Deception: Chapter 1, Vengeance and Consequences


The woman died, blood gurgling out of what had once been her throat,
but before the killing blow had been dealt, she screamed. Ranma
cursed himself for a fool. He should have finished the bitch off and
had fun later. Surely the sentries had heard the shriek. Nearly a
hundred women patrolled the village and it's surroundings at night, as
much for the safety of those within its walls as to keep in the
unfortunate husbands and slaves who did not have the power to escape.

Well, they would all be dead soon, anyway, so what if he couldn't
personally kill as many as he'd hoped? Cologne was all that mattered.
She was tough, there was a chance she could survive the incoming
airstrike. Besides, he owed her, owed her big time. She'd stolen his
life away from him, literally, and Ranma was determined she know the
downfall of her entire culture rested on her shoulders, the product of
her actions.

The martial artist, his black fatigues making him nearly
indistinguishable in the moonless night, shrugged out of his backpack.
From within, Ranma retrieved several pieces of armor and a pair of
knee braces. A few seconds later he had secured the ultralight
polymer bracers and locked them into a pair of gloves specially
reinforced and armored with multiple locking panels of the same
material that formed the bracers. The knee braces snapped into place
and were tightened with a small ratchet before sliding the shin guards
into their holding slots.

The armor wasn't purely for protection, though Ranma had had that in
mind when he'd requisitioned it. To effectively combat Cologne, he'd
have to slip into the soul stream, a higher dimension of existance
only attainable if one moved at speeds several times that of sound, as
well as resonated properly with the surrounding environment. Ranma
had learned early on that the speed required to stay in the soul
stream put immense stress on his joints, and the braces would keep him
from making any damaging mistakes during the upcoming fight. Cologne
didn't have this disadvantage. Her joints were little more than worn
stubs of bone, made usable by perfectly controlled chi.

****

Cologne ghosted through the chaos that was her village ablaze.
Repeated drills had turned the warriors into an effective fire
fighting force, and bucket lines were already forming to combat the
major fires, yet the flames still spread, too well entrenched in some
cases, but mostly too numerous to contain. The cellar carved into the
bedrock beneath the communal council building had a number of magical
artifacts, one of which had been originally crafted to provide
protection against the Phoenix Lord of Jusendo, but also served as a
rather effective fire extinguisher.

Hopefully another elder, one closer to the cellar had already thought
to retrieve the jewel, but Cologne couldn't take any chances. Winter
was coming and if the flames reached the food stores many could starve
to death, maybe even forcing the tribe to resort to its long abandoned
custom of raiding the surrounding villages for food instead of the
just the more expendable goods, such as men.

The old woman's heart sank and a slow buring anger rose within her
breast as she arrived to see the council building little more than a
pile of smoking rubble. Sabotage, it could be nothing else. That
building had been stone, the only wood within its structure aged oak
so dense and tough that it too may as well have been stone. The Musk?
Unlikely, they were too few in numbers to hope to fend off an Amazon
war party, even with the help of their sovereign, Prince Herb. The
Phoenix People were much more likely culprits. Their wings gave them
a definite mobility advantage, allowing them to strike silently
avoiding guards stationed on the walls, and Saffron wasn't the only
member of that race capable of generating and manipulating fire.

There would be time for recrimination and retribution later, she had
to retireve the jewel from the rubble. The cellar was sturdily built
and chances were high that it hadn't caved in. Other elders were
arriving, finally. Colonge growled a warning to the woman to stay
alert as she focussed her senses on the soil below. She had barely
expanded her perceptions a foot into the ground when a pained shout
reached her ears. Slowly, the Amazon drew back into herself,
automatically seaking out the source of the cry. One of her fellow
elders was down, obviously dead from the removal of her head.
Darkness and blood obscured the corpses physical prescence, yet
Cologne could feel the lingering traces of chi well enough to know
that the victim was one of her oldest and dearest friends, Shampoo.
Her own great-granddaughter was named after the fallen woman.

Less than a second had passed since her withdrawl from the ground, but
another strangled cry sounded to Cologne's left. Spinning around,
Cologne saw an older Amazon woman clutching at the stump that had once
been her arm. Before she could render any assitance, the woman's hand
glowed with an intense yellow aura, liberally streaked with the orange
of pain. With a primal scream of purest pain, the woman cauterized
her own wound and ran off to join her sisters in the effort to save
the village.

Then Cologne felt it. A disturbance in the harmonics of the soul
stream, that mysterious place that acted as an intermidiary stop
between life and death. Reflexively, she sent out feelers of chi,
shifting them to the proper pattern to pierce the stream. The action
triggered a response, something she hadn't expected. It came as a
shock, a literal blow of psychic energy that left Cologne reeling, her
staff the only means of supporting herself.

"Ah, Cologne, fancy meeting you here," came a voice from behind. Now
she knew her enemy, now she had something to fight. Cologne turned to
face Ranma, seeing the man as a dark splotch of shadow backlit by the
flames in the background. Closer examination revealed that he wore
armor. It wasn't much compared to the garb of a modern day soldier,
and even less impressive than that used by Amazons in battle. That
Ranma wore armor meant he was serious, deadly serious.

Ranma's use of the soul stream, a carefully guarded Amazon secret,
would have warranted his death, the massive damage to the village
meant weeks, if not months of torture, but the murder of an elder of
the tribe was a fate worse than death, an eternal existance imprisoned
within the springs of woe, eternal agony and despair his only
companions. Now, how was she supposed to subdue him for the
punishment to be dealt?

****

He watched as Cologne stared at him impassively. Had old age finally
caught up with her just when his revenge would be wraught? Without
turning his attention from the woman before him, Ranma's arm blurred,
launching a small, flattened metal projectile at an unfortunate Amazon
who wandered too close. In mid-flight a mechanism activated causing
the device to pivot on itself, seemingly growing into a flying cross.
Before it struck the woman a moment later, the change repeated,
leaving a spinning blade three feet long to bisect the woman at a
forty five degree angle from shoulder to hip.

"Aren't you going to say something?" Ranma queried. He had roughly
two hours to get out of the valley, plenty of time at the speeds he
could move, but this moment had been years in coming, and further
delays were annoying.

"What is there it say, young warrior?" Cologne responded, unshaken by
the gruesome death of her fellow tribeswoman.

Ranma shrugged."Nothing really, though it would be nice to hear an
apology. I mean, you did destroy my life, not that it was much of a
life in the first place, but it was all I had, and you took it upon
yourself to interfere with it. Oh well, all that doesn't matter
anyway. I'll kill you in a few minutes, I'm not arrogant enough to
believe I can take you too easily, then watch as your village is
destroyed, along with every man, woman, and child." He looked at the
surrounding village, the immediate area nearly deserted as everyone
expended their efforts in a futile attempt to save their homes.
"Twisted as it may sound, all this just brings a warm glow to my
heart. Kinda funny, I'd say, since I am what you made me, afterall."

Something between the rasping of steel and stretching of rubber
sounded within the nearly silent clearing, and from the armored
bracelet on each of Ranma's forearms, a three foot blade of dull gray
metal grew. Each was so slender as to nearly disappear if looked at
crosswise, and they terminated in needle fine points capable of
piercing the protective plating of a tank.

"And the battle is joined," Ranma heard Cologne whisper as she
blurred, fading into the stream.

****

It was the swords that made the final difference. Cologne had the
reach advantage, even with Ranma's weapons, but the martial artist was
as fast as her and used the twin blades to weave an impossible
defense, as she found out when several inches of her staff became wood
chips after attempting an early debiliatting shiatsu strike.

Sound didn't exist within the stream, and very little energy was
transmitted from it to the world of life, so the battle, a spectacular
display of skill and power, went unwitnessed by the frantically
laboring Amazons. Chi blasts that would have vaporized acres of real
estate did little more than kick up puffs of dust, and physical
impacts possessing the force of speeding locomotives barely shook the
earth.

At uncommon intervals, both combatants would slip back into the real
for a breath of air, returning too quickly for their opponent to gain
an advantage. Soon, Cologne felt the draining effect of remaining in
the soul stream for such and extended period of time. She had to end
the fight before her reserves became to depleted to sustain her
deficient body. A burst of speed, the equivalent of to the kacchu
tenshin amaguriken, but several magnitudes faster and designed
specifically for use within the stream, propelled Cologne forward.
She saw that Ranma would not be able to bring his blades around to
properly defend himself and was relieved, for this was a fight who's
outcome could decide the future of her people.

Alas, it was not to be.

****

Ranma smirked internally, ignoring the throbbing in his knees and
ankles. He had a minute, two at the most, before he would need a
serious break and time to regenerate the damage done to his legs by
such high speed combat. Thankfully, the old ghoul fell for the bait,
leaving herself open in an attempt to take him down before her own
flagging strength failed.

The look upon the bulging, bloodshot eyes as Ranma's sword sprung from
a forward position to its preprogrammed back facing one and speared
Cologne to the ground would live in his memory forever, a moment to be
cherished for decades to come. With the ceasation of motion, they
both returned from the soul stream.

"So much for three thousand years of Amazon knowledge, eh?" Ranma
taunted. The diminuitive body pinned below him convulsed, coughing up
a bloody froth. "Hurts, don't it, knowing that you've failed, that
everyone you care about is going to die because of mistakes you made?"
A slightly unstable chuckle was followed by one last statement. "Then
again, getting run through like that probably doesn't feel all that
great, either."

Ranma stood, withdrawing the blade from Cologne's back and using the
proper blink sequence to resheath the swords within his bracers. A
minute build up of chi drew Ranma's attention and he bent to look at
his victim, the true object of his wrath. She raised a trembling hand
into the air, pointing vaguely in his direction, and released a spark
of white energy. Ranma sensed the threat embodied within the harmless
appearing gesture, and leapt clear as the spark expanded into a twenty
foot wide column of light that turned the area he had stood on, as
well as Cologne's body, into a pool of molten rock.

Looked like the old bitch had one last trick left in her. It was a
nice one too, maybe he could duplicate it? Time for that later.
Ranma looked back to the village he and Colgone left behind during
their fight. The fires were dying down and the sky no longer glowed
as intensely red as it had during the first few minutes of his
excursion into arson.

****

Ranma relaxed, leaning back in his seat as the pilot engaged the
engines and the rotors shrieked into activity before being quited by
sonic dampeners. The dull thump of high explosives sounded thoughout
the clearing and needles fell from the disturbed trees as Ranma's air
support finished what he hadn't.

Now he could see about getting some therapy, or at the very least, a
vacation. Yesm he deserved a vacation. He'd just single handedly,
well almost single handedly, destroyed a serious threat to global
security. No one who knew of the Amazons wanted a spy or agent with
access to their abilites or paranormal artifacts free to wreak havoc.

****

The stealth chopper set down on the carrier deck with a slight jar.
Ranma unbuckled his safety harness, clapped the pilot on the shoulder
for a job well done, and went to get some rest.

The quarters aboard the Freedom were cramped, not as bad as the
previous generation of carriers, but nothing to write home about.
Ranma's special status meant he got his own cabin, an area smaller
than most prison cells. It served its purpose, allowing him to
strecth out and sleep, as well as having walls shielded heavily enough
to block the interference the ship's quasi-plasma engine generated
with his chi.

****

:For Your Eyes Only:

Read the block lettering stamped on the manilla envelope Ranma awoke
to find lying next to his head. Geeze, couldn't he get a little R&R
after a hard night of muder and mayhem? With a sigh, Ranma tore open
the thick yellow packet and dumped its contents onto his matress.

A tour brochure, a wad of cash, and a plane ticket. Okay, THAT was
unexpected. A note slid out last. Ranma caught it in before it
landed and read:

Agent 009

Work on your tan, you're starting to look pale.

The Grand High Bitch,
M

****

Author's Notes: This is unusual. I wrote it cause I got pissed off
at something I read and had a prologue lying around on my computer
that I figured would fit in nicely with this. If I continue with this
fic it will be in shorter chapters, each with Ranma doing secret agent
stuff, but none of them this dark or violent.