Quick Author Note:
In response to a few queries, I'd like to say here that I have made a few modifications to the chronology of the story. Originally, I had planned for this chapter to deal with Akane, and her attempts to 'surpass her limits' and earn the chance to fight with the others. However, in response to reviews and popular request, I shifted the next sub-arc dealing with Ukyou and the fiancé mess forward, and the Akane character arc backward. There is really only so much I can do at once, but expect Akane to play more of a role by around Chapter 13. As I've said before, I listen to every review and comment I receive, and when I can, I try hard to accommodate my readership.

Now, back to the story…


The Umisenken made Operation Ghost Wire a walk in the park. There were at least a dozen guards on duty, but Ranma wasn't terribly worried about them. The Art of the Silent Thief would keep them from seeing him… unfortunately; the same couldn't be said for the electronic defenses the building employed. Cameras would still betray him, and so would any laser tripwires, tripwalls or infrared sensors. Luckily, steps were being taken to correct that problem.

Ranma waited behind the stairwell door as another security guard walked by, oblivious. Even if he had looked through the glass, he wouldn't have seen the Saotome heir. However, his progress was at a halt for the moment. Opening the door would set off an alarm, and the mission was strictly 'dry cleaning'- meaning no use of deadly force, no use of ANY force in fact, and no being seen.

"I'm in," Konatsu's voice came in over their squad level communications channel. They kept chatter to a minimum, and the ninja boy didn't say any more about his progress. Ranma knew where he was, however. Konatsu had been given the job of slipping down the elevator shaft, going through the ventilation system and disabling any alarms there (of which he'd reportedly found two), sneaking halfway down a hall, picking a lock to Security Office 2-C as soon as the occupant left, and then disabling the more troublesome security features.

It was a hell of a job, and Ranma would have offered to do it himself if his Umisenken hadn't been better suited to getting past human opponents, rather than machines. As it was, Konatsu's ninja training had included defeating modern electronic surveillance, and he had disabled anything that got between him and his objectives with the speed and silent competence one would expect from a 'legendary kunoichi.'

It was just too bad they couldn't have brought better equipment. Being handed the mission, Ranma had soon learned why his squad was best suited for this sort of work. Section Seven of the UNETCO Charter forbid the use of advanced or alien-derived technologies against Earth based organizations or individuals outside of incidents involving direct alien intervention. It was a measure designed to protect human governments, political groups, and economic concerns from UNETCO manipulation. With the technology and training as its disposal, XCOM could become a threat to everything it was designed to protect. What military on Earth could stand against XCOM air and space superiority? What army could so much as scratch XCOM powered armor? What government could immunize itself against XCOM psionics?

Section Seven of the Charter prevented that.

Unfortunately, it also made dealing with Alien sympathetic organizations more difficult. Psionic infiltration was forbidden by Section Seven, and the fear of a slippery slope, and the most advanced technologies had to be reserved for the fight against the aliens themselves. This left conventional technologies and conventional methods. Martial Arts were a cheat around that restriction.

Ranma suspected that was the reason they had been brought into UNETCO in the first place. Not to fight aliens, which the organization had already been doing for years, but to better fight other human beings. The idea made Ranma a little uneasy, but it wasn't as if they were ordering him to assassinate anyone.

Yet.

Konatsu's voice returned. "All set. I'm pulling back."

"No silent alarms detected. Nothing on the local police network," Ukyou said, from her location in a skyscraper opposite Sirius Corporate Headquarters. "I'm watching the guards now. They're acting normal. I think we're in the clear."

"Nothing strange on the ground," Shampoo added. She and Ukyou were both together, working backup and monitoring the situation. They were coordinating the information coming from Ranma and Konatsu in the building, along with information passed onto them by operatives in government agencies and that made available via UNETCO electronic and human intelligence already in place. Behind them, and miles away, Seiran Mountain watched everything from a distance, offering their expertise on demand.

"Ok. I'm moving," Ranma said quietly, and making sure no one was around, he started to open the door. It was unlocked, and no alarm (silent or otherwise) sounded when he slipped through. Konatsu had taken care of the cameras with a looped feed that had been recorded on the spot. The little electronic bug would kill itself after a certain amount of time, and no one would be the wiser.

Another guard, armed for bear with a MP5A2 sub-machinegun, whistled as he walked by, never noticing the young man pressed up against the wall just a few feet away. Sneaking along, Ranma passed by a large open area, like a lobby. Beautiful hardwood stairs led down to the floor below, where the offices and mainframe were located. The carpeting below was red, with a massive stylized Silver Star in the middle – the Sirius Corporation Logo, representing the Dog Star. The walls facing north, what must have been an entire corner of the floor, were tall panes of glass, offering a breathtaking view of the world's largest megalopolis in all its glittering, neon glory.

The lower floor was not as well patrolled, and a greater reliance was put on non-human defenses. Ranma paused to adjust the eyepiece built into his stealth suit's mask. Everything seemed to be working properly, and as he cycled through the vision modes he didn't see any laser trip wires or tripwalls… there was a hidden camera set into the wall that he wouldn't have noticed, but nothing could be done about that if Konatsu hadn't caught it in a video loop. Gaps in the floor indicated pressure sensitive alarms, which was unexpected.

Looking up, Ranma saw two pencil sized gaps running along the ceiling. It wasn't ideal, but it would have to do. He just didn't have the clearance to leap down the hall, and jumping from one wall to another ran the risk of making too much noise. Falling on his hands, he pushed up and touched his feet to the ceiling. The groove was small; too small for his big toe to fit in. Luckily, his index toe was able to wedge itself in place, leaving him as a less than ideal angle.

His Martial Arts Tea Ceremony training paid off again!

The training had been to move without getting up off the seating position, using your toes to maneuver. Once mastered, it could even be used to hang from projections in the wall or ceiling, grasping onto the surface with your big and index toes. This wasn't quite the same, since he was sticking one toe into a depression, rather than locking both around a projection, but it would do. Daring to take one step at a time, he quickly reached the end of the hall, and flipped down onto his feet.

Ducking behind a wall, just to be sure, he got his bearings and remembered where his targets were. He had several to take care of, and he had to be fast. A handy bulletin board nearby sported a map with names for offices, as well as a variety of post-it notes related to work that was being done. He headed for the nearest office, and frowned at the electronic card swipe used in place of a proper lock and key.

Genma had taught him to pick old fashioned locks, but nothing like this.

He supposed that, when the time came, the Anything Goes Martial Arts curriculum would have to be updated for the twenty first century. This was where the UNETCO toys came in. Each door required an authentication token to open in the form of a smartcard. Ranma retrieved a device with a long, thin projection under a flat cylindrical body. Placing it right against the door, and fitting the thin section into the swiping mechanism, he flicked it on and waited as a faint series of red lights began to cycle around in a circle and turn green.

Sixteen tense seconds later, the door bolt retracted, and Ranma was able to gain entry. The office was large but rather messy, with papers scattered about in cardboard boxes, and several overflowing desk drawers open. Still, it wasn't hard to find the phone, next to a few framed family pictures. Ranma stared at them for a few seconds, wondering what a man with two kids and a pretty wife would gain from collaborating with aliens. Then again, this man could have just been an unwitting patsy.

Either way…

Ranma quickly opened the bottom of the phone where the batteries were held. Intel had gotten the brand of the phones right at least, and Ranma quickly replaced the foam strip on the back of the casing. Now, it would report anything and everything that happened in the room or over the phone to UNETCO. Imbedded in the foam, the bug was all but invisible. The computer he left alone.

Slipping out, he repeated the procedure; going to all the offices on the list he'd been given. Sirius was a major concern that allegedly used its alien connections to corner the market on advanced electronics technologies. It also financed activities that endangered UNETCO interests, and by extension the well being of the world as a whole. Their Japan Headquarters was likely the focal point of their assistance in locating martial artists and others for later alien abduction.

Finally, Ranma broke into the room with the computer mainframe. There were more pressure sensitive plates built into the floor in addition to the usual cameras and inactive laser tripwires. It was likely that the mainframe had recent backups of all the work done by computers on the LAN, and UNETCO intended to get a copy of it for themselves. The computer was vertically oriented, which worked in Ranma's favor. Finding a small foothold on a wall, he gripped it with his toes and in a second stood perpendicular to the wall with the face of the mainframe over his head.

The mainframe seemed to operate on a secure, wired network, to keep anyone from trying to jump in on their separate wireless system. Or that was what Intel had told them. Ranma wasn't sure what that meant, if anything, but he knew what he'd been told to look for and do. Sure enough, there was a laptop friendly USB port waiting for an administrator to make use of. Getting into the system from there would be up to the Tech-heads back at Seiran Mountain; he was just the delivery boy.

Retrieving a small device the size of a keychain ornament, he plugged it in.

"Linkup established with Psyche," Ukyou said, keeping her voice quiet even though she wasn't in any real danger of being overheard from where she was stationed. "Things look good. 'Five by five' is the term, I think. Ghost is now communicating with Cupid and Psyche."

Ranma kept quiet and waited. He'd made very good time, so he wasn't particularly worried. He knew the data linkup, the hacking, and the transfer would take time. Easing himself back onto the floor in a normal standing position, he fell into a cross-legged position and concentrated on centering himself.

His thoughts soon drifted back to Ukyou and Shampoo, and how he was going to deal with them. He'd used the new mission as justification to put things off for a few days, but if he didn't act soon it would almost certainly bite him on the ass sooner rather than later. The two girls generally behaved themselves when on a mission, but at the base, during training, almost any other time it was like business as usual for them.

He really had to put his foot down.

If only his stupid old man hadn't stolen the Kuonji yatai as a dowry then he could've written the whole thing off. Mostly. Then there was when the dumb ol' panda had eaten Shampoo's prize, and started that whole mess! And once things had started down that road, it was hard to stop. He'd wanted to be friends with Ukyou, and mollify her into not wanting to fight, but complimenting her had just gotten it into her head that he wanted her as a fiancé. He didn't!

Well, he liked the attention he got from her, and from Shampoo (and the free food was another nice bonus), but he didn't want to marry them. He didn't really even want to marry Akane; he just wanted to be with her, and have her pay attention to him (and not Ryouga or P-chan or Shinnosuke or any other guy). Now, two years later, he had to make some hard decisions. Knowing Ukyou and Shampoo, only a direct 'no nonsense' sort of move would settle the issue once and for all.

"Hmm…" Ranma mused. "Maybe if Ryouga and Mousse are there, I can use them as human shields..."

A couple minutes later, a voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Cupid has sent a green light," Ukyou spoke up, referring to Seiran Mountain HQ. That was his cue to head back. Retrieving the device he'd plugged into the mainframe, Ranma backtracked out the wing of offices, past the hall with the pressure sensors, up to the next floor, and then to the stairs where he'd began. From there it was back to the grate he'd entered from, through that to the elevator well, and then up to the roof where they'd originally broken in.

Konatsu was waiting there, and he carefully closed up the panel they'd removed, and reset the wires they'd bypassed to avoid setting off an alarm. Like Ranma, he wore a black stealth suit that concealed any potentially distinguishing features. A round lens in the middle of his facemask, where the forehead should have been, along with two smaller lenses over the eyes stared back at him. They looked dull and empty, like a camera with dead batteries. Apparently this technology still wasn't quite advanced enough to fall under the mandate of Section Seven.

"Let's go," Ranma said, and the two moved off to the edge of the roof. A fifty four story sheer drop loomed before them, but neither gave it more than a moment's notice. Walking off the edge, Ranma fell a foot and a half before stopping, balancing on a thin wire connecting the building behind him with another smaller one about three hundred feet away. Normally, a helicopter would have inserted them on the building they were to infiltrate, but Ranma and Konatsu's skills had afforded UNETCO more liberty with where they could run an insertion/extraction.

Running along the nearly invisible wire, Ranma still tried not to look down. A parking lot and garage stretched out below, blending in with busy roads and small buildings. But it wasn't the height that could have messed up his balance; it was the disorientation from hundreds of bright moving lights and the vertigo of focusing on them while compensating for the movement of the wire due to the wind. A fall of this height (Akane's fondness for 'orbit punches' and kicks not-withstanding) would have been most unfortunate. Ryouga could possibly survive it, given his rock hard head and likewise constitution, but Ranma didn't want to consider the effect it would have on his body.

Reaching the end of the wire, he jumped, flipped, and landed on the roof. A minute later, Konatsu joined him. Neither could read the other's expressions behind their masks, but both were grinning broadly. Altogether, the mission had been very exciting… and running back and forth over a shaved tightrope two hundred meters in the air always got the blood pumping.

A few seconds later, while Konatsu retracted the wire bridging the two buildings, the door to the roof opened and Ukyou stepped out, waving. She wore plainclothes, playing the part of a secretary or the like, and both boys took her presence as the signal to take off their masks and get a breath of fresh air. It was windy and cold, and a blast of chilly atmosphere hit Ranma in the face, causing him to wince.

"Everything going ok?" he asked, walking up to her. "When can we expect pickup?"

"An unmarked civilian helicopter will be by to pick us up in about seven minutes," Ukyou explained, her eyes darting from Konatsu to him. "So what was it like? All that high tech ninja spy stuff?"

"Pretty neat," Ranma replied, and looked to Konatsu, offering him an opening to voice his opinion. He was the only real trained ninja present, after all.

"The life of a shinobi is five percent preparation, ninety four percent waiting," Konatsu finally said, after being sure they were waiting for an answer. "And one percent frantic terror."

"He tells it like it is," Ranma quipped, and offered a friendly nod to the cross dressing genius ninja.

"Ah," Ukyou began to say, her tone less sure than before. "Ran-chan. I… I'd like to ask you something. About a few days ago."

Ranma sighed under his breath, and turned to the other guy present. "Konatsu. Can you go help Shampoo with the equipment?"

"Yes, sir," Konatsu replied crisply, and headed for the door. To his credit, he didn't even look back.

When he was out of sight, Ranma quickly spoke up, before Ukyou could continue where she'd left off. "Don't call me Ran-chan on duty, Ukyou. Just Ranma will do."

Ukyou looked a little hurt by the rebuff, but she relented. "You're right. The situation and all…"

That was it exactly.

"So what's bothering you?" he asked, looking out over the dancing sea of lights that was the Greater Tokyo Area. Standing next to him, Ukyou hesitated before responding.

"I'd like permission to speak freely and off the record," she said, referring to the fact that normally UNETCO monitored and recorded everything they said and did when on duty. As the team's commanding officer, only Ranma could deactivate the devices which watched over them. He looked at her briefly, considering the request. Anything off record would be noted with some suspicion (mind controlling aliens tended to instill some healthy paranoia in any organization designed to combat them), and he'd have to answer for it later to his superiors.

Still, he gave her the benefit of the doubt.

"The time is twenty one hundred hours and eighteen minutes. Deactivate Watchmen One and Three," he announced, for the benefit of said devices and those back at base HQ. Voice recognition software confirmed the request and the phrase. A second later, the command was carried out.

"Thanks," Ukyou said, giving a few seconds to be sure they wouldn't be overheard. "I'm… I guess I'm lucky I beat Shampoo in rock-paper-scissors, or else she'd be here instead of me."

Ranma was glad they'd solved the problem without doing anything that would cause him trouble later, but he still wasn't sure what this was about. If she'd asked him to deactivate the Watchmen devices just so she could share some alone time with him he'd be pissed off, and justifiably so, he thought.

"Ukyou," he prompted.

"I wanted to…" she closed her eyes and shook her head sadly. She seemed to be struggling with what to say, but he waited for her to compose her thoughts.

"I wanted to say I'm sorry. About before, when I… I panicked I guess."

"You want to apologize for that?" He asked, caught off guard. During Operation Zebra, she'd been psionically attacked by one of the aliens, maybe even the Ethereal (since they didn't need line of sight to attack you), but in the end she'd been able to pull together enough to still fight, and take out a Floater that had been trying to ambush him from above.

"I told you that you didn't have to protect me, that I could take care of myself, but… but it wasn't true, was it?" She asked, and sucked in a sniffle. She wasn't normally the type to cry, and she looked like she wasn't about to start now. "I couldn't stop it, not by myself. I… it was horrible, and I couldn't stop it."

She shuddered. "I was the only one who broke down like that."

"Ukyou," he had to resist using 'Ucchan' to try and comfort her. "I can't imagine what that… that thing showed you when it invaded your mind, but you saved me back there. When it counted, you were there, and you didn't hesitate."

He offered her a platonic smile, and placed his hand on her shoulder. "Ukyou, listen: I'd never been more proud to know you than I was at that moment. You don't have anything to be ashamed of."

To his relief, she didn't try and turn the moment into an excuse for her to get closer to him. She just stood there for a few seconds before reaching over with her right hand and resting it on top of his, which he'd kept on her shoulder. She didn't reply, and they stood like that for a few more seconds before Ranma sensed a chance to say more.

"I was scared too," he admitted, and she looked at him with undisguised shock.

"You?" She asked, amazed. "But…!"

"I'm not too stupid to realize when my life is in danger, or when a situation gets serious. I've been scared before, Ukyou; real scared. Not all the guys I've fought have been like Ryouga or Kuno, where I never thought they'd actually kill me. More than a few, like Herb, or Saffron, or even Pantyhose…" Ranma took a deep breath, and kept his eyes fixed on the horizon. "Those bastards would have killed me. Herb nearly cut my head off. Saffron would've burned me to a crisp if not for Akane. Even Mousse and Ryu could have meant to kill me at one point or another."

"Only an idiot like Kuno wouldn't be scared back there," he said with a smirk. "And look what happened to him. But you'll get stronger; we all will. Together. That's how we'll get through this, and that's how we'll win. Ok?"

"I just don't want to feel like the weak link in the chain…" Ukyou didn't sound as pained as before, which Ranma was thankful for. He'd never been very good at cheering people up, but he was trying real hard to correct that about himself. Maybe then he'd get pummeled by Akane less often, and maybe, hopefully, he could squeeze out of all the engagements that entangled him.

Hell, it was worth a try at least.

"I mean," she continued. "I'm not like Shampoo. I'm not going to pretend I'd stand a chance against you, or Ryouga, or probably even Mousse or Konatsu. By the way that Ryu guy acts, I'd bet he's stronger than me and Shampoo put together. And Kuno… well, I'd like to think I could hand him his ass if I had to."

"Ukyou… if you picked a hundred million people at random, I'd put money on you being better than any of them, men and women." Ranma hoped that had sounded as encouraging as he'd wanted it to. Praise wasn't his specialty. "You're not going to be a weak link unless you start questioning yourself. You just have to take this seriously."

"I am!" she replied defensively. "I really am!"

There was the chance he'd been looking for.

He popped the Big Question. "If this work we're doing meant canceling the engagement between us, would you agree to it?"

She seemed about to blurt out an answer, but retracted it before it left her lips. Her expression and eyes fell, and for a while she just stared at her feet.

"Don't ask me that, Ranma," she finally answered. "Don't. Please."

"I would," was his only reply. Next to him, Ukyou sucked in a sharp breath of cold air. Her hands started to wring together, and she went from looking down to looking at the city below them, to looking at the stars in the night sky. He could see, even feel, the cascading emotions running through her ki. She was strong, and her emotions were strong, but untamed and uncontrolled. If she could harness her emotions, if she could properly channel her ki, she would be more powerful than she ever imagined.

But would she?

Could she?

'I would.' He could see her running those words over and over again through her mind. 'I would.'

"If you want to talk more about this later… I'd make time for it," he said with an air of finality.

"What about Akane?" Ukyou asked softly, as always identifying her true rival for his affection as the Tendo girl, and not the Chinese Amazon.

"I don't think I'm gonna marry her either," he answered, honestly. "Not any time soon. But that's my business… and hers."

Ukyou nodded slowly.

"I'm going back on record, and so are you," he announced, and said the proper phrase. "Reactivate Watchmen One and Three. Time is twenty one hundred hours and twenty three minutes."

A few seconds later, Konatsu and Shampoo returned from below, carrying the laptops and other equipment that had been set up for the mission. Ukyou kept her back to them, and he left her alone while he went to make sure they had everything. Two minutes later, a silent black silhouette descended and picked them up.


A thousand operations a day must have been performed throughout the Tokyo area. Each hospital was a maze of rooms and suites and labs and corridors, as vast in scale as any corporate skyscraper. They were monuments in stone to the profit and power of the medical profession over human frailty.

Ryouga stayed perfectly still, and didn't even think about moving. He hated hospitals with a passion, and not just because he could so easily get lost in them. Whenever he'd ended up in a facility like this, there had always been questions: uncomfortable questions, questions he couldn't answer. Questions about how he got such terrible injuries, or where his parents were, or why he was uninsured, whether he was homeless and had stolen those credit cards…

There were no good answers to those questions.

The other three members of his team milled around more freely, and even occasionally wandered off to get a drink or use the facilities. The only exception was Kuno, who remained stoic, waiting for news. They were essentially alone in their little corner of the waiting room, and that was preferred. Ideally, they would blend in and be forgotten by everyone present.

Ryu returned from the other side of the room bearing a pamphlet. "Hey, check his out. You know they have a laser eye surgery place downstairs?"

"Isn't that something?" Mousse, the obvious object of Ryu's query, smirked and adjusted his glasses. They were new ones, much thinner than those he'd been using before joining UNETCO, but they still stood out on the Chinese martial artist's face. That said he went back to reading the newspaper propped up against his crossed legs. The message was clear: 'I see fine with my glasses, thank you very much.'

Ryu, however, was undeterred. Ryouga had noticed that the Kumon Dojo Heir had gotten much more talkative over the last few weeks.

"It says here," Ryu continued to say, despite Mousse's dismissal of the topic. "That the United States military offers free eye surgery and that the JSDF is considering doing the same. You'd think we'd get a good deal like that too. I mean, considering… everything else."

Ryu wisely watched exactly what he said; there was no telling who could overhear a conversation. Mousse sighed, and flipped past a few pages to the other half the article he'd been looking at. After a few seconds, though, he shook his head and lowered the paper, keeping his fingers between the pages to save his place.

"They did make that offer, actually," Mousse said, noting how even Kuno had given some attention to the implied question and the conversation in general.

"And?" Ryu asked, sitting down on one of the little blue waiting room chairs.

"It isn't quite that straightforward," Mousse explained. "I was around five when I began to suffer from (what I later learned was) acute angle-closure glaucoma. When I complained about my loss of vision and the pain I was eventually given over to one of the village healers for… treatment. It wasn't effective. My mother eventually took me to a Chinese doctor in a city, where we learned that it was too late to correct the problem and that my vision was permanently damaged."

"So it can't be fixed?" Ryu asked, and then winced at the question. "I'm sorry..."

"Don't be," Mousse replied with a shallow dangerous smirk. "Living with it made me stronger. Not weaker."

"Glasses help a little," he then added, and tapped the rim of the metal frame over his right eye. "And they're not nearly as much of a pain as you think. Sometimes it helps to not be able to see things. Everything else I've tried to compensate for by training."

"So they're nothing more that can be done?" Ryouga asked, speaking up for the first time in a while. "What about 'the shop?'"

"Lieutenant Tsuchihashi…" Mousse quickly looked around and hoped no one had overheard him besides the other three guys, even though it was just a name. "He and I looked into that when I first arrived. The 'shop' does make replacements, but it would keep me off duty for a few weeks; time I'd rather spend more productively."

Ryu smirked back at Mousse, impressed by the answer the myopic martial artist had provided. Kuno nodded solemnly, and Ryouga couldn't help but also smile in approval. He'd have made a similar choice if solving his directional dysfunction had kept him off duty for a month or more. It was a handicap, and a bad one, but it could be worked around… and like Mousse's bad vision, his damn directional curse had made him stronger. Much stronger.

It was part of the great divide between the elite cadre of martial artists, and so many of the extremely skilled but fundamentally limited individuals he had seen in his travels, and evaluated for UNETCO intervention. To harness one's ki fully, one had to be willing to throw away any pretense of a normal life or a human existence in pursuit of the Art. It wasn't just about suffering through training most would consider insane, it was about a mentality that valued the Art over fitting into society.

That was why Akane and so many others would never be stronger than they currently were.

"Gentlemen," a doctor said as he approached the group. He was a middle aged man with black hair and squinting eyes, and he was one of many permanent plainclothes second tier operatives of UNETCO, dispersed across the world in areas of importance. Many didn't even know who they really worked for or who their research or work actually benefited. This man, however, was more in the loop than most.

"How is she, doctor?" Kuno asked, getting up from where he'd sat for the first time. "Is…?"

"We'll talk about it as you follow me, if you please." The doctor turned and they followed as he headed down one of a hundred empty white tiled halls. As Ryouga walked, Ryu stayed close by, keeping a constant eye out to make sure India Squad's commanding officer didn't get lost. He was silently very grateful for the other man's help. After the initial embarrassment of making clear his 'problem' with getting places, Ryu hadn't once made a crack about it, and if the duty frustrated him he'd kept that fact to himself.

"I've completed the analysis, and she's clean. No implants, no lesions, no signs of prior abduction." The doctor gave them Kodachi's diagnosis with a straight, serious face that belied doing it more than a few times before. "When I was finished, I also took the liberty of giving her a 'clear conscience' just like the ones you boys have."

Ryouga briefly looked down at his gloved hand, and not because his recent training had caused some distressing lingering pain there. Like the others, he had suspicions about where his 'conscience' was, but he couldn't be sure. Almost anywhere fleshy was possible. The euphemism 'conscience' referred to a sub-dermal tracking device implanted in all UNETCO personnel and many of their family members under UNETCO protection. Supposedly, they were kept off line, and only activated under very specific circumstances. An alien abduction would set one off, for example, but otherwise they remained silent and untraceable. How it worked exactly, Ryouga didn't know and didn't really care.

Kuno breathed a sigh of relief. "Hopefully it shall be enough."

"Would you prefer the alternative?" Mousse asked, knowing full well the answer. "This is the only option we have at the moment."

"So it would seem," Kuno agreed. "But she is not your sister, is she?"

"If she's done here, then we'll want to move her out of this hospital immediately," Ryouga spoke up, returning the conversation to its proper topic. "How much longer can we expect her to be asleep, Doctor?"

"You have a good four hours at least," the older man replied, and crossed his arms behind his back.

"Plenty of time," Ryu said.

"I can not say I like the nature of this," Kuno interrupted. "I will include my reservations in my report."

"You're free to do so," Ryouga answered, though Kuno had said as much at least twice before. "But you yourself stated that she couldn't be trusted to stay in protective custody, and she hasn't done anything that warrants being put away more securely. So all we can do is let her go with a warning and keep an eye on her."

"Do you really think the truth would be the best thing to tell her?" Mousse asked, his glasses glinting from the overhead lights.

"She didn't seem that bad…" Ryu began to argue. "Plus she has some skills."

"You don't know her like we do," Mousse replied, quickly. Kuno huffed in response, and Ryouga grunted. A minute later, they were standing around Kodachi's sleeping form. She was still wearing her leotard beneath the medical tunic, and the only real difference in her appearance other than that was her ponytail - it was unbound, letting her black hair fall freely.

With surprising gentleness, Kuno reached down and picked her up.

It was time to go.