The Saotome Gambit

by Shinji Ikari7

Not writen by me but thought it would be good to have the story on FF.N

6. Chapter 6

Orochi Bunker

18:59 Local Time. T-minus 25 minutes to impact

The thermonuclear bomb could talk.

"Present identification and arming codes to authorize thermonuclear release," it declared.

Akane stepped up to the weapon, and placed a hand upon a sensor plate as she had been hastily instructed to do by her father and Kasumi prior to leaving Nerima. Both members of her family now huddled over her and the weapon as it sat in its packing crate next to the Phoenix Hawk LAM.

"I am Lady Akane Tendo of Nerima, Viscountess of Gondolin," she said in a loud yet strained voice. "Arming Code for full thermonuclear release is NOVEMBER-VICTOR-YANKEE-NINER-NINER-NINER-HOTEL-ALFA-CHARLIE."

The bomb considered her reply.

"Present second stage identification and concurrence-authorization for thermonuclear release."

This time Genma stepped up, and placed his hand upon the sensor plate.

"I am Commander Genma Saotome, under warrant from the Grand Duke of the Nerima Confederation," he told it. "I concur with the order to arm and release. Second Stage Arming Code for full thermonuclear release is FOXTROT-MIKE-ZULU-ZERO-ZERO-TWO-OSCAR-OSCAR-ZULU."

"Enter desired time delay and present final authorization for full thermonuclear release," the bomb said to them.

Akane looked to Ranma, who gave her a firm nod. She placed her hand once more upon the sensor plate. "Final authorization code for full thermonuclear release is FOXTROT-TANGO-NOVEMBER-SIX-FOUR-TWO-WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT."

"And then some," Ranma agreed as Akane spoke aloud the last three codes.

"Authorization granted for full thermonuclear release. Projected yield: one-thousand kilotons." the bomb declared. "Enter time delay or activate default setting to proceed."

Akane backed away from the weapon, closing the access panel as she did so.

"It's ready," she declared.

"This thing's a time bomb?" Ranma asked the Duke.

Soun nodded. "Most nuclear weapons are," he replied.

"How long a delay can I have?"

"Ten thousand seconds," Soun answered for him.

"Can I stop the countdown once it's started?" she asked.

Soun shook his head. "Normally, yes. But it requires both people who armed it to rescind a release order."

Ranma saw his point. Akane and his old man couldn't exactly ride along with him in the cockpit in case they wanted to call it off.

"Well, I'll need at least fifteen minutes to make it into space, or at least high enough up that the blast from this thing won't wipe you all out on the ground."

"There is a dead man's switch function for the device, Ranma," Kasumi said to him. "It starts a default one minute countdown from the moment the firing button is pressed."

Ranma nodded. He could use the micromanipulator arms stowed within the right forearm of his LAM for the delicate work of pressing such a button. "Yeah, I guess it might be too dicey to go guessing exactly how much time it will take to deliver this damn thing." She did not like standing next to the bomb, and certainly not with it armed.

Lieutenant Davidge presented a few schematic drawings for her to look at as she checked her pressure suit systems one more time.

"You want to get it as close as you can to the top center of the unit, or to the main engine nozzles in the ventral hull," he told her. "A thousand kilotons is a lot of boom, but it might not be possible to vaporize the Orochi outright, even with that much destructive power."

"You're talking about destabilizing the fusion plant," Ranma said to him.

"That's right," Davidge agreed. "The reactor is still operational, so any kind of instantaneous damage to the core might just blow the whole thing at once. The higher up you are when it happens, the better, of course. The blast from the fusion plant might be as bad as the bomb itself, and an atmosphere will only compound the blast effects."

"Great," Ranma said with a shrug. "Now anyone have any ideas on how I'm gonna get this thing into low orbit?" She gestured to the bomb, which was the size of an oil drum. "It's too big to ride along with me in the cockpit, and there aren't any hardpoint mounts on my LAM."

Akari presented herself with a salute. "Captain Saotome, I believe we can fit the bomb comfortably within the left hand of your mech during transit, if I relax the standard flexor tensions within the forearm actuators a few points. That will allow you to carry it safely in Fighter Mode, and let you deploy it in either Airmech or Battlemech Modes."

"Great," Ranma said with little enthusiasm. "How long will it take?"

She disappeared underneath the fighter with a torque wrench in hand without replying. The sound of metallic clacking rang out from the undercarriage before she reappeared with a smile on her face.

She brushed her nails on her coveralls. "Already done, sir."

"Good," Ranma declared, relieved to have what appeared to be a reliable solution to the problem while they had only minutes left in which to act. "Now get on the shuttle, before it leaves."

The lone shuttle from the Coronet rested, with its turbojet engines running, near the battlemechs. The Shogun of the Furinkan Combine and most of his retinue were already aboard, and it was time for the other non-combatants in their group to join them.

Akari looked to Ryouga for an instant before responding. Ranma could tell by the look on the Lost Boy's face what the answer would be before she even spoke.

"I'm staying here with Ryouga," she replied softly.

Ranma let it go at that. "Let's get it loaded, then," she said. She looked up at the dimming sky. The Orochi was already a faint smudge of light against the deep blue of dusk.

SLDFS Coronet

19:03 Local Time, T-minus 21 minutes to impact

"Conn, Sensory: Orochi main satellite Closest Point of Approach bearing two-seven-five, plus two-five; range: two-eight thousand kilometers. Time to target CPA: six-zero seconds."

"Sensory, Conn; aye," Captain Hinako remarked, throwing her hair back over her shoulder with a determined whip of her hand to let it uncoil in freefall in dark silken strands. They were maneuvering the Star League cruiser to attack the falling orbital battlestation with their spinal mount particle beam, a weapon of fearsome destructive power they hoped would be enough to vaporize the Orochi before it could smash into the planet. The entire royal family of the Confederation might be killed if that happened - not counting Nabiki, whom Hinako no longer considered one of them for her terrible betrayal of the Grand Duke.

"Seven-zero seconds to firing point," Fire Control updated. Captain Hauptmann hunched over the displays with the two techs they had manning the section, his face drawn with concern. He knew the importance of the next few minutes as well as any of them. "Main Gun acceleration ladder indicates ready. Pre-firing checklist complete."

"Helm slaved to Fire Control," the Helmsman announced. The starship continued its slow rolling turn to put its bow directly on the Orochi in preparation to fire. Her work done for the moment, she leaned back in her acceleration couch and worked the kinks out of her shoulders.

"Engineering reports ready to fire the Main Gun," the Chief of the Watch added. This time around they had locked shut the vital circuit breakers that fed the starship's systems in advance of firing - just in case the gun's powerful magnetic fields threatened to disrupt them again. There was the potential for danger in overriding a safety feature, but there was an even greater danger in becoming a sitting duck for the Orochi in the event the attack failed to destroy it.

"What about the Combine ships?" Hinako asked as the seconds ticked down.

"Imperator is descending from high orbit, ma'am. Her intentions are unknown at this time," Sensory declared. "She's trailing vapor from several locations, ma'am, and her drive outputs are unsteady, but she seems to have a little fight left in her."

"That could go badly for us," Hinako replied. "Especially if our precautionary measures fail, and we lose power and drives again."

"You could always put the zap on the next bunch who tries to board us," Hauptmann suggested wryly. "Like you did earlier."

Hinako arched an eyebrow at him. "I'd rather not," she said in a husky voice. "I feel a little bloated right now as it stands." She put her hand on a curvy hip. "In any event, it won't help us if they simply decide to blast us to bits instead of making another boarding attempt."

Test Area North

19:05 Local Time. T-minus 19 minutes to impact

Shampoo saw the line of black smoke rising from the treeline and knew that she was already too late to stop Mousse. The brick-like shape of a Musk Leopard Class DropShip hovered into view as she recognized this fact, the shriek of its vertical drives piercing even from a kilometer away. She watched the DropShip maneuver in a slow circle around the line of smoke, the draft generated by its engines whipping the oily vapors into a brown haze as it drew near.

Against her better instincts she clicked open her tac-net mic and tried to reach Mousse. There was no answer, nor did she expect one. She continued advancing in her captured Assassin through the woods to see with her own eyes what she already feared had happened.

A mech-door on the DropShip began to slide open as she dashed through a break in the trees a scant hundred meters from the smoke, and she caught the flash of a Musk Panther in the green and red livery of General Herb's personal guard plummet feet first fifty meters to the ground before triggering its jets to slow its descent. A flick of Shampoo's eyes to her unfamiliar displays assured her that the Assassin's weapon systems, a mixed bag of low-end firepower that included everything from missiles to lasers and machineguns, were armed and ready. She eased back on the throttle to bring the battlemech to a walking pace as she caught flashes of smoke and the flickering of flames through the trees before her.

The Panther stalked in front of her field of view less than forty meters away, though she cursed at having no clear shot at it through the trees. She advanced cautiously now, adjusting the focus of her bifocal cameras to get a better look at the clearing beyond. What she saw brought a lump in her throat in spite of herself.

The blackened, ragged mass of Mousse's Crusader lay sprawled over the wreck of a Grand Dragon. She could see that the Crusader's left hand had clenched the head of the Musk battlemech in an attempt to crush it, but that the cockpit hatch was open. General Herb had obviously escaped death, and the Panther had come to deliver him from the battlefield.

That wouldn't come to pass if Shampoo had any say in the matter. She checked her medium laser array a second time, knowing that it was her most powerful and most precise weapon in the Assassin's inventory. She reached the treeline of the clearing as the Panther's head dipped to examine the wreckage of the two 'mechs in detail, her finger curling around the weapon trigger of her laser as the aimpoint floated before the Panther's jump jet pack. A lucky hit on the thin rear armor could detonate the pressurized liquid oxygen tanks used as propellant for the jets in vacuum, and the resulting fireball would add massive amounts of heat to the 'mech - which would hopefully discourage the use of its arm-mounted PPC.

The Panther raised its head slowly, and began to stomp away from the wrecks, causing Shampoo's finger to ease off the trigger. What was going on? she wondered as the DropShip began to pivot in midair.

The sizzle of missile fire answered her question as vapor trails fell from the cloud bank above. LRMs exploded into the armor of the DropShip, slamming the Leopard into a slow spin as the pilots fired attitude jets to regain control. A second volley streaked in, half of which hit their target, and left the rest to plunge into the forest around Shampoo. The explosions rocked the woods and toppled trees into the clearing as leafy bits burned and fell from the sky.

A double sonic-boom buffeted her as she regained her battlemech's footing, and she caught the electric-blue flash of two Furinkan Combine Shilones from Prince Kuno's Blue Thunder regiment streaking past overhead. The DropShip's weapon systems answered with a weak volley of laser and autocannon fire as the Panther fired its jump jets in a desperate bid to climb aboard while the spacecraft was still airborne.

Shampoo aimed her weapons at the open door of the DropShip as the Panther boosted aloft for its rendezvous. As the Musk battlemech reached out to grasp the hull of the DropShip, she let fly with her entire arsenal. Laser fire and machinegun tracers sang into the open Mech Bay as her missiles corkscrewed past the Panther and struck home. Explosions rocked the internals of the ship, and it rolled queasily to port.

The Panther missed the open bay, and scrabbled for a single hand-hold on the deck, dangling precariously fifty meters above the verdant forest of Ryuugenzawa. Shampoo fired another full volley into the open Mech Bay as the DropShip's gunners trained their turrets around desperately for a sign of enemy fighters that were not there.

The second volley of fire knocked the Panther loose from its hold on the deck, and it plummeted straight down. The pilot in his panic fired his jump jets, but as the battlemech began an end over end tumble in its descent, he managed only to rocket himself straight into the woods at high speed. The crash of his impact shivered the trees around Shampoo as she watched the unstable DropShip roll completely over to dive nose-first into the forest beyond the clearing.

The DropShip's impact knocked her to the ground as a silvery flash of light erupted from the woods, scorching and starting a dozen small fires in the ground cover even as a thick plume of smoke and flame rose from the crash site. The DropShip's fusion reactor, or perhaps the reactors of one of the other 'mechs aboard had just crashed-out, and she knew to expect no more trouble from that quarter. Shampoo eased her 'mech to its feet to discover for herself what it was that the Panther had seen.

She reached the wrecks of the Crusader and Grand Dragon as the woods to the south began to brew up into an inferno. The first thing her bifocal suite focused on was the man who lay sprawled on the torso of the Grand Dragon. Thin lines of red streaked down the battered hull where he lay, mingled with long tangles of black hair.

Mousse.

There was no sign of General Herb to be found at first, only torn earth and clods of sod from the struggle between the two stricken war machines. Craters littered the ground where missiles had fallen, their impact points still steaming from lingering heat. Shampoo reached up unconsciously, undogging the hatch even as she searched for her nemesis.

She did not even realize that she was climbing out of her cockpit until she was clear of the hatch. At that point she decided that she could only go on, climbing down from the Assassin until she was close enough to make a leap for the wrecks below. Her eyes began to water, and she told herself it was only because of the acrid smoke that began to drift her way in the wind from the crashed DropShip.

She found General Herb by chance, crumpled against the hull of his Grand Dragon. Judging from the way his limbs were splayed, it looked as if he had been thrown with great force against the unyielding armor of the 'mech. Shampoo approached cautiously in spite of what her eyes told her, and reached for his head. She noted with a detached sense of satisfaction that the silvery white hair of the hybrid general was matted with blood, and she touched by accident the long sliver of metal that projected from the base of his skull.

Herb's red reptilian eyes were open, yet glassy and unfocused in death. His face seemed frozen with the expression he had shown in the instant of his end; haughty, mocking, and cruel. Feeling cold all over inside at the sight of her enemy, Shampoo released her grip on his hair with a grunt of disgust and let Herb's lifeless body collapse to the ground.

Herb was dead, and that left only Mousse. She pulled herself up the hull to see for herself if he had joined his former master in death. She knelt over Mousse as he lay face down, his head hanging over the edge of the Grand Dragon's torso. He was very still, and his ragged indigo robes fluttered restlessly in the hot breeze. She could see where the wound Lime had given him had struck, and knew that it had been very bad indeed.

"Mousse," she said to him, not wanting to touch him at first for fear of seeing his face frozen in the same agony of death as General Herb. "Wake up."

He stirred at the sound of her voice, and she felt faint with the realization that he was still alive.

"Shampoo...?" he rasped.

She wasted no more time with words, leaning over his body to lift him by his armpits and carry him from the wrecks. She choked back a gasp as she saw his face at last, and the place where his left eye had been. The eyelid was glued shut with a thick clot of blood, but she could see the streamers of flesh and filaments of thin grey optic nerve fibers that projected from the clot.

"Don't bother," he replied weakly as he sagged in her grip.

"Shut up," she barked at him, struggling to raise him up and back to drag him clear.

"I meant it, Shampoo," he managed in a voice drained of vitality. "There's no point in doing this. I'm already dead."

"You are not dead, idiot!" she snapped in his ear, her eyes awash with moisture. The damned smoke was getting thicker. "There is a doctor in the Confederation camp. He's a good man. He'll take care of you."

She cradled him up into her arms, wincing as the muscles in her back twinged with protest. She was in no shape after so much intense combat to be doing this, but she continued without complaint.

"You don't understand," Mousse continued. "Radiation..." he choked out. "Too much to survive." He tried to worm his way out of her arms. "The baby..." he added, a note of worry creeping into his voice. "You shouldn't be this close to my 'mech right now."

His struggles made Shampoo pull a muscle in her back, and she twisted in pain, dropping Mousse and falling to the churned ground with a yelp. Mousse toppled over the edge of the Grand Dragon torso to land limply at her feet.

"Idiot!" she cried out in pain when she could finally speak. "Still trying to play the martyr for me? I won't stand for it!"

She forced herself to sit up, her back tingling and her nerves raw with the sensation of being torn apart. She pulled Mousse up to lay his head in her lap, his bruised and blood-stained face drawing taut in a rictus of agony well beyond the little hurts that Shampoo endured. Wisps of grey smoke from the fires whipped past her, stinging her eyes and making her cough in irritation.

They lay together for some time as the woods crackled around them. The fire's intensity was checked for the moment by the heavy rains from earlier in the day, but the grey smoke of green wood trying to burn filled the air. Mousse's breathing was slow but steady, though his skin was growing cold. He had lost a great deal of blood.

She was too exhausted to move, and sat numbly with Mousse in her lap while she regained her strength.

"How did General Herb die?" she asked at length, seeking any kind of conversation that would keep Mousse conscious and pass the time until she felt that she was able to get up again.

"I killed him," Mousse replied with great effort and a little pride. "I set off one of my unexploded missiles with a grenade, and I managed to catch him in the blast." He coughed then, sharp and loud. Pink foam frothed at his lips, which Shampoo wiped away with her hand, not wanting to look at it and what the sight of it foretold of Mousse's limited future.

"I wanted to be the one who killed him," Shampoo returned quietly. She had looked forward to the opportunity to kill Herb, and now had to live once more with disappointment. It wasn't enough that the hybrid general was dead and his treasonous Musk Dynasty put to rout, she wanted to tell him how much she despised him, and how he would never have her.

Mousse tried to smile. "Can you forgive me?"

She sniffled at this against her will.

"I forgive you," she told him. She brushed at the tangled locks of hair at his temples. He managed a weak smile at her reply.

Angry at herself for becoming so maudlin, she pulled herself to her feet, and dragged Mousse with her. Her back protested with a vengeance but she would not give in.

"Stop it!" she cried, whether to Mousse or to herself, she did not know. "That's enough."

Mousse was nearly limp in her arms, a dead weight that wanted nothing to do with continuing on.

"Let me go," he sighed.

"I'm not going to let you die," she growled against the pain. "I'm not going to go through life haunted by your death today. You're going to live - do you hear me!?"

Mousse didn't reply.

"Mousse?" she chirped worriedly.

His head lolled against her chest, his skin bled white.

"No," Shampoo moaned. "You can't die on me like this, Mousse!" She sank to the ground, cradling Mousse's head against her bosom. "Not like this...!"

He was still breathing, she could feel the faintest tickle of it agaist her throat, but it clear even to her now that he was almost gone. Her eyes smarted and her throat stung, and she couldn't lie to herself anymore that it was just the smoke.

"...Mousse..."

She looked up into the heavens, to the broken formations of dark clouds pregnant with rain, and to the waning sun sinking into the west. To the south came the steady roar of plasma rockets boosting what remained of the Musk Dynasty into orbit, their white-hot streaks difficult to look at directly even twenty kilometers away. High above them was a faint smudge of light, barely visible against the darkening sky. It seemed to be growing bigger and brighter with every moment.

She held Mousse's head against her bosom and wept. She wept with the reckless abandon that she should have shown in her prison cell on Tau Ceti. This time, there was no inner peace. There was no cool acceptance of fate. There was only the one burning question: what had all of this struggle and death been for, here at the end?

Herb was dead; it was a relief but yet no real comfort to her. The Musk Dynasty had been crushed and its power broken, but what did that matter to her, trapped on Ryuugenzawa? Mousse lay dying in her arms, and that was the only thing that moved her. Mousse was the architect of the Musk's downfall, far more than the Orochi that crippled its fleet or the Combine troops that drove them even now from the planet. Mousse was the hero of the Joketsuzoku, and at best he was a traitor to them.

Mousse didn't kill Herb for her sake, or even for his own. Shampoo understood his motivation after all that had passed between them that afternoon. He had fought for the life of his unborn child; a daughter whose mother had sworn would be fated to hate and oppose her father at every turn.

"Mousse," she began, choking on his name with grief as she said it. "I don't hate you," she went on. "I've never hated you."

"I-I know that, but... It's not important anymore. Just let me go now," he whispered, stirring briefly before fading once more into semi-consciousness.

"But what, Mousse?" she asked him sharply. She didn't know who she more angry with in that instant, herself or him. "But it wasn't enough for you to have me not hate you?" She cradled her chin against his brow and rocked with him. "I know that. But not hating you was all that I could give. Do you know that? Do you really understand why I couldn't do more than that for you?"

The distant scream of DropShips fleeing for the heavens was her only reply.

Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds

Bunker Nine, Test Area North

19:05 Local Time. T-minus 19 minutes to impact

"Time's wastin'," Ranma declared brusquely as she checked over her LAM once more. The bomb had been loaded into the Phoenix Hawk's left hand, itself currently stowed within the forearm of the LAM. There was so many things that could go wrong on the ascent, things that could damage the bomb and prevent its function, that she could not shake the feeling that her mission was doomed from the start.

Still, she had to go. Too many people she cared about were depending on it. The Orochi was growing larger in the dimming sky, and the clock was ticking.

She reached for her pressure suit helmet with a dismissive shake of her head, wanting to put doubt behind her before it sabotaged her reflexes and made mush of her brain. Davidge had said that the Orochi was in some kind of safe-mode, that it would not shoot back at her - but she could not afford to lower her guard on an assumption.

"Forgetting something?" Akane asked her.

She turned to see her fiancee holding a thermos of hot water for her. She was still upset with Akane over the bomb - for not being trusted to know about it for so long - but she wanted more than anything to put the matter aside. She did not want to leave with nothing but resentment between them.

"Uh, yeah," she replied quietly. She had spent most of the day as a girl, and had let it slip her mind.

Akane poured the thermos over Ranma's head, changing her back into a guy once more. Before he could thank her, she wrapped her arms around him and held him as close as the pressure suit and its life support pack would allow. Ranma closed his eyes in her embrace and held her tight. This was what he wanted from her, a silent affirmation of what she meant to him, and how much he cared about this uncute tomboy who had turned his life upside down and inside out at every turn.

"Remember what I said to you, Ranma," she whispered. "I don't want you dying up there - not even to save me."

"Nothing's gonna happen to me," Ranma assured her. He looked over her shoulder to see his father, Grand Duke Tendo, Kasumi and Doctor Tofu, Ryouga and Akari, Ukyou, Konatsu, Shinnosuke and his grandfather, and even Yuka standing off at a safe distance, their eyes meeting his with a blend of anxiety and hope.

Akane stepped back enough for him to raise his helmet over his head, then dove in to kiss him sweetly on the lips before finally allowing him to twist and lock it in place with a hiss. His gloved hand caressed her cheek before he turned and climbed the boarding ladder to his cockpit.

"Be careful up there, Ranchan," Ukyou called to him.

He gave her a cocky 'thumbs up' in reply, and slipped into his ejector seat. The LAM's engines shrilled to life at the touch of his finger, the SLDF 'mech powering up for what was the most important mission of its two- hundred year lifetime. Ranma lowered and locked the canopy, then turned to offer a final wave. Akane and the others moved well back as he prepared to lift off.

He goosed the throttles and the LAM leapt into the air on twin columns of thrust. He put on as much speed as possible as he climbed into the air, concerned that a Combine fighter might spot him and attempt to ambush. Long streaks of white light filled the distant southern horizon as DropShips fled for orbit. He had to agree with them. It was definitely time to get off the planet.

"Get that shuttle out of here!" Grand Duke Tendo called to its pilot. The pilot nodded his head from the cockpit, and the loading ramp began to retract. The engines spooled up as the rest of the assembled Confederation forces headed back to the bunker to wait out the Orochi.

A Tautog sailor, spared from his duties aboard the Coronet to attend to the shuttle, reached over to draw Nodoka Saotome away from the boarding ramp. She craned her neck to look one final time at the LAM as it rocketed skyward.

"Please, milady," the sailor begged her. "We don't have much time to make orbit, and we can't lift off with you out of your seat."

Nodoka nodded sheepishly. She should have known better, but to see her son - even from a distance while in his 'mech - had meant the universe to her. She only wished that she had been given the chance to hug him before he took off to destroy the Orochi, but there had simply been too much to do and too little time in which to do it.

Her no-account husband had explained this to her, and while she understood the reasons why, she sensed that Genma was purposefully trying to keep her from Ranma. Wasn't seventeen years enough for the man!?

She was still fuming about it as the sailor checked her acceleration couch straps and then went forward to the cockpit. The Shogun's hula girls, a few of the non-combatants from both the DropShip Palomino and the lost Dragonfly, - including the Dragonfly's enlisted hospital corpsman - and finally the unconscious Aerospace Pilot, Sayuri, were all aboard with her. It was all the shuttle had room for, and there would not be time for a second trip before the Orochi completed its plunge.

The next chance she would get to see Ranma again would be after he had done what he needed to do, and everyone went aboard the Coronet to go home to the Confederation. Surely it wouldn't take that long?

She closed her eyes as the shuttle lifted off for the safety of low orbit. She had waited seventeen years to see her beloved son. She could wait a few more hours.

Shogun Kuno stood with Hikaru Gosunkugi at the door of the bunker as the Grand Duke and the others approached. The look on his face was as carefree as always.

"I understand your right to stay, your Eminence," Soun said to the Shogun. "But I can't for the life of me figure out why you wanted to."

The Shogun smiled as he made way for Akane and the others to pass through the door.

"No room for de rum punch on de shuttle," he replied with a hearty laugh. "I say, get de others outta here - den we got more for me an my bruddahs." He slapped Hikaru on the back at this, nearly bowling the Gosunkugi heir over.

Hikaru straightened himself up. He had been torn with the decision of fleeing while he still could, and of remaining close to Akane. She had even smiled at him once since his arrival at the bunker, and he would give anything get another one from her. Perhaps something terrible would happen to Ranma Saotome; a noble sacrifice that destroyed the Orochi and left the matter of Akane's marriage prospects open. He could be there to comfort and console her! Perhaps this was what his prophesies had been steering him towards this entire time!

"As long as you're staying here, your Grace, I see no reason to do otherwise," he said in a weedy voice. He tried hard to sound like he meant it.

"Father," Kasumi said to Soun as the Grand Duke acknowledged the League heir's courage. "We should be getting inside now. Time is running out."

Soun nodded. "Of course." He looked to the Shogun and the Gosunkugi heir. "You just didn't want to give up on the limbo contest right in the middle, eh, your Eminence?"

The Shogun flashed his teeth in a knowing grin.

SLDFS Coronet

19:05 Local Time, T-minus 19 minutes to impact

"Conn, Sensory; Surface launch detection. Multiple Commonwealth DropShips on orbital insertion trajectories."

Hauptmann turned to look at the displays. On the main telescope monitor, the streaks of light and vapor from several DropShips glowed against the dark clouds of the planet. The DropShips were well-armed for a close range engagement against the Coronet, whose primary and secondary gun batteries had not yet been tested. Still, the Orochi was closing between them, and he did not expect the Commonwealth to do anything other than keep their distance from the falling battlestation.

"Conn, Fire Control; Firing point procedures complete. Main Gun aligned with primary target. Acceleration ladder presets continue to indicate ready."

It was moment of truth time now. Hauptmann exchanged glances with Hinako, who mirrored his sanguine mood with a silent nod. The last time he had issued this order, he had nearly crippled his own ship.

"Fire Control, continue to match bearing rates and fire the Main Gun," Hauptmann ordered.

"Fire Control, aye." The tech flipped open the red safety-striped cover over the weapon trigger and removed the baton-like control from its sealed vault within the console. His thumb smashed down on the top button with gusto. "Firing the Main Gun!"

Once more, a strident alarm hooted three times in warning as the Coronet prepared to fire its spinal mount particle cannon. The lights dimmed as power reserves were shunted away from hotel loads to the massive superconducting loops that fed the spinal mount. A low droning rumbled up from the depths of the Star League light cruiser as motes of starflame began to leak from the muzzle aperture at the bow of the ship. Without further warning, a gout of blinding light erupted from the muzzle, sending forth a lance of blue-white radiance stabbing down towards the Orochi.

The particle beam lingered for several seconds, connecting the falling battlestation to its Star League contemporary with a bridge of white hot relativistic annihilation. Hauptmann, Hinako, and the others stood in rapt silence on the Coronet as the particle beam cut through the dorsal armor of the battlestation with a wash of sparks and plasma flame, bursting bulkheads and exploding with undiminished brilliance through the ventral hull and continuing down into the upper atmosphere of Ryuugenzawa. A crimson glow flowed from the blackened rent in the Orochi's hull as it continued its fall.

"Did we kill it?" one of the techs manning the diminished Commo section asked.

Hauptmann watched in disbelief as the Orochi fell on towards the planet. A slow spin had started on the disc-like battlestation, and fires continued to burst out from the rent, but the thing seemed otherwise unharmed.

"How soon can we fire another shot?" he demanded.

"Ten minutes at the least," Fire Control declared. "I'm showing malfunction lights on several portions of the acceleration ladder due to overheating."

"Conn, Engineering," Lieutenant Fulton piped up from aft. "The Main Reactor's a little unstable after that last shot. I don't recommend putting any more hits on the power distribution system until we can run through some checks on our end."

"Damn!" Hautpmann slapped the console with his hand. "Ten minutes is too long. Fire Control; commence fire at the Orochi with our primary and secondary weapon mounts." Fulton would just have to deal with the transient power demands from the weapons as best he could.

"Fire Control; aye. Commencing fire now with Turrets Alpha through Delta."

Hauptmann was about to issue further orders when the Orochi shot back at them. The particle beam merely grazed the bow armor, but the blast effect rocked the bridge crew violently at their stations.

"Conn, Sensory; the Orochi is powering up gun directing radar and other weapon systems! EMS sweeps from the hostile arrays are being considered by Threat Analysis to be erratic but valid."

"Thanks for the warning!" Hinako barked to Sensory.

"It happened during the power drain. Passive sensors went down for a few seconds after our shot," Sensory explained weakly.

"Port side 'E' Deck depressurization alert!" the Chief of the Watch announced as part of his ship's status board shifted from green to amber, and then to red. "Pressure curtains in position. Leak contained to outboard ring section 'Charlie,' port side. No fires or other malfunctions indicated at this time."

"Captain Ninomiya, get us the hell out of here," Hauptmann ordered. "Fire Control; let that thing have it with whatever you have available to shoot."

Hinako was already issuing commands to the helm. "Helm; All Ahead Flank! Left full rudder, ten degrees negative pitch. Come to steady course one-five-five minus one-zero!"

"Manuevering answers All Ahead Flank!" the Helmsman cried as she yanked at the control yoke for the helm. Lieutenant Fulton's voice assured them over the intercom that the ship could still put out in spite of its woes.

The Coronet's main engines blazed forth high energy plasma in confirmation of his assurances, generating a semblance of gravity for the crew as they ramped up to their full three gravities of thrust. Naval Laser cannons from turrets on the starboard side rippled fire at the Orochi as the starship rolled to port and continued a dive towards the atmosphere to get out of the Orochi's dorsal firing arcs.

Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds

Bunker Nine, Test Area North

19:08 Local Time. T-minus 16 minutes to impact

"Something just happened up there," Davidge declared as red damage warnings lit up across his displays. "Safe-Mode disengaged! The Orochi is arming and readying its weapons! The various targeting systems were damaged in the battle with the Combine, but the thing is still trying to shoot."

"Give Captain Saotome the bad news," Malloy ordered. "All those fleeing Musk ships must have riled the thing up."

"Captain Saotome is already airborne, sir," of the ex-Dragonfly's commo techs declared.

"Tell him anyway."

Phoenix Hawk LAM ASX-002

25,000 meters MSL above Test Area North

Ranma didn't need the warning from the bunker to know that his situation was taking a turn for the worse. The blinding shaft of charged particles ripping through Ryuugenzawa's lower atmosphere from the Coronet told him in very clear terms that things were already going south.

He was pushing the LAM for everything it had, making demands on the engines he knew from recent experience were dangerous in the extreme. The mach indicator on his HUD continued to roll towards double digits as he climbed through the lower stratosphere. Water vapor on his canopy had frozen into a thin rime of frost along the edges of the clear polycarbonate armor.

At best he had about ten minutes to reach the Orochi, find a place to plant the bomb, set it in place, arm it, and get the hell out before the battlestation's plunge through the thermosphere brought it deep enough to begin ionization. It would take most of his ten minutes to get up there, even with him practically killing himself with the frequent ramp-ups from five to eight gravities of thrust to escape the planet's pull as swiftly as possible. His vision was starting to blur as his pressure suit squeezed against his thighs and stomach to keep his blood where it was needed, and his head swam in spite of his conditioning.

It would have been an impossible ascent if he hadn't been able to control his fighter directly with his brain through his neurohelment link, as he couldn't even lift his hands from his seat under the acceleration forces he endured. As it stood, he was fighting back the nausea and dizziness that assailed him, focusing his will on Akane's survival below. The blessed Star League automedic that was a part of his pressure suit sensed his distress and flooded him with stimulants and blood-doping chemicals to maximize oxygen transfer. He barely heard the hiss of the suit's injectors in his armpits over the banshee keen of the plasma drives and the bass rumble of the fusion plant in the pit of his stomach, nor did he feel the cold pricks against his clammy skin.

The minutes sped away in an amphetamine-induced blur, the ghosty green alphanumerics of his HUD forming vapor trails in his watery vision as he locked onto the battlestation's radar reflection in his racing mind. A final ramp to eight gee's hit him in the gut, driving him into his ejector seat with a vengeance as the Orochi grew ever larger. His reflexes, keyed up to the breaking point, sang out in warning as laser fire began rippling down at him.

High in the thermosphere, in what was essentially low orbit, there was virtually no air to restrict him as he juked the LAM out of harm's way. At the literal top of the world, the horizon sank away in a violet arc to either side of the canopy, lit only by the fading sun and the frantic drives of the escaping Commonwealth DropShips in the distance. Ranma transformed his LAM into the more agile Airmech Mode as the Orochi split its smaller weapon mounts between him and the light cruiser Coronet, higher still above him. He took care to keep the battlemech's left hand stowed during his Phoenix Hawk's transformation to protect the bomb.

Ranma streaked past the falling battlestation, firing his engines to adjust his ballistic arc in order to put him on a position and course above the Orochi while descending upon it. The center control node Davidge had described to him was there, and so were a bevy of point defense batteries, all shooting at him. The beams and bolts crazed his armor and flashed across his canopy as he defied all instincts for survival and closed with the doomed satellite.

SLDFS Coronet

19:18 Local Time, T-minus 6 minutes to impact

"Conn, Sensory; Phoenix Hawk LAM detected, bearing zero-zero-nine, minus seven-eight."

Hauptmann trained one of the high speed telescopes over to the indicated bearing from his position at Fire Control.

"One of ours?" he asked.

"Ranma!?" Hinako cried from the conn as the Cameron Star of the SLDF became clear on the LAM's silver hull. "What does he think he's doing up here?"

"Looks like suicide," Hauptmann concluded. "Continue to fire on the Orochi," he added to the Fire Control section. "We'll keep the heat on if it will distract that damned machine."

A hit on their starboard beam shook them at their posts, reminding them that the Orochi was far from out of the fight.

Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds

Bunker Nine, Test Area North

19:18 Local Time. T-minus 6 minutes to impact

Akane watched the telemetry displays in the control room in silence, her teeth set against her lower lip and her hands moist with perspiration. The steadying hand on her shoulder from Shinnosuke as he looked on was appreciated even if she was too busy worrying about Ranma to mention it. Hikaru Gosunkugi lurked close by, quietly pouting that it was the local bumpkin and not himself who was giving Akane comfort.

"Point defense batteries continuing to fire," Davidge announced for everyone's benefit. Akane wanted to hit him for pointing out in clinical detail how the battlestation intended to kill the man she loved. She remained glued to her chair instead, watching the tiny point of light on the display that was the radar abstract of Phoenix Hawk LAM ASX-002.

"How much longer until the Orochi reaches the lower atmosphere?" Grand Duke Tendo asked the lieutenant. Genma remained quiet and still at the Duke's side, his mind wracked with doubt and the unspoken fear that even seventeen years of intense training had left his son unprepared for such a suicidal task.

"Three minutes," Davidge replied. "After that, we'll lose our telemetry feeds and have no more contact with the Orochi."

"Look!" Shinnosuke shouted, pointing at the displays. "He's making another pass!"

All eyes focused on the Threat Engagement board as radar-directed autocannons and heavy lasers swung to bear once more on the offending fighter. The radar image began to blur, then became multiple images as the LAM's onboard ECM systems spoofed the gun-directors, but a quick glance at the nearby Electronic Warfare display showed that the Orochi was already processing countermeasure algorithms to defeat the spoofing.

"Please," Akane whispered over and over as the LAM commenced yet another attack.

Hikaru silently prayed that Ranma would succeed as well - but not live to tell of it.

Phoenix Hawk LAM ASX-002

"SonuvaBITCH!" Ranma swore as the beams burned around him, lancing through the armored engine/weapon pods and destroying the twin medium pulse laser mount. His vernier thrusters flared in every direction as he loosed another volley of countermeasure decoys in what was his third failed attempt to reach the hull. The Orochi's weapons were too well coordinated in spite of the gun-directing radar damage for him to dodge them all, and he was taking hits. His own heavy pulselaser lashed out in return, hosing fire into the gun batteries as he aborted the approach.

He soared as close as he dared to the saucer's edge and dove once more below the Orochi. The ventral gun mounts were waiting for him, and another blizzard of high energy laser and particle beam fire wove lines of electric death around him. The last of the countermeasures popped from the dispenser as he punched his plasma drives for another crushing eight-gee evasive burn.

He went blind for a moment, clawing his way through numbing waves of unconsciousness as he fought off the acceleration effects. His Electronic Warfare panel hooted an alarm declaring that the Orochi had once again unlocked his radar spoofing patterns, and then shifted to another set of countermeasure routines. He was running out of options, and all it took was one lucky hit on his left forearm to damage or destroy the bomb he needed to take out the battlestation.

Seems like the fire is worse on the dorsal side, he thought frantically. If I attack the ventral side I won't be protected by the hull when this thing hits the mesosphere, but I don't stand a chance trying to take on the upper half.

His mind made up, Ranma pulled a hard turn and came back at the Orochi from straight on the narrow edge of the saucer. Both sets of guns could theoretically fire at him from this point, but he found that they could not depress enough into the other side's firing arc to make it a problem. If anything, the volume of effective fire thrown at him was lower.

Nine hundred kilometers, he noted on his radar altimeter. He had seventy-five seconds to pull this off before the Orochi hit the atmosphere in earnest.

Bunker Nine, Test Area North

19:19 Local Time. T-minus 5 minutes to impact

"Akari?"

Ryouga's voice seemed to carry much farther than he would have preferred among the muted voices of the others gathered in the dining area of the bunker. In the event that Ranma was unable to destroy the Orochi, everyone had been sent down to the belowground portion of the bunker to ride out the impact as best as they could.

"Yes, Ryouga?" she replied.

If she sensed what he was thinking in that moment, she did not make it clear by the tone of her voice. Ryouga swallowed nervously before he continued, while Captain Grant called out the five minute mark to impact from the dining area table.

"I..." he began, but his voice trailed off. His face turned red even though he could see that everyone else in the room was busy with their own thoughts, or making nervous small-talk with their neighbors to pass the time until the Orochi crashed into the planet. No one was paying any attention to the two of them.

"I was going to ask you something," he managed after several more false starts. "S-Something very important." He wanted to let her know more than just how he felt, he wanted her to know how much a future with her meant to him, and with their immediate future uncertain, it had become a crisis within his heart.

She turned in his lap to look at him.

"Ryouga?" she asked, her voice now suggesting that she knew exactly what he had in mind, and her gentle eyes lighting up with surprise.

He nodded, allowing the question to pass between them unspoken - at least for the moment.

"Would you?" he finally asked her. "If we survive this, I mean."

She buried her face in his shoulder and nodded with a soft cry of happiness at his proposition.

"We'll survive," she assured him as his arms closed around her to hold her close in his lap. "For this, we have to survive." His face continued to blaze bright red as she answered him, an effect thankfully lost upon their neighbors in the dim emergency lighting of the bunker.

Elsewhere in the bunker, Ukyou Kuonji sat in brooding silence on the steps of the stairwell leading down to the control room. Konatsu hovered close by, his eyes fixed with concern upon her.

"Are you all right, sir?" he asked.

She looked up to regard him. His pretty face was streaked with dirt and sweat from his excursion into the forest. The sight of him; so beautiful that it hurt to think about when she considered her own modest looks, and so lost without her that she felt pangs of guilt whenever she thought about why he was always there by her side. A sigh of remorse escaped her lips against her will.

"I'm worried," she finally replied. Worry and guilt were both evident in her eyes.

"About the Orochi, or Captain Saotome?" he asked in return.

Ukyou bit back the soft oath that sprang to her lips with Konatsu's question. As usual, her former majordomo cut to the heart of the matter, knowing exactly what she was feeling.

"Ranma," she said to him. "If anyone can do what he's trying to do to stop the Orochi, I know it's him, but that doesn't mean that something bad can't happen in the process."

Konatsu nodded silently. There wasn't much he could add to her statement, but he felt that her concern for Ranma was not the only thing that was bothering her.

"Do you have any regrets, sir?" he asked.

"Stop calling me 'sir,'" Ukyou snapped, irritation rising in her voice. "I didn't like it even when it meant something between us. You know that."

"I'm sorry," Konatsu pleaded, abashed by her rebuke.

"And stop being sorry," Ukyou returned. "You are your own person, Konatsu. You're not my servant, and you're not my slave. We aren't part of the Federated Shiratori anymore. Our relationship can't be based on that."

Konatsu bowed his head and remained silent.

Ukyou stood to face him, lifting his chin gently with her hand to look him in the eyes.

"Look, I couldn't ask for any friend more loyal and dedicated than you," she said to him. "You've repaid any debt of kindness you might have owed to me in the past a thousand times over. So now I want you to stop living your life as if it were at my sufferance. Can you do that?"

Konatsu's face began to redden.

"I-I don't know," he said, unsure of what he felt, much less what he could say in reply.

"You're so hopeless," Ukyou sighed, drawing Konatsu into her arms for a hug. "If anyone should be apologizing around here, it's me. We're probably gonna die down here in this hole; forgotten on a lost planet that no one else in the Inner Sphere knows exists." She squeezed him even tighter to herself. "I'm the one who led you here. I did it because I fooled myself into believing that I had a chance with Ranchan, and if my mistake gets us killed in a few minutes, then I want to apologize right now for it."

Konatsu brought his arms up to return her embrace. It was a bittersweet moment, for while he had never felt Ukyou's affection for him so strongly in his life, he knew in his heart that the love she had for him was not the love that he felt in return for her.

"I have no regrets," he managed. "I came with you because I wanted to."

"I know that," Ukyou sighed, giving him another squeeze. "But I also know the reason why you wanted to, and I feel like I've somehow taken advantage of you because of it." She wiped at her eyes, still holding him close. "I'm going to keep telling myself that we'll be okay, so humor me, huh, sugar?"

Konatsu nodded in reply. Ukyou was grateful for the silence. She needed time to think about where she was and where she was going - and if worse came to worst, she had all of five minutes in which to do it.

Blue Thunder Regimental Headquarters Company

Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds, Test Area North

19:20 Local Time, T-minus 4 minutes to impact.

"My lord Prince!" Kyle pleaded with his commander from high orbit. "I urge you to take shelter at once!"

"Bah!" Tatewaki snorted in retort. "I've had enough of your girlish chatter, Kyle!" He switched off the commo link to the Imperator with a flourish. His Operations Officer was becoming an embarrassment to him, and worse, infecting the men with fear. It took every gram of his command presence to keep them in ranks because of Kyle's clamor.

And for what? he asked imperiously, for he could see battlemechs standing in a line near a hill in the distance, and felt in his bones that Akane Tendo's was among them. Two of the 'mechs bore the distinctive cannon-armed silhouettes of Warhammers, his love's machine of choice.

"I go forth with glad heart to meet my destiny this day," he said lightly to himself and to his men as his Thunderbolt stomped towards the Orochi bunker.

Phoenix Hawk LAM ASX-002

19:20 Local Time, T-minus 4 minutes to impact.

Ranma wrenched at the controls as his battered Phoenix Hawk LAM skidded across the scorched lower hull of the Orochi in Airmech Mode. Once in contact with the orbital battlestation, he was too close for the point- defense guns to draw a bead on him, and he gasped for breath in the sudden respite from weapon fire as the LAM came to a halt. He could feel the Orochi's internal rumblings through his own ship as the suffuse glow of red-hot metal lit up the artificial horizon created by the massive half- kilometer disc.

Vents of flame shot up from the point where the Coronet's spinal mount particle beam had blasted through the battlestation, fanning out into flat clouds against the weak air resistance as the Orochi burned from within, giving Ranma hope that his bomb would be enough to finish the job. Forgetting for a moment that with his present orientation, he was essentially upside down, and facing the looming planet of Ryuugenzawa 'above' him, the slope of the hull 'rose' to the center of the disc, where Davidge had said was a vulnerable spot. He scooted the Phoenix Hawk carefully along the hull, blasting the domed turrets of impotent point-defense guns as he went to make certain none of them shot him in passing. The main drive exhaust nozzles at the very center of the ventral bulge seemed like a good place to set the bomb.

He needed to pry open the massive thirty centimeter thick armored louvers for the drives to get inside, as there was no obvious place to plant the nuke on the exterior hull, and no way to ensure that it stayed put. The Phoenix Hawk strained at the armored shutters, working them back and forth with its one free hand and the other forearm until he had weakened their mounts enough to squeeze inside the nozzle. He did so with trepidation, knowing that if the Orochi was capable of reacting to such an intrusion, one good blast of plasma from the Main Engines would utterly incinerate him.

It was nearly pitch black inside the house-sized nozzle; a long tunnel of magnetic coils that led directly to the fusion reactor in the heart of the battlestation extended beyond. He activated his landing lights to see what he was doing, then unlocked the left hand of his LAM, which slowly extended from the forearm to reveal the thermonuclear device from the Tendo Armory. At first brush the thing appeared to be intact.

He stole a glance at the clock function he had called up to the HUD, and knew that he had less than fifteen seconds to arm and plant the bomb before the Orochi started hitting thick atmosphere. Some of the buffeting he already felt was from the falling battlestation's flirtation with the mesosphere. He set the bomb between a series of plasma accelerator coils that ringed the tunnel, figuring that it would be secure enough for the two minutes or so he had remaining before the thing needed to explode. Hurrying without being careless, and mindful that he had a slight case of the shakes from the speed his automedic had prescribed, he extended the three micromanipulator arms from the right forearm of his LAM.

The control panel cover was slid aside to reveal that all appeared normal with the weapon. It was armed, and required only the timer function to be set. He moved one of the manipulator waldoes over to the key pad, and punched in a ninety-second delay. It was the longest he dared to give the thing, knowing that he would have to squeeze his way out past the nozzle louvers and still manage to put as much distance as possible between himself and an explosion that was going to be at least a megaton in yield.

As he touched the 'enter' button on the keypad with his manipulator waldo, he offered up a brief plea for it to work.

The bomb's function display flashed several times in acknowledgement, then shifted to a series of red failure lights.

"You gotta be shitting me!" Ranma cursed as the bomb sat inert within the nozzle of the Orochi's plasma drive. The battlestation began to oscillate as it dug into the thin atmosphere of the mesosphere, and a thin stream of vapor flowed through a gap in the nozzle louvers to coil around his cockpit canopy.

Black Rose Terror Regiment DropShip Thorn

19:21 Local Time, T-minus 3 minutes to impact.

Sasuke watched Kodachi's battered Marauder limp out of the distant treeline from the vantage of the Overlord Class DropShip's bridge. Troops from her brother's forces were in obvious pursuit, though he had ordered what little remained in the way of the regiment's aerospace fighters to harass them to buy his mistress time.

Time was something they had very little of, for he now understood that the Orochi was going to crash into the planet, and they were judged close enough to the projected impact point to be wiped out by the blast such a collision would generate. The ninja had already overridden the captain of the Thorn at the point of his dagger over the idea of abandoning Kodachi before it was too late to escape, and now the First Officer kept an uneasy watch from the command chair. Sasuke did not know what to make of the fact that Tatewaki had apparently written off the incoming Orochi as inconsequential, other than to dream of the possibilities that would come from the Prince's death.

"Hurry, Mistress!" he called to Kodachi over the radio. "We have to lift off this very moment!"

"You'll hold your position," she returned coolly. Sasuke cringed to see Tarou sitting more or less in her lap on the display. He had hoped that Kodachi's paramour had been among the regiment's fallen.

"Of course, Mistress," he demurred. He cast a sharp-eyed look to the newly minted captain of the Thorn, telling him without words that there would be no further discussion of the matter of leaving without Princess Kodachi.

"Mech Bay Door Number One is open and standing by for retrieval," the former First Officer replied.

Phoenix Hawk LAM ASX-002

19:21 Local Time, T-minus 3 minutes to impact.

Ranma tried entering the time delay a second time without the desired effect. Then he punched at the sixty-second manual release. Still nothing. The bomb was locked out on numerous incomprehensible errors. Had the changing environmental conditions contributed to the device's malfunctions, or was it something else?

There wasn't any time to waste with a useless piece of junk. He needed results, and he needed them now. Turning to activate his twin rack SRM launcher, he prepared to loose a volley of missiles down the tunnel of the plasma drive, and to the gigantic fusion reactor beyond.

He stopped himself just short of firing the missiles. If he did what he had intended, there would have been no time to escape. Cursing to himself as the seconds ticked away, he yanked at the release for his cockpit canopy, venting the atmosphere within to the tunnel. He'd save the missiles for the absolute last second, but in the meantime, he was going to try and hotwire a thermonuclear weapon.

How hard could it be?

He moved in freefall down the arm of his LAM to the bomb, pulling himself along while he fished in his thigh pockets with his other hand for the small array of portable tools he kept on his person. The bomb's display continued to glare at him in angry shades of flashing red as he popped the LCD panel out of its mount with a screwdiver. The only thing he had going for him was the fact that by properly arming the device for full release before he left the planet, the standard anti-tampering interlocks had been removed.

He flipped up the LCD panel and let it hang in free-fall by the slender length of wiring bundle that tied it to the rest of the bomb, and was relieved to see that a schematic diagram of the arming and firing mechanisms were present on the backside. His eyes scanned the schematic voraciously as the Orochi continued to bite into thicker air, and a thin scream of vapor whistled through the gaps in the armored shutters of the nozzle. All of his years of training as a Scout and as a burglar were coming down to this moment as he determined where and how the bomb could be overridden manually.

He found it with an exultant cry. The manual sixty-second release switch, although determined to be 'dead' with a touch of his voltmeter probe to its 'hot' side, could still bypass the keypad input function if he found a way to energize it - but as it relied on the timing circuit itself, he would have to depend on that part of the bomb to be functional. He didn't have time to figure out what had gone wrong with the bomb's control system, so he would have to take the chance that it worked.

He searched for and found an available 24 volt power input with his voltmeter probe. All he had to do now was short across the manual release with his screwdriver. He took a deep breath and touched the conducting surface of the screwdriver to the voltage source and the switch. A flash of sparks and the felt hiss of pressurization within the guts of the bomb told him something had happened. An LED began to glow next to the fission-primary casing - the tritium gas boosting charge had been loaded into the primary as a preamble to the big firecracker going off.

He spun the LCD readout panel around to see that the MANUAL FIRE light had come on, and that a sixty-second countdown was already three seconds into its progression. Stifling the urge to piss himself, he scrambled for the open cockpit of the LAM as the thermonuclear bomb counted down to detonation. He did not want to be there to check the validity of the firing circuit's function firsthand.

Ranma dragged himself up the arm of the LAM to the cockpit and pulled himself into his ejector seat, securing seat straps with one hand as his other hand closed the canopy. He pivoted in the middle of the engine thruster to face the shutters, and gripped a section of them with both of the Phoenix Hawk's hands to wrench them open. He could only guess at how much time he had left before the bomb exploded, and no matter the accuracy of his guess, it wasn't a comfortable margin.

He pushed and pulled at the louvers to force them open, fighting the blasts of atmosphere as much as the mounts. Wisps of ionization streamed past his 'mech as the Orochi began to heat up with the atmospheric friction of reentry. If the magnetically-shielded louvers hadn't been designed to withstand the incredible radiant heat of million degree plasma rushing past them, he would have been concerned about them melting to his battlemech's hands. As it stood, he was having more trouble getting out of the Orochi's innards than he had getting in.

Straining the myomer bundles to their limits, he finally wrenched the louvers open, but a flick of his eyes to the clock function on his HUD told him that he was already too late. He gave a defiant shout over the radio and launched himself free of the nozzle with the last few seconds of his reaction mass, and was propelled into the violent wash of superheated air trapped beneath the plummeting orbital battlestation. He crashed against the ventral hull of the Orochi as he cleared the nozzle, his LAM tumbling against the glowing red hull to the ragged edge of the half-kilometer disc.

There was no fighting the controls - he had no fuel left, and in the maelstrom of superheated air, no way to stabilize himself. Battered with each jarring hit against the Orochi's ventral hull, he could only hope with wildly frantic thoughts that his Phoenix Hawk would hold on to enough of its structural integrity to keep from flying apart in a thousand pieces. He was so occupied with the idea of being smashed to bits against the red hot hull that he completely forgot about the thermonuclear bomb he had set to go off inside the Orochi.

Fortunately for the people on the planet below, the bomb had not forgotten what it was supposed to do.

SLDFS Coronet

19:22 Local Time, T-minus 90 seconds to impact

"Conn, Sensory; the Orochi has reached the point of ionization. Estimated time to impact is nine-zero seconds."

"Can we fire another shot?" Hauptmann demanded from Fire Control. "We don't have any more time to lose."

"Malfunction lights haven't cleared," the tech replied. "And I don't know enough about this system to figure out a way to bypass the safety interlocks."

Captain Hinako Ninomiya looked on helplessly at the main telescope monitor. The battlestation was about to crash into the planet, and probably kill everyone down there. What had Ranma been up to in his mad attacks on the Orochi? Where had he disappeared to when he attacked the battlestation's underside? Surely the boy couldn't have been trying to destroy it with only the tiny weapons array of a Phoenix Hawk LAM?

"Any sign of Captain Saotome?" she asked as the Coronet's sensors looked down at the fiery trail of the falling Orochi from a scant thousand kilometers above the planet. She concluded that Ranma was stubborn enough to try such a thing, even if there was no hope of success.

"No, ma'am," Sensory replied. "All I have on my scopes along those bearings are the fleeing Commonwealth DropShips plus the IFF ping from our shuttle at a range of four thousand kilometers."

Hinako was going to ask another question when a loud squawk of electronic protest sounded over the intercom speakers. She caught the brilliant flash of light from the Orochi in that same instant, and was grateful for the auto-dampening features of the telescope array. Blinking away the spots before her eyes, she watched as the battlestation fountained a column of plasma from the very center of its dorsal bulge, a column that continued to rise like a beam of pure energy well past the Star League cruiser off its port bow, and into medium orbit.

"What the hell?" Hauptmann grunted from Fire Control.

The rest of the Orochi began to break apart as the inner half of the disc evaporated with the heat of the exploding bomb. Sections over fifty meters in length scattered from the blast, while smaller pieces were propelled into crazy spirals by a combination of the explosion and the air resistance caused by their plunge into the atmosphere. Hinako watched in awe as the Orochi fanned apart into a glowing tracery of debris that expanded over the darkened face of Ryuugenzawa below.

At first she thought it had been some malfunction within the Orochi caused by the stresses of entering the atmosphere. As she watched the sections of the wrecked battlestation burn, she came to understand that its destruction had been engineered. It could only have been Ranma.

Test Area North

Shampoo winced at the brilliant flash of light that overwhelmed the early evening sky, and looked up to see thousands of streaks of flame fanning out across the heavens from a central ball of annihilation. Unaware that it was the Orochi's disintegration, she wondered if one of the starships in orbit had come to a bad end, and wondered if it had been a Furinkan Combine or Musk Dynasty ship. Bits of debris rained down in fiery white streaks as they burned up in the atmosphere, while larger pieces of the battlestation continued their fall all the way to the distant ocean.

"So beautiful," she heard Mousse whisper, and she had to agree with him. At a distance, such cataclysmic destruction had a compelling allure.

She looked down at him, stroking his matted hair and thinking about how much time he had left to live. His skin was so cold beneath her fingertips, and his breathing was so faint that she could no longer detect it. A pang of dread shot through her at the realization that Mousse was lying very still in her lap.

"Mousse?" she called to him quietly, almost pleading for an answer.

There was none. Mousse had passed on in that moment while her attention was drawn to the sky, and his eyes, half open, seemed to be fixed upon her. A touch of her hand to his chest told her what her she already knew, for the weak and thready beat of his heart had ceased.

She felt something break inside her then, a part of her that she had always kept at arm's length within her soul. It was as if the last nineteen years of her life had belonged to someone else, a person she no longer knew, or even recognized. It was the last of what had been many ruptures, great and small, with her old self; the Shampoo that had tried so hard to live up to the demands of her family and clan - and most of all, her great-grandmother - and failed.

Mousse had been her final link to that other self, and now that he was gone, she was cast adrift. Alone.

A fluttering in her belly stirred her to sob just once; a wracked, anguished cry that ended abruptly as she reasserted herself with an angry grunt of determination. Perhaps she wasn't alone, for the baby was still with her, but she would never be the same woman she had been before she came to Ryuugenzawa - could never be that woman. That Shampoo was gone - as dead as the man who lay in her lap - and now she was reborn to a new life. It was a life of uncertainty and hardship, but she had learned in the last six months to expect nothing else.

She rose slowly to her feet, taking care to close Mousse's unseeing eyes and set his head down gently in the forest grass as she did so. She wanted to go back to the bunker, to the only people she had left on this world who would have her. Part of her wanted to go home, but she doubted that such a thing was possible even if they had a starship to do it with.

Bunker Nine, Test Area North

"What the -?" Davidge squawked as he strained his ears to listen over a headset for the tiniest trace of electronic signals, and was bombarded with a blast of intense noise.

"What is it?" Akane asked.

"I think he did it," he replied. "I really think he did it!"

"The Orochi is gone?" Genma cried expectantly.

Davidge nodded, pointing to one of the displays. "You can see here that there was a huge pulse of electromagnetic energy, and now there's a continuous buzz of static consistant with a large explosion high in the mesosphere. It's got to be the Orochi."

"Well, in two more minutes we'll find out for certain," Malloy pointed out. "If it's gone, then nothing will happen. Otherwise we're definitely going to feel it when it hits."

"Can't we radio Ranma and find out for certain?" Akane asked.

"Not with the ionization effects I'm detecting," Davidge replied. "We could be out of direct radio contact with anyone in space for hours, perhaps even days with a blast that big."

"So we wait," Shinnosuke observed.

"I'm not worried," Hikaru added with a shake of his head. Nervous about Saotome's survival, yes. But not worried.

They watched the clock as it ticked off the seconds. When the time for impact passed without any noticeable effect, a whoop of joy went up from those in the control room that carried up the stairs and was echoed by everyone remaining in the bunker. The Orochi was destroyed, and the planet spared catastrophe.

Akane hugged both Shinnosuke and Hikaru, and then anyone she could reach in the crowded control room. The stress and tension of nine long hours of conflict evaporated with the knowledge that they had beaten the odds and survived the battle.

"I'm going outside," she declared, wanting to be there when Ranma returned. "Who's coming with me?"

General Prince Tatewaki Kuno started at the blinding flash of light that filled the sky. His commo suite squawked in protest, and harsh static blared from the speakers. Battle management links went down, severing his connections to his command staff.

"What manner of skulduggery is this!?" he demanded. There was no response from his troops, who stopped their advance to watch the long streaks of fire that raced across the sky towards the distant sea.

Snarling curses that they did not hear over the hiss and crackle of the disturbed ether, he continued on towards the bunker. The battlemechs that stood around the low grassy hill were silent. None offered any resistance, and as he closed the distance he realized that they were unmanned. Even more curiously, they were adorned with the Cameron Star of the Star League Defense Force.

Finally, shamed at seeing their general get ahead of them, the rest of his troops closed ranks and continued their advance. The brilliant meteor shower continued above them as small bits of debris actually reached the surface, pattering the ground and in rare instances spanging off their diamond-hard battlemech armor.

Tatewaki was beside himself with anger, but as the radio interference continued undiminshed, he could do nothing to berate his troops for their distraction. He reached the line of SLDF battlemechs, and upon close examination, confirmed that they were inactive. Their crews were likely hiding within the bunker.

What he wanted to know more than anything was that Akane Tendo was among them. He felt that it was so, and yet not knowing was driving him mad. It only then dawned on him that the terrible flash of light in the sky had been the Orochi exploding high in the atmosphere, and at this he barked out a fey laugh at the miracle. Destiny was truly calling him to her bosom, or, more specifically, to the bosoms of Akane Tendo and the Pig-Tailed Girl.

"Come out!" he called out over the external speakers to the bunker. "Show thyselves, be ye Star League or mine own Confederation foes! I have come to make the peerless Akane Tendo my bride!"

"That sounds like Kuno," Ryouga said in a hushed voice from the bunker door. The Prince of the Furinkan Combine continued to rant over the loudspeaker of his Thunderbolt on the other side of the door.

"Kuno?" Akane asked worriedly. "You're kidding me. He didn't leave the planet with the others?"

Ryouga shrugged uneasily as Akari curled up behind him to listen. "From the way the ground's shaking, I think he brought his whole guard with him."

"Shall we make a run for our 'mechs?" Ukyou asked quietly as Kuno continued issuing demands for their appearance.

"It might be suicide to try," Akane returned, mirroring Ukyou's apprehension. She looked to her father and Kasumi. "What do you think, Dad?"

Soun in turn looked to the Shogun of the Furinkan Combine. "He's your son."

The Shogun nodded his head. "Yah, bruddah. Dat be true. Mebbe it be time to settle tings wit' de keiki."

"Just what did you have in mind?" Genma asked the Shogun.

The Shogun shrugged. "Gonna see if dat boy done got himself a proper haircut, first." He motioned for Ryouga to open the bunker door.

Ryouga looked to Akane for confirmation, and she turned to her father. Soun nodded slowly in agreement.

Tatewaki Kuno was stunned by the appearance of his father from the door of the bunker. His troops, recognizing the Shogun of the Furinkan Combine, dropped their battlemechs down to one knee in a display of fealty and respect. The Shogun gave them a jaunty wave and a wide grinning smile.

"Hey, boy!" he called to his son's Thunderbolt. "You gonna come down and say aloha to your papa?"

Tatewaki choked back a rush of bile in his throat. How had this man come to this place? Had Nabiki made a mistake somewhere along the line, or had she planned this from the start when she pointed him towards the Ryuugenzawa System, and if so, why?

Slowly, taking pains to preserve his dignity, he opened the hatch to his battlemech and appeared. There was no sense in letting on to his feelings of anger and confusion regarding his father's presence. He did enjoy looking down on his hated father, and he toyed briefly with the idea of stomping him into the ground with a well-placed battlemech foot.

"You gonna come down, Tachi?" the Shogun asked, his voice taking on a hint of annoyance.

"Of course, Father," Tatewaki replied with mock enthusiam. "Let me embrace you as a son to his father." He climbed down the Thunderbolt as designated members of his personal guard did the same from their 'mechs.

The two men walked towards the center of the space of ground that separated them as Ryouga, Ukyou, and Akane looked on from the door. As the two neared each other, Tatewaki threw open his arms to accept his father's love. The Shogun did the same. It was a surreal moment made even more bizarre by the fact that as they came within half a meter of each other, the father produced a pair of hair-clippers, and the son a wooden bokken.

They passed like dueling samurai from ancient legends. Tatewaki Kuno's bokken flowered into a bouquet of wooden slivers and sawdust while the Shogun sheathed his clippers with the grace and dignity born of a master's skill.

"You never could beat me, keiki," the Shogun crowed, turning to see Tatewaki's face purpling with humiliation. "Maybe you shoulda took up stamp collectin' instead o' tryin' ta rule da Combine."

"Curse you, Father!" Tatewaki retorted. "Whilst I hath expanded the mighty Furinkan Combine into many new systems in the tender years of my youth, thou'rt squandering thy hours away in frivolous pursuit of base pleasure. Speak not of matters regarding who is fit to rule and who is unfit!"

The Shogun nodded his head. "Perhaps you right, boy," he replied.

This took Tatewaki aback.

"You say this not in jest?" he asked with an arched eyebrow of surprise.

The Shogun turned to his companions in the bunker instead of replying to his son's question. "You come out now. Dere ain't no sense in resisting anymore. Da boy won fair and square."

Tatewaki saw the Grand Duke of the Confederation step out of the door, his face red with anger. Truly, Nabiki's lies went even farther than he dared dream if her father walked free on the planet Ryuugenzawa, and was not in custody on Nerima.

"What's the meaning of this?" Soun demanded of the Shogun as Ryouga and Genma tried unsuccessfully to pull him back inside. "You said you were going to talk to Prince Kuno, not compell us to surrender to him!"

The Shogun shrugged. "It's like I been saying all along, bruddah. If da boy is willin' to struggle and sacrifice for what he wants, den he deserves ta get it when it comes along." He nudged his thumb towards his son. "Da boy was crazy stickin' around on de planet when de smart ting to do was get going - but it done paid off."

Soun failed to see the point. "I will not surrender to the Combine!" he shot back. Ryouga and the others filtered out to lend the Grand Duke support, and perhaps make a break for their 'mechs - though Captain Grant and Ukyou had to drag Genma out by his arms to do it.

When Tatewaki laid eyes upon Akane, his face brightened as if looking upon the rising sun.

"Akane Tendo!" he cried, and ignoring the other Confederation types, made a beeline straight for her with his arms thrown wide for an embrace. Shinnosuke and Konatsu quickly stood in front of her to block his path, while Hikaru Gosunkugi pretended not to exist in the hopes that Tatewaki wouldn't notice him standing there with the Confederation heir.

Tatewaki drew his katana and leveled it at her escorts. "Stand aside," he ordered them. The whine of battlemech weapons zeroing in on the crowd added emphasis to his demand. "Come not between the Blue Thunder of the Furinkan Combine and his prize if thou dost value life and breath."

Akane stared Tatewaki down. "Speaking of breath, Kuno; I will defy you to my last breath," she said coldly to him.

Her defiance was unnerving, but he swallowed his disappointment by directing his wrath towards Hikaru Gosunkugi. "Bloodless coward," he snorted imperiously. "Slow death upon thy cross is assured for thy treachery this day."

Hikaru tried not to wilt under Tatewaki's withering gaze. All this, and yet still disaster struck! However terrible the thought of certain death was to him, the agony of crucifixion paled in comparison to the agony of seeing Akane Tendo made Kuno's wife.

The Combine prince didn't give him a second thought, returning his attentions to Akane. "Pray tell, fairest of all Nerima, whither the churlish Ranma Saotome, that I might impale him upon the prow of my mighty battleship as a trophy?"

She cringed at his plans for her beloved while her hands crackled into fists.

"He'd dead," she spat. "Your troops killed him in battle today." She gave the lie to puff him up, and at the same time put him at ease in the hopes that Ranma's return to the surface of the planet would come as the surprise they needed to make their escape. Ryouga gave her a quizzical look, only to be stabbed in the ribs by an elbow of the much swifter Ukyou Kuonji to shut him up before he gave the show away.

Tatewaki Kuno expressed both satisfaction and dismay at the news. He had hoped to face the cur one last time before putting him to the sword, just to hear him beg for mercy.

"No matter," he returned coolly. "I have what I have come for."

"Not so fast," Akane retorted. "I said I will defy you to the end, and I meant it."

Tatewaki chuckled. "I value and prize thy defiance, Akane Tendo. Indeed, thy fierce and unbroken spirit is what draws me hither to thee, as a moth to the flame. Though perhaps you speak in haste, having not long had the pleasure of my companionship."

"The last time I had the pleasure of your companionship, you were hurting my friends and threatening them with death!" she yelled back at him, letting emotions flow through her that she had suppressed since Capra. "So you can imagine how that might have poisoned me to your so-called charms!"

The Shogun stepped between them, flanked by the fuming Grand Duke Tendo and several of Tatewaki's dismounted troops. He gave Akane a smile and a wink, making her blink in astonishment, and leaving her wondering just what he was up to.

"Maybe tings ain't exactly like you'd hoped, eh, keiki?" he asked his son with a rhetorical aire.

"Nonsense," Tatewaki spat. "I've won. The Confederation is as good as mine, and so too the lovely Akane Tendo. I need only to feast my eyes upon the vibrant Pig-Tailed Girl to make my victory utterly complete."

Akane made a face at him, but kept silent. Pig-Tailed Girl? Does he mean Ranma!? She cast a furtive glance to the sky, where the fiery fingers of the obliterated Orochi satellite continued to expand and fade away into flickering streamers of light.

"Maybe you ain't quite earned what you tink you got," the Shogun broached casually as Akane searched the heavens for a sign of Ranma. "Maybe you got one more challenge to overcome."

"If this is about one of your ridiculous limbo contests, I shall have nothing to do with it!" Tatewaki fulminated.

Akane, distracted as she was, understood what the Shogun was getting at.

"Kuno, I challenge you to a duel!" she cried, taking her eyes away from the sky and fixing them upon the Combine prince. "It's my right as a mechwarrior and a lady of the blood!"

Tatewaki turned to regard Akane with wide eyes.

"Challenge me?" he asked, intrigued. "The Blue Thunder of the Furinkan Combine?"

She nodded slowly in reply. "If you defeat me in battlemech combat, I'll submit to you right here and now. The Confederation will be yours without any more resistance." Soun and Kasumi gaped at her offer, but remained silent pending the Combine prince's response.

Tatewaki blinked in surpise. "You shall become my dutiful wife?" he asked her dubiously. "My queen and my sovereign empress? Bearing our children in the fullness of time?"

"I'll marry you right here and now," she replied, working herself up for the other end of the bargain. "And I'll be your wife and the mother of your children."

Tatewaki was beside himself with joy. "Done and done, Akane Tendo!" He leaped forward to embrace her once again.

"Not so fast, Kuno," she snapped, pushing him away. "If I win, the Furinkan Combine will withdraw from all Confederation territory taken since the beginning of the Third Succession War."

It was Tatewaki's turn to gape, and he was not alone.

Akane continued, projecting for Kuno the same steely determination to do what was right for the Confederation that had earned her the adoration of her people.

"Furthermore, you will agree to an immediate cease-fire between the Furinkan Combine and the Confederation, to last a minimum of ten years from this day. You will also pay reparations to the Confederation in the sum of twenty billion c-bills - one quarter of which will be due in six months to the Bank of Sol on Earth, and the rest in annual installments to the same. All compliance with this agreement will be monitored by Comstar, and with the appropriate penalties for any breach."

Akane knew from past conversations with Nabiki that Comstar was always looking for ways to check Tatewaki Kuno's ambitions without seeming arbitrary, and allowing them to enforce the cease-fire would be just the opening they needed to keep the House of Kuno in line, while keeping up the appearance of being impartial in the Succession Wars. She had mulled over these very terms in her thoughts ever since Ryouga's recovery of the Library Core from Happousai - though at the time it had simply been a way for her to buy off the Combine's assaults in exchange for a share of the secrets. Now she could keep the Library Core for the Confederation and still get what she wanted. She had defeated Tatewaki Kuno in battle before, and she was confident that she could do it again.

Soun began to gibber incoherently at his youngest daughter's apparent insanity - at least until Kasumi gently placed a hand over his mouth to shut him up. A look passed between the two sisters as Kasumi said without words that she understood what Akane was doing - and approved.

"Preposterous!" Tatewaki thundered in dissent. "Thy demands go beyond the limits of reason! I refuse!"

Akane faced him down, moving aside Konatsu and Shinnosuke to deliver a fingertip to his chin. "That isn't your decision to make, Kuno." She turned and offered a sweet smile to the Shogun. "Do we have a deal, your Eminence?"

The Shogun let out a long loud laugh. "Ho yeah, wahine! I gotta say you da most akamai keiki to evah come outta da Confederation. If da boy wins, you submit. If you win, you get everyting you asked for, wit' my compliments!"

He cast an amused look at his son. "So, boy. You gonna do right by da Kuno family, and end dis silly war - one way or da other?"

Tatewaki returned his father's look of amusement with a baleful glare. "I shall, Father. For the glory of the Kuno name, the honor of the indomitable Furinkan Combine, and the love of Akane Tendo; I shall prevail this day."

"Good," the Shogun snorted. "'Cause you gettin' a shaved head from me if you lose." He looked to Akane. "Hope you don't mind doin' dis in de dark, as we almost outta daylight. You got twenty minutes to prepare, wahine. De rest of your people stay out here with us as guarantors."

Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds

Bunker Nine, Test Area North

19:54 Local Time

The last of the summer evening's daylight faded into the gloomy darkness of impending rain as Akane Tendo prepared to climb into the cockpit of the Warhammer her father had operated for her duel with Tatewaki Kuno. If she defeated him, the Confederation would earn ten years of peace and stability to rebuild and rearm with the lost technology from the Library Core. If she lost, the Confederation was doomed to become a vassal state to the Furinkan Combine, and she the wife of Prince Kuno.

Ranma wouldn't stand for it, but she needed to give Tatewaki something to bite on for her to land the deal. She hoped that her lover would back down from doing something stupid - like honoring his promise to kill Tatewaki before letting the Combine Prince take her away. A quick glance skyward for a sign of his Phoenix Hawk LAM returning from low orbit ended in disappointment.

"He should have come back by now," she said to Doctor Tofu, who was acting as her Second in the duel.

"He probably went to rendezvous with the Coronet," Tofu replied, understanding exactly who Akane meant by her remark. "Heck, he probably used up almost all of his fuel just trying to make orbit in time." He closed an inspection hatch on the Warhammer, satisfied with what he saw within. "Don't worry about him up there," he continued. "You need to keep yourself focused on what's happening down here."

"I know," she returned softly. "But I can't help worrying about the jerk. He's probably doing this to make me worry about him."

Tofu smiled. "You're probably right about that. But you can punch him for it after you've defeated Kuno, so stop thinking about it now."

Akane smiled. "I'll try."

"Good," Tofu said, moving over to rub at Akane's shoulders to loosen her up. "Now you've fought Kuno before, so you know how he acts in a battle. He likes using that sword of his, and it'll cut through your 'mech like butter, so keep your distance from him. Don't let him close on you. You've got a decent mix of armament, at least as good as his inside of one hundred meters, so pound on him from there."

"I know," Akane replied, letting Tofu work the kinks out of her.

"And watch for a jump attack," Tofu added. "He might try to close the gap with that."

"I know," she repeated, impatient to get on with it. Thinking about how much was riding on this duel was distracting her.

Tofu backed off. "Good luck, Akane."

Ukyou stepped up to take his place as Akane fastened the straps of her cooling vest.

"What is it, Ukyou?" she asked the woman.

Ukyou offered a weak smile. Though she considered herself one of the Confederation now, it wasn't without a certain amount of discomfort that she wished her rival well. If Akane lost the duel, then Ranma was fair game once more, and even though Ukyou knew that Ranma loved Akane, the faint hope that he might come around to her still lingered in her heart.

"Kick his ass, hon'," she said finally to Akane. Even if it breaks my heart for you to win, she thought to herself. It makes my life a lot less complicated this way.

Akane nodded in agreement. "Thanks, Ukyou. I mean that."

The former general shrugged her shoulders. "Just remember me when it comes time to hand out the medals for all of this, okay?"

"I can't do that," Akane said with a grin. "Only Confederation soldiers can receive decorations."

Ukyou rolled her eyes. "Jeez, now I have to enlist after all we've been through on this mudball? You should have been a recruiter instead of a royal."

"I'll see about getting you a commission when this is all over. I'm going to need you for something very important in the very near future; the most important diplomatic assignment I can imagine," Akane returned, then lightly threw her arms around Ukyou for a hug. Ukyou blinked twice in surprise before returning the embrace. Diplomatic assignment? It was what she had wanted as a way to escape Mikado Sanzenin, and yet there was something in Akane's voice that told her taking the job would mean going back to the Federated Shiratori for a little while.

She'd do it, she decided. If Akane could win even her rivals over to her cause with such ease, her future as the ruler of the Confederation would be a bright one, and Ukyou wanted to be a part of it.

"Make me a captain and we'll see," she said, half-joking.

"Major at the very least," Akane returned.

"Deal," Ukyou laughed, thinking about how she would outrank Ranchan and Ryouga both.

They separated, and Akane started up the leg of her Warhammer as a light rain began to fall. "I'm not going to lose to Kuno," she told everyone within earshot.

The battlemech awaited her command. Like the Warhammer she had used against the Black Rose forces, this one bristled with all of the Star League's advanced technology. Such technology gave her some advantage over Tatewaki Kuno, but against his deadly katana and his sheer determination to win everything in one fell swoop, she knew there were no guarantees.

Tatewaki Kuno ascended the ladder to his Thunderbolt's cockpit, sure in the knowledge that he would prevail. Akane's challenge was welcomed by him, not only because she would be his once he prevailed, but also because it suited his sense of drama to resolve everything in one grand duel. He looked out at the rabble of Confederation troops below him and scoffed. There was no glory to be had in capturing them without a fight.

"You wastin' time, boy," his hated father called up to him from the ground below. How he despised that man - almost as much as he despised his cursed sister.

"Keep silent old man," Tatewaki snarled under his breath. "The Blue Thunder of the Furinkan Combine shall deal with you in turn."

The Shogun waved once. "You lose, boy, and it won't jus' be a haircut. You gonna be waxing surfboards for me for da next year, no shit."

Tatewaki winced at the threat, however unlikely it was to happen, for it brought back memories of a misspent youth doing just that.

"Akane Tendo, prepare thyself!" he cried as he pulled the hatch shut and sealed it.

The field of honor was the bowl shaped valley that opened up from the door of the bunker. The forest made up the boundaries on three sides, and the hill of the bunker the fourth. All in all, there was about five hundred meters of clearance from one end to the other, making this a close range fight in battlemechs. The spectators withdrew their battlemechs to the safety of the treeline, and those on the ground were forced to watch from the bunker door. Tofu and Ukyou acted as her Seconds, and were mounted up in their battlemechs. Tatewaki had two of his personal guard in his own corner of the field.

Akane wasn't worried about it being a close range fight. If she could avoid Tatewaki's katana, her battlemech had the firepower to get her through a fight at short range with his Thunderbolt. As Tofu had said, she knew how Tatewaki fought, and there was no reason to expect him to change his tactics. After all, the numerous times she had defeated him in last five years had proven that.

The only thing she was concerned about was that at any time Ranma might swoop down on the duel and render it null and void. The Confederation needed this win more than anything, and Ranma wouldn't know about it until it was too late. She wanted to know that he was all right, that he had survived the destruction of the Orochi, but this was not the time for him to make his grand return.

She activated her main radar, and spent several moments tuning it against the clutter and backscatter generated by the woods on the perimeter. This was a fight in the dark, and she needed every advantage to deliver her weapons effectively. The Streak SRM-6 launcher on her Warhammer's right shoulder would help, as would the deadly NARC beacon.

She wasn't going to worry herself with fairness at using Star League technology against Kuno. If the idiot was willing to let her use her choice of mech against him, then it was on his head. The Shogun seemed to agree with that sentiment, though for some reason, he was unwilling to point out to his son that he was outmatched in the technology department.

Perhaps he really meant what he said about Tatewaki earning his victory.

"Akane Tendo," Tatewaki said abruptly on her commo display. "Know that I hold thee in the highest reverence, and were this not a challenge with thy hand in marriage as the prize, I would never seek ye any harm."

She tried not to gag. How many times had she had to fend off a giant battlemech-sized katana or a barrage of laser fire from him while he spouted the same nonsense in her direction?

"I wish I could say the same, Kuno," she replied curtly, and put her Warhammer into a slow walk.

Shogun Kuno's voice sounded over the tac-net. "Hey Keiki, you ready?"

"The Blue Thunder of the Furinkan Combine is always ready for battle," Tatewaki sniffed.

"And you, wahine?"

Akane locked her NARC beacon on the distant target that was Kuno's Thunderbolt.

"Let's do this," she replied. Please dear gods let me win!

"Then Fight!" the Shogun cried.

Akane had a lock with her NARC beacon, but Kuno was just out of SRM range. She decided to light up his life with a twin blast of PPC fire instead.

Her Warhammer's gun-tube Donal PPC arms ripped out a pair of lightning bolts at Kuno, the blinding plasma arcs turning the night into day as sonorous thunderclaps echoed off the distant treeline. She watched in disbelief as Tatewaki evaded her shots, his Thunderbolt leaping into the sky on a blast of jetfire. He was closing the range as quickly as possible to deal a katana strike that would end the fight.

She waited until he touched down at a range of three hundred meters before releasing the missiles. The Streak SRMs rippled from the shoulder launcher with earsplitting screams, and shot at high speed in a hooked claw formation that rode the NARC beam straight to the target. Kuno didn't seem to care that they were about to hit, for he continued to march straight at her.

As the six missiles came within meters of his Thunderbolt, the giant katana flashed in the muted moonlight. Explosions popped like orange strobes and their booming reports filled the air with hot shrapnel. Even before the smoke had cleared, Akane knew that Kuno had cut them out of the sky.

He could never do that before - could he? she wondered with horror as the Thunderbolt continued to stomp inexorably towards her. All those other times I beat him, was he just holding back from me?

"This doesn't look good," Ryouga said in taut voice to Akari from the bunker door. Grand Duke Tendo had fainted away into Kasumi's arms with a groan of disbelief.

"The battle isn't over," Akari pointed out. She nuzzled a little closer to Ryouga anyway, seeking comfort.

He looked up to the BattleMaster that stood atop the bunker. He wanted to join the fight - but this was Akane's duel! He couldn't protect her, even though he wanted to desperately, and she would never forgive him if he intervened. There was also the rain that he would have to face to even reach his 'mech. Akari still did not know about his Jusenkyo body, and he preferred to break the news to her some other way.

"He's just trying to psych you out, Akane," Ukyou said to her over the tac-net.

"It's working," she said in reply. She selected her twin gunclusters for a furious salvo as her missile launchers reloaded. She was going to hit him with everything at once, and see how well he dealt with it.

"Don't let him get to you," Tofu added.

"How can I fear the beam, bolt, or missile from the woman who shall be my wife?" Tatewaki broke in. "Nay, I shall not fear them, for they shall not harm me!"

"We'll see about that!" Akane yelled angrily, and let fly with the whole shebang. Her Warhammer's systems squawked in protest under the power and waste heat loads, and she swiped at the system shutdown override button as alarms wailed.

The Thunderbolt again leaped into the air on jump jets, though she saw with some satisfaction that at least her missiles had struck him. Six plumes of vapor rolled from the impact craters in his torso armor as he touched down within a hundred meters of her.

"How was that!?" she asked him defiantly. She had hoped for much better results, but at least she had pierced his damned mantle of invulnerability.

"A love tap," he replied. "Oh Akane, how can you stand to let this charade go on!? Drop to one knee and say you'll marry me this instant!"

"Go to hell!" she yelled at him, and triggered another blast of PPC fire. The bolts blasted headlong into the Thunderbolt's torso, shrouding it in a nimbus of electric fire as the rain began to fall even harder around them. The battlemech staggered with the hits, but continued on with arms wide open for her.

"Why isn't he shooting back?" Shinnosuke asked Konatsu.

"It could be because he's an idiot," the kunoichi broached delicately.

Hikaru Gosunkugi was taking no chances with that. He prayed fervently next to them for Tatewaki's utter defeat. All of his straw effigies were in place, each with a namesake spike embedded into them. Candles burned at his temples, their wax dripping onto his shoulders and spilling down his tunic. His sunken eyes seemed to take on a hellish light of their own as he chanted the same unending mantra.

"Lose, Kuno... Lose, Kuno... Lose, Kuno..."

Akane found herself backpedaling as the Thunderbolt advanced into point blank range, its hull armor smoldering but intact. She fired her gunclusters at him, the laser beams and machine gun rounds chewing into his battlemech as he raised the katana with shocking speed and brought it down at her. She sacrificed an arm to stop the blade from cleaving through her battlemech's torso - the gun-tube Donal PPC flying from the elbow joint in a clash of steel and sparks.

"You're mine!" Tatewaki crowed as she nearly fell on her back with the hit. "ONE HUNDRED BLOWS!"

The katana flashed and sparked as he threw strike after strike at her. Bits of ferro-fibrous armor flew in all directions as he diced apart her Warhammer's torso armor, yelling out triumphantly with each blow. She felt the strain on her failing gyro, and knew that she was being pushed over backwards.

She brought up her mech's leg in the only attack she could think of, catching the Thunderbolt in the groin area with her Warhammer's knee. Though there was nothing of vital significance in that area of the battlemech, the blow was enough to throw Kuno off balance, and she pulled him over in a somersault as she fell.

The Thunderbolt landed flat on its back some distance from her Warhammer as she fought to stand up. It began to roll over to all fours as she fired a salvo of SRMs into it, the explosions throwing Kuno to the ground once more.

Her launchers reloaded as the Thunderbolt rose again. She had no other weapons remaining to her - just the missiles, as Kuno's attacks had cut up every gun mount she had. A second volley of Streak SRMs pounded into him, blasting apart the Thunderbolt's left arm at the shoulder.

"You are mine, Akane Tendo!" she heard him cry out in anguish. "Let no one come between us, even if it be death himself!"

He would not stop. A third volley crashed into him even as his katana severed the launcher from the Warhammer's torso with a clumsy, chopping stroke. She let out a shriek of alarm as he raised the sword overhead for the finishing blow, and hooked her torso about to club him with the stump of her remaining PPC arm.

Both battlemechs hit each other at the same time. The sword cleaved down into the Warhammer's centerline torso, the edge bisecting the cockpit visor in a flash of flame and sparks against the falling rain as the gun-tube arm smashed across the Thunderbolt's cockpit. Both battlemechs hit the ground with sickening thuds from the force of the impacts and lay very still as black columns of smoke rose to the leaden sky.

"This can't be," Ryouga gasped.

"Akane!" Doctor Tofu cried, advancing his Centurion at a run towards the center of the field where the two mechs lay. The ground was turning to churned mud where the two combatants had struggled, and he fought to keep his mech's footing.

"Could we have a tie?" the Shogun asked over the commo from the Combine side of the field. "Da first 'mech to stand up will be declared da winnah!"

"Stand up, Akane!" Ukyou cried out over her Hatchetman's external speakers as she caught up to Doctor Tofu's Centurion. "For God's sake, stand up!"

Akane Tendo felt something warm and sticky running down her nose from her scalp and shrieked. Her fingers rubbed at the stuff, and she strained by the light of her instruments to see what it was. The bright red color made her feel faint with fear until she noted the distinctive petroleum scent of hydraulic fluid.

She blinked away her disorientation as Ukyou shouted in her headset to stand up. What was going on? It was like had awoken from a deep sleep. She had no idea where she was or what she was doing within the cockpit of her Warhammer.

The long aligned-crystal steel katana blade imbedded through her forward cockpit reminded her at once. She marveled at it, the way it had cut through the armor and her control systems so effortlessly, and had it bit just ten or more centimeters deeper, how it would have cut her apart just as easily.

Ukyou shouted for her to stand up once again. One look at the interior of the cockpit told her that such a feat might be difficult indeed.

A tertiary display told her that she still had power, though she was leaking coolant through the fusion reactor's primary bank of heat sinks. If she was going to stand up, she would have to hurry, or else the powerplant was going to fuse itself into slag. She wiped away the slick oily hydraulic fluid that dripped down on her head from a line that had been broken, and then gripped her controls.

Gyro feedback filtered into her brain from the neurohelmet. She could do this, instrumentation or not! The Warhammer roared in protest as she thought it into a sitting position.

"She's moving!" Shinnosuke cried.

Hikaru was evoking Jesus, the Buddha, Muhammed, anyone who could lend a divine hand in sealing Tatewaki Kuno's defeat. He was about to go Shaker on them when the Warhammer rose unsteadily to its feet, then pivoted its torso to look at the bunker.

"Da winnah!" Shogun Kuno declared. "Da fine wahine, Akane Tendo!"

Akane did not look upset to see two Furinkan Combine medics carrying the cold-cocked Tatewaki Kuno away on a stretcher to a waiting DropShip. Neither did the Shogun.

"A deal's a deal, wahine," he told her. "Da Daimyo ain't gonna like it, but de Big Kahuna nevah go back on his word."

"I'm glad to hear that, your Eminence," she replied.

"You put up one helluva fight. Da way de boy chopped da missiles outta de air like dat, I tink you one done wahine."

"I wasn't going to lose," she responded quietly.

"Anyway," the Shogun continued. "I'm takin' de boys home now. Dere ain't no reason to stick around here, an if I'm lucky, dis bruddah is gonna catch de last o de good waves back on New Hawaii." He looked at Grand Duke Tendo and Hikaru Gosunkugi. "You bruddahs are welcome any time, yah. Da food at de luau is gonna be jus' broke da mouth, no shit!"

"I think I'll be taking you up on that very soon," Soun agreed heartily. He could not contain his happiness at the fact that the Shogun appeared to be honoring his word.

"We gotta go now," the Shogun replied. "Send de hula girls and any Combine prisoners over to de Imperator as soon as de interference clears up. We wait. In de meantime, I send de armistice notice to de rest of de Inner Sphere. Oh, and give me regards to dat akamai wahine, Missus Saotome."

He waved jauntily for them and turned to join his troops in leaving.

"I do believe we'll be seeing a new era in relations with the Furinkan Combine," Soun observed, watching the Furinkan Combine troops withdraw from the bunker. "I just hope it lasts."

"I'm working on that, Dad," Akane replied. "I just can't wait to tell Ranma what we just won for ourselves."

20:28 Local Time

Shampoo passed silently through the Furinkan Combine perimeter as Tatewaki's Thunderbolt smoldered in the darkness. She did not know and did not care about what was taking place at the bunker. All she wanted was to find Doctor Tofu. Of all the people in the Confederation camp, he was the only one who had cared so deeply about her well-being, and she needed comfort for all her wounds - inside and out.

She found him standing next to a woman of willowy beauty that bore a passing resemblence to Akane Tendo. It must have been the eldest daughter of the Grand Duke, Kasumi. By the way the doctor stood next to the Tendo woman, it was clear that he harbored strong feelings for her. She felt a pang of grief at this. It was as if any man worth having was always denied her.

"Shampoo?" Tofu asked her worriedly upon seeing her bloody and battered, and clad only in panties and a half-shirt. "Are you all right?"

Shampoo threw herself into his arms and held him tight. She fought back the urge to sob in his shoulder, and was mostly successful. Tofu's face blazed red as Kasumi gave him a questioning look. Minutes passed as Shampoo finally caught hold of herself and let him go.

"It over," she said to him.

"I know," Tofu replied. "We've been concerned about you ever since Konatsu returned without you. Where did you go?"

"That not important," she returned. "I make decision about baby. I keep."

Tofu blinked several times as Kasumi arched an eyebrow at him. How did he explain - without sounding like an idiot - that the child wasn't his?

"Th-That's great!" he managed. "What made you decide?"

She looked away to the south. "I no wish to talk about," she told him. "I only ask one more thing."

"What is it?"

She closed her eyes. "Shampoo left friend behind in woods. No want animals to take body away. Mousse deserve good funeral with own people."

"I understand," Tofu said solemnly, making his own guess as to who Mousse was to Shampoo. "I'll take care of it personally, if you'll show me where you left him."

Shampoo hugged him again. "You good good man," she replied. Then, releasing him, she took Kasumi's hands in hers. The eldest Tendo looked into the fierce violet eyes of the Amazon as she made her offer. "If you no want, Shampoo keep for self. Doctor Tofu make good husband with proper Joketsuzoku conditioning."

Tofu made a strangled noise next to them as Kasumi smiled gently.

"I think I'll be keeping him safely within my own orbit, thank you," she returned sweetly.

Orochi Control Bunker

07:18 Local Time, 20 June 3025

"Please tell me you've heard from Ranma," Akane said to Lieutenant Davidge. Her face remained unwashed from the battles of yesterday, and it was clear by the dark circles under her eyes that she hadn't slept a wink since then.

Davidge shook his head slowly. He had been dreading this moment since early that morning. "I'm sorry, milady. I haven't."

"Is it still the interferance from the explosion?" she asked, as if begging for it to be true.

"No," he replied dully. "The interference cleared up about two hours ago. Neither the Tautog nor the Coronet has seen or heard from him."

"That isn't possible," she replied, almost to herself. "That just can't be."

"I'm sorry, Akane," the lieutenant offered. "I'll keep listening on all channels. He's bound to turn up sooner or later."

"Please do that," she begged. Despite their victory, they would be spending at least three more days on the planet to repair the Palomino and to make a final sweep of the Star League facilities for any lostech before leaving for good. If Ranma had been forced down far from the bunker, they would have plenty of time to look for him.

She only hoped that the Shogun had a firm enough grip on his son to leave the system and keep the cease-fire as they had promised. Until she and her friends left Ryuugenzawa, they were still vulnerable.

Shinnosuke met her in the stairwell as she left the control room where Davidge kept his vigil.

"Are you all packed?" she asked him.

He shook his head. "Not yet. I still haven't convinced Grandfather to come with me."

"He does realize that he's welcome to come to Nerima with us?" she asked.

Shinnosuke nodded. "I think he's trying to get me to leave the nest," he said to her. "He doesn't understand that I'm not leaving without him. I'm really the only family he's got here, and now that our duties as caretakers are over, what does he have left?"

"I'll have Ryouga drag him onto the DropShip if I have to," she returned. "Don't worry about it."

He nodded appreciatively at this. "Has Ranma returned?" he asked gently.

"Not yet," she sighed. "If he's doing this just to make me worry... I'll pound him into snail snot."

They climbed the stairs up to the top level of the bunker. The doors were open, and the stomp of Ukyou's Hatchetman moving out with Genma's Orion to clear the fallen trees from the Palomino echoed through the chamber. Sunlight streamed through the open door, and Akane stepped outside to let the rays warm her.

Her father stood with Kasumi on the slope of the hill formed by the bunker. She joined them wordlessly, and they continued their discussion.

"What would your mother do about her, Kasumi?" Soun asked his eldest child.

"Show patience," Kasumi replied. "Without compromising discipline."

"It's more than a matter of putting her over my knee and spanking her," Soun returned. "She's committed high treason against us - and very nearly destroyed the Confederation."

Kasumi sighed. "I can't condone executing her, Father."

He nodded gravely. "And yet I fear the risk of letting her live," he said, stroking his moustache uncomfortably. "I don't broach this subject lightly, Kasumi. Believe me. If I thought there was another way, I would take it."

Kasumi steepled her fingers neatly together as she watched her baby sister stride up the hill looking much older than her tender nineteen years.

"Perhaps it would be best if we let Akane decide," she said to her father.

"Akane?" Soun asked.

"Me?" Akane chimed in. "Decide Nabiki's fate?"

Kasumi nodded. "You are the one who rescued the Confederation from the Furinkan Combine," she said gently. "When Father and I nearly lost it."

Soun saw the wisdom of Kasumi's reasoning.

"I can't make that kind of decision," Akane said to them. "You don't want me to make that kind of decision. I can't show mercy to her, not after all that she's done to us!"

"Then don't," Kasumi advised, though by her tone it was clear that she was only playing the devil's advocate.

Akane closed her eyes and waved them off. "I can't make this decision. Not right now. Not with so much else on my mind." She looked to the horizon, where Ukyou and Genma's battlemechs stomped on towards the Palomino. "When Ranma returns, then I'll think about it."

The whine of turbojets rose in the air as one of the Coronet's shuttles lifted off from the clearing and rose for the starship in low orbit. Doctor Tofu was aboard, as were Shampoo and the body of the man the two had brought in from the woods last night. From what Akane understood of the situation, the man, Mousse, had been the other infiltrator aboard the Dragonfly when the astrogational patch had been stolen. Mousse had also been the father of Shampoo's child.

She didn't particularly care for the Amazon, especially because of the way she looked at Ranma sometimes, but she also knew that if she was going to make her plan for peace in the Inner Sphere work, she needed the cooperation of the Amazons. Shampoo was the great-granddaughter of the Matriarch, so presumably she had some cachet with her - at least enough to act as a go-between for the two countries.

Ukyou too, though she would no longer wear the uniform of the Federated Shiratori. She wanted Empress Azusa's participation in her plans, if for no other reason than to compell the Furinkan Combine to play nice. There wasn't anyone else but Ukyou and her friend Konatsu to carry the message to the Empress.

Hikaru Gosunkugi, already resting aboard the Coronet as a guest of the State, was the final element in her plan to end the Third Succession War, and gods willing, to ensure that a Fourth Succession War never happened.

The battlemechs they had recovered had given her the idea, though Ranma's insistence that they keep the Cameron Stars of the SLDF painted on them had helped. The Star League didn't need the return of some ghost like Aleksander Kerensky. All it needed was the cooperation of the Great Houses, and with the Library Core, she had the incentive she needed to get the others to set aside their differences and talk through their disputes.

It was a gamble, trading secrets for support, and it could all very well explode in her face, but she was willing to bet that if she could realign the Inner Sphere to put the Furinkan Combine on the defensive - that is, to get the League of Five Nails, the Jusenkyo Commonwealth, and the Federated Shiratori to join the Nerima Confederation in a new Star League - then the Furinkan Combine would have no choice but to behave, even to join as well.

Hikaru Gosunkugi would be named First Lord of the Star League, she decided, though the title would not be the hereditary dynasty that it had been in the days of the Camerons, nor would it be a permanent position, but would rotate among the Great Houses every few years. Nor would the First Lord's word be law. To go back to the Terran Hegemony and the original Star League would only lead to another disaster.

It was going to be a balancing act of epic proportions, she decided. The fate of billions would ultimately depend on her. If it didn't work, then the Inner Sphere would continue it's slide into darkness, but if it worked, then the new golden age that everyone kept pining for would finally come about.

It was a terrifying prospect, and it wasn't something she felt she was capable of carrying out all by herself. She would crack under the pressure and end up going completely insane. She needed Ranma there to steady her, and to remind her in his own infuriating way when she was in over her head and needed help.

And where the heck was that stupid jerk, anyway?!

The steady thump of battlemechs approaching from the east drew her eyes. The sound came from the direction the Palomino lay, and yet as she squinted against the early morning glare, she saw that east was also the direction of the distant sea.

The Phoenix Hawk LAM's brilliant silver and white livery was gone, scorched and scored from the hull by a force and heat that she didn't want to think about. Bits of dried seaweed hung in green and brown garlands from the vents, and from the battered engine/weapon pods. Ukyou and Genma's battlemechs flanked the 'mech proudly as it stomped slowly and steadily towards the bunker with its sensor head fixed squarely upon Akane Tendo.

"Oh my," Kasumi gasped as she saw the Phoenix Hawk LAM emerge from the forest.

"RANMA!" Akane cried, and ran down the hill to meet him. Tears spilled down her cheeks as all her fears and doubts were dispelled. First she was going to knock his block off for making her worry about him, then she was going to kiss him silly.

The Phoenix Hawk stopped within fifty meters of the bunker as Akane ran toward it. It dropped into Airmech Mode with a grinding noise that made everyone wince, then the canopy lifted to reveal Ranma Saotome. He stretched out his arms, appeared to yawn behind his helmet facebowl, then casually rolled over the side of the cockpit to land feet first on the grass below.

Akane made a flying leap into his arms as he straightened up, and he spun her around for a moment in the air as the others at the bunker drew close.

"Everything all right?" he asked her with lopsided grin.

She tapped on his helmet. "Take that silly thing off and I'll tell you what you missed," she replied.

He caught the fire in her eyes as she said it.

"You gonna hit me?" he asked her.

"Of course I am," she replied. "But then I'll kiss it all better."

He set her down gently on her feet as Ryouga, Akari, Shinnosuke, Tad, Captain Grant and the others circled around them. "Maybe I'll wait to take it off."

Akane kicked him playfully in the shin. "Jerk."

"That's me," he replied. He finally twisted his helmet off. "Man, I'm bushed. I need some sleep." His stomach growled audibly. "And some chow."

Akane took the helmet from him. "No food until you explain to me why the heck it took you twelve hours to return! And the airwaves have been clear for two hours now, so you can explain why you couldn't be bothered to radio us!"

He rubbed at his sore neck. "Radio's busted," he replied with a yawn. "And I had to walk the whole way back."

Ukyou called down to him from the outstretched hand of her Hatchetman. She held up a stringy garland of seaweed that dangled from the Phoenix Hawk. "Jeez, Ranchan, what did you do, crash into the ocean?"

Ranma curled his arm around Akane's waist and pulled her close to his side. "Crash? Gimme a break, Ucchan. Me crash? Let's just say I made the most of a water landing, and that I decided to save what was left of my engines by walking home instead of flying."

"He's my son all right," Genma crowed from the open cockpit of his Orion. "Conserving one's resources is the hallmark of the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts."

Ranma gave his father a sidelong glance. "With a beer gut like yours, Old Man, I can see which one of us takes that more to heart."

Akane turned his face to look at her while Genma tried to think of a stinging rebuke for his son. "Ahem" she harrumphed. "Shouldn't you be kissing me right now?"

Ranma turned red, and his pressure suit readouts began to flash.

"In front of everyone?"

She gave him a fiery, if loving, look. "Shut up and smooch me before I change my mind about hitting you."

Nerima Confederation WarShip Coronet

Leaving Ryuugenzawa Orbit

Ryuugenzawa System, the Magistracy of Canopus

23 June 3025

Genma Saotome placed both hands on his son's shoulders and held him firmly in place within the last shuttle to come up from the planet. He had insisted that the two of them be the last Confederation personnel to leave Ryuugenzawa. Once the shuttle had docked with the ship, the Coronet began slowly accelerating out of orbit to take them to the distant Jump Point - and from there, the trek home to the Capella System. The celebratory mood had not dampened since the defeat of Tatewaki Kuno and the return of Ranma, and Genma had one last admonition for his son before he stepped out of the shuttle and was reunited with his mother.

"Now remember, boy. Your mother can't find out about your Jusenkyo body. Not now. Not ever. The same goes for me, so don't even think about trying to change me into a panda when she's around."

Ranma scowled at his father. "You mind explaining why?"

Genma looked away. "It's something I promised your mother when you were little," he began. "...It's... Well, it's very complicated. Just promise me that you'll never tell her about it. It's a matter of life and death."

"Start talking," Ranma spat. "I know how your promises go, and I want the whole story this time."

"All right," Genma conceded. "One of the conditions for your mother letting me take you on this training journey was that through it, I would make you a man among men."

Ranma flexed his bicep for his father. "Not too shabby, I'd say," he declared. "So what's this got to do with not letting Mom know about what happened at the Jusenkyo Labs?"

Genma fixed his son with a glare. "If she finds out that you need a D-cup bra whenever you get wet, then you aren't very manly now, are you?"

Ranma saw his point, but he still wasn't convinced.

"So what?" he asked. "Hot water changes me right back to my old buff, manly self. If I can get used to it, then she can too."

"There is also the matter of the suicide pact I made, and that you signed before we left Sian," Genma pointed out in an ominous tone of voice.

"Say what!? I don't remember signing any suicide pact!"

Genma nodded gravely. "It's true. You were little more than a baby then, but your handprint on the document is unmistakable. When I promised your mother that I would make you a man among men, I promised for both of us in blood. If at any time she feels that I have failed to keep my word to her, then both you and I are to commit ritual suicide at her command."

Ranma did not believe a word of it. Still, the very thought of having to honor such a bargain...

"That's insane!" he protested. "What kind of a father does that to his kid? What kind of mother would honor a deal like that?!"

"There is something you have to understand about your mother, boy," Genma replied, skirting the issue of his own shortcomings as a parent. "Of course, you've hardly known her growing up away from her like you did, but once you've gotten to know her, you'll understand that she would indeed hold us to our accounts."

He reached into his dougi and withdrew a worn stereograph of Nodoka. Ranma had never seen it before in his life, and certainly didn't believe that his father would have carried it on him before now. "Look at this, boy, and tell me she wouldn't do it."

Ranma looked at the stereograph. It was taken about the same time as his own picture of his mother. She was pretty to the eye, and he could see how he had inherited most of his looks from her. The stereograph was otherwise unremarkable.

"So what am I supposed to be looking at?" he asked snidely.

"See that bundle of silk on her back?" Genma returned.

Ranma looked again. There was in fact a long slender object wrapped in silk and neatly tied to her back.

"Okay, I see it. What is it?"

"The Saotome Family sword," Genma answered him. "The sword she will use to cut our heads off after we've disemboweled ourselves at her command."

Ranma choked. Mom would do that? "No way!" he finally managed.

"She's still carrying it with her," Genma pointed out. "Trust me, I saw it on the planet when she was in the bunker."

Ranma fought back the urge to slug his father. His own mother, whom he had not seen for seventeen years, had been on the planet with him during the fighting, and he had not been told about it.

"So she's still carrying the sword, knowing that she might have to cut my head off with it the second she sees me?"

Genma nodded. "She's a remarkable woman, don't get me wrong," he hedged. "But she's a little obsessive."

Ranma grabbed his father by the collar of his dougi. "And you made a death pact with her over something as stupid as this!?"

"It was the only way I could get you away from her long enough to train you to become a great mechwarrior!" Genma protested. "She was smothering you with affection - you would have ended up a limp-wristed, slack-jawed sissy if I hadn't rescued you from her!"

Ranma's face turned purple. "Gee, thanks Pop!" he yelled, his hands now close to strangling his father. "I can only imagine how terrible it must have been to be a little boy with a mother who loved him that much!" He now bobbled Genma's head back and forth. "How can ever repay you for taking me away from that and giving me a life of hardship, suffering, poverty, and pain instead!?"

"You don't have to thank me," Genma gurgled out. "I was happy to do it for the sake of my only son."

Ranma dropped him on the deck of the shuttle as Akane stepped through the airlock door from the Shuttle Bay.

"Are you coming out or what?" she asked him. "Everyone's waiting for you - especially your mother!"

When he didn't answer her, she stepped past the fallen Genma Saotome to brush a hand at his cheek. Ranma stood rigid and fuming, his eyes burning holes into his father on the deck.

"What's the matter with you, Ranma?" Akane asked him worriedly.

"Tell me something, Akane," he replied tersely. "Is my mother carrying anything with her out there?"

She blinked at his question. "I don't think so. Why?"

"On her back," Ranma added. "Was she carrying anything on her back? A sword, maybe?"

Akane thought about it. "Now that you mention it," she began. "There was something strapped to her back. I guess it could be a sword. Why are you asking me this?"

Ranma closed his eyes. "You know how I feel about you, right?"

"It might be nice if I heard it from you directly, in so many words, just this once," she pouted. "But yes, I think I do know how you feel about me."

He blushed in spite of himself. "Then if it means anything to you, you'll promise me that you won't ever mention my Jusenkyo body to my mother."

"What for, Ranma?" she asked.

"Do it," Genma grunted from the floor. "Promise him."

"Shut your pie hole," Ranma barked, putting a foot on his father's face. "This is all your fault!"

"Is this going to take more than five minutes to explain, and do I really want to know why you're asking me this?" Akane asked him.

"No and no," Ranma replied. "Just promise me. And pass it on to the rest of your family - assuming they haven't already spilled it to her."

Akane shook her head. "This is nuts, but since when is anything to do with you or your father normal... Okay, I promise."

"Good," Ranma said tersely. "Let's go." He took care to step on his father on the way out the airlock door to the Shuttle Bay.

His mother was the first person he saw. She looked a little older, and maybe a little sadder, than his stereograph of her, but it was definitely her. He realized that he had seen her once in the bunker on Ryuugenzawa, but in his haste, and with the Shogun's people milling around at the same time, he had missed who she really was.

The silk bundle on her back definitely looked like a katana.

"Ranma!" she cried, and ran to embrace him.

Her voice, the voice that had serenaded him in dreams as a little boy, now dispelled his misgivings and he ran to meet her halfway. She was no longer the towering, almost mythic presense he remembered as a child. He picked her up as effortlessly as he did with Akane when he wanted to twirl her around.

In spite of himself, he began to cry.

"I've missed you, Mom," he said, trying not to sob. His father's admonition to be manly was punctuated by the sight of the bundle on her back, now only centimeters away from him as he hugged her. It tore at him to think that she could do such a thing, and yet he dared not take the chance. How many chalk marks on the wall of reasons to despise his father was he going to make before the man redeemed himself?

"Ranma," she sighed in his ear. "How you've grown. I couldn't ask for any son as manly and brave as you."

He wanted to say something endearing in return, but all he could think about was how long the trip home to Nerima was going to be now that he had to avoid cold water like the plague. He knew full well that anything that could trigger his curse would be attracted to him like a magnet.

"It's good to see you, Mom. It's so good to see you."

He meant it, even if she might prove to be his undoing some day.

Azure Cloud Castle

Planet Nerima, Capella System,

The Nerima Confederation

15 July 3025

The acrid smell of plasma-arc incinerators hard at work made Nabiki's nose wrinkle in distaste as she passed through the Salon to the large bay windows overlooking the castle proper and the city of Gondolin far below. She looked once over her shoulder to observe her assistants frantically destroying as much of the documentation generated during her brief reign as possible before her father's ship arrived from the orbiting Star League cruiser Coronet. She had no illusions about her fate - not with the Furinkan Combine beginning a general withdrawal from all Confederation territory, and her father and sisters returning from Ryuugenzawa in apparent triumph. The best she could hope for was to make any legal investigations into her activities as difficult for them as possible.

Though several members of her staff had committed suicide upon the news of Coronet's arrival in the Capella System, Nabiki was not going to give her family the satisfaction. If they wanted to exile her - or even execute her - they would have to come down to the planet, look her in the eyes, and do it themselves. She would not oppose their landing; it was futile to think that she could compel even her most loyal troops to fire upon the rightful Heir to the Confederation in her moment of glory.

The news networks were all abuzz with the armistice, and more than one pundit had called for her abdication as regent with Akane still millions of kilometers away in system space. How they had defeated Tatewaki Kuno so utterly, she did not know. It didn't seem possible, and yet she could trace the ultimate failure of her plans to the loss of her father and the Shogun to the damn loyalists. She should have kept them closer at hand, and she had nearly given herself an ulcer thinking about where her father had disappeared to after his rescue. Now she knew.

Nabiki looked away from the document incinerators and returned her gaze to the castle's windows. Her father and sisters were taking their time about landing. If the tables had been turned, she would have had them arrested before breakfast. Indeed, she had spent a sleepless night while the Coronet settled into orbit, waiting for one of her own men to appear at her door with a warrant for her detention - or perhaps a poisoned dagger like the one that had killed Tetsuo Gosunkugi.

Count Baldur Thuringia appeared as she thought about arrest. She caught the reflection of his uniform in the glass of the window. He was not alone - a half dozen Marines from the 5th Brigade flanked him, and they were led by a grinning Gunnery Sergeant Tranh Minh Ky. Behind them appeared the short and stout Commodore Tanaka. Additional Marines entered the room to arrest her staff and to stop the destruction of any more evidence.

She turned around to tell the count what she thought of his treachery; that he didn't even have the dignity to stay bought once she had made him her tool, but fell short of issuing her rebuke when she saw that he was in irons.

The look in his eyes was one of placid resignation. Nothing could be said about that. If Rolf were still alive, she would have expected him to laugh out loud at their mutual downfall.

"Nabiki Tendo," Tanaka said to her, displaying a piece of parchment taken from the inside pocket of his long officer's bridge coat as he did so. She snorted dryly at the irony of the gesture, for she had done the same thing to her own father.

"Get on with it," she replied, her voice steely and proud in spite of her fear. The thought of a rope drawing tight around her throat made her feel very cold and small inside.

"You are under arrest for High Treason," the Commodore declared. "By joint order of Grand Duke Soun Tendo, ruler of the Nerima Confederation, and Lady Akane Tendo, Viscountess of Gondolin, and Heir to the Nerima Confederation, you will surrender to my custody immediately."

Nabiki put her back to the Commodore and looked out the windows once more. A Leopard Class DropShip was descending for the landing pad that serviced the family armory. It was the Palomino, the ship whose departure she had toasted over six months ago, and whose return she had believed would never come.

The Saotome Gambit had paid off.

Eight Shining Pearls Fortress

Planet Jusenkyo, Jusenkyo System

The Jusenkyo Commonwealth

4 March 3026

"Hush, Mushan," Shampoo said to her baby in a voice that was soft and loving, and yet edged with the tempered steel of her own Joketsuzoku upbringing.

The tiny child, barely six weeks old, looked up at her with piercing blue eyes and gurgled a noisy response. Though all children's eyes were blue at birth, and remained so for up to a year before changing to their permanent color, Shampoo recognized the shade in her little one's eyes as that of Mousse.

"Impudent brat," Shampoo sighed as she handed Mushan over to her great-grandmother.

"He reminds me of you as a baby, actually," Cologne pointed out. "Though perhaps he has better manners." She took her great-great-grandson into her arms, her old and withered hands caressing the top of Mushan's head. The little boy quieted immediately in his ancestor's care, and looked up with intense fascination at her ancient face.

Shampoo regarded her great-grandmother with a jealous look. "He never quiets that fast with me," she pouted.

Cologne toyed with a curly dark purple lock of Mushan's hair. "That's because you spoil him, child."

Shampoo didn't agree with her great-grandmother on that matter, but she knew better than to get into an argument about parenting with a woman who had raised more children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and now great-great-grandchildren than she could easily keep track of.

"I have an appointment to keep," she said finally.

Cologne's eyes darkened for a moment, then her face returned to its normal placid and serene self.

"You have nothing to prove, Shampoo," she told her great-grandchild. "The Elders are ready to exonerate you in light of your distinguished service against General Herb and the Musk Dynasty." The entire matter of Shampoo's punishment had been put aside upon her return to the Commonwealth, as Joketsuzoku law forbade anyone who was pregnant to engage in combat, and it was the accepted wisdom that a woman remained exempt for forty days after childbirth.

Shampoo shook her head slowly in reply. "I have a duty to myself to appear in the Circle. The required time since the birth of Mushan has now passed. I am eligible to fight for my life. If there are any who still feel that it is necessary for me to die for my past mistakes, then I must meet them and settle this matter for all time."

Cologne nodded gravely. "I understand, child, though I feel that it is foolish to tempt fate by choosing to enter the Circle so soon after giving birth. It has been many years since the last time I had a child, and I still remember how sore and weak I felt even six weeks later."

Shampoo did not expect such an admission from her great-grandmother, who was said to have fought and won a major battle against the Furinkan Combine within days of giving birth to the girl who would someday become Shampoo's own grandmother. The truth was that she did not feel up to her old levels of physical readiness. She had fallen far from the peak of her strength and stamina during her pregnancy, and the discomfort in the aftermath of childbirth along with the long nights of nursing a young baby had taken their toll. She barely recognized herself in the mirror sometimes.

"But if you must do this," Cologne continued. "Then I do understand. You are young, and while I see that you have done much growing in the last year, you are still entitled to be impetuous. I only ask that you take more care to look beyond the necessities of today." She raised little Mushan up to the level of his mother's eyes. "My number one great-great-grandson depends on you, Shampoo."

"He is a child of the Joketsuzoku," Shampoo responded. It was her own conditioning talking, and she regretted saying it as soon as the words slipped past her lips.

Cologne measured her own rebuttal by the look of regret on Shampoo's face.

"He is your son," she replied, and left it at that.

The Fated Circle was a ring of rough-hewn stone in a secluded courtyard of the fortress that had been worn smooth over centuries of combat. Fine white sand had been carefully raked and leveled to a pristine and even surface within the ring. Close to three hundred kinswomen of the Joketsuzoku stood on the perimeter of the circle as the Elders were brought in on gilded litters to face the east.

As the presumed condemned, Shampoo faced the west, the direction associated with death, for her challengers. She wore her full dress cheongsam, though it had been retailored in the last week to accommodate her better in her post-partum body. Though no man would have ever considered her fat, she was a little roomier in the bust and hips than she would have preferred, and as long as she nursed Mushan, she was going to stay that way.

The Elders regarded her in placid silence. She could see her little son in the arms of a much older cousin, who took her place by Cologne's side as an attendent. Shampoo remained calm, and she saw that the faces of those in the gathering crowd did not seem to be very supportive of her impending death sentence.

It was the reason why she felt she could tempt fate, as her great- grandmother put it. The Elders were in fact prepared to exonerate her since her return from Ryuugenzawa, both for her struggle against the Musk Dynasty, but also for her work in resurrecting the Star League with the Nerima Confederation. In Commonwealth eyes, Akane Tendo's fledgling Star League was equated with a strong alliance against the Furinkan Combine, and as minor but vital bits of lostech were deciphered and sold at reasonable prices to companies within the Commonwealth, the economy was promising to boom. It was hard to hold a grudge against her on the cusp of a new era of wealth and security.

"Your great-granddaughter faces her death well," Elder Peony said in aside to Cologne.

"She is of my blood," Cologne replied crisply. The scales of power had once again tipped in her favor over Peony with the death of General Herb and the disintegration of the Musk Dynasty that followed. The quiet threat of an audit of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's books was more than enough to put Elder Peony back in her place, as such an investigation would have eventually turned up her complicity in arming and financing a traitor to the clan.

Still, Peony seemed terribly smug in that moment. Cologne began to wonder if something was up.

Elder Peony, as if reading her thoughts, merely sat back in her chair and puffed placidly on a pipe. Her homely face betrayed nothing to her bitter enemy.

Shampoo stood at attention on the east side of the circle, facing the west and the Elders as Cologne rose to speak. Her great-grandmother's voice was dry and even as she spoke to be heard by all around the circle. That little Mushan let out a loud cry of annoyance by her side did nothing to her ability to project tranquil majesty.

"Though it is the opinion of this Elder Council that Mechwarrior Major Shampoo has exonerated herself of all shame and disgrace by her actions in war and in the peace that followed, there may be those who feel as if they or their clan have been wronged without sufficient redress."

"Thus it is the judgement of the Elder Council that Mechwarrior Major Shampoo submit to this Fated Circle, in a trial by combat to the death, to answer for any outstanding crime." Cologne made a slow circuit of the crowd with her most inscrutable gaze. "Should no one step into the circle to offer challenge to Mechwarrior Major Shampoo, then let this matter be dropped for now and for all time."

There was a long murmuring pause as the crowd waited to see if anyone would step into the circle. Cologne stood coolly at her place, her gnarled ashwood staff rigid and erect by her side as a symbol of her authority, and waited.

It seemed as if no one would accept the challenge of killing Shampoo. Then the crowd parted, and Pink stepped over the low ring of stone and onto the warm sand. Her twin sister Link remained on the other side of the ring, as if torn between her devotion to Pink and some other, unnamed, concern.

Shampoo was about to close her eyes in relief when Pink appeared in the circle. The look on her face was unreadable, save for the one fierce glance she cast at Shampoo before turning to address Cologne.

"I am Mechwarrior Lieutenant Pink, and I stand in challenge to Mechwarrior Major Shampoo's presumed exoneration," she said in a loud voice.

Cologne realized then that Peony had engineered this turn of events as revenge against her, though as to what grudge the young poisoner, Pink, had with Shampoo, she could not imagine. Peony was not in a position to promise much for this service, though perhaps Pink did not understand that.

"Very well," Cologne replied calmly. "It is the right of any Joketsuzoku to face the accused in this trial by combat." She paused to give Link a questioning look. "Are there any more who wish to join Pink within the Fated Circle?"

Link cast her eyes down to the sand. No one else stepped forward. It was a formality, as while Shampoo stood, anyone could join the circle at any time. Only when Shampoo was the last one standing, and no one else wished to challenge her, could the trial be considered over.

"Very well then," Cologne continued. "Mechwarrior Lieutenant Pink, you have ten minutes to prepare yourself, if you wish."

"I am ready now, Elder," Pink replied.

"Then this Fated Circle is now open," Cologne said in her gravelly voice. "Let the will of the gods be made known to all this day."

She sat down on her litter as Shampoo and Pink saluted and stepped towards the center of the stone ring. Her face did not betray her unease with the situation. Shampoo was not ready for an intense combat, and though Pink was not a strong fighter, her use of poisons and other agents would require that her great-granddaughter exercise the utmost care with her.

"How did you find this one, Peony?" she asked dryly, letting her know that she was aware of her rival's plot.

"That's not important," Peony returned with her toothless smile. "But if you must know, there was the matter of a recent poisoning in which the young mechwarrior was implicated. I offered to lend her my assistance in stifling the investigation if she would do me this one small service. Strangely enough, she was very receptive to the idea of killing Shampoo." She narrowed her eyes to rhuemy slits at Cologne. "Your great-granddaughter does not look prepared for this fight."

As you well know... Cologne thought darkly.

"Considering for a moment that Shampoo insisted that this trial take place today," she replied crisply to Peony. "I wonder if your 'pessimism' is misplaced." She couldn't resist adding another dig. "Taking into further consideration your own historically poor choice in pawns for implementing your plans, I wonder if you haven't made yet another mistake in this one."

Cologne's barb hit home, and Peony turned to sit back in her chair with a sibilant huff.

Shampoo stepped within several paces of Pink as she drew her long mechwarrior's dagger from its place on her hip. Shampoo didn't need to ask if it was poisoned, nor would there be any opprobrium if it was. The use of such tactics brought into question the poisoner's basic fighting skills, but if the victim wasn't skilled enough or sufficiently aware of the danger to avoid the envenomed blade, than her death was considered a just reward for her own shortcomings as a fighter. The Joketsuzoku did not become one of the great fighting forces of the Inner Sphere by making excuses for themselves or playing by Hoyle's Rules.

"Why are you doing this, Pink?" she demanded as she drew her own dagger. A wary glance in Link's direction confirmed at least for the moment that she was just fighting Pink.

Pink returned her look. "I have my reasons," she hissed.

"Share them with me," Shampoo insisted.

Pink lunged with a strike that probed Shampoo's defenses. As she had hoped, Shampoo was slow to evade, though she noted that Shampoo had sense enough not to try and parry her poisoned blade and risk getting cut.

"Your whelping of Mousse's child for one thing," she spat as Shampoo's riposte was turned aside with a clash of steel. "How could you bear the seed of a Musk traitor - and a worthless son at that!?"

Shampoo's eye twitched at the denigration of her little Mushan. He was male, but he was her one and only son - whom she loved with all her heart - and he was all that remained of Mousse in this world. She was reminded of her last conversation with Pink on Tau Ceti IV, which had only taken place a year and an eternity ago. Pink's fanatical female chauvinism had not apparently been diminished by the fact that it was Mousse, a man, who had brought down the Musk Dynasty, and all for the love of a child he had presumed was a girl.

"You forget yourself," she returned, kicking up a cloud of fine white sand with her slippered feet to distract and perhaps blind her foe. "You killed Laughing Orchid for opposing Mousse. Now you condemn him?"

Pink scrambled backwards, her eyes tearing up, and swiping wildly with her knife to keep Shampoo at bay. "That was different!" she snarled. "Laughing Orchid stepped out of line."

"And you alone are the judge of us, then, Pink?" Shampoo shot back. "Perhaps I was blind to not realize your exalted place on the Elder Council!" She turned aside the horrid dagger of her enemy and slashed at Pink's shoulder. The ring of steel upon silk cheongsam was music to her ears, as was the sharp gasp of pain from Pink as the dagger cut her tender flesh.

Shampoo stood her ground in the circle as Pink withdrew several paces to nurse the wound in her shoulder. Her blood was running hot now, and she let herself forget her aching back and the tender spot between her thighs where her episiotomy still mended. Pink was going to die today, and perhaps the girl realized it too.

She was not entirely surprised then, when a cloud of noxious spores filled the air before her. She threw herself over in a somersault, her joints crackling and her nerves singing their distress. Pink continued to loose the foul substance from the bangles at her wrists as she held her arms out at chest level before her.

Shampoo's head swam in spite of her swift evasion, and she knew she had been exposed to at least a little of Pink's attack. She had some confidence in the idea that the poisoner would never use something fatal in such an unpredictable and indiscriminate attack. As her sinuses began to fill and her ears buzzed, she realized that it was merely a deleterious agent meant to distract and leave its victims vulnerable to the true danger - Pink's poisoned dagger.

Pink waited to advance on her foe until the agent had taken its full effect. The murmur from the crowd was mixed in its mood. While such methods were not the norm in battle, they were kosher enough for the Fated Circle.

"So killing me is your answer?" Shampoo asked while Pink waited patiently out of reach.

"I consider it a cleansing," she replied. "You've been corrupted by Mousse and his putrid seed. You've forgotten what it means to be one of us."

"I'm a mechwarrior," Shampoo said coldly to her. She wiped at her freely running nose and slung the blob of mucous at Pink's feet. "Not a vigilante assassin. If that is what it means to be a Joketsuzoku, then I want no part of it!"

Pink flushed with anger. "I shouldn't have expected you to understand. You didn't before, after all." She moved with great deliberation towards Shampoo, her black slippers padding quietly across the sand and avoiding the blob of snot that her foe had cast at her. Her voice now was soft enough to carry only among the two of them.

"The corruption that infects our people can't be rooted out with the old ways. They take too long, and presume too much good of the guilty. If you live this day, you will likely and in the fullness of time take your great-grandmother's place as the Matriarch of the clan. With your foul son by your side, you'll only lead us down the path of ruin, with men soon considering themselves our equals, and more and more traitors like Herb rising up to overthrow us." She looked at Shampoo over the glint of her knife, the faint silver-green stain of her chosen poison casting its own shards of light on the crowd.

"Killing you is only the start," Pink went on. "I swear to you that your son will not long survive his mother's passing. Crib death is still a menace, even in the days of star travel and mighty battlemechs."

Any remaining kindling of sympathy in Shampoo's heart for spiteful, misguided Pink was quenched as she swore to destroy Mushan. She crouched in a low stance like a cobra preparing to strike, her long knife raised above her shoulder with the point directed at Pink's right eye.

"If I die today, it will be in the knowledge that you will precede me into the void," she said to Pink, and stalked towards her enemy. She had to concentrate with everything she had to remain guarded against the swelling in her sinuses and the watering of her eyes. Her chest was getting tight, and her breaths were coming in short and ragged gasps. Perhaps she had been mistaken about the lethality of Pink's spore cloud.

Pink lunged in a feint, a maneuver Shampoo almost fell for until she caught the placement of her enemy's weight on the wrong foot for the attack. She recovered in time to parry the dagger with a cry of desperation, then stepped inside Pink's guard to drive her own knife straight into her enemy's heart. The dagger punctured the chest wall with an audible crunch that made even the hardened crowd of warriors watching the battle wince, and the butcher's ring of tempered steel grating against Pink's sternum echoed across the ancient courtyard.

Pink's eyes were wild with fright as Shampoo's wrist chopped aside her last frantic attempt to stab her enemy. Shampoo held her there, fixed upon the dagger as her fluttering heart lacerated itself further against the razor sharp blade sunk into her chest. Blood spilled down her dress black cheongsam to spatter in a pool at her slippered feet. All the while, Shampoo stared into her terrified eyes as death's icy hand closed around her.

Pink coughed out a garbled curse, thick with dark blood from a severed pulmonary artery, and then expired. Shampoo let her slide off the blade to collapse spread-eagle on the warm sand of the circle. Only when the roar of surprise from the crowd had passed did she stoop to wipe the blood from her dagger on the hem of Pink's cheongsam. She felt sick, not just from the spores she had been exposed to, but with the very idea of slaughtering a fellow clan-sister.

Cologne nodded quietly at her place as Peony choked out a gasp of disbelief. She rose then to address the crowd.

"Mechwarrior Major Shampoo has defeated Mechwarrior Lieutenant Pink," she announced. "Does anyone else wish to challenge Mechwarrior Major Shampoo?"

Another pause passed through the crowd. Many eyes fell upon Link, who had fallen to her knees in grief at the edge of the circle. When she did not rise to avenge her sister, the silence that followed was nearly tangible.

"Then let it be known that this matter had ended," Cologne declared. "The Fated Circle is closed. Let no one hold the events of this day against Mechwarrior Major Shampoo, for the celestial justice of the gods is far beyond the ken of mortals as ourselves."

7 March 3026

"There is something I must show you," Cologne said to Shampoo as she led her great-granddaughter down a dimly lit stairwell that seemed to lead forever into the bowels of the basalt mesa that was the foundation for the ancient Joketsuzoku fortress. "Few have ever heard of this place, and fewer still have seen it. You alone of all my great-grandchildren have thus far been entrusted with what I am about to show you, and you will keep this in the absolute strictest confidence."

Shampoo nodded quietly at her great-grandmother's admonition. She was still recovering from the effects of Pink's poisoned spores, and was surprised by Cologne's invitation to accompany her into the very heart of the fortress.

"I understand, Great-Grandmother."

"See that you do," she replied.

They came to a huge door, as large and solid as any bank vault. Cologne removed something from the folds of her robes that Shampoo could not identify, and spoke several cryptic and half-heard lines from a poem whose origins were lost to the antiquity of the pre-Jump era.

"I foresee that you will lead our people some day, Shampoo," Cologne said as the door unlocked with the heavy sound of massive bolts being thrown. "You are starting to show the germination of the first seeds of real wisdom. Not the proverbs and parables of our people, mind you, but the kind of true-seeing that comes only from hardship, pain, and loss. You have experienced that firsthand now, and the birth of your son has made you even more cognizent of your own mortality. Nurse those seeds within you, Great-Granddaughter. Let them grow tall and strong, and let their arms stretch wide through your soul. You will have great need of them someday. In this you can be assured, as you shall soon see."

They stepped soundlessly through the door, and into a long bare passageway, illuminated only by a single set of fluorescent track lights along the right-hand wall. The vault door closed behind them with a heavy thud, terrifying in its finality.

The passageway turned once to the left, and opened up into a vast gallery, a chamber hewn out of the solid rock at the bottom of the fortress. Gantries and catwalks criss-crossed the outer walls of the gallery, and stretched out across the open air in a tracery of steel and plastic. Shampoo realized that most of the complex was below the level of the passageway, for she could look down upon the many partitions twenty meters below her as if peering down at an enormous rat maze. The indistinct buzz of a babel of voices and activities met her ears, and she marveled at how so many people could work here and yet keep the goings on of the place a secret.

"The darkest secrets of the Joketsuzoku are buried here," Cologne said to her as a platform elevator rose up from the maze to their level. "Most will stay buried for as long as I can keep them here, but even I grow old, and someday the responsibility must pass to another."

They stepped upon the elevator, and it began to descend into the gallery.

"There are so many people here," Shampoo broached.

"They know no other existence," Cologne replied, sensing what Shampoo was asking in her statement. "Most of them have never been outside the gallery in their entire lives. It is the only way to maintain the security of the place."

"But what is this place, Great-Grandmother?"

Cologne stepped off the elevator as it touched down. "The very life's breath of the Jusenkyo Commonwealth," she replied. "As much I look forward to reaping the rewards of membership in Akane Tendo's Star League, I cannot bring myself to believe that the peace will last long beyond the ten years she won for her people. Already there are stirrings within the Furinkan Combine to overthrow the Kunos for what happened, and whispers of the Black Rose gathering strength in the marches along the Federated Shiratori are never far from my ears.

"We must not put our complete faith in this Star League, child. Though the Tendos currently entertain no dreams of dominion outside their own Confederation, they control the flow of recovered technology to the rest of the Inner Sphere, and so long as they are willing not to divulge or use HPG technology, Comstar turns a blind eye to their growing power. There will come a Tendo one day who has not known what it was like to be on the losing side of a war, who will see his country as the strongest in the Inner Sphere. What then of the new Star League, when he usurps the political mechanisms carefully installed by Akane Tendo to prevent abuse?"

Cologne shook her head slowly to herself as Shampoo listened.

"No, child. We cannot ever fully trust those outside our own clan. We must continue to rely only upon our own power, our own people, and our own technology. That is what this place is for."

They passed an enormous bank of glass cylinders, each filled with a clear yellow-green fluid - and a human being suspended within. Shampoo's eyes widened in shock as she realized that the stories of a forbidden Star League cloning facility were true.

"Yes, child," Cologne replied to her wordless question. "In the days before the fall of the Camerons, the scientists of the day were drunk on their own knowledge. They tampered in the domain of the divine, creating - or at least transplanting, as Gaido suspects - the Jusenkyo Pools and, yes, even constructing this facility. What little we are able to coax out of these ancient machines is enough to preserve our clan. The first hybrids, so important to the creation of our ultimate army, got their start here after their forebears were exposed to the Jusenkyo Effect."

They continued on past the silent technicians, most of them hybrids, as they looked after the incomprehensible technology that drove the place. After passing through a sterile antechamber, they entered a wide open section of the gallery, where warm, humid air blew gently across their bodies.

It was here that Shampoo saw Kima, alive and apparently unharmed, standing among a group of winged hybrid children who clamored noisily for her attention.

"...Kima..." she gasped.

"No, child," Cologne corrected her. "Not Kima. Not the Kima you knew, anyway."

"I don't understand. A clone?"

"Yes, a clone," Cologne replied. "This Kima knows nothing of the intelligence agent we exposed to the Pool of Drowned Akane Tendo - the Kima you knew. They have never met, nor have they ever suspected the existence of the others."

"Others?" Shampoo asked. "There are more than just two?"

"A secret for another time, child. You have much to learn before then."

Shampoo nodded dumbly, still awed by the sight of Kima, so hale and alive. It brought back bitter memories of the broken body of Akane Tendo lying dead in the street of Capra City - the Kima she had known, and the Kima that Tarou had slain. This Kima moved with the same unconscious grace as her clone-sister as she looked after the hybrid children - one of whom bore a suspicious resemblence to General Herb.

"Come, great-granddaughter. It is not polite to gawk," Cologne said to her, and led her along with a gentle tap of her ashwood staff.

They came then to another chamber within the vast underground gallery. Shampoo saw the man who stood at the center of the room, and did not believe that any man could be more handsome or more frightening. It was like looking at the face of a god, and as he rose up on angelic wings, clad only in a golden satin loincloth, the air seemed to shimmer with heat. She felt a blast of it upon her face, and flushed with an almost sexual frission.

"Saffron," Cologne announced calmly. "Would that I were a hundred years younger, I might feel the same for him as you do, child."

"He is a hybrid...?" she muttered.

"He is our greatest triumph," Cologne replied. Saffron flew to the top of the gallery to stretch out his wings. To Shampoo, he seemed to exude a golden fiery glow from every pore of his mostly naked body. "And perhaps, as Doctor Gaido fears, he will prove to be our ultimate undoing. I do not know what the future will bring with Saffron, but I fear a future without him even more."

She leveled a fiercely cold gaze at Shampoo. "Saffron is not to be trifled with, child. He is a tool that must be kept very close at hand. Remember this, you who will rule the Jusenkyo Commonwealth someday."

Tetsuyama Fortress

Planet Angbad, Melkor System

The League of Five Nails

4 March 3026

"Hikaru Gosunkugi, First Lord of the Star League."

The title would take some getting used to, Hikaru decided. Still, it had a delicious feel to it as he said the words aloud once more. He was going to be the First Lord of Akane's new Star League.

The suspicious part of him warned that it was just a sop to garner the support of the League of Five Nails for the new order Akane had in mind for the Inner Sphere. He supposed that it could be true, for the position of First Lord did not carry with it the power it had once held in the grip of the Camerons' hereditary dynasty. The stranglehold on the Inner Sphere the Camerons and their Terran Hegemony had enjoyed ended with the assassin, Stephan Amaris, and even General Kerensky himself could not restore it when the Usurper was overthrown and put to death.

Now he was to be First Lord, but his powers were largely ornamental in function. He technically had political control over the new Star League Defense Force - once everyone got around to actually raising it, of course - but with the provision that for at least the first twenty years, it would be directly commanded by one of the Tendo line. Otherwise, his powers extended only as far as setting Star League policy, overseeing the eventual bureacracy that would spring up to administer the League, convening and adjourning the High Council, and casting the tie-breaking vote, if the need should arise. There was some power there, he supposed, but not much.

On the other hand, the decision to make him the premier First Lord had carried with it real power over his meddlesome parents. Popular support for him had never been high, being the recluse that he was, but now, he was actually cheered by the people upon his return to Angbad. The Furinkan Combine was retreating to its own systems, and the Third Succession War seemed to be at an end. Hikaru was quick to capitalize on that, and with his elevation to First Lord in a new Star League, he had managed to check- mate his parents into abdicating.

The removal of so burdensome a yoke had done wonders for him. He felt reborn. His only regrets now were the unavenged death of Tetsuo, and that he had been unable to remove Ranma Saotome from the equation involving himself and Akane Tendo.

That Nabiki had a hand in Tetsuo's death, Hikaru was now quite sure. How he could obtain revenge for the loss of his cousin and best friend, he was less certain. She was well guarded by her family, and her isolation was believed to be almost total. That she had not been executed for her treason came as a surprise to Hikaru, but as plans for the new Star League began to unfold, he understood her true value to the Tendos.

As for Ranma Saotome, he did not know. The impossible fool had been remarkably resilient to the assassination attempts Hikaru had quietly - very quietly! - ordered against him. It was also maddeningly clear that Akane was hopelessly in love with Ranma. That fact alone was enough to make Hikaru wish that Tatewaki Kuno had been correct in assuming that Ranma had some sorcerous hold over her. He knew better, but he still found himself wishing that it were so.

In the stillness of his chambers the sound of an ancient book creaking open was loud enough to make him wince. His slender, spidery fingers traced along the lines of text, absently searching for an unconventional solution to his problems. He predicted that many an hour would be spent under the flickering light of votive candles as he continued his occult studies with a renewed vigor. There was no viable military answer to the issue of Ranma and Akane. The political arena created by the new Star League was yet to be established, and so he could not seek for answers there, even if he had the time and the free hand with which to act against an undesired marriage.

That left only one option to him: he would pursue those avenues of occult power that he had wisely avoided in the past. He understood the risks, or at least thought he did, and had come to the conclusion that without Akane Tendo by his side, being the First Lord of the Star League was empty and devoid of real meaning. His lips trembled as he chanced across a relevant passage, and he had to look away for fear of unintentionally mumbling aloud something dreadful. Yes, more study - careful study - was required before he was ready to take that step.

He could wait. Being the prisoner of Tatewaki Kuno had taught him a measure of patience that would serve him well in his plans. He would not give up on his dreams of making Akane Tendo his bride.

The South Tower of Azure Cloud Castle

Planet Nerima, Capella System

The Nerima Confederation

28 December 3025

Kasumi Tendo paused at the top of the stone steps to rest, as she had done every day for the last five months. Four heavily armed Marines from the 5th Brigade remained at silent attention behind the aligned-crystal steel and superhard transparent polycarbonate walls of the security lobby. The lobby cordoned the tower from the winding stairwell that was the only direct connection with the rest of the world. She presented her pass from Grand Duke Tendo to them through a security drawer, which ensured that no human contact ever passed through the barrier without strict controls.

Electromagnetically-driven bolts threw themselves open with loud clunks as her pass was approved and a phone call made to the main security station within the castle proper to report the entry. Kasumi stood patiently while the heavy door swung open towards her, and a Marine beckoned her into the mantrap beyond. The eldest Tendo daughter did so quietly, knowing that both doors to the mantrap could not physically be open at the same time, and waited for the first door to close before the second one opened.

Once she was scanned for weapons and tools, the second door slid open and the Marine escorted her through. Once she was safely on the other side of the barrier, her noble status and priviledge was re-established. There would be no further escort for her unless she requested it, and she never requested it. The Marine passed her through with a salute.

The South Tower had once been a terrifying prison, a place of torture and murder where Confederation nobles and even quite a few Tendos from the Civil War in the late 29th Century had been taken to keep them out of the way - usually to await execution, although a few had spent the rest of their lives imprisoned here when it was not politically prudent to do away with them in an official capacity. Kasumi knew of several Tendos from the Civil War period who had been quietly murdered during their exile in the South Tower for that very reason.

Despite the fresh paint, the fine wallpaper, the plush carpeting, and the exquisite wood paneling, Kasumi could almost see the blood on the walls, and could almost smell the madness and decay from decades of imprisonment. Far worse than any treason she had commited against her father and her country, Nabiki's actions had forced Kasumi to face the darkest aspects of her family's history, the ugly times during the First Succession War when she would have been ashamed to call herself a Tendo. Nabiki had reminded them all that the difference between treason and legitimacy was merely a matter of who won out in the end, and that within the warmth and love of family, even vipers could make their nests.

She knocked gently on the door to the sitting room and opened it. Nabiki was there: in the same chair and in the same pose as she had every single time Kasumi had come to visit. Kasumi sighed quietly to herself at the sight of her middle sister. She sighed because she would not permit herself to scream - in rage or in anguish, though she wanted to do both.

Nabiki, for her part, remained silent and stoic at the table. Coffee steamed from a silver pot. The aroma had the rich fragrance of beans grown on New Hawaii, and Kasumi wondered briefly if they had been given as a gift to Nabiki by Tatewaki Kuno when he had come to Nerima to sign the instrument of surrender.

Nabiki followed her with her eyes as she approached the table to sit. A slight nod of her head was all the assent she would give. As Kasumi took a chair across the table, Nabiki's eyes flicked to the blue sky beyond the window.

"Why do you keep coming here?" she asked finally. Her voice was filled with a scorn that had become tired with frequent use. Her question was the same question she asked Kasumi every day.

Kasumi replied with the same answer she gave every day.

"It's my duty as your sister," she said quietly.

Nabiki's eyes never left the window. She sipped at her coffee for a moment, then set her cup down before her.

"That is so much bullshit, sis," she spat. The scorn in her voice had returned with a vengeance. "You walk up six hundred meters of stone steps every day because it's the only way you can think of to assuage your guilt."

Kasumi blinked at this. She did not reply.

"Your silence speaks volumes," Nabiki added after a satisfied moment of quiet.

"What exactly do I have to feel guilty about?" Kasumi replied, her voice taking on a hard edge of its own that gave Nabiki momentary pause. "You are here for reasons entirely of your own doing, Nabiki."

Nabiki took another sip of coffee. The bitterness of the brew was reflected in her voice as she spoke. "You feel guilty, dear sister, because you continue to believe that if only you had stayed on Nerima instead of going off to fight the Combine on Oni, you could have done more to keep me out of trouble, so that none of this would have happened."

Nabiki's words hurt, if only because there was so much truth behind them.

"Save yourself the grief and stop believing that," she added. "You were never going to stop me with tough love." Only then did she finally turn to look at her older sister. "Stop coming here, Kasumi. You're just wasting your time and mine."

Kasumi poured herself a cup of coffee from the silver pot. She then took a cube of sugar from the bowl with deliberate care and sweetened her cup. Nabiki glared at her in silence as she next stirred in a measure of cream.

"The day I stop coming to visit you, Nabiki, is the day that Akane changes her mind about your sentence," Kasumi said to her as she sipped gently at her cup.

Nabiki flinched ever so slightly at that. It was infuriating to spend empty days and intolerable nights thinking about how her life was solely in the hands of her baby sister. That Daddy wanted to have her executed for treason was no surprise - since the day Mother had died of a disease that a doctor two centuries earlier would have laughed at, he had always been the most reserved, even cold, towards her. Akane had become the darling in Daddy's eye, the one most like Mom. Now she was damn near ruling the Confederation herself!

"I wouldn't mind," she said finally to Kasumi. "Death would be a break from the monotony of imprisonment in this gilded cage."

"There are times that I think that death would be too easy for you," Kasumi retorted. The riposte was so unlike her that Nabiki found herself doing a mental double-take. "Can't you even once imagine the harm you caused us? Or the damage you did to the Confederation?"

Nabiki shored up her position with an arrogant laugh. Kasumi was never one for intricate head games, since she always wore her heart on her sleeve. "Please," she snorted. "Whatever harm I may have caused was nothing to the ten years Daddy sat on his ass while the Confederation crumbled around him. What was I supposed to do, sit there and watch everything we had go up in flames?"

"It's always about money with you," Kasumi returned coolly. "You could never see past the price tag of anything - not even family."

Nabiki had listened to that tired old saw from her older sister enough times to let it slide past without effect. "We've been through this a thousand times, sis. I fail to see the point in arguing it again. I may have the next forty or fifty years to spend in this awful place - unless of course whoever is sitting the throne some day decides he needs to make room for someone more important..." She drew her finger across her throat with the appropriate sound effects. "In which case I can only hope that they decide to do me quick. But until then, stop boring me with your tired old platitudes and your meaningless values."

Her eyes bored into Kasumi.

"Face it, sis; we stopped being a family when Mom died, and you know it."

Kasumi looked away. "There are times when I feel that Mother is still with us," she replied in a hushed voice. "And that you're the one who died."

Nabiki's coffee soured in her mouth at that. She swallowed it down with a grimace and looked out the window to hide her reaction from Kasumi.

"Yeah, well, that would have made things better for everyone now, wouldn't it?" she managed.

"Stop it, Nabiki," Kasumi snapped. "If you really do wish to die so badly, then do something about it. There hasn't been a suicide watch on you in months."

Nabiki was surprised by Kasumi's frank invitation to kill herself, and decided that their conversation might prove to be interesting after all.

"Oh no," she replied with a crooked grin. There was mirth there in her expression, but it was the malicious kind; the kind of grin a sadist wears when he pulls the legs off of an insect before burning it down with a magnifying glass. "I wouldn't give you or the others the satisfaction. If you want me dead, you'll have to kill me yourselves. I want to see if you have the guts to do it. In the meantime, I'll content myself with the notion that every day I'm alive is a day you'll be quietly worrying about some plot I may be hatching to escape and overthrow you again."

"You can't do anything here," Kasumi replied. Nevertheless, the fear of just such a thing happening was the reason why Father had wanted to execute Nabiki.

Nabiki shrugged. "You're probably right," she conceded. Her expression suggested otherwise, but how much of it was concocted on the spot to sow the seeds of doubt and how much of it was genuine, Kasumi could only guess.

Kasumi wanted to reach across the table and shake some sense into Nabiki, but she remained calm and cool as she always did. How could anyone grow so far apart from everyone that mattered to her? It was the question she had been asking of Nabiki for years - ever since Mother had passed away, although the signs were perhaps there long before then, she realized. How could Nabiki stand to be so dead inside?

A look at Nabiki as she poured herself a fresh cup of coffee gave her a glimpse at the answer. She knew she was dead inside, and the tiny smears of mascara at the corners of her eyes, the way her lips seemed to hang with a sullen heaviness for just a moment before she licked them self-consciously and took a shallow breath to cover it up, and the ancient weariness behind her scornful expressions were her way of letting it show.

Nabiki hated herself, Kasumi realized. She hated what she had become. Perhaps she even hated what she had done. It was more than just the burden of living in such an oppressive exile, it was something she had been carrying around inside her for over a decade. All she had left was her own pride, and those little weapons of spite and malice she could muster to turn aside the probing gaze of anyone who might guess the truth about her.

It was heartbreaking to Kasumi, who wanted nothing more than to take her little sister into a hug and love her until the hate and the self-loathing were abjured forever. She wanted to execute the cold and cruel manipulator that Nabiki had become, and spare the little girl with the mahogany-colored bob of hair and the playful nature that she had once been.

Not even Nabiki was as surprised as Kasumi was when she found herself rising up out of her chair, pulling the middle Tendo daughter from her own seat, and hugging her tight.

"Kasumi," Nabiki hissed uncomfortably in her ear. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Hush," Kasumi replied, her arms circling around Nabiki in an embrace that was loving, and yet too tight for her sister to slip out of easily in escape.

"Let go of me, goddammit!" Nabiki protested bitterly, and squirmed to no effect in Kasumi's arms.

Kasumi remained silent, her eyes closed as she thought about much happier days in their lives. She focused everything she had on the Nabiki she once loved, and wanted to love again. It was foolish of her, and she knew that one hug wasn't going to heal wounds that had been festering for ten years and more inside her sister's soul, but perhaps there was something to be said for tough love that Nabiki didn't bargain on.

She drew upon all of the love in her own life; love for Father; love for Akane and her somewhat pig-headed but nonetheless-wonderful-for- her-fiancee, Ranma; love for her dear friend in adversity, Mrs. Saotome; and of course, love for a man she had often overlooked in the past as little more than a sweet but bumbling mechwarrior turned family physician - Doctor Tofu Ono. Nabiki squirmed less in her embrace now, as if resigned to ride out the hug to its end. Kasumi gave her an extra-tight squeeze just because she could.

"I think there's still hope for you," she whispered in Nabiki's ear. "That's why I come here day after day."

"Don't waste your time," Nabiki growled in reply, though her bitterness had lost most of its bite.

"I don't think you're a waste of time," Kasumi said to her. "And I intend to continue proving that to you."

She felt Nabiki shudder in her embrace, and just briefly, felt her sister's arms come up to return the hug. A single sob, felt more than heard, escaped Nabiki's lips. Then she managed to throw herself off and spun around in a huff.

"Get out," Nabiki barked. "Leave me the hell alone."

Kasumi nodded as her hands clasped at her waist. "Very well," she replied. As she turned to go, she set a thick manila file on the table from the satchel she carried with her during the day. "I brought something to help keep you occupied," she said.

Nabiki eyed the file warily, her suspicions on full alert after the surprise mugging she had received.

"What is it?"

Kasumi smiled gently at the door. "Some proposals of Akane's for a new Star League. I thought you might appreciate a look."

"Ha," Nabiki snorted, getting back to her old grouchy self again. "Akane and diplomacy? Please... It would be a wonder if her precious 'Star League' lasted six months, let alone the ten years she supposedly won from the Combine."

Kasumi arched an eyebrow at her. "Perhaps you have a few suggestions then?" she asked sweetly.

Nabiki knew she had been taken for a sucker.

"This was your plan all along," she accused. "Butter me up with some affection, then hire me on as slave labor to fix all the problems in your pet political project!"

"The affection was genuine, Nabiki," Kasumi replied. "And your assistance isn't demanded at all. I just thought you might like to read something that wasn't restricted to romance novels and three-year old gossip magazines."

Nabiki eyed the folder hungrily. There was bound to be current events information in there - something she had been forbidden to access from her South Tower library terminal. Cut off from the outside world with only Kasumi for company, she had been starving for real news for five months.

The underlying intent was clear. At the moment she had no value to the family except a certain sentimental attachment. Doing the grunt work for Akane's crazy Star League gave her a value beyond that. Nabiki read a little closer between the lines. Could it have been a quiet signal from Akane that, in time, all could be forgiven?

She wasn't sure she wanted all to be forgiven. It seemed as if, except for remaining among the living, she would get very little out of a deal that would probably entail years of grueling effort on her part. Her pride stung at the thought of it.

"Real cute, sis. I underestimated you," she replied. "Both of you," she amended.

Kasumi smiled once more, then closed the door behind her.

Nabiki stared at the manila file and tried not to shake. She was still feeling a little disoriented by Kasumi's impromptu embrace. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that it hadn't been some put-on to soften her up for the work. Kasumi just didn't operate like that.

Kasumi wore her heart on her sleeve.

She caught herself in another sob as her throat began to sting. The problem with love, she realized, was that you always got hurt by it. Always.

She wiped away a drop of moisture from her eyes and opened the file. There was work to be done - the first work she had done in months - and perhaps, she allowed through her skepticism, the most important work she had ever done in her life.

Maui Atoll, Planet New Hawaii,

Alpha Centauri System, The Furinkan Combine

10 January 3026

"How's it going, keiki?"

Tatewaki Kuno bit down on the curse that came reflexively to his lips. He took a sharp, short breath, and turned to face his accursed father; the very architect of his present misery.

"It proceeds well," he replied blandly, mindful that stoicism was a hallmark trait of the samurai, and that he would ultimately grow stronger with this tempering of his spirit.

The Shogun of the Furinkan Combine set aside a pineapple shaped cup of rum punch to inspect his son's handiwork. The four-meter-long surfboard glistened beneath his fingertips in the vermilion light of another gorgeous New Hawaii sunset. Several priceless cans of authentic Mister Zog's Sex Wax lay at his feet as he bent low to run his rough hand across the polished wood of the board. A traditionalist in the spirit of Duke Kahanamoku, the Shogun shunned surfboards made of plywood, or, even more heinous in his opinion, synthetic materials. Real men rode massive planks of polished lumber on monster waves, not six measly kilos of advanced polycarbon fiber.

"Very nice, keiki," he said with a satisfied lilt in his voice. "You finally gettin' de hang o' dis." He patted the board affectionately as he beamed at his son. The wax was very lightly buffed where his feet would keep in contact with the board, making the surface slightly tacky, and giving him additional control while he was up. The rest of the board was free of wax to allow it to cut across the water with minimal drag. The art of surfboard waxing was a discipline every bit as demanding and technical as swordsmanship in the opinion of the Shogun, and he was well pleased to see that his son had finally mastered it.

Tatewaki closed his eyes and inclined his head slightly in deference to the complement, trying not to let his hatred seep through in his voice as he replied.

"I am pleased that you think so, Father."

The Shogun lifted the heavy timber board with a strength that belied his soft party-boy lifestyle.

"You gonna join your old man for a few waves?" he asked. "De tide is jus' no ka oi."

Tatewaki rubbed at the stubble on the top of his head with his hand, what was now the ruins of his once manly and stylish hair, and tried not to scowl.

"I regret, Father, that I have other pressing matters to attend to," he replied. It was hardly true, given his current status of having been relieved of command of the Furinkan Combine's armed forces, but he knew that his father would not press him on the matter - no matter what other indignities he insisted upon.

"You sure, boy?" the Shogun offered hopefully. There was always hope that Tatewaki would grow out of his battlemech fixation and take up the sublime sport of surfing, and he remained ever the optimist.

"Quite, good sir," Taewaki seethed.

The Shogun shrugged. "Suit yourself, boy."

When his hated father was gone, Tatewaki removed himself from the quaint beach house where he had spent the bulk of his exile and stalked across the sand to a grove of native fern palms. Captain Lucius Kyle, his former Operations Officer aboard the Imperator, was there waiting for him.

"Speak," Tatewaki commanded. Though he had been stripped of his rank and command, he was no less imperious in his mood. He knew that Kyle had come with news of greatest import to him, but that was all he was certain of.

"My lord prince," Kyle began. "I have been dispatched to tender a pronouncement from the Daimyo of the Kessel, Benjamin, Alshain, Raselhague, and Trondheim marches."

Tatewaki smiled. Already the Daimyo, whilst ever clamorous for spoils and glory, and as impatient as children when denied, were now run through the full measure of their patience. It was as he had forseen.

"The Blue Thunder of the Furinkan Combine, be he bloodied with misfortune, is yet unbowed," he replied in turn. "He does not treat with those who are beneath him as his equals."

Kyle bowed respectfully. "I realize that, my lord," he said in a hushed tone. "As do the Daimyo of these great marches. They come to you through me as loyal retainers to their lord."

Tatewaki maintained his stern countenence while he beamed inwardly. The Furinkan Combine was on the brink of civil war and collapse with the threatened secession of the eastern marches of Galedon and New Samarkand, and the recent bloody rampages of the restored Black Rose Terror Regiment. As he had foreseen, there was no one within the ranks of the nobility who possessed the stomach or the mettle to crush the separatists and bring Kodachi to heel.

"And what do these loyal retainers pledge to me beyond their vaporous oaths of fidelity?" he asked Kyle archly. There could be only one correct answer.

Kyle smiled. "My lord, the Shogunate is yours if you desire it." He produced a document from a mag-locked tube at his belt. It was festooned with the personal seals of all five of the remaining loyal marches of the Furinkan Combine, plus the signatures of fifty battlemech regimental commanders, a hundred aerospace fighter wings, and the Chief of Naval Operations himself.

Tatewaki looked askance at the paper as Kyle displayed it for him.

"What conditions do they place upon my investiture to the Shogunate?"

"None, my lord," Kyle replied with pride. "The Daimyo realize that you alone can restore order to the Combine, and they come to you as humble supplicants seeking only to serve you."

"Indeed," the Combine prince snorted contemptuously. "Though only now at this perilous juncture in history do they realize it."

It was a bitter victory for him, Tatewaki realized as he accepted the document for closer inspection. The Daimyo were grasping at straws, their own feeble attempts to hold the Combine together having failed in the last six months of chaos, and their fear of the Jusenkyo Commonwealth taking advantage of the situation had propelled them to this course of action. To preserve their own power, they needed him to put an end to Kodachi and the adventurism of the eastern marches.

"When can the Imperator arrive in the system?" he asked imperiously.

"The ship awaits you at the Jump Point, lord," Kyle replied. "A shuttle stands by even now to take you to your DropShip."

Tatewaki spared a glance towards the sea, where his father poked out from the tube of falling water known to surfers as 'the green room.' He was oblivious to the coup d'etat that had just occured.

"You have orders to inform my father of his removal from the Shogunate?" Tatewaki asked archly.

"I do, my lord," Kyle confirmed.

"Forget your orders," Tatewaki commanded. "Leave my father to his pleasures on this accursed planet. See to it that he lacks for nothing in his new state of exile, but also see to it that he never leaves this world again." He rubbed at his shaved head, seething with long-suffering fury, and yet vindicated by his brief imprisonment on this terrible paradise planet. "To the shuttle, Kyle. I am loathe to remain upon this world yet a moment longer than I must."

"Of course, my lord." Having been gifted with a little foresight of his own, Kyle had already sent men to gather up his lord's belongings and convey them to the ship.

Tatewaki turned his gaze one last time to the sea. There was no point in gloating to his father over his triumph, for the man understood nothing, and never would. It was best to leave and say nothing.

"Make haste with thee!" he barked, and stomped off towards the far side of the island, where the shuttle would be waiting for him. He had an empire to bring under control, and then... Akane!

Former Shogun Kuno watched the shuttle lift off from the island with the shrill of turbojets from the vantage of a wave-top. He had known why the ship had come to Maui Atoll, even as he knew that his son was leaving. He shook his head ruefully, but did not give it any more thought. The boy was stubborn, and there was no telling him anything. He offered a single wave to the space craft as it shot into the upper atmosphere, bound for orbit.

"Aloha, Keiki."

Headquarters Company

1st Nerima Guards Regiment

Planet Nerima, Capella System

The Nerima Confederation

11 January 3026

It had been a year since Ryouga first became a pig.

Mechwarrior Captain Ryouga Hibiki, the recently appointed commander of Akane's personal guard, sat within the cockpit of his mighty BattleMaster deep in thought as the thunder and crack of weapons filled the air of the battlemech firing range around him. He had almost forgotten the significance of the 11th of January until that morning, when a splash of water from the cooling vest connection tubes had reduced him to a small black pig in less time than it took for him to squeal in surprise.

Akari had taken the discover of his secret identity well, he mused darkly. She had been suspecting for months that the company's mascot and Akane's beloved pet was none other than her much-adored husband, and to finally see his transformation in action produced little more than a gasp of surprise followed by a soft chuckle. She then gave him some hot water without another word about the incident, and kissed him on the cheek as he had dressed himself with a red face of shame. Sometimes he wondered if he deserved to have such a loving and devoted wife.

The 11th of January also brought with it thoughts of Happousai and Tarou, and it was these two men who had made him so quiet and moody within his cockpit. Happousai was dead - at least he had every reason to believe so - and in the last six months since Ryouga had torched the wizened old master of the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts with a blast from his BattleMaster's PPC, he had yet to feel much regret in doing so. At the same time, he felt little satisfaction in the deed. It was as if by killing the master of his school, he had somehow killed the school itself.

Genma Saotome and Grand Duke Tendo weren't up to the job of replacing Happousai, though Genma himself claimed the title of Master of the school now. Grand Duke Tendo could speak only of retirement once the Star League negotiations were complete and the Inner Sphere united under one political system, and Genma Saotome, well... He remained as greedy, slothful, and gluttonous as always. Happousai might have been ruled by his libido during his life, but at least he had the skills and techniques to call himself a master.

As for Tarou, Ryouga had only hearsay and rumor of him. The Black Rose had risen once more from the ashes of defeat at Ryuugenzawa, and was operating in those eastern marches of the Furinkan Combine that were now practically in open rebellion against the Shogun. With Tarou at her side, the Black Rose and her Terror Regiment had reconstituted itself and gone on a rampage of violence and destruction against both the Furinkan Combine and the Cult of Azusa in the Federated Shiratori. The two were inseparable, it was believed, and their individual hatreds had become common goals.

Because of this, Ryouga had recently been warned by Confederation Intelligence that he was a potential target for assassination.

That was one secret that Akari still did not know about him, and the one that he worked hardest to keep her from. Tarou wanted him dead for what had happened on Ryuugenzawa, and wanted it enough apparently to hire agents to spy upon him - for the purpose, it was intimated by Confederation Intelligence, of having him killed.

Ryouga doubted that Tarou would hire someone to kill him. It wasn't the man's style. Tarou's hatreds were dire and personal affairs, and he would never contract them out to someone else when the possibility of getting his revenge on his own was there.

Still, it was something that concerned him. Tarou might not wish to have someone else get his hands dirty by killing him, but the possibility of making him suffer in other ways was there. Akari was too easy and obvious a target for something like that.

The shooting stopped abruptly around him, and he snapped his eyes up over the console displays of his battlemech to see that the rest of the company had completed their exercises. It was time to lead them back to Azure Cloud Castle. Akari would be waiting for them to return, though Ryouga hoped that she would let the rest of her crew of technicians handle the company so he could spend some extra time with her.

"Form up by lances and start back to base," he ordered over the tac net. He was still not entirely comfortable with the idea of command, but he could not refuse Akane's request that he take over her personal guard.It was an honor, and yet at the same time, he thought back to the days of being an itinerant mercenary with no ties and no responsibilities.

The company began stomping back to the base of the mountain along the reinforced road from the firing range, with his BattleMaster in the lead. For a moment his eyes caught a glint of reflected sunlight high in the sky, and he zoomed in on the aircraft with his telescopic cameras. It was a Boomerang recon plane in the middle of some aerobatic routine, and he smiled to himself. Ranma was probably showing off again.

Akari was waiting for him at the battlemech hangars, and with her were Ukyou and Konatsu. He jumped down from his mighty BattleMaster, surprised to see the two, and wondering why they weren't at the starport.

"Kiss me first," Akari said to him with a shy smile as he touched down on the tarmac. She had read the puzzled look on his face and knew that he wanted to talk to Ukyou right away.

Ryouga turned red. They had been married for several months now, but he was still nearly overcome with embarassment over displays of affection for her in public. All the same, she was hard to resist in her neat, pressed technician's coveralls and the yellow and black bandana she wore over her hair.

"Heya, Ryouga," Ukyou greeted him as he set Akari down on the tarmac, still blushing from their smooch.

Ukyou was resplendent in her red Nerima Conferation uniform, and proudly bore the rank of Mechwarrior Colonel. A flash of silver at her lapel showed off the Cameron Star Akane had commissioned for those who were part of her project to resurrect the Star League. Konatsu smiled demurely at Ukyou's side, the kunoichi bearing the rank of Lieutenant, and the white and blue ducal piping of one of the Tendo family's royal guards.

"Why are you here?" he asked her. "I thought you had already left for orbit by now."

She gave him a light pounding on the arm. "Jeez, I just came to say good bye," she told him. "But I see how it is."

"No no no!" Ryouga protested, ashamed. "It's just that I thought -"

Ukyou shrugged. "You're right, though," she said to him. "I should be going, but to tell you the truth I'm going to miss everyone on Nerima."

She blew at her chestnut bangs. "And I'm honestly not looking forward to going back to face Empress Azusa and Mikado, even if I have the Coronet backing me up. I burned a few bridges leaving there."

"You don't think it will be dangerous, do you?" Akari asked her.

Ukyou offered a lame smile. "I don't know. With the Cult of Azusa, rationality isn't a given. I should hope that the thought of a massive particle beam screaming down at the palace from orbit would give them second thoughts about harming me. Since we're trying to induce them to join the new Star League peacefully, I also hope it doesn't come to that."

She sighed. "Anyways, that's why I'm here. I have no idea how long this will take, but my orders are to get through to the Empress or anyone we think might have the power to bring the Federated-Shiratori over to our side. I'm hoping the bloodbaths Kodachi's caused them of late will make them see the light, but you never know... I could be there for six months, maybe a year before Akane gives up and calls me home."

"We'll miss you," Akari offered sweetly. "And Ryouga and I will be sure to send you letters as often as we can."

"I know..." Ukyou said, trying not to get too emotional. Ryouga and Akari had become very close to her since she had settled on Nerima with her new commission in the Army. "Oh hell, now my mascara is starting to run," she said, waving them off. "Love ya both!" she managed, hugging Akari, kissing Ryouga's cheek, and then punching him jovially in the chest before fleeing to the waiting staff car. Konatsu curtsied shyly and followed after.

Akari sidled up to Ryouga, who put an arm around her waist and snugged her tight as the staff car pulled away from the battlemech hangars.

"I hope things work out for Ukyou," she said to him.

"I hope so too," Ryouga agreed.

"That is..." Akari added shyly. "...I hope that she can be home in less than a year."

Ryouga nodded absently, not noticing how Akari looked up at him adoringly as she spoke.

"It would be a shame for her to miss the birth," she declared.

Ryouga nodded again, oblivious.

"Yeah..." he said distractedly. He was busy watching the Boomerang perform its aerobatics high in the Nerima sky, and wasn't really paying much attention to what she had said to him.

Akari settled her cheek against his shoulder and sighed.

"I wonder if it will be a boy or a girl?" she mused loud enough for him to hear.

"What will be a boy or a girl?" he asked her absently.

"Why, our baby, of course," she cooed lovingly in reply.

Ryouga went rigid, his eyes glazing over.

"Baby?" he squeaked.

"Ryouga-dearest?" Akari cried softly to her husband, who lay spread-eagle on the tarmac in a catatonic state, one eye twitching spasmodically as he offered a dazed grin to the heavens. "Ryouga...?"