Mousse swept out his hand, motioning for the rest of India Squad to stop. They were divided into two man units: Ryouga and Kuno were sweeping around to clear the northern face of the property, up to where the UFO had landed, while Mousse and Ryu were tasked to make an initial entry into the house, along with Ranma and Ukyou. When necessary, Ryouga and Kuno would enter via one of the balconies. Shampoo and Konatsu were best suited to covering the open spaces behind the house.

The Chinese martial artist had just been about to peek into the kitchen through a window on the first floor when he saw a blip register on the motion scanner attached to his laser carbine. Every primary weapon had an attached motion sensor, and smart linked together they formed the Platoon Advance Warning System (or PAWS). It was all part of a coordinated data collection system spread out over both Squads designed to give each individual soldier as much information as possible about the location and disposition of the enemy.

At the moment, that system was warning him about the alien waiting in the kitchen area of the villa, no doubt waiting for someone to stroll past the window or enter through the door. Mousse knew he didn't look it, but he was carrying the most gear of anyone on either of the two squads; his mastery of Hidden Weapons made him a veritable walking arsenal. That said it took only a second to reach into one of the folds of his robe and retrieve a XM84 Diversionary Flashbang.

The window shattered as he threw the grenade right through it, whereupon it hit the ceiling, bounced off a number of neatly arranged pots and pans, and exploded several feet in the air filling the kitchen with blinding light and deafening sound. While flashbangs were not as effective against most sorts of alien as they were against humans, this particular Snakeman happened to be right next to the grenade when it went off. 180 decibels of sound and over one million candlepower were more than enough to stun the creature, and a second later its top half became neatly separated from its bottom.

Facing into the kitchen from the smashed window, Mousse scanned the inside down the iron sights of his rifle, keeping the display terminal of the attached motion sensor at the bottom of his line of sight. If anything came rushing into the room, he'd have ample time to register the incoming movement and its direction. With the room devoid of any apparent hostiles, he nodded imperceptibly to himself.

"Tango down. Kitchen is clear," he said, a little cautiously. "No movement."

"Hold position," Ryouga's orders were punctuated by a muted curse. "There's at least one alien still guarding the UFO. Juliet Squad - status?"

Ukyou replied first. "In position."

"Southern face is clear." Shampoo.

"No activity in the southeast." That was Konatsu. "I'm circling around to the pool area."

"We're ready," Ranma confirmed. "There isn't much time left on the clock."

"Ryu and I are ready," Mousse said, not needing to look in his teammate's direction to know he was poised to pounce like a jungle cat.

"Alright. Remember the timing," Ranma reminded them. "We'll breech in ten."

Mousse began the count down in his head. In ten seconds, Ranma and Ukyou would enter the house through the southwest balcony. There was an attached bedroom there, and possibly one of the human hostages. From there they would head down the stairs, clear out one of the first floor bathrooms and two storage areas while approaching the reading room from behind. Around that time, Mousse and Ryu would enter to reinforce them. Hitting the rooms from both approaches would prevent a potentially deadly alien ambush.

In the meantime, there was nothing to do but count down, watch the scopes, listen to the radio chatter, and wait. He heard the distant sound of gunfire from behind, where Kuno and Ryouga were keeping the aliens guarding the UFO under close watch. The alien ship itself was still in perfect working order, and if it started to take off and bug out, then it would be up to the Lightning fighter/transporter they had arrived in to shoot it down. Near Ground Level Intercepts were generally frowned on, as any misses would literally tear apart the landscape nearby. XCOM air to air missiles were all armed with tactical nukes, and ship-mounted plasma weapons were of the same level of potency. Fusion Balls were directed explosions of incredible magnitude, but they weren't safe to fire off near the ground either.

"Ryu, PDM!" Ryouga growled. "We're mining the ships' entrance."

"Right!"

Mousse found himself agreeing with the decision. PDMs, or M86 Pursuit-Deterrent Munitions were also known as Proximity-Detonated Mines. One or two thrown at the single functional airlock of the landed UFO would bottle up the aliens inside pretty well. It would also kill off any troublemaking alien that was too fond of peeking out through an open doorway to get a cheap shot or two.

"Tango!" Ukyou's shout interrupted his thoughts.

"Got 'im!" Ranma answered, and Mousse could imagine the two of them clearing the rooms. Ukyou would be acting as cover, using her large exotic alloy spatula as an additional layer of protection from alien fire, while Ranma quickly checked the rooms they had to secure.

"We found one of the hostages," Ranma continued, sounding hurried. "A woman. Early twenties. Unconscious."

That would have had to be Minister Somei's youngest daughter, one of the three hostages believed by Intel to be in the building (aside from the contingent of guards). The others being the Minister's wife, and the man himself.

"Now!" Mousse barked, reaching the end of his countdown. As one, he and Ryu kicked in doors two and three, flashbang grenades already leading the way into the kitchen and reading room respectively. Immediately, he saw a flare of light and tried to cover himself with his rifle as he spun back and out of the doorway. Splashes of plasma burned clean through the wall to his left and right, disintegrating the brick and glass nearby and turning the aluminum in the door into a fountain of molten metal.

"Tango!" Ryu yelled, his voice already nearly drowned out by the whine of cutting lasers. Mousse barely heard it. He had managed to escape the worst of the first barrage, but another shot had hit the wall, gone right through it, and struck him clean in the lower left chest. Any other soldier in the world would have been cored – a basketball sized hole burned from one side of the torso to the other – if not instantly cremated. Fortunately, once again XCOM personal armor had proved its worth… assisted in this by Mousse's own special hidden weapons techniques and the metal wrapped around his body.

On impact, the alien plasma blast first encountered a coil of alien alloy wrapped around Mousse's abdomen. Burning through that, what was left hit a .22-inch thick alien alloy plate. The dispersed thermal energy was then blocked by a layer of special heat-resistant areogel that hardened instantly on exposure to atmosphere. A complex weave of conductors and coolant fluids within that layer helped to dampen what would otherwise have been a plasma inferno hotter than the sun. For a second, Mousse felt like his body had been pressed against an oven, and then the heat was gone – dissipated.

WARNING: plasma impact detected

MEDICAL ALERT!

He ignored the little diagram that popped up in the lower left corner of his helmet HUD. The wound on his torso wasn't bad, but there'd also been some serious damage to his armor both there, and to the armor around his right forearm. Luckily there hadn't been any penetration there, and he didn't feel any pain in his arm or hand. His robes had been mauled, but they were made of fire resistant Nomex nylon, so there wasn't any danger of them catching fire.

Scrambling along the outside wall of the living room, Mousse brought his rifle back up to his shoulder and tried to get a bead on what had hit him. He was too late, however; Ryu, Ranma and Ukyou had beaten him to the target. Or targets, actually. Two of the Snakeman type aliens had been lying in wait, silent and unmoving, waiting for him to enter the room. The moment he'd thrown his flashbang into the doorway, they had opened fire in his general direction, counting on the over penetration of their plasma rifles to hit him through the wall and door.

Both were dead now.

One of the aliens lay slumped behind an overturned couch, both it and the furniture having been sliced cleanly in half from top to bottom. Another Snakeman had cleverly backed itself into the fireplace, having also stacked up two chairs to give it more cover to fire behind. Both chairs were on fire now, and what was left of the alien was also slowly burning in the fireplace, having been nearly diced by three sets of slicing laser beams. A few seconds later, the house smoke alarm went off, and a sprinkler head built into the ceiling started to liberally rain water down on the heads of the three XCOM soldiers.

Stepping through the ruined threshold of the door he had tried to go through just a few seconds earlier, Mousse took in the sight of the place.

"You ok, man?" Ranma asked. Mousse was still used to associating the pigtailed fighter's voice with his unarmored self, and it was still somewhat strange to see Ranma so thoroughly concealed by matte black personal armor. He and Ryu and Ukyou looked nearly alike, except for Ukyou having her giant spatula and Ryu wearing a white band around his arm.

"I'm fine," Mousse assured Juliet's Squad's leader.

"Two tangos down," Ukyou confirmed for those not present but listening over the group intercom. "The south side of the house is clear."

They were about to move onto the rest of the house, when the glass and metal frame of the living room facing the courtyard exploded inward. Shards of crystal filled the air, and would have surely savaged any unprotected human (or alien) in the room. Without a word, without prompting, all four soldiers ducked down and took cover. One of the aliens had exited the house from the northernmost door facing the courtyard, and was now opening up on them at full auto.

In seconds, it became a full fledged counter attack.

An explosion near the UFO, and the sounds of Kuno and Ryouga as they opened fire made it clear that the aliens were trying to take the offensive again. Whatever was going on near the landed alien ship was obviously pretty brutal, as one and then two large explosions followed, probably as the two parties exchanged more grenades. Mousse ducked low as a plasma blast hit the large plasma TV he had knocked over and taken cover behind. It instantly went up like a microwave filled with silverware.

They were under fire from two aliens now, one at the other end of the courtyard and another coming around from where the kitchen connected to the northern one third of the house. Both were sticking under cover and firing wildly, three shots, three shots, duck, three shots, three shots… More experienced XCOM operatives would have had more luck picking the aliens off, but gun duels weren't what either India or Juliet Squads were geared (or trained) for.

"Mousse!" Ukyou prompted.

"Ryu!" Ranma did the same.

No more needed to be said. On an almost instinctive, almost telepathic level, they had a grasp of what the other fighters were planning. It was nearly impossible to understand or explain, the sort of parallel synthesis of comprehension that martial artists who had fought against each other, and fought side by side with each other, many times before in life or death duels gained. It was most obvious when one watched Ryouga and Ranma fight a common foe, but to some extent, they all understood how their peers fought, and through that, how they thought.

Mousse didn't know it, but the aliens would have understood it perfectly.

"Combination attacks!" Ranma rolled out from behind his cover, and he and Ryu stood back to back, facing the alien across the courtyard. Mousse meanwhile leapt out, spun around behind the protection of Ukyou's battle spatula, and tucked his hands into his sleeves.

"Kijin Dai Ran Bu!" (Demon God Big Mad Dance!)

"Hiryu Shoten Ha!" (Rising Dragon Heaven Blast!)

"Kenran Hinode!" (Brilliant Sunrise!)

"Karasu Sansai Ha!" (Raven Storm Wave!)

Four special techniques were executed in the same split second. Ryu's vacuum blades joined Ranma's horizontal tornado, channeling the deadly projectiles into a funnel shaped spiral of doom. The courtyard, stones and trees and bushes, was instantly turned into a giant chopped salad as a long shallow trench tore into the ground. The alien, sensing danger the moment the humans jumped out of cover, ducked behind the concrete wall of the house and the metal and wood frame of the door. A second later, both ceased to be. The twisting helix of vacuum blades neatly removed a circular section of the first and second floor of the house – the alien stood amid the ruined masonry for just a moment before the first few blades bisected it, and then trisected it, and then eviscerated it into a handful of pieces.

Inside the kitchen, meanwhile, the second alien wailed as a halo of light engulfed it. Ukyou's ki attack was far more thermal in nature than Ranma or Ryouga's emotion based techniques, which were primarily concussive, and even the Snakeman's resilient hide blistered under the heat. Blinded and stunned, it never saw the wave of killer flechettes heading its way. A heartbeat later it was impaled in a hundred ways and stapled to the wall behind it.

"I saw from here!" Shampoo interrupted, filling in that exhilarated moment of silence after the execution of a good special technique. "Great job, Ranma! You really are worthy of an Amazon bride!"

From where he stood next to her, Mousse could all but see Ukyou's expression turn dark even behind her helmet and facemask. Ryu didn't give any outward appearance of annoyance that Ranma had gotten all the credit, but Mousse himself was secretly a bit annoyed. True, his and Ukyou's combined technique hadn't been as flashy as Ranma and Ryu's, but still…! Why did Shampoo always have to fawn on Ranma?

"Two tangos down." Ryu remained professional, and all four quickly got back to being focused on the duty at hand. Ranma patted him on the back by way of thanks, both for the technique and for the reminder.

"Let's move!" Juliet Squad's Lieutenant barked, and all four advanced into the northern part of the villa. Ukyou and Ranma took point, and they quickly passed by a furnished but empty guest bedroom and a large bathroom. At the extreme northwest of the house was a flight of stairs leading up, and one leading down into the cellar. Ranma quickly motioned for Ryu and Mousse to handle the basement while he and Ukyou went upstairs.

"This is India Squad Leader," Ryouga spoke up, then. "We've taken down one tango, and we're headed into the UFO after the second. Its wounded, and probably trying to start the engines."

"Roger that." Ranma replied, leading Ukyou carefully up the stairs. "Be careful in there."

"You, too."

At the top of the stairs, Ranma held up his hand, and he paused. There was movement up ahead in the master bedroom, though it was impossible to tell if it was human or alien. He showed Ukyou three fingers and pointed at the door. She nodded. Squeezing the hilt of her battle spatula, the heavy pommel detached and dangled several inches from a thin cord.

Ukyou spun around once, to build momentum, before snapping her weapon to the side and sending the pommel crashing into the handle of the door. The force was sufficient to knock the door open about half way, and the second it did, plasma fire erupted from behind it. In such confined quarters there was little that could be done to avoid the bursts of white hot death. Luckily, Ukyou had already taken refuge behind the wide flat face of her main weapon, and was already in a crouch with her rifle leveled and about to return fire.

"Hold your fire!" He reminded her, and jumped forward, biting his lip as a plasma blast passed right by his left shoulder. They couldn't risk firing blindly into the bedroom when one or both remaining hostages could be inside. Kicking the door off its hinges and pivoting on the ball of his right foot, Ranma let his rifle leave his hands and swing back and out of the way. He instantly took in the scene: a woman on the floor next to the bed, dead or unconscious, two identical men on the bed, both sitting upright at the edge. On the left side of the room was another Snakeman, busy trying to knocking the door out of its way, and on the right was a startled looking Sectoid.

The Sectoid could have some psi powers, but for the most part, the biggest threat was the Snakeman. Ranma decided to leave the secondary threat to Ukyou, who would be right on his heels, and concentrate on the primary danger. By the time the Snakeman had started to nudge the door out of its line of sight, Ranma was up close and personal. The alien tried, desperately, to get the weapon up and on target, but Ranma quickly grabbed the plasma rifle just above the grip, and twisted, breaking the alien's wrist with an audible crack. He then introduced his armored elbow to the creature's face, shattering its teeth and sending it sprawling.

The Snakeman was beaten, but not down, and it tried valiantly to fight back with its left arm. It had a hand with three claws probably well suited to raking flesh, but what it hoped to achieve against the personal armor Ranma wore, he couldn't imagine. With a single smooth move, Ranma unclipped the stun baton strapped to his right leg, and plunged the crackling electrical end into the Snakeman's gut. Its body shook for a second and collapsed.

Behind him, Ranma heard a similar fate befall the Sectoid.

"Upper floor is clear," Ranma announced with a deep sigh of relief. "Two tangos down but still breathing. Hostages recovered. Status?"

"This is Mousse. The cellar looks clear. Found two more unconscious guards."

"Everything looks clear out here, Saotome-taichou."

"The ship is secure. There was only one tango left inside, and Kuno finished it off."

"Good. Good!" Ranma then turned to the two identical Ministers of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. One was naked, the other still in his night clothes. There seemed to be some sort of apparatus attached to the side of their skulls, in roughly the same spot. Ranma approached, getting a closer look at the alien duplicate. Really: it was uncanny.

"Kinda creepy, seeing that they can do that," Ukyou said, standing next to him. "I mean, if they could replace someone in the Cabinet… where would it stop? The Prime Minister? The Emperor himself?"

"That's why we're here," Ranma replied, not very comfortable with where Ukyou's line of thought led. He wasn't the paranoid type by nature, but if aliens could just pull a replacement job like this, then he could see why some people would be.

"Ah, Lieutenant," Ukyou then asked, using his formal title now that the heat of combat was slowly fading from their thoughts. "Which Minister Somei is the real one?"

"The one wearing clothes, I'd assume…" Ranma frowned at that. "Unless they already got the clone dressed. One way to find out, though."

Ukyou then leaned over and gently poked the naked version in the chest with her index finger. When he didn't move, or give any indication of a response, she tried again. After two more pokes, he teetered and fell backwards onto the bed, where he started to drool.

"Would you please stop that?" Ranma sighed, and reached behind him and into his haversack, eventually retrieving a large circular object. Ukyou recognized it after only a moment.

"A mind probe!"

Ryouga obviously heard her.

"You better be careful using that, Ranma," he warned, sounding much like he was in the room instead of a half mile away inside an alien UFO.

"Relax!" the pigtailed boy assured his friends. "I read the instructions! I know what I'm doing!"

Ukyou cautiously took a step back.

"Let's see…" Ranma held up the mind probe, and fished around for a small tag clipped to the underside. "Okay. 'The mind probe is an alien communication device which is used to take information directly from brain waves…' Here's what we want: step one, turn unit on."

He activated a small switch, and the mind probe began to ominously hum.

Ukyou took another step back.

"Step two," Ranma read off from the tag. "Identify subject. That's easy, he's right here! Step three; 'conceptualize the existence of the mental probe.' Hmm… Ah! Here we go!"

Along the outer rim of the mind probe, a line of dull green began to glow.

"Are you interfaced with the mind probe?" he read, and then answered. "Yes, I am. Do you see the display? Yes, I do."

"Now, for basic information gathering when in sight of the target," he continued, oblivious to the odd stare Ukyou was giving him. "'Click on the mind probe and the 'use' option. Then click on an alien with the cursor.' Sounds pretty easy. Warning, do not use on conscious human beings, side effects may include headache, nausea and/or disorientation. See documentation for details."

"'Use' option?" Ukyou asked, incredulous. "Cursor?"

"It's just like a video game!" Ranma assured her, and then focused on the man in front of him (that is: the one with clothes on). In his mind, a little white cursor moved over the Minister and then a gold box appeared around the older man. Prompting the device to activate, two options appeared in front of him: "use" and "cancel."

Ranma selected "use."

Instantly, a wave of surface thoughts coagulated into a short burst of information which the mind probe quickly sorted, organized, and presented. The most important aspect of the information shown was a number representing alien influenced thought mind waves compared to baseline human ones. Highlighting and doing the same query for the naked version of the Minister revealed much the same physical information. The differences were solely in surface thought processes (the naked one had none whatsoever), and the alien influence index (one being at near zero and the other being over eighty percent).

"Ranma? … Lieutenant?"

He quickly shook his head to clear his thoughts, and the information disappeared. He couldn't even remember most of it, now that his mental connection to the probe had broken. The whole experience had actually been rather strange, now that he thought about it. Next time, for sure, he'd really have to read the manual and not just browse through it.

"Mister birthday suit over there is a blank slate," Ranma said, pointing to the naked old man with his thumb. "They didn't finish copying the original's memories."

"So what do we do with it? Or him?" Ukyou asked, kneeling next to the still unconscious man's wife. She seemed unhurt, and Ranma was briefly tempted to mind scan her, too. The more he thought about it, the safer he would feel just making sure. It wasn't like he was paranoid or anything, just playing it safe. The Commander would be happier knowing he'd done a thorough job.

"I dunno. That's not our department." He took out the mind probe a second time, and quickly used it on the man's wife. The surface scan for alien influence came back negative.

"Everything ok up there?" Ryu asked, standing at the bottom of the stairs.

"I think this is a wrap," Ranma concluded. "Let's secure the area for the cleanup crew. Juliet Squad will handle the house; India can take the outside and the UFO."

"Ah, the fun part of every mission…" Mousse griped.

"I'm with ya on that," Ukyou seconded, hefting the unconscious Sectoid under her arm and heading towards the Snakeman. "Dibs on the non-leaking live ones."

Watching her leave, Ranma walked over to where the Cabinet Minister, one of the most powerful men in Japan, sat limp and unmoving. Holding the man's jaw, Ranma craned the older man's neck, and looked closely at the small alien device dug into the side of his head. One of the clean up techs would know what to do with it, and if it was safe to remove.

As for what the aliens had wanted with this man, it was a mystery as far as he knew. But whatever their plans, XCOM would thwart them, as often as necessary. Picking up the man's wife and gently laying her down on the bed next to her husband's doppelganger, Ranma waited in the room, watching over them until the clean up crew drove up to the damaged country villa.

Elsewhere, the battle was not going as smoothly.