Chapter 1 – Cold night out (part 1)
Keitaro's night started out with him comfortably sleeping in his warm bed but now he was freezing out in the streets where the lightskept flickering near the sidewalk. Tightening the coat around him Keitaro cursed under his breath. He was really going to wring Yokoshima's neck if he keeps him waiting any longer.
It was really late when Yokoshima called him asking to come to Tokyo needing his help with something. Keitaro wasn't able to ask anything more when Yokoshima suddenly cut the connection and he couldn't call him back.
So after sneaking out the Inn in the dead of the night Keitaro, now currently is freezing his ass off because of his friend.
Looking at his watch, it was already only a few minutes before midnight and Keitaro decided if Yokoshima wasn't going to show up anytime soon he was going back to his warm comfy bed and then beat the snot out of Yokoshima later when they meet.
Suddenly a bright light beamed at him from the side and then he saw Yokoshima riding a red motorcycle and looked quiet worn out. The young ghost sweeper was wearing a dark blue suit without the tie and his trademark red bandanna was actually not on him.
Keitaro was surprised that Yokoshima can actually look decent. The young GS then rushed to Keitaro's side panting and stopped for a second to try and catch his breath.
"Are you Okay?" Keitaro asked looking at the younger man. "You looked like you've seen a ghost." Keitaro joked and Yokoshima just glared at him pointedly.
"Okay, not funny…. Well are you going to tell me why you woke me up from my sweet sleep and let me freeze here?" Keitaro continued.
"Sorry, but I really need your help. The others are kinda busy and you're the only one who's near enough." Yokoshima breathed out and stood straight.
"Get on the bike we need to get to my place." Yokoshima jerked his thumb towards the bike's direction and Keitaro didn't move.
"Wait a minute; first tell me what you need my help for?" Keitaro asked. He knew Yokoshima's job was facing supernaturalentities and the likes and as far as he can remember he does not have any kind of abilities to combat such.
"I took a request from the G men and I kind of bit more than I can chew so I need back up." Yokoshima tried to explain and Keitaro was still not budging. "Tell me the whole story." Keitaro said seriously and Yokoshima sighed knowing that his friend won't help until he knew what he was going to be getting into.
"Fine, the G-men contacted me a week ago, there have been a rise of spiritual activity in Tokyo and the G-men were short on men after the whole Ashtaroth thing so they asked me to investigate. I found the reason after snooping around a bit. "
Yokoshima straightened his collar and sighed. "Remember that gigantic body Ashtaroth left after his defeat?" Keitaro nodded remembering the incident.
"Well the G-men couldn't find a way to destroy the body and so decided to seal it away with the help of the Gods and Demons. " Keitaro continued to listen and leaned on a street lamp.
"The thing is, even with all the high security. The body was stolen right under their noses and they didn't even now it was gone until now. A Cult group somehow managed to make a contract with some evil Demons and fallen Gods in order to acquire the body and now they are trying to revive the body and because the body is made out of pure spiritual energy various low level spirits are attracted to it like flies."
"Okay, this still doesn't explain why you contacted me, contact the G-men the other GS for crying out loud they're the one who knows how to deal with this!" Keitaro said. Living with dangerous girls Keitaro could handle but stopping world crisis problems was just too much.
"I would if I could." Yokoshima looked sober for a moment and Keitaro took note of that.
"When I was investigating the situation the group had already launched an attack on the G-men and other Ghost Sweepers. All of them even Mikami were captured and are being held somewhere in the base where the body is held." Yokoshima explained and Keitaro stared at his friend shaking. Keitaro took a deep breath and sighed.
"This is not going to be easy you know. If Ranma or Masataka were here it would probably be easier." Keitaro mentioned.
"So you're going to help me?" Yokoshima looked hopeful.
"What else can I do? But where are the guys?" Keitaro asked.
"Masataka's in the mountains on retreat or something with Ranma and I don't know how to contact them, Shinji's with his parents somewhere in the pacific testing another variation of Jet Alone." Yokoshima said.
"I guess it can't be helped. But I still don't know how I am of any help?" Keitaro asked. The only thing he knew he had was a sturdy constitution and that isn't good for anything else than a shield. Keitaro's face went pale realizing that.
"The hell you want to make me into a meat shield!" Keitaro grabbed Yokoshima by the collars and was now face to face with the younger man.
"Well the thought did cross my mind." Yokoshima confessed and Keitaro really wanted to wring the guy's neck. "Come on Keitaro I was just joking. You know how to handle guns right?" Yokoshima said and pulled a black berretta and handed it to Keitaro.
Keitaro took the gun and checked it, a custom grip with a modified barrel to insert a silencer. "Yeah I told you guys my grandfather trained me, aside from the whole endurance training he made sure I know how to use guns. It's something else to have a grandfather who was from the Special Forces." Keitaro said remembering all the drills his grandfather made him went through.
"But last I heard unless its silver bullets or rock salt in shells, guns don't work on spirits." Keitaro said.
"Well that my friend is not an ordinary gun." Yokoshima said in matter of factly way.
"You have ghost busting guns?" Keitaro was surprised.
"Hey I still run out of spiritual energy so it wouldn't hurt to be prepared you know." Yokoshima replied. "So can we go now?" The younger man said looking back and spotted specters flying towards them.
"Shit they found me!" Yokoshima said and formed his spiritual sword in his right hand. The sword was pretty much light that shaped like a sword.
Three specters were closing in fast, bony faces and hollow eyes they laughed manically as they glide the air. Yokoshima faced the fast approaching spirits and jumped into the air slicing at one of them. Yokoshima hit one on the arm and it screamed in pain and its hollow eyes glowed angrily.
The two other specters passed Yokoshima and headed straight for Keitaro.
"HAhahah, an easy kill it will be fun to see your head roll!" one of the specters laughed and extended its bony clawed hand aimed at Keitaro's head.
BANG
A shot rang in the air and the specter now sported a dandy hole in the forehead effectively stopping it in mid flight. "Guess a head shot doesn't work on ghosts." Keitaro said aiming the gun with both hands body bent low.
Even after so long out of combat or practice, Keitaro's body reflex never forgot the training his grandfather drilled into him.
"Aim for the eyes!" Yokoshima yelled and dodged a swipe from the specter he was fighting. Spinning his body and getting behind the spirit Yokoshima cleanly cut the spirit in half and successfully exorcized it.
Keitaro quickly took Yokoshima's advice and shot the other Specter in both eyes and it clutched its head in pain and dissolved in mid air. The one sporting the new hole in the head quickly realized that he was outnumbered and decided it best to run.
"It's getting away!" Yokoshima shouted.
"No it's not" Keitaro took aim and shot the specter several times and it started to fall,Yokoshima delivered the finishing blow with a quick slice.
Yokoshima breathed a sigh of relief and looked at Keitaro. "We need to get back to my place quickly."
"Okay, but you're giving me one of these for my birthday." Keitaro said waving the gun. It would be really handy to have an exorcizing gun.
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Yokoshima and Keitaro arrived at the Harbor and stopped in front of warehouse 13. It has been his base of operations since he quit Mikami and started working solo. The place was said to be bad luck by the man in charge of the harbor so he rented it out really cheap. It did not surprise Yokoshima to see that the place was actually haunted by a spirit. So after he had exorcized the spirit Yokoshima had managed to get a cheap place to do business and people tend to stay away from the place because of its reputation for bad luck.
Yokoshima walked towards the large double doors of the warehouse and instead of just a simple lock it actually had a state of the art combination lock and retinal scan.
"Isn't that a bit over the top?" Keitaro asked seeing the various protections the place had.
"Not really, I tend to collect really dangerous spiritual objects after every job and I need to keep them safe or else there's something bad will happen." Yokoshima replied.
When Yokoshima finished opening the doors he hit a switch and light spilled into the spacious building. There were various strange objects neatly placed on glass cases and stands. The items gave off strange eerie auras and Keitaro shivered from just looking.
Yokoshima then led Keitaro farther back wherewasa big red sofa placed in the corner and a blanket thrown over it that hinted Yokoshima uses it as a bed. There was a minifridge and a microwave a few feet to the right of the sofa and a TV in front. There was a makeshift office to the left where a computer and a few file cabinets placed around the desk the computer rested on. Keitaro walked towards the makeshift office and Yokoshima headed straight for a large cabinet with various digital locks and opened it.
Keitaro was looking at Yokoshima's desk and saw various garbage and ero books littered on it. Keitaro couldn't help laugh a bit thinking that something really just doesn't change.
Yokoshima walked up Keitaro carrying an ACR assault rifle with laser sight attachments. Yokoshima then tapped a panel and a case of small arms opened and the young ghost sweeper gestured to the weapons cache. "Help yourself" he said. Keitaro checked the guns and inspected the bullets seeing tiny markings carve on the bullets. He figured it was something that lets it hitghosts. Deciding on an old but reliable model, which was a modified M1911A1, he picked up the weapon and gauged the feeling and weight of the weapon in his hand.
The young ronin examined the gun and started to inspect it pulling out the clip and cocking the gun to release the bullet inside he checked the barrel and gave an experimental shot pulling the trigger.
"Needs a little cleaning but it'll do." Keitaro said and Yokoshima grinned at him from the side.
"You really look different when your holding weapons." The younger man said and then propped a large metallic case on his office desk spilling the garbage on the floor.
"This will probably be a lot more useful to you than me." Yokoshima and opened the case revealing a dark grey padded suit.
"An exosuit, how'd you get one of these?" Keitaro started to look through the content of the case and examined the suit.
"Multifibernano enforced armor and tactical grade camo capacity. This things military grade armor and I've seen older versions of it, the circuitry in this one is far more advanced and it seemed to be able to double the users strength" Keitaro looked to his friend with inquisitive eyes."This is not something you can easily get a hold of, how did you managed to get one?"
Yokoshima only shrugged and smiled at his older friend, "Let's just say I got friends in the R&D dept of the G-men and they sometimes give me first dibs on new toys."Yokoshima said and then pulled out the suit from the case and stretched it out a bit and then showed small carved runes along the suit. "These runes gives protection against spirit energy and they told me the suit also emits somekind of electro-whatever field that lets you survive a spirit blast and pretty much punch spirits. I don't really understand techno-know-how but all I know is that it works. I blasted it with a few of my monjouand it pretty much held." Yokoshima explained and threw the armor towards Keitaro.
"I guess we're wearing this for the mission" Keitaro said feeling better about the odds they had.
"Actually you're the only one wearing it, I only got that one." Yokoshima said and Keitaro eyed his friends like he just grew a second head.
"Hey look, don't worry, I may not look it but I'm a lot stronger than before, my spirit energy is more than enough to take on any hit we might face. Besides, I'm counting on you to actually finish this job. That's the real reason I called you, I trust you enough to finish what we start even if something happens to me." Yokoshima said in somber tone and before he knew it something hit his face and felt the sting of Keitao's hook to his face.
"Look, we're going to get trough this together in one piece I sure as hell am not going to let you die that easily now get ready we need to get this over with I have a class tomorrow." Keitaro said taking off his coat and getting ready to put on the suit.
Yokoshima just smiled and nodded.
The young GS then went behind the weapons locker he had opened earlier and came rolling out a large wooden crate and uncovered the top. He examined the explosive resting on a layer of foam and went to look at Keitaroto ask what he needed but saw something he hasn't for a long time from his friend.
Large gashes and scars littered his body and a few bullet scars were easily visible on him, although it wasn't prominent but Keitaro had a built body concealed under his baggy choice of apparel.
Among their group of friends Keitaro's history was a complete mystery to them, they knew he went around the world with his grandfather when he was younger but they didn't know what they did. What made them more curious is that when Keitaro was introduced unbelievable sights such as supernatural entities, giant mechanoids and superhuman martial feats, he took it in stride. He would only show a bit of surprise in his face and then tackle their problem like it was a simple as planning a barbecue.
Finished with equipping the prototype stealth suit, Keitaro faced his younger friend. Moving his arms around, turning and bending his body into different directions he tried to get a feel of the suit. The padded armor suit traced his form and didn't reflect much light, which helped with staying out of enemy sight.
He pushed a button on his wrist and instantly the suit shifted and a small monitor on the wrist showed "CAMO ON". Seeing nothing changed Keitaro looked at himself and saw nothing.
"I think the stealth functions busted." Keitaro said and leaned on the table then his arms started to shift in color and changedinto the tables color and admired the camouflage and then shook his hands and it returned to its basic grey color. He then tried something a little more challenging and dropped down the floor and instantly the suit shifted into the floors color and texture.
"This is good stuff Yokoshima, it's like the prototype my grandfather's friends was working on but he never got to solve the power problem."
"Well that prototype did cost a whopping 10mil dollars, so it better be useful." Yokoshima said.
"AH so that's what you meant as friends." Keitaro said.
"Hey there's one thing I learned from Mikami-san is that most things and people have a price." Yokoshima shrugged and returned to rummaging in the crate.
"Well it's pretty comfortable to say the least. So what do you got there?" He asked his friend and turned the camo function off.
Various explosives were lined on the table HE grenades, Flashbangs, Smoke and Chaff and other plastic explosives such as C4's. From under the foam lining
"Business must be booming." Keitaro stated looking at all the weapons.
"I learned a thing or two about making money from sticking around with Mikami, but my prices are much more reasonable so I get more customers." Yokoshima said.
"I get the thing where you need protection if you weaken your spiritual energy but this is I don't know a bit too much, is it even legal?" Keitaro asked.
"Hey Mikami has various guns and a bazooka in her office you know. Besides I'm a special member of the Occult G-men so the weapons are completely legal." Yokoshima said and looked a bit worried.
"Keitaro, I… this is going to be really dangerous and if you change your mind I understand if you don't want to go with me." Yokoshima said.
"Yokoshima, you just called me in the middle of the night disturbing my sleep and making me wait in the cold for a good hour. Then you told me about a demon god that's in the hands of a group of people who will use it to destroy the world and finally got attacked by killer ghost's."
"You know me once I take on a mission I carry on till the endand I love blowing shit up." Keitaro finished and Yokoshima smiled at his friend.
"I guess your right, which one do you want?" Yokoshima asked then tapped a panel under his desk and a whir sounded not too far from them which a hidden locker sprouted from the floor revealing high powered rifles and missile launcher.
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"This really bring back memories." Keitaro said in full gear. His head now sported a full cover mask with lenses for eyes. Hanging on his side attached to a thick strap was the ACR rifle now sporting a silencer on its end and the modified sidearm he had cleaned earlier was now safely strapped to his right thigh. Anyone who could see him now wouldn't even think that the menacing form before Yokoshima was the mild mannered Keitaro.
Yokoshima on the other hand wore something similar to what Keitaro had on but his had segmented ceramic armor and Kevlar weave. Yokoshima forgone any head protection and opted to wear his trademark red bandana but now a little longer. The young ghost sweeper opted for a light armor to ward off physical damage confident his own spiritual energy was enough to block demonic or spiritual attacks. .
"You really gotta tell me and the guys what kind of crazy childhood you had." Yokoshima said driving the boat they were on, he was going slowly as to not to alert the enemies and because of the thick mist hiding the base.
"Someday maybe." Keitaro said solemnly and then asked "So Ashtaroth's body is in that large base in the middle of Tokyo Bay?
"Yeah, the body was too big and too dangerous to be moved so the government just decided to build a base on top of the body to keep it secured." Yokoshima answered. "Gods, demons and a few G-men guard the place on rotation because of the immense danger that thing poses. A few GS comes by to check on it time to time."
"And because the place is like a fortress no one expected someone to actually try and take it over." Keitaro said.
"Not only that but the Gods and Demons in the base doesn't actually get along so all they needed to do was get them to fight among themselves and then take over."
"So the cult that took over the facility, what do you know about them?" Keitaro asked taking a binocular from a small pack strapped to his waist positioned on his lower back.
"Not much really, they just sorta came outta nowhere, but they were packing serious munitions and skilled soldiers, they managed to take down the G-men and subdue veteran Ghost sweepers pretty easily." Yokoshima said.
"All I know is that they call themselves Black Ram, it's unknown what they plan to do with the body but it's pretty much anything but good." Continued Yokoshima.
Keitaro was silent and spotted a shadow of something in the middle of the thick mist.
Keitaro motioned to his friends to cut the engine and the boat slowly drifted towards the massive structure. Keitaro scanned the docking area, and saw teams of guard marching in duo and were equipped with large caliber automatics.
There were also demons walking and flying around, which would be a lot tougher to handle.
"I'll go ahead to open a landing point, stay here and wait for my signal then come back me up." Keitaro said and quickly dove into the freezing water and swam under, away from the eyes of the guards.
The base had defenses for air and water incursions, but the sonar in the water were not designed to spot small objects in the water such as something as big as a person, basing it on that no one in their right mind would try and infiltrate the base solo.
Fifteen minutes past and Keitaro managed to find a blindspot on the platform and had scaled it up until the second level of the first structure. There were five platforms around the large dome and the design of the interconnecting pathways to each platform where made to form a pentagram to act as a seal.
Hanging on the ledge Keitaro listened on the light clacking of boots against the steel floors, louder and louder it got until the sound was right in front of him and he waited for them to pass him by. With enough distance he slowly pulled himself up the ledge and crouched. Knife drawn from a sheath on his chest. Without making noticeable noise Keitaro managed to close the distance between the two guards and himself.
Swift combination of movements and Keitaro had managed to grab one of the guards and ram his head on the railings effectively knocking him out. The other guard couldn't react fast enough and was easily grappled by Keitaro, and tossed over his shoulder and then swiftly locked into a headlock knife on the guards throat.
"What do you need Ashtaroth's body for." Keitaro said his voice muffled by the mask but audible enough to be understood in close proximity.
"Like I'm telling you." The man said and made a move for Keitaro's head but Keitaro quickly detached himself from the guard and drove a kick to the guards head and knocked him out.
"Might need to do the 'nut' trick grandpa always did." Keitaro said and scanned the area on where to store the unconscious occupants. Luckily finding a small cleaning storage room he dragged both guards into the room and secured their mouths with cloth and their hands and legs with zip ties. So far the more dangerous enemies are unaware of him yet. Thankful that the demonic guards stayed away from the human guarded area and the Gods kept to the sky, it was pretty easy to find gaps in surveillance and plan a route.
Going back to where he had climbed up, Keitaro flashed a flashlight into Yokoshima's direction and the young Ghost sweeper promptly dived in and followed the signal of his friend.
Wet and cold but still unnoticed the two insurgents followed the path they had memorized to a command post closest to their position. They needed where the group was keeping the captured GS's and G-men.
Up three flight of stairs and carefully crossing a hallway they arrived at their destination. Peeking inside, four guards were inside two manning the consoles and two on the back lounging as they shared a bag of chips.
Keitaro gestured to his friend with his finger of how many were inside and Yokoshima nodded in understanding.
Keitaro then knocked on metallic door and the two resting on the back of the consoles straightened up and picked up their weapons. They looked at each other the nodded in understanding. One of the guards went towards the door and the other readied his weapon trained from the back of his partner.
As the door swung open both guards where confused to not see anyone and then the first guard who opened the door move towards the entrance and poked his head out unable to see anyone. Turning his back towards the door he shrugged his shoulders and moved to close it when something flickered on the wall opposite the doorway and a hand lunged out for him effectively subduing him into a chokehold and another hand with a suppressor equipped handgun shotout and shot the surprised guard unable to fire his gun.
The two manning the consoles suddenly bolted from their seats going for their smallarms when a white pearl harmlessly rolled into the room with a kanji for bind appeared on it a white light bathed the room and the two console operators became unable to move white light bounding their limbs.
"That was exciting."
"Uhm did you just kill that guy?" Yokoshima asked, a little surprised Keitaro went for the kill so easily.
"What, no, I used your less lethal ammunitions, special tranq bullets, didn't you check your inventory?" Keitaro asked.
"Never did, had the guy who sold it to me hook me up with anything I might need. Guess he figured I needed something that 'doesn't' add to my work of spirit busting." Yokoshima shrugged.
"Well anyway, we need someone to talk to" Keitaro said and without paused pushed and released the man he held and shot him in the face, a cloud of blue shrouding his head and promply fell asleep.
"This, shoots knockout rounds." Keitaro waved his pistol infront of the bound operators. "Won't kill you but still hurts when I shoot you soooo…" Keitaro lazily aimed for the man nearest him, more accurately the crotch area.
"Which one of you wants to keep their ability of making babies?" The targeted man squirmed and the other whimpered.
A/N: Needed to fix the chronology of the story, the way I wrote the first piece kinda led to a dead end when they were already a group again at the start, the band is still going to be made but not the 'Hey-we-need-to-be-a-band-again-so-we-could-have-something-in-common' deal.
AAANNNNDDDD it's gonna be more action oriented, heavily implied metal gear references, im a fan.