Nabiki stumbled into the hospital in exhaustion and delayed shock. It was very early in the morning, and it had been a very long day; by now events were catching up with her. In her hand, she carried a copy of the video of that day's events. Her formal dress was reduced to ruffles and tatteres, her face like a white mask around two red and bloodshot pits, and her hair was a disaster. Unnoticed by her, tears slowly leaked out her eyes.
It had started with what was to be the day of her sister's wedding, but since then, it had descended into the stuff of nightmare. She recalled vividly teasing Akane as she helped her dress, laughing at her sister's embaressment over what a wedding night would involve. Even Ranma had admitted how beautiful Akane had been in her wedding gown. Nabiki had also made a great deal of money from the usual Nermia suspects peddling information about the event.
She had never in her wildest dreams imagined the disaster that would ensue. It had just been some harmless fun on her part. After all, everyone would have discovered the wedding on their own anyway, and by getting them to come as guests, she had believed that would place some limits on their behavior.
She had never been more wrong.
The images of Akane, Kasumi, Nodoka, and Ukyo being struck down by those filthy, animalistic bitches replayed again and again in her mind. May the souls of their murderers rot in the lowest levels of hell.
Only a few seconds after Cologne disappeared over the wall, Ranma had gathered a paralized Kasumi in his arms. Nabiki could see the terror in her remaining sister's eyes, she was not breathing on her own. She could not loose another sister! Quickly, she had stopped Ranma, and shown him how to breathe for Kasumi while he carried her; Kasumi's diaphram and lungs had apparently been paralyzed along with the rest of her. Ranma had then disappeared himself carrying Kasumi's limp form to the nearest hospital.
Then, Nabiki had been the only reponsible one left at the dojo. She had called the police. She had called a taxi to the hospital, and stuffed her crying father into it, Genma had fortunately decided to go along. She had been the one to deal with the guests, some of which were more troublesome than others. Kuno Tatewaki had, for once, acted with true nobility, and bowed to her argument that any vengence was clan Tendo and clan Saotome's to take. He had even been gracious enough to offer the aid of the Kuno estate. Nabiki had gratefully accepted, and said they would call if they needed any assistance. Despite the directionless idiot trying blaming Ranma for this tragedy, Nabiki had used the shame of Ryoga's dishonorable actions of using his pig form to sleep with Akane into forcing him to accept the same argument. Finally, she had sent Happosai (after his pretense of a few seconds of grief for the 'pretty ladies') bounding after the Kuno bitch who had the audacity to show up in a black wedding dress and crow at the deaths of her baby sister and Ukyo. God she hated that woman. She truely deserved whatever attention Happosai gave her.
Then she had to talk to the police for several hours. Fortunately, she had hired people to videotape the ceremony, and the camera was set up to make several copies simultaneously. Nabiki had anticipated selling copies of the video to the guests immediately after the ceremony. Now, those tapes were put to another use, in showing the police the events.
Nabiki had thrown up watching her sisters being killed and paralyzed again.
With the hard evidence on the tapes there would be no problem for their families from the authorities. In fact, the police had already put out what the Americans called an 'All Points Bulletin' on the amazons. Unfortunately, the officers said that by the time they arrived at the Nekohaughten, the store was deserted.
Then, perhaps worst of all, she had to deal with the coriners. The less she thought about that, the better.
After that the caterers, the photographers, the priest, the musicians, and everyone else hired for the wedding had to be paid and sent home.
Gods, she could barely think straight, she desperately needed a rest, and she still didn't even know yet if Kasumi was okay. The only thing keeping her going now was concern for her sister and a burning hatred toward the amazons. When she tried to close her eyes and rest for a moment in the taxi, the images recorded on the copy of the tape in her hand ran past her eyelids, making her desperate for something else to look at.
Finally reaching the reception area, she leaned against the desk. "Tendo Kasumi, please", she muttered at the desk clerk. "She should have been brought here yesterday."
The girl behind the desk looked at Nabiki with concern. "Miss, do you want to sit down a moment ? You're the other sister, right ? I've been told to expect you. Look, I'll call an orderly to help take you back to intensive care."
Nabiki was about to refuse when she found that she could not push herself vertical from leaning on the desk. "Yes, that would be helpful. Thank you."
In what seemed only a moment, an orderly was helping her walk down a seemingly endless set of white aneseptic corridors into a room filled with people and beeping equipment. To her ragged amusement, she noted distantly the mop and bucket being put to use around and underneath where her father was collapsed weeping by the hospital bed.
Drawing in her breath and steading herself, Nabiki focused on the bed and took a step forward. When she saw Kasumi's pale face, covered with the ventilator mask, things went dim. Suddenly, without knowing exactly what happened, she found herself half prone, apparently supported by a strong pair of arms.
"You fainted," commented Ranma, neutrally. Neither Ranma nor Nabiki paid attention when Genma rose from his seat, and after a shared glance with Soun, left the room.
Looking up at Ranma's face was almost frightening. Nabiki would likely have soiled herself if his focus had been directed at her. Ranma was still clad in his rent and bloody white tuxedo rental. His face was drawn and haggard, at least as pale and bloodshot as her own. Yet, boiling underneath it was a rage and hate so great Nabiki could have sworn his eyes were glowing.
Rallying a little, Nabiki made an almost normal comment. "You look awful Saotome. How's Kasumi?"
Ranma dismissed her comment. "So do you. Kasumi's asleep for now." Then, Ranma did turn his focus on her. Nabiki was right, she did nearly piss herself. "Where is Cologne?"
"Gone. The Neko Hanten was deserted. Almost certainly left for China." Nabiki grasped his arm, and prevented Ranma's sudden move toward the door. "Wait! Even you can't do this alone, against all the elders! Even if you can beat Cologne by yourself! You need my help, Saotome, and you're not leaving me out of this !"
Ranma focused on her again. This time Nabiki withstood his gaze a bit better. The thought of her own hate strengthened her. Neither knew it, but at that moment, their expressions looked remarkably similar. "How, and when," he demanded flatly.
"We will have vengeance, I promise that," Nabiki swore.
Ranma finally nodded, satisfied with something he saw in her face, then cocked an eyebrow, indicating he wanted her to continue.
"With this," Nabiki waved the 'wedding' tape in her hand. "Copies are already on their way to all the major news outlets. I'll parley the outrage from this into a meeting with our local Diet representative, and we can raise enough of a diplomatic stink to demand Cologne's head from the PRC. The amazons will refuse, of course ...", Nabiki stopped her tired babbling when she noticed her father's hand on her shoulder. Genma was similarly maneuvering his son toward the door and down the hall.
"Daddy ? What's going on?" was all the question Nabiki's fuddled mind could raise. Through her bewilderment, Nabiki noted that Soun had, somehow, ceased bawling as she and Ranma were herded into a room. The hospital chapel? What?
Somehow, Nabiki found herself, still in her ragged bridesmaid dress, standing in front of a priest, with Ranma in his bloody tuxedo at her side, muttering "I do" at the appropriate places in response to the western style vows.
Nabiki couldn't summon the will or energy to argue with her father when he had whispered "do this for me" in her ear, as he delivered her to the front of the altar. Dazedly, she wondered why Ranma was going along with this, especially when she saw how badly his hand was shaking when he put was was to have been Akane's ring on her finger. Given their fathers, she should have expected it, Nabiki supposed. There had just been just too many things to keep track of.
In the lounge outside the chapel, Nabiki saw to her surprise that the sun was rising outside the window. Finally, she shook off enough of her own shock to turn to her new husband, ignoring the fathers, the priest, and the various witnesses that had been rounded up, and opened her mouth. Whatever she had to saw must remain unknown, however, fate was not done with her yet this day and she was interrupted again.
"Saotome," a familiar voice oozed from the hallway. "I've found you. Now you will die for killing Shampoo."
Nabiki looked toward the stairway door, and hissed in hatred. There, framed by the light from a stairwell window behind him, stood the last of the accursed Amazons left in Japan. Mousse's arms were tucked into his sleeves, poised. Atypically, his glasses were actually on, and his gaze firmly and accurately fixed on Ranma.
"Before I kill you, I have a message from Cologne. If you survive to meet her again, it will be with all the elders together, and even you cannot prevail against them all. One way or another, we will have our vengeance. Now die!"
Mousse sprang across the room, pulling a pair of sabers from his sleeves. He had barely cleared the weapons, however, when his throat met Ranma's fist, crushing Mousse's larynx, and snapping his head back with a sickening pop. No one there had even seen Ranma move.
Ranma watched coldly, fist still extended, as Mousse collapsed to the ground. Nabiki nodded in her own cold approval, and caught Mousse's eyes just before the life went out of them. "Die, you asshole, and join your bitch in hell," she hissed.
Nabiki was satisfied to see that there was a hospital security camera which, hopefully, filmed the entire episode. Between that and the witnesses, there would be no problem with the police over this episode. Mouse had obviously attacked with fatal intent first. Looking back at the recently living pile of worthless meat, Nabiki felt herself growing unaccountably warm between her legs. Vaguely, she recalled reading how death could sometimes effect people that way.
She shrugged, dismissing the reasons as unimportant, and decided to take some advantage of being married. Reaching up to a still coldly glaring Ranma, she turned him toward her, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him. After a moment, Ranma started responding, both to the kiss, and Nabiki could feel, in other ways.
Breaking the kiss, Nabiki whispered a little breathlessly, "Husband, take me home. Now."
Ranma picked her up, Nabiki's arms still around his neck, and the two of them disappeared through the open window.
Ranma slipped into the small clearing in the trees on the mountainside where Nabiki had established their camp this time. He smiled to see that their Chinese liaison team had caught up to them. Who'd have thought that Nabiki could have gotten fit enough to keep up to him, carrying that much gear, in just 8 months? Of course he hadn't been going all out, but still.
Reaching the center of the clearing, Ranma ducked under the small camo drop cloth propped up to contain any light, dropped the Umisenken with a soft rustle of cloth, and faded out of invisibility next to Nabiki. Behind him, the PRC liaison officer jumped, as did a couple of the sentries on the PRC special ops team. The first time he had done that, Ranma had unknowingly almost sparked a firefight.
Nabiki just looked up from her military hardened terminal, courtesy of the Kunos, and nodded to acknowledge his presence. The subdued glow from the terminal was the only illumination in the nighttime clearing, giving barely enough light to see her by, the moon being hidden behind the trees. Nabiki, like Ranma, was dressed in a set of camouflage fatigues, wore a similarly patterned lightweight stocking cap, and had her face blackened. Additionally, she carried an AK-47 slung over her shoulder.
"One team of three scouts on the lower slopes will pass near the Chinese artillery emplacements. Otherwise they're safe," Ranma reported.
"Show me where," Nabiki gestured at the satellite photograph displayed in on the terminal in front of her, linked by camouflaged fiber optic cable to the main tactical computers in the Chinese field headquarters.
Ranma came in behind her and tapped on the map shown. "Here. They're moving this way. There are 3 other scout teams on this flank, here, here, and here."
The Japanese speaking PRC liaison officer listened and watched closely as Nabiki placed the appropriate icons on the tactical situation map, nodding to himself. "You'll have to take out this team, then, without letting the others discover it for at least 2 more hours. The other three groups as well, but they won't be critical until they reach the target valley. Can you do it, or shall I send our team?"
"Feh. This will be the fourth column we've handled. What do you think?" Ranma snorted in contempt. By now, with his undetectable Umisenken technique, he was doing the majority of the scouting and was held in awe by the special forces team assigned to accompany them. "By the way, we left before the cleanup was complete on the last refugee column. How many surrendered after I brought down that elder and the top warriors ?"
"Over 70. That makes over 600 total from all columns. The last group was shipped out to be split up and resettled yesterday. None of the warriors surrendered again."
Ranma shrugged and looked back at Nabiki's map. "Still keep radio silence, right ?"
"Right," Nabiki responded, with a slight frown. "Remember, we don't what happened to all the radios from the original Chinese expedition the amazons slaughtered. There's no way to know if this column has any."
Ranma nodded. "Anything else ?"
"At the rate this column is moving, we'll need you in place here," Nabiki tapped the map, "at no later than 0600 hours to handle the elder. I'd say to kill a couple of the Joketsuzoku bitches for me, but I'll be able to do that myself when their evacuation column reaches us," Nabiki smirked back.
"Yeah, well, be careful. You know I'd rather you weren't in the middle of it this time. The best of them can dodge your machine gun, you know," Ranma cautioned his wife.
"That's why the PRC agreed to have you along, Ranma. Now get out there."
Ranma shook his head, and drawing a cloth across himself invoked the Umisenken again, fading out of sight. Picking his way out of the copse of trees and back down the mountain, Ranma meditated on the changes in Nabiki.
Since their wedding, Nabiki's ice queen facade had hardened into an obsessive bloodthirstiness. Not that Ranma really minded. He wanted to see the Amazons dead as much as Nabiki did. By now, though, Ranma realized that he wouldn't have been able to accomplish half so much by himself as they had accomplished together. They made good partners. Beside, Nabiki was bent not just on vengeance against Cologne, but on the destruction of the Amazon nation, and she was succeeding.
Events had proceeded almost exactly as Nabiki had predicted and promised to Ranma. Using the videos of Akane's, his mother's, and Ukyo's deaths, Nabiki had gotten a lot of news coverage and raised public outrage with the Amazons, both in Japan and internationally. Ranma didn't really understand how, but somehow she had used that outrage to get the Japanese government to pressure the PRC to deliver Cologne and bring the amazons to heel.
"Just demand Cologne and they'll probably give in," she had told him, after they woke up in bed that first morning. "Demand that the amazons be broken up and resettled, though, and they'll have to refuse. Otherwise it'd be the end of the amazons, and that's what we really want."
"So," she had said, "they'll either submit, and their nation ends, or most likely they'll fight, and the PRC will bring in the really big guns. The PRC will have to in order to maintain their authority, and they've already shown they are willing to, at Tianamin square. That's when we get to go along and help." At that point, Nabiki had resembled nothing so much as a big, toothy shark.
Just as she had predicted, the small political and military expedition the PRC sent to the Amazon village with their demands had failed. If reports were to be believed, they were slaughtered to the last man.
As Nabiki had hoped, the amazons, knowing what they faced, had tried to run. Evacuation columns had split off in different directions from the Amazon village. Each one was led by one of the elders. Elders were frighteningly competent, as the first expedition had proven to the Chinese. Each one could fight off several tanks or helicopters, and artillery and machine guns were useless to harm them. That wouldn't stop those same artillery shells and machine gun bullets from slaughtering the rest of the Amazons around the elders, though, and nothing would stop nukes, gas, or bioweapons. The Amazons only real choice had been to run.
That's where Ranma came in. The PRC needed him or someone like him to handle the elders, and Ranma had a stake in this and wasn't a challenge to the PRC's authority, as some of the other top martial artists of their acquaintance might have been. The last thing the PRC wanted was to owe a debt to the rulers of other, unofficially acknowledged mini-kingdoms, like the Musk or Pheonix people. Since the elders split up, he could now take them one at a time. Nabiki, of course, came along as a 'liaison' officer.
Ranma had to admit the sex was nice, too. Of course, he knew Nabiki was probably doing it at least in large part to keep him in line, but he didn't mind too much. After all, she wasn't asking him to do or not do anything he didn't want to. Besides, He was using Nabiki to get vengeance at least as much as she was using him. It wasn't like they loved each other or anything.
By now, Ranma was within sight of the scouting party he was targeting. The three amazon warriors, obviously battle hardened veterans all, were competent scouts. They took turns slipping quietly from shadow to shadow in the moonlight, two of them watching while one moved, never loosing sight of each other, and never bunching up close enough to be taken all at once. Ranma could see them carefully taking note of the details of their surroundings while never exposing themselves to obvious sight.
They never knew how outclassed they were.
If made a little more than another mile of progress, they would find one of the Chinese artillery positions. It was time to stop them. Ranma would have to be careful to not use any high powered ki techniques yet. The other scouting parties would be close enough to feel them, and from past experience, each party had at least one ki adept. Making certain none of the other scouting parties were in sight, and without dropping his father's invisibility technique, Ranma waited while the first two scouts slipped by him and tracked the last one, a tall statuesque women with long green hair who appeared to be in her early 30's. He waited until the woman had moved into her next position, had been noted by the other two, and settled into her own watch before striking. Ranma simply grasped her head from behind, and with a quick, brutal twist, quietly broke her neck.
Setting down the first corpse, Ranma quickly and invisibly caught up to where the currently moving amazon was setting herself. As soon as she set and the third started moving, Ranma repeated the maneuver, reaching around the young woman's pink hair and breaking the scout's neck with the same quick, brutal twist.
Speed was of the essence now, he had to finish this before the remaining Amazon noticed something amiss with her two companions. Dropping the invisibility technique in favor of quick movement, Ranma leaped. He impacted the last scout, a short wiry woman in her mid twenties, before she knew anyone was there, driving her backward to the ground and planting his elbow into the woman's trachea, crushing it. Then he just had to pin her arms and use his weight to keep the woman trapped while she silently suffocated. Ranma watched her coldly as the woman's despairing eyes finally closed and she grew still.
Ranma swirled a cloth around him as he rose, reinvoking his father's invisibility technique, and again checked to make certain he had not been seen. Satisfied, he moved the scout's bodies up the mountain one at a time a few hundred yards and dumped them into a small ravine. Returning, he erased his tracks and the signs of the small scuffle.
Ranma checked his watch. He had to handle the other three scouting teams, then it would be time to make for the next rendezvous point, two valleys in that direction. If the column kept to it's pace, then shortly before sunup he would encounter it's main body in a valley ringed by the PRC army positions. He rather hoped that this column would be the one that Cologne was guiding. There were only 5 elders, each guiding a column of Amazon evacuees, and she wasn't in either of the first three they found and hunted. So, there was a one in two chance this time. He'd know in a couple of hours.
Ranma smirked as he invisibly watched the column as it passed him, guarded and flanked by groups of warriors. Any moment now, the demand for surrender would be broadcast. He wasn't certain why they bothered, the Amazons never surrendered, at least not until the warriors leading and flanking the column were dead. That was fine with him. If he shed every drop of blood from every one of them, it wouldn't yet be enough to make up for Akane.
Closing his eyes, he felt for the strongest ki signatures. This time the elder escorting the group was in the van. It didn't feel like Cologne, which was a bit disappointing. It was damn inconvenient that she was so far ahead, Ranma would have to negotiate almost the entire column to get to her from his position at the open end of the valley, either that or get her to come to him.
This time, Nabiki had said that a series of mines had been planted on the slopes leading up to the ridges overlooking the V shaped valley. The amazons had obviously planned to hole up here for the day, and had been counting on their scouts to insure the ridges were clear. They would probably have set up their own sentries there when they stopped. Well, so much for the scouts, and any of their other plans for the day.
Hmmm, if he attracted the elder's attention and forced her to deal with him, the mines, artillery, and machine guns would do for anyone else who tried to rush the slopes. He'd have to be flashy this time, then. Best move directly into the path they'd try to flee in. It'd take the APC's and tanks waiting just over the hill a few minutes to get here and plug the valley. Without dropping his invisibility, Ranma drifted directly behind the column.
Ranma heard the sudden blare of loud Chinese broadcast over megaphones from the Chinese positions, playing the prerecorded demand for surrender, and winced. Damn language. Even if he was beginning to understand it, he'd be only too happy when he never had to hear it again.
In a testament to their discipline and training, the groups of warriors flanking the column almost immediately charged the ridgetops, while others tightened about the column trying frantically to reverse it's direction.
This was his cue. Nabiki breaking radio silence and telling him "Ranma, Go" over his headset was purely superfluous.
"I'm on it," Ranma replied, as he dropped his invisibility less than 50 yards directly in front of the amazon rear guard, now turned around and rushing his direction. "I'll come in from the rear, and use a lot of ki. That should pull the elder back."
Before they even noticed him, Ranma dramatically flung his arms out and too the sides, not bothering to announce the technique, moving so fast that he created a set of sonic booms. Leaving the air no chance to close in behind his arms, he charged the vacuum with an amount of precisely tailored ki. The ki kept the air from recollapsing inward, and the air kept the ki in the precise, unearthly sharp, shape of a pair of large sickle blades. Both assemblages rocketed away from Ranma at a speed many times that of sound, straight toward the flanking parties of amazons facing him. Slicing uncaringly through armor, weapons, flesh, and bone, the aptly named vacuum blades cleaved heads, torsos, and limbs fatally, leaving only bloody corpses in their wake.
Not leaving the women facing him time to gather themselves, Ranma rapidly charged up a ball of ki between his hands. When it reached a large enough size, he tightened his focus and sent a narrow beam of bright energy shooting out, which he played back and forth across the ranks of the opposing warriors like a fire hose. Everywhere it touched a massive explosion followed. Occasionally some dismembered part of a body could be seen amidst the moving fountain of earth and rock.
Ranma could see that the explosions he created were soon joined by a series of exploding mines and artillery shells climbing the valley sides along with the rapidly thinning ranks of charging amazons. The survivors were rapidly changing tactics, scrabbling for what cover they could. They couldn't break the ambush by rushing emplaced modern weapons, they would have to simply hold off the army while the column escaped the way it came. Arrows and a few smaller ki blasts reached out toward the emplaced troops. Bullets, artillery, and mortar shells answered in return.
Over his headset, Ranma could hear Nabiki as she screamed an imprecation, and the staccato rapping of her assault rifle as she squeezed off bursts. "Nabiki, do you see the elder, yet ? And close your mike if you're not going to talk."
"Sorry. There's a small group of warriors making their way back down the column toward your position now. It's probably them. They're still a few hundred yards off." Thankfully, Nabiki did remember to close her microphone this time.
Ranma held his blast and waited until a flight of arrows arced toward his position, while a countering powerful ki blast deflected his own harmlessly into the air.
Rolling to one side to miss the flight of arrows, Ranma blurred. Moving fast enough to leave afterimages on the retina, he leaped into the still flying dirt and dust, absently avoiding the craters and gullies he had just created and the corpses in them. Meeting the charging group of reinforcements in the confusion, Ranma wasted no time. The first two women he met were dispatched before they knew he was there, one with her skull broken open reminiscent of a melon, and the other with rib and breastbone shards driven into her heart from a pair of lightning fast blows.
The third adversary was both aware of him and a slightly better combatant. She managed to parry his roundhouse kick with a small shield at the cost of a broken shield arm and being spun halfway around. Ranma's followup strike was interrupted by the imposition of a wooden staff. The escorting elder had arrived.
Ranma fluidly changed his deflected strike, intended to break the exposed hip, and instead grabbed the back of woman's neck. Throwing himself backward, he let his weight pull the woman in front of him over his head as he fell, shielding him from the elder's own followup strike, and guided the woman to land just behind him, head first body vertical, snapping her neck.
Continuing his own momentum, Ranma rolled backward over the collapsing new corpse and came to his feet a half dozen yards away from the elder. Ranma got his first good look at the woman as he rose.
Similar to Cologne and the other elders, this woman resembled nothing so much as a foot high troll, with wrinkly parchment skin and eyes seemingly far to large for her head. A shapeless robe covered whatever body was still left in the miniature person. The surviving three warriors of the elder's party moved to flank Ranma.
Impossibly, the elders eyes seemed to grow even more as she recognized who she was fighting. "You're that boy of Cologne's from Japan!" she gasped in Japanese. Gathering herself, she spat, "Wasn't it enough to kill the matriarch's heir, Male ! You shall not destroy us, too!"
"Heh, you and your accursed laws killed my wife, my mother and my best friend. They paralyzed my wife's sister, and destroyed my life, bitch. You ask if it was enough ?" Ranma growled in reply. "If you were all dead, it would not be enough ! Be glad we allow those who surrender to live, unlike you murdering bitches!"
As they spoke, the elders attention was suddenly distracted by a stream of bullets targeting her. Ranma absently backtracked the fire while the elder spun her staff and deflected them, mainly at Ranma. Damn it, what the hell was Nabiki doing! He had asked her to stay out of this! There she was, halfway down the damn slope, just a couple hundred yards off, behind a boulder. If one of the other warriors took it in her head to go after her ...
Well, best make use of the distraction she was providing and deal with this group before one of them did something Nabiki would regret. Ranma normally eschewed modern weapons for himself. His body was a more potent weapon than any he could carry, and unlike a weapon it could not be taken away from him, malfunction, or run out of ammunition. Nevertheless, he did enthusiastically adopt a few useful tricks.
He made use of one now. Gracefully dodging deflected bullets and spinning between the elder and her three remaining warriors, Ranma left a few small egg shaped objects tucked inconspicuously in the belt or sash of the other warriors. They were grenades. Not just any grenades either, as the warriors found out to their dismay. Not coincidentally as Nabiki's magazine ran out of ammo and her fire faltered, the grenades simultaneously exploded. The three warriors suddenly found themselves covered in flaming napalm. Before they could do more than scream, Ranma finished the technique he had primed. His dodges between and around the warriors had been in a spiral pattern, starting a small but specific air flow. A cold ki charged uppercut, counter to the heat from the napalm, triggered a powerful, localized, artificial whirlwind.
Immediately, the three human torches were sucked up into the storm as a powering source of heat for it. Ranma hadn't been able to approach the elder close enough to plant a grenade on her, but he had other plans. The elder immediately grasped for cold ki herself, and kept on the ground. Ranma had anticipated this, however, and before the elder could more than take a step she was dislodged by a ki blast impacting beneath her feet which threw her up and into the maelstrom.
Nabiki had apparently swapped magazines, and the next stream of bullets was simply directed into the wind funnel, apparently trusting the powerful storm to pull the bullets into their targets. Ranma added a few vacuum blades to the mix for good measure, then took a moment to look around.
Behind him, a line of tanks had formed and was advancing up the valley. A number of APCs had pulled behind the tanks and were disgorging troops. There were few warriors still fighting along the slopes of the valley. The situation appeared well in hand.
The storm dissipated as the tanks and troops charged past him, allowing the no longer flaming bodies it contained to fall to the earth. Ignoring the obviously dead warriors, Ranma advanced on the still living, although badly battered, elder. It looked like she had taken at least one bullet and been grazed by a vacuum blade.
"You know," Ranma remarked conversationally as he squatted by the still trying to rise elder, "my eldest sister in law was one of the kindest, sweetest people you could ever hope to meet. I don't think she could harm a fly. Despite all the craziness back then, she always had a kind word, a cup of tea, and a willingness to listen to anyone. Do you know what Cologne did to her?"
Ranma grasped the stunned and wounded woman's neck, and ground a word out between suddenly clenched teeth. "This." With that, he twisted his hand and broke her spine.
Ranma dropped the elder, turned, and walked out to meet Nabiki. They met at the bottom of the valley slope. "This is finished, let's go," Ranma said. Nabiki nodded, and without a further word being exchanged they left for their camp.
Cologne scrambled up the hill in the downpour, slipping in the mud. All around her, the din of battle faded in and out of her perception. Panicked people screamed or clutched at her as she passed, only to disappear behind her in the mist and rain. Bullets whizzed overhead, and the sounds of explosions rumbled all around in a continuous din. Incongruously, her recently healed wrist ached from the rain and moisture, broken from her last fight with Ranma,
They had been ambushed. The first she knew of it, a loudspeaker was blaring a demand for surrender. They had been prepared for such an occurance, of course. She and her warriors could deal with the Chinese army if necessary, at least for long enough for them to escape. Unfortunately, the Chinese army wasn't the only thing attacking them.
Ranma had come.
Already, half of her best warriors were down, and Ranma was not being merciful. Cologne knew that she couldn't hope to fight him anymore. Ranma had even gloated that she was the last left, the rest of the refugees were already dead or 'resettled'.
So, she had left the rest of her escort to delay Ranma, prayed to the spirits of her ancestors, and ran. She only had one chance now, one she was not at all certain would work. If doomed in the present, her only hope was to change the past. She needed the Nanban mirror. She hadn't dared to try using it before. Who knew how it would work since it had been broken and imperfectly mended by that fool Happosai ? She no longer had any option. She had to try.
Finally, Cologne skidded to a stop by a specific chest that had been carried near the center of her column. Unwilling to spare even a few seconds, she forbore to unlock and open the chest normally, and instead simply struck the lid, shattering it. With speed born of the Amiguriken, Cologne roughly tossed aside artifact after ancient box after precious book, finally coming to the bottom of the chest where a damaged, and thus less valuable, mirror had been packed.
Pulling out the object of her desire, Cologne gazed briefly at the rain beaded, fragmented image of herself in the broken mirror. In that moment, Cologne allowed all her grief and frustration to come to the fore. It was hard, oh so hard. She had spent generations coming into control of her emotions. Now, though, the magic of the time traveling mirror required her tears. For her people, she simply must cry. Cry for the senseless death around her; cry for her once heir and great granddaughter, dead in a foreign land; cry for the death of her people; and cry for her own stupidity and actions which had brought these events about.
Tears mingling with the rain, Cologne whispered to her fractured image, "Take me to when I could have prevented this."
This had to work! Oh please, spirits of my ancestors, let this work! Unfortunately, the spirits of her ancestors had not been with her since the start of this entire fiasco. They still were not.
Eyes blurred by tears and rain, Cologne was focused on the mirror which had just begin to glow softly. So she did not see a camouflage clad female Ranma fade out of the rain and mist behind her, followed closely by a similarly clad Nabiki. The two youths sported near identical expressions of fanatical hate on their faces. Cologne was soon forced to notice them, though. It was hard to ignore the blast of raw, red, hate powered ki which tore the mirror from her hand, shattering it into a spray of glass fragments which covered the three of them. Ranma's shout "Rage of Dragon's Vengeance" accompanying the technique was also a dead giveaway.
"Do you like my new ki blast, Cologne ? I made it especially for you."
Cologne looked up, directly into the muzzle of the grenade launcher and assault rifle carried by Nabiki less than ten feet away. Standing beside her, Ranma was slowly charging yet another ki blast, one which, Cologne could see, would perhaps be her largest ever. Given that Ranma had once literally destroyed a mountain with a ki blast, this was no small thing. Were these children insane? Surely they could not hope to escape Nabiki's grenade from such close quarters, much less Ranma's insanely powerful blast.
"We couldn't decide which of us had dibs on you, Cologne, so we decided to share," Nabiki glared, and slowly begin tightening her trigger finger. "Whatever happens, you will die from this. We'll see you in hell tonight."
Cologne blinked. A soft glow was spreading over the small area including the three of them, the area where the fragments of the shattered mirror had fallen.
A grenade, burst of bullets and beam of ki pass through the area occupied milliseconds ago by Cologne. The huge explosion following the ki blast consumed the smaller explosion from the grenade. The explosion easily dwarfed even those created by the surrounding artillery. A roiling fireball consumed the area where Cologne, Ranma and Nabiki recently stood. However, there were no longer people there to be consumed by the fiery monster, no bodies to lay in the newly created crater, dozens of meters in diameter.
Left to it's own devices, the cold rain fell impartially, slowly filling the new depression.
Perhaps the spirits had listened after all.
Authors notes
Thanks for pointing out the spelling errors on names last chapter. Automatic spell checkers can be a bugger, too, if you put the wrong correction in their dictionary. My apologies.
The next chapter or two are still going to be fairly dark and intense, before the focus of this story shifts. Let me know what you think so far !
Authors notes
Well here you have Ranma and Nabiki's action for the past few months. The next chapter will bridge between this part of the story and a sudden change of plot direction. Suitable for a change in direction, it will incorperate the views of several characters, instead of just one.
Constructive criticisms accepted with delight. I'd really like to hear about bits of the story that are confusing, or that more detail needs to be given to the characterizations over here, or that more dialog needs to happen there, etc. Please, I'm begging ya, here ! I'll have a hard time getting better as a writer without such feedback.
Authors notes
A little extreme here, but...
I'm interpreting Ranma and Nabiki as basically fanatics at this point. They only thing they care about is achieving vengeance. This means that they are willing to suicide if they think that they'll take the last of the amazon elders, and the one personally responsible for all their troubles, with them.
Heck, they might even be eager to suicide. Both Nabiki and Ranma would still feel guilt and grief over the deaths and injuries at the bombed wedding. They might view suicide as a fitting end to their tasks.
-- Pat
