PART 3
What's happened so far: Jeff Anderson, 'retiring' super hero, has come to Nerima for reasons involving a dead colleague and Mishima Heavy Industries. He has arranged a cover as a student teacher at Furinkan High School. Jeff has met most of the Ranma cast, even getting involved in a fight between Ranma and Ryoga. He thinks that they are both meta-humans like himself. Nabiki is mad at him for destroying her camera, and he wound up on the receiving end of Akane's temper when she found out about it. While preparing to leave the Tendo dojo, Kasumi invites Jeff to dinner. You wouldn't turn down Kasumi would you? Even if the most of the household (and P-Chan) were mad at you?
-----
I look out of the dining room at the falling rain and wonder if this a good idea. I realize it's not a good idea, but I'm not willing to disappoint Kasumi. The thought of doing so makes me feel... dirty. I had already washed and changed into the last clean clothes I had with me. The Tendo's bathtub is huge, but I'm not one for soaking. Kneeling at the low table where Kasumi directs me, I feel like I'm entering a combat zone.
Tendo Soun sits at the head of the table. I'm not worried about him. Saotome Genma sits next to him. Right before being invited to dinner, we were having a conversation that had been taking an... interesting... turn. He had been sizing me up ever since I got here. Not sure what he's thinking, but I doubt it's friendly. Next to him is his son Ranma. Ranma had been in a fight at lunch with someone called 'Ryoga'. I fought some as well, but without affecting the outcome much. He didn't look happy either.
Next to Ranma was his fiancee, Tendo Akane. One of his fiancees anyway. She holds her pet pig, P-Chan, in her lap. We had been sparring earlier when I said something that upset her and she attacked me seriously. I had to restrain her before she did me or herself serious harm. After she settled down, she ran out of the dojo crying. She wasn't crying now, but I could tell she was still upset. The pig was glaring at me with hostility as well.
Next to me was Akane's older sister Nabiki. She was avidly ignoring me. I first met her last Saturday when I was started using my cover as a student teacher at Furinkan High School. She was very helpful and even set up my rental of time at the Tendo dojo. I needed the room and the privacy that the dojo provided and was willing to pay the price for it. But since then, it was as if she was doing everything in her power to annoy me. She tried to sell me information about Kuno and Ranma. (Right in front of him!) Then she started taking pictures of me. For various reasons, I don't like being photographed. I admit that my reaction was excessive, crushing the camera in my hands (with help from my telekinesis), but I did pay for a replacement.
Not much is said until Kasumi brings out the food. No squid or octopus or eel that I can see, so a little of the tension in my stomach goes away. Rice, seasoned potatoes, and stir fried veggies with beef. The food is passed around and we all begin to eat. Ranma must have learned his eating style from Genma, they are both scarfing food at a breakneck pace. I fumble with my chopsticks for a second before starting my own meal.
The potatoes are wonderful. The stir fry is good, but it's not really my thing. The rice is rice. I politely turn down the proffered tea. I don't drink either green or brown tea. It's one of those "acquired" tastes that I never bothered to get. Like alcohol or coffee or tobacco.
Blink. I could swear Genma just snagged a piece of beef off his son's plate. Blink. No doubt about it, he just tried again and was blocked. I take another bite of stir fry while observing the battle. Blink. All right, that was off _my_ plate. Pretty well done considering he's reaching across the table to do it. While I'm chewing, he snags one of my potatoes. Nope. Can't have the potatoes. They're mine.
I concentrate in order to focus this just right. I place a small repeller field between Genma and my plate. Depending on how tightly he's holding on to his chopsticks, it should either bounce them out his hands or shatter them. With all the speed tricks and such I've seen since arriving in Nerima, everyone should think this is more of the same.
I reach down, spear a chunk of potato, and very deliberately bring it up to my mouth. It's an invitation, I know. "The potatoes are delicious Kasumi-san."
"Thank you very much Anderson-san."
Crack! Genma sits there with his arm partway over the table, a pair of broken chopsticks in his hand.
"Are you all right Saotome-san?" I ask quietly, checking the table for reactions. Soun, nonplused. Genma, mildly ticked as far as I can tell. Ranma, smirking. Akane, feeding her pig. She may not have noticed anything. Nabiki, poker faced, but she's been like that the entire meal.
"Oh my," Kasumi quietly states, getting up and heading for the kitchen. She returns a few seconds later with a replacement set of chopsticks.
Genma doesn't bother to answer me, he just takes the chopsticks and continues eating.
"Getting slow Pops?" Ranma says offhandedly.
"Jagaimo o kudasai" (I'd like some potatoes, please.) Really good potatoes. I leave the repeller field up. Once I set one, they don't take much concentration to maintain. Just in case he's stupid enough to try again.
Crack!
-----
By the time dinner is over, the rain has stopped and the mood has lightened up a bit. Except for Nabiki's. She's planning something, and it won't be pleasant for me when she decides what to do to me. Akane is back to normal as well, apparently having put the entire dojo incident behind her.
"Sure you don't want to spar with my son Anderson-san?" Genma inquires, continuing his efforts to size me up.
"Yeah Jeff, it'd be fun." This from Ranma.
I notice Nabiki paying close attention to the conversation.
"Not today gentlemen. Besides, it wouldn't be a contest." Turning toward Ranma, I continue, "You're much better than I am. Even if I had my staff, you'd still stomp me. I'd just last a few seconds longer is all." (Genma can't be a slouch either, being Ranma's sensei.)
I make my goodbyes and start my ride home in the fading light. Then I think about what I'd do in a real fight with Ranma. Nabiki might just try to instigate something there. My first impression of her is pretty much gone, replaced with the picture of a skilled manipulator. Too bad really, I liked the Nabiki that I first met.
Hmm. No way I could take Ranma without using my powers or gear. With my full gear, I'd still lose unless Ranma made some serious mistakes. But all that stuff is back home. Can't do anything about it now. With my powers... I don't know... If I keep my TK under wraps, using it like I did tonight, I might be able to trick him and win. It wouldn't be a sure thing though. If I'm willing to blow my cover completely, I could take him. The ability to throw high speed punches doesn't do much good against someone who can telekinetically bounce your head off a wall from 40 meters away.
Now Ryoga, on the other hand, I'm not sure I could stop with even with my TK. He's tough. It's very hard to beat an opponent who doesn't notice you hitting him. Could do the 'long fall' bit with him, if I blew my cover. Maybe. Hope he doesn't have a spare for that umbrella of his. Wonder what happened to it? I sincerely doubt he doubled back for it, considering he left his pack behind.
I'm not really paying attention to my surroundings, so I almost miss it. A sporting goods store. Hmm. Gives me a few ideas. I don't have my regular gear, but I might be able to get a few substitutes. I whip around and head back.
Upon entering, I see it's similar to back home. I check the prices for the two biggest matching aluminum baseball bats, a catcher's mask, a pair of binoculars and a box of 'energy' bars. I need the calories. Checking my wallet, I'm a bit short. It takes me a couple of minutes, but I ask a clerk where the nearest ATM is. A couple minutes later, I've got the directions and am on my way. It's only a few blocks, so I leave my stuff in the store and my bike chained out front and walk.
The ATM access charges are outrageous so I pull out as much as I can. I finish up and find some things don't change, no matter where you are. Using an ATM after dark is one of them. It's always a sign for the local lowlifes to come out and play. It probably doesn't help that I'm a gaijin. I just get the money put away when I hear a voice.
"Hand over the money, your watch and any other valuables too," says a dark-haired man in heavily accented English. I don't wear a watch. He looks to be about my age, is wearing black leather jacket over a black shirt with black pants. He has a butterfly knife in his left hand pointed at me. There are five more guys dressed the same in an arc behind him. The one farthest right carries a tire iron while farthest left spins a set of nunchaku. I don't see any weapons on the other three yet. No visible tattoos, so probably not Yakuza.
"Go away, there are only six of you," I reply in Japanese. I'm in the mood for a fight, but I've got to give them a chance to back down. I expect some further posturing by the leader, but he surprises me by attacking immediately. One step to close the distance between us and he slashes the knife at my stomach. I bring my left foot back to adjust my stance and dodge his attack, grab his left arm behind the wrist with my right hand and twist hard in a standard disarming move. While the knife falls to the ground, I pivot and bring my left knee into his wide open stomach.
By this time his friends start arriving. I plant my left foot, twist and launch a back kick at the one in front of me. He drops. I reset my stance and hop back a meter to avoid the tire iron. Before he can back hand me with it, I step forward, blocking his return swing. This also keeps him between me and the rest of them. I grab his shoulder with my left hand and pull, but the follow up strike with the heel of my right hand is off target. By the time I can extricate myself, another of the punks tags my chest with a wild swing over his friend's back. My wife hits harder.
Two hops back to avoid the recovered tire iron wielder and get some room. When fighting multiple opponents, let them get in each others way as much as possible. By this time, the leader has picked his knife up and is shouting orders at the rest of them. The guy I kicked is still out of it. The three weapons users stalk toward me while the other two go help the downed guy. Tire iron to the right, nunchaku to the left and knife down the middle. The nunchaku have the most reach, so I attack him first. Long hop to the left and two steps forward. I feint a punch, drawing his attack. Snatch myself back out of range and charge in after his swing whistles past me. Punch to solar plexus, stopping him. Punch to stomach, bending him over. Elbow to the back, dropping him.
Evade incoming knife thrust. Grab his foot when he tries a kick after that. Throw foot into the air hard enough to take his other leg out from under him. Jump 2 meters straight up because the two unarmed guys try to tackle me from behind. See them run into the guy with the tire iron, who had been circling around for an attack. Land and clock the leader of the pack before he can get up. Wait while the three remaining guys beat each other up for a bit. Mop the floor with the tire iron guy after he coshes the other two.
I confiscate the weapons and start walking back to the sporting goods store. I use the knife to cut the leather straps connecting the two halves of the nunchaku. This leaves me with a couple of short batons similar to what are used in escrima. Not my staff, but I practice a lot of stick variations so I'm comfortable with them. After that, I snap the knife blade against the sidewalk, dropping the pieces, as well as the tire iron, down the nearest sewer grate. The batons and my Japanese/English dictionary trade places in my back pocket and I untuck my shirt to cover the switch.
I get back to the store, buy the stuff I had spotted earlier and get home without further incident. Allowing for the time change, Anne should be up by now, and I haven't spoken to her in almost a week. It's long past time to call home. Since we may talk of things I don't want the NSA, NRO or other government agencies to hear, I run the conversation through my custom laptop's encryption protocols.
The laptop is the only real tool I brought with me to Japan. It _looks_ like a oversized clunky old laptop. At least the folks at Customs thought so. The extra size helps hide the real goodies and helps with the heat flow. The CD-Rom drive can handle DVD's and the 3.5" drive is also a "super disk" reader. There are 21 processors, 16 P-III's wired for parallel processing, 4 dedicated math co-processors and to top it off, a 4 gig RAM chip from those nice folks at NEC. Not the fastest chip out there, but boy does it hold data. Couple of other goodies in there as well.
The biggest problem is the heat build up. I use silver for my heat sinks, and there's a length of woven silver cable I can put in a cup of water to help keep things cool when the on-demand fans can't cut it. The other problem is the thing sucks serious juice. Working at full speed, the batteries are flat in under an hour. Lucky for me I seldom need it to work at full speed. It was the best portable machine I could build with my resources.
Too bad it's obsolete.
I stop wool gathering and dial the phone, bypassing the voice mail system. Running through encryption degrades the signal somewhat, but I after four rings my wife answers.
"Hello?" Damn, I miss her.
"Mushy mushy," I answer. Frigging satellite bounce time-delay. Give me land lines any day.
"Jeff?!?"
I can't help myself. "Anne?!?" I ask/shout trying to match her tone.
"Oh God, it is you." I can hear the happiness and relief in her voice.
"Keeping the home fires burning?" I try to keep my voice light and airy, but it's very hard when I'm here and would much rather be there.
"Are you finished already?" Bless her, Anne knows I don't like interruptions when I'm in the middle of a project. But I miss her too much.
"Not even close darling. I haven't downloaded today's results yet from Monster, but I'm not really expecting anything for at least another week." The length of time required was why I had bothered setting up such a detailed cover for my stay here in the first place. Since the entire project might take another month or two, it was easier to set up the student teacher thing as opposed to running around with a tourist visa.
We talk for a good hour. How she is. How Lil' Bill is. How the team is. She misses me, but is otherwise fine. My son is sitting up and rolling over by himself. The team can damn well take care of itself.
"So... How are you doing?" my wife asks. I can hear the care and concern in her voice.
"Oh, it's been interesting. Found a place to stay that isn't too expensive. It's not very close to the school though. Bought a bicycle from a pawn shop so I can commute. They've got me teaching Math and English Lit if you can believe it. Met some nice folks. I'm renting time at a dojo to stay in shape. There's not enough room here for my workout routines." She knows which routines I'm talking about too.
"My Japanese is coming along nicely. I'll have to take you out to a nice Japanese restaurant when I get home. Shock the heck out the staff." This earns me a brief time-delayed giggle, which is the nicest thing I've heard all week.
"Ran into a couple of guys that I couldn't take in a fair fight. One of them has super strength, and the other has at least partial super speed."
"Partial?" She's not thrown by the change in topic. She's used to that from me.
"I've seen him fight twice and he's pretty fast. He shouted something about chestnuts, then punched the other guy so fast I couldn't keep track of how many times he hit him."
"Chestnuts??" she says in disbelief.
"I call 'em like I hear 'em. He said 'chestnuts'. His name is 'Ranma'. The strong guy is called 'Ryoga'."
"You sure Ryoga is super strong?"
"Yep. When I first saw him, he was 6 meters off the ground in the middle of a leap towards Ranma. He was carrying a 65+ kilo umbrella and waving it around like it was made of paper. I kicked him square in the back as hard as I could without using my powers and he _barely_ noticed."
"Umbrella??" she laughs.
"Don't laugh, he swung that thing hard enough to crack the sidewalk. But that isn't what convinced me he's a meta-human. During his fight with Ranma, he thrust a finger into the sidewalk and it exploded with enough force that I felt it through my repeller field."
"..." Thought that would get her attention.
"Convinced?" I ask.
"uh, yes," she answers in a small voice before continuing, "Are you sure you're all right? This sounds a lot more dangerous than a recon mission."
"I said I couldn't take them in a _fair_ fight. In an unfair fight, Ryoga might be a problem, but Ranma'd be toast. Besides, as far as I can tell, they don't have any connection to Mishima. Worse comes to worse, I'd just crank up the TK like I did for you and Bill." My telekinesis has a default level, but I've been known to go higher than that on occasion. Like when I first realized I loved Anne and again when Carnosaur threatened her. Or when that other lunatic tried to kill her when she was giving birth to Bill. A few other times.
"You _know_ that's not reliable," she admonishes.
It isn't. And the side effects happen even if the TK boost doesn't work. Doc Murchison says it has something to do with my adrenal glands and fatigue poisons. So far he hasn't managed to identify the exact mechanism, but boosting really screws up my endurance. Which screws up a few other things as well. From what we can figure, my theoretical maximum TK strength is somewhere around 22 Kilotons, but I'd burn out in a few seconds and drop dead immediately after.
I hear Lil' Bill start crying in the background.
"Well, you've got to go," I tell my wife. "Tell my son I love him."
"What about me?"
"I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. But you already knew that." We finish our goodbyes and I wait for her to hang up the phone.
I dial back into Monster and download today's results. No progress worth mentioning. I don't really feel like watching TV to work on my vocabulary so I think about Rich for a bit.
-----
Fastball was a member of the team, and we all let him down. He died on a submarine that went down in the North Atlantic. The rest of us never even made it to the sub. He had run ahead using his super-speed while the rest of us had been fighting some mercenaries in power suits on a hijacked cargo ship. From what we could reconstruct after the fact, he neutralized the warheads on board and trashed the sub's control systems before he died from massive heart failure brought on my unknown means.
Life went on, as it always does. We had captured the mercenaries and Fastball wasn't the only corpse found on the sub when it was recovered, so I and the rest of the team thought the matter settled. It wasn't until almost six months later, when Anne and I came back from Canada, that I found that Richard Williams, alias Fastball, had left the bulk of his estate to Challengers Ink (the cover organization for our team) and to me in particular.
It wasn't too surprising he knew my real name, even if I never knew his until he died. We all have "open in case of incontrovertible proof of death" kits. He had always been a smart bugger. Richer than I had thought as well. After estate taxes, there was about $2,000,000 in cash and bonds, $200,000 a year in chemical patent royalties for the next 10 years and a large building a mile from The Meadowlands across the river in Jersey.
Unfortunately, the team didn't exist at this point, having fallen apart while Anne and I were in Canada. Anne had just told me she was pregnant, so we decided to head up to Canada to finish building our "retreat" home. I left Paul in charge when I left, but he botched his first mission as field leader, got in an argument with his wife that led to their divorce, and dropped out of sight leaving Jaime in charge. Jaime filled a couple of roster spots with his girlfriend, Nightblade, and some armored guy calling himself Limelight. (Yeah, the same woman whose back I broke. She got better and changed sides. Runs the team these days.) A month later Jaime disappeared into a temporal rift. This left a leadership vacuum which ended in the team disbanding. (I found out about all this after the fact.)
Deciding to fulfill the spirit of Fastball's will, I managed to contact as many of the former members that I could and set up a meeting to determine if there still was a team and what role I would be playing in it. With Anne starting to show, I made it clear that my wife and child were my first priority. A few ideas were floated, but eventually a consensus was reached to reform the team under the name MATRIX.
I stuck around long enough to see things started off right for the new team. Anne gave birth to William J Anderson while I was busy fighting some lunatic who claimed to be from the future and kept screaming that my son had to die. Messed me up pretty good too before I stopped him. While I was busy healing, I decided to check up on some of the details of the case where Fastball died. Least I could do considering what he left behind.
I found the submarine he died in was a Vietnam era craft officially listed as "scrapped" by the Navy. Research indicated the craft was purchased and then refurbished by Mishima Heavy Industries. A week later, I found out the power suits worn by the mercenaries we fought while Fastball was getting killed were made by Mishima too. I had been trying to hack the Mishima computer systems ever since. I even began studying Japanese to help, before I found the JASON translation protocols. Kept up with it just in case.
I wanted to know who had paid for the sub and the suits. If the people behind this were the ones found dead with Rich, fine. If they weren't, I'd present my findings to the team and leave it to them. Either way, this would be my last mission before I retired from the 'super hero' business to be with my wife and son.
After a couple of weeks of effort, Monster and I had found traces of a back door into the Mishima Heavy Industries network. It would take some serious computing power to find the key to that back door, but to open and use it I'd have to be on site in Japan. Anne and I 'discussed' our options for a week before she agreed to let me go. (Actually, quite a bit of yelling was involved.) I came up with the 'student teacher' cover as a way to keep my stay in Japan more open-ended. I wound up at Furinkan High School because they had a high staff turnover rate.
So here I am, pretending to be a student teacher at a Japanese high school while my computer tries to get me into a system that can tell me who paid the bills for the group that killed a colleague of mine over a year ago. Seems silly when I think it through, but I can't imagine not being here right now. I owe this to Rich, or to his memory, or legacy, or something. With thoughts like this running through my head, I fall into a fitful sleep.
END PART 3
In Part 4: Transformations
What's happened so far: Jeff Anderson, 'retiring' super hero, has come to Nerima for reasons involving a dead colleague and Mishima Heavy Industries. He has arranged a cover as a student teacher at Furinkan High School. Jeff has met most of the Ranma cast, even getting involved in a fight between Ranma and Ryoga. He thinks that they are both meta-humans like himself. Nabiki is mad at him for destroying her camera, and he wound up on the receiving end of Akane's temper when she found out about it. While preparing to leave the Tendo dojo, Kasumi invites Jeff to dinner. You wouldn't turn down Kasumi would you? Even if the most of the household (and P-Chan) were mad at you?
-----
I look out of the dining room at the falling rain and wonder if this a good idea. I realize it's not a good idea, but I'm not willing to disappoint Kasumi. The thought of doing so makes me feel... dirty. I had already washed and changed into the last clean clothes I had with me. The Tendo's bathtub is huge, but I'm not one for soaking. Kneeling at the low table where Kasumi directs me, I feel like I'm entering a combat zone.
Tendo Soun sits at the head of the table. I'm not worried about him. Saotome Genma sits next to him. Right before being invited to dinner, we were having a conversation that had been taking an... interesting... turn. He had been sizing me up ever since I got here. Not sure what he's thinking, but I doubt it's friendly. Next to him is his son Ranma. Ranma had been in a fight at lunch with someone called 'Ryoga'. I fought some as well, but without affecting the outcome much. He didn't look happy either.
Next to Ranma was his fiancee, Tendo Akane. One of his fiancees anyway. She holds her pet pig, P-Chan, in her lap. We had been sparring earlier when I said something that upset her and she attacked me seriously. I had to restrain her before she did me or herself serious harm. After she settled down, she ran out of the dojo crying. She wasn't crying now, but I could tell she was still upset. The pig was glaring at me with hostility as well.
Next to me was Akane's older sister Nabiki. She was avidly ignoring me. I first met her last Saturday when I was started using my cover as a student teacher at Furinkan High School. She was very helpful and even set up my rental of time at the Tendo dojo. I needed the room and the privacy that the dojo provided and was willing to pay the price for it. But since then, it was as if she was doing everything in her power to annoy me. She tried to sell me information about Kuno and Ranma. (Right in front of him!) Then she started taking pictures of me. For various reasons, I don't like being photographed. I admit that my reaction was excessive, crushing the camera in my hands (with help from my telekinesis), but I did pay for a replacement.
Not much is said until Kasumi brings out the food. No squid or octopus or eel that I can see, so a little of the tension in my stomach goes away. Rice, seasoned potatoes, and stir fried veggies with beef. The food is passed around and we all begin to eat. Ranma must have learned his eating style from Genma, they are both scarfing food at a breakneck pace. I fumble with my chopsticks for a second before starting my own meal.
The potatoes are wonderful. The stir fry is good, but it's not really my thing. The rice is rice. I politely turn down the proffered tea. I don't drink either green or brown tea. It's one of those "acquired" tastes that I never bothered to get. Like alcohol or coffee or tobacco.
Blink. I could swear Genma just snagged a piece of beef off his son's plate. Blink. No doubt about it, he just tried again and was blocked. I take another bite of stir fry while observing the battle. Blink. All right, that was off _my_ plate. Pretty well done considering he's reaching across the table to do it. While I'm chewing, he snags one of my potatoes. Nope. Can't have the potatoes. They're mine.
I concentrate in order to focus this just right. I place a small repeller field between Genma and my plate. Depending on how tightly he's holding on to his chopsticks, it should either bounce them out his hands or shatter them. With all the speed tricks and such I've seen since arriving in Nerima, everyone should think this is more of the same.
I reach down, spear a chunk of potato, and very deliberately bring it up to my mouth. It's an invitation, I know. "The potatoes are delicious Kasumi-san."
"Thank you very much Anderson-san."
Crack! Genma sits there with his arm partway over the table, a pair of broken chopsticks in his hand.
"Are you all right Saotome-san?" I ask quietly, checking the table for reactions. Soun, nonplused. Genma, mildly ticked as far as I can tell. Ranma, smirking. Akane, feeding her pig. She may not have noticed anything. Nabiki, poker faced, but she's been like that the entire meal.
"Oh my," Kasumi quietly states, getting up and heading for the kitchen. She returns a few seconds later with a replacement set of chopsticks.
Genma doesn't bother to answer me, he just takes the chopsticks and continues eating.
"Getting slow Pops?" Ranma says offhandedly.
"Jagaimo o kudasai" (I'd like some potatoes, please.) Really good potatoes. I leave the repeller field up. Once I set one, they don't take much concentration to maintain. Just in case he's stupid enough to try again.
Crack!
-----
By the time dinner is over, the rain has stopped and the mood has lightened up a bit. Except for Nabiki's. She's planning something, and it won't be pleasant for me when she decides what to do to me. Akane is back to normal as well, apparently having put the entire dojo incident behind her.
"Sure you don't want to spar with my son Anderson-san?" Genma inquires, continuing his efforts to size me up.
"Yeah Jeff, it'd be fun." This from Ranma.
I notice Nabiki paying close attention to the conversation.
"Not today gentlemen. Besides, it wouldn't be a contest." Turning toward Ranma, I continue, "You're much better than I am. Even if I had my staff, you'd still stomp me. I'd just last a few seconds longer is all." (Genma can't be a slouch either, being Ranma's sensei.)
I make my goodbyes and start my ride home in the fading light. Then I think about what I'd do in a real fight with Ranma. Nabiki might just try to instigate something there. My first impression of her is pretty much gone, replaced with the picture of a skilled manipulator. Too bad really, I liked the Nabiki that I first met.
Hmm. No way I could take Ranma without using my powers or gear. With my full gear, I'd still lose unless Ranma made some serious mistakes. But all that stuff is back home. Can't do anything about it now. With my powers... I don't know... If I keep my TK under wraps, using it like I did tonight, I might be able to trick him and win. It wouldn't be a sure thing though. If I'm willing to blow my cover completely, I could take him. The ability to throw high speed punches doesn't do much good against someone who can telekinetically bounce your head off a wall from 40 meters away.
Now Ryoga, on the other hand, I'm not sure I could stop with even with my TK. He's tough. It's very hard to beat an opponent who doesn't notice you hitting him. Could do the 'long fall' bit with him, if I blew my cover. Maybe. Hope he doesn't have a spare for that umbrella of his. Wonder what happened to it? I sincerely doubt he doubled back for it, considering he left his pack behind.
I'm not really paying attention to my surroundings, so I almost miss it. A sporting goods store. Hmm. Gives me a few ideas. I don't have my regular gear, but I might be able to get a few substitutes. I whip around and head back.
Upon entering, I see it's similar to back home. I check the prices for the two biggest matching aluminum baseball bats, a catcher's mask, a pair of binoculars and a box of 'energy' bars. I need the calories. Checking my wallet, I'm a bit short. It takes me a couple of minutes, but I ask a clerk where the nearest ATM is. A couple minutes later, I've got the directions and am on my way. It's only a few blocks, so I leave my stuff in the store and my bike chained out front and walk.
The ATM access charges are outrageous so I pull out as much as I can. I finish up and find some things don't change, no matter where you are. Using an ATM after dark is one of them. It's always a sign for the local lowlifes to come out and play. It probably doesn't help that I'm a gaijin. I just get the money put away when I hear a voice.
"Hand over the money, your watch and any other valuables too," says a dark-haired man in heavily accented English. I don't wear a watch. He looks to be about my age, is wearing black leather jacket over a black shirt with black pants. He has a butterfly knife in his left hand pointed at me. There are five more guys dressed the same in an arc behind him. The one farthest right carries a tire iron while farthest left spins a set of nunchaku. I don't see any weapons on the other three yet. No visible tattoos, so probably not Yakuza.
"Go away, there are only six of you," I reply in Japanese. I'm in the mood for a fight, but I've got to give them a chance to back down. I expect some further posturing by the leader, but he surprises me by attacking immediately. One step to close the distance between us and he slashes the knife at my stomach. I bring my left foot back to adjust my stance and dodge his attack, grab his left arm behind the wrist with my right hand and twist hard in a standard disarming move. While the knife falls to the ground, I pivot and bring my left knee into his wide open stomach.
By this time his friends start arriving. I plant my left foot, twist and launch a back kick at the one in front of me. He drops. I reset my stance and hop back a meter to avoid the tire iron. Before he can back hand me with it, I step forward, blocking his return swing. This also keeps him between me and the rest of them. I grab his shoulder with my left hand and pull, but the follow up strike with the heel of my right hand is off target. By the time I can extricate myself, another of the punks tags my chest with a wild swing over his friend's back. My wife hits harder.
Two hops back to avoid the recovered tire iron wielder and get some room. When fighting multiple opponents, let them get in each others way as much as possible. By this time, the leader has picked his knife up and is shouting orders at the rest of them. The guy I kicked is still out of it. The three weapons users stalk toward me while the other two go help the downed guy. Tire iron to the right, nunchaku to the left and knife down the middle. The nunchaku have the most reach, so I attack him first. Long hop to the left and two steps forward. I feint a punch, drawing his attack. Snatch myself back out of range and charge in after his swing whistles past me. Punch to solar plexus, stopping him. Punch to stomach, bending him over. Elbow to the back, dropping him.
Evade incoming knife thrust. Grab his foot when he tries a kick after that. Throw foot into the air hard enough to take his other leg out from under him. Jump 2 meters straight up because the two unarmed guys try to tackle me from behind. See them run into the guy with the tire iron, who had been circling around for an attack. Land and clock the leader of the pack before he can get up. Wait while the three remaining guys beat each other up for a bit. Mop the floor with the tire iron guy after he coshes the other two.
I confiscate the weapons and start walking back to the sporting goods store. I use the knife to cut the leather straps connecting the two halves of the nunchaku. This leaves me with a couple of short batons similar to what are used in escrima. Not my staff, but I practice a lot of stick variations so I'm comfortable with them. After that, I snap the knife blade against the sidewalk, dropping the pieces, as well as the tire iron, down the nearest sewer grate. The batons and my Japanese/English dictionary trade places in my back pocket and I untuck my shirt to cover the switch.
I get back to the store, buy the stuff I had spotted earlier and get home without further incident. Allowing for the time change, Anne should be up by now, and I haven't spoken to her in almost a week. It's long past time to call home. Since we may talk of things I don't want the NSA, NRO or other government agencies to hear, I run the conversation through my custom laptop's encryption protocols.
The laptop is the only real tool I brought with me to Japan. It _looks_ like a oversized clunky old laptop. At least the folks at Customs thought so. The extra size helps hide the real goodies and helps with the heat flow. The CD-Rom drive can handle DVD's and the 3.5" drive is also a "super disk" reader. There are 21 processors, 16 P-III's wired for parallel processing, 4 dedicated math co-processors and to top it off, a 4 gig RAM chip from those nice folks at NEC. Not the fastest chip out there, but boy does it hold data. Couple of other goodies in there as well.
The biggest problem is the heat build up. I use silver for my heat sinks, and there's a length of woven silver cable I can put in a cup of water to help keep things cool when the on-demand fans can't cut it. The other problem is the thing sucks serious juice. Working at full speed, the batteries are flat in under an hour. Lucky for me I seldom need it to work at full speed. It was the best portable machine I could build with my resources.
Too bad it's obsolete.
I stop wool gathering and dial the phone, bypassing the voice mail system. Running through encryption degrades the signal somewhat, but I after four rings my wife answers.
"Hello?" Damn, I miss her.
"Mushy mushy," I answer. Frigging satellite bounce time-delay. Give me land lines any day.
"Jeff?!?"
I can't help myself. "Anne?!?" I ask/shout trying to match her tone.
"Oh God, it is you." I can hear the happiness and relief in her voice.
"Keeping the home fires burning?" I try to keep my voice light and airy, but it's very hard when I'm here and would much rather be there.
"Are you finished already?" Bless her, Anne knows I don't like interruptions when I'm in the middle of a project. But I miss her too much.
"Not even close darling. I haven't downloaded today's results yet from Monster, but I'm not really expecting anything for at least another week." The length of time required was why I had bothered setting up such a detailed cover for my stay here in the first place. Since the entire project might take another month or two, it was easier to set up the student teacher thing as opposed to running around with a tourist visa.
We talk for a good hour. How she is. How Lil' Bill is. How the team is. She misses me, but is otherwise fine. My son is sitting up and rolling over by himself. The team can damn well take care of itself.
"So... How are you doing?" my wife asks. I can hear the care and concern in her voice.
"Oh, it's been interesting. Found a place to stay that isn't too expensive. It's not very close to the school though. Bought a bicycle from a pawn shop so I can commute. They've got me teaching Math and English Lit if you can believe it. Met some nice folks. I'm renting time at a dojo to stay in shape. There's not enough room here for my workout routines." She knows which routines I'm talking about too.
"My Japanese is coming along nicely. I'll have to take you out to a nice Japanese restaurant when I get home. Shock the heck out the staff." This earns me a brief time-delayed giggle, which is the nicest thing I've heard all week.
"Ran into a couple of guys that I couldn't take in a fair fight. One of them has super strength, and the other has at least partial super speed."
"Partial?" She's not thrown by the change in topic. She's used to that from me.
"I've seen him fight twice and he's pretty fast. He shouted something about chestnuts, then punched the other guy so fast I couldn't keep track of how many times he hit him."
"Chestnuts??" she says in disbelief.
"I call 'em like I hear 'em. He said 'chestnuts'. His name is 'Ranma'. The strong guy is called 'Ryoga'."
"You sure Ryoga is super strong?"
"Yep. When I first saw him, he was 6 meters off the ground in the middle of a leap towards Ranma. He was carrying a 65+ kilo umbrella and waving it around like it was made of paper. I kicked him square in the back as hard as I could without using my powers and he _barely_ noticed."
"Umbrella??" she laughs.
"Don't laugh, he swung that thing hard enough to crack the sidewalk. But that isn't what convinced me he's a meta-human. During his fight with Ranma, he thrust a finger into the sidewalk and it exploded with enough force that I felt it through my repeller field."
"..." Thought that would get her attention.
"Convinced?" I ask.
"uh, yes," she answers in a small voice before continuing, "Are you sure you're all right? This sounds a lot more dangerous than a recon mission."
"I said I couldn't take them in a _fair_ fight. In an unfair fight, Ryoga might be a problem, but Ranma'd be toast. Besides, as far as I can tell, they don't have any connection to Mishima. Worse comes to worse, I'd just crank up the TK like I did for you and Bill." My telekinesis has a default level, but I've been known to go higher than that on occasion. Like when I first realized I loved Anne and again when Carnosaur threatened her. Or when that other lunatic tried to kill her when she was giving birth to Bill. A few other times.
"You _know_ that's not reliable," she admonishes.
It isn't. And the side effects happen even if the TK boost doesn't work. Doc Murchison says it has something to do with my adrenal glands and fatigue poisons. So far he hasn't managed to identify the exact mechanism, but boosting really screws up my endurance. Which screws up a few other things as well. From what we can figure, my theoretical maximum TK strength is somewhere around 22 Kilotons, but I'd burn out in a few seconds and drop dead immediately after.
I hear Lil' Bill start crying in the background.
"Well, you've got to go," I tell my wife. "Tell my son I love him."
"What about me?"
"I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. But you already knew that." We finish our goodbyes and I wait for her to hang up the phone.
I dial back into Monster and download today's results. No progress worth mentioning. I don't really feel like watching TV to work on my vocabulary so I think about Rich for a bit.
-----
Fastball was a member of the team, and we all let him down. He died on a submarine that went down in the North Atlantic. The rest of us never even made it to the sub. He had run ahead using his super-speed while the rest of us had been fighting some mercenaries in power suits on a hijacked cargo ship. From what we could reconstruct after the fact, he neutralized the warheads on board and trashed the sub's control systems before he died from massive heart failure brought on my unknown means.
Life went on, as it always does. We had captured the mercenaries and Fastball wasn't the only corpse found on the sub when it was recovered, so I and the rest of the team thought the matter settled. It wasn't until almost six months later, when Anne and I came back from Canada, that I found that Richard Williams, alias Fastball, had left the bulk of his estate to Challengers Ink (the cover organization for our team) and to me in particular.
It wasn't too surprising he knew my real name, even if I never knew his until he died. We all have "open in case of incontrovertible proof of death" kits. He had always been a smart bugger. Richer than I had thought as well. After estate taxes, there was about $2,000,000 in cash and bonds, $200,000 a year in chemical patent royalties for the next 10 years and a large building a mile from The Meadowlands across the river in Jersey.
Unfortunately, the team didn't exist at this point, having fallen apart while Anne and I were in Canada. Anne had just told me she was pregnant, so we decided to head up to Canada to finish building our "retreat" home. I left Paul in charge when I left, but he botched his first mission as field leader, got in an argument with his wife that led to their divorce, and dropped out of sight leaving Jaime in charge. Jaime filled a couple of roster spots with his girlfriend, Nightblade, and some armored guy calling himself Limelight. (Yeah, the same woman whose back I broke. She got better and changed sides. Runs the team these days.) A month later Jaime disappeared into a temporal rift. This left a leadership vacuum which ended in the team disbanding. (I found out about all this after the fact.)
Deciding to fulfill the spirit of Fastball's will, I managed to contact as many of the former members that I could and set up a meeting to determine if there still was a team and what role I would be playing in it. With Anne starting to show, I made it clear that my wife and child were my first priority. A few ideas were floated, but eventually a consensus was reached to reform the team under the name MATRIX.
I stuck around long enough to see things started off right for the new team. Anne gave birth to William J Anderson while I was busy fighting some lunatic who claimed to be from the future and kept screaming that my son had to die. Messed me up pretty good too before I stopped him. While I was busy healing, I decided to check up on some of the details of the case where Fastball died. Least I could do considering what he left behind.
I found the submarine he died in was a Vietnam era craft officially listed as "scrapped" by the Navy. Research indicated the craft was purchased and then refurbished by Mishima Heavy Industries. A week later, I found out the power suits worn by the mercenaries we fought while Fastball was getting killed were made by Mishima too. I had been trying to hack the Mishima computer systems ever since. I even began studying Japanese to help, before I found the JASON translation protocols. Kept up with it just in case.
I wanted to know who had paid for the sub and the suits. If the people behind this were the ones found dead with Rich, fine. If they weren't, I'd present my findings to the team and leave it to them. Either way, this would be my last mission before I retired from the 'super hero' business to be with my wife and son.
After a couple of weeks of effort, Monster and I had found traces of a back door into the Mishima Heavy Industries network. It would take some serious computing power to find the key to that back door, but to open and use it I'd have to be on site in Japan. Anne and I 'discussed' our options for a week before she agreed to let me go. (Actually, quite a bit of yelling was involved.) I came up with the 'student teacher' cover as a way to keep my stay in Japan more open-ended. I wound up at Furinkan High School because they had a high staff turnover rate.
So here I am, pretending to be a student teacher at a Japanese high school while my computer tries to get me into a system that can tell me who paid the bills for the group that killed a colleague of mine over a year ago. Seems silly when I think it through, but I can't imagine not being here right now. I owe this to Rich, or to his memory, or legacy, or something. With thoughts like this running through my head, I fall into a fitful sleep.
END PART 3
In Part 4: Transformations