Well, we've apparently gotten off of our collective duffs again to produce for you people a chapter. Hope you enjoy it, and don't forget to R&R.
Chapter 3: And A Feather Duster.
"Are we done yet?" the glare leveled at the researcher as she stood, looking down at a set of readouts on a computer screen would likely have peeled paint at a hundred meters.
"Just a moment, Sergeant," the woman said, apparently unwilling to be hurried, as she wrote several numbers down from the readout of her guinea pig... patient's heart rate monitors. The patient herself was standing in the middle of a small, cylindrical bay to the side of the Tuatha de Danann's sickbay, several wires hooked up over her body. As she was about to ask the researcher if she was finished one more time, a vent opened up above her, dumping a small amount of warm water over her head.
"That's it, I think we're done," the martial artist turned mercenary growled, having gotten rather tired of this after the first five changes, over two hours ago.
"But in just a few more tries, I may be able to isolate the electromagnetic..." the scientist started, before she noted that her equipment was starting to beep, and that the Cirlian aura camera she'd rigged up was starting to show the man in front of her glowing a deep, roiling blue that extended about a foot from his body. "Um, we're done?" She tried, hopefully.
"Thank you," Ranma said, beginning to expertly remove the medical sensors, and stepping out of the small chamber. He considered asking the woman what she'd learned, but decided against it, as the data would be in a report eventually, regardless, and Mithril had already tried this five years ago, to very little effect.
Stepping quickly over the tangle of various Arm Slave, torpedo and other sensory equipment that they'd tried to use to figure out what the heck he was, he opened the medical bay's door, only to be staring into the upper chest of Lieutenant Commander Kalinin. Looking up and cursing the fact that all foreigners had to be so tall, he asked, "Sir?" Feeling that 'Get out of my way so that I can get something to eat' wouldn't be a good move for his career.
"Sergeant Ranma," the older man said. "I came down to get the results on you and give you your latest orders."
Ranma shrugged. "The results are probably the same as last time," he commented. The lieutenant commander frowned, but had to nod, knowing that the other had been picked apart pretty thoroughly on his initial physical. "Well then I'll wait for the report on that, however I still need to brief you on your new orders."
Ranma nodded, stepping around the grey haired man and out of the medical bay, before the two of them started down the corridor towards the main briefing room. As they walked, however, Ranma could have sworn that he saw something small and black dart across a hatchway in front of him.
He was about to comment on it, when Captain Testerossa charged through as well, hurrying down one of the companionways to the deck below. Shaking his head, he wondered if repeated dousings of water over a short time could cause hallucinations, and continued on.
HR.
"I still can't believe you'd just throw a gun out in the trash like that," Sousuke said, continuing what had been something of a recurring topic of conversation as she and Kaname made their way home from school.
"Oh, stop pouting already, Sora," Kaname countered with a ghost of a grin. "What else was I supposed to do with it? I mean it wasn't a magical sword or anything."
Sousuke paused in her stride for a moment as though stuck on some undefinable thought before shrugging it off. "You should have kept it and learned how to shoot." Kaname looked at the apparent mercenary incredulously. "...or reported it to the authorities," she finally concluded.
"Either way, how would I make the gun safe enough to handle?" Kaname asked with a hint of frustration creeping into her voice.
Sousuke thought for a moment before responding, "If you truly cannot determine where the safety or clip ejects are, just place the weapon down with the barrel pointing away from yourself and anyone with you, slowly back away, and get someone who knows what he or she is doing. So that this is not a common occurrence, I will teach you how to handle a firearm appropriately."
"Thanks, I guess," Kaname started, before the full import of the redhead's words hit her, and her eyebrow twitched. One thing she'd learned about Sousuke over the past two days was that, when asked something, the other seemed incapable of doing anything but giving the full and complete answer, unless he had a very good reason to lie, which he did badly. Sighing in exasperation, she reached out to open the door into the main lobby of their apartment building. "You know, never mind," she finally said. "I'm sorry for throwing out your gun, okay?"
Sousuke considered her for a moment as they waited for the elevator, and finally nodded. "Apology accepted," she said in a perfect deadpan. "When should I schedule time at the range?"
"Wha... but I... huh?" Kaname sputtered, trying to regain her wits. Looking down into Sousuke's rather serious eyes, she sighed. "Next weekend?" she offered, before realizing, "and where are you going to find a firing range in Tokyo?"
Sousuke didn't respond, merely stepping out of the elevator on their floor, though as she headed to her apartment, she turned. "Kaname?" she asked, her hand on her front door's handle. Seeing the teal haired girl nod, she continued, "Thank you for assisting me today. My mission would have been much harder without your cooperation."
Kaname couldn't really think of something to say before the redhead entered her apartment, closing the door behind her. "Maybe I should help her work on her politeness parameters," she grumbled, irritably.
HR.
"So... I'm rescuing damsels in distress now?" Ranma asked, raising an eyebrow as he studied a picture set out before him of a young, black haired girl with a disturbingly blank stare. Granted, he'd done a great deal of that when he was younger, but it wasn't something that Mithril usually got into, unless the rescuee's parents paid well.
"This is a very important damsel," Kalinin said, his mouth quirking up slightly. "It's important that we recover her, or in the worst case scenario, destroy her." Seeing Ranma open his mouth to say something, Kalinin raised his hand and shook his head. The intelligence agent seemed to get the message, and settled down. "Now the girl is being held somewhere in China, and we're working on tracking the position of the vehicle that was carrying her. Fortunately, we got informed very quickly when her friends called the authorities."
"So, um," Ranma started, "What exactly is so important about this girl?"
"You don't need to know," Kalinin said, blithely.
Ranma frowned darkly. "Does this have anything to do with Kaname?"
This time, Kalinin's mouth turned up into a slight smirk. "You don't need to know," he repeated, though Ranma got the message loud and clear. If the answer had been no, the other man would have said so. "You get time to give Sergeant Sagara a status update and create a cover to explain where his parents are going before you ship out tomorrow morning. Are those orders understood?"
"Yes, sir," Ranma replied, quickly, before picking up the sheaf of papers that was spread across the table before him and standing. Though Mithril wasn't very prone to military ceremony, save for public occasions, he gave the commander a respectful nod before turning and leaving the room.
HR.
This time, Kaname decided as she stood at Ranma and Sousuke's door, she would not be surprised. Of course, over the past two days a lot of things had happened that shocked her, including learning that her uncle was some sort of mercenary, and that she was being protected from... something... by the weird military otaku in class, but she was relatively sure that the worst was over.
Of course, as she said that, the door swung open from her knock earlier, and Sousuke stood in it, male and wearing what looked like a green camouflage tank-top and a pair of black pants. "Uh," she said, having expected Sora, and noticing, very distantly, that the boy actually looked sort of cute, maybe, if she ignored the fact that he was Sousuke.
"Ah, Kaname," he said, nodding to her before turning around and walking back into the apartment. She just stood there for a moment before realizing that she wasn't actually going to be invited in and followed him. As she entered the living room, she noticed that Ranma was standing there, wearing the most unconvincing, and somewhat moth eaten, salaryman's suit she'd ever seen, and holding a very large suitcase in one hand which most people would be hard pressed to drag behind them.
"Ah, Kaname," Ranma said, managing to sound nervous where Sousuke had just sounded bored.
The girl contemplated saying something tactful, before shrugging it off, as this WAS Ranma, after all, and asking "Um, what's with the cheap suit?"
"Hey," Ranma objected. "This cost me sixty thousand yen... six years ago," he finished, looking down at his collar and tugging it. "Maybe storing it in a navy yard storage locker was a bad idea."
The teal haired girl just rolled her eyes, suddenly realizing why Sousuke seemed to listen to what her uncle said, as they both seemed just as clueless about the world in general. "Okay, but where are you going?"
"I've got a business trip," the pigtailed mercenary said, and Kaname was about to ask if he was kidding, before she remembered that he actually could have one.
"I thought you were staying here to keep Sousuke... I mean, to help Sousuke," the girl objected.
Ranma's eyebrow rose, and he looked over at the other mercenary, wondering precisely what had happened to make Kaname think he needed to be kept in line. "You went into the girls bathroom, didn't you?" he asked, flatly.
"Only twice," Sousuke replied quickly.
"He thought a love letter was a terrorist attack," Kaname contributed.
Ranma nodded sagely. "Probably was," he agreed. "Nothin good's ever come out of one of those."
"Now I remember why Mom told me to never ask you for relationship advice," Kaname started, before noticing Ranma's face go still for a moment.
"Yes, well," he said, his usual speech habits changing for a moment. "I have to go now."
"Woops..." Kaname muttered, as Ranma walked past her and out of the apartment. When the door closed behind him, she and Sousuke remained staring at each other for a few moments, before the military boy broke the silence.
"Why did Sergeant Ranma react like that?" He asked, looking at the girl in confusion.
Kaname looked away and out the window for a moment. "I... kinda forgot Mom and relationships was a touchy subject," she admitted. "So, um, we're... on our own now, huh?"
"Not entirely," Sousuke started. "There's..." he stopped himself, as though realizing right then what he had been saying, and though Kaname gave him a strange look, she decided not to push it, as she really didn't want to know.
"I'll see you at school tomorrow," she finally said. "Is Sousuke or Sora going to show up?"
"I'm not sure," Sousuke admitted. "Sora is more inconspicuous, and capable of hiding more ordinance on her person, however I'm still not very comfortable moving as her and dealing with social interactions. Also, the height difference has caused me to lose sight of you several times."
Kaname just stared at him for a moment, before turning around and leaving.
HR.
"I'm bored." Kurz Weber said, as he leaned casually against the back of a chair, peering over Melissa Mao's shoulder.
"I know, you've only said it six times tonight," his commanding officer replied. "Just be glad, it means we don't have to do anything. Wasn't that the whole reason you were so happy about this assignment in the first place?"
"No, it was only half the reason," Kurz retorted. "The other half was the pretty schoolgirls."
Mao decided to ignore the second half of her subordinate's comment, as she didn't want to have to explain shooting him in the groin. "Well, regardless, this has been pretty much a vacation for us. Nothing else's really happened since that Intel officer left a couple of days ago other than that school trip announcement, and I've seen you taking those magazines into your A.S."
"Uh..." Kurz said, trying to find something to change the subject to. "They do have that field trip in a few days."
"And we'll handle that when it comes," Mao returned. "Now either help me with the monitors or go do something else, you're only bored because you're standing around doing nothing."
"What, and do something productive?" Weber laughed. "If I stop hanging around here, I'll have to start filing all the paper work I've been ignoring... and some of that stuff's two years old."
Mao rolled her eyes. "Then let's talk about something other than how bored you are. Have you recalibrated your sights from that horribly vicious baseball hit yet?" Her mocking smirk was obvious, even though Weber couldn't see her face from where he was.
"It was serious! It knocked my sights .15 degrees out of alignment. That could add up pretty damned fast in a fire fight."
"Sure, sure," Mao rolled her eyes.
"I really think you don't get the whole sniper thi..." Kurz started, before trailing off, leaning in closer to his commanding officer.
"What the hell are you doing?" Mao growled, and was half way to elbowing the perverted asshole in the ribs, when he hurriedly pointed to one of the surveillance monitors set up around Kaname's apartment building. Looking, Mao saw what he'd noticed, a rather skinny humanoid figure creeping its way along the side of the building.
"Looks like we've got ourselves an intruder," she commented. "I wonder if you're finally going to get some of the excitement you want so much. Go get your rifle."
"Yes, Ma'am," Kurz said quickly, turning and dashing into the depths of the apartment, coming back a minute later carrying the weapon. "Where is he?" He asked, setting it up at a window ledge.
"He's..." Mao started, before blinking. "Wait a second, he's on the completely wrong side of the building to go after the target."
"What? Is he going to climb into the building and try to get Angel that way?"
"If he was going to do that, he would have entered one of the empty apartments on the second floor," Mao countered. "It looks like..." Her eyes widened, and she grabbed a radio from the table next to the surveillance system. "Urzu 2 to Urzu 7, you've got an inbound, repeat you've got an inbound. Get up, Sousuke!"
"Sergeant Major?" the rather bleary sounding voice of Sousuke crackled over the radio a second later.
"Urzu 7, get ready, there's a hostile climbing the side of the building, and apparently heading for your apartment." Mao said, quickly.
"Understood, Urzu 2," Sousuke replied, apparently having managed to wake up a little more in the few seconds that she had been talking. As she watched the camera, Mao's eyebrow rose as a puff of smoke could be seen issuing from the side of the building, and a loud cracking sound came from the radio.
"Target neutralized," Sousuke's voice came back about ten seconds later, and the two members of Urzu group at the surveillance station shared a look.
"Um, confirmed Urzu 7, do you need any assistance?" Mao asked, a little confused.
"Negative, target is no longer a threat," the younger mercenary returned. "Urzu 7 out." With that last statement, the radio went dead, and Mao shrugged.
"Well, that would have been exciting, except it wasn't," Kurz grumbled, and Mao just rolled her eyes, returning to her vigil over the cameras, with only a mutter of, "I need a drink."
HR.
Kaname couldn't sleep. She knew it was stupid, as the sound she'd heard could have easily been a part of her dream, or a movie being played too loudly, but she couldn't get the thought out of her head that it had been a gunshot, and had come from the direction of Sousuke's apartment.
Granted, her only times having heard gun shots recently had been from Sousuke, or Sora, themselves, on one memorable instance involving a giant raccoon mascot for a nearby fast food chain that had jumped out at them slightly too quickly, but she doubted that even Sousuke could find a reason to shoot something in his own apartment unless it was actually out of the ordinary.
Walking into her darkened apartment, the shadows, broken only by the occasional reflections from car headlights flickering on the ceiling made her even more edgy, and she picked up a rolling pin that had been sitting on the kitchen counter before venturing out and down to Sousuke's front door.
"I'll knock once, and if he doesn't answer, he's asleep and it was nothing," she muttered to herself, doing just that and waiting for several moments. She was about to turn around and make her way back home when the boy's door swung slowly open to reveal Sousuke standing there with a glass of water in one hand, a stupidly long straw reaching out of it and slightly over his head.
"Kaname?" the military boy greeted.
"Did you hear a loud noise earlier?" the teal haired girl asked. "It sounded almost like a gun shot."
"Oh, that was just the flash-bang grenade, no need to be alarmed," Sousuke replied, casually.
"A flash-bang grenade?" Kaname asked, recognizing the device as an example of the one she'd been given three days earlier. "Why did you set off a grenade?"
"It was necessary," the mercenary boy started, before Kaname just sighed in exasperation, pushing him aside and shoving her way into his apartment to see what was going on. When she did see it, however, her eyes widened.
"Oh, H... hello, Chidori-san," a kind of weedy looking boy with brown hair and glasses said, from where he was trussed up in a kitchen chair, his feet tied to the legs and his hands to the spars that made up the back. Next to him was an end table, containing a stun gun, several matches, a pad of steel wool, a kitchen knife, and a set of egg beaters.
"What is going on here?" Kaname bellowed, turning to Sousuke and almost managing to manifest a battle aura.
"I was in the middle of conducting an interrogation," the Sagara boy retorted calmly.
"You were..." Kaname really wasn't sure what to say, so she decided on the easy answer. "Untie him, now!"
"I suppose I've learned all I need to," Sousuke agreed, walking over to the boy and picking up the kitchen knife before going around behind him to cut his hands loose. As he bent to get his feet, the other's hands abruptly flopped to his side, knocking the glass of water that Sousuke was still holding in his left hand. By the time the mercenary realized what was happening, it was too late and he had already shifted into a she.
Kaname just slapped her forehead, muttering something about idiots and water, while the boy who had been tied up managed to turn his upper body to get a look at what the class representative had been looking at. When he saw Sora Sagara kneeling where Sousuke had been preparing to cut his foot bindings, he somehow managed to jump two feet forward, landing on his face.
"I'm so sorry, they made me do it, and they had my pictures, and it was you or Chidori-san, and she gets so angry, and don't let your brother hurt me, and..." he started babbling rapidly, almost crying.
"Hey, calm down," Kaname said, trying to remember the boy's name, as it seemed rather obvious that he knew her, and probably the Sagara 'siblings.' "You're... Suuichiro, right?"
"Shinji," the boy muttered, his face still pressed into the floor. Sousuke helped him out with this, grabbing the chair and the back of his collar before lifting him to a sitting position.
"All right, Shinji, now what's going on?" Kaname asked, trying to sound calm and reassuring.
"There were these guys who wanted to have the panties of hot girls in the school," the boy explained. "They told me to get either yours, Sora's, or that girl from class 2-C's, and I didn't know where she lived, and you're scary when you're angry..."
The boy flinched as he saw Kaname's eyebrow twitch, but went on when he saw that she didn't have any comment. "How was I supposed to know that Sora-san had her underwear drawer wired to explode?"
"Standard security procedure," Sousuke replied, casually, putting the various implements that she'd earlier gathered back where they came from.
"Sousuke..." Kaname groaned, exasperated, where-upon the redhead shrugged back at her, not seeming to understand what her problem was.
"Wait, she.." Shinji asked, before shaking his head. "Look, I don't care, can I go now?"
"Will you give me back the panty you've got in your left back pocket?" Sousuke asked, calmly.
"Oh, um, right..." Shinji muttered, fishing out the plain grey undergarment and handing it over. "They're gunna burn my negatives, I know it, but I just wanna get out of here."
"Who's going to burn your negatives?" Kaname asked, frowning. She didn't like guys being perverts, and she certainly didn't like them being coerced into it. After all, there were enough perverted ones already without creating more. "And what were the negatives of?"
"Oh, they're great shots! Full colour, perfect zoom, they've got every curve and line, it's incredible!" Shinji started gushing, as Kaname's eyebrow started twitching again. "They've got the new M6-A2 type that was on the Okinawa base and everything!"
"What?" Kaname asked, flatly.
"You know, American Military A.S.?" Shinji asked, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"...riiight..." the teal haired girl said slowly, though Sousuke was looking intrigued. "Tell us who's blackmailing you, and I'll see if we can stop it without any casualties." Sousuke didn't say anything, just nodding.
"Um, thanks, I guess," Shinji said, still very confused, especially about Kaname's calling Sora 'Sousuke,' "But... can I get that drink of water now? I'm still very thirsty." Kaname face-faulted.
END.
In case you're curious, the standard security procedure Sousuke mentioned? Written by Mao, and yes, she had a very, very good reason.
That's all for now folks and again, since we can't beg for feedback enough, R&R!