I've decided on a posting pattern. As I finish drafts, I will post them
along with the final version of the previous chapter. This means there'll be
two copies of each chapter posted to the mailing list, one draft and one
final. I'll use C&C from the first post to polish the second, and so on.
This arrangement allows me to get continual feedback on previous work even
as I'm constructing new stuff, and helps maintain the continuity of the
story in case I'm delayed for an excessively long time in between releases.

~The Ascension of Cologne: A Ranma ½ Fanfic~

by Blasphemy Kilmanjar, Greater Daemon of Eris Kallisti Discordia and
Disciple of the Most Holy Kodachi.

Chapter 1

"Cult of Chaos: An Ancient and Powerful mystick tradition dedicated to
furthering the aims of the Goddess Eris Discordia, the ancient Hellenistic
Goddess of Chaos and Discord. Maintained throughout the ages by the Bavarian
Illuminati, an equally ancient organization of Sleepers. Cultists are
careful to distinguish themselves from the mad Marauders."
                        -The Dictionary of Magickal Philosophy, Hermetic
Library of Circea Chantry

	Deep in Central Appalachia, the easternmost mountain range of the
continental United States, there lives a small university town called
Morgantown. Like many college towns, the prosperity of the natives there
depends largely on the foolish largesse of the students, who are regarded as
a profitable and necessary evil. 
	The locals are, therefore, largely tolerant of the eccentricities of the
students; a position they are encouraged to take by a University
administration that permits the student body to walk all over it. This means
that life at the university is like a four-year vacation for the paying
student, with the supposed authorities not permitting themselves to wipe
their asses unless the act is approved by a student committee.
	It was the sort of arrangement that suited Joseph Kaosu Towenaar just fine,
and that notable had just finished that thought with a certain amount of
satisfaction when he finally opened his eyes and lazily stared at the
ceiling of his eight-by-twelve foot dormitory cell.
	He shifted, dislodging a large pile of hardcore porn; yawned, stretched and
waded through knee-deep Sbarro's pizza boxes and empty Wendy's bags and
burger wrappers in a grand and noble quest for the front door. After a
five-minute search during which he managed to unearth a desk, a computer, a
phone, and a vastly underworked trash can, he made it to his goal. Through
that great portal was the way to the communal bathroom and his own personal
Nirvana. 
	-Spiritual fulfillment in the shape of white porcelain...- Kaosu began to
giggle, his hand on the doorknob. He almost let himself sink to his knees,
but no! No weakness must be allowed to delay him from his goal. 
	Straightening, he gave his legs a good hard look and issued his orders. 
	-All right, men. Forward, march!- For an instant, it seemed a mutiny was at
hand, but the legs managed to pull through and deliver what he wanted. With
the help of a strategic strike from his hand to the enemy-held doorknob and
his impeccable timing, Kaosu was out of the front door and standing in the
hall. -Good work, men.-
	Now it was relatively easy. The erstwhile general staggered to the
bathroom, flung open a stall door, and took a long reflective piss in the
general direction of Stalnaker Hall. -Ahhhhh...-

	Meanwhile, a world away...
	Special Recon Command Cyborg Unit 9X803 stood motionless in the thin,
chilly darkness of a suburban street at three AM. Location: Nerima, Tokyo.  
	9X803 was one of the Series 9 class of cyborg, a unit developed to command
and coordinate lesser units and bring organization to the efforts of vastly
inferior human agents. Her augmented brain was at that moment processing the
visual feeds from a dozen men in black who were scouting the ward with
umbral viewing equipment, hoping to spot the source of a serious reality
deviation. 
	Nothing. The ward looked the way it should: completely dormant. 
	\Perhaps there was an error./ One MIB appeared to be inclined to doubt the
Order's reports. 
	\Perhaps./ 9X803 would have chastized the true-human severely if she hadn't
been rather doubtful herself. This was their third night here, and the third
night of sensing nothing unusual anywhere, except... She set the video feeds
to act as background processes for a moment and raised her machine arm. 
	/: BEGIN PROCESS HOLO.TEST
	WARNING: PARADOX PROBABILITY: 98.4% CONFIRM?
	/: Y
	A hologram, realistic, lifelike, suddenly popped into view in front of the
cyborg. The image of a young, miscellaneous woman turned and smiled at
nobody in particular, then vanished as 9X803 twisted in exquisite pain at
the inevitable backlash. That was pretty undeniable. An effect like that
should be coincidental, easy. Paradox, the force of reality fighting back
against radical changes, should not be so powerful for such a simple effect.
It shouldn't even have happened. Not here, not in the middle of Tokyo, the
most powerful centre of technomagick in the world. Anywhere else in the
civilized world, it would have been simple and painless.
	Just not here.
	\Keep looking./

	Meanwhile, back at the dorm...
      Kaosu Towenaar was giving the woman sitting in his recently unearthed
desk chair a look that, if mixed metaphors could skin a cat, would have seen
her tanned and made into mittens.
	"You want me to what?"
	She sighed. "I want you to drag your lazy, besotted ass to Japan so you can
play general. There's an... interesting... situation  developing there."
	"Do tell."
	"You know that Japan and Tokyo in particular have always been among our
greatest problems. The Tech-heads are firmly entrenched there. A tradition
mage can't so much as turn his farts purple anywhere in Japan without having
paradox come around and turn him inside-out, dick first."
	"So? We've known that for years."
	"And we've been counting on centuries of work to bring the Techno paradigm
crashing down in that area, yeah. Well, I got news for you: we've got an
opening."
	Kaosu opened his eyes wide. He turned his head and examined her more
carefully, searching her face. Treachery was not unknown in Tradition ranks,
and this sounded both dangerous and pretty ludicrous.
      Carolyn sat there primly, her calm, middle-aged society woman
demeanor an incongruous mask on her vulgar, ribald personality and
I-love-to-get-my-hands-dirty nature. He and she were not in opposing
positions in the organization, as far as he knew. She was a liaison between
her own faction, the Cult of Ecstasy, and his group, the Cult of Chaos.
	Still... no. She showed no signs of deception, and his magickal probe came
up with nil.
      "All right, Lynn. Tell me what's happened."
      She pulled a file out of her case. "This is all we know. I had the
librarian on Circea pull every cross-reference we could find, but most of
the Nerima connections; that's where you're going, by the way, Nerima;
involve Kuh Lon, an old Akashic renegade.
      Kaosu started. "I know her... she's in on it?"
      "Apparently. She surfaced in Nerima three months ago. One of our
Akashics, a dojo owner in a neighboring ward, recognized her."
      "I see. Did you know she was at least five hundred years old?"
      "Really? How did she manage that?"
      "She's a specialist in static magick. Everything from acupressure to
node-type curses. She researches it. I wouldn't be surprised if she managed
to extend her life somehow."
      "Hmmm. Sounds like a tough old bitch, lasting this long."
      "Oh, yes. She is."
      "Right," Carolyn moved on. "What's happened is this: somehow, the
Technocrat's static reality has been banished from this one ward, this
Nerima place. It's like a shard realm on earth. Technocratic magick has
gotten extremely vulgar there, while nonsensical magick like ours, while
still difficult, is a lot easier to perform. Their monitors and advanced
network devices don't work there anymore."
      "Why?"
      "We don't know. The Adepts found it first, of course. They thought it
was a minor glitch in the Technocratic security system, but it's consistent."
      "Hm. What do you want me to do, then?"
      "Defend the place, Towenaar. The Technocrats are moving in. If you
can, build us a chantry or establish a fortress. Try to widen the bubble."
      There was a lengthy pause.
      "Are you going to take this?"
	He considered. He'd been stagnating here in West Virginia, growing to be a
homebody. He needed some excitement. He was, after all, only a hundred and
fifty. A mage in the prime of life.
      "Give me the tickets."
	"Excellent." Carolyn got up to exit the room, finding her way through the
trash with far less difficulty than he did. She opened the door, paused.
	"One thing, Towenaar. Two, actually."
	"Yes?"
	"You're going to be the visible opposition. Don't worry too much about
secrecy."
	"I guessed that. What's the second thing?"
	"We can't afford to lose this one, old friend. We're focusing all our
efforts here, and we intend to keep it. That means we're leaving our primary
weapon there on sentry duty."
	"You mean..."
	"If you ever leave Japan, don't bother coming to us for sanctuary anymore."
	The door slammed.

	Nerima, Japan. A quiet suburb, the morning peace and stillness broken only
by the occasional shout from a happy schoolchild. 
	"RANMA NO BAKA!"
	A cheerful place with cheerful inhabitants, where violent crime is
virtually unknown.
	*THWACK* "Aaaaaiiiieeeee..."
	A wonderful place for children to play, with police too interested in their
own hides to do much about it.
	*CRASH*
	"Baka," snarled Akane, tossing her mallet to one side. Nabiki looked up at
the hole in the ceiling with an experienced eye and immediately began coming
up with contractor estimates.
	"You really shouldn't do that, sister dear. I heard the contractor was
thinking of buying his second Mercedes with our business."
	"It's not my fault he's an insensitive jerk!" Akane picked up her schoolbag
and waited by the door while Nabiki finished her tea, stretched, and got up,
bag in hand.
	"Did you aim him at the school?"
	"He should come down in the courtyard, although he might hit the roof. My
aim has been a little off lately."
	The two sisters started off for school, walking instead of running,
discussing little things between themselves. A black-suited piece of the
scenery caught Nabiki's attention suddenly.
	"Hey, Akane?"
	"Yes?"
	"Have you noticed those odd men who've been hanging around lately?"
	"Like that one?" Akane pointed to the large, bald man in a black suit and
sunglasses who was standing motionlessly across the street from them. At
their looks, he turned and walked the other way. "Yeah, I guess."
	"I thought they might be some kind of government agents or something, but I
don't know for sure. They don't talk or anything. You think something's
going on?"
        "Maybe. There's a lot of gaijin around just lately too, but they
don't turn up till evening. Maybe the big guys have something to do with them."
        They turned the corner into the school courtyard and were greeted by
the sight of Ranma Saotome crawling out of a small crater in the concrete.
	"Owwwwwww..." He rubbed the back of his head. "Geez, Akane! I wasn't making
fun of you! I just said that your scrambled eggs weren't dissolving the
plate anymore! It was a compli-" *WHAM*
      "Baka." Akane sniffed and turned to go in. Nabiki bent over the
crater and offered Ranma a hand up. "You ever heard of something called
'tact', Saotome?"
      Ranma scrunched up his forehead. "Isn't it a sort of American cracker?"
      "Never mind. C'mon or you'll be late."

      Kaosu sat in his seat in first class on the USAir redeye flight from
Pitt to L.A., going over the file Carolyn had given him.
	The plane was dim except for his own little spotlight and the lights of a
few other unfortunate working souls. All around him, other passengers
snoozed or watched the packaged entertainment on silently flickering
personal TVs mounted in the backs of the seats in front of them. 
        There wasn't too much in the file. A city map of the district,
profiles on local authority figures, sleeper ciminal activity, and, of
course, the full report on the reality deviation, starting with surmise and
theories from Adept hackers and working up to surmise and theories from the
heads of the council. The basic evidence was pretty strange: the
Technocracy's security and monitoring systems were all fragging up within
Nerima. Nothing more complicated than a standard computer was working there.
	Even better, a report snagged from a piggyback tap seemed to indicate that
the New World Order's assassin droids, their HIT Marks, were unable to cross
the ward's borders without total system failure. Cyborgs were barely able to
function, as long as they didn't do anything too visible. -So the
Technocrats are blind. Good.-
      So much for the main report. Kaosu turned to the files
cross-referenced to Nerima.
      The first file he looked at was the council's sum total of
information on one Kuh Lon, a Chinese Amazon from Joketsuzoku, a village
noted for producing an unusual number of highly skilled mysticks. -Heh. They
got her birthdate wrong.- The council didn't know very much, he realized.
	The Akashics had banished her from their ranks for playing with dangerous
forms of static magick, then later labeled her a renegade so they could
ignore her when she came to them requesting aid or sanctuary. -She must have
scared somebody bad. Depressing to think that even the Akashics aren't
immune to corruption.- 
      The next part was generated by monks the Akashics recruited to keep an
eye on her. After the Brotherhood dropped her, Kuh Lon returned to her
village and began pursuing magick with vigor, studying everything she could
get her hands on. She studied martial arts and ki, both readily available in
her warrior culture, learning how to incorporate this static magick into her
regular system. She learned, at some point, the technique of extending her
lifespan to an unbelievable degree without suffering paradox. As she grew
older, she gained more and more power and status in her village until she
was behind everything that went on.
      These records stopped at about the one hundred year mark. A short note
stated that the monks handling the surveillance had all been killed in a
cave-in at their monestary and that the Akashics did not consider Kuh Lon
important enough to continue watching her. -BAD mistake.-
      The last entry in the file was a note, written in kanji; Kaosu had
made a hobby of memorizing the symbols, fortunately. Kuh Lon, recognized
from a portrait somewhere, noted entering Nerima district.
      -Right.-
      Kaosu turned to the other file, labeled 'Xian Pu'. One page in it:
another short note. "Spotted with Kuh Lon. Looks harmless. Suspected relative."
      The mage closed the files slowly and stacked them neatly in a pile. He
spent the remainder of the trip deep in thought, breaking out of it only to
change his clothes in the tiny bathroom before disembarking. His old ones,
new that morning, were already in rags. He still had a flight across the
Pacific to survive and couldn't afford to have the damn things fall off in
the middle of the terminal.

      It was approaching evening in Nerima, and Cologne looked boredly
around the main room of the Nekohanten. Nothing much had been happening
lately, and she wasn't exactly sure she wanted anything to happen. She'd
been taking an unconscious rest from driving and persecuting her potential
son-in-law and had spent the vast majority of the last week or two indoors,
running the café and fiddling with her spices, chemicals, and elixirs. 
	-Maybe I'm getting old,- she thought as she considered her odd apathy for
the last week or so. -Or bored. Pursuing the son-in-law is fun, but it's the
same thing, over and over.-
      She sighed quietly, watching Mousse attempt to take an order from a
potted plant. -Idiot,- thought she.   -All his years of training in the
arts, building up his physique, fine-tuning his reflexes, trying so hard to
compensate for his blindness, and here he sits in Japan, taking orders from
houseplants. He'll never know it was my fault. Not that there was a way
around it. The universe demands a penalty for mistakes. Better he pay it
than I.-
      So she told herself, and so she slept at night.

      A few blocks away, Doctor Tofu was sitting in his darkened office,
looking out the window. It was long past his closing time, evening turning
gently to night, but with the man in the black suit standing on the other
side of the street, he was considering his moves as carefully as a man
playing chess against black-robed Death. He knew what the man across the
street meant to him if his least suspicion was aroused. 
	Fortunately, he also knew that the men in black were keeping an eye on every
miracle worker, pill-peddler, fortune teller and chiropractor in the
district. He hadn't been singled out. Yet.
      After considering for a few more minutes, he made up his mind. He
stood, stretched so that his silhouette was clearly visible in the window
despite the lack of light from inside, and went downstairs and out, walking
swiftly in the direction of the Nekohanten.

      Inside, Cologne was ringing up a small party of students when she
noticed Tofu walk in and find a table near the back of the ramen shop. She
finished with the students and hopped back to the kitchen. "Shampoo, go tend
the register. I'll handle the cooking. Tell Tofu-sensei to come back here
where we can discuss his work in peace." Shampoo nodded and left.
      A few moments later, Doctor Tofu stood in the door.
      "What is it, Tofu? I'm very busy here."
      "Have you been outside lately, elder?" Tofu was speaking with
respect and a deference not normally apparent in his manner to anyone.
      "No. What is going on outside that I should see?"
      Tofu thought about ways to lead into this, then decided that clear,
direct, and simple was probably the best way. "The Static Ones have entered
Nerima. Their soldiers are posted to watch everyone even suspected of being
a mage."
      It was not often that anything happened to surprise or worry
Cologne. She was over five hundred years old, after all. She had lived
through innumerable evils, had suffered through at least five more lifetimes
than any sleeper. When she turned, Tofu was disconcerted to see her withered
face as pale as a cup of milk.
      "The Static Ones are HERE?"
      "Hai. My office is being watched by a bald man in a dark suit. I
noticed three more on my way here."
      Cologne sat quietly on her staff for a moment, face still pale but
regaining colour. "Why did you come to warn me, doctor? I am no longer in
the Brotherhood. Your people should welcome a chance to see me destroyed."
      "Perhaps they would, but it would be wrong to leave you in such a
predicament. Besides, I have no intention of leaving, no matter how bad it
gets. You and I are the only Awakened in Nerima, besides them. We will need
each other."
	It was true enough. Cologne sat on her staff, lost in thought. Tofu leaned
on the counter, and both meditated for a span until: "Great-grandmother?"
      Cologne looked up at her child's child's child and smiled fondly to
herself. So like herself at that age, so energetic, so alive... she
remembered the threat impending and shivered. Her great-grandaughter was not
going to die in a Technocratic death camp in some shard realm somewhere, of
that she was sure. "Yes, child?"
        "Great-grandmother, some gaijin come in. They wearing lots of chains
and leather, got funny hair. Shampoo think they want food, but no can
understand them. Speak English."
        "Gaijin. Just what I needed." Cologne muttered to herself and hopped
out of the kitchen to the main room. She located the table with the loud,
rude teenagers immediately and had started to hop over to it when she
stopped suddenly and peered closely at the Americans. "Tofu," she said,
without turning to the man she knew had come up behind her. "Are those
gaijin breathing?"

	Oni Industries Building, downtown Tokyo. In a small, cramped office three
floors below the luxurious penthouse office of the company president, the
true rulers of the company were holding a meeting. Unlike the president's
office, where the sweet smoke of expensive cigars and the gentle fumes of
exotic wines permeated, this place was bare of comforts, odors, and colours.
	A woman and two men occupied the office. They were seated around a small
table in uncomfortable folding chairs. The woman, florescent lights glinting
off the iron grey of her hair, began.
	"The gaijin Cainite princes have proven far more amenable to selling their
people to us than our own Kindred, who are inclined to look down on
'mortals' and our problems." Her mouth quirked. "The Prince of New York City
was especially eager to help in exchange for our assistance in his campaign
to extend his influence as far as Washington. We now have eighty-three
powerful fighters bought and paid for."
	"Good," said the man on her immediate left. "Dragging Americans into our
business is regrettable, and Cainites, at that, but they are strong fighters
and possess natural magickal instincts that could be invaluable in resolving
this problem." He turned to the third man, who had been looking
uncomfortable throughout the meeting. "Now, how is our investigation of the
Nerima problem proceeding?"
	"Uh. Well. The Nerima problem is, um, not, um..."
	"Yes?"
	"Uh. Well, our umbral scans of the area show no activity whatsoever."
	"So scan harder." The woman smirked. "Or are your toys broken?"
	The man went a bright shade of pink. "That's just it. They are broken, as
soon as they enter the ward. Outside of Nerima, our scanners pick up
background umbral energy, minor reality shifts, normal noise. Inside, they
bon't register so much as a blip. The only way we even know Nerima exists on
the umbral level is through natural, vulgar scanning. Our machines just
don't work there, especially our monitoring devices."
	"Why not?"
	"We don't know."
	"What does work there?"
	"Not much." The red face got a little redder. "I never saw such a thing in
all my life. Pistols jam. Paradox backlash from a basic hologram blasted one
of our cyborgs into the deep umbra. Even a basic piggyback phone tap
exploded for no reason, but at the same time, extremely vulgar effects are
getting easier to perform. We get lower paradox probabilities for shooting
off a fireball than we do for shooting a gun."
	The first man turned to the woman once more. "Has the Council picked up on
this?"
	"Our people found traces of Adepts hacking into the security reports. They
would have noticed a big Nerima-shaped hole in our network. Especially a
big, consistent Nerima-shaped hole."
	"Do we know what they're doing about it?"
	"Not yet."
	"But we will?"
	"With something as big as this? You bet we will."

	"Bakayarou!" Ranma winced and dodged as Akane took a swing at him with her
mallet. It was late evening in Nerima, and the smells and sounds as the two
walked down the street embroiled in polite debate 
	*WHACK*
	were the smells and sounds of evening in suburbs across the world: faint
gasoline, hot pavement cooling down, cars in the distance, the occasional
cricket or locust chirping or buzzing in the grass partitions between
sidewalk and street, hoses or brooms in action cleaning walkways.
	Akane ran a little ways ahead of Ranma and turned to face him. "Baka!
Always insulting me! You knew it was my night to cook!"
	"I didn't! I just suggested dinner at Ucchan's...oops." Akane, furious,
produced a bucket of cold water from out of nowhere. "Eeep! Akane, wait,
listen to..."
	*SPLASH*
	As the two girls continued down the street, arguing at the top of their
lungs, a bald man in a black suit and sunglasses turned and followed them at
a distance. They continued this way for about a block, at which point the
man was joined by two others who looked just like him. The three increased
their pace until they were within arm's reach of Akane. A massive hand
glomped on her shoulder just as she was winding up for another mallet-slam
on a protesting Ranma, who had her eyes shut and so didn't notice the other
man who came up behind him and grabbed her upper arms until it was a
millisecond too late.
	"Excuse me," the third man said, but got no further than that as Ranma
tossed herself free of her captor with ease and Akane reached back and
brought the first suit forward over her shoulder and into the pavement.
	Akane and Ranma backed off slowly, on guard, as the three suits collected
themselves and regrouped. They paused for a moment, almost as if communing
with some mysterious entity, then advanced, one suit manipulating a small
remote control.
	From the perspective of the bald man with the remote, it seemed that his
companions, the two teenagers, and all other activity had suddenly ceased.
He knew he was going to suffer from incredible paradox when he dropped back
into the time stream, but it didn't matter. He was a single cell, a small
part of a larger whole, and if the body needed for him to die to accomplish
a goal, so be it. He advanced casually to the frozen teenager, the boy he
had noticed undergoing a remarkably vulgar metamorphosis from male to female
without backlash, and was about to break her helpless bones when an abrupt
punch in the belly knocked him backwards. 
	He stared up, shocked, as everything came back to life all around him. His
spell had been countered, but by who? The children were not awakened.
	"I don't know how you got so close to me so fast," the redhead was saying,
"but you're not going to do it again." She kicked him hard, catching him
under the jaw and spinning him backwards, then closed in on his prone form
and jumped, aiming for his head. Just before impact, he saw, from the corner
of his eye, the black-haired child sweeping the legs from beneath his two
companions with a kick that was almost too fast for the eye to follow. He'd
just started to wonder what he'd gotten himself into when a slippered foot
slammed into the front of his head, pavement slammed into the back, and he
slipped gracefully into the occulted depths of unconsciousness.
	Ranma turned from her dreaming opponent just in time to see Akane mopping
up the other two bald suits. -Heh. She's gotten better. Look at the way she
moves...- She blinked. -What am I thinking?-
	The last man fell to the ground, groaning a little. His training in the
magick of natural forces supposedly enabled him, assuming no paradox, to
tear apart the moon, make the sun turn green, or cause the ocean to boil,
but none of that was a match for the little whirlwind hellion who was
standing over him in a slightly arrogant pose, her dark hair swirling a
little in the light breeze. He captured that image in his dimming vision as
he, too, slid under the warm, healing blanket of unconsciousness.
	"Who the hell were those guys?" Ranma was glaring at the suit she'd taken
care of. 
	"They're men in black, the Technocracy's answer to the army grunt." 
	"Huh?" Akane looked up from her inspection of her fallen opponents. "Who
said that?"
	"I did." The voice was emanating from the direction of a tree a few yards
away. "You two are excellent fighters, taking those three out the way you
did. If they'd had time to act, you both would have been dead or captured,
depending on whether the Technocrats see you as a threat or a study. Allow
me to introduce myself," the voice went on. "My name is Joseph Kaosu
Towenaar, chosen from the languages of the three cultures I love the most,
and it looks like I may need your help."
	With that, a man stepped out of the shadow of the tree. He was tall and
thin, wearing a black trenchcoat, ragged black jeans, and a moth-eaten black
turtleneck. His hair was a blazing purple mane, not as long as Shampoo's,
but brighter. On one wrist was a bracelet made of gold, and on his nose sat
an elegant pair of glasses, the frame also gold. The face looked pale and
young, not as young as Ranma and Akane, but maybe as old as Kasumi or Dr.
Tofu; it was obviously American. He held an odd dagger in the bracelet hand.
"Right. These bastards aren't going to be of any use to any of us." He
stepped up to the first man, who was starting to shift around a bit,
regaining consciousness. The left hand, which had a watch instead of a
bracelet, reached out and held the man's head steady while the right drove
the dagger into the back of the man's neck, right in the junction between
the skull and spine.
	"What..." Ranma looked shocked as the blood flowed up around the blade.
	Kaosu frowned, pulled at the dagger. "Damn these idiots and their tight
neck muscles." He put a foot up on the back of the suit's head, wrapped both
hands around the dagger, and jerked. Blood spurted.
	Akane looked ill. Ranma recovered from her shock in time to step over and
stand in front of the next downed man, blocking the trenchcoat-clad murderer. 
	Kaosu, for his part, looked irritated. "You're a great fighter, meisie, but
you're an idiot. Let me through."
	"I can't let you kill him."
	"Yes, you can."
	"Why?"
	"Because if he doesn't die, the first thing he's going to do when he wakes
up is talk to his superiors, and they, in turn, are going to make sure that
you and your girlfriend over there are dead."
	Ranma almost hesitated. If she had, Kaosu would have had her, would have
used the indecision to poke at her mind just so, and thus would have had the
time to kill the last two black suits. Things might have then happened a lot
differently, but Ranma did not hesitate.
	"You're going to fight me to get to them." The young warrior dropped into a
classic defensive stance. Beside her, Akane readied herself as well. Because
they were facing slightly away from each other, only Kaosu was able to
appreciate how coordinated they appeared, the darkhair supporting her,
preparing to take care of the business she dropped.
	"You mistake me, warrior. I am no fighter, not in the way you know." The
mage sighed. He shouldn't have gotten involved, but anyone the Technocratic
lapdogs were interested in must be important somehow... "Very well." He
studied the two martial artists for a moment. "I surrender."
	"Nani?" The two spoke almost with one voice.
	"I believe you both heard me. I surrender. You can have the lives of the
Static Ones' slaves, to save or remove as you please." Kaosu turned, licked
his dagger clean, sheathed it, and prepared to stroll off. "You're going to
regret your mercy, I fear. The Technocrats will know that you fought and
defeated their soldiers. They'll know about whatever it is about you two
that interested these slaves in the first place. They have visuals, agents,
files, references. Half an hour after you see the last of those two bald
bastards, the New World Order will have compiled comprehensive files on both
of you, and by tonight, action will be taken. Goddess help you both." Kaosu
executed an intricate bow in a classical Western style and walked off,
leaving in his wake two powerful martial artists in a perfect portrait of
tense, ready beauty. Only without the sun behind them and the silhouettes
obscuring the two visages would the facefaults be visible.
-=-=-=-=-
End Chapter One
-=-=-=-=-
Obligatory Author's note: "Meisie" is an Afrikaans word for "girl." "Kaosu"
means "chaos" in Japanese, and "towenaar" is Afrikaans for "wizard." I think
"Joseph" has something to do with god, but since I do not, I'm not inclined
to assign any meaning to the name. 

-Drakkus Blasphemy, Greater Daemon of Eris Discordia
drakkus@labyrinth.net
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