Ranma 1/2
I Saw a Light Shining and Thought of You.
A R1/2 and GGX/XX crossover. This chapter is more of a lead up chapter, just warning you all. I hope you enjoy it, and too the respective owners of the characters, please don't sue, I'm broke.
Chapter 7: It's Dark in Here
It was dark around him and he felt her breathing rhythmically next to him, on her side her silhouette expanding and contracting in the dim light of the moonlit room. What happened yesterday, he could hardly even believe, those two, the ones he wanted to protect, they were gone. He was sure they were alive, but he had no clues to point him in the right direction. It had happened so fast too. One minute Baiken was talking to him the next a scream and they were gone. They had tried to find them for the rest of the day but found no clues. Whoever took them, they were good.
And then there was the girl, the strange girl that just sat and stared without a sound at the area the two had been. He wondered what was going through her mind, even their son had tried to talk to her but that got them nowhere. She was closed within her own world and nobody seemed to be able to enter that world. He was sure that she was sad that her parents were gone but that should not cause her to end up like this. At least that was what he was guessing.
"Damn it," A tired voice said from beside him suddenly and the body next to him rolled over, "Get some rest you asshole."
Ryouga smirked despite himself, "Sorry, I was just thinking."
"Don't hurt you're brain," The woman said as she sat up and glared at him, "You're making it all gloomy in her and I can't think."
"I'm just worried is all," He said guardedly, "I should have known you would be too thick to relate."
Baiken blinked and stuffed a pillow in his face so hard he had to struggle to keep feathers from going into his mouth, "You absolute jerk, Ryouga! I care about Dizzy at least, it's not like I don't care. So just shut the hell up. Besides, I feel responsible, I mean if I had been paying more attention..."
"Nothing different would have happened," Ryouga said quietly, as if trying to reassure himself and her at the same time.
Baiken brought her one hand up and looked at it in the moonlight, "This hand has only known fighting Ryouga. Yet it still could not protect them, I've lost so much already."
The man made a move to embrace her and she tensed up at first, then she went limp in his arms, "You did not lose them yet. They are not dead, we have to believe that."
"I do believe," Baiken said softly, "Ranma is a good friend and though I would never have admitted it before, Dizzy has become like a sister to me."
She felt the man's body rumble with a deep laughter and the movement comforted her slightly, "That's interesting, I feel close to her also, they are both like my family.
The two of them heard a knock on the door and Ryouga slid out of bed in order to answer the door. When he opened the wooden door a little girl stood on the other side and he looked down in confusion at her. Then he became even more confused when she suddenly dove at him and took his legs out from under him. Quicker than he could react she was on top of him and pounding her little fists into his chest as tears ran down her little face.
"Give them back!" She yelled at him and for a minute Ryouga had trouble realizing what she was talking about, "Give them back!" She yelled again.
The punches did not hurt but they were annoying so he grabbed her in a gentle but tight hug, "I did not take your parents, I don't know where they went, but rest assure that they will pay when I find them."
Hinata, overwhelmed by her emotions stopped trying to hit the man and settled for crying in his chest, leaving wet spots on his night shirt. Ryouga continued to embrace the girl but slowly rose and walked over to the bed and sat her on his leg. Using his night shirt he wiped the tears from her eyes as they reached their terminus.
"You need to go to bed," Ryouga said softly, "Tomorrow we will look for them again. Okay."
Sniffing, Hinata let a small nod pass, "Okay."
"That's a good girl," The man said, "Now be on your way."
He watched the girl walk out of the room still sniffing and sighed and hung his head in his hands as the door closed. Baiken climbed across the bed and embraced him with her one good arm and kissed him gently on the cheek. Ryouga did not look up but he did drop his hands from his face.
"Don't worry about it honey," Baiken said softly, "We'll find them."
The man balled his hands into fist and she could feel a deep guttural sound start to emanate from deep in his throat. Many times she had wondered about his fangs and what purpose they served, but now she could see by the way he tensed up where they sprang from. He was a man of mixed curses and mixed blood that had to fight his inner demons every day. She was not sure that he even knew what he was himself but she was sure that for him to react like this he was agitated over something.
He let out a powerful yell, loud and sudden and it was gone suddenly, his face tight and his teeth grit in what looked like some kind of pain, his green eyes wide, "It hurts Baiken..."
The woman sighed and drew herself into the sitting position next to him, brushing her long pink hair out of her face, "I know it does baby, I'm sorry."
His face went back to normal and he gulped and shook his head, "You have nothing to be sorry about. It has nothing to do with you, Baiken, God I don't want to lose you. Please say you won't leave me."
The quiet of the room was broken with a slap to the back of the man's head, "Just stop it, you're being dumb, though I should expect that from you."
"At least I'm not a super tomboy," Ryouga said in a half hearted insult.
The woman stuck her tongue out at him, "At least I'm not a hard headed pig."
With a mock growl the man jumped from his place and landed on top of the woman with a good impression of a lion pouncing on it prey. The two rolled around the bed for just a bit before the rolled onto the floor trading blows with pillows and other soft objects they could find nearby. Even the bedding was not safe as it got pulled onto the floor and before long the two were laying still on top of one another and gasping for air. Two warriors easily defeated by a pillow fight, Ryouga could not help but let out a chuckle.
"You're a super-tomboy, Baiken," The man said breathlessly as he lay underneath the woman and gave her a kiss, "But I wouldn't have you any other way."
The woman found herself giggling, something she would never have done before, "You're my hard headed pig-man, too," She responded as she ran her hand through her disheveled hair to get it out of her eyes and kissed the man back.
The rest of the night could be left to ones imagination, this is not that kind of a story. Let me just say that two people desperately in love with one another can, at times, be very loud. Especially when they let months of pent of emotional passion loose on one another. When they woke in the morning the two of them were still on the floor in each others embrace. Ryouga felt sticky with dried sweat and he slowly, gently, removed himself from the woman's embrace and grabbed a towel. Topless and in only boxers he headed for the bathroom and turned the metal knob on the shower, the water coming out in a hiss and tapping on the walls of the moderate sized stall. The man ran a hand through his hair feeling the oil on his hands before he scowled and hung his towel.
As he entered the shower he felt the heat and water against his skin and he sighed with the feeling of his muscles relaxing. Reaching for the soap he ran it across his body until he built of a thick lather, then he washed his hair and just when he was about to rinse off he felt a soft yet strong hand on his back. Turning he found Baiken standing naked in the shower with him and he silently raised one quizzical eyebrow. The woman said nothing but embraced him and looked into his eyes as she used her hand to soap up his back. The man smiled and turned so the woman could see what she was doing better.
As she finished his back up and he rinsed the soap off Ryouga took the soap and started to return the favor the she had paid to him, "It's such a shame that you insist on renouncing your womanhood."
The woman looked down as he said this and her wet hair hung limply around her face, "When you're disfigured like I am, it's hard to consider yourself anything but a vessel for your own revenge."
"Oh?" Ryouga said as he finished washing her back and moved to the front of her body, "How's that?"
Baiken clenched her small fist and he could hear the tenseness in her voice, "That man... he took everything from me, everything except my life, even my beauty."
Ryouga stopped and turned her around towards him, bend down to see if he could catch a glimpse of the woman's face, "Beauty, I still see it, you have flaws that can not be overlooked by most people. You know what that means?"
The woman shook he head slowly, "I know what it means to most people. It doesn't bother you?"
"No, you overcame the limitations of those wounds," Ryouga started to continue washing the woman's body and stopped at the crippled arm, ending where the woman's elbow would be in a stump. She saw him stop and for a second she was afraid he was going to use the same look of disgust everyone else before had. Instead he sighed and started to wash around it.
"Even with your arm like this you survived and you had to have done a remarkable job keeping it dressed," The man continued to her other arm, "It seems to have healed pretty cleanly."
The next words from the woman were a whisper, "Sometimes it feels like my arms still there, like it's just asleep. It scares me, that's why a wear the prosthetic arm most of the time."
"I was wondering how you hid so much up that sleeve of yours," Ryouga commented with a rueful smile remembering the first time he had found himself wrapped in a claw ended chain, "You've also adapted remarkably well to you missing eye."
"I've had practice," Was the simple reply.
"Bet you have," Ryouga replied equally as simple, "Are you through being depressed so we can get out of the shower and eat something."
With a nod the woman turned the know controlling the flow of water to the show off, "Thank you Ryouga."
"That was the least I could do for you," The man said as he dried off and got dressed, "Helping the person you love is natural."
Baiken grinned and shook hear head in order to try and top crying, though they were not the tears of a sad person. The woman dried herself off and threw on a bathrobe, leaving her hair hanging long and loose instead of putting it in the normal high ponytail. Such a hair style was really unneeded when there was no fighting going on.
The two of them walked downstairs and after a meal with everyone in the house in a slightly better mood than yesterday. It was not perfect and in truth everyone was just trying to steel themselves for the upcoming problems. The first was that they would have to find someone to take care of the children, but Baiken quickly solved that with a phone call. Ryouga was unsure who she called, though he trusted her when she said it was all taken care of.
After that the two of them dressed in their normal battle clothes, for that was what was expect from their searching. Clues did not normally fall out of nowhere and they had a feeling that finding the proper clues would get them in some scrapes. As they were about the leave the gate, a powerful wind blew and Ryouga looked up to see a giant airship lowering itself, then a silhouette of a man fell to the ground and landed right in front of them with what seemed to be little effort. He wore a black coat and black pants with a leather belts and over sized buckles, and no shirt. He held a large-brimmed hat with one hand and had the other hand on the hilt of a sword that was still in its sheath. His long blond hair was tied in a ponytail and he wore dark glassed to cover his eyes.
Ryouga sighed and rolled his eyes, he had always considered Johnny a joke when it came to fighting but he knew that the cause was noble enough, "Hey, I guess your the guy Baiken called."
The man grinned and lifted his head which had been at a downward angle before to look at Ryouga, "That's right. I guess you two need to go away for a while and I'm the babysitter. Must be some important kids."
Baiken nodded, "You could say that, Dizzy and Ranma were kidnapped and Hinata, their daughter, needs some looking after while we search for them. Kaneda is my son and he needs some looking after himself."
"Alright, I rarely take males on my ship but since your a friend I'll allow it," Johnny said, "Where are they?"
Ryouga threw a thumb over his shoulder, "In the house."
"Alright, you two can go ahead, I'll handle it from here."
The two nodded and continued walking out of the front gate as Johnny went about the business of collecting the kids. There was some hesitance in their walk initially, but eventually they managed to focus on their main mission which was to find Ranma and Dizzy and get them back safely. They managed to find their first clue a little past the gate when they met a group of people gathered around when looked to be a good sized stain of blood on the ground and next to it was a basketball sized crater. From what they could figure out it was from the night before, someone heard the sounds of a scuffle and saw a man get knocked out by a group of men, one female was being carried of the shoulder, right before a car pulled up and they all jumped in. A patch was left as the car sped away.
Ryouga knelt down on the street where the patch of rubber was left and felt the ground, it was old but they were headed in this direction at least until the next block which was a ways away. Baiken and Ryouga followed the road and when they got to the turn they round another patch and some paint from where a car had hit the side. Ryouga could not help the smile that crossed his face, at least they were not making it easing for them to get the job done. Eventually they lost the trail for a little while before they would find some clue to indicate the right direction once again. It went on like this for a while until the arrived finally at a nondescript office building that had tinted windows up all of its One-hundred floors. Baiken let out a low whistle at the size and Ryouga could do nothing but nod.
"I feel kind of bad show admiration for the bad guys," Ryouga said as he continued to look up in awe, "I they must be was rich company."
Baiken nodded, "I agree, it is a big building though."
The man beside her looked at the solid looking door finally and shook his head, "This thing would stand up to a missile," He said as he walked up to the door.
"Sow how are we going to get through?" Baiken asked.
Holding up a finger, Ryouga pointed at the door and touched it ever so gently, "With a Breaking Point touch."
With those words the whole door crumbled into pieces and Baiken was left wordless as she stared incredulously at the man. Ryouga looked back at her with a shrug and walked inside. After she recovered from her shock, Baiken followed the man through the door into the lobby. As they entered they found the lobby clear of anyone, strange considering that Ranma had just blown the door in. Looking around the two decided to look at the computer behind the guards desk. There they found the reason for the lack of personnel. Every camera showed a picture of guards laying on the floor, though it was hard to tell from the monitors whether it they were dead or just unconscious. Ryouga sighed and sat down at the chair and tapped a few buttons, though he never had any formal training, traveling allowed him to learn some skills that he would probably not have otherwise. One of those were basic hacking skills.
After a few tries he was able to guess the password through the use of a backdoor within the system. Searching through some documents turned up some information that made Ryouga's blood run cold. When she saw the look on his face, Baiken came over to see what was causing it and her face was blank at the information on the screen. There was a secret project that used a kind of frequencies and some smaller, less powerful gears, to create a device that would rid a someone of Gear traits. What this meant to a full gear was instant death, to a half Gear it was intense pain and after too much use even they died eventually. That was the only way to explain what had happened to Dizzy and Ranma. At least the two of them were in the right place.
It was then that the whole building shook with an explosion from below the two of them. Baiken and Ryouga looked at one another at the same time with the same serious expression and nodded. Heading towards the elevator doors, Ryouga grunted and used a powerful kick to knock the door out of its track and plummeting towards the ground below. It was a good minute or so before they heard the door stop.
"A little far for just a basement floor," Baiken commented with a bemused grin.
Ryouga nodded, "What do you say we see just how far it would be."
Baiken put her hand on the hilt of her sword and jumped into the shaft without a word in response. Ryouga shrugged and jumped a second after her, thanking whoever was watching over him that he had remembered to wear his heavy duty boots today. Before too long the ground became visible below and Ryouga saw Baiken draw her sword and jab it into the wall of the elevator shaft. He let her slow past him and grabbed a hold of the cable in the center by wrapping his leather belt tightly around it and focusing some energy into it to reinforce it. He crashed through the elevator car at the bottom with a horrible sound and throwing dust around everywhere. Slowly he stood from the wreckage and sighed as he found a few guards at the bottom with automatic machine guns aimed directly at him. Grinning he put his arms above his head just as Baiken fell into them. Without hesitation he tossed her at the men at high speed and she hit the first man like an arrow, using his body to slow her momentum as she drove the blade of her sword through him.
The other two guards were so surprised they let their guard down and opened a hole up for Ryouga to dash forward and clothesline them. Baiken removed her sword from the body and wiped the blood from it with her clothes. Sheathing the weapon she walked up to Ryouga with a frown.
"I'm going to have to sharpen this sword when I'm done," The woman said as she used her hand to adjust her hair out of her eyes.
The man adjust his headband, "Sorry, I did not plan it like this."
"Not your fault," she responded, "Let's keep moving.
Ryouga nodded and the two of them ran off down the metal corridor, it was a strait line so even Ryouga could not get lost. Eventually they came to a huge metal door, and if the front door looked like it could take a missile blast, this one could repel a whole army. Baiken looked to Ryouga and he shook his head helplessly, the breaking point did have its limits and the guards would come for them by the time they were able to get through.
"So we can't go any further?"
Ryouga looked down at the ground and shook his head, "I don't see how."
There was a crunching sound from behind them as someone walked up behind them and the two of them turned, expecting a fight. Instead they found Ky Kiske, his blond hair slightly unruly, hovering in front of his blue eyes. His face was serious and he held his sword in his hand, the blade arching with electricity. His uniform, white with blue trim, was without a spot of dirt and yet he was walking from the area that the other two had just come from. He held up a hand to indicate he had no intention of fighting them.
"I heard what happened from Johnny," The man said as he lowered his blade, "Others will be hear later. I jut arrived first, how are you two doing?"
Ryouga folded his arms over his chest and regarded the man coolly, "I see, we're find except for this door being in the way."
"Looks quiet impassible," The man responded with just a hint of his French accent.
"You noticed as well," Baiken responded as she sheathed her sword.
Ky walked up to the door and took a look at it, "Its impossible to open it with a blast. However it's electric."
The man stood back, took a breath and the other two had just enough time to get away from the door before he swung his sword and let an electric bolt loose. The whole door arched with the energy and the code pad to the left of the huge door spark and exploded. Then the door slowly slid open, show it's thickness to be about two feet. After reaching about four feet wide it shut again and slowly started to opened until it got to the same four feet and slammed closed. The three looked at one another, nodded as one and took a run for it just as the door started to open again. Ky took the low road with a slide, Ryouga leapt grabbed Baiken and the two of them dove above the man and landed in a roll just as the door closed once again.
Everyone collected themselves on the other side and proceeded down the dimly lit corridor, which after much inspection turned out to be empty. Ryouga was beginning to think that this place was abandoned.
Ky was the one to voice the opinion, "If it was not for those guards I would think there was not a single person here."
"I agree," Baiken said, "I wonder what's going on."
With a shrug, Ryouga turned to one of the doors and started to inspect it, "Not sure about that. What I do know is that none of these rooms are being used right now. This place is older than what has happened recently."
Just as he said that there was a shudder throughout the building and Ryouga looked up to see the ceiling start to collapse. Nobody really needed a cue to run as they also saw the ceiling collapse. The walls may have been metal but the floors were still cement they it crumbled as fell as the three of them ran as fast as they could to get away from the heavy pieces falling from above. What made it even worse was the bigger chunks making a hole in the path below their feet. Running fast became jumping fast which ended when the three burst through a door at the end of the path, falling in the metal room from exhaustion. For some reason this room even had metal floors. Baiken gasped as she finally caught her breath enough to speak actual words.
"What the hell is going on here?" She yelled as she continued to pant.
Ryouga shook his head and thumped his fists on the ground where he sat against the wall, "I would like to know to."
"I feel like this was probably a trap," Ky said, "I have to admit I to am feeling a little trepidation about this mission, it is as if we have been led to this room on purpose."
At that the other two looked around as saw that the room they were in was different than the rest of the place. Where their were cobwebs and dust everywhere else, this room was clean. The rest of the building had been dimly lit but here it was bright enough to make out every detail. In the corner of the room there was a speaker and with a bit of feedback there came a rather distorted voice from the speaker box.
"I like when people are at least smart enough to realize their surroundings," the voice said, "It's too bad you won't be alive long enough to do anything about it."
Ryouga grit his teeth and stood, "Did you take Ranma and Dizzy?"
"If I did, it would make very little difference," The voice answered.
"What do you mean, where are they?" Ky said as he joined Ryouga.
There was another short burst of feedback before the voice came back, "They are preoccupied by their own struggles. They are in this building if that's what you mean. Now that I answered your question you really should focus on surviving."
With that the room lost its side walls and in its place stood a line of guards and turrets all with weapons pointed at them. Baiken cursed and drew her sword, there was little chance that they would survive, but she would still fight damn it. Ky drew his sword, charging it with electric energy as he did so, the blade glowing blue and white. Ryouga summoned his battle aura, glowing a deep shade of green, and let out a growl as he stared each of the attackers down. Then they all charged.