The year is 2005. For six years, mankind has waged a Secret War against
an enemy from Beyond the Stars. The Nerima Wrecking Crew and their
families have been relocated to Seiran Mountain, XCOM headquarters for
the Far East. Finally, a mission is sent down for the newly militarized
Nerima Wrecking Crew, to cut their teeth against the Alien Menace. As
Operation Zebra draws to a victorious close, mysterious powers move to
secure their objectives.
-----

The Road To Cydonia

Chapter IX
Through Hell Barefoot

-----

Written by:
Capn Chryssalid
jbraveboy@gmail.com

-----

It was black and brown, the color of dead autumn leaves. Except for the
eyes: the pale white eyes that shone with moisture, even in the dark. It
was hard to remember, hard to understand, what came next after that
first second of savage fury. There existed in the human mind a sort of
switch, that when triggered changed the way one thinks from collected
rationality to an animalistic state of pure survival.

Teeth.

It had teeth; he remembered that clearly, as it snapped and shook its
massive head. He batted at it, without thinking, fighting desperately to
keep those yellow and white things from his throat, from his face. It
seemed to barely make a sound, but he screamed, as if pure volume could
drive it off. It was large, too, larger than he had been.

When it bit down on his arm, he'd felt wetness between his legs, and the
shock of it all had focused his efforts. Tuck in the legs, find a
surface - there! Push, tuck, roll, get away, still holding on, twisting,
a cracking sound, fire shooting up his arm like a hot poker tearing
through his flesh and lodging in his brain. Red blood as he wedged his
arm free. The scuffling sound as it fell onto its side, and scrambled to
right itself.

Not a nightmare.

Don't run.

Don't hesitate.

-----

The doorbell rang again, a third time, as Ryouga walked down the steps
of the family home. He had been grateful for the reprieve. He'd managed
to find his way home several days ago, but of course no one was around.
A note from his mother indicated she'd left a week before he arrived,
and his father - who knew? There was no note from him, and he hadn't
called. Ryouga wanted to talk to him, too, especially because the last
time they'd seen each other they hadn't parted on good terms.

Which was to say that he'd ran away and his father had let him.

Ryouga finally saw the door, and hoped against hope it was one of his
parents, and not some stranger. He still felt a little nervous around
the locals he didn't know. It was different on the road, where you could
always just leave a place or a people. The neighbors here, the postal
workers, everyone... they knew. They knew about the 'problem' the Hibiki
family had. There was a knowing, suffering, often aggravated way they
spoke, or acted, or looked at him, like he was just making things worse
by perpetuating a continual frustration in the community.

Luckily, he didn't have a problem walking around the house. He could
find his way, he knew, if he'd been in a place often enough. He had a
terrible sense of direction, not a complete lack thereof. The doorbell
hadn't ringed a fourth time, and he wasn't tall enough to see through
the peephole. Was anyone even still there?

"One moment!" He yelled, just in case, and reached up to unlock the
door, until all that restrained it was the flimsy little chain - the
most inadequate of all door defenses. As if a determined burglar
couldn't just push hard on the door, and either break the chain or pop
it out of where it was secured into the wall. Still, it felt a little
good to have, which was probably the point.

Opening the door a crack, he saw a familiar walking stick, and past it,
a familiar face. He gasped, and undid the chain before throwing the door
wide open. Bowing his head, he stepped back and aside.

"Grandfather!" He chirped, his head still bowed. "Welcome home!"

Seigo Hibiki was not an impressive specimen.  His frame was thin - a
stark contrast to his son, Ryouga's father - his eyes slightly sunken,
and his mouth drawn back, lips tight together. He resembled, more than
anything, the sort of old man you'd find in the hottest section of a
public bath. His complexion was lightly tanned, and his skin looked like
weathered dry leather. He wore a traveling pack that looked to weigh as
much as he did, along with plain brown pants, shirt and jacket. A
checkered yellow and black bandanna circled his bald head.

"Hmm. Ryouga," he said, simply, staring at his grandchild with black
eyes still sharp and seemingly unfailing. With a faint tap-tap sound,
coming from the black tipped end of his wooden cane, he entered the
house and began to remove his shoes. Ryouga quickly closed the door, and
began to relock it.

"Grandfather... if you don't mind me asking," Ryouga began, as he went
up on his tippy toes to reach the highest padlock. "Why didn't you let
yourself in? Don't you have your keys?"

"Your mother put in a new lock," the old man answered with a slow,
almost meek voice. "I couldn't remember where she hid the new keys for
it."

"They're taped to the inside of the mailbox," Ryouga said, done with the
door. He watched as the oldest living member of the Hibiki family untied
his plain brown shoes, and carefully set them down in the same spot he
always used. Like all members of the family, he treated his footwear
with kindness and care. When one spent so much time wandering, and
walking, it was just common sense to be mindful of the conditions of
your feet.

"Would you like something to eat?" Ryouga asked, heading for the
kitchen. "Almost everything's expired, but there's some instant ramen
I've been making for myself the last few days. And some stuff in the
fridge, like frozen dumplings."

"That would be fine."

"The only tea we have is Genmaicha. 'Popcorn Tea.' Is that ok?" Ryouga
heard a grunt, and assumed it to be one of acceptance. Grandfather left
his backpack leaning against the wall, next to Ryouga's own, and then
sat in the kitchen, at the table, and waited. He was a quiet man, and
always had been, but he let Ryouga make the food and tea by himself, and
the young boy was grateful for it. He wasn't handicapped by his age, by
his height, by his inheritance curse, or by anything else. A Hibiki was
never keen to admit weakness, even to family.

Serving the food, and the tea, the two of them shared a moment of
silence and began to eat. There were no great exclamations of joy at
meeting up, or of being thankful for the food and company. Ryouga had
seen the displays among the other boys, among other families, as he'd
watched from afar. He understood why the Hibikis avoided it. One could
become attached to such things, and miss them terribly. There was
already enough of a burden, enough to miss, enough to feed the despair
and loneliness.

No more.

No more.

He finished first, slurping down the noodles and broth quickly, and then
waited for his grandfather, who ate much more slowly and purposefully.
Ryouga didn't know his father or mother very well, not really, and he
knew even less of his grandfather and grandmother. One of the things he
knew, however, was that this fragile looking man that ate only a few
noodles at a time was more than just Seigo Hibiki.

He was the Strongest Hibiki.

Hyakka Kogarashi Hibiki - 'Hundred Flower Whirlwind,' both for one of
his special techniques, and for the many men he'd killed. His father,
with a mixture of morbid familial pride and moral disdain, had told him
this years ago. Ryouga had asked, naturally, why someone would give such
a gentle sounding name to something he'd been taught was wrong: taking
another life. Grandfather, he'd been told, was of the old school. He
took lives, when he felt it necessary or just, and he disguised those
actions with names that belied their true ugliness.

The old man who sat opposite him had slain a hundred men in one night.
He was the last living member of a Nightmare Unit in the Army of the
Kwangtung. He was, in a way, the most perfect and horrible creature ever
to bear the family name. He had survived, after all, where so many other
Hibikis would have died. Where thousands of Japanese fighting men had
been carted off to Soviet labor camps, he had returned home, and not on
any ship or plane, an unreadable smoldering behind his dark eyes.

Ryouga had never decided whether to admire the man or not.

When grandfather had finished the tea, his cool black eyes rested on
Ryouga's left arm, and the sling it was in. The young boy lowered his
eyes in respect and shame. He wasn't strong yet. Not like his father,
and certainly not like his grandfather.

"Was it a man?" Grandfather asked, finally. "Or a beast?"

"A... a wild boar," Ryouga replied, and shook his head. "I was... lost.
It was night, and it got the jump on me."

"A wild boar," Seigo said, in his slow measured tone of voice. "Did you
kill it?"

Ryouga, all ten years five months and eleven days of him, shook his head
again.

"No, grandfather." He licked his dry lips. "I managed to climb a tree
and let it have my backpack."

For a few seconds, there was no reply. Ryouga tentatively looked up,
wondering what he'd see on the elder Hibiki's face. Perhaps most parents
and grandparents would have reacted with shock, with worry, with panic.
Seigo's face showed none of these things.

"You'll get another chance," the old man finally said. "That is also the
nature of our curse."

Ryouga wasn't sure whether that news should have filled him with a grim
confidence, or a soul shattering fear. Mostly, it was the latter. There
wasn't time to dwell on it. Grandfather then asked about where he'd been
hurt, and how he'd handled fixing himself up.

He'd explained as best he could. He'd stayed in the tree, and the boar
had quickly found the food in his backpack, and that he'd been cooking.
After eating it, it had rooted around for a few minutes and then
wandered off. As soon as he'd dared, he'd gone back down, gotten his
medical supplies, and headed back into the tree with them.

The bite on his arm, the scratches and cuts, he'd poured the burning
antiseptic on. Just recounting it, he cringed. The pain had left him
numb and he'd cried for what felt like hours. He omitted that in the
story, however. There was no need for it. With that done, he'd had to
reset his dislocated elbow, and then put together a splint and sling.
He'd used one of his three tetanus shots, but there hadn't been any ice
available, and the limb had swollen and been sore for days. It hurt to
move, to breathe, to walk. He ran a fever, and had trouble keeping food
down.

Four days later, he found a village, and they helped to take care of
him.

Such was life, for a Hibiki. Not all made it to see adulthood. He had a
cousin who'd been hit by a car (in fact, he'd had a close brush with one
himself, on an unlit road in the middle of nowhere), and his Aunt had
disappeared two years ago. He suspected that his father still held out
hope that his little sister was still alive, but two years was a long
time to go without a note, a phone call, anything. He couldn't remember
either of their faces. They were just names.

Just names.

"Are you healing well?" Came his grandfather's response.

His good arm patted the clean white cloth of his sling. "I think so."

"Are you training?"

Ryouga nodded.

"Good," Grandfather said, and took another sip of his tea. "Take this
time to heal. To think. To plan. To train."

"Can..." Ryouga sniffled, and quickly composed himself. "Can you teach
me, Grandfather? To be stronger? To fight like you do?"

The old man, the Strongest of his Family, made a sour face.

"Don't be foolish," he said, charcoal eyes almost disappearing as he
squinted. "I can not train you. Neither can your father. No one can. The
curse prevents it. How many lessons will you have before you get lost,
or I do? All any of us can do is train ourselves, for ourselves. A
Hibiki relies on no one but himself."

Ryouga stared down at his feet. "I know, but..."

"No. You do not know." Seigo eased himself out of the chair, and reached
for his cane, which he'd left leaning against the kitchen's brick wall.
"But you will learn, eventually."

"All I can do," he continued, gently tapping the floor with the end of
his walking stick. "All we can do for each other as family... is teach
how to train, and how to persevere, even when death seems like a
release, and an escape from the pain."

Ryouga was quick to follow, as the older Hibiki lead them to the house's
small backyard. He only had one arm and both legs to train with, but he
was willing. He had to be. There was, for a Hibiki, literally no other
option.

"Are you going to show me special techniques?" Ryouga asked, hopeful.
"Like father's Tetsununo? Or your Hyakka Kogarashi?"

Seigo sighed. "Even if you could use those things, as weak as you are,
you would quickly come to rely on them. Special Techniques of that sort
are not what make a man strong."

"Tools make men strong, but spirit makes a man strong. That is what I
think." The old man turned slightly, to look at his grandson. It wasn't
a loving expression Ryouga saw on his face, but it was accepting. Maybe
even proud.

"What do you mean, Grandfather?" Ryouga asked, confused.

"The Bolsheviks had better tools than we did, and they crushed us in
Manchuria. Nothing I could do would ever change that, no matter how
strong I was then. But my spirit kept me alive where another man would
have died. That is what I see the beginning of in you. When that spirit
is strong... when it is unbreakable... then you will find plenty of
tools to fight with, and your own repertoire of special techniques."

By then, they were in the backyard, and as Seigo turned to face his
grandson, he held out his cane. Letting go of it, it fell... cracking
and planting itself into the earth with a heavy thud. Ryouga stared,
wide eyed, at the seemingly thin and light piece of wood. By the end of
the day, he'd learned a few things. By the end of the week, he'd altered
his training. By the end of the month, he'd taken off his splint and
sling.

By the end of the year, he'd gotten his revenge.

-----

Waves of ephemeral force rippled through Ryu's body. They did nothing to
his skin or muscle, but left his nerves on fire. He fell to his knees,
as the senseless storm crashed through him, leaving him adrift on a
tidal wave of agony. His muscles seized up, and he fought to stay
conscious, as the paralysis seeped deeper into his body, slowing his
breath and making coherent thought difficult.

He closed his eyes, and tried to summon some sort of defense. This
wasn't a mental attack like before. This was telekinesis of the highest
order, of the sort no human had ever mastered. Suddenly, he felt a
heaviness in his heart, and then on his body. The despair, the emptiness
he felt, he instinctively knew was not his own.

Opening his eyes, he saw a sickly green color permeate the air.

Only a few feet away, Ryouga stood, bleeding out an aura of emotive ki
unlike any he had seen before. What Ryu couldn't understand was how he
was even standing. Their opponent was an Ethereal: the leadership caste
of the alien army, an entire race of creatures that survived solely
because of their psionic power. Physically, any given Ethereal was
little more than a desiccated corpse of withered and atrophied muscle
and bone, unable to even support its own weight. Virtually all the blood
in their bodies ended up pumped to their one functional organ: their
brain.

Every movement of their bodies was an exercise in their power. Ethereals
didn't walk; they hovered, mentally holding themselves aloft. Bodily
injury meant virtually nothing to them. They were, without a doubt, the
most dangerous of all the many and terrible species of alien known by
XCOM. Only psionic training and experience were of individual use
against them. The only other option was a press of bodies, a rush to
overwhelm and exhaust the creature with numbers and firepower.

How was Ryouga standing?

Ryu narrowed his eyes, and stared at the armor clad leader of India
Squad. He wasn't as experienced a ki user as the lost boy, or Ranma, but
he could see currents to the other boy's aura. There were lines to it,
running down Ryouga's arms, glowing incandescent even behind the black
alloy and armor. Ryu knew what they were, knew that network of fibers
that ran through the body, and he understood why the lost one wasn't on
the floor, paralyzed.

The Ethereal did something to efferent nerves - the ones that transmit
away from the central nervous system - while at the same time hyper
stimulating the afferent nerves, which transmitted sensations like pain
in the opposite direction. Ryouga was flooding his entire nervous system
with his ki, stimulating everything at once. Ryu could follow the
principle, as it was similar to what any martial artist of their caliber
could do to muscle tissues, but to do that to one's nerves and still be
able to stand...

The lines began to pulse, to regulate, like a mental heartbeat. As Ryu
watched, he straightened his stance, and raised his arms. The video
they'd been shown days ago had said that only a psionic barrier could
defeat a telekinetic attack, intercepting and disrupting the attempt
before it could take effect. None of them had trained long enough to
develop that yet. Ryouga had managed a defense of sorts, countering the
alien's attack with one of his own, literally on himself.

It was like setting yourself on fire to keep from freezing to death.

"Now let's see..." Ryouga spoke, his voice strained almost to breaking.
"Who burns out first!"

He crossed his arms, untied two bandannas, and snapped back his arms.
The motion straightened out the cloth for just a half second, and in
that tiny frame of time Ryouga's ki flowed into the material and turned
it as hard as steel, locking it in that shape. Both of the lost boy's
hands whipped back forward, and the bandannas began to spin like black
and yellow buzzsaws.

They crossed the distance between man and alien in a fraction of a
second, and then... stopped. In midair. Something rippled in the air
around the two bandannas, and they fell to the ground with a metallic
clang. Ryu heard a sharp intake of breath, and moved his eyes to where
Ryouga seemed to be considering using his rifle. It had a muzzle
velocity of around 2,600 feet per second, or over twice the speed of
sound. There was no way the alien would be able to telekinetically
intercept the rounds.

But Ryouga didn't shoulder the weapon, instead un-strapping it and
dropping it on the ground. Then, with his right hand, he undid the
Velcro strap on the top of the stun baton holster on his right leg.
Getting a good grip on the rubber handle, he retrieved the sleek gray
fiberglass rod and began to walk forward, an electrical arc from the
pointed tips of the weapon fizzling in the charged atmosphere, leaving a
faint trail of blue in its wake.

NO

Ryu felt the presence paralyzing his body lift as that thunderous word
echoed in his consciousness. He tried to move, but his arms and legs
felt unresponsive and cramped up. Straightening out just his right leg
sent a dagger of pain slicing up his spine.

DO NOT APPROACH

The air around Ryouga grew thick and indistinct, like a mirage. The lost
boy's feet began to slip and slide back. The Ethereal still hadn't moved
from where it floated, but there was no doubt that its attention was now
solely directed towards the one still standing threat to its existence.
Ryouga took another step, slamming his foot down, and gaining just a
little more space than he'd been pushed back.

He held out his left hand, and an oval ball of ki began to coalesce. It
was like the beginning of the Shishi Hokoudan, but unstable. Bits and
pieces of green energy flaked away from the twisting, struggling orb.
Ryouga took another step, and then another, each time being pushed back
less and less by the Ethereal's psionic onslaught.

NO

The beaten and unstable Shishi Hokoudan suddenly shot out of Ryouga's
hand with a clap of thunder. This time, the Ethereal did move, pivoting
slightly and floating to the side. The screaming green ball of ki hit
the wall behind it, fizzling against the virtually indestructible alien
alloy that made up nearly the entirety of the ship.

Ryouga's heavy breathing could be heard over the communications link.

"Yes."

He began to advance.

NO

The Ethereal's robes billowed, and something moved through the air.
Ryouga grunted, and stumbled, holding his side. He stumbled, and almost
fell, but caught himself at the last second. Ryu saw it again, a
shimmering in the air, narrow like a spear, as it shot straight through
the lost boy.

"Ryouga! What the hell's happening up there?" Ranma shouted over the
comm. system. "Just hold on! Me and Ukyou are almost there, and we got
Mousse, too!"

"Do whatever you like," Ryouga managed to reply, as he stood again.
"I'll be done in a moment."

He took another step.

DO NOT APPROACH

Another invisible bolt shot through him, but he didn't stumble. Still
clutching the stun baton in his right hand, Ryouga took another step,
and another. The Ethereal floated back.

DO NOT APPROACH DO NOT

"You aren't the one from before..." Ryouga hissed, and spat something up
that interrupted his sentence. "That's good. That means I can take you
alive."

In arm's reach of the robed creature, the lost boy tried to bring the
stun baton into its abdomen, but a frail black hand caught his wrist,
and - impossibly - held him back. With his left hand, he grabbed the
alien's right shoulder and pushed it back, slamming it into the wall
with a crunch of atrophied bone. Ryouga snarled, trying to force the
stun baton forward, but barely making any progress.

YOU

The 'voice' was weaker, but Ryu could still barely hear it in his mind.

KNOW YOU

KNOW HER

LIVES

"Shut up!" Ryouga snarled.

LIVES

LIVES IN US

"Shut the Hell up!" The lost one twisted the stun baton in his grip, and
brought it up, into his left arm. The armor's inner layers were
insulated, but the outside still conducted electricity. The alien
shuddered as the charge shot through it, and in that moment of broken
concentration, Ryouga shouldered it hard against the wall, flipped the
stun baton into a reverse grip, and slammed it into the Ethereal's
forehead. For the first time, it made an actual physical sound: a high
pitched wail, like the sound of a tortured banshee.

And then it collapsed into a boneless heap on the floor.

"Hey," Ryu said, still barely able to move, but feeling the paralytic
effect wearing off. "Hey! You ok?"

>From where he stood over the broken alien body, Ryouga's armored form
turned to face the Kumon Dojo heir. For a few seconds, it seemed like he
was thinking over his response, but it never came. The so called lost
boy didn't say a word until Ranma arrived, and even then it was only to
mutter that he needed medical treatment.

A half hour later, lights descended from the sky and drove down the road
to cordon off the area and begin packing away all the evidence of what
had just transpired. Ryu had stood with Ryouga as they took away the
drugged, but still alive, Ethereal. There were still marks on its
forehead: two dots within a circle, like a tattoo.

Or a Brand.

It was over.

-----

That same night, miles to the south in Shimonoseki, it was just
beginning.

At the base of a five story parking garage, a guard looked up from his
book, recognizing the face of the man waiting by the window of his booth
holding his parking stub. With a polite nod, he accepted the paper, and
slid it into a machine inset into the wall. It made an audible snapping
sound as it read and marked the stub.

"Here ya go, Ayabe-san," the guard handed the paper back with a smile.

"Thank you," the businessman replied, inclining his head. As always, the
guard noted that Ayabe wore black gloves, regardless of the weather or
the seasons. Shimonoseki could get quite hot in the summer, but in the
two years he had worked at the garage, the guard had never once seen
this one man's hands.

Other than that one quirk, however, Koichi Ayabe seemed like a totally
normal person. He was a management type, with an amiable face and a
ready smile that wasn't often more than a skin deep courtesy. He never
came to work in anything but a suit and tie, and never made any trouble.
Really, he wouldn't have stood out at all if not for those black
(expensive looking) leather gloves.

"Safe drive," the guard keyed open the door to the bottom level of the
garage, and as Ayabe walked away, he went back to reading about
improving his love life.

The garage was well lit, but many corners late at night dipped endlessly
into darkness. Concrete pillars rose like the rough trunks of trees.
Walking slowly up the stairwell, to the fourth floor, Koichi Ayabe
patted his left pants pocket, reassured by the feel of the keys there.
On this floor, the garage was mostly empty, with only a dozen or so
vehicles occupying it.

His blue Nissan Teana wasn't hard to spot, even if he hadn't parked in
the same space for almost eight years. It was a sedan, a good
replacement car for his old Toyota the kids had thought so little of.

"What was a car without a CD player now-a-days?"

Or so their logic had gone.

Sighing to himself, he took out the car key, jangling together the house
keys and other metal bits he'd never sorted through to see which were
worth keeping as useful. He was about to press down on the base of the
key to unlock the front driver's side door, when he hesitated. Looking
behind himself briefly, he slowly put the keys back into his pants
pocket.

Turning around, he put his hands in his pockets and smiled.

"Can I help you?" He asked, amiably. It wasn't just something he had
picked up from work - where it often helped to talk about financial
matters like downsizing in a less threatening and more conciliatory tone
- it was almost second nature. Being too obtrusive had always made him
nervous, and an easy way to blend in or allay suspicion or jealousy had
always been to act and speak in a friendly fashion.

The stranger stood silent in the shadow of a concrete pillar, and Ayabe
narrowed his eyes enough to squint. The stranger was tall, possibly a
foreigner even, but relatively slim. He wore a knee length white
overcoat, like a doctor's. It was open at the front, and beneath it the
stranger wore sharply contrasting black clothes harder to make out.

"Are you Ayabe Koichi?" The stranger asked, last name first.

"I am..." the other man answered cautiously.

The stranger then added, "Are you the Ayabe Koichi who also used to be
known as the Genius of the Denkouken Style?"

That caught Ayabe's attention. Here, he'd thought this was an attempted
robbery, or car jacking. That this person hiding in the shadows knew
that much about him, about his past, was totally unexpected.

"I haven't been called Tensai in years," Ayabe explained and withdrew
his hands from his pockets, his polite pretense slipping away. "What's
all this about? Did you come from the Dojo?"

"I did," the stranger answered, but the tone of his voice hid another
meaning behind his words in plain sight. He had come from the Dojo, but
obviously not on behalf of it. The two stood in silence for a few
seconds.

"It wasn't easy tracking you down," the stranger continued, wearing a
false smile as he stepped out of the shadows. "I'd like you to come with
me, please. I have some friends interested in seeing your fists."

"Seeing my fists?" Ayabe smirked and cocked his head to the side.
"You're rather mistaken, if that's what you want from me. I don't
practice martial arts anymore. I have a real job; a respectable job.
Tell your friends... if they want to see me, to call my secretary and
make an appointment."

The stranger dipped his head in an irritated gesture. He wasn't a
foreigner, as Ayabe had at first thought. His features were Japanese,
with thin wire rimmed glasses and healthy black hair that came together
in a dragon lick ponytail behind his head. He looked to be in his late
twenties, or maybe thirties, making him Ayabe's junior by almost a
decade.

"We have a van parked just outside this building," the stranger said,
walking purposefully towards the businessman. "You can walk there, or be
dragged there. I'm sorry, but those are the only two options available
to you."

"My only two?" Ayabe asked, and let out a deep sigh.

The stranger stood still a couple paces from the older man. "I wasn't
able to find the true Denkouken when I visited the Dojo, and my friends
are eager to get their hands on the real thing. They have no use for
pale imitations and ordinary athletes."

Koichi Ayabe just shook his head, and removed his leather gloves. No
sooner was the first one off, than the stranger's eyes lit up. The
second glove came off next, and then they went into the side pockets of
the former martial arts genius's jacket. Ayabe held up his hands, and
flexed his fingers. Catching the radiance from a nearby light above him,
three round pieces of metal could be clearly seen between his knuckles.

"So you have it," the stranger said it, not as a question, but as a
statement of fact.

"Yes," Ayabe admitted. "Once I had mastered all but the final techniques
of Dankouken, I had this done to myself. Six nails were screwed into the
bones of my hands, ten smaller ones into my fingers. All for the Art.
All to live up to the arrogant title of 'Genius.'"

He then scoffed.

"I was a fool. And a young man. The worst possible combination." Ayabe's
eyes hardened, as he stared at the stranger. "Is this what you wanted to
see?"

"Just..." The stranger's voice took on a more urgent tone. "A little
more."

"I was afraid you'd say that." Ayabe slipped out of his jacket, and
tossed it over onto the hood of his car. As he balled his hands into
fists, his aura began to emerge as a cool and vibrant blue. Crackles of
white erupted from his hands, leaping into the walls and up into the
ceiling where two of the inlaid lights exploded.

Watching the display, the stranger nodded, and pulled tight the sterile
lab gloves that covered his hands. "Yes. Show us the power of your
Denkouken, Ayabe Koichi."

The middle aged businessman disappeared in a flash of sparks. The
stranger dressed as a doctor spun around, and slapped aside an open palm
blow. Ayabe didn't pause from surprise, and struck out with an elbow
even as he drew back the other arm. He struck again, fast, with another
open palm aimed for the doctor's left armpit. It got halfway there
before it was intercepted, the bone of both men's wrists meeting.

The doctor blocked another blow with his other arm, and twisted his hand
at the wrist, briefly touching the other man's arm with his extended
ring finger. He then shifted back; his left foot skidding across the
pavement as both his hands came down to block a rising knee. Ayabe was
fast, despite his age and lack of practice, and his arms and hands
cracked as they snapped like snakes, trying to make direct contact. The
doctor managed to block or avoid them all without great difficulty.

And then Ayabe's right palm slammed into his chest, moving from a
perpendicular blocking position down into a smooth reverse thrust. There
was a thump from the impact, and a second later a thunderous crash
resounded throughout the parking garage as the doctor imbedded himself
in the passenger side of a parked vehicle, his chest smoking. A wailing
alarm erupted from the now ruined two door coupe.

"I didn't kill you," Ayabe said, over the din. "Be thankful for that.
But this fight is over."

The doctor groaned, and he twitched, twice. "They're excited now."

Taking a deep breath, the stranger pulled himself free of the wrecked
car, seemingly oblivious to the bleeding cut on his left arm. Ayabe
watched him with a grim expression.

"That first move was a slight of hand and motion, making it seem as if
you had vanished," the doctor began to say, breathing steadily. "It is a
common technique, but you also amplified the effect with a split second
flash of blinding light produced by your modified fists. After that, you
attempted to strike with an open palm, charged with electricity. When
you finally hit me with it, after throwing several blows to maneuver me
into a position where I could not defend myself. By my guess, your
attack carried a direct current of around a hundred milliamperes. In a
normal person, with a directed strike to the chest, the result would be
instant ventricular fibrillation."

"The techniques you describe are the Denkouken Ryu: Hiraishin Aisatsu
Sen (Lightning Rod Salutation Flash), and the Hiraishin Kaizai Satsu
(Lightning Rod Intervention Murder). It is a killing technique... I was
the first to be able to employ it non-lethally." Ayabe pursed his lips
as if in thought. "Still, it should have been more than enough to floor
a human like yourself. I wonder if your unusual resistance to
electricity is due to the pressure points you tried to use on me?"

The doctor smirked. "Yes. I can see why they called you 'Tenasi.' You
are quite right about the pressure points. Well before I came here, I
increased my body's resistance to electricity... and to heat."

"A sound precaution," Ayabe replied, nodding.

"Furthermore," the other man's glasses glinted as it lowered his gaze.
"I have eyes that cannot be fooled or blinded... Yes. You... you are
definitely the one they want."

"I agree," another voice interrupted, this time obviously from a woman.
It was a melodious soprano, but casual... or confident. Ayabe turned his
eyes to his right side; disturbed that this newcomer had (like the man
before her) managed to mask their presence and get within ten meters of
him without his Sakkijutsu tipping him off. She was tall, like the man,
but otherwise dissimilar.

She didn't bother to try and hide herself like the man had, and Ayabe
could guess that she was Chinese from her face and what he'd heard of
her accent. Her eyes and hair were a chocolate brown, and she wore what
seemed to be a green rain slicker. She also carried a short wooden
staff, propped up against her right shoulder. Ayabe mentally chided her
- did she think that a little rubber would protect her from him?

He blinked; a mistake.

His Sakkijutsu didn't go off, but he was starting to doubt its
sharpness. In an instant, the woman had vanished, not due to a slight of
hand combined with high speed, but purely from rapid acceleration. He
flinched, readied himself for an attack, but then he felt her presence -
and only then saw her - standing next to the strange man in the lab
coat. Ayabe kept from betraying his shock and awe at what she had done.
He had always been fast, with good eyes, and couldn't remember if he had
ever lost track of an opponent since he had achieved higher mastery of
the Art.

That wasn't the sort of casual speed that came from just being a Master;
it was the mark of someone truly special. Truly powerful. Ayabe had
reckoned the man to be extremely skilled, even from just his knowledge
of pressure points, from his general ability in hand to hand, and from
his ability to mask and control his presence. This woman, however,
judging by her speed... she was incredible.

"It won't be long before we're interrupted," she lectured the man, all
the while not sounding too worried about the situation. Then, she turned
and smiled at Ayabe. "You have a wife and children, don't you? Do you
think they can take care of themselves with you gone?"

"You leave my family out of this...!" The normally calm businessman
snarled in reply.

"It wasn't a threat," the woman explained. "It was merely to set my mind
more at ease with what I have to do."

She lifted her left foot off the ground, and Ayabe could feel the build
up of ki in her body, like a drop in barometric pressure from a distant
tornado or hurricane. It terrified him, and he instinctively
internalized his own ki, converting it into one of the most powerful of
the Hidden Denkouken Arts, supplanting the normal neurochemical and
action potential functions of his cells, and increasing their speed and
efficiency two fold.

His skin burned and his business suit tore as he threw his body through
the air, the friction painful against his out of practice flesh. The
world was a slow motion movie, with flecks of dust twirling through the
air in a leisurely vector towards the other end of the parking garage.
But he saw her, leading the charge with her staff, contrails of air
rippling down its length, down her arm, and over her shoulder.

Ayabe didn't even try and block it, instead stepping out of the path of
destruction in the hopes of a favorable counter attack. She was smiling
(actually smiling!) as she passed him, and as he attempted to hit her
exposed side with a full power Hiraishin Kaizai Satsu, she twirled like
a drill bit, deflecting his hand. He nearly lost his balance from the
abrupt and unexpected counter, and as he regained his footing, he saw
the tip of her staff impact one of the reinforced concrete pillars that
held up the roof.

He'd expected it to be destroyed, but to his surprise, there wasn't any
damage at all. It was then that he saw her leg, and her right foot flat
against the pillar - or rather, buried two or three inches in the solid
concrete. He frowned: the woman had power and control in generous
amounts.

"Who are you?" he asked, hiding the fear in his voice. "Who the hell are
you people?"

The woman effortlessly jerked her foot out of the impression it had
made. Behind Ayabe, the man moved stealthily, masking his ki perfectly.
They circled him like wild dogs waiting to strike.

"We are... exemplars," the man said, flexing the dexterous fingers he
wielded like scalpels.

"Of the future," the woman finished her companion's sentence. "We're
going to open your eyes, Ayabe-san. Through us, the best of you shall
survive... eternally."

-----

Noriko Yasuda waited as the two men read over the report's conclusion,
each of them taking extra time to absorb the information on the last
page. She had a copy of the news on her desk as well, summed up in a
short three pages. After reading it herself, she had placed the papers
down on her desk with the delicacy and respect one would show to a
poisonous serpent.

Captain Banks was the first to finish, going by how he folded the last
page of the report back into place, and dropped it onto her desk. He ran
a hand over his bald head, back and then forward, an anxious motion
carried over from his younger days when he'd had a full head of hair.
Next to him, Captain Ben-Solomon also finished and put the report down,
his face calm and neutral.

"I am expecting a response from Andermatt by tomorrow," Noriko began.
"However, I doubt they'll contribute anything but a confirmation of what
we've already discovered."

"Well, at least they're not being very subtle," Banks spoke up and made
an amused huff. "Tearing apart and leveling a parking garage? This isn't
normal for a Trenchard."

"You're right. It isn't normal," Ben-Solomon interrupted. "But the
genetic tests confirm it. Not just one, but two of the damn things."

"I've made the proper arrangements with local law enforcement to try and
track down Mr. Ayabe, but like with the other abductees the last week,
it is doubtful that they will be found." The UNETCO Commander frowned,
and leaned back in her chair, steepling her fingers over her stomach.
"We will have to intervene independently if this continues. It isn't
just these two Trenchards... there was a van seen leaving the area. The
records in the police database have been tampered with. There is a human
front at work, and it is starting to irritate me."

She tapped her thumbs together, contemplating her response to the
report.

"The Head Office is concerned," she thought out loud, "They'll want a
response soon after Andermatt's reply. This whole situation with the
Trenchards is their fault, after all."

"You don't think things were moving in that direction already?" Banks
asked, and then amended his statement. "Still, if nothing else, it made
the problem more endemic."

"Shutting down Sirius here in Japan will be messy without going through
the locals," Ben-Solomon, a counter-intelligence and HUMINT man from his
days in Shin Bet, knew the most about what his commanding officer was
proposing. "We'll have to tip toe around Section Seven of the Charter."

"That has been a problem in the past," Noriko agreed, but she didn't
sound altogether too worried. "Skirting around Section Seven has
normally left us vulnerable, but with a few of our new recruits..." She
trailed off.

"Oh ho!" Banks interjected with a grin. "She's right! Even following
Section Seven by the letter, they'd be at the top of their game."

"It is an interesting idea," Ben-Solomon seconded. "But will they go
along with it?"

"I was hoping you two could offer some insights into that," Noriko
answered, looking from one Captain to the other. "We're holding a First
Kill Night for both of the teams tonight, as you know. I'd like you, and
the other mentors, to flesh out how open to the concept the recruits
are. Be casual about it."

The two men exchanged looks and nodded.

"Ma'am," Banks added, changing the topic slightly. "How much should we
tell them about these Trenchards? Especially the male, who we have
positively identified... As Acting Lieutenants for their squads, they'll
have clearance high enough to know the truth."

"Tomorrow," Noriko responded quickly, having already given it some
thought. "They worked hard yesterday... or this morning. Even caught an
Ethereal without losing a single man or woman. Let them enjoy tonight.
They've earned it."

As the two men agreed, saluted, and eventually left, Noriko Yasuda
smiled to herself. Two active Trenchards running around Japan meant
trouble, not just for XCOM, but for all the exceptional martial artist
types in the country. At the same time, it could be seen as a real
opportunity. She'd been meaning to crack down on the alien-sympathetic
locals but lacked the manpower to make the risk worth the effort.

The Nerima Crew and their martial arts abilities had immediately struck
her as the solution to that problem. As valuable as they could be
against the aliens, they would be put to even better use against the
human collaborators who hid under the protection of the UNETCO Charter
and Section Seven. With those leeches taken care of, and the alien base
in East Asia identified (or better yet: put to the torch), then things
would be one step closer to Operation Aloadae.

For years, the war had raged in Earth.

It was high past time the aliens got a taste of it on their home turf.


-----

Nabiki Tendo had been to many parties before, but never anything like
this. It wasn't that it was wild, because it definitely wasn't, it was
the food. Even here in Japan, Americans and their cousins in the British
Commonwealth made up a disproportionate percentage of the UNETCO
population. When they got together to barbeque, it was a sight to
behold. The smell of charcoal and smoked meat filled the air,
tantalizing her nose and teasing her taste buds with a chorus of
potential meals.

She had been told that it was tradition to celebrate a recruit's first
victory in the field with an open air barbeque, giving everyone at the
base a chance to break the monotony of work, and reacquaint themselves
with the non-recycled air outside their mountain lairs. It also seemed
to be an opportunity for rivalries to re-emerge, as the day's cooks
weren't the professional chefs who worked in the base. The night's hosts
were ground pounders and pilots, showcasing local favorites from their
respective homes.

Most people came and went, finding time for dinner between their work
shifts. Only the two new squads that had returned triumphant the day
before, and their family members, had the evening off. At most, twenty
or twenty five people were outside at any one time, eating and talking,
drinking and acting like normal people on a holiday or weekend. It
wasn't the sort of thing she'd expected to occur outside the secret
mountain base of an alien fighting international organization.

"All this food, and you try and steal mine!?"

"Quit whining boy! Your plate happened to be closer than the grill."

"I earned this food! What have you been doing lately, you old panda?!"

"I've been working! Who says I haven't? Show your father some respect!"

"Genma! Behave yourself! Ranma! Don't you dare punt your father!"

"Yes, dear." "Yes mom."

Nabiki rolled her eyes, but couldn't help but smile at the three
Saotomes. It was good to see them together, the only full family present
at the entire affair. It almost made her forget how few people she
really knew here, even among the Nerima locals. In high school and in
college, she'd had an easy time joining a clique of friends, but here
(being so young, and so under qualified) she'd found a much harder time
fitting in. And when she'd looked to the Nerimites, she'd been forced to
realize that they weren't her friends, they were Ranma's and Akane's.

She just didn't know them.

Ukyou and Shampoo, who she had known of since they'd first showed up,
Nabiki had only a surface familiarity with. Both were typically orbiting
Ranma and by extension the Saotome clan, but for once neither had any
food to hook their would-be fiance with. Instead they settled for
sitting nearby, watching him and each other (like hawks), and
occasionally hoping to interject themselves in whatever conversation
Ranma was engaged in.

Akane and Kasumi were talking to the man who had prepared and served the
slow cooked beef brisket that, Nabiki had to admit, had ended up
incredibly good. The middle Tendo daughter doubted that her younger
sister would have much luck replicating even the most basic grilled side
of chicken or oversized hamburger, but if Kasumi found more recipes to
add to her repertoire, then the world could only be a happier and
tastier place. There was certainly enough variety in foodstuffs to give
her some new ideas: wet ribs, dry ribs, kabobs, crocodile and cleaned
prawn, pork chops and chickens - in strips, pieces and all the varied
partitions.

It was too bad Nabiki preferred eating over cooking. She actually wasn't
much better than Akane in the kitchen, but that wasn't a fact she was
especially keen on others learning. Which was, again, the problem. When
you tended to blackmail people, they weren't likely to become more than
casual conspirators and hangers on, much less real friends. That was
normally enough for her, but with the pressures of actual work she was
starting to feel... isolated, even with her sisters and father close at
hand.

She saw the new guy to their group, Ryu, sitting next to Mousse on a
metal chair by a citronella lamp. Both had empty paper plates on the
ground by their feet, what few bones that remained from their meals
picked clean enough to impress a vulture. Ryu made a gesture with his
hands that looked like an explosion, and laughed, and to Nabiki's slight
surprise, the boy's Chinese companion smiled and chuckled, his shoulders
moving enough to see.

They looked like friends.

They had only known each other for less than a month, and they already
looked like friends. Nabiki felt a pang of jealousy, which was a most
unwelcome and generally unfamiliar feeling for her. Further away, she
saw Kuno, Konatsu, and two men she didn't know. Tatewaki was making a
production, probably of what he had done on the mission the day before.
Nabiki couldn't hear what he was saying, not over the din of a half
dozen other conversations closer by, but she could guess that he was
grossly exaggerating whatever it was he'd managed to accomplish (if
anything). One of the men held up his hand, and interrupted with
something, and they looked at Konatsu, who held up his hands and replied
(probably in his normally modest and demure tone). Nabiki couldn't see
Konatsu's face with his back to her, but Kuno and the other two guys
were smiling.

Nabiki felt the urge to leave, but suppressed it as being immature and
foolish.

She wasn't anti-social, and her conversational skills sure as hell put
someone like Kuno or Mousse to shame. Or so she had always assumed. Kuno
hadn't had many friends (just lackeys and followers) back in high
school, and Mousse had always been a loner. Even Ranma, while he had
been popular as a student who stood up to teachers like Hinako and the
hated insane principal, seemed to have preferred to hang out with guys
who wanted to beat him into a pulp over guys who wanted to go to the
mall or whatever it was that boys did in their free time. Probably ogle
all those pictures of Ranma-chan she sold to them.

Nabiki giggled at that, the thought cheering her up momentarily. She
didn't want to have to hang around with her sisters, listening in on
culinary tips she didn't care about and never intended to use (or misuse
in Akane's case). She didn't want to revolve around Ranma, his fiances,
and the denigrating hoops they jumped through to get his attention.
Listening to that for thirty minutes would rot her brain.

Injecting herself into the other conversations going on didn't look any
more promising, however. The population was mostly male, but they were
all much older than her, and she doubted the tricks she'd developed to
work on high school boys and college freshmen would be too helpful in
breaking them away from their personal conversations about fighting
unspeakable menaces, and classified missions, and what it was like to
pilot a flying saucer against aliens.

Damnit, she was bored. She wanted to talk to someone, hang out, have
fun, and forget that tomorrow she had to crunch numbers for a living.
The food and drink were incredible, like nothing she'd had before, but
the company left something to be desired. For her at least. Finally, she
found the one person she knew would be off brooding by himself. Now
would be as good a time as any to squeeze a few secrets out of the lost
boy (not for blackmail purposes, she reminded herself, but because it
was always useful to have a network of useful contacts and insiders).

Ryouga sat in a steel chair, the front legs in the sir, the back propped
against a tree, letting him stare upwards at the star lit night sky. He
still had food on his plate, but despite it being on the ground, the
faithful Hibiki dog Shirokuro contented herself with staring at it
instead of stealing the tidbits. Nabiki picked up an unoccupied chair,
and put it down next to him with just enough of a production to be sure
he'd noticed.

"Hey," she offered, when he didn't make the first attempt at
conversation.

Ryouga tilted his head, taking his eyes from the sky to briefly confirm
that it was her. She smiled, putting on a friendly front, and watched
his eyes to see if they dipped down a bit to her neckline. She wasn't
wearing anything risque, but she knew her violet tube top hugged her
figure well enough to get the job done.

Over the years, she'd learned how looking good was as intimidating as
looking mean, and generally much more effective at getting what you
wanted. As the saying went, you could get more with a kind word and a
gun, than just a gun. Ryouga's eyes didn't linger on her for more than a
half second, before he went back to craning his neck at the palette of
stars.

It was took quick to draw any conclusions from.

"Nabiki," he said, and closed his eyes.

"Wow, don't gush all over me, now!" She pouted, and saw a trace of a
smile cross his face.

"You know," she continued. "Most guys would be happy if a cute girl came
over and showed him some attention."

He nodded imperceptibly. "So what can I help you with, Nabiki?"

"You can quit acting like a social pariah and talk to me." She kicked
him gently on the ankle. "Come on! Don't make me wring a human
conversation out of you."

The front legs of his chair came down, as he sat straight up and picked
up a white can of Sapporo beer. They were all underage, except Kuno who
had just turned twenty a month and a half ago, but no one seemed to
care. She supposed that since UNETCO properties were like international
zones, the drinking age was 16 or 18, not that it mattered when it came
to privately owned residences. The legal age was more about buying
alcohol than drinking it.

"Alright, what do you want to talk about?" He asked, as he picked a
piece of meat from his plate, and gave it to Shirokuro. The dog plucked
it from his fingers with her front teeth, and Ryouga wiped the digits
off on his dark blue jeans.

"I dunno," Nibiki replied, casually, and took a sip from her own now-
lukewarm can of beer. She was the sort who nursed her drink, never
totally willing to give into an excess that could impair her thinking.
That and she'd learned in her senior year of high school that she had a
poor tolerance for the stuff.

"What were you thinking about just now?" She asked, and noted how Ryouga
looked away from her, and down to his dog who had gone back to staring
at his plate.

"Nothing," he insisted, and didn't elaborate.

"Are you telling me that your mind was completely blank? Totally devoid
of all thought?" She smirked, but didn't immediately draw an objection.
"I guess if Ranma were here, he'd probably back up your statement
without hesitation."

Ryouga made a scoffing sound, and shook his head, finally giving up the
point.

"I was just... thinking about something I'd heard," he finally answered.

"Work?" Nabiki asked.

"Yeah. Work." He looked up at her, and went back to sitting back-
straight in his chair. "Sorry. I can't talk about it."

"I know," Nabiki replied, and nibbled on a grilled shrimp, holding it by
the tail. When she was done, she shook her head. "Secrets. You guys
always lived in your own little martial arts world, but everything now
seems to be a big national secret."

"Martial artists are just people... like soldiers or police. They're men
and women who fight and live at the edge of their skills." Nabiki
listened, surprised to hear him talk about his lifestyle. While it
hadn't been hard learning superficial details about the Nerima martial
artists, their personal motivations and thoughts were something they all
kept to themselves.

Ryouga smiled sadly, looking down at the drink cradled in his lap. "No
one ever reveals their true self to others. Even the ones they love."

Then, enigmatically, his pensive mood darkened at what he had just said.

"I don't know about that," Nabiki said, thinking about it for a second.
"Ranma's pretty transparent, his poker face is proof enough of that, and
it was never hard to see how you felt about people. Especially Akane."

"Have you ever been in a do or die situation, Nabiki?" he asked.

Kinnosuke immediately came to mind, and she had to nod. "Yeah. I have."

"Then you know your 'real self,'" he replied, rather cryptically, but
Nabiki did know. She knew that feeling of fear and excitement and
challenge. A part of you did retreat into itself, for protection, for
security - it was that clear part of your mind that you relied on in a
clutch moment, devoid of hesitation or fear or human doubt.

It was that part of her that was willing to sacrifice anything, or
everything, for victory and pride. It had been the part of her that let
her defy death, or deal death, in her thrift duel with Kinnosuke. He
could have been killed, and so could she, and for what? Not to save the
Dojo, but to preserve that true identity that existed deep within her.
She looked over her shoulder at Ranma and Ukyou and Shampoo, at Mousse
and Ryu, at Kuno and Konatsu.

When she faced Ryouga again, she wasn't sure what to say.

The lost boy just took another sip from his Sapporo Yebisu. Hoping to
pick up on a lighter topic of conversation, Nabiki pointed at the can.
"You ever been there?"

"Where?" He stared at the label. "Sapporo or Ebisu?"

"Either one." Nabiki smiled; glad to move on to talk about travel and
familiar and foreign places. She'd always wanted to get out and see the
world, and she'd always been intrigued by how Akane and Ranma described
how their erstwhile friend ended up in strange places and spent his life
on the road. Ranma in particular had something of a romanticized view of
wandering around and having adventures, and she suspected the pigtailed
boy sort of envied Ryouga for being able to go off on his own. Ranma had
been to a great many places himself, but always following in the
footsteps of his father.

"Yeah," Ryouga said and grunted in a displeased way. "I've been through
them both."

"And?" Nabiki pressed, nudging him with her foot. "Come on, Hibiki! Out
with it! I've been to Ebisu a few times myself, but not Sapporo. Did you
go for the Snow Festival?"

Ryouga sighed. "I didn't go there on purpose. I was... I had taken a
wrong direction somewhere. When I blasted out of the ground I
accidentally knocked over some guy's ice sculpture. Of course he
attacked me on sight."

Nabiki groaned. "Let me guess: Martial Arts Ice Sculpture?"

"Oh! You've heard of them, then?" Ryouga asked, and Nabiki resisted the
urge to face fault in the ground. Why did everything involve martial
arts with these people?!

"Well," Ryouga continued his story, more confident now about telling it
to someone he assumed knew about the esoteric and useless martial art
he'd encountered. "After I beat the guy up a little and apologized to
him, I learned that there were these two schools of Martial Arts Ice
Sculpture: the Kanda Style and the Ueda Style. The guy I'd run into was
the heir to the Kanda Style, and he explained that he was training to
beat the heir to the Ueda Style and impress this girl he wanted to
propose to."

"It wasn't really my business, so I'd tried to leave, but it being a
snow festival it was only a matter of time before I got splashed and..."
Ryouga paused, as if he'd swallowed his tongue.

"And?" Nabiki prompted.

"And..." Ryouga coughed, and resumed his story. "When I went to towel
off, I ran into Eri Sanzo, who of course happened to be the girl the
other guy was in love with. She sort of filled me in on what was
happening from her point of view. Turns out her grandfather had trained
the founders of the two other schools, and that this year one of them
was going to gain legitimacy by beating the other, and marrying her into
their family. I can't say it isn't a story I haven't heard before."

"Typical," Nabiki grumbled, disgusted by the notion, as familiar as it
was to the often less than scrupulous practitioners of the Anything Goes
Style, of which her father was a proud member. "Which of them 'won,'
her?"

"Well, after she expressed to me how she didn't want to marry either of
them, I couldn't just walk away," Ryouga said with a resigned sigh. "So
she taught me what she knew of their Art, and I got involved and beat
the two guys in a duel, getting them to postpone deciding which was the
'true school' for another generation. By then I figure it'll be someone
else's problem, and Eri seemed happy, so it ended well enough."

"It seems like you left a lot of that story out just now," Nabiki
observed, and Ryouga blushed a bit, though at what she could only guess.
"What was this Eri girl like? Was she cute?"

"She was... very pretty," he replied, reminiscing. "Very nice. She lived
in this palace of ice and snow. It was pretty amazing."

"Did you like her?" Nabiki asked teasingly.

"I don't like everyone I help out, Nabiki." He looked her right in the
eyes for a second, and she wondered if he was referring to her
specifically. To her surprise, she found that the thought hurt.

"You need to lighten up, Ryo-baby," she quickly replied, sounding
playful to cover up any doubt or insecurity that may have been in her
voice. "Frowning guys aren't as attractive as ones that smile."

Ryouga did smile at that, and went back to staring at his drink. "Like I
think about those sorts of things..."

"You should," Nabiki added, craning her neck to try and see his face.
"You have a nice smile, on the rare occasions it shows up."

She'd expected a response from him, positive or negative, but he didn't
make any that she could see. For a few seconds, she wondered if she'd
embarrassed him (good!) or if he'd felt insulted. Ryouga wasn't just
easily depressed, from what she'd seen and heard around the time of that
Shishi Hokoudan duel he'd had with Ranma, he was downright miserable.
He'd lived his life with no family, few if any friends, a humiliating
curse, and the misfortune of falling for a girl in love with his rival.
Did she sound condescending, implying that he should smile more often?

Really, what did he have to smile about?

"Is there anything you want to talk about, Ryouga?" She asked, sensing
he had something in the back of his mind that he did want to talk about
with someone, but that fear or some other emotion was keeping it in
check. Nabiki would have liked to be someone he could confide in, if
only to pay him back for saving them when they'd been abducted. She knew
he didn't trust her, and she also knew that while he'd probably heard
horror stories about her from the others, she had a relatively clean
conscience when it came to him.

"Ryouga?" She asked again.

"No," he muttered, and then repeated more loudly. "No. I'd rather not
talk about it... it's either too stupid to mention, or... or too
horrible to unburden."

"Ooh," Nabiki cooed. "Now saying something like that, you've sparked my
curiosity!"

Ryouga muttered something under his breath, and took a long drag from
his drink, finishing it off. He seemed to be deep in thought about
whatever it was that bothered him so much, and Nabiki couldn't help but
wonder what it was. If this had been Nerima, back in the day, she'd have
assumed it was a problem relating to Akane or Ranma (or both), but here
and now, she suspected it was his work. He was connecting something he'd
seen to something he'd heard, and she could see the dark suspicion just
beneath the surface of his face.

"Nabiki," he finally said, shaking the empty can in his right hand. "Do
you think you can find out where certain pieces of equipment are
shipped, inside or outside the base?"

Her work really wasn't something she wanted to talk about, but he did
seem to be heading somewhere potentially interesting. And Nabiki Tendo
loved 'interesting;' the price of being almost perpetually bored and
unchallenged by one's peers.

"Requisitions orders all come through our department, so if it enters or
leaves the base, it is somewhere in our files," she replied, and
wondered if he knew the scope and scale of UNETCO record keeping. It
helped that they had computers generations beyond state of the art.
"What are you looking for?"

He nodded, and took a deep breath. "If you can... I'd like to know where
the human remains recovered last night are taken. Whether they leave the
base, stay here, or get shipped to another base somewhere. Anything."

Nabiki made a sour face. "Human remains? You mean like the people we saw
before...?"

"Yeah," Ryouga answered grimly. "That ship was an Abductor, and the one
we took out was a Harvester. Maybe even the one that... that I'm
thinking about."

"I'm not normally one to ask," Nabiki said, but asked anyway. "But is
this going to get me in trouble?"

"I don't think so," Ryouga replied and then added. "You don't have to do
it if you get a bad feeling or something. I mean, you... I was just
asking, so..."

"It's ok," she assured him, wearing a friendly smile. "I'll see what I
can do. But in return, I do want you to share anything you find out or
suspect. Off the record, of course."

"Deal." Ryouga seemed glad to share just a fraction of what had been
bothering him with someone else. Nabiki nursed her drink again, mentally
going over how she was going to do what she'd agreed to look into. Her
security clearance was about the lowest there was, except for whatever
Kasumi and the other really low level civilians had, and she wasn't sure
that she could have access to that sort of information. However, she had
always been rather nosy, and the trill of playing semi-harmless snoop
would be an exciting escape from what passed for normal.

Lying quietly on the ground, Shirokuro picked her head up off her
crossed paws, and looked up at her master. Ryouga patted her gently, his
hand cupping one of her ears, before picking up his plate, and sliding
two pieces of meat off it onto the ground. Shirokuro quickly stretched
out her neck, and deftly appropriated the pieces with her tongue, eating
the morsels as swiftly as possible.

"I'm surprised you didn't clean you plate like all the other crazy
martial artists here," Nabiki observed. By the time she'd finished the
sentence, Shirokuro was done eating and looking for more.

"I can't eat much," Ryouga began to explain, resting the plate on his
left leg. "During the mission, I took a hit to the abdomen."

Nabiki's eyebrows rose at that. "You got shot?"

"It was..." he seemed to mull over how much to tell her, before
relenting. He looked up at her, and she knew he was skirting the edge of
what she should and should not know. "One of the aliens we ran into was
a telekinetic. It hit me with an attack called a Giesteslanze, or Mental
Lance. It goes right through armor, right through the body... my ki
protected me, kept it from punching a hole clear through me, but there
was still some internal damage."

"Are you ok?" Nabiki asked, and she saw that the concern in her voice
had caught him off guard. "Was it one of those... Sectoids we ran into
before?"

"I won't let just that kill me," Ryouga said, in a somewhat sinister
tone. "And it wasn't a Sectoid, no. What we caught is classified two
levels above your clearance, but process of elimination makes it obvious
what it was."

"Ethereal," Nabiki whispered. Being naturally curious, she'd taken the
first opportunity to learn as much as she could about the aliens they
were protecting the Earth from. The level of information she had
available to her was limited, but she had been privy to the fact that
only command caste Sectoids and Ethereals used mental attacks. Of the
two, Ethereals were by far the most dangerous.

"I won't confirm or deny it," Ryouga answered, all but saying she had
guessed correctly. "But I am getting another drink."

Slowly standing up, he started towards a table next to one of the
smoking Barbeque grills, beneath which a duo of coolers waited for the
thirsty to dig out their beverage of choice from among a sea of salty
ice water. It was only about twenty feet away over flat, clear terrain,
so it wasn't likely he'd get lost heading there or back. Shirokuro
didn't test fate, and followed close by him, using her flank to make
sure he didn't stray.

"Dog walks man," Nabiki saluted the loyal creature that had devoted
herself to keeping a Hibiki from his natural state of lost-ness. It must
have been a trying life indeed, even for man's best friend. Or maybe, as
she thought about it, it was little removed from a Seeing Eye dog
leading her blind master around and keeping him safe from a condition he
had no control over.

Taking a bit more of a drink from her beer than usual, she wondered if
it would really be profitable to try and play the part of a friend to
the lost boy. His proposition had certainly made him a bit more
interesting in her eyes, and he must've had a ton of strange stories
from his travels over the years. He was polite, and nice, but with a
suitably amusing vicious streak which she could appreciate. Yes, and it
was that vicious streak that would take him places in UNETCO.

Ranma, for all his strengths, was not very vicious. While that was to
the pigtailed boy's benefit in normal society, it would limit him here.
Ryouga, on the other hand, would walk through Hell barefoot... not for
his friends, not for his family, not for love or freedom. No.

He'd do it for hate.

He'd do it for revenge.

Some men, to fight monsters, became shining knights or noble samurai,
finding comfort and cause in their virtue. Others, like Ryouga, became
bigger monsters. Those were ambitious men, powerful men; self-
destructive men. She knew the kind, and found them both fascinating and
incredibly exciting. Men like that could be attached to by cunning and
intelligent partners; at least until they burned themselves out, at
which time those partners were often in a position to take advantage of
the situation.

Yes, he could be a profitable friend to have.

"Ryouga," Nabiki spoke up as he walked back to his chair. "Ranma told me
once that you've been to Russia, right?"

"Yeah." The lost boy sat down, and eased into a comfortable position,
more relaxed around her than she could remember before. "I'd been
heading for Xining at the time to get food for the guys before we hit
Phoenix Mountain, and before I knew it... there I was in the shadow of
Saint Basil's Cathedral."

Nabiki took another draught from her drink and grinned at him.

"Tell me all about it."



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