For six years, mankind has waged a Secret War against an enemy from
Beyond the Stars. With Ghost Wire in place, the two teams wait for their
next set of orders to strike. Ukyou searches out help for her upcoming
duel with Konatsu, Kuno gets a new blade, Ranma mulls over his Command,
the aliens once again test human airspace, and the stage is set for two
major confrontations to come.
-----

The Road to Cydonia
Chapter XI
Room for Improvement

-----

Written by:
Capn Chryssalid
jbraveboy@gmail.com

-----


"You're proving unreliable."

"Sorry, sorry, but this condition isn't entirely unexpected."

"So where are you, exactly?"

"Out in the middle of nowhere I'm afraid."

"Well... stay put for now. Someone will be along shortly to fix your
problem."

"And after that? Should I move on to the next one?"

"That's probably for the best. We'll take care of things here."

Two cell phones closed at the same time, a hundred miles apart.

-----

From: Drctr. Weissman [mailto: AWeissman@unetco.org]
Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2006, 18:02
To: SLt. Hibiki Ryouga [mailto: rhibiki@unetco.org]
Subject: Your Request
Attached: Form_01048B_Hibiki.pdf

Your request to be present for or to participate in the interrogation of
Non-Terrestrial Subject BX31-06 is denied. Your suggestions into lines
of investigation have been noted and taken into advisement. If you have
further questions regarding this decision, feel free to schedule a
meeting or videoconference.

You will be kept abreast of any pertinent developments that arise.

Attached is a copy of your request form and our response for your own
records.

--

Director Andrew Weissman
Special Research and Intelligence Division
UNETCO Far East Command
Ext. 2708 - phone
Ext. 2709 - fax

-----

Tatewaki Kuno didn't like to wait. Abstractly, he knew patience, like
perseverance, was a virtue, but the latter came to him far more
naturally than the former. It didn't help that he had just woken up and,
checking his email, received a certain piece of news he had been waiting
anxiously for. Even more so than those new pictures of her sister that
Nabiki had promised, he had been waiting for this message.

Even before meeting with the rest of his team for morning training, he
wanted to get this matter out of the way. Indeed, the noble scion of
House Kuno hoped to surprise his new comrades. They were a strange
bunch, all of generally low breeding and little class, but like the
fellows of his Kendo Club he had grown somewhat used to their presence
(call it de-sensitization). Additionally, as much as it galled him to
admit it, he had come to realize that he needed to make a few...
adjustments to his fighting style to avoid appearing, to the ignorant
observer, as a junior member of the group.

For a long time, he had not given much thought to being outclassed by
peers. He had always been a genius with a sword, and in kendo (that most
noble and worthy martial pursuit) he had rapidly outstripped the
competition to the point where he purposefully refrained from using his
more powerful techniques in official matches. Then Ranma Saotome, that
vile womanizing fiend, had appeared and ruined his perfect record of
victories.

Without even a sword!

Disdain for hand to hand combat ran deep into the core of his being, and
Kuno still found it difficult to take the idea seriously. All the great
samurai were known for their skill with the blade. It was a sign of
status in society. What, really, was the point of being so skilled in
vulgar karate or whatnot, when a true man could find both form and
function in the unrivaled beauty of the katana? Bare handed fighting
seemed so uncouth and undignified, not to mention slipshod and
undisciplined.

In time, there had come others in addition to Saotome, but they weren't
really ever a concern. What reason would he, Tatewaki Kuno, have to
compare himself to the likes of Mousse or Ryouga Hibiki? None! At least
until recently. As the saying went, 'a miracle happens only once.' Ranma
and his accursed trickery had beaten him before, but then, coming here,
he had been forced to realize in practice bout after practice bout that
the others were similarly skilled. It was a grave injustice, and then it
had happened.

Kuno took a deep breath, and silently thanked the gods for the wondrous
armor that UNETCO had given him in that first mission. His resulting
injuries had been minor for the most part, but the Kuno Family Sword had
not been as fortunate. The sword itself (one of two Treasure Swords in
their possession) had been over four hundred years old, dating from the
Suo-Koto Period of sword design. In retrospect, bringing it into such a
dangerous situation may not have been particularly... wise. Especially
when a cheaper sword could have been just as useful, and its loss
wouldn't have been missed.

But it wasn't the crude cruelty of this new battlefield that was to
blame.

His pride and nothing else had destroyed the Kuno Family Treasure Sword.

The tragedy of that (and the disgrace he'd brought to himself) aside,
he'd quickly considered having a Ningen Kokuho craft a new blade for his
use in this battle against evil. One of these men, a 'Living National
Treasure' of Japan, could surely provide a sword of nearly equal
magnificence... but it would take time, and there was no guarantee that
blade would fare any better in practical use. With the Kuno fortune he
could just buy another appropriate sword from one of many collectors he
knew, but the thought of another great  old blade, made by a Master of a
previous era, disappearing in a flash of alien plasma - it filled his
mouth with bile.

Mousse had inadvertently provided another option. The master of Hidden
Weapons had been making use of the UNETCO engineering facilities since
his arrival, and he had been most forthcoming with the details of how
his new accessories were fabricated. Discretely, Kuno had decided to pay
the local machine and metalworks a visit, and make a few (not quite so)
subtle inquiries into what they could and could not provide for a
warrior in need of a new blade.

Now, it seemed, it would finally see the results firsthand.

The thought sent goose bumps up his arms. The email had indicated that
the sword was ready for use and that he could come by "whenever" to pick
it up. Apparently, there was to be no ceremony or other ritual
surrounding the sword's construction and presentation. The man who had
made it considered it an amusing distraction from working on other,
probably more complex, contraptions. Kuno wasn't sure he liked that,
since much of a sword's true value lay in its harmony with the notions
of creation and destruction, but he could understand the value of
pragmatism under these difficult and trying circumstances.

So, for once reigning in his natural impulse to burst loudly upon the
scene and let all present know of his munificent arrival, he waited and
spent the time looking around the workshop. Truly, the place was a
miracle of technology. Some form of lathing machine whirred at the
command of one of the local personnel, as what looked like silvery wire
wound around and around some sort of cylinder. Elsewhere, the insides of
a large machine were left bare, revealing a complex arrangement of
metallic tubes and electronic gadgetry. Kuno massaged his temples. It
was all rather confusing and unnerving, and he hoped to take his leave
as soon as possible.

It wasn't that he didn't respect the work being done here - these men,
after all, likely built that armor which had saved his life - but he
felt terribly out of place. Science and the like did not appeal to him.
He was a man born to the wrong era; his inspiration and academic
interest were largely limited to the more liberal fields of history:
traditional Japanese poetry and theater. It didn't help that he just
wasn't very good at anything else.

After only a few minutes, he grew bored and anxious, and started to
meander around, looking for a familiar face. What he found, eventually,
was a familiar back of the head. The man who he'd expected to come and
meet him by the workshop entrance (he had, in a reply email, announced
that he would be by promptly) was busy, hunched over a disassembled
rifle of some sort. A few moments of plumbing his memory produced a
picture from his orientation on advanced weapons: it was one of the
plasma based guns, an almost direct copy off of a vile alien design.

Kuno cleared his throat, but not so loudly as to be vulgar.

The man held up his right hand in the universal gesture of 'just a
minute' as he returned to the weapon. What he was doing, Kuno couldn't
imagine. He had training and implanted knowledge about how to maintain
and disassemble conventional firearms, but none of the advanced non-
projectile ones. He held in his anxiousness, and waited just a little
longer.

Finally, the man made a loud 'hrrumph' sound and slid back on his chair
before turning around to face his visitor. He was a large man, but not
heavy set, with a short dark black beard that made it seem as if that
hair had migrated straight from the bald top of his head. His features
were craggy, and Kuno had thought initially that he had the demeanor of
a blacksmith. He was a foreigner (from Germany or Austria or maybe
Poland, Kuno wasn't too sure) which made asking him for help in making a
new sword all the more surreal. This was about as far from a wizened
master sword smith as it got.

"Ah, Tatewaki! There you are!" The man greeted the scion of House Kuno
with a hearty slap on the arm and laughed jovially. Hans Fischbach was
the man's name, and he was the Senior Fabrication Technician for Seiran
Mountain. Apparently, Mousse had befriended him very quickly, and he had
taken a special interest in the 'cute little toys' the Chinese martial
artist had wanted crafted.

"Yes. Here I am," Kuno replied in English, but his tone made it clear he
wasn't sure how to reply to Hans' exclamation. He was here, wasn't he?
What was there to say?

"Come, come!" Hans gestured for him to follow, and Kuno did as he walked
around to an apparently empty workstation. The older man then flipped
open a panel, and the fingers of his right hand rapidly punched in some
sort of identification key or command. A second later, a large pane in
the wall opened up, revealing a large container of deep blue fluid...
and standing in the vat of liquid, held in place with clamps, was a
sword.

"No bubbles. Good. I'll drain the tank, and let you handle her yourself.
Here we go..."

Kuno nodded eagerly, and watched as the blue liquid began to disappear.
The level lowered and lowered, and finally disappeared entirely. It must
have been pretty viscous, because not a single drop adhered to the walls
of the vat or the sword itself. Hans then reached out, opened the
chamber, and carefully freed the weapon with a cloth scarf.

Holding it out with a knowing smirk, Hans let the younger man gently
remove it from his hands. Feeling the weight, Kuno confirmed that it was
very light, probably only a kilogram, and then he fully took in the
other attributes. It looked to be around 26 inches, or 66 centimeters
long, making it a little shorter than the average katana. The hilt was
that of the family sword, at least on the outside, but there was a new
hand guard (still in the shape of a rectangle but with two holes on
either side), and an attached tassel of red and white cloth reminiscent
of a baby phoenix's tail.

The point was curved to a long tip, an o-kissaki, similar to what he had
asked for but not exactly like he had imagined at the time. The
curvature was centered on the middle of the blade (making it tori sori),
rather than the bottom, just as he had requested. He'd expected there to
be little taper, but looking now, he saw that there was almost none
between the hamachi and the yokote (virtually the entire length of the
sword), making it rather wide. A single perfect groove ran down the
right side but not the left, and Kuno wondered how its tachikaze would
sound when it was swung.

"The sword is a combination of exotic alloys and a scandium-aluminum
alloy I used as the stable core, which also evened out the weight," Hans
explained, while Kuno eyed the new tool of his trade. "It's of basically
uniform density, so you won't get as much bend out of this as you would
a regular sword, but it won't chip or break - it isn't brittle - and the
metal itself is corrosion resistant. Blood won't be a problem. Hell,
sulfuric acid wouldn't be a problem. The edge is plasma treated and in
Phase One or Two it's just a couple molecules thick."

"The hamon is decorative?" Kuno asked, meaning the temper line so
distinctive to a true Japanese katana.

"Yeah," Hans replied with a stiff nod. "I figured you'd want that, so I
colored the plasma I used to treat it."

The younger man took one last look at the simple but telling waves that
ran the length of the blade and bowed deeply in thanks. Senior
Fabrication Technician Fischbach returned the gesture with a hearty
laugh and pat on the shoulder.

"Don't sweat it, my friend!" he said, obviously not one for deep or
solemn propriety. "Besides, you haven't even tried out the special
memory metal features yet! Go on!"

Raising his head, Kuno's smirk grew very wide indeed. "As yes, good
smith, I had nearly forgotten about those..."

-----

Ukyou was more than a little surprised to bump into Kasumi on the way to
the Dojo Facility. She hadn't had much interaction with the oldest Tendo
daughter over the years; unlike Akane and Nabiki, Kasumi never visited
the restaurant, indeed she hardly ever seemed to leave the Tendo
residence, and she wasn't particularly talkative as far as Ukyou knew.
The only time they'd really exchanged more than basic pleasantries had
been a brief few days during the Secret Sauce Incident.

Standing alone with her in the elevator, she saw that Kasumi was in her
work clothes, dressed like a nurse, meaning she was either between
shifts at the moment or she had business somewhere outside the medical
wing. Noticing the other girl's attention, Kasumi smiled warmly. It was
the kind of smile, with eyes closed and the whole face put into it, that
sometimes came off as a little off putting (or condescending) because it
didn't seem entirely natural that someone could be so pleasant so often.

The world could be coming to an end, and Kasumi would find a way to
smile.

Or that was the impression Ukyou had of her.

"Are those drinks?" the okonomiyaki chef asked, deciding to strike up a
little conversation and satisfy her curiosity at the same time.

"I thought the boys would be a little thirsty from all their exercise,"
Kasumi replied, and Ukyou couldn't believe that she had just called
martial arts training 'exercise.' As if it was calisthenics or
something. "I was making the trip there anyway, so I brought them some
drinks."

"You're headed to the dojo?" Ukyou asked, though it was a question that
had already been answered. "I'm going there myself."

"Oh?" Kasumi tilted her head slightly, like a bird. "I thought Ranma's
group didn't practice until the afternoon?"

"I'm actually going to meet up with the 'lost boys,' not my own squad,"
Ukyou snickered a little at the joke.

Kasumi's smile remained exactly the same, leading Ukyou to believe she
either didn't get the reference, or didn't care for it. Who could tell
with her?

"Well, that's nice," the slightly older girl answered evasively. Ukyou
briefly toyed with the idea of explaining or pressing home the play on
words, but ultimately sighed and let it be. Kasumi was a strange one.
Her motives were either extremely transparent, or very well hidden; it
was impossible to tell which. Ukyou just considered herself fortunate
that Akane had ended up becoming Ranma's fiance instead of Kasumi. The
other girl was just way too mild and agreeable, at least on the surface.

They left the elevator and walked the rest of the way in relative
silence. Ukyou trailed a little behind Kasumi, as the older girl hummed
sweetly. Noting again the four glasses of liquid on the metal tray in
Kasumi's hands, Ukyou wondered whether she should have brought some kind
of peace offering as well. It wasn't as if she was good friends with any
of the guys, nor (as she thought more about it) were they under any
strong inclination to help her. Up until a few seconds ago, she had
considered just barging in and asking to be as effective a tactic as
any. In the past, she had given Ryouga and Mousse food to wet their
appetites for a new break-up-Ranma-and-Akane scheme, but she doubted
that would be a powerful incentive here, where they got all the food
they wanted for free.

Perhaps, in retrospect, she should have gone through a little more
effort to get to know them. As it was, even Shampoo had a better network
of contacts to rely on at the moment. Mousse would jump through flaming
hoops for his 'beloved Shampoo,' and the only other person besides Ranma
that Ukyou could ask for help was the very person she needed to train to
fight. And Ranma, upon hearing of the upcoming duel, had been more
exasperated than she'd imagined, and he had plainly stated that he
couldn't and wouldn't take sides between members of his team. Her pride
would never let her go to Genma for help after how he had ruined her
life, and she doubted Soun could help much, so that left the other four
boys of India Squad.

Finally, the Dojo came into sight.

Pinned on a wall nearby was a signup schedule for individual sessions as
well as general classes. There were a handful of names up in English,
but there weren't any that Ukyou recognized. Inside, she saw Mr. Tendo
and another man going over some sort of move involving a rifle. Ukyou
didn't imagine that the Tendo Ryu normally used rifles or handguns as
part of their weapon lineup, but the School of Anything Goes was nothing
if not adaptable. The motion the man was using reminded her of a
kodachi's when held in a reverse grip.

The only other person in the room was Akane, looking a little disheveled
in her white practice gi. Seeing the two of them enter, she waved her
hand and headed over on an intercept course. Kasumi slipped off her
shoes while standing and Ukyou did the same a few seconds later.

"Hi there, you guys!" Akane greeted them cheerfully. "What's up?"

Ukyou had noticed a certain spring in Akane's step over the last few
days that she couldn't recall from before. Even around Shampoo, her
behavior had become less... confrontational. It was hard to pin down
exactly, but it seemed likely that Akane's confidence had increased
lately. Ukyou couldn't imagine why, especially since the youngest Tendo
daughter hadn't been considered strong enough to sign on for combat
duty. Almost everyone knew Akane had been practicing on her own, she
could even be seen occasionally at the shooting range, but Ukyou had a
gut feeling that there was more to it than that.

Well, it didn't really matter at the moment.

"Hey, Akane," Ukyou returned the greeting with a little bow of her head.

"Akane-chan," Kasumi said, simply. "How was the morning class?"

Ukyou hadn't been going to ask, but she was curious as well, and she
listened as Akane replied, "Pretty good. Everyone who comes has already
had a lot of previous training, but they're all from very different
backgrounds. Most are western Special Forces types, so they come to
practice on us and pick up some new tricks. They aren't really here to
learn much about the school or its tenets, so dad doesn't even bother."

"What about yourself?" Kasumi asked. "Are you learning anything?"

"Sure," Akane answered easily. "I've met a lot of nice people, and
they're helping me get weapons certification."

Ukyou frowned a bit at that. Akane had met people and made friends here?
Akane?! A brief flash of jealousy came and went, though just a sliver of
it lingered in the back of her thoughts. Akane had obviously taken
advantage of being left behind to tend to the new Dojo to make new
friends, and those friends were helping her get onto the firing line, no
doubt so she could be closer to Ranma. That wasn't good. And what did it
say about Ukyou Kuonji that she didn't have any real friends besides her
fiance and a guy who was obsessed with her, while Akane had already
stated to insinuate herself into the base community?

Akane and Kasumi chatted a little more, and Ukyou missed most of it,
until she heard something that caught her attention again.

"They've become pretty secretive about what they're doing in there,
actually," Akane said, answering a question Ukyou hadn't caught. "They
keep the see-through tinted and the door locked. Even put up a 'do not
disturb' sign."

"So we can't get in?" Ukyou blurted out, and it occurred to her that
Akane didn't know why she was even here. She explained, "I was hoping to
get their opinion on something."

"You mean your fight against Konatsu?" Akane asked, and Ukyou's eyes
widened.

"How did you...?"

"Ranma told me." Akane didn't elaborate beyond that. "Anyway, you can
ask, but they'll probably just ignore you."

"They'll let me in," Kasumi assured her sister. "Besides, I'm here on
Doctor Pearson's orders."

Akane gasped. "Is someone hurt?"

Kasumi's ever smiling face faded and took on a more disapproving look.

"Probably," she said.

"Well, let's go see," Akane said and led them over to the flat metal
door that separated the Dojo proper from the private dueling and
training section. She activated the intercom. "Hey, Kasumi's here.
Ukyou, too."

For a few seconds there was no reply.

Then Ryu's voice: "...are here! Put that away you idiot!"

Followed by mad laughter that could only come from Kuno. "Accept your
punishment with dignity, you cur!"

And: "Damnit! Hold on, just a second."

The three girls exchanged dubious looks. On second thought, maybe it had
been wise to keep the door locked. Knowing those four, who knew what
kind of madness was going on inside. A massive melee of flying bandannas
and vacuum blades and ki attacks and razor wire and weighted chains
filled Ukyou's mind, and she definitely didn't want to be the one to
stumble unprepared into that kind of mess. On the other hand, it got her
a little excited, too. It would be good to fight someone besides Shampoo
for real.

The door eventually opened, and it did look as if a hurricane had hit a
weapons factory before exhausting itself on the walls and floor of the
room. Tatami mats were torn up and upended, and while the walls
themselves were mostly unmarked, that was by virtue of the fact that
they were essentially indestructible. You could have enough C4 to level
a building go off in the room, and the room would remain intact. An
imbedded speaker in one of the room's walls seemed tuned into an
American radio station, probably bounced in from one of the US military
bases like Misawa in the north.

Mousse seemed busy stomping on Kuno's head, but his robe was torn in
several places and blood leaked down his left arm. Standing next to the
door, Ryu also looked ragged - his hair was frizzled up, and a head
wound leaked blood over his left eye. Ryouga also stood nearby, the
fighting tape and bandages on his arms and hands looking either burned
or bloodstained or both.

Kasumi 'tsked' and put on her best face, though her tone was mildly
scolding, as if the boys had been caught roughhousing in the living
room. "Is this a good time to take a break? I'd like to take at look at
all of you."

"Is that lemonade?" Ryu rushed up to her with puppy dog eyes. "It IS
lemonade!"

"I guess it is about that time," Ryouga seconded, licking his lips at
the cool drinks that had interrupted Hurricane India Squad.

"This isn't over until he cries uncle!" Mousse stomped on the back of
Kuno's head again, and grinded his foot savagely. "Give up, Kuno! You're
a ten years too early to be challenging the likes of me!"

"Roguish vagabond! None may tread upon the head of Tatewaki Kuno!"

Kuno rolled out from under Mousse's foot, and the second his knees
touched the ground, he propped himself back up on them, and then onto
his feet. He wasn't particularly agile, but he knew how to take and
recover from a fall. He held up a metallic bokken in a wide stance
different from his normal kendo. Ukyou recognized it as the prelude to
the Hirazuki, a powerful parallel sword thrust technique developed by
the assistant leader of the Shinsengumi, Toshizo Hijikata.

"Defend yourself!" Sure enough Kuno's legs tensed under his torn hakama,
and he thrust at Mousse as the Chinese boy parried the blow and tried to
slip out to the side.

Mousse obviously wasn't familiar with the technique himself (not too
surprising given his background), and he was caught by surprise when
Kuno's thrust shifted seamlessly into a perpendicular slash. Still, the
agile Chinese martial artist was not to be underestimated, and he
flipped back into a one handed stand before kicking out with his legs
wide. Kuno jumped back, parrying Mousse's spinning legs with his bokken
to the unmistakable sound of metal on metal. From the sound, and knowing
him, Ukyou could guess that Mousse had some sort of blades hidden in his
shoes.

Typical.

"Come on, you guys," Ryu carefully stood between them and Kasumi, just
in case bladed metal started to fly. "Give it a minute's rest!"

Mousse flipped back onto his feet, and looked briefly over his shoulder
and then back at Kuno. The Kendoist sported a confident smile, despite
the footmark over half of his face, a bloody nose and a black eye.

"The day is soon upon you when you will regret your taunts and foolish
words, my friend!" Kuno chuckled and struck a dramatic pose. "And after
I have dealt with you, I shall go and liberate the pigtailed girl and
Akane Tendo from the thrall of that vile Saotome!"

Then, he squinted at something over Mousse's shoulder. "Akane Tendo!"

Rushing past his opponent, he quickly embraced the object of his
obsessive affection, rubbing his cheek into her hair. He only had a
second to enjoy holding her in his arms, before the youngest Tendo's
fist had a reunion with his chin and sent him head over heels like a
bowling pin. Sprawled out on the floor, Kuno grumbled something
unintelligible, but probably to the effect of, 'Love hurts, especially
your love, my fiery huntress...'

"Ah, lemonade!" Mousse commented, walking over and fixing his hair with
a comb he had retrieved from... who knew where? He was Mousse. Sometimes
it seemed like he had anything and everything jammed up his sleeves, and
that the hard thing was finding it once it was in there. Then, Kasumi
unwrapped a small paper package, and the three conscious members of
India Team gasped.

Rice Krispies Treats!

"Thank you, Kasumi!" The three boys chorused as they took their drinks
and snacks. Ukyou shook her head. Were these really the guys she'd
planned to ask for help? A bunch of numbskulls easily bribed by a smile,
a drink, and a kiddy snack? She wasn't sure what was more pathetic: them
acting like that, or her going to them for training.

What a bunch of stooges; she'd have never thought that they could have
worked together as a group before. Ryouga had always been a brooding and
moody love struck fool, getting into a fight with anyone who spoke ill
of Akane, while Mousse had always been so obsessed with winning
Shampoo's love that it interfered with whatever life he normally would
have had. Ryu seemed normal enough, for a martial artist, but now he was
starting to become more like his new buddies.

And Kuno was... well, Kuno.

"Oh, my!" Kasumi said, looking closely at Mousse's arm. "You may need
some stitches for that, Mousse. Let's have a look at you right away."

"Um, sure..." Mousse walked off a ways and sat down. Kasumi sat demurely
next to him, and took out a small case from the medical kit she had
brought with her on a clip at her hip. The Chinese boy held his drink
with his right hand while Kasumi carefully tended to his wound. Oddly,
Ryouga watched the scene rather than stare at Akane, which was what
Ukyou had expected him to do.

Hell, as long as she had known the lost boy, he had never been able to
keep a cool head around his secret love. Even later, when he hooked up
with Akari, he would stutter and lose what little cool he had whenever
Akane was in the general area. Now, though, to Ukyou's complete
bewilderment, he opted to watch Kasumi clean up Mousse's blood rather
than twiddle his fingers and hope for a scrap of Akane's attention. What
the hell had happened to him?

A quick look at Akane confirmed that the other girl was also a little
perplexed by this change in behavior. Amazingly, it was Ryu who spoke
up, and he was the guy who they were least familiar with.

"I'd expected you to be around, Akane, but not you, Ukyou," Ryu said
between drinks. He winked his left eye shut, as a bit of blood almost
dribbled into it. "What's the occasion? Ranma want something?"

"Nooo," Ukyou replied a little heatedly. Why did he think Ranma had sent
her? "I came for my own reasons."

"Ah! This must be about that duel next week," he inferred.

Ukyou groaned and hid her face in her hands. "Geez! Does everyone
know?!"

"Well, Shampoo did send out that email to everyone about it," Ryu
explained, not noticing how Ukyou twitched at the name of her rival and
constant source of frustration. "And then Nabiki got wind of it, and
started to place odds on who would win... and then there was that email
that she had to forward later about how gambling isn't permitted on the
base..."

"Wonderful!" Ukyou ground her teeth together. "This is just great!"

"Well, look on the bright side!" Ryu said cheerfully. "You have a whole
week to get ready. And it isn't as if losing the duel will force you to
seal up your entire repertoire of techniques because some idiot thinks
they're 'evil.'"

He and Akane exchanged looks that Ukyou didn't quite understand, and
then he shrugged. Ukyou knew he was talking about Ranma, and how he had
been forced to seal the Yamasenken Techniques, and she guessed that
Akane had been there for things as well. She did have a habit of
insinuating herself into Ranma's disputes for some reason or another.

"Yes, well, I do have a week, and I'd like to pick up some pointers from
you guys," Ukyou finally just out and said it. "I can't ask Ranma,
because then he'd have to take sides against Konatsu, and he won't as
the leader of our team. So I was wondering if you guys could help me
out..."

"If you're going to train Ukyou," Akane interrupted. "I'd like to get
involved, too."

Ryu dithered, and took a long drink that didn't actually seem to involve
him lowering the water level of his lemonade. Ryouga looked at them out
of the corner of his eye, and sighed. It had been obvious from the
beginning that by 'you guys' they had meant mostly him. Not that Ryu and
Mousse weren't also skillful fighters... it was just that Ryouga was
more of a familiar face, despite his faults. And besides, next to Ranma,
he was probably the strongest guy around.

"Akane-san..." Ryouga said her name with his usual amount of over-
generous respect, which at least brought up some similarities to the him
Ukyou had gotten used to. "Ukyou. I have the utmost respect for both of
you, but I don't believe looking to me for help is the wisest course of
action."

In other words: no.

Ukyou couldn't believe it, and by the look on Akane's face, neither
could she. Sure, they hadn't gotten along with him too well ever since
that Cursed Tunnel of Lost Love affair, but to turn down helping Akane,
too? It was unprecedented! Ukyou stared at him, and for an instant the
angle of his face, the coldness of his attitude, reminded her of when
they had first met... when he had thought of her as a boy, and as
someone daring to get in the way of his fight with Ranma.

Was that how he saw her now? As an obstacle in the way of his revenge?

"Ryouga..." Akane said, and Ukyou could see him relent just a fraction.
It wasn't his normal reaction, but it was close. It wasn't his normal
shyness, though. It was almost as if he had thought of something, and it
made him feel... guilty. It wasn't the first time he'd been that way at
the mention of Akane, and Ukyou had supposed it was because he'd almost
killed her back when he'd had his first fight with Ranma.

"Both of you are at the point where what you really need to learn can't
be taught," he tried to explain, looking at the two girls. "Ukyou, you
could do to broaden your technique and learn some new tricks... but to
take the next step in your training, you need to find how to
conceptualize your ki. And Akane, you still have to learn how to use
your spiritual presence. I can't teach you how to do that. Both are
concepts you have to grasp for yourselves."

Ukyou did understand that, having learned to tap into her ki already, at
least to a basic degree. Akane, however, didn't quite get it.

"What do you mean: use my spiritual presence?" Akane asked. "Dad said
something like that, too, and Mr. Saotome."

"It isn't easy to describe..." Ryouga began to say.

So Ryu jumped in. "Think of it this way. When you're born, you
instinctively know how to move your body, but not how to coordinate
those movements. In the same way, you are born knowing how to create ki,
or spiritual presence, but not how to coordinate its movement or
direction. Before anything else, you need to learn how to move it around
inside your body. Most of us learn that through a near death
experience."

Ryouga nodded. "A martial artist can only truly advance if he or she
risks everything, including their life. You understand this, don't you,
Ukyou?"

"Yeah," Ukyou agreed. "I remember when it happened to me. I had been
training against the sea, and as the weather got worse, I took up the
challenge instead of turning in. I stayed up all night, and a few times
I lost my footing, hit my head, and almost passed out. That was when my
body learned how to really use ki."

"Ranma probably learned it during his Nekoken training when he was six,"
Ryouga interjected. "Which was why he was so fast when we met in junior
high school. I was ten when it happened to me."

"I was thirteen," Ryu added. "It was during a duel."

"You see, Akane-san," Ryouga cut in again. "This isn't like eating some
magical noodles or wearing a battle dougi. There is no short cut."

"I'm not looking for a short cut!" Akane exclaimed, but she could see
that the others weren't convinced. Really, it was clear that even she
wasn't completely convinced. "I just want to be able to help..."

"You don't have to be like this, like us, to help," Ryouga said, but
didn't elaborate. "Just be yourself."

"Ugggghhh..." A loud groan came from the ground, as Tatewaki Kuno slowly
eased himself off the ground. "Akane Tendo, your love is a formidable
thing indeed..."

"Hey, Kuno, here!" Ryouga knelt down and handed the Blue Thunder the
extra drink and plastic wrapped snack he'd been holding while Kasumi
tended to Mousse's arm.

"My thanks," the older fighter took the glass. "Ah, lemonade, the cure
to a parched throat! Just like my twisted sister used to make, but
hopefully without the varied and debilitating poisons..."

At that, the assembled teens sweat-dropped at the poor kendoist's family
life.

"However, I am unfamiliar with this other confection," Kuno finished
saying, missing whatever looks of pity he may have received. Taking a
bite of it, however, he didn't complain - which for Kuno was itself a
compliment.

"Ok," Ryouga said, standing back up. "Look, I'll make a deal with you
two. I don't think I can be of any help, but..."

With his now free hand, he unwound two bandannas from his head. Holding
them between his thumb and index finger, he snapped them straight and
sent a strong burst of ki into the fabric. The trick was still
impressive to watch, showing the lost boy's mastery over a well known
but very difficult technique. Even Ranma hadn't replicated it, and the
pigtailed one had an eidetic memory for learning and copying martial
arts techniques.

"If either of you can break the ki seal on one of these bandannas in the
next half hour, then I'll do what I can to get you to the next level of
your training." He held out the bandannas, and both Ukyou and Akane took
one. Ukyou had never actually gotten a hold of one of Ryouga's bandannas
before, and initially trying to bend it proved impossible. It was as
rigid and hard as tempered steel.

She also noted Ryouga's hands.

So, apparently, did Kasumi. She was back, and with a vengeance. Ryu was
given a bit of gauze to hold to the wound over his left eye, and Ryouga
was led away to a corner where she could see 'what was left of his poor
fingers.' She was plainly unhappy and critical of the lost one's latest
training, and from what Ukyou overhead, so was Doctor Pearson, the
medical officer who had been put in charge of the two new squads.

She looked down at the bandanna in her hands. "Thirty minutes, huh?"

"Akane Tendo, let us share this strange new foodstuff and bask in the
warm glow of each other's company!"

Clonk! "In your dreams!"

"Were you two married in a previous life or something?"

"Our love transcends the boundaries of reincarnation..."

"Don't encourage him!"

-----

The two figures stood over the motionless body.

"Is he...?" one asked, in a woman's voice.

The other kneeled down, and touched two fingers to his fallen form's
throat.

"Yes," was the man's answer.

The woman sighed, and rested her hands on her hips. She flicked her long
brown hair, and looked out across what was left of the inner shrine. It
was dark, with the candles that had been lit now extinguished, but some
features were still plain to see. Two large scrolls hung from the walls,
though one had a tear in it. An Amitabha statue sat on its perch,
unharmed in its meditation mudra with thumbs touching and fingers
together, offering only silent contemplation of the ruin that had
befallen the area around it. The ground and ceiling had been torn up,
and pale blue prayer beads were scattered around and embedded in the
walls.

"What happened?" She asked, rolling one of the beads around between her
fingers. "Was it his one of his techniques or ours?"

Outside, in an herb garden, a bamboo shikaoi water cup tipped lazily.

"That is what I'm looking into."

While he did so, the woman held the wooden bead up to eye level.
Japanese Buddhist monks often carried prayer beads of 112 beads, calling
them juzu (instead of the more continental mala), representing one's
progress on the path towards enlightenment.

"I wonder if, in the end, he saw the pure land of jingt? where he was to
be reborn?" The woman mused, using the Chinese term for the mythical
land in the west.

"...Probably not," she concluded. "But did you see the serene look on
his face when he fell?"

"Natural state humans will believe the most baffling things," the man
replied, and stood up. "Severe systolic heart failure and internal
bleeding. It also seems that second attack of yours caused a pulmonary
edema. I can treat the latter, but not the former. It seems we've lost
this one."

"You could have been a bit gentler, you know, given his old age," the
man quickly added with no small hint of criticism. "I would have
expected you to be more sympathetic to his physical condition."

"Those who don't fight shouldn't criticize," the woman said haughtily.
"And don't compare me to the likes of him. With all that spiritual
power, he could have kept his body alive another hundred years or more,
but instead he chose to accept death when it came for him. I could live
another three hundred years, and I still would not understand
Buddhists."

"No point crying over spilled milk I suppose." The man carefully removed
his surgical gloves. "Were you able to decipher any of his techniques,
or that sutra he used?"

"The Tsukiakari Nenbutsu (Moonlight Prayer to Amitabha) isn't a move you
or I could use anymore," the woman answered, casually flicking the
broken prayer bead onto the dead priest's body.

"Unfortunate," the man stated, and slowly walked towards the exit.

"Yes, but what can you do?" the woman wondered aloud, walking alongside
the man and tucking her hands into her green rain slicker. "Which
reminds me: In case I'm not able to tempt him, we should call in extra
resources for this last one."

"That's probably wise."

"And then, once we're done here in Japan... I am so looking forward..."

They stepped into the bright light of the day.

"To finally going home..."

-----

Akane found it interesting how each of India Squad practiced by
themselves. For her, it was much more informative than watching a one on
one or melee match. She'd been in quite a few duels as a representative
of the Tendo branch of Anything Goes, but her personal training had
always been somewhat less inspired than her enthusiasm for a formal
fight. Nabiki had occasionally remarked that her little sister lacked
patience for steadily accruing profit from an investment.

As she thought about it, Akane knew that was actually a rather apt
comparison. Training was rarely about quantum leaps in ability gained
after relatively little work. Most training needed patience and
perseverance, doing the same grueling thing over and over, in the hope
that it would pay off with a gradual improvement in some area of the
Art, or in the development of a new technique. That may have been fine
for some, but for Akane, who had hopes of maintaining normal friendships
and a normal attendance in school and school programs, it was trying in
the extreme, and had little effective appeal.

She just wasn't that obsessive.

She considered herself a martial artist, but that wasn't all she wanted
to be in life. It was a definition of who she was, not THE definition.
So, after a certain point, she hadn't really bothered with severe
training anymore. Life had gotten in the way, and her father hadn't
exactly been there to push her into totally devoting her life to the
Art. So her training became relegated to breaking concrete blocks for
stress relief, and doing the occasional kata. She had been top dog in
Nerima for years, so what reason did she have to improve anyway?

Ryu Kumon had reserved a long stretch of the practice room for his
training. His arms blurred as he fired off vacuum blade after vacuum
blade at the far wall, where he had drawn a square in black magic
marker. This was his technique training - he was working on something
new, probably, or a derivation on the Yamasenken. Earlier, he had been
engaged in what Akane had at first assumed was a kata. Now, she
suspected it was physical training to be able to create vacuum blades
with his legs as well as arms.

She had never trained like that.

Elsewhere, Mousse began to walk back to a position near the Kumon
fighter. Both eventually had their backs to the same corner, and Akane
knew what the Chinese martial artist was about to do. He had been
practicing it for about twenty minutes now. Together, the two of them
were monopolizing the north and west faces of the practice room with
their dangerous techniques. It was no wonder the door had been locked.

"Head's up, everyone!" he called out, as a courtesy, and leveled his
(now sewn up) right sleeve at the far wall. "Karasu Sansai Ha!"

His hand withdrew into the sleeve, and a ripple went through the fabric
as a prelude to the 'Raven Storm Wave.' Mousse's left foot slid back,
braced his body, and without further preamble his right sleeve erupted.
Hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of slivers of metal filled the air in a
wide cone before narrowing on a target set into the wall, painted over
an upturned tatami mat. The straw mat shook as it took on the appearance
of a flattened porcupine, riddled with glistening flechettes. When he
was done, Mousse's sleeve was smoking, and he was breathing heavily, a
savage grin on his face.

She had never trained like that.

Ryouga stood by another wall, but unlike the others he seemed to be
practicing for in close combat. Arrayed against the wall, he had three
metal targets, which after getting a close look, appeared to be hollow
and filled with liquids. The lost boy struck them over and over,
sometimes with his fists, sometimes with his palms, and all were marred
by blood. One of them must have been super hot, too, because the thick
liquid inside was bubbling like boiling water. It was definitely
technique training, but for what, Akane couldn't guess. Though she
suspected Kasumi, of all people, knew.

She had never trained like that, nor did she really want to.

Self mutilation had never really been high on her to-do list.

Even Kuno, after he had stopped making an ass of himself by trying to
molest her, seemed to be showing vast improvement, though that was most
likely due to his new weapon. He had called it Tenrai Hououkendo, or
Heavenly Thunder Phoenix Sword, and he had been practicing with it all
morning. Akane could guess that it was made of that strange alien metal
that UNETCO was so fond of, since it didn't bend of deform, even when
Kuno did his Blue Thunder Attack, jabbing with the sword so fast it
became almost impossible to distinguish one strike from another. It was
the most powerful and taxing move he had that she knew of, aside from
his mostly useless ability to carve up watermelons with super speed.

Then, there was Ukyou, in the same boat as her, basically. At least as
far as their current activities anyway. The okonomiyaki chef had also
been trying, like Akane, to undue whatever ki technique Ryouga had used
on his bandannas to no avail. The other girl had tried to break it with
raw strength, and she had tried to cut it with her mini-spatulas, and
her mega-spatula, all for naught. Then she had tried to jury rig
something to hold the bandanna flat while she chopped and stomped away
at it, again, with little or no progress. Wedging it in the door had
been a good idea, but neither girl had anything strong enough to cut
through the ki enhanced fabric.

Akane had tried raw strength, too, but she knew it wouldn't work. Thanks
to the training Ryouga had given her two years ago, she had some basic
guesses about the technique he had used: the Tetsununo or Iron Cloth
Technique. It was likely that it could be cut, but that wasn't what
Ryouga had asked them to do anyway. He had said, "Break the ki seal" not
snap it in half.

It was a test of ki control.

"Both of you are at the point where what you really need to learn can't
be taught," he had said. "Ukyou, you could do to broaden your technique
and learn some new tricks... but to take the next step in your training,
you need to find how to conceptualize your ki. And Akane, you still have
to learn how to use your spiritual presence. I can't teach you how to do
that. Both are concepts you have to grasp for yourselves."

Spiritual Presence and conceptualization of ki... was this a test for
her, or for Ukyou? After all, Ukyou was further along on the road of ki
control than Akane was, so why give them the same test? Spiritual
Presence was the direction of one's ki, into an object, or into another
person, producing Spiritual Pressure. Conceptualization of ki was more
amorphous, and she wasn't sure exactly what it implied.

"Akane, remember: the ribbon is purely an extension of your body. It is
not a weapon in and of itself," Ryouga had explained; back when she had
asked him to teach her Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics. "As a
substitute for the hands, and the fists, you can attack with it, but
that is not the essence of this Art. Find yourself in the ribbon, and
you will be able to use it properly."

Akane closed her eyes and remembered how, like Ryouga, Kodachi had been
able to use the ribbon to pick up other objects, even large ones. That
part of Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics had always eluded her. The
ribbon did not naturally wrap around things like that, much less tighten
enough to pick them up. Moreover, the ribbon was not made out of special
material, and would probably snap if it suspended any appreciable
weight.

"Find yourself in the ribbon," she repeated. "In the ribbon."

It must mean that you extrude your ki into the fabric. But saying it and
doing it were two totally different things. Only a ridiculous martial
arts savant like Ranma could pick up a complex technique like that just
by watching it and being given no-good cryptic advice! Then and there,
the thought of how easily Ranma had picked up the style sent a flush of
jealous anger through her body.

"No luck, huh?" Ukyou asked, sitting down opposite Akane with an
exasperated huff. "What a rotten test!"

"There's probably some meaning to it," Akane said, taking in how worn
down Ukyou looked. She wasn't totally sure how she felt about Ukyou,
even after knowing her and going through two grades with her back in
Furinkan. The chef was a perennial paramour of Ranma's, but when she
wasn't chasing after her Ran-chan, she could be quite personable and
friendly. Akane supposed she was more a 'good acquaintance and rival'
than a real 'friend.' After all, a friend wouldn't try and steal your
stupid jerk of a fiance, or carpet bomb your wedding (not that you
necessarily wanted to get married to said idiot fiance, you just didn't
not want to get married - yeah, that was it!).

"We have to try and break up the ki inside the bandanna," Akane
continued, pushing aside the complexity of what passed for her personal
life.

"That's pretty obvious. The question is how: imparting enough energy,
kinetic energy, should do the trick. But it isn't." Ukyou sighed into
her fist, and Akane reevaluated her impression of what the other girl
had been doing. They'd both been in the same high school physics class,
and in fact, Ukyou had done better in it than Akane had. If energy was
energy, and "x" amount of ki was keeping the material in its current
shape, then "x" amount of any other sort of energy should... no.

No, that couldn't work.

"Except we need to remove energy from a system, not add to it," Akane
speculated. "Like boiling water. Steam doesn't become water if you add
energy to it. Water won't become ice if you hit it."

"But is this even like that?" Ukyou asked, giving Akane a bit more merit
for making a potentially useful observation. "After all, things get
harder - more solid - when they lose energy. So maybe adding energy is
what we have to do."

"I... I dunno," Akane admitted. "I don't know if this works like that at
all. There's no way to tell."

"No. I saw it," Ukyou said, remembering. "That jackass definitely put ki
into this bandanna of his. Plus, he called it a seal. So it's definitely
a matter of canceling the ki, or breaking the seal."

"Seal? You mean like a written sutra?" Akane asked, holding up her
bandanna. There didn't seem to be any writing on it. Still, she and
Ranma had done more than a few exorcisms in the past, and they had
experience with using Shino and Buddhist seals, if not making them.

"I couldn't find any writing on mine either," Ukyou commented, also
holding up her bandanna between her hands. "Maybe it was a metaphor?"

"Not a very helpful one," Akane scoffed. "Unless you're a miko or
something,"

A moment of silence later and she felt the arms of a familiar and
annoying kendoist envelop her.

"Akane Tendo, the thought of you in a chihaya would be heaven on Earth,"
Kuno murmured happily (referring to the traditional shrine maiden
outfit), a second before Akane gave him a five finger salute right on
the kisser. He flipped over, feet twitching, a spray of blood arcing
through the air.

Ukyou snapped her fingers. "Ah! What if the seal he mentioned is just
the shape of the ki once in the cloth? Still, that means that breaking
it is a matter of disrupting his ki with ours."

"Can you do that?" Akane asked, ignoring the upended and unconscious
Kuno heir behind her. "Force ki into the bandanna?"

"If I could, I would have tried that already anyway," Ukyou grumbled.

The other girl lowered her eyes. "Oh..."

"I don't know how that jerk expects us to do this. He knows neither of
us can extrude ki like that! He's just being an asshole driving it home
like this!" Ukyou raged, fisting the air angrily.

"I can hear you guys, you know," a small voice came from over where
Ryouga was practicing.

"She didn't mean it, Ryouga-kun!" Akane turned and waved him off, trying
to sound as pleasant as possible. Behind her, Ukyou was still fuming
like a kettle. The lost boy watched the scene with a deadpan sort of
exacerbation before going back to his training.

"Ok, we only have a few more minutes," Akane quickly went back to the
matter at hand, reigning in her own frustration. "There has to be some
way to bring out enough ki to do this. How about a battle aura?"

"Too diffuse." Ukyou shook her head. "I tried and it didn't work."

"So we need a way to focus the ki?"

The okonomiyaki chef dropped the bandanna she'd been holding and pounded
a fist on it. "Oh, well, that should only take a few years of training
to do..."

"Wait! Between us, we can do it!" Akane suddenly blurted out, and
clapped her hands together. "We both have a battle aura, but we can't do
anything with it by ourselves. But when the auras of two martial artists
clash, they exert pressure between them."

"Like with the Hiryu Shoten Ha," Ukyou said, seeing where Akane was
heading. Both girls had been present when Ranma had learned that ancient
technique; both had seen the training, heard the theory, and seen it in
action. When the battle auras of two powerful martial artists touched,
they clashed and exerted force on one another. It was this resulting
spiritual pressure that the Rising Dragon Ascension to Heaven took
advantage of.

"Yosh!" Akane held out her hand, holding the bandanna Ryouga had given
her in her palm. Ukyou then stood, and her palm met Akane's. Together,
they summoned their fighting spirit, and flecks of red and blue began to
manifest in the air around the two ladies. Feeling the rising power,
Kuno looked up from where he lay on the floor, Mousse paused in
collecting his flechettes, Ryu stopped in mid swipe, and Ryouga looked
over his shoulder.

With a 'fwoosh'ing sound, the two auras snapped into full existence, and
instantly began to compete and exert pressure on each other. Without
even thinking, the two girls began to one up each other, until their
hair began to move as a result of the building air currents. Between
their right hands, the bandanna began to glow a fierce red, first along
the edges, and then in an array of triangles along its surface. The
energy swelled, the lines inflating, before...

Like a firecracker going off, the network of infused ki shattered in a
spray of sparks. When Akane and Ukyou's hands parted ways, a limp
bandanna fluttered to the ground, bathed in the light of their burning
battle auras. Then, just as the formerly steel-hard cloth touched the
floor, the spiritual pressure between the girls ebbed, and receded as
their auras gently wavered and broke apart.

"Yes!" Akane whooped, gleefully jumping in the air. "Yes yes yes!"

"Looks like I owe you a drink, Ryu," Mousse commented, a smirk on his
lips.

Ryu grinned right back. "These Nerima girls are a strange breed, that's
for sure."

Then the two girls exchanged high fives, and Ukyou pointed at the lost
boy and laughed triumphantly. "How do ya like that, huh? Thought we
couldn't do it, didn'tya?!"

The other guys looked to India Squad's leader for a response.

"Don't act like you have anything to celebrate," Ryouga said, and faced
the two of them, crossing his arms defiantly. "If you really want to
learn from us, I'll make you pay for it... by making every day worse
until you leave. Kuno!"

Said Blue Thunder had sat silently during the proceedings, his sword
laid out over his lap and crossed legs. Aside from the tissue paper
stuffed up his bloody nose, he managed to strike a dignified pose. Dark
eyes stared up as Kuno jammed his blade into the floor.

"You need not even ask. As a generous and kind soul, of course I shall
help those in need. Leave Akane Tendo's training to me!" He then laughed
manically, losing whatever credibility he may have once had. Amazingly,
he seemed completely oblivious to the biting looks he was on the
receiving end of.

"Kuno," Ryouga said again, with a familiarity that came from working,
training, and giving orders to the slightly older fighter many times
over the last month. "I want you to train with Ukyou."

"What?!" "Me, train with that Jackass?!"

...came the predictable replies.

"Really... you two have a good deal in common," the lost boy said, and
hastily amended it with, "In terms of your fighting style. Ukyou, you
don't fight like I do, and you don't fight like Ryu does. And unlike
Mousse, your specialized style revolves around a singular weapon. You
won't learn more from Kuno, but you'll develop more by learning with
him, especially since you're both at around the same level of ability.
If the both of you improve from this arrangement, then my squad is
stronger for it, which is all I really care about."

Ukyou and Kuno stared daggers at each other, and both seemed about to
object.

"If you want to leave, Ukyou, you're welcome to at any time," Ryouga
added. "You aren't India Squad, after all. You're just a guest here."

And at that, he left the distinction between them unspoken, but obvious.
Kuno would have to do what he was asked to, and it seemed like he
realized that fact. A sour look crossed his face, but he sighed and
accepted it. Ukyou, however, didn't have to listen. She could just walk
away.

"Hey, Ryouga... since when did you start throwing around statements like
that, huh?" Ukyou asked. "And when did you adopt this smarmy sensei
attitude?"

Mousse chuckled at that, but she ignored him.

"Ever since I found my road to follow," he answered; another unusually
cryptic response from a guy she had always thought as very
straightforward. As Ukyou stared at him, she knew what it was. This was
the old him, the one driven by anger and revenge, and unburdened by the
complications of romantic interest. Somehow, he hadn't just gotten over
his doomed love for Akane; he had banished it entirely from his mind.
This was the him she could have met more than two years ago, before
either found their way to Nerima.

When it came to Akane, to the girl he claimed to love, he had always
been indecisive. He had called it his 'heart of glass' - so afraid was
he of rejection, yet so afraid of being alone after having tasted the
ambrosia of affection, that it had paralyzed their schemes to get their
respective crushes. All the time Ukyou had known him, she had never
bothered with the side of him that dealt with his dispute with Ranma,
focusing instead on the him that could win over Akane for her. It
seemed, now more than ever, that the fighter and the lover were two very
different creatures within the lost boy.

Staring into the eyes of the fighter, she felt that part of herself rise
up in challenge.

And, suddenly, she felt the impulse to fight him. Her hands grew sweaty
as she clenched them, and that primal vicious hunger within her soul
that was the nucleus of her fighting spirit began to resonate. It was
something she hadn't felt since her duel with Tako. Just being in the
room with him, with the other boys of India Squad, Ukyou felt a surge of
aggression and excitement that, in a different place and time, would
have probably forced a blush to her cheeks.

"India Squad isn't Juliet Squad," he said, as if sensing her churning
ki. No: he did see it. And he felt it; too, resonate more and more with
his own. "Am I right?"

Ryu's own spiritual pressure was more restrained, but promised the same
level of carnage. "Don't think you'll last long here if you aren't
willing to fight with all you've got. When we hammer down a nail, it
never sticks back up!"

"You took the words right out of my mouth," Mousse said, tucking his
hands into his sleeves; a walking arsenal of weaponry.

"They are as unrefined as ronin can be," Kuno spoke up, resting his
sword on his shoulder. "Nonetheless... this is a group worthy of having
the Blue Thunder as a member."

"Alright, Hibiki," Ukyou reigned in her fighting instinct. She'd
definitely take a crack at the lost boy, but not just yet. She'd wait
till she had some surprises for him first. "I'll use you guys as my
warm-up."

The guys all laughed at that, giving her cockiness a measure of
approval.

"Well," Akane interrupted, shaking her head sadly but still cracking her
knuckles. "The testosterone in here is such thick enough to cut with a
knife. But who should I work with, Ryouga-kun?"

"Mousse and Kuno's styles don't really suit you, and I don't have any
boulders to pound you with, so..." Ryouga swept his hand towards the
only guy left. "Until you've found your spiritual presence, I don't
think Ryu will mind passing on one or two Yamasenken techniques."

"Reformed Yamasenken... actually," Ryu corrected, staring down the
youngest Tendo daughter. "I'll see what I can do with her. It'll be good
practice for when I found the new Kumon Dojo."

"That's a funny coincidence..." Akane wasn't faced by the intimidating
young man; she smirked right back at him. "I was about to say this'll be
good practice for when I inherit the Tendo Dojo."

While the two girls got acquainted with their new training partners,
Mousse walked over to where Ryouga stood, watching over the room. They
were the core of India Squad, since they had known each other the
longest, and worked together the most often. The two stood in silence
for a few seconds, side by side.

"Ranma won't be too happy," Mousse said, speaking quietly. "About Akane
getting involved, I mean."

"I didn't recommend her either, at first. But that was before..." Ryouga
trailed off, and didn't finish his sentence. Mousse knew what he meant.
He hadn't recommended Akane then because it was before he'd been cursed
of his Jyusenkyou curse, and because he'd wanted to protect her. Now,
looking at her, he saw another potential soldier. No: Ranma would not be
happy with that.

"She was already walking down this road," he said, starting up a
different sentence. "She had already made up her mind. If Ranma wants to
stop her, let him suffer for it."

"And if she dies? That girl, who you loved so much it hurt, so much you
would die for her..." Mousse asked, tentatively, "Could you order her to
her death, Special Lieutenant Ryouga Hibiki?"

On the far side of the room from them, Akane poked Ryu boldly in the
chest as she made some confident proclamation. The object of her
attention laughed, and pointed to his arm. Most likely, they were
talking about the Kijin Raishu Dan - the signature vacuum blades of the
Yamasenken style.

Ryouga sighed softly and closed his eyes.

"You know, Mousse, you'll never be very popular, asking those kinds of
questions."

"Maybe. But someone has to."

...

-----

"When someone is able to fight and willing to fight and accepted into
this organization... that person becomes a soldier, and the act of
tossing aside the title of civilian forfeits any claims for special
treatment or protection from harm. Sometimes, that means they die."

-----

Ranma's fingers paused over the keyboard.

"Ten minutes, Ranma!" a voice called from his room.

"I know!" he called back. It wasn't like he couldn't hear that the movie
hadn't started yet. What was it about girls that left them inclined to
point out the obvious, anyway? It was definitely one of that uncute
tomboy's less endearing traits.

And now she'd ruined his train of thought!

His mouse pointer hovered over his last sentence, and he reread it
again. It was annoying enough having to write mission reports, but
having to do written ones was even worse. He'd never been a great
student, and his patience for expressing his opinions on paper was
exceedingly limited. At least he wasn't being graded, at least as far as
he knew. He just passed on the completed assignment to his mentor, and
then defended his statements in their next face to face meeting. That
part at least was kinda fun, but the initial research and composition
was a total pain in the ass.

It didn't help that he was distracted by a half dozen other things.

Switching over to his email client, he saw one of them.

-----

From: SLt. Hibiki Ryouga [mailto: rhibiki@unetco.org]
Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2006, 15:32
To: SLt. Saotome Ranma [mailto: rsaotome@unetco.org]
Subject: Ukyou and Akane

I know this isn't what you wanted to hear, but you deserve to know.

Earlier today, both Ukyou and Akane came to me asking for help training.
I tried to rebuff them, but they were persistent. It has come to my
attention that Akane is trying to independently get certification to
enlist in UNETCO. I don't know why. If she passes all the prerequisite
levels of handling and certification, and the preliminary training (I do
not doubt that she will), then all she will need is one written
recommendation, and two unsolicited recommendations from among the base
officers.

If you want to prevent her from joining UNETCO as an active duty
soldier, you will have to personally convince her to stop. For what it
is worth, I will not write her a written recommendation, but if I am
approached for an unsolicited evaluation of her, I will answer all
questions honestly and without bias.

See you at the PsiLab tomorrow and good luck with your written report.

-Ryouga

-----

It happened to be the same problem waiting in his room and eating his
popcorn.

For some reason, despite all the worry and trouble she caused, he smiled
at the thought of her. And that was the problem, really. He didn't know
why he liked Akane, not really, but he knew he didn't want her put in
harm's way. From the beginning, he and Ryouga had been in agreement
about keeping her as far underground and as far from the aliens as
possible. Hell, Ranma had wanted to keep all the girls out of danger,
but then the lost boy had gone and written up his own evaluation of how
useful they could be.

Now it seemed Ryouga couldn't be counted on at all to protect Akane from
her own pigheadedness. Technically, Ranma knew that the lost boy had
'forgotten' his time with Akane as P-chan, and subsequently his
infatuation with her, and that that was the likely reason for this
change. Still, he was more than a little disappointed, both in his rival
and friend and in Akane herself.

Really: what was she thinking?!

Stupid, stupid, stupid macho chick!

Ranma had known about most of Akane's activities already thanks to Mr.
Tendo, but by the way Ryouga had phrased it she was very close to being
able to apply. He could try and cite her as being unfit to serve in a
letter to the Commander, but without Ryouga to back him up, it would
reek so much of bias that it wouldn't do any good at all. UNETCO had no
problem with any female soldier who could fulfill the physical and
psychological tests, so it wasn't even as if he could argue that she
wasn't emotionally unprepared for fighting. Chances are that she was
prepared, and that she would pass all the prelims.

It was true: the only option he had left was to talk to her and convince
her not to try and sign up. The thought of that made him want to crawl
out of his skin. Akane was as stubborn as a mule and twice as likely to
kick someone who she found annoying. At least in his experience. Any
normal girl would have been happy that he was protecting her, but not
Akane, oh no of course not!

"There's no way I'm going to finish this now," he said with a defeatist
groan, and minimized the visible programs after saving his document.
He'd have to come back to it later before he went to sleep.

"There you are," Akane remarked as he entered the small bedroom he had
in his quarters. She was fully clothed, of course, but her being there
still caused his heart to miss a beat. Before coming here, all his
physical experiences with her had either been violent, or slowly
building towards romantic only to be interrupted by fiances or parents
or rivals or just random nonsense. Finally, after a year of tension,
they had taken the chance to follow through, and the thought of it still
filled his stomach with butterflies.

And just like that, he found himself in uncharted territory.

Nothing in his past experience had given him training on what to do
after you started to act ... more than friendly towards a girl. He'd
never even worried about it before, what with all the craziness and the
repeated female related poundings. He wasn't sure what was comfortable
now, and what crossed the line. What was he supposed to do now with her?
Marriage was what his pops and Mr. Tendo wanted, but that still seemed
kind of far off in his mind.

'Man, watching casual relationships on TV was a lot easier than being in
one!'

He fell back on his bed, and watched Akane carefully as he inched a
little closer to her to keep from slipping off the side. Sure enough,
she'd started chipping away at the popcorn he'd microwaved (no way he'd
let Akane make it; she'd find some way to mess it up like burning it to
a crisp), and as he innocently reached over for a handful, he wondered
if she would give him the 'are you trying to touch me you pervert?!'
look. Maybe he'd just been looking for the worst, because she didn't
even give it a second glance.

He suspected he could get away with more than usual with her, now, but
how much... he still couldn't be sure. Still, uncute tomboy that she
was, she didn't look bad there, her back against the wall by the head of
his bed. Why did she have to make his life harder by getting involved in
this mess? Why did she want to put her life on the line when he was
already taking care of things? Giving up on finding rational answers for
an irrational girl's conundrums, he took his spare pillow, folded it in
over itself, and used it to prop up his head in the direction of the TV
screen.

There were still a few minutes before the movie started.

"What were you working on back there?" Akane asked, as she put the
popcorn down between them. "It's still strange seeing you working so
hard on stuff like this."

"Feh!" he huffed. "I'll do work when there's a good reason to. And it's
an ethics paper for my officer training."

Akane probed for a few more details. "You finished with it?"

"Just about," Ranma replied, not quite seeing why she'd care. Still, he
did have something to bring up, to test the waters of so to speak,
before the movie began.

"Hey," he asked, quickly. "I heard you and Ukyou dropped by on Ryouga
and his group."

Akane wrapped her arms around her legs, and when she replied it was a
little defensively. "Ukyou just wanted some help for her duel with
Konatsu. I just stuck around for some pointers."

As always, a barb of a comment was the first thought that entered his
mind, but he managed to control his foot-in-mouth disease and didn't
blurt out anything he'd later regret. Akane could use the help, but
reminding her of that fact was a rarely appreciated piece of insight.
He'd had more than enough lumps on his head to prove that.

In the absence of a Ranma Remark (tm) Akane continued, "You know, she
doesn't say it, but I think Ukyou's really worried about this fight. She
wants to get better, you know?"

"It's only natural for a martial artist to want to be stronger," Ranma
answered, the same mantra his father had instilled in him a decade or
more ago.

"Not just that," Akane pressed. "She doesn't want you guys to think she
isn't useful. She's fighting for her pride. She's trying hard to get
better because she doesn't want you to think she's holding you back, or
that you picking her was the wrong decision."

"Oh? Some people have complex motivations, don't they? I don't think any
of the guys here are like that," Ranma observed, missing any sort of
parallels or allegory that Akane may or may not have been trying to
present. As if to show her displeasure with his powers of miss-
observation, Akane sighed and gently tapped him on the head.

"Baka."

"Whatever..." he grunted. "This whole thing is just a lot of trouble, if
you ask me."

"Do you think she has a chance, Ranma?" Akane asked, and he saw one of
her legs slip under the covers to his right. "Ukyou I mean?"

"Of beating Konatsu? I wonder..." He crossed his arms as he thought.
"No, probably not."

"Not even a small chance?" Akane seemed to really care about the topic,
and he wasn't sure why. The two girls weren't good friends or anything,
and they squabbled often enough, at least when they weren't working
together against a common enemy.

"I know Konatsu's fighting potential better than anyone," Ranma
explained, watching the TV screen and the parade of previews. "He isn't
very strong, but he's fast, and pretty skilled. Kinda like Mousse. Plus,
he'd got a buncha ninja tricks. When I fought him, I thought he was a
girl, which meant I couldn't just hit him straight on."

Ranma remembered, then, when Akane (replete in her near invincible
battle dougi, and beating him up with it while insulting him) had
proclaimed, 'If you hit me even once, I'll never be able to forgive
you!' It was a memory he hated to remember. If she had been fighting a
real opponent, like Pantyhose Taro, she'd have been in for a real
surprise. It was another reason why he didn't think Akane belonged on a
battle field. She didn't want to fight... she wanted to win, and she
would rely on an advantage that would inflate her abilities
artificially. In a life or death fight, that kind of false sense of
security would be suicidal.

He quickly put that memory aside.

"Now, if I'd known he was a guy, I'd have had less trouble. But he had a
handicap then, too. Normally, as a ninja, he'd have a lot of equipment
and weapons, but since he'd pawned those things for food to survive he
had to rely on hand to hand... which isn't his specialty. This time,
he'll be able to take whatever kinda stuff he wants to the fight."

"Really," he summarized, sounding somewhat weary of the while deal.
"Konatsu's pretty dangerous if he goes all out. He'd give Mousse one
hell of a fight. So... no... as Ucchan is now, she doesn't have a chance
of beating him."

Akane made a sad little sigh at that bit of news, and he looked just
over his shoulder at her. He was on the verge of asking why she was so
interested when the movie finally started up, a booming sound
introducing the assorted production companies involved in its making.
Gradually, the two settled in to watch. Whatever problems that still had
to be dealt with could be put off.

At least for a few hours.

-----

Central Japan in mid November was not particularly warm, especially at
night. It was a fact easily driven home when your best friend kept the
car window down a crack to 'enjoy the fresh air.' As if they hadn't
gotten enough of that during the last few hours outside.

Hiroshi tried to shield his face as a particularly strong gust of wind
blew in.

"Man, close the window already, would ya?"

"You're such a pussy, Hiro." The boy on the opposite side of the car,
riding shotgun, went by the name Daisuke. They'd been best friends since
elementary school, and they were both veterans of Furinkan. In the end,
they'd even planned to attend the same college. That long friendship,
however, did not keep Daisuke's quirks from getting any less annoying
over the years.

A laugh from the back came from a new friend they'd made when visiting
their new university. He went by the name of Ichiro. He was a year
older, and coming out here into the countryside had been his idea. He
and a bunch of guys from the dormitory had found a new disk golf course,
and they'd decided to take the day off and give it a go before the
weekend got started.

Hiroshi blinked a few times, clearing his vision. As the designated
driver, he'd kept himself down to only two drinks, so he wasn't as
giggly pasty as Daisuke got, but he was feeling a little tired. The road
they were on was long and lonely, without another motorist in sight.
Belatedly, he wished he'd chosen rock instead of paper, and then one of
the other guys could have ended up handling the drive home.

"Turn up the music. Let's hear some tuuunnnneeess...."

"I could go for some better music myself," Hiroshi agreed with the
somewhat slurred collegiate in the back. "There isn't shit on the
radio."

"Dai! Check the CDs in the glove compartment," Ichiro's said as he
leaned forward enough to stick his head between the front two seats.
Hiroshi rolled his eyes. Great. The idiot didn't have his belt on or
anything.

"Right. Let me see here..." Daisuke started to rummage around in said
compartment, pushing aside handfuls of crumpled paper marked by MapQuest
and Yahoo to find a black CD case. Hiroshi kept his eyes on the road.
Just his luck, some animal would jump out and crash into them. As his
friend flipped through the plastic pages, Hiroshi's eyes strayed to the
long row of trees that flanked the road on both sides. It had gotten
strangely dark all of a sudden, and he found that had to rely on the
little yellow glowy things in the middle of the road.

"Why is there so much J-Pop on here? Is this the Love Hina soundtrack?"

"Just pick something!" Ichiro finally leaned back. "We're gonna lose
this station in a minute anyway."

Sure enough, the station was starting to lose reception. Without moving
his hands from the wheel, Hiroshi used his thumb to try and change it.
Ichiro had a nice car, that was for sure, and the ability to switch
around the preset radio stations and even toggle the Nav System from the
wheel itself was pretty cool. The next station, too, was garbled.

"Here we go! Some classic early 90s!" Daisuke slipped a CD into the slot
just under the manual radio controls, and a second later music started
to play. They got about halfway into the first song, when the CD started
to skip.

"Did you scratch the disk, Dai?"

"No way, man! Maybe you CD burner nicked it?"

Staring up at the moon, high in the night sky, an inexplicable chill ran
down Hiroshi's spine. He pressed down harder on the gas, picking up
speed. He was already more than thirty kilometers over the speed limit
before he realized what he was doing, and a second later, he realized
that he didn't care. There weren't any cops around, and something in the
recesses of his soul was crying out to go faster.

"Hey, man, ease up..." Daisuke started to say, and the car did begin to
go more slowly. "Hiroshi? Yo, Hiro?"

"What's going on?" Ichiro asked, poking his head forward again. "What's
the problem?"

"Something's wrong with the gas," Hiroshi replied, after tapping the
pedal a few times to make sure. "It just... it just stopped."

As the car drifted, bit by bit, towards an eventual stop, the CD player
skipped one last time, and faded out as it lost power. A few seconds
later, the car battery must have died, because the lights went out and
the digital clock stopped and then disappeared entirely. Plunged into
darkness, the three boys cursed and fumbled around for the emergency
flashlights.

Daisuke was remarkably prepared, having a little pen sized light on his
keychain. Twisting it on, it provided a meager bit of illumination that
the three clung to like moths. With it, it wasn't hard to retrieve the
second larger flashlight in the back, behind the driver's seat. Ichiro
took that one, and he quickly opened the back door and left the car.

"Hey, wait!" Daisuke followed, and Hiroshi cursed loudly as he lost
sight of much of anything. The dashboard was lifeless, but he could
still see at least outlines and some details, thanks to the star strewn
sky. Unlike in the city, there was no light pollution out here, plus the
sky was cloud free; you could easily pick out the dimples on the moon.

Beams of light flashed by, as Ichiro and Daisuke went around to check on
the car's engine. Hiroshi popped the hood, and waited. He didn't know
about their older friend, but Daisuke didn't know jack about how to fix
a car, or replace a battery, or whatever. Reaching into his pants
pocket, he pulled out his trusty cell phone, surprised neither of the
other two guys had thought to check theirs. He could just call...

No one, it seemed, because the battery was dead.

"Fuck!" Ichiro cursed from outside. "Damn cell's dead!"

"Same here!" Daisuke finally got to checking his. The hood of the car
lifted up, and the lights mostly disappeared. Not liking just sitting
there, Hiroshi also left the car to see what was going on with the
engine. Sure enough, neither Ichiro nor Daisuke knew what to do, and
they spent a few minutes alternating between offering guesses as to what
had happened, to just looking around inside the guts of the crippled
vehicle. Hiroshi, however, spent his time watching the woods.

Around then, Ichiro's flashlight started to fade.

"Oh fuck... oh fuck...!" Ichiro's mouth ran, as he shook the light
waving what was left of it across the infinite expanse of the night sky.
"What the fuck are we..."

As Ichiro's light faded, and Daisuke's stated to suffer the same fate, a
reciprocal light began to grow in the distance, behind the trees. It
started as little more than a twinkle, or a will o' the wisp, that
barely caught Hiroshi's eyes. A cold terror began to rise in his throat,
stealing his breath, as the light grew brighter... and closer.

"Guys!" Hiroshi gasped. "Guys! GUYS! Look!"

Ichiro and Daisuke turned, slowly, from the car to the illumination
coming from the forest. Dai started to say 'helicopter' but the word
scarcely left his mouth, as the light rose up above the tree line. It
was bright, but more like the moon than like the sun, and it seemed
round and seamless as it slowly rose up into the air. In that instant,
the forest was as quiet as a tomb.

Soundlessly, save for the near heart attack it caused, it projected a
line of light down into the forest. Hiroshi felt the impulse to run, and
he started to move his feet, when the light swung around - so fast, too
fast! - and enveloped him and the two others. His legs seized up and
froze, like a deer caught in the headlights of a car.

He heard a voice, then, and felt a hand close around his heart.

And then, suddenly, the entire sky filled with light and the headlights
wavered and dimmed. Blinking hard, Hiroshi saw the bright light in the
sky, but where it had once been a perfect and homogeneous glowing orb,
half of it was orange and sore like a molten ingot of steel. There was
no preamble before another flash filled the world, and Hiroshi nearly
lost his footing as a blast of heat made him wince.

The headlights were gone, then, and he watched mouth agape as something
saucer shaped wobbled in midair, billowing vapor and trying desperately
to maintain position. He glanced over to Daisuke and Ichiro, to make
sure they were still there, still seeing this... this event. Then he
went back to staring at the formerly flying saucer, now more like a
broken and blasted Frisbee. With a whine, it tilted and fell from the
sky.

When it crashed, Hiroshi could just feel the vibration beneath his feet.

"Holy... SHIT!"

Another whine came in over their heads, much closer, as another flying
saucer passed overhead. This one, however, seemed different. It didn't
bother hanging ominously, instead preferring to lower in a decidedly
hasty fashion. Four landing struts folded out, and in only a few seconds
it was on the ground. There was a light underneath it, and tall black
shapes appeared, one by one.

What ultimately came into sight sure as hell wasn't the lanky Hollywood
caricature of an alien. He was, after all, a healthy Japanese male of
college age. As they got closer, and the movements and mannerisms became
more obvious, he knew what he was seeing.

"Spartans!"

"Replica soldiers!"

"Space Marines!"

The three gave each other a look like 'what?' and then turned their
attention back to the obviously (probably) humans heading in their
direction. There were four heading out in the direction the other flying
saucer had crashed, and they were wearing bulky suits, larger than the
sort the Master Chief Spartan-117 sported in the HALO games. They were
all colored black, too, which made it hard to really judge details.

Two of the more lightly armored people headed in their direction, moving
at a quick jog. Unlike the first four, these looked a bit more like the
Master Chief, at least in the fact that their body suit - or armor -
seemed mostly form fitting. When they got close, the voice of one of
them suddenly became audible in mid sentence.

"... on our way!"

"Geez, securing civilians?" The other one, a woman by her voice, slowed
her pace as she got within a couple meters of the three college boys.
And what was that on her back? "Why does Echo Squad get all the fun?"

"Look up 'chain of command' when you get the chance. Well, I'll be, look
at this..." The taller one, the male, propped his rifle up against his
shoulder and held out his other hand as he approached. "Sorry guys, but
I'm gonna have to ask you follow me."

Hiroshi, still more than a little overwhelmed by what had just happened
over the last few minutes, was about to comply when Daisuke gasped and
snapped his fingers. The normally inconspicuous dark haired young man
pointed right at the tall armored soldier.

"Ranma! I'd recognize that voice anywhere!" Daisuke proclaimed, and then
pointed less assuredly at the other one. "And you've just gotta be
Ukyou. That giant spatula is a dead giveaway!"

The two black armored soldiers faced each other briefly then returned to
the three civilians.

"Life is full of crazy coincidences. This way!" Ranma pointed back to
the landed saucer with his thumb. In the distance, something exploded,
and the sound of... some kind of weapons fire could be heard.

"I mean NOW! Move Move Move!" He and the other trooper, probably Ukyou
though she hadn't spoken again since that one time, roughly herded the
three guys away from the road, keeping their heads low. As they got
close to the ship, Hiroshi took the opportunity to stare in gaping awe
at the freaking coolness that suddenly surrounded him. With the three of
them sheltered next to the saucer, the two soldiers suddenly stood
ramrod straight.

"Shit!" Ranma snarled. "Runners! Ukyou..."

"Leave it to me!" The female soldier replied, and took off in a burst of
speed back for the road. Reaching it faster than almost any normal human
sprinter, she took cover behind the crippled car Hiroshi had driven into
this mess with. With a straight arm, Ranma pushed them back further,
next to some sort of treaded robot tank that was half in and half out of
the bushes.

It all seemed to be happening so quickly, Hiroshi couldn't follow what
was going on, and felt a strange sense of distorted time. The sound of
gun fire came from somewhere behind them, maybe a mile or so away, along
with a different sort of sound. Then came the unmistakable sound of a
tree falling in the woods (at least when someone was around to hear it).

Maybe one tense minute later, Ukyou jumped up from behind the car, and
fired at something. An inhuman wail, like a flayed cat, filled the air.
She quickly ducked back under cover, and rolled away, as some sort of
green thing streaked through the air, leaving a faint afterglow in the
atmosphere. One shot hit the ground, and blasted a crater into the
asphalt. Another just barely avoided hitting the car, and instead went
over it to completely incinerate the trunk of a tree.

Switching neatly from her rifle to her giant battle spatula, Ukyou spun
as she rose from a crouch. Something seemed to hit the trees off the
side of the road with a rustle, and a second alter a small grey form
came flying through the air, arms flailing. Ukyou pushed both her arms
forward, weapon in hand, to meet the oncoming target. Passing by her
silhouette the flying body cleaved neatly in two before hitting the
ground behind her.

Shaking the gore from her weapon, she walked just out of sight.

A second later, another gunshot rang out.

"Confirmed," Ranma said, speaking into some sort of helmet microphone.
"Area is clear. Will remain on site until further orders."

"This is so awesome!" Daisuke crooned. "Sooo awesome!"

"Thank the gods my car wasn't hit..." Ichiro cried, tears streaking his
cheeks.

"Ranma," Hiroshi started to ask, though he didn't know quite where to
begin. 'How's it been, what're you up to?' seemed a little insufficient
at the moment.

"I'm really sorry, guys," Ranma interrupted, picking something out from
a pocket on his uniform, or armor, or whatever it was. "We should be in
the clear now, so... well, I'll see ya when I see ya."

Hiroshi was about to ask what he meant by that, when the armored form of
the boy he had known back in Furinkan High School lifted up and aimed a
small aerosol spray. Two little squirts and everything went black.

When he awoke, hours later, he would drive back to the dorm with the
other guys and remark how lucky they were that they hadn't gotten into
an accident when he fell asleep at the wheel. He would swear off
drinking, even a little, when he had to drive, and Hiroshi would go on
with his life without looking up at the stars and wondering how close he
had come to the unspeakable.

Ranma went back, filed his report, got some sleep, and trained for the
next time. This mission in particular would stick out, though, not just
because they'd been able to arrive and strike before anyone had gotten
hurt, but because they had saved people he knew. It was just a shame
that it had to remain a secret. Still, he figured his old classmates
would learn the truth soon enough...

It would make a great story for their five year high school reunion!

-----

That following morning, only a few miles from where Hiroshi and his
friends had been saved, the remains of a small campfire smoldered. Two
people stood nearby, one on a cell phone, and the other finishing
cleaning up the area. Similarly, two large backpacks rested against the
thick trunk of a tree.

"Yes. Very well. I'll take care of it..."

The taller one of the two, a trim man wearing a long navy blue traveling
coat, closed his phone and slipped it into his inner breast pocket. As
he pivoted, to look over to his side, he adjusted his clothes - a plain
western style shirt with an unbuttoned collar. Black hair hung over his
face, the same color as the short beard that framed his jaw, partly
obscuring his green eyes.

"Was that your friend, dear?"

The woman was more petite, over a foot shorter than her six foot two
inch tall husband. Her similarly black hair was folded back on itself to
keep it from dangling past her shoulders. She wore a long khaki colored
drill jacket that reached down to just below her knees, and up to her
wrists. Beneath that, she wore a white hadajuban undershirt, and over it
a black sash around her waist. Unlike with the man's boots, she sported
a black jika-tabi over her feet and lower legs, as well as waraji for
footwear.

Her brown eyes strayed to the two massive backpacks nearby, and with one
arm and no visible effort, she picked one up and tossed it in the man's
direction. He picked it out from midair with one hand, and lazily slid
it down his arm and over his shoulder. A second later, she picked the
other bag up and did the same.

"We missed the party," Tetsuya Hibiki said, and grinned without a hint
of aggravation, showing off two overdeveloped canine teeth. "Oh well!
Maybe next time, right?"

"If there is a next time, please tell your friend to give us a little
more advance warning," Mitsuko replied, obviously a little miffed that
they'd gone all this way for nothing. Still, as a Hibiki, she was used
to it. "Where should we head now? Kyoto? Fukuchiyama?"

"Osaka," her husband answered, and started to walk. "This way."

Mitsuko would have been more than a little shocked had she realized her
husband, the direct inheritor of the Hibiki directional curse, was
actually heading in a direct straight line for Osaka. Later, she would
chalk it up to good luck, and a fortunate twist of fate, that they got
where they were headed in record time.

But it was neither luck nor fortunate fate that was responsible.



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