Disclaimer: …ah, fuck it, you all know the drill by now. Onward.


Chapter 9: It Kinda Looks More Like a Puma to Me…

If Kaolla Su had been the philosophical type, she might have realized the many consequences, moral quandaries, and subtle ironies of hacking into the digital video records of nearby public security cameras mounted outside buildings and intended primarily for police to review for evidence at crime scenes (and occasionally to catch cars running red lights).

If she had belonged to the police department or any of a dozen other agencies and public service management groups, she might have even doubted the possibity that such a feat could be so easily accomplished from what amounted to a custom-built home computer in a room full of tropical plants, strange equipment, and half-built robots.

Kaolla Su was neither of these, and the only thing on her brain that currently competed with her almost playful process of rapidly hacking into a password-protected and encrypted file of a video recorded about twenty-four hours earlier on a nearby street corner was, not surprisingly, the thought that she wanted another banana.

"C'mon, Su, I wanna see the dork getting blown up!" an impatient Sarah was beginning to urge from her seat nearby.

"Allllmost got it…" Su replied with a grin.

Motoko continued to meditate. Or at least tried to. Since the previous night, something hadn't felt right to her, and to her utter annoyance she simply hadn't been able to shake the feeling that it involved the dorm's manager, if only indirectly. By early afternoon, the feeling had only grown more prominent, and though she sensed no immediate danger and saw no direct evidence of wrongdoing, she couldn't help but feel that something was awry.

As a warrior trained to root out and combat evil in any form, Motoko felt obliged to investigate.

She had received a lucky break early on, when she learned that Kaolla Su had been working on finding a surveillance tape of the crash Keitaro and Kitsune had described from the day previous. Su, of course, was more interested in watching the bus blow up than what was happening up to that point and afterward, but Motoko had finally convinced her to find and play the whole scene when she found it, not just the explosion.

It had been almost six hours; now, the two had been joined by both Sarah and Naru (who had each come looking for one of them about a half hour earlier) and everyone was waiting on the Mol-Molian princess to pinpoint the right file. By the sound of Su's mounting excitement, she was now quite close to success.

Finally, the computer made a content-sounding noise over the speakers at last, and Su whooped and danced about like mad for almost a full minute before, on a final twirl of her leg, she casually hit a button on her keyboard with her big toe.

"PLAY!" she squealed excitedly, before dropping into a seated position an instant later.

The angle of the camera was awkward at best, mounted on a corner overlooking the intersection below. A few people walked by here and there, minding their own business.

"Are you sure this is it?" Motoko asked.

"Of course!" Su replied. "I reprogrammed the vidTrackSceneSpotter I made last night to spot Keitaro an' big balls of fire being next to each other 'n the video, an' this one's the ONLY one it found!"

Naru rolled her eyes. "Then why isn't anything happening yet!"

Su's head tilted. "That's 'cause the tape starts twenty minutes before anything blows up!"

Suddenly, in the top-left corner of the screen, they saw Keitaro walking up to the crosswalk at a casual pace.

But he wasn't alone.

"Lookielookie, there they are!" Su said, jumping up and down.

"Calm down, we're trying to watch!" Motoko cautioned, trying not to break her focus from the screen. Indeed, both Keitaro and Kitsune were there; on top of that, they were quite close to one another.

Closer than she had expected, in fact: they were arm-in-arm. The were talking about something, though just what was impossible to tell, as there was no audio. A moment later, the two were facing each other, with a strange look on both of their faces.

Next to her, she heard Naru begin to growl angrily. The on-screen pair were starting to lean toward one another. "Is that baka pervert doing what I…"

In the span of an instant, however, the whole scene changed, and Naru's question halted before it could finish leaving her lips. Motoko noted a flicker of movement at the top of the screen: sure enough, an out-of-control bus came barreling toward the pair, half on the sidewalk and moving fast.

She didn't have time to be surprised by its appearance, however. Almost faster than she could follow, Keitaro was spinning, and Kitsune was suddenly on the other side of him, just barely out of the path of the oncoming bus.

To everyone's surprise, Keitaro stood his ground.

A split second from him being struck, the bus violently skidded several feet sideways, leaving clear skidmarks in the ground at a sharp angle away from them.

Mokoko blinked. "What the...?"

But all was not finished. From the left side of the screen, a Mac Truck hurtled toward the intersection on the opposite road, half a second before the front end of the bus had entered it. The impact sent both vehicles spinning and toppling over, the back end of the bus nearly sideswiping both Keitaro and Kitsune in the process. But again, Keitaro moved incredibly fast, leaping out of harms way with Kitsune still under one arm.

All present stared open-mouthed at the scene. The crash was more horrific than any had imagined; Keitaro's reactions, however, had taken them completely off-guard.

"Why'd that bus suddenly skid away from him like that?" Sarah wondered aloud.

"How did he move that fast!?" Naru exclaimed, as they watched the pair on the screen getting back up. They saw him look to the bus and the truck; the only sign of life from either vehicle any could see at the moment was the truck driver, who was beginning to stumble his way out of his torn-open cab. Smoke and flames began to flicker in and on both vehicles.

Suddenly, they saw the pair talking, or rather Keitaro telling Mitsune something; a moment later, she was rushing toward a building just off-screen, while he was running straight toward the bus.

"Wait, where's Kitsune going?" Naru uttered.

"LOOKITKETAROS!" Su exclaimed. In a leap that would have made a kangaroo jealous, their kanrinin bounded into the air, five yards away from the bus, to a smooth feet-first landing on its upturned side.

Motoko gasped in shock. She'd seen, even done, similar feats, using her ki for the extra propulsion. It had always been a difficult thing to pull off.

He, on the other had, had never done anything of the sort, not that she had ever seen.

That is, until she saw him do it just now, as casually as a runner hopping a low hurdle.

And it didn't end there. Spellbound, they watched him pull off one small miracle after another, seemingly oblivious to the licks of flame that caught the edges of his limbs, the chokingly thick smoke that soon made it difficult to see everything at once, the dark liquid lines forming on his arms and legs as he scraped past debris to pull person after person from the remains of the bus's doorway. The mangled door itself lay on the ground nearby, bent and wrenched even further than it had been before; he'd pulled it off himself, wrenching the sides outward like the curled ends of a hole punched through a sheet of metal. When all seemed to be done, and the only one left was him, he leapt into the smoke-filled bus himself. For a long time, he didn't come out, and though they already knew he had to have made it out they still held their breath. Finally, something shot like a rocket out a thick window near the top-right corner of the screen, landing and rolling on the ground near the center.

It was Keitaro, with what looked like two young kids under his arms!

But it didn't end there, either. The flames on the bus grew even worse, and they saw him get up and yell something that made everyone scatter away as fast as they could, including him.

The bus suddenly lurched violently, and blew apart in a massive ball of flame. The last thing the camera caught was a large chunk of metal hurtling toward it, and the video ended very suddenly in static and the words "SIGNAL LOST" flashed on the screen.

None of them spoke. Not even Kaolla Su, who had been too stunned to appreciate the explosion she'd been itching to watch since the previous night.

Finally, Sarah broke the silence.

"No wonder he looked so tired when they came back!" she said.

Before watching, Motoko had wanted to find proof that something hadn't been right, so that she could identify it and deal with it properly. Naru's sentiments had been similar, though she'd been less suspicious than she'd been curious.

Unfortunately, watching what had actually happened had done nothing to answer their questions, suspicions, or curiosities at all.

It had only multiplied them.

"W-we have to find them," Motoko all but stammered, barely retaining her normal composure. The sight of Keitaro performing feats like that on a level so far and beyond anything she'd seen before demanded her attention now more than anything. "They must explain this. He must explain this."

Though she was loath to admit it to herself, she sounded far more confident than she felt.

**********

'Where in the hell is Mitsune!? She couldn't be out on a night like this!' Naru thought in exasperation to herself as she furiously made another mad dash around the entire inn, her third in ten minutes time. She couldn't think straight anymore; she didn't know whether to be furious, or afraid, or confused. Her brain had gone on hold early on, starting when she'd seen her best friend in that baka's arms; when he'd suddenly gone all superhuman for the next ten minutes, coherent thought became a thing of the past. Only now, as she hunted for any sign of her friend intent on getting answers, did her brain finally start going off hold.

Stopping midway through the second floor hall, she decided to stop charging about aimlessly and think. Neither Keitaro nor Kitsune were anywhere to be found; somewhere between now and the last time she'd seen either of them, they'd disappeared. Where could they be? An awful thought crossed her mind: had they gone somewhere, together?

Naru would normally have laughed at the absurdity of the thought, or become furious if she thought it had any validity.

Now, inexplicably, all she felt was a nagging sort of dread.

Keitaro's door was open, and the room was empty. Mitsune's room was directly behind her, the door closed but not locked. Not even bothering to knock, Naru charged in immediately.

There was no one there. She looked around, frustrated, until she began to notice that something wasn't quite right. For starters, the closet was open and in partial disarray, as was the dresser. A few bottles were notably absent from Mitsune's lineup on her shelves.

Then she noticed a coil of wet rope near the window.

Suddenly, the scene began to make a strange, terrible sense to her. The closet, she discovered, no longer held Mitsune's favorite travel bag. The window sill was wet on the inside from the rain, meaning it had recently been opened. The rope was quite long, and wet at all but a few feet near either end. Mitsune might've been spotted with a packed travel bag in the hall, but if she had lowered it out the window and walked out on her own…

'Did she…would she have…but then—'

Somewhere between panic and rage, she ran from the room. For whatever reason, she now knew Mitsune had left for parts unknown, and Keitaro was nowhere to be found, either. Had they gone together? She had to find out.

Though Naru had a fiery temper and unpredictable nature, she was still quite intelligent. Charging through Keitaro's open door, it took her no more than ten seconds to discover he, too, had left with luggage in tow. Another coil of rope, similarly soaked, lay nearby his wet windowsill; much of his (admittedly meager) wardrobe had been recently raided, as had his closet.

He had left in nearly the same manner as Mitsune, and that could only mean they had been working together. In the instant before emotion became the dominant controlling force in her consciousness once more, Naru's mind produced the most likely reasons why they would go off together in secret, without telling a soul.

The first possibility: she was pulling a trick on him, as usual. She dearly wished that was the case, but her mind wasn't about to settle for that in good faith.

The second possibility scared her the most: that the two were now together, and headed off to be alone with each other. She refused to accept this, not without proof, and not willingly even then.

Possibility three, on the other hand, held that the perverted baka was somehow trying to trick Kitsune, and had succeeded in doing so; her mind willingly fixated on this, seeing it as the only possibility that made sense without crossing into conceptual territory she did not want to dwell in.

It also instantly channeled her confused, broiling emotions into one she understood very well, and allowed them to focus on one target with all due force.

That Keitaro was lucky to be sitting in the backseat of Seta's van, already fifteen minutes down an increasingly obscure route in a driving rainstorm, was a supreme understatement. In his current state, Naru might easily have killed him just then.

Eleven seconds after entering his room, she was charging out, intent on catching the absent pair and punching Keitaro straight back into the inn from wherever he stood.

They couldn't have gotten far, she thought; if she was swift and picked the most likely path (which, to her mind, was likely to be the train station) she might be able to catch them before they slipped away! She practically flew down the stairs, landed, and kept going.

Her pursuit came to an abrupt halt, however, when she collided with what felt like a brick wall made of flesh. The impact dazed her, and she quickly crumpled backward.

Haruka stood towering over her, garbed in rain gear and carrying a small travel bag of her own. The older woman hadn't budged an inch from the impact, and wore a dangerously hard expression.

"Haruka!? W-what are you doing here?" Naru asked, her eyes wide with surprise.

"I'm taking over as kanrinin for a while," Haruka said simply.

"WHAT!?"

"Keitaro had to leave," Haruka continued, undaunted by Naru's outburst. "Both Mitsune and someone I can trust are with him. We, too, must leave, and very soon."

"B-but…why? Where are they going? What's going on here!?"

"Ask me later. We don't have time right now. Gather the others, and bring them here quickly!" Haruka commanded in a tone of absolute seriousness.

"O-okay," Naru agreed, taken completely aback by her adamancy. Granted, Haruka never took any nonsense from anyone, but she usually explained herself better than that when she did. Bewildered and confused, she set off to do as she had been ordered.

Within minutes, the other tenants had been gathered. Motoko had still been on the hunt for the two missing members of their household; Kaolla and Sarah had been discussing and re-watching the security camera tape instead. Shinobu had been making dinner, and was the most thoroughly confused of all. When she heard that something was amiss concerning her Senpai, however, she came running all the same. The moment they had all arrived, Haruka began barking orders at a rapid rate, ignoring their startled and confused expressions as she did.

"Listen carefully, all of you. I need you to do exactly what I'm about to tell you, as fast as you can. Don't interrupt, don't ask questions, just do it. I need all of you to pack a bag with whatever clothing and supplies you'll need for at least three to four days. Bring anything personal or important with you that you can, especially your diaries. Motoko, bring your sword and any other weapons or equipment you have with you. Su, bring your most portable rocket launcher with all the ammo you have that it can use. If you have anything in working condition that can track the location of anyone that lives here, especially Keitaro, then either destroy it or bring it with you. If you can, bring all the blueprints you have for everything you've made, especially for any tracking devices. Sarah, you can help Su once you've finished packing. Shinobu, if you can somehow make six servings of whatever you're making for dinner portable enough to carry out to my van in this rain, do so; otherwise, pack whatever you can make portable so that we can eat. Do not waste any time looking for either Keitaro or Kitsune; they've already left. We must leave before dinner if at all possible; if you're wondering why, save it 'till later. Now move!"

**********

In less than an hour, six women and one flying turtle were piled into Haruka's van, the back of which was loaded with all their gear and more besides. While the tenants had scurried about to gather all that Haruka had ordered them to, she had been to Keitaro's room. When she'd left, she'd brought a bag full of his important papers, his diary and photo album, and a single, tattered piece of fabric she'd found lying in his trash bin, among a few more of his personal belongings.

Now, the van was rolling down the highway at a steady clip through the pouring rain with Haruka behind the wheel.

Her passengers, meanwhile, had reached the end of their collective patience.

"Alright, Haruka," Naru began calmly from the second row seat, "it's officially later, now. We're all here except for Kei and Kitsune, at least four of us have seen something that needs explanation, and the only one here that seems to know anything about any of this is you. SO TELL US WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON ALREADY!!"

Her demand opened the floodgates, and the questions began pouring out.

"Where are we going?" Sarah demanded.

"W-where are Sempai and Mitsune?" Shinobu asked.

"Why did you have us bring our weapons?" Motoko demanded.

"WHY'D I HAVTA TAKE ALL MY NEW SUPER-KEITARO-TRACKER 3000's APART!?" Su wailed.

"CALM DOWN!" Haruka demanded, and everyone fell quiet again. "We are leaving to buy time and perform reconnaissance for Keitaro."

"What for?" Sarah asked.

"He is about to face a very large and very serious threat, and in case you haven't noticed he's already beyond overtaxed as it is. He needs at least a day or two to rest properly without worrying about taking care of the inn or being attacked by any of you, and he will not survive unless we, too, are safely out of harm's way ourselves."

"Does this have anything to do with what happened yesterday?" Motoko inquired pointedly.

"How much do you know?" Haruka demanded.

"We—that is, Kaolla Su, Naru, Sarah, and myself—viewed a security tape of yesterday's bus accident," Motoko began. "The original purpose was to view the event for ourselves and confirm what Kitsune and Urashima-san described had happened."

"W-what happened?" Shinobu asked timidly. She had a sinking feeling that he was in trouble once again. Frantically, she began thinking of whatever she could say or do to help his case if she could, but couldn't think of anything just yet.

Before Motoko could answer, Haruka spoke. "Keitaro did what he has always been capable of doing in a very public way, out of the need to save a large number of people from imminent death. From what I've heard so far, it was quite the spectacle. Am I right so far, Motoko?"

Surprised, the swordmaiden answered, "Actually…yes. Unusually so, in fact. I have never witnessed him to be capable of some of the things he seemed to be doing."

"He jumped twenty feet in the air!" Su chimed in.

"The dork punched a bus five feet sideways!" Sarah added.

"An' he ripped off a door all squashed on like 'RRRRAAAGGGHHH!' an' pulled a buncha folks off an'—"

"I know, Su. I already know all that," Haruka responded. "It's part of the whole reason we're on this trip in the first place. How, might I ask, did you come across this tape so quickly?"

Su looked like she'd swallowed a fish for half a moment, but responded, "Ummm…I kindasorta hacked it off the internet to see the bus blow up."

'Great. Just great,' Haruka scowled inwardly. 'If Kaolla Su found a video of the whole thing already, they'll have it by now, too. Dammit, this isn't going to be easy at all.' "Never mind. I take it at least the four of you now know something of what Keitaro can do?"

Their heads nodded. "Why'd he never tell us he can do stuff like that, anyway?" Naru asked. "He's never acted strong like that before! I mean, we all know he's got that immortality thing going for him, but…"

The look that came over Haruka's face just then would have sent chills down a tiger's spine. "Immortality? Keitaro is flesh and blood, Naru Narusegawa. So am I, and so are you."

"But…he is never hurt by anything," Motoko countered. "Has he not returned uninjured from every punishment for his perversions?"

Haruka sighed, shaking her head. "No, Motoko, he hasn't."

"What!?" everyone asked at once.

"He has returned, certainly, sometimes from halfway across the city," Haruka clarified. "I am not denying that. But don't believe for a moment that he has done so unharmed. Shinobu?"

"Huh?" the girl answered.

"Reach into that bag in front of you. There should be something made of fabric in there; pull it out and hand it to them for me, would you? Don't look at it yet."

Somewhat warily, Shinobu felt around inside the bag until her hand closed on something soft. Pulling it out, she discovered it was a rolled up lump of familiar-looking dark fabric. Pausing, she said, "I-is this…?"

"Just hand it to them," Haruka said quietly.

"What is it?" Naru asked as Motoko took the ball from Shinobu's now-shaky hands.

"I want you to tell me exactly what that is," Haruka replied, a hard edge in her voice. "Or, more accurately, what that was before last Friday evening!"

Motoko gasped as she unraveled the ball. "This…this looks like…"

"It's one of Keitaro's shirts!" Naru exclaimed. "But…what happened to it? It's in tatters!"

Motoko's face suddenly went very, very pale. "Haruka…there's…this shirt has…"

"I know, Motoko," the driver replied. "A large, clean slice across the front, with blood-stained edges, and one missing sleeve. Care to take a guess at how they got there?"

"Whose blood is…but...but this is his shirt! How could it…" Naru was at a loss.

Motoko suddenly felt queasy. A memory flashed across her mind's eye: a dazed Keitaro, in the hot springs while she was bathing again…her sword, charged with ki, connecting with his chest, blasting him through the fence in a flash. Only afterword had she seen the door he'd been propelled through, and realized the mistake. She'd thought nothing of it at the time.

She looked at the shirt. He'd been wearing it that very night.

The angle of the tear was the same as her sword's arc had been.

"I…I did this," she said aloud, a note of horror in her voice. "This is…this is his blood."

"Funny you should recognize your own handiwork, Motoko," she remarked. All eyes turned to the now deeply embarrassed and ashamed Shinmei-ryu swordmaiden. But Haruka wasn't finished yet. "I think you know something of how it got there, but perhaps not all of it yet. Why do you suppose he was in the hot springs in the first place?"

Motoko looked up in shock and surprise. 'How could she have known—?' "He…landed in the water in front of me," she said waveringly. "I…I thought he was in the midst of another act of perversion."

"But he wasn't was he?" Haruka pointed out. "Oh, he came in through the door, all right, and you were inside, but he did not do so willingly. Did he, Naru?"

Naru turned red with surprise and guilt, half-remembering how she'd hit him literally through the door. "B-but…he landed on me inappropriately!" she sputtered, trying to defend her actions.

"Oh, did he now?" Haruka asked rhetorically. "I suppose he just leapt down a flight of stairs to land on you in particular? Or was it simply that you happened to be standing at the foot of the stairs when he was blasted head-first through the upper banister by a large, flaming ball of laundry? Sound at all familiar, Kaolla Su?"

In the second back row, the hyperactive inventor looked like she'd swallowed a goat. "Well, uh…he was standing there bent over…I mean, it was a perfect target an' all…hehe…" she said weakly.

Haruka began driving the point home. "Simply put, Keitaro was ricocheted between the three of you, one after another, through several pieces of the inn's architecture, all because of what you wanted to believe at the time, am I wrong? Kaolla Su, you used him for target practice; did you even ask his permission? I'm sure he would have given it, you know. Naru, you didn't even bother to think about what he was doing in a pile of singed laundry on top of you, or did you let your fist answer for you, as usual? And Motoko…when he landed, backwards and on the rocks I'm sure, did you bother to find out if he was okay, or how he got there? Or did you truly believe a deep cut from a sword with enough ki pumped through it to blast him through a thick wooden fence without so much as slowing down wouldn't hurt him severely!?" Her voice grew increasingly vitriolic as the girls shrank back in their seats. "And it doesn't end there; you see, he had the misfortune to be holding a broom during all of this. He still had it when it lodged itself in a tree and pulled his shoulder out of socket in the process. By the time he'd landed, he had a deep, foot-long gash on his chest, a dislocated shoulder, two long sticks embedded in his thigh on his way down, a twisted ankle, a cracked jaw, and several broken ribs. Does that sound very immortal to you? Do you have any idea how often he has to put up with injuries like that!? Keitaro has one power only that allows him to survive: he is able to heal himself."

"What? How?" Sarah asked.

"He uses his ki to speed up the process. It's extremely difficult to do, though by now, I'm positive he's become the leading world's expert at the process. It is also incredibly painful to carry out, as it compresses much of the pain one might normally feel from an injury into a short duration of time. Imagine a week's worth of pain crammed into a single moment! Each injury he receives can take a month or more to heal normally; imagine what he feels when he has over half a dozen of them at once!"

Motoko blinked. "I've…heard of this, once before!" Everyone looked at her in surprise, as she continued. "There are…certain ki-based martial arts which teach defensive and healing techniques. They use inwardly channeled ki to repair damaged tissues and organs, mend bones, heal wounds…but I've never heard of any but a few masters even being capable of performing them."

Naru's jaw dropped. "You mean…he's a martial artist!?"

Haruka chuckled humorlessly. "Well, that certainly took you long enough. Keitaro has already fully mastered or trained in quite a few martial arts that I know of, and probably more that I don't. He's quite good at it, actually; he soaks it up like a sponge, a born natural. Quite frankly, if he and I were to fight a straight battle, he'd be able to win easily."

This took everyone back several steps. Haruka was one of those few, rare individuals neither Naru nor Motoko would risk taking on willingly; when angry, she was easily stronger than Naru, more skilled than Motoko, and more experienced with hand-to-hand combat from her travels with Noriyasu Seta than anyone else they knew.

Now, she was telling them that the guy they'd long pegged as being weak but practically indestructible was, in fact, a great deal stronger than anyone present!

"If he could defeat you in battle, Haruka-san, why could he not do the same to any of us?" Motoko asked.

"Because unlike you, Motoko, he would rather take the hits himself than deal them out to his friends!"

The silence was deafening after that. For a minute, no one spoke, trying to process what Haruka had just said to them. Finally, Haruka continued. "Do you know what he did, less than five minutes after repairing the damage from being nearly killed by half of his residents for the umpteenth time?"

Naru blinked. "He…got up and came back?"

"Oh, eventually. But not right away, not that time. You see, while he was enduring the agonizing process of healing himself, he was being watched by a Fox."

"You mean…K-Kitsune!?" Shinobu cried.

"I do indeed. You see, she was on her way back early that night, and he landed nearby. She watched the whole thing, beginning to end. When he spotted her nearby, she ran. Unfortunately for her, there was a gang of thugs to greet her when she reached the path. But she was not hurt that night, for one reason and one reason only: Keitaro."

"Whaddaya mean? What'd he do?" asked Su.

"He used the very martial arts skills he adamantly refused to use on his tenants to defend the life, safety, and honor of Mitsune from eight hardened criminals to whom perversion was a severe understatement!" she snapped. "Perhaps you saw the news the next night?"

The girls all colored. They'd missed most of it, due to the frenetic antics over the remote control that night. But Shinobu remembered a part of it. "U-um…I didn't hear everything, but I did hear something about an unknown man fighting a small gang to protect someone…I t-thought it was kind of s-sweet…" She began to blush furiously as she realized the implications of her statement.

"Good for you, Shinobu; that makes two of you who weren't completely blind and deaf. Tell me: did he sleep at all that night when he returned, carrying an unconscious Mitsune on his back?"

"U-um…no, actually, he didn't." Shinobu said, her face falling. "He…s-stayed up until he'd finished all the repairs; it took him all night, and all morning, and he only s-slept for a few hours in the middle of the day! H-he must've been exhausted!"

Haruka nodded. "And I'm positive that he's done much the same thing in the past as well. And yet none of you, who have lived over a year in the same dwelling with him, ever even noticed, did you? The thing is, as much as you didn't notice what he was capable of, neither did anyone else…or they wouldn't have, until yesterday. I think even you took notice of what happened then, or you wouldn't be breaking into the city surveillance system to watch."

Naru huffed at this point. "That still doesn't explain why he wouldn't tell us he can do all those things! And it really doesn't explain what he was doing there with Mitsune! I knew I shouldn't have let him slide that cock and bull story by me about them meeting by chance! Where is that stupid baka, Haruka? I'll—oof!"

The van pulled off to the side of the road and lurched to a screeching halt, sending everyone surging forward against their seatbelts. The driver turned slowly, eyes locking on Naru with the promise of hell burning within them.

"Have you been listening to a word I've said!? Keitaro rescued, by himself and at his own life's risk, over fifty people from a mangled, burning wreck, and you have the audacity to think like that!? He tore that bus's door door off on his own to get them out, and he jumped into the smoke and fire to pull the last two children out when no one else would get near it, and all you can think about is who he was with at the time!? Keitaro, as we speak, faces a threat greater than a hundred of you at your very worst; he alone can face it, and he is half fucking dead from exhaustion! He would be going with us at this very moment, if I could trust the lot of you to not attack him at the drop of a hat!"

Naru shrank back in her seat at the withering force of Haruka's verbal fury, but it didn't stop. "Keitaro started that day already at the point of exhaustion. Saving those people pushed his body to the point of collapse last night; had you chosen to answer his selfless deeds with your fist, he wouldn't be able to come back, period!"

All the blood drained from Naru's face as Haruka's words sunk in. The fury in Haruka's voice and glare finally faded. "That is why I am stepping in: to prevent you from doing something you will regret for the rest of your life. Among all of you, only one had enough maturity to truly come to recognize him for who he really is on her own. It is because of her that Keitaro's blood is not on any of your hands, and it is because of her that we all might survive this longer than a few days. That is why Mitsune is with him, and why they are not here with us. I hope, for your sake, you can bring yourself to understand that before we meet them again, or so help me I will hit you into the next continent myself!"

There was a long moment of silence. Though Haruka's anger had been focused primarily on Naru, the message was intended for all of them, and affected them all to some degree. Naru felt her confidence in her own viewpoint wane sharply; Motoko struggled with the idea of their kanrinin being potentially more powerful than she herself was, yet so completely unwilling to use it against them as she used hers against him; Kaolla Su worried that she had gone a little too far over-the-top at his expense, a rare thought for someone who normally paid little attention to such things; even Sarah began to have doubts about her nonchalant attitude toward what happened to him, where before she could generally have cared less.

The only one that still kept her head was Shinobu: she, at least, knew she had made an effort to help her Sempai wherever she could, and for once felt completely vindicated for having done was thus she alone that felt safe enough to ask another question.

"Umm, Haruka? Couldn't we have…waited for them to come back at the inn? Where are we going, if not to where they're going?"

Haruka sighed, starting the van once more. "Right now, Keitaro's safety is dependent on how long he can rest and not be found by anyone, including most of you. Our safety, on the other hand, depends on not being found by anyone looking for him."

"By whom?" asked Sarah.

For a moment, something crossed Haruka's expression that was unreadable, a flicker of emotion too complex to put into words. "By people…you really don't want to get to know, not like I did."

"I-is Sempai in danger?" Shinobu asked in fear.

"No, not at the moment," Haruka said more kindly, the strange cloud in her expression lifting. "Right now, he's on what basically amounts to a couple day's forced vacation with someone he can trust and someone else I can trust implicitly. Only he and I know where they've gone, or where the place even is, and neither of us are telling where anytime soon. Don't worry, he'll be fine for now. "

"Who's he with?" Motoko asked, intrigued. Haruka rarely spoke of anyone she trusted, let alone implicitly. Before she could get an answer, however, the sense of something amiss she had felt since the previous night grew suddenly stronger, before falling off again to something a little stronger than it had been.

Somewhere out on the roadway, something or someone very dangerous had just passed them. And Motoko wasn't the only one to feel it.

"I'll tell you that later," Haruka said, suddenly shifting her focus to a short line of cars passing quickly in the opposite direction on the road. She watched them pass carefully; none took an active interest, but all sped in the direction of the Hina-Sou. 'Shit, they're not wasting any time, are they?' she thought. "Right now, we have to make tracks." The van lurched into higher gear and sped down the road, turning onto a different highway in another direction shortly thereafter.

**********

A dozen vehicles pulled up in front of the abandoned Hinata-Sou at once.

The occupants of each vehicle, a collection of trained professionals and common criminals, they all served one master, who was currently waiting impatiently in the lead vehicle for them to get to work. He expected results from this group, yes, and he expected them fast.

After all, he was paying them out the nose for their services, and he wasn't about to tolerate slacking off with his money.

His orders for them were simple enough: find the owner of this establishment, the one that had been identified an hour earlier by a well-paid off police commissioner. Clever bastard, that one. If all went as planned, he'd have to give the man a bonus.

If it didn't, maybe he'd have someone else kill the corrupt official for him. Maybe not. It depended on what he felt like doing to him, and he knew he could do practically whatever he felt like doing.

Right now, he was reviewing the small tidbits of information they had on the owner, his tenants, and his nearest relations. Fascinating stuff, really. A guy that apparently lived among young females. He had powerful relatives, that much was certain. One lived nearby; her name was one already known to his organization as an irritating nuisance. He sneered; it was hardly surprising this one had been pegged as such a great threat, considering what a pain his blood relatives had been over the years.

But that was no matter. Garhem Essade, leader of an organization designed, built, and run practically for his own personal benefit, an expression of his own power and influence, dealt with all such nuisances in his own good time.

The men under the somewhat overweight former business tycoon were strong and professional in their own right. He was, of course, superior in terms of skill to nearly all of them in his own right, but these days he found it was far better to get their hands dirty for him.

When they returned with their initial reports, however, Essade was far from pleased with their work.

Apparently, they had already left. Owner, tenants, and nearby relative had already made scarce of themselves before they had arrived.

How disappointing. He had been looking forward to meeting some of those tenants, too; they would have made excellent playthings once their landlord had been dealt with.

It must have been Haruka that warned them. He scowled; that interfering insect! He would enjoy making that one pay for all the trouble she'd caused over the years. Her and that wretched dirt-scooping twit she was so attached to. He was even worse! Meddlesome and beyond his control. The last time they'd met, Essade had learned about this supposed hidden hero, and the fascinating bit of ancient power he was supposedly able to use to great effect. Scowling again, he promised himself that he would personally squeeze the troublesome adventurer for the location of that item himself.

After all, there were worse elements to deal with than Garhem Essade was himself, and every bit of power would be of use in getting them out of his way.

Like any other heap, there was always someone at the top of the pile. Essade existed in a pile of the evil, corrupt, and self-serving, a very large pile indeed. Much of it he owned or controlled.

But getting to the top, ah, that was a true challenge! And staying there, even more so.

His life had been spent climing the heap, and now only one stood in the way of him and the apex. An apex he intended to remove, and to replace with himself

Unfortunately, they did not call that apex Atrocity for nothing.

For now, the abandoned structure would serve nicely as a temporary base of operations in the search. His men had been the first to arrive, but wouldn't be the last by any stretch. Like a greedy dragon guarding a horde, he would glean and guard what information could still be found in the confines of this dormitory.

Tomorrow, he would begin the hunt in earnest.

**********

Over a day had gone by, and they hadn't been found.

Haruka counted her blessings as she pulled into an extremely well-hidden tunnel that led to an underground parking garage. They'd been fortunate, the first night; aside from the initial group of vehicles she'd spotted heading toward the inn, nothing had yet recognized her vehicle and none seemed to be expecting them to have already left; this gave Haruka a few hours to get to her first destination without being followed. There, a few friends of hers provided them lodging for the night; they were expecting them. They had been contacted by another mutual friend, who'd been called by another, whom Haruka had called herself. The lines of communication, of course, would be traced step-by-step, but it would take time; by the time they were fully traced, each friend in the chain would be long gone, as would many others in a network of chains just like it. They'd departed with some supplies early the next morning, as had the friends that had lodged them for the night (though they went in a different direction entirely).

The second leg of the journey had been the most dangerous by far. By the time they had set out, the first, and biggest, group she knew of was already actively patrolling many of the roads, searching up and down for anyone they could find. Haruka had experience with avoiding these in the past, as had several of her friends; it was quite difficult, but doable. By midday, matters had grown worse; rival groups had caught on to what was happening, and their own patrols had been added to the fray. Near the end, there were three vehicles from different groups meandering through traffic not far ahead of her, all searching for her at once; fortunately, they found each other first. Their ensuing firefight near a divide in the highway forced them to continue in a different direction from her van (and a fair portion of the rest of traffic as well), and she managed to slip by without any of them noticing.

They, fortunately, had been the last in Haruka's gauntlet run.

Finally, she had made it to the safest place they could go, a place that was well hidden and well defended both inside and out. She'd been there only a few times in her life, always at greatest need and always in secret. For as long as she had known of its existence, there had never been many more than a dozen people coexisting at any time within its reinforced bunkerlike walls, though it could certainly hold hundreds at a time at need.

This time, it would be filled to capacity in a matter of days; now, it would have to serve its true purpose at long last.

As the van pulled in the dimly lit cavernous garage through one of a dozen entry tunnels, Haruka noted that at least a third of those that were coming had already arrived.

"What…is this place?" Motoko asked from the back.

"This," Haruka said, pulling into a space, "is the only place we can go to be safe, even if only for a short while longer. It used to be an underground bomb shelter, built in secret as a fortress against nuclear war. It isn't the only one of its kind, but it is one of the largest, and the only one that is privately owned. Take out everything we brought, including the other packages I have in the trunk; I'll be back in a moment." At this, she left them and walked a short distance toward a narrow alley-like groove in one of the complex's massive concrete support pillars. Inside, she found what she needed: a row of large, flat pushcarts, the sort that could be commonly seen in a grocery or hardware store for moving heavy, bulky items en masse. She took the nearest, rolling it back to the van. "Help me load everything on here, then follow me," she ordered, and the girls did as they were instructed.

When they were finished, she heaved the laden cart with considerable effort, making it move slowly and steadily toward a very large elevator half hidden around a nearby blind corner. There were no call buttons on this elevator; instead, a numeric touchpad was set in the wall to one side. Punching a long code into the pad that she had made sure to learn by heart, she heard it beep in confirmation.

The thick doors of the lift separated slowly at the middle, the horizontally serrated series of flat tips and matching pits along the inner edge making it resemble the opening jaws of a great metal behemoth. She promptly pushed the cart over the threshold into the very spacious interior of the lift, with the others warily filing in behind her. Though they were already underground, the wide lift lurched and moved down even further after the doors had shut, slowly but surely descending ever deeper into the earth.

Whatever surprises the past few days had held for the tenants, none could quite compare to what was waiting for them at the end of the ride. They stepped out of the dimly lit elevator into a huge, bright, iron-walled underground fortress. They were in a cavernous central area bustling with people of every imaginable background. There were ordinary civilians, scientists and engineers, heavily armed personnel in custom uniforms that resembled a cross between the martial arts gi and riot gear, and foreigners in full homeland dress and garb from many distant and unrelated lands. Except for the riot-gear clad squads moving about, there were fewer than half a dozen representing any given group, and the mixture was as incredible as it was absurd.

"What…the…heck?" Naru asked, gazing around with a slack jaw.

"Who are these people?" Sarah asked.

Haruka smirked, lighting a fresh cigarette. "Not what you were expecting, I take it?"

Motoko's eyes darted around quickly, taking in the scene before her visually. The uniformed guards in particular caught her attention: each moved, acted, and stood in a manner she'd often seen among those trained in the martial arts. And yet…

"What is the purpose of this place? I see many that act as though they have been trained to fight here, yet few who do so in the same manner. Are they warriors from many schools of one art form?"

Haruka nodded. "Most of them are from different schools of quite a few martial art styles, Motoko. Some are from several, in fact. I doubt you'll find many with the same, let alone similar, backgrounds here."

"Yet if you wait long enough, one may very well find you, Motoko," a strong, melodic voice spoke from behind them.

Motoko turned in surprise and disbelief, and not a small amount of fear. Of all the people she thought she might encounter in such a place as this, the one that addressed her had been last she had ever expected.

"Ane-ue!?"


A.N.: Blimey, that became a bit longer than it was when I started! The beginning scene was a bit of a new addition to the original chapter I had written, and might slightly alter the way I redo some of the later chapters a bit. Not much, but a little.

Anyway, the title is a reference to the machinima from RoosterTeeth, from a quote early in the series concerning the appearance of the Halo vehicle nicknamed the Warthog. Funny series, that. Well worth watching. Only series with a smart-ass Mexican robot, an idiot in "light red" *coughpinkcough* armor, Shisnos, a hotheaded English-Blargh translator/bomb, and CPR that cures sniper headshots.

In case you are wondering, the group that is at the Hina-Sou is one of three main antagonists I have planned. All three are OCs, and all are different. Of them, he is perhaps the most resourceful and the least physically powerful. He mentions the most powerful one, however, and believe me when I tell you that THAT one is one scary-ass evil mother fucker. I'll be getting to him later, along with a third that is somewhere between the first two and very much unlike either.

Also, be sure to note these villain's regular names when I give them: they are anagrams for one or more aspects of their personalities. As a hint, first one is two words, one twice the length of the other, both rude.

And the forecast for the next chapter: Expect heavy lead showers to the tune of "What Planet is This?" Look it up, its on one of the Cowboy Bebop OSTs. Just never listen to it while operating any sort of vehicle, or it will give you dangerous ideas.