"That was fun," Shichimu said cheerfully coming out of the theater with the two mercenaries. "I had no idea that movies had sound like that."
It was a sight that was attracting some attention: a girl who looked about seventeen and Japanese walking down the street of a small European city while two men clearly not related to her and quite a bit older walked with her.
"I guess that means you'll be paying to see the movie more often now," McAllen said in a humorous aside before putting his eyes back on the street.
"Oh yes, I'll be paying to hear a movie a lot more often now," she said. "Well...if I get money."
"I don't think that'll be a problem for a bit," Kurz said.
"I did like the dragon better as green though," she said.
"It was dark blue," McAllen said.
"Yeah, but I changed it," she said.
"Hold it, you changed the color of what you were seeing," Kurz said.
"Uh huh," Shichimu said nodding. "I guess that's another part of what I do. It's why I keep forgetting I'm ugly, because I make myself look like an Ichi when I look in the mirror. Or draw a line on the ground so I know how to get back from somewhere."
"And if you walk away from where you drew the line, does it go away?" McAllen asked.
"Why would I let it do that?" she asked. "Then I'd get lost in the lab or when she sent me on missions with the others."
Kurz and McAllen exchanged a look.
"Her power is a customizable User Interface," McAllen asked.
"No, I just change what I'm looking at is all," she said. "I mean it's exactly the same as looking out things that aren't in front of me. Just have to be careful or you can get..."
"Hold up," Kurz said. "Duck aside here."
McAllen nodded and pulled the girl into the alley next to them, going on guard as Kurz moved against the edge of the wall and quietly pulled out a gunsight from his pocket and brought it up to his eye, making sure no one got a good look at him doing so.
"We've got company at the hotel," he said. "Judging by body language and the way the men are jumping, I'd say that's a Kodachi down there."
"The woman has some information, if we had stayed in the hotel we might have been caught by now," McAllen said. "Maybe she already has a psychic way of finding us like this girl's vision."
"Maybe," Kurz said. "But if she already had Shichimu's ability, I'm not sure she'd be here herself."
"Let's get out of here," McAllen said. "Let's head for the secondary."
"I could..." Shichimu started to say.
"No," McAllen said. "If she knows what you can do, she'd just sit herself somewhere she might think you'd look at and grabbed you when you looked."
He gestured for the girl to follow him and she did so as quietly as she could. Like many of the numbers, she had been on missions in the past even if she lacked training.
"It's too dark," she complained, pausing for a moment. "Fixed it."
Kurz stared at her and shook his head as he came up behind them, ready to go for his gun.
"I'd love to be able to adjust the gamma on real life," he said. "Still, tone that down, don't know how much she needs to get you."
"But, it's dark," Shichimu protested.
"Not that dark," Kurz assured her.
"Less talking," McAllen said.
The secondary site had a few lookout points associated with it. Things Kurz had reasoned would have a good line of site on the location and would give him something to go to put a watch on the site, a tool shop in a row of shops, and see if it was safe from a distance.
This was stuff Kurz himself had picked out from studying the maps and checking out surveillance pictures. It wasn't on any sort of file or anything. However, they were things that anybody with the same information and surveillance could reason out.
And there had been someone in one of his lookout points.
Grimacing, he looked down at the dead man and cleaned his knife. Someone was going to notice this position going dark. He left the building quietly and headed down the street in the opposite direction of McAllen and Shichimu for the moment.
It was fifteen minutes before he'd decided that he wasn't being followed and started to turn back for where he'd left them before moving on to check the secondary site.
Moving carefully and checking his corners, he still felt a little off. There was a feeling like he was missing something or had forgotten something and left him frowning.
He started running a scenario in his head, just how would he follow someone in this case. How far back would he walk and what paths would he take. Without looking down or saying it out loud, he started measuring his pace and thinking about Nimu's pace.
There was something that was pretty firm in his mind.
The sniper turned around a corner and put his back to the wall, drawing his knife and counting beats out before slashing his knife into the open space at the corner.
There was a thud and a gasp as the image of one Kodachi's bodies was just there with a knife through her chest. It wasn't as if it faded into view, it was more like he suddenly realized for the first time that she was there the entire time.
"Damn it," the body said as blood trickled out of her mouth. "I don't have too many with this power."
And then the form toppled to the ground and Kurz took off at a run before a call could be made zeroing in a collection of thugs to his position.
Or worse, a Kodachi with a more offensive power.
It was another thirty minutes before he arrived where McAllen and Shichimu were waiting for him.
"Mr. Weber," Shichimu said in relief as he came into the room. "I was getting worried."
"They were there?" McAllen said before noting the package Kurz was carrying.
"Yeah, all over the place," Kurz said. "Scratch one Kodachi, tried to do some sort of mental forgot she was there trick to make herself invisible."
"And you killed her how?" McAllen asked.
"I channeled Sagara and let paranoia guide me," he said, looking out the window of the small abandoned store front that McAllen had scouted when they first started the mission.
His lieutenant had also thought to leave a bit of care package in place, just in case.
McAllen moved up next to Kurz and whispered, glancing back toward the girl.
"I don't like this," he said. "First we get those traitorous creeps on the SRT and then this freak is in on both our official exit plans?"
"Yeah, looking like a big time mole all right," Kurz agreed. "Do you have any contacts in this area, sir?"
"Not as such," he said. "And I'll bet she has the cops on us in a little bit. And she'll sick the cops on us next."
He thought carefully a moment and then nodded.
"Okay, we're leaving the city," he said, turning toward the Ni so the girl could hear.
"Isn't that what we were trying to do?" she asked.
"No, we were trying to get a particular meeting," Kurz said. "Now we're just leaving."
"I saw a car down the street we can use," McAllen noted. "Don't forget to grab gear from the cache."
"Don't worry about me forgetting something like that," Kurz said.
They were out into the streets then quietly, breaking into the little European box car and piling into it and heading out down the streets in their little car, Shichimu in the back seat and trying to keep down as they moved along through the streets.
They were stopped at a traffic light when Kurz noticed a handful of familiar mercenaries and they turned to notice him.
"Go, go!" he shouted as the mercenaries started drawing pistols and rushing forward at the little car as it sped off.
"Great, now they're going to have a description of the car," he said.
"It's a piece of sh...junk," he glanced back toward Shichimu, "European car and there's a dozen like it just in view. Just go! Ummm...sir."
"Wouldn't she usually send some of my sisters for this?" Shichimu asked.
"Maybe if we hadn't freed most of them in the area just recently," McAllen said. "And I'm getting the feeling she's not trusting missions to just anybody anymore."
They got out of the view of the mercenaries and merged into traffic heading onto one of the major through fares out of the city heading further north, towards West Germany and other places.
Things seemed to be calming down again when they were getting close to the outside of the city and a shrill cacophony of sounds made itself apparent to them.
"What the hell is that?" McAllen wondered.
The unmistakable sound of screeching tires followed by a crash and the distant sign of an explosion down the road brought them to a brief stop as Kurz stepped out of the cat briefly and rose his scope to his eyes.
Down below them at the head of the road, people seemed to be going ahead and screaming their heads off as they tried to run away from...something. They didn't seem to be heading in any one direction, just running randomly terrified, viciously attacking anything that got in their way.
He scanned back and watched as a handful of people watching in their cars or along the street were suddenly gripped with what looked like a severe amount of pain before they too were engaging in the fearful activity.
In the midst of the chaos was an organized group of people in black tactical gear moving up the road and watching the people as they grew fearful and moved about tearing things apart in the urge to be away. At the center was one of the Kodachi Kuno bodies, walking very slowly and clearly concentrating from car to car.
"Ah hell," Kurz said. "We've got to get out of here now."
McAllen stepped back and looked down the road, not seeing the detail that Kurz was but recognizing a plan to flush out something that was hiding.
"Everybody!" the lieutenant shouted at the top of his lungs to the people near enough to hear. "Get out of here."
Kurz meanwhile reached into the car and pulled out a rifle, nothing more than an old hunting rifle, but it was all he really needed at the moment. He attached the scope and sighted down toward the woman in the street so casually spreading the fear that was tearing people apart down there.
A shot rang out and the woman fell as the people still in control of themselves around Kurz and McAllen called out in shock and scattered away from him.
The riots were still going on, but at least without her, there was a chance that they'd calm down naturally.
"Go!" McAllen said. "After that we're definitely going to have cops on us."
"Yeah, not much choice on the matter thought," Kurz said as he slung his rifle back over his shoulder, detaching and pocketing the scope in the same motion.
He took Shichimu's hand and they darted aside from the road in between some of the buildings that were there. McAllen came up behind them, holding his pistol and looking for any sort of trouble.
"Careful, that was too blatant to be anything but something to flush us out," McAllen said.
"Yeah," Kurz said. "I know."
They came to the edge of the town then, hills and forests not a hundred feet out, and stopped as Kurz pulled his scope out again and scanned the area.
"Damn it," he said. "They have a position on the hill to the left, how many minions does this bi...woman have anyway?"
"She has a lot," Shichimu asserted quietly.
The sound of gunfire behind them several blocks away attracted their attention.
"And sounds like she's still got her men pushing for her," McAllen noted.
"Is she doing all this just to get me?" Shichimu said. "Why? I can't do anything really powerful."
McAllen snorted.
"Trust me on this one when we say that the last thing we want her to be able to do is look anywhere in the world she wants," Kurz said.
"Let's get up this street," McAllen said, pointing to the side towards a steep rising street at the top of which a bunch of barrels sat outside a warehouse. "Then we'll have the other side of this hill and be sliding down the back end of it."
"And, what's that going to do?" Kurz asked.
"Working for this organization and you've never read the Hobbit?" McAllen asked.
"What are you talking about?" Kurz asked before glancing up the hill. "Are you crazy? I might be able to pull that off, but there's no way you..."
"I'll find my own way out," McAllen promised him. "That's the way you're going and that's an order."
A shot rang out and one of Kodachi's minions collapsed to the ground as the others took cover.
"There they are," one of them shouted. "We'll get them now. Head up there, we've got them covered on both sides from this point."
One of the mercs nodded with a smirk as he chambered his gun and started darting up the small hill toward the warehouse at the top.
Almost immediately, he ducked aside as a rolling barrel came down the hill at him followed by another and another.
"Keep going," his commander said, pushing forward and dodging aside another barrel as it rolled down the hill down toward the river below. "They're pressing from the other side too."
A dozen mercenaries pushed their way up the front slope toward the warehouse on the edge of town, and they had radio reports from a number of other units heading up as well. All of them were dodging barrels as they went along.
One of the barrels struck the base of a tree and cracked open letting Kurz kick himself free of the item and pull out, standing in a very disoriented dizzy fashion before he tracked in on Shichimu's voice nearby and broke her free of the barrel she was in.
"That was scary," she said, trying to hold her feet and clutching Kurz as she did so. "Wh...where is Mr McAllen?"
Kurz frowned as he led her into the trees then and looked back up the hill.
"Remember he said he'd find his own way out?" Kurz noted darkly.
"He's going to die, isn't he?" Shichimu said quietly.
"Nah, he'll get out," Kurz said without much conviction.
McAllen looked around from behind his cover towards the various men that had converged on his position and grimaced. There weren't any good gaps in the net for him to slip through.
"You've caused something of a mess," a woman's voice said from outside.
He glanced up and saw Kodachi walking toward him casually.
"Why don't you come out here and we'll talk things over," the woman said in an incredibly soothing tone of voice.
It sounded like a good id...
He shook his head immediately and cleared his mind as well as he could. It was evilly clear just what this body's ability was. Just thank goodness the woman, if she could really be called that, hadn't learned how to share powers yet.
Hopefully they didn't know that was possible.
"I think you may not have heard me," Kodachi said. "We want the three of you to come out and...talk things over. I'm sure after a brief conversation, we'll be able to come to an understanding."
The soothing sound of the woman's voice slipped insidiously through his ears and he found himself struggling to avoid standing up out into the clear.
"Now, now," she repeated, each word pushing him up to action until he was standing straight with a number of guns pointed his way and staring across at one Kodachi Kuno's bodies. "That's better, now go ahead and come closer while we wait for the other two of you to see reason."
"I'm not coming over there, bitch," McAllen said tightly.
"Oh, yes, yes you are," the Kodachi noted. "OhhHOHOHOHOHOO! Yes you are. And do put down that gun, I've lost enough bodies already this action I think."
Even the shrill laugh was appealing somehow and against his will, McAllen felt his legs dragging across the scene as the pistol in one hand clattered uselessly to the ground. He reached up toward his chest into his jacket, as if to draw another gun, but the bluff was taken for what it was by the woman.
Slowly, eventually, he found himself standing tall over the woman that was forcing him to act so and looking down at the blonde roots of her hair.
"Oh crap," McAllen said as he realized the importance of that.
"Yes," the woman holding one Kodachi's bodies noted. "Now where are the other two..."
His hand came out of his jacket and several small metal objects clattered off of his fingers to the ground.
"What are tho..." Kodachi paused and took a heavy breath. "Oh bother."
The grenades under McAllen's jacket exploded outward ripping the stolen body to pieces along with a fair number of her mercenaries.
Kurz and Shichimu were well gone from the area before any of Legion could pick up the trail again.
"No, you're kidding," Mao said, snickering.
"I'm really not," Ranma said. "His name was Pantyhose Tarou."
"Pantyhose?" Mao said laughing out loudly in a way that was very far from ladylike.
It brought a number of stares from across the lobby of the Kabuki theater they were just leaving.
"Who names a kid Pantyhose?" she wondered.
"Freak perverts who steal underwear," the man beside her said.
"And that was his big goal in life," Melissa said, slightly tipsy. "He wanted to change his name?"
"He also wanted to rule the world," Ranma said, smirking, "but first he wanted to change his name, yeah."
"That's some freaky childhood there," Mao said with a chuckle as she leaned against Ranma to steady herself. "You know, you'd think being immortal would make one's alcohol tolerance higher."
"Judging by the number of myths that have Gods or Demons drunk, poisoned or ill?" Ranma asked snickering. "I don't imagine it's a common trait to be immune to poison."
"I don't want to be immune," Mao said quickly with spritely twinkle. "That wouldn't be any fun. I just want to be able to go longer before it shows."
"You drank about three times the alcohol I did and I'm not much better off," the martial artist noted. "I'm just better at hiding it."
"Lightweight," Mao teased playfully. "You, 'Mr. Kurosawa', are a lightweight. You shouldn't be affected by a mere...what was it, liter of saki? Or was it two?"
Ranma was about to answer when something clattered to the ground ahead of him and he turned to look and saw a familiar figure leaning on the wall next to her. At her feet was an oblong object wrapped in cloth and her purse.
"Excuse me," the woman said, tightly, clutching her hand tightly. "You reminded me of someone."
She started to lean over to pick up her things and winced visibly at the simplest effort to start to lean forward.
"Here, let me get that for you," Melissa said, moving forward to carefully lean down and collect the items to hand to the woman.
It took a grunt of effort and working around the walking cast, but she still managed it quicker and easier than it took for the woman to simply bend part way over.
"Maybe you should sit down," Mao offered carefully. "You don't look like you're in the best shape."
"I shall be fine," the woman said tightly. "Thanks for your help, I imagine it was difficult for you in your state of inebriation."
Mao glanced back toward Ranma, who was oddly silent, and then back toward the woman.
"Excuse me?" she demanded angrily. "What the hell is that for gratitude?"
"I imagine she's not thinking clearly," Ranma said, coming up to Mao's side. "Who did you think I reminded you of?"
"My son," the woman said. "He...died, yes...several years ago, quite heroically, but one always hopes that they'll return someday."
"One of my children ran off on his own for a couple of months recently," Ranma said. "I know exactly what you mean."
"Is there something going on here?" Mao asked.
Ranma looked over toward her and nodded slightly.
"You really should sit down," Ranma said. "You look like you're in pain."
"Of course, I'm in pain," she said proudly, straightening herself. "It's the fourth day, so it is getting very bad. Tomorrow I'll probably not be able to walk far at all. And by the end of the next day, I'll be hallucinating. Then it will start to get better, and just about the time it's almost gone on the sixth day, it starts coming back."
"Good Lord," Mao said. "Lady, have you been to a doctor for that?"
"Yes, of course I've been to a doctor," she said. "They say they can't find anything. Something about spontaneous flare ups of the cells. They think I'm making it happen to myself, like some belief thing."
It was also clear that the pain had already started to work its way into her head since she was spontaneously telling them this information, but she kept lucid enough to at least keep on track with the situation.
"Six days of pain and six days of recovery?" Ranma asked.
"Yes, six then six," she said, leaning against the wall. "The six when I can't think straight for more than ten minutes, or the six where I can think clearly and the pain is leaving, but I know it's coming."
She shook her head then and looked around suddenly confused.
"Excuse me," she said. "I've let myself wander again...this isn't house. Just let me into this building and I'll call my husband to pick me up."
Ranma glanced over at Mao and gave her a gesture to indicate for her to wait as he helped Nodoka into the theater.
"So kind, if my son were alive, I'd hope he was as manly and thoughtful as you," she said.
"Though I assume you'd accept him regardless of what he was like when came back," Ranma said. "That is what mothers do after all, take in their children."
There was a furtive look across the woman's face as Ranma helped her sit down.
"Of course," she said in a calculated tone. "Of course I would accept him regardless."
She emphasized the "him" very strongly and glanced around carefully.
Ranma walked over to talk to some of the theater staff to help her. He walked back toward Mao and watched as an involuntary spasm worked its way over her body with a wince.
"She was lying about her son being dead," Mao noted quietly as they walked away.
"I definitely know that," Ranma said, holding Mao steady so as to counter both the injured leg and the alcohol.
They walked a few more yards down the street before he continued.
"That was my mother," he explained.
Mao's head snapped up and she looked back toward the theater and up toward Ranma.
"Thank God," she said with a sigh.
"What?" Ranma asked, surprised. "Relieved I was born a guy for sure?"
"Nah," Mao said, waving her hand dismissively. "I was worried I was falling for an old traditionalist. Instead I find I'm with a fellow black sheep. Now...all you have to do is talk about you ran out on an arranged marriage like I did, and we've got it made."
"Well, two actually," Ranma said, recognizing Mao's tipsy attempt to get his mind off the encounter.
"Oh! That's just great," Melissa roared. "Kurosawa..." and she slowed down to remind herself to use the right name "...you are officially in my good graces."
Nimu felt herself free of gravity's hold for approximately a full second before she slammed back down to the mat below her, eyes wide in surprise.
"We are in a basic spar," Shampoo said sharply in clear disapproval. "Using basic skills. Moving things with your mind is not a basic skill!"
The Chinese woman circled around her fallen student prodding her side with a toe.
"You strike, you evade," she said. "This is basic. When you stop to do fancy things with your mind, you are distracted and open. Something that creates an opening is not an advantage."
"I just got to where I can use this without worrying about getting called to my twisted freak of a mother and disappearing," she noted. "And you want me not to use it. What about if I have comrades watching my back."
Shampoo looked up and across the room to where Yaku Go was playing on her hologram computer and then down at Nimu.
"You wish to protect your sisters?" she asked.
"Of course," Nimu said, coming to a seated position. "Can't I do that best if I use all of my powers."
"You want to build a house without foundations?" the Amazon asked. "Wait, of course you do, you are a Kuno, what else would you do?"
"I am not taking that woman's name," Nimu said standing up. "And when I see her I'm going to..."
She reached out and telekinetically pulled one of the axes off the wall to send toward Shampoo.
The Amazon looked almost bored as she caught it and twisted it around to slash just in front of Nimu's face and across the training hall into one of the weapon's dummies that showed signs of hacking all ready.
Nimu's bangs drifted down to the floor.
"Kodachi is a pathetic fighter," Shampoo said. "But you are worse than I remember her. And you take too long and too much effort to move anything significant. Ranma did not learn any special chi techniques before she mastered the basics. Nor did I."
"You do something more than just fighting?" Nimu asked curiously.
Shampoo held out her arms to either side and let both her eyebrows rise up, her palms held loosely out invitingly.
"Attack," she noted.
Nimu hesitated and Shampoo simply stared at her expectantly.
Gritting her teeth in determination, Nimu stepped forward as quickly as she knew how, and found herself pushed up and over Shampoo on the edge of a great ball of energy that seemed to appear around the woman.
"Continue," Shampoo said, without looking at Nimu.
With a war cry, Nimu came in only to have Shampoo sidestep away and with something that looked like barely a wave of the hand, pushed the girl away into a hurtling projectile across the room toward's Ranma's collection of sharp weaponry.
Only to stop dead inches away from the steel weapons and then thump to the ground.
Yaku looked up from her computer game and stared blinking before laughing out loud.
"Cool! Can you do it again?" she asked.
"I don't think it will prove necessary again," Shampoo noted.
"You're telekinetic!" Nimu accused standing up and walking into Shampoo's face.
"Of course not, you idiot!" the Amazon returned. "I am a chi master. Raw chi can imitate much, such as by latching a rope of chi around a stubborn pupil to stop her cold at a certain distance, but it is not telekinesis."
"Why aren't you teaching me how to do that?" Nimu asked.
Shampoo sighed and looked over toward Yaku.
"I was given the impression she was intelligent," the Amazon noted.
"Big Big sister is smart," Yaku said. "She can drive a car."
"Yes, I see," Shampoo noted, taking not of the equations running across the hologram Yaku's computer was using as a screen.
Turning back toward Nimu she crossed her arms.
"You must first strike and evade naturally," Shampoo said. "To be able to place thought and act all at once. Make a decision and let the body carry it out, not micromanage every muscle for every strike. Your eyes see, your body reacts. Instantly."
"Like a reflex?" Nimu asked.
Shampoo pinched the bridge of her nose and then whacked Nimu on the head.
"Reflex?" she snapped. "You cannot control reflex. If you train a strike into a reflex, then you will strike an ally whenever the reflex is triggered by one. No, nor reflex. Not instinct."
She took a breath and thought for a moment.
"Nature," she said finally. "You get up in the morning in the same way everyday correct? You realize its morning and you wake up and get to your feet."
"This is true," Nimu said. "But I fail to see..."
"You can choose not to get up," Shampoo said. "You can choose to get up differently, but still you get up almost the same instant you think about doing so. This is what you want, a movement so familiar that it takes no effort to guide. When you can do this, you can plan and think in battle without leaving openings. And then we will teach you to fight with your mind."
Yaku stepped away from watching Nimu getting repetitively whacked on the head by the Chinese woman and walked back to the table to set her Athenian computer down and start typing away as she sat down.
Her feet kicked in and out underneath her as she ran scenarios and possibilities on her computer and her mind while humming along. They'd said that Nimu was her legal guardian, despite having once tried to kidnap her, because Deimosu wasn't old enough.
And that didn't make sense because Deimosu was older than Nimu by at least a year or two.
Somebody had assured her that Nimu looked like she was old enough to be a guardian though.
In the meantime, she was working on the whole mini-game thing for making sure nobody else had access that they didn't want people to have.
About three Starcraft massacres ago, Yaku was in the middle of a fourth and wondering what some of the words she was seeing meant, Sarah had come in talking about how other people had handled the same problem.
"So, it's like loan sharks or grant approval," Deimosu's mother had told her and Sarah at that meeting.
"Lone sharks?" Yaku had asked. "You mean like Big Brother's sister, Naiki?"
"Uhh, no," the woman had said.
"Why'd they do things that way?" Sarah had asked.
The answer for that had come from the pretty girl with the lavender hair.
"Demons have traditionally used black magic as a way of forcing aid and trapping people they consider enemies or criminals," she'd said. "The entire system is a weapon that they can choose to use at anytime against someone who tapped into it."
"And the people getting hurt in the crossfire when their targets used those spells, collateral damage," Ranma noted. "The Gods probably wanted originally to hype the whole worship thing and check to see what someone wanted before they let them use the spell."
Yaku watched the adult and teenagers talk and typed through to connect to the internet, since they were on Earth at the moment, and look for terms like "credit card", "lone shark" and "grant approval".
And, wow, financial math was interesting.
But she'd already digressed from there to other things.
"Personally, I don't like magic," Ranma said. "It feels like slipping into the back of someone's head and rooting around their mind for something you want. It's just...just...ewww..."
"You sound funny," Yaku said laughing. "You're too old to say 'eww'."
She pointed at her computer screen.
"Did you know English letters could all be turned into numbers?" she asked. "They call it numerology."
Tessa, Sarah and Ranma exchanged a look and tried to repress a smile with varying degrees of success or failure.
And then she'd been asked to leave the room briefly before coming back in. That usually meant they were talking about her, but it didn't sound like anybody was mad this time, so she hadn't been worried.
Anyway, she was busy winning a Starcraft match and puzzling out strange words.
"Big Big Sister," she called out toward the training area.
"We are busy right now, child," Shampoo said.
"What do these words mean?" she asked. "I keep seeing them when I play this game."
The front door started to open.
"I don't know if it was a bad day," Yonjuu was saying. "Deimosu would think 'twelve' alot and then beat people up. And that one girl made people hallucinate or something."
"I had a great day!" Sanya said loudly. "Everyone was so impressed with my great feats of skill and intelligence. OhhhHOHOHOHO!"
"I'll just leave her here before I strangle her," Skuld said.
"Can you read these words?" Nimu asked, panting...and getting knocked to the floor for the distraction.
"Pay attention to..."
"'Benefit, you fucking swarming bitch slut. I'm going to rape your eyes and stuff them up your...'"
Yaku stopped as she looked around to see several people standing around her computer and looking at the screen with extremely scary faces.
"Umm, is something wrong?" Yaku asked.
"Give me that," Skuld said angrily as she sat down and snatched Yaku's computer.
"Can you believe how damn cheap this 'Benefit' is?" a random gamer asked. "I swear she's using some sort of hack or..."
"ChibiHammer just logged into the server, dude," his friend said.
"In the middle of a game?" the first noted. "See, told you Benefit was hacking. Chibi never shows up in the middle of a game for no reason."
A flashing message popped up on the game screen.
"It'll take me ten seconds to check the logs and see who was cussing out the eight year old girl, better be gone by then."
And then it started counting down.
"Dude, disconnect, disconnect!" his friend said while in a hurry to shut down his own laptop completely and physically remove the wireless card from its external slot while gesturing at his friend's tower.
"What is she talking about eight year old, there's no way that was an eight year old," the first gamer said. "And what can she do, fry my mother board through the internet?"
At which point the countdown hit zero and the unfortunate kid watched a process list surge up into huge numbers as overheating warnings struggled through the huge use schedule to fill up on his screen, though the smoke from his machine was the first actual sign he had of what was going on.
And then several bursts of light flared out from the tower and faded away into a thick smoke that hovered in the air above.
"Yes, yes she can fry your mother board through the internet," his friend said.
"I'm only three," Yaku told Skuld as she watched the Goddess type out the message.
"All right," Skuld said firmly. "That should handle that for now."
"You gave them a warning," Shampoo said. "Followed by?"
"Forcing their computers to overwork into a swift burnout," Skuld noted. "And they might not have realized Yaku was a kid, so gave them a headstart. Anybody who knows me should have known better than to stay online."
"Is that a spell?" Naiki asked. "I thought that the Gods' magic was screwed up too."
"Spell nothing," Skuld said. "I'm a damn genius! I could probably outvirus most of Nifelheim!"
"Really?" Naiki asked.
"No...no, not really," Skuld said reluctantly. "But I can definitely outvirus a stupid gamer with a tweaked out tower and two year-old security protocols."
"Can I go back to playing now?" Yaku asked.
"Well," General Hammond asked. "How did we miss this, people?"
"Carter?" Jack said, gesturing to the Major.
"Well, sir," Carter said. "We think it's because there are no set physical links connecting Earth and either Asgard or Nifelheim. The residents simply travel themselves or craft a temporary gate. It would explain how those worlds were able to shut off all travel from the outside. Our explorations have been mostly through to places with a permanent link, most of which we've managed to reroute here."
"We do think we know how those links got there now," Daniel said.
"And how is that?" Hammond asked.
"The Gods and Demons seem to have a usual method of dealing with some enemies," Teal'c explained. "I believe O'Neil stated it best."
"Their SOP is the Sealed Evil in a Can, general," O'Neil said. "Someone comes across something they can't quite kill or aren't allowed to kill...so they put it in a box and hide the box."
"You're basically saying that a lot of the hidden places are forgotten prison colonies," Hammond said.
"That would account for most of them," Carter said. "Especially the small ones, but not all. However, when you start to include the human spellcasters that may have been using the same seal arts to make little private hide-aways for themselves..."
"Or not so little in the case of Atlantis," O'Neil said.
"There is another potential side to this," Teal'c said. "These individuals bare some apparent relationship to the Enki and the Yaron. The Demoness mentioned calling themselves Keepers, which is the meaning of Enki and there was some mention of 'singers' which relates to the meaning the Yaron."
"But neither of those species is anything remotely close to human in either appearance or thought," Hammond said.
"Or humility," Daniel added. "Well makes sense. Asgard and Nifelheim are lifeboats and you generally don't have just one lifeboat."
"So the freaks we all know and hate are the ones that went out and haven't completely found their way back yet and got cut off from everyone else," O'Neil said. "And these are the ones that stayed close to home and kept up with the new fads."
"Yeah, that's one way to put it," Carter said struggling not to correct the oversimplification. "The main problem on our end is what they said about weakening seals."
"How so?" Hammond asked.
"If the seals are derivations of the technique used to create Asgard and Nifelheim, like I think," Carter said. "And we've been dealing with the seals that were created by small time 'wizards' making interdimensional laboratories or which were opened up by the deaths of Gods and Demons over a long period of truce..."
"And now we have a full out war," Hammond said looking toward the world map on the world. "Our cosmology is about get a lot more complex."
"There's also the fact that Psyche is who we've used to collect the physical links all this time, while we focused on dealing with off-world stuff," Carter said. "And now they're prepping full blown for invasion by Asgard and Nifelheim rebels."
"And what are we looking at for danger level?" Hammond asked.
"Belldandy, the Goddess representative, mentioned category 1 Demons and Gods," he said. "People with the power necessary to personally prevent a global catastrophe or cause one. The current fear is that the Demon rebels will grant that level of power to their troops. While the Gods on the other hand..."
"Have a large number of vehicles that might as well do the same thing," Teal'c said. "It is hoped that either Mithril or the Gods will be able to supply enough power to counter those situations when the time comes."
"Any recommendations on how we can help with the situation?" Hammond asked.
"Well, with the Demons and Gods deciding to go public," Daniel said. "The other hidden places will come up eventually. We might be able to offer evacuation and staging areas."
"There wasn't much to do about this, General," O'Neil said. "At least from our end. It was all going on in Asgard and Whifflebat's backyards and they were looking the wrong way."
"And we're looking out in their abandoned summer homes and prison cells," Hammond said. "This would just about be the perfect time for something to try to come in at us from one of the deep worlds."
He shook his head and leaned back.
"So are we revealing the extensive explorations we've done?" Teal'c asked.
"For now, no," Hammond said. "We're going to wait for Mithril to do some in house cleaning first."
There was a slowly setting sun ahead on the horizon, the red light streaking down and mixing with oranges and violets to touch the top of a tree-crowned hill that once upon a time had a police car hurtling down it at breakneck speed in an attempt to catch a pair of teenagers riding double on a bike.
Unbidden a similar image of riding double entered two minds, neither really sure who had initiated it, though the logical guess would have put it on the girl that had been riding double on the bike at the time.
Kaname flushed a bit and pushed the image away as Eija momentarily leaned into the sketchpad in front of her a little more than she had been.
"Is there something wrong?" Sousuke asked nervously as he felt the rise in tension around him.
Eija was sitting immediately beside him with her sketchpad, staring across the path toward a large mirror she'd borrowed from her home's training area and set down to give her an easy view of how the three of them were sitting.
Kaname was immediately behind, sitting on the bench that Eija was currently leaning against. Sousuke's back was leaning against her knees as she leaned down to cut at his hair in small snips and bits.
"Is something wrong?" Kaname asked with a laugh. "I take the two of you to get a haircut and you both just about freak out."
"Yes, well, it was uncomfortably familiar," Eija said quietly. "There is a reason I keep my hair long."
"Affirmative for myself as well," Sousuke noted as he held stock still and let Kaname cut his hair.
It was somewhat odd that letting her do this was both easier and more difficult than it was to let the man from the fashion shop. Where Kaname was holding his head and pushing it around was a lot rougher than the other man had started with, but the rising fear that the scissors might suddenly be turned on him was completely absent.
There was another sort of fear entirely at the moment. At least it felt like fear.
He couldn't really describe it any better. It was an anxiety and fear that something might...not?...happen.
Whether Eija's arm brushing against his side as she sketched away, or the way Kaname firmly held him in place as she snipped at his hair with care that was clearly exaggerated by concern.
Or Eija glancing up at him rather than looking toward the mirror and glancing away from him quickly with a flush to her face.
Or when Kaname gave him some teasing, unfathomable comment relating to the world of Japan and speaking in a tone of voice that was calm despite the fact he could tell from her heart beat she wasn't.
Or the furtive unreadable messages between the two girls that seemed to be half complete thoughts that filtered on the edge of his new Ainur awareness.
Each brief conflict sent a wave of tension through him that he could feel echoed in either girl. And he wasn't sure what the source of the tension was save that it was disappointed by the continued nothing.
And there was a vague part of him that hoped something would happen but afraid that it would hurt one or both girls.
"Yeah, I probably should have thought about doing anything that involved putting sharp objects near either of you," Kaname said in a cheerful manner that was a clear apology.
"It's all right," Eija said aloud.
"You know...I'm...almost done here..." Kaname hesitated briefly. "If you sit around in front of Sousuke, I can probably lean over and do your hair, Eija."
Wha...what are you up to? Eija asked.
All three teens blushed at the suggestion.
"Wo...would that be okay," Eija asked, looking up toward Sousuke and Kaname.
"If it would make things easier..." Sousuke said in a slow, careful voice. "And it wouldn't upset your sketch..."
"No..." Eija said. "I haven't started to draw us yet."
"Okay..." Kaname said breathlessly and trying to calm down herself. "Go ahead and...uh, move to his la...to sitting in front of him then."
Hesitantly, shuffling about, Eija did move to stand up briefly and reposition herself in front of Sousuke, with one leg stretched out beside her and the other bent, knee up on her other side. Almost perfectly holding her inside.
Her faced flushed more brightly red than ever and she forcibly concentrated on keeping her hand still as she started to go back to drawing.
"Hey...uh, Sousuke," Kaname said. "Go ahead and start undoing Eija's braid...please it'll go...faster that way."
The Whispered girl took a deep breath herself and brought the hand with the scissors up to wipe at her forehead even she glanced around to see if anybody was watching their mildly scandalous activity.
"Is that all right, Satomi?" he asked. "Satomi?"
"Eija?" Kaname asked.
Please don't tell me I broke you.
...I'm...fine...
Slowly she nodded and started moving again.
Very carefully reaching forward to take Eija's hair, Sousuke pushed his hand unintentionally into the small of her back through the fabric of her uniform. It was a firm touch, tender in the manner of a suddenly realized contact.
In the same moment, Kaname laid her hands on Sousuke's shoulders and leaned forward to blow the loose hairs off the back of his neck. The breath became something more subtle and susurrous, lacking the force needed for the intention, but carrying something more intimate.
It was like a sparkle of electricity came to life between all three points of contact; physical, mental and emotional; and through all three teens, kept cycling through the infinity between moments. No words even between the thoughts of the girls and just a stuttering of breaths and shuddering of hands.
Then that moment was gone, and they started moving again, but the electrifying feeling remained cascading through them, even jumping across the short distances between and arching, re-arching and forming a growing network of interlinked tingles on their skin.
Kaname had the most handle on what that feeling implied, having already admitted to herself and Eija some of that, but even she had only the most vague concept of what sort of depths they were surging into. Her mind kept wandering towards some of the sexual imagery she'd seen occasionally over her teen years.
Her link with Eija was almost completely flooded with raw feeling now, not much in the way of words or even images, getting through. And the exact thing seemed to be flowing between her and Sousuke then,
No, scratch the seem. It was...there was a definite matching of...something there between her and the soldier boy.
"Per...perhaps there is something I could do?" Eija suggested. "I feel very...passive..."
"You're sketching us aren't you?" Kaname asked with a flush, wondering just how she and Sousuke were going to show up in that picture, especially as distracted as Eija happened to be.
"Chidori is correct...Satomi," Sousuke said quietly. "You are doing...something."
He shifted slightly trying...not to get comfortable, he actually felt very comfortable. So comfortable that it was scary just how comfortable it could be. And that paradox ran through his mind, wondering just how comfort could be scary.
It slowly began to creep up on him, as Kaname leaned forward to start to work on Eija's and her hair touched lightly to his shoulders and over his cheeks.
This comfort...was near perfect.
There was something even beyond this that he had only a vague sense of. And there was something that was almost a different expression of this state that his body seemed eager for, but which he himself was only vaguely aware of as he pulled his hands out of Kaname's way and circled around Eija's waist protectively.
As Kaname started to carefully snip at Eija's hair, the Goddess knew that Kaname's lips were close to Sousuke's and equally aware of Sousuke's presence at her back and around her belly. It was like a fire reflected.
She could feel Kaname's passions burning and it stoked her own heat, which in turn pushed Kaname's higher. And that heat was equally felt rising in Sousuke. There weren't words, but she knew Kaname could feel the rising tension in their shared...love just as well. And it was clear that, even without a telepathic link, Sousuke could feel the same thing and was growing ever more anxious himself.
"Have you..." Kaname started to say before stopping herself.
"Yes?" both Eija and Sousuke said in gasps almost like the release of pressure from a burdened steam valve.
"Uh...Sousuke, do you..." Kaname hesitated again.
There was no way to be subtle about this, he just wouldn't get it. Both of them, to some degree, had only a vague notion of relationships and the like.
"Do you think about getting married?"
Sousuke held his breath and Eija felt his hands flutter around her and starting shiver again.
"Maybe..." Kaname continued in a soft whisper.
"I...have not..." Sousuke said with a slight twinge of realized sadness. "But...I would...have a difficult choice."
Sousuke's mouth worked into a tight, anxious frown as he tried to work out the problem.
"What if...you didn't," Eija asked, taking action.
She had to take some initiative herself. Her Searching had told her that. Too often she just let herself go with the flow. And she wasn't going to do that with Kaname and Sousuke, be a lingering passenger weighing them down.
The Goddess had to be an equal partner with them. Equal in everything.
"What if you didn't have to choose?" the pale girl asked. "What if...there were a...matched set."
She put her pen down, the picture was pretty much done and she was terrified that she'd mess it up with the way her emotions currently ran.
"If...no one were hurt..." he said quietly.
"What if the only way someone gets hurt..." Eija said just below him, leaning back and looking up into his eyes.
"...is if any of us are..." Kaname continued.
"...are apart." Sousuke finished. He'd meant it as a question...but it didn't feel or sound like one.
There was a unisoned heavy release of breath between the three, as if suddenly a great burden had been released and Sousuke suddenly had a feeling that something had happened, and it was good, but he still wasn't entirely sure what it was. He just hoped he could protect this.
Eija closed her eyes and let herself lean all the way back as all tension faded and she could suddenly relax, while still feeling as if her heart was traveling a sprint, being held quietly in both Sousuke's and Kaname's arms. Something she'd only ever let her mother do before.
Kaname kissed the side of Sousuke's head and quietly went back to finishing styling and cutting Eija's hair. There was an incredible giddiness to her, as intense as Eija was suddenly relaxed. And she couldn't stop herself from chatting, either verbally or telepathically as they continued sitting there until after the sun set and they'd have to go their different ways until the sun came back up and until they were living...
...somewhere together.