Ranma sekirei

There was, Ranma reflected as he, well currently she, slowed her descent down the side of the skyscraper to survivable levels, a certain sense of irony that she was the one who was kidnapped. Cradled in one arm is a young girl with long blond hair, wearing a hospital gown, and who is thankfully unconscious given the screaming she'd been doing 5 minutes ago.

Below, she can see jackbooted thugs boiling out of the main entrance of the skyscraper. Making a split-second decision, she times her next touch carefully, and pushes hard off the side of the building. Angling herself across the road to another skyscraper, putting a little chi into her jump allows her to make the impossible distance, where she uses her momentum to run sideways across the glass frontage. Reaching the corner of the skyscraper, somewhat lower than she started, she pushes off to the next skyscraper. Behind her, the sound of a helicopter becomes apparent as it crests the top of the building she just left. Cursing slightly under her breath, she redoubles her efforts to escape. Seeing some shorter buildings in the distance, she quickly diverts her course away from skyscraper central to an area that's likely to have some alleyways and buildings that she can actually roof hop across.

Alighting on the ground, to the screams and shouts of the pedestrians, Ranma takes a moment to orientate herself in Tokyo before cursing. 'Why did they bring me all the way to Minato Ward?' Shaking her head and spitting out a mouthful of flame red hair, she takes a moment to reposition the girl in her arms before launching to the top of a nearby building and heading towards the closest ward, Meguro. Some discrete thefts from washing lines later, as well as stolen cup of tea from a small café, and Ranma is a young man carrying his sleeping imouto to the station. Overhead, the black helicopters fly past without stopping, by the time they turn back Ranma has entered the subway and is heading north to Nermia Ward.

It is around 20 minutes later that the young girl wakes up briefly and looks up at Ranma with her deep green eyes.

"You are my Ashikabi."

"Wha… mumph", before Ranma can say more, the young girl kisses him on the lips, massive green wings rising out of her back, to the shock of everyone else in the carriage. As if nothing had happened, the girl then moves around on his lap and goes back to sleep.

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"Ma'am! Number 108 has just been winged."

Sahashi Takami looks over at the operator, "Did we at least get a fix on her location?"

"No Ma'am, she's in the subway."

Takami pinches the bridge of her nose, "What about 109?"

"She disappeared from our sensors before 108 boarded the subway."

"Tell me we at least have CCTV footage?"

Another operative shakes his head, "No Ma'am, they were moving too fast and unpredictably to locate them."

"Ancestors help me! Does anyone have any good news?"

The door to the operations centre clicks closed in the silence and Miyajima coughs, "Um, that probably means that now is a bad time to say that 109 escaped with a Jinki then."

Takami spins around, "Why in the hells was a Jinki even here?"

Miyajima crosses her arms, "Why do you think? 109 has never been regulated, so I was tasked with seeing how much regulation she needs. Which, as you well know, requires the use of a Jinki. I was coming here to tell you that 109 needs to go to the island, as I don't think she's a Sekirei in the same way that Miya isn't a Sekirei."

"Shit! How did we miss that?"

"I don't know, what I do know is that her Tama has never been used."

Takami stalks towards Miyajima, "What did you do?"

Miyajima shakes her head, "What do you think I did? You're a regulator, you do the math. Anyway, that's all I wanted to say."

Takami fumes as Miyajima turns and leaves. Suddenly she spins around and shouts at the operators, "What are you all looking at? Find that Jinki or else!" For emphasis she raises her omnipresent clipboard. Hurriedly everyone turns back to their consoles.

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An hour later, Ranma carries a sleeping child into the Tendo home. As the door closes with a soft click, Akane looks up, "Where have you… been? Nani?"

Ranma shakes his head, "It's a long story, where's everyone else?"

"Baka! They're out looking for you, where have you been all week?"

Carefully, Ranma lays the girl down on some cushions, and struggles to disengage her grip as she murmurs, "No onii-chan, don't let me go", in her sleep.

"It's been a week? Last I remember I was heading home from Ome overland as it was a nice day. How are you doing after Jusenkyo?"

"How do you think I'm doing Baka! You missed our wedding!"

Ranma scratches his head, "Huh? What do you mean I missed our wedding?"

"We were supposed to get married last week, and you ran out on me."

Ranma raises his hands, "Now hang on! I don't know about no wedding, and there's no way I'm going to marry an uncute tomboy like you."

Ranma only has a moment to roll backward before a mallet smashes through the floor where he was sitting, "Stay still and take your beating like a man!"

Ranma jumps over a wild swing as he shouts, "What are you doing?!"

"Stay still and let me beat you, you damn baka! You think I'm not good enough to marry?"

Sleepily the girl on the cushions looks up, "No beating up onii-chan." As she says that, vines quickly grow through the cracks in the floorboards and latch onto Akane, wrapping her up like a mummy.

"Ranma! Get me out of here so that I can beat you!"

Ignoring Akane, Ranma crouches down in front of the girl, "Are you awake now?"

The girl nods, "Yes onii-chan."

"I'm Ranma, and the tomboy over there is Akane, what's your name?"

The girl smiles, "I am Sekirei 108, Kusano, and you are my Ashikabi."

"Oh My!" Ranma looks up to see Kasumi standing in the doorway looking at the damage and the trussed up Akane, who has a faint red aura around her as she glowers impotently at Ranma.

"Boy! Where have you been?"

"My manly son has returned!"

"Arien will take Shampoo on a date now."

Ranma sighs when everyone that's piling into the room stumble to a halt at the sight of Kusano, "Everyone, meet Kusano, a girl I rescued while I was rescuing myself."

Pulling himself together, Genma looks at his son, "You've been slacking boy, there's no way that you should have been kidnapped."

"Says you!"

Cologne pogos into the room and takes a seat, "I think we should hear what son-in-law has to say before we start the normal entertainment."

"Well it was like this."

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"I'm glad you're safe son, and thank you for coming to visit."

Ranma blushes as Nodoka, his mother, pulls him into a hug, "Ah, it was nothing. I just needed to get out of the house for a bit."

"No matter, you still came to see me. Now be careful and try to avoid cold water."

"Yes mum."

Once Nodoka lets go, Ranma scratches the back of his head, "Hey, mum. As it's a nice day, I'm going to walk home rather than take the train. I need time to think."

"I'll let your fiancé know if she calls."

Around 30 minutes later, after a freak shower, that she is passing through Musashimurayama when a scythe comes out of nowhere towards her. Despite being the pre-eminant martial artist of her generation, and possibly the world, there's still not a lot she can do when an attacker comes out of nowhere. Despite this, she's able to roll with the blow and face the black haired assailant. Her top fluttering down to the street below.

"Hey! What's the big idea?"

"You face Sekirei number 14, and I will remove you from the game before you can threaten my Ashikabi."

"It's not like it would take much to threaten your guy, at least I have boobs."

"Why you!"

"Why me, urk!" Whatever Ranma was going to say next is cut off as a wire saw loops around her neck. Flipping over, in a modified cartwheel, she uncrosses the wire even while she's leaping over the head of the assailant behind her. Ducking down, she slips out of the garrot and under a claw swipe from a third assailant.

"What, it takes 3 of you to attack poor little me?"

14 swipes her scythe at him again, "Just stand still so we can terminate you."

"Nah ah, not happening, you need to do better than that." Privately, Ranma's worried, as all three of the women are almost as fast as the old ghoul. On top of that, they seem to be accustomed to working with each other in a fight. It's only the last year and a bit of near constant fighting between himself and the fiancé's and rivals, culminating in fighting Saffron, that has allowed him to keep up with the three of them so far. Unfortunately, while Ranma Saotome doesn't lose, sometimes it takes more than one fight for him to win. Such is the case today, where number 14 manages to catch his temple with the haft of her scythe while he dodged back away from both the blade and a lunging metal claw. This sends him cartwheeling over the edge of the building, to land face down unconscious in the street below.

Ranma wakes up suddenly as a searing pain scorches her back between her shoulder blades. Reflexively, she kicks out at other occupant in the room, kicking the weird crystal out of their hands. Leaping over the head of the middle aged woman, she deftly hits a couple of shiatzu points and knocks her out.

Taking stock of her situation, she realises that she's in some sort of hospital. Though she's never seen a hospital room with so much high tech gear before. Looking down at herself, she realises that she's wearing a hospital gown rather than her normal clothes. Quickly pulling a change of clothes out of her hidden weapons space, Ranma gets dressed and takes the crystal and a clipboard full of notes.

As she opens the door to leave, she hears the clear sounds of an alarm going off, as well as booted feet heading in her direction. Shaking her head, she slips into the Umi-Sen Ken and leaps up to the ceiling where she finds that it's a high quality suspended ceiling. Smiling, she pushes up one of the well concealed tiles and slips into the small gap, the tile being pushed back into place just as the guards arrive at the room. Silently she curses her father for her knowledge of how to sneak into and out of buildings like this, even though it's proving useful.

She carefully makes her way around the corridors until she comes to the door for the stairs. Making sure that there's nobody around, she slips out of the ceiling and is about to open the door when she hears a young girl scream. Before her conscious mind has even processed the sound, her body is already bouncing off the wall and down the corridor towards the scream. As she's heading down the corridor, she disables a few groups of guards that are obviously still searching for her, before bursting through a door into a similar room to the one she woke up in. Sitting on the bed is a blond girl with wires attached to her head, chest and arms. Off to one side is a grey haired woman working on a computer of some description.

Swiftly, Ranma knocks the woman out just as the girl starts to scream again. Not knowing how to fix this, she rips the wires off of the girls body and picks her up.

"It's ok, I've got you, nobody's going to make you scream again."

The girl looks her in the eyes before they roll back into her head, and she passes out. As she steps through the door, a large group of guards rounds the corner accompanied by a white haired woman, with bandages wrapped around her legs and arms. A tattered black kimono covers any other bandages she may be wearing. What catches Ranma's eye are the gauntlets she's wearing, that have scythe-like barb-tipped claws at least 6" in length. At the sight of those, Ranma executes the Saotome family final technique and runs towards the stairs, quickly followed by the woman, and slowly followed by the guards.

As the door comes into view, she doesn't even slow down. Instead she fires a Móko Takabisha at the door and blows it off its hinges. Co-incidentally, she also knocks out a group of guards that were just coming down the stairs. As she's making her way up the stairs, it becomes clear that the woman with the claws doesn't have the same experience that Ranma does with parkour like movement. A frantic 15 minutes later, where they've been trying to use the lifts to cut off her escape, she finally arrives at a floor before the security guards. Kicking the door off it's hinges, she darts out and down a corridor where there's a glimmer of daylight. There's a ding behind her, and a shout as the claw wielder takes up the chase again, and starts to gain rapidly. Desperately Ranma slides under a claw swipe before bouncing off the wall and down a corridor that leads to an office with an external window. A Móko Takabisha takes care of the door, and she launches a pair of Móko's at the window, sending spiderweb cracks through the entire thing. Vaulting over the desk she turns to protect the girl she's holding from the glass and sees the woman slide to her knees just as Ranma breaks through the window.

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Takami pauses the video and turns back to the audience, "What happened Haihane, she was in the perfect position to catch and you dropped to your knees?"

"We were on the 110th floor Ma'am, and it just hit me."

Minaka Hiroto, head of MBI, and 'guardian' of the Sekirei, steeples his fingers, "What I want to know is how she did that."

Takami shakes her head, "We detected no flares of her tama during the entire time she was loose in the building. Coupled with her apparent ability to climb around the floating ceiling without making any sound, this made it impossible for us to triangulate her location in the building. In fact, a few times we lost track of her tama completely."

"What about outside?"

"The security team is still putting together the footage of their escape, it should be done tomorrow."

"Well this is an interesting twist to the game, do we know where 108 went after they split up?"

Takami nods, "Nerima."

Karasuba swears, "Shit, that's the place where we have virtually no coverage. I'm going out for a walk."

That said, she stands up and picks up her nodachi before leaving the room.