried
to address the greeting to all of them. "It looks rough out there
today."

"Huh!" Ranma scoffed, his dismissive tone underscored by his grin.
"That's an understatement."

Nodoka stood back, watching her son with pride.

Shampoo growled in obvious jealousy, and grabbed Ranma by the hand.
"Shouldn't we head to the debriefing, Lieutenant?"

Her forced professional tone didn't seem to annoy Akane any less than
normal, and she scowled at the Chinese girl hanging onto her fiance's
arm. She was about to speak, and probably escalate the situation, when
Ranma coughed and got their attention.

"Thanks for waiting, Akane. I appreciate it," he said, and then quickly
addressed Shampoo. "All right, let's get going."

He slipped his hands out of Shampoo's and deftly headed for the lift.

"But..." Shampoo stamped her foot, and chased after him. Ukyou followed
soon after, rolling her eyes. Kazuo took her by the shoulder, relieved
that she was unhurt, and then let her go. Konatsu followed in the rear,
nodding once to Akane and the friends' parents.

"Ryouga," Mitsuko said, with that other strangeness now over. "Welcome
back."

He stared at her for a second before smiling honestly. "Glad to be back,
mom."

"Akane," he then said, almost as an afterthought. "I hope you're ready."

Without another word, he motioned to the rest of India Squad. Ryu took
up the lead, and Ryouga briefly kneeled to pet Shirokuro, who sensed
that her master would be fine following one of his friends, and so
stayed put. The group then followed Ranma's squad, and disappeared into
the complex that was the heart of Seiran Mountain.

"We'd better go, too," Nodoka spoke up once the young men and woman of
the two squads were gone.

"Right," Mitsuko agreed, and as the two women and Kazuo started towards
the stairs they had entered from, they noticed that Akane was still
looking out over the Hangar.

"Akane-chan?" Nodoka asked, calling to the girl.

"You guys go on," she replied, looking over her shoulder. "I'm going to
hang around a little longer."

Closing her eyes, she mentally replayed what Ryouga had said before
leaving.

'I hope you're ready.'

When the body bags rolled out of the next transport to land, she
understood what he meant. But her commitment never wavered.

"I hope I'm ready, too."



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