Chapter 6: Pigs On A Sub.
As wind whipped past him at roughly twice a normal person's terminal velocity, Ranma both thanked all the kami that had ever been pissed off at him that he'd learned at least some of Herb's chi gliding trick and wondered if he was completely insane. He'd just jumped out of a combat helicopter at altitudes higher than Akane or Happosai had ever sent him and was currently screaming towards a thick forest full of trees that would happily impale him on branches because he'd thought he'd felt a really, really angry Chi signature.
As a river beneath him began to grow to the point that he could see details rather than a small ribbon of water, if he squinted, his eyes widened. There were two Russian suits being menaced by what looked vaguely, from this distance, like Kodachi Kuno as a giant robot. Seeing that both Soviet machines were disabled and the taller A.S. was about to put a bullet through one cockpit, he aimed a Moko-Takabisha as best he could while the wind made it hard to see past his tearing eyes and let loose. It was at about that point that he remembered he should probably begin bracing for a landing, and about five seconds later he impacted with the shallow water.
HR.
"What the hell?" Gauron scowled, his eyes almost crossing as he looked at the bent and broken barrel of his gun, before he tossed it away disgustedly. He was about to jump back and turn, keeping his two enemies in sight while trying to spot his new one, but that quickly became unnecessary, as something smashed into the water behind Sousuke's A.S, the water settling a moment later to reveal a rather frazzled looking red haired woman who was almost curled into a ball.
The scene was frozen that way for a second or so, before the redhead groaned loudly, forcing herself to her feet. The insane mercenary blinked at her for a few seconds, before voicing his startlement. "Ah, if it isn't the old pain in my ass!" He chuckled. "I saw you lurking around recently, but didn't think you were with the same softy outfit as Kashim here."
"What?" the previously mentioned pilot asked, along with Kaname, who was looking between the A.S. with the destroyed gun and the family member who, for all she knew, had just dropped from orbit.
Gauron didn't seem to notice this, continuing his speech. "I'm afraid this time, though, I don't really have any use for you. You just wouldn't be a challenge." The last statement seemed to drip with venom, as he catapulted himself over the Savage, incidentally using its head as a pivot point, and tried to squash the pigtailed martial artist flat.
"Yeah, I never liked you either," Ranma quipped back, rolling to the side and just missing being pounded into the riverbed by the machine's foot. As Sousuke looked on in astonishment, he noticed the redhead moving one hand quickly in an easily recognizable small unit sign for "covered retreat."
"Tell me she's kidding," Mao's voice came from the young mercenary's cockpit's speakers. "She wants to distract that thing while we run?"
As Gauron turned, withdrawing a large knife from somewhere on his A.S.'s torso and slashing at Ranma, who actually leapt, landing on the top of the blade, running up the thing's arm and kicking it in the head, Sousuke replied dryly, "I believe that she's making a good distraction of herself."
Mao just sighed. "This hunk of junk's too badly damaged, so I'll transfer over to yours. Once that's done, we're going to have to grab Kaname and run like hell, understood?"
"Not a problem," Sousuke replied, nodding.
HR.
"Approaching drop point." Kurz winced at the voice of his Arm Slave's A.I, wishing that Mithril could have shelled out for a half decent voice program as he made several tiny adjustments to better aim for the landing strip near the edge of the military base. His tactical display showed his commanding officer coming down behind him, preparing to cover him as he disposed of the bomb inside of the aircraft.
Hitting the release on the airfoil that had carried him to the drop-zone, he tried not to wince as his M9 hit the ground with a loud, reverberating impact and his teeth clacked together. Instead, he immediately ran forward, withdrawing a chainblade he'd been specially issued for the mission and cutting a slice out of the side of a commercial airliner. As he did so, he scanned the windows above the cargo area, looking for any sign of his teammates, but winced when he didn't see them.
He resisted the urge to shake himself as a plate of metal fell from the plane's side and he reached in, grabbing the bomb. Of course, Sousuke and Mao were probably off somewhere preparing to give support to the ground troops, though he was really wondering why he couldn't detect the tracking gear in their weapons by this point.
"Damn it," he muttered, as the bomb was hurled up into the air, exploding massively. "If you guys are out there, that's one hell of a signal!"
HR.
"Why won't you stand still and die?" Gauron bellowed, as he leapt up after his target, wondering if the bitch had always been this good, or if she'd somehow gotten better.
"Die to a failure like you?" Ranma asked, smirking as she saw the infinitesimal twitch in the enemy machine's movements that meant Gauron had just made a fist without wanting to, and taking a moment to scan for Kaname and the others. She sighed in relief, noting that they were out of her range, which meant they could probably get enough of a running start to ditch the Savage and get lost in the forest, if they had any brains.
Unfortunately, while trying to ensure that the others had gotten away, Ranma had stopped moving for a brief second, which would likely have gotten her killed, or at the least badly battered, if it weren't for the fact that Gauron had managed to calm himself down after her last jab.
He'd worked with Ranma many times before, and had actually seen him or her get several American M3 pilots so mad that they'd blown each other's heads off. Carefully surveying his surroundings, as he knew the martial artist couldn't actually do any damage to the Lambda driver equipped Codarl, he realized exactly what the martial artist was doing. "You bitch..." he howled, a whining noise beginning in his machine's cockpit as his Lambda driver suddenly gained a massive boost of furious will.
Ranma continued to stand in place, shocked, as a massive explosion went off about a mile to the south and she was hit by a wave of Chi worthy of a pissed off Saffron at about the same time. "That... No way in hell!" she yelled, as the diffuse wave was proceeded by an actual physical force, emanating from the Arm Slave and sending the martial artist flying across the river and into a tree on the opposite bank.
She was just shaking off the impact and trying to get the immense battle aura that had suddenly infused everything around her to stop pounding her extra senses when the red machine came at her with its knife again, slicing the tree she'd already damaged in half as she rolled away. "I don't care about the mission right now," Gauron's voice boomed. "I'm going to kill you!"
"Well, at least I distracted him," Ranma muttered, vaulting to her feet and starting to run as Gauron turned from his defoliating project to chase her.
HR.
Akane Chidori didn't think she'd ever made travel plans faster in her entire life, as she sat on a 747 bound for Tokyo, nervously watching a CNN special report on the hijacking of the airliner that contained her daughter and her class. Immediately after Nabiki had given her the news and she'd seen the story break, she'd called the girl's apartment in Tokyo, hoping against hope that she had decided to stay home today.
The blue-black haired woman looked down at the ocean as it passed beneath her, thinking about the cheerful, yet panic inducing message that had greeted her when the answering machine had picked up. "Sorry, but I'll be gone for the next week, leave a message and I'll get back to you after Monday."
For a moment, the former Tendo contemplated calling Ranma and seeing if he was willing to go riding to her daughter's rescue, but scolded herself for her idiocy. After all, venturing into the middle of war torn areas was something even he wasn't stupid enough to do... probably.
Leaning back in her chair and pulling her gaze away from the window, Akane caught sight of the screen at the front of the business class compartment, which was playing the movie she'd originally come to the U.S. in order to star in, a stupid spy action flick with more horrible oriental accents than she'd really like to admit, especially since one of them was hers.
For a moment, she wondered if Kaname had been kidnapped specifically to target her, but shook her head. She was pretty famous, but not that well known, and it was probably stupid to think that she was responsible for this. After all, she hadn't been responsible for much in Kaname's life over the past five years.
"Kaname-chan, please be all right," she whispered, worriedly.
HR.
"What do you think that was?" Kaname asked, as she, Mao and a female Sousuke stood in the rain, staring up at a sky which was darkening slowly from a massive explosion of light.
The sergeant major shrugged. She actually had a couple of ideas, but neither of them were really good to suggest to a shivering civilian in nothing but a lab coat.
"It wasn't an Arm Slave explosion," Sousuke reported, sharing none of her superior's tact. "It was large enough to be the explosive planted aboard the plane, but the angle was too high for it to have detonated on the ground."
Mao winced, especially when she saw Kaname's eyes widen, but nodded. "That means that either it wasn't in the plane, or the plane took off before it exploded," she noted, having faith in Sousuke's analysis of the situation as the most explosives savvy person she'd ever met.
"Then... we should go back and see if they're okay," Kaname said, uncertainly.
"If the explosive went off outside of the aircraft, it could mean that our reinforcements are here," Sousuke suggested, just as Mao was about to veto the idea.
"I suppose you could be right," the older woman agreed, sighing in annoyance. "But we'd better move around to avoid that stretch of river where that damned A.S. was."
Sousuke nodded, though Kaname winced at the reminder of what was happening with Ranma, and the three moved out.
HR.
"All right, that's everyone," Captain McAllen noted, as the last of the civilians filed onto the transport planes from the now rather useless hulk of the 747.
"Yeah, everyone but the rest of our team," Kurz replied, scanning the various outbuildings for any sign of Sousuke or Mao.
"Yeah, well unfortunately we've been given orders to pull back without them," the captain said, sounding reluctant himself, but understanding the mission. "Load up on the transport and let's get home."
"Sorry sir, but what?" Kurz asked, frowning.
"You heard me, Sergeant," the captain snapped, irritably.
Kurz' mouth suddenly formed into a grin, as he took one arm from its usual control sleeve, reaching forward and flicking a switch on the console in front of him back and fourth rapidly. "Sorry sir, but I'm losing you, something's wrong with my comm. system. I'm going to look for Urzu 2 and Urzu 7, over."
"What? Weber, you'd better not..." Kurz finally flipped the switch for the last time, silencing his radio, and returned his hand to its control sleeve.
"Incoming priority transmission from TDD-1," his artificial intelligence voice informed him several seconds later, as he was rapidly approaching a tree line where he could see the obvious signs of something large breaking its way through.
"Ah, shut up," he muttered, wondering precisely how fired he'd be when he got back as he heard the transport helicopter flying away overhead.
Turning his full attention to the trail before him, he noted that it was most likely made by a large Arm Slave, if not two walking together, and there were a lot of large shell casings nearby. He didn't exactly need his rather good wilderness tracking skills to figure out that it was probably where the other Mithril operatives had gone, and as the constant pulse of the Tuatha de Danaan's comm. request sat in the corner of his main screen, he did his best to ignore it and track the trail.
This, of course, became exponentially easier when he edged out of the trees at a river bed a few minutes later to see several trees cut down by gun fire, and a few craters in the riverbank where grenades had obviously gone off.
Noticing an empty RK-92 laying face down in the water, he cursed and was about to dismount and try tracking the others on foot when a loud explosion echoed from slightly down river. Curious, he magnified the view down stream and blinked as he saw an unknown, thin A.S, which was glowing with a red aura and appeared to be holding a combat knife against something crumpled at the base of a tree.
Without thinking, the sniper squeezed off several shots in succession, which smashed into the glowing machine and sent it stumbling to the side. Abruptly, the red haze disappeared from around the enemy machine, and it turned, charging down the stream. "What the hell was that?" the sniper muttered, contemplating moving after the strange Arm Slave, but reconsidering as it managed to run out of range more quickly than any other he'd ever seen.
He was about to dismiss what he'd seen, at least for the moment, when he saw the thing that the other A.S. had been holding its knife to move, resolving into a human figure who laboriously made its way up the river bank. He was about to ask who they were, when they apparently lost their grip on the slope and fell back towards the water.
"Damn it," the A.S. pilot cursed, moving to help whoever it was and hoping that it wasn't any of his teammates, as they didn't look too good.
HR.
"No one's here," Kaname observed, as she, Mao and Sousuke hunkered behind a bush, staring across the tarmac at the 747 with the gutted cargo deck.
"There are several hundred troops on the base," Sousuke replied, before a glare from the teal haired girl caused her to shut her mouth.
"Well, what do we do now?" the Chidori girl asked, sighing.
"We could head back to that river," Mao offered. "Continue with the plan from before.
"If that other A.S. isn't still there, yes," Sousuke agreed.
"We could try and sneak past it," Kaname offered, only to get a shake of the head from the redhead.
"Most Arm Slaves have powerful infrared sensors. The fact that it hasn't found us already is surprising," Mao explained, when Sousuke appeared to be reluctant to do the same. "That means we should probably take advantage of the fact that we haven't been spotted and head through the forest rather than overland."
Sousuke nodded, and Kaname only looked at the others, confused, before resisting the urge to sneeze. Having apparently gotten as close to universal agreement as they were likely to get, all three started walking.
HR.
It was half an hour later when they first heard it. It was Sousuke who stopped, turning nervously and tightening her grip on her assault rifle. "Did you hear that?" she asked, causing the other two to look back towards her.
"Hear what?" Kaname asked, wrapping her lab coat around herself, and being rather grateful that the rain had stopped a few minutes before.
"It sounds like something's moving towards us through the bush," Sousuke reported, and Mao was instantly on alert, straining to hear what the younger mercenary did. Just as she thought she heard something, Kaname opened her mouth to speak up, and was immediately shhed.
She crossed her arms, trying to figure out what the other two were all excited about, when she heard a crackling sound similar to the one Sousuke's Savage had made as it had cut through the trees, though it was rather quiet, getting steadily louder.
"We'd better hide," the elder mercenary said, looking around for a good tree to use as cover.
"But I thought you said they could see us?" the teal haired girl asked, worriedly.
"They can, but if we can get in position, one of us could do some damage when they spot another," Sousuke explained, climbing a nearby tree.
"What do I do?" Kaname asked, looking between the two.
Sousuke was about to answer, when a form suddenly broke through the trees nearby, and Kaname scrambled for cover. As she did, however, Mao began laughing from where she'd hidden in a natural bowl created by the base and roots of one tree. "What's so funny?" the Chidori girl asked, indignantly, from where she was hiding behind the tree Sousuke was up.
"That's an M9," the Sergeant Major called. "Who's there?"
"Only your knight in shining armor," Kurz' voice came from the speakers on the Mithril A.S. "You guys really worked hard to avoid me, huh?"
"Shut up and report, Sergeant," Mao said, trying to hold back a grin at the fact that backup had arrived.
"Well, the report's not good," Kurz admitted. "First off, the evac plane's gone, and I sorta disobeyed orders to find you... but don't tell them that, I just had a little radio malfunction, that's all."
"What?" Mao exclaimed, shocked, but she was cut off by Kurz' next report.
"Secondly, there's some strange new Arm Slave out here that likes glowing, and we've got a man down." Saying this, the blond sniper lowered one of his M9's hands, revealing a battered, unconscious redhead who was bleeding copiously from several wounds.
HR.
"Captain, Urzu 6 is reporting in," an excited technician called across the bridge of the Tuatha de Danaan, causing Tessa's head to rise immediately.
"Put him through," she ordered. She hadn't exactly been pleased when it turned out that Sergeant Sagara and Sergeant Major Mao had gone missing, both due to the probable loss of life and the fact that it would likely cripple Urzu group, but the loss of the sniper had been even worse, as he'd apparently taken it upon himself to disobey orders and head in after the others, which was something she could sympathize with, even if she didn't agree with it.
"Urzu 6 to base, are you receiving?" Kurz' voice came over the bridge's speakers, and Tessa nodded.
"We're here, report," she demanded, before Lieutenant Commander Kalinin could even open his mouth, visibly surprising him.
"I've found the target and the other members of Urzu group," the sniper reported. "Unfortunately we've only got my Arm Slave and a couple of assault rifles with low ammunition. Also, we have a critically wounded Intel officer out here."
"Ranma?" the captain asked, sharply.
"Yeah, how'd you..." Kurz started, before deciding that it was unimportant. "Look, she's pretty badly hurt, and we don't have much out here to treat her. Add that to three other people we need to extract and..." He trailed off, but Tessa could make the connection easily enough.
The problem was that all of the people there likely couldn't be carried on Kurz' M9, even if they had an evacuation corridor, which they currently didn't have. This meant that they would have to move at a human's walking pace, and the injured soldier would likely die in the time it took to get out, not to mention that enemy patrols would likely find them.
As a half dozen strategies for getting everyone out of the situation flashed through Tessa's mind, her hand tapped away at the small computer display screen built into her chair arm, going through the list of resources at her command. As the contents of the ship's missile tubes flashed over the screen, her eyes widened.
"Sergeant Weber," she called into the open air. "Hold position and transmit your exact coordinates, help is on the way."
"Yes Ma'am," Kurz said, sounding very relieved, as the comm. channel closed and everyone on the bridge looked at Tessa oddly, especially her second in command and Kalinin.
"Captain?" Mardukas asked, curiously.
"Prepare the Arbalest to launch on the coordinates Mr. Weber gives us, and once that is done, we will move the de Danaan to this location." Saying this, she tapped a button on her control screen, causing the screen at the front of the room to show a local map with a set of cross-hairs marking a point near the coast.
"Ma'am?" Mardukas asked, though Kalinin's mouth quirked up into a half smile as he suddenly realized what she was planning.
"We've retrieved the coordinates," the radio technician reported.
"Good," Tessa nodded. "Now do it."
HR.
"Stupid piece of junk," Gauron muttered, as he stood, glaring at the Arm Slave that Amalgam laughingly called top of the line. Granted, it had performed reasonably for the first little while, but then, somehow, it had been outperformed by... her.
Well, it hadn't exactly been outperformed, since before that other A.S. had shown up to ruin his fun he'd been on the verge of killing her, but the fact that the overheat alarms had been blaring even then irritated him immensely.
Granted, he'd seen her destroy entire buildings when she was good and pissed, and had been on the receiving end of one of those attacks, but an Arm Slave could do the same thing, and with a lot less effort, especially one of the new generation ones.
Now, after one fight with her, or rather one fight with her and another, rather mediocre, one against Kashim, the damned thing was overheated and had damage to the left arm from the damned unknown M9's gunfire, and it would take another twenty minutes for it to cool down to the point of usability again.
"When this thing's back up and running I'll kill her, then I'll have to deal with Kashim," he decided, distracting himself from the disappointing test run with the thought of the battle to come.
HR.
Sitting at the small desk in her quarters, Captain Tessa Testerossa stared at a small black piglet, which was nervously staring back, and which she could swear was sweating under her gaze. While the de Danaan was enroute to the rendezvous point, she'd excused herself from the bridge for personal reasons, which translated, in this case, to interrogating an animal that couldn't talk, and she'd been trying to figure out what questions to ask it and how to get answers for the past five minutes.
"One bwee for yes, two bwees for no?" she finally offered, causing the animal to jump several inches off of the table at the suddenness of the question. Finally, it just nodded, and Tessa's eyebrow rose. "Well, that could work too," she admitted to herself, a little sheepishly.
"You're definitely smarter than a normal pig, if you can understand what I'm saying," she observed, and the pig nodded again. She wondered briefly if the thing was some form of robot, but discarded that solution as she realized that it had been examined by the ship's medical staff, and she was relatively sure they could tell the difference between blood and oil.
At the moment, she wasn't aware of any projects that were breeding super-intelligent pigs, though if there was one, she supposed there was no reason that someone would tell her. "Hmm," she finally said. "Some sort of brain transplant?" When the pig somehow managed to faceplant into the table, she frowned. "A Whispered pig?"
At this, the piglet looked at her in confused exasperation, before walking over to the side of the table, carefully being studied by Tessa as it did so, and knocking over her glass of tea. What happened next was a little too hard for the Mithril captain to follow, but it ended in her little desk breaking, and her in a tangle of arms and legs with another person.
"...you know, that was a really dumb idea now that I think about it," the person Tessa was laying under commented, in a nervous sounding female voice.
"What?" Tessa managed to ask, as the rather heavy weight on her chest moved, and she managed to sit up, noticing a girl with green eyes and dark hair, the pink bandanna that her pet pig had worn around its neck tied over her forehead. Instantly, the Mercenary leapt into action... or at least, she shuffled backwards into a wall as quickly as she could, pulling her service pistol out of a pocket and leveling it at the intruder. "Wh... who are you?" she demanded, shakily.
The dark haired girl had a nearly impossible to repress impulse to reach up and scratch the back of her neck, but decided against it as Tessa's gun hand looked rather shaky, and she wasn't sure if she'd feel worse about getting shot or having the other girl shoot herself in the leg. "Um, my name's Ino Hibiki," she said, hurriedly. "I didn't see anything!"
"What?" Tessa asked, confused.
"I know this sub's some big military secret and such, but I didn't see the missiles, and the Arm Slaves, and that big glass tube that you used to..." Ino immediately clamped a hand over her mouth, her eyes shifting nervously from Tessa to the door, and wondering if it was worth her modesty to try and get lost.
Tessa knew that the girl in front of her could be putting on an act to make her lower her guard, but the panicked babbling she'd just partaken in made the silver haired girl rather doubtful of that. Slowly, she stood, keeping the gun pointed as best she could, and walked over to her closet to get something for the other to put on. After the bandannaed girl had restored some modesty, she asked, "How did you get aboard this ship? We haven't been in port in several months."
"It's been months?" Ino asked, suddenly rather worried. "Well, I was..." She looked down at her hands, as they played with the buttons on the front of the suit jacket she'd been tossed. "I sort of ran away from home, but it was an accident."
"An accident?" Tessa asked, levelly, though the incredulity in the question was obvious from the look on her face.
"I was really mad at Dad," Ino explained. "It turns out this weird curse of his is inheritable, and I got it."
"That's why you were a pig," Tessa said, more than asked, getting a nod from the other.
"Right. Not only am I a pig, I'm a BOY pig!" Ino yelled angrily. "And all because of dad and his stupid Jusenkyo curse." Suddenly, she realized she was venting her grievances at a person who had a gun aimed at her and at least a few good reasons to shoot her, calming down slightly. "He got me so mad that I failed to take my guide pig with me when I left the house, and then I ended up in an engine room, or something," she explained sheepishly.
"I see," Tessa said, though her attention had wandered after Ino had talked about Jusenkyo curses. "You were a male pig, why was that?"
Ino shrugged, rather glad to have the subject changed to something other than her trespassing on some military super sub. "I don't know, Dad says I look exactly like he did when he first got the curse, but he's gotten a lot bigger since then."
"Oh," Tessa said, and then she shook her head. What she'd just thought of was rather interesting, and could be extremely important later, however she was currently dealing with what she was now pretty sure was a civilian on her ship, as she'd never seen anyone with acting that good, or a curse, for that matter. On top of this, the operation to rescue the URZU team and their passengers was going to start in an hour and twenty-seven minutes.
"I'm sorry," Tessa finally said. "But we're in a state of readiness right now and I don't have time to deal with you." As she moved, Ino's eyes widened. Tessa really didn't seem the type to just shoot someone or something, but she really didn't want to put that to the test, and as the other girl's gun hand started to move, she tensed up.
That was, of course, before the Mithril officer put her pistol down on her dresser and reached for an intercom panel. "Security to the captain's quarters, unauthorized personnel. Please use minimal force in apprehension."
Ino didn't move for several seconds, and probably would have stayed there, frozen in shock, if the door to the room hadn't flown open a minute later, revealing Commander Mardukas, panting heavily and with his hat knocked slightly to the side. "Madam Captain, are you all right? Were is he?" he demanded, roughly.
"Commander?" Tessa asked, surprised. "I only called for Security to escort this young lady to a holding cell until we can offload her."
"Oh," Mardukas said, catching sight of Ino and blinking. "Well, um, of course, Ma'am." Saying this, he quickly straightened his cap and stood to his usual attention. "I apologize for bothering you."
Tessa just looked oddly at the older man as he helped Ino up and out of the room.
HR.
"So, how is she?" Mao asked, as she took a sip from one of the hydration packs that had been pulled out of Kurz's A.S.'s survival kit and grimaced, wishing that Mithril would at least shell out enough to make the vitamin filled liquid taste like something other than dissolved chalk.
From the ground nearby, Kaname shook her head. "She's been muttering things," she admitted. "The fever's not going down, but the bandages are still good." She looked down at Ranma's pale, sweating face, and wiped her forehead with a towel.
"I can't believe she managed to hold that thing off that long," the sergeant major shook her head.
"What I want to know is where it is now," Sousuke replied, from her vantage point in a tree, peering into the murky woods nearby. "I doubt Kurz's shot damaged it that much."
"What, you doubt my abilities?" the sniper's voice came crackling from a radio the younger mercenary was holding. "It looked like it was retreating for another reason, though I'll admit..." He trailed off for a moment, which caused Mao to look away from Ranma.
"Urzu 6? What's wrong?" she asked, worriedly.
"Holy..." was about all the sniper got out, before his Arm Slave had backed into the clearing the others were in, and he'd put himself between them and the open area. Mao was about to ask him what the hell he was doing, when the sound of a tremendous explosion ripped through the area.
When the noise and dust had settled, the M9 moved out of the way to reveal a huge, deep trench in the ground with a shining white machine crouching at the end of it. "That's one hell of a taxi service," the blond muttered, surprised.
"I'm guessing it's to help us transport everyone out of here," Mao said. "Sousuke?"
"Got it," the red haired girl replied, leaping out of the tree and making a B-line for the white A.S.
"All right," Mao ordered. "I'm guessing that explosion's probably told some people we're here, and since our new machine doesn't look like it's got any weapons on it, Urzu 7, you transport Kaname and Ranma. Urzu 6, you're with me."
"Yes, ma'am," both of the other mercenaries replied, as Kaname looked on in confusion, and was startled when the white machine walked over to her and lowered a hand.
"Oh boy," she gulped, trying to fortify her stomach. "Here we go again."
END.
Well, that's all for now, folks. Please, Tell us what you think of this fic in a review.