Chapter 7: Shining Finger Sword!
For the second time in one night, or maybe it was morning by this point, Kaname was holding desperately to a moving Arm Slave, which was running through the forest. This time the ride was much smoother, the white machine seeming to be much better at keeping itself steady than the Russian bear she'd previously been held in the hand of, but that was about the only improvement in the situation, as this time she was trying to keep a semi-conscious, delirious relative from rolling off of the thing's cupped hands, and was getting tired of being called a stupid panda.
"Just hold still, please," the teal haired girl whispered, as she grabbed Ranma's flailing arm, wincing as she noted a small blotch of red spreading under the bandage there. The older redhead seemed to hear her plea, settling down somewhat, and Kaname used the opportunity to look out past the shoulder of the Arbalest, noting that they were currently running across a rather flat area, the forest rapidly receding behind them.
Digging through one of the pockets in her labcoat, Kaname came up with a radio that had been given to her to replace the one she'd accidentally dropped in the water when the weird red A.S. had attacked, pushing the call button. "Do you know where we're going?" she asked, somewhat worried, as she was certain that she'd felt at least a few turns while they were in the forest, and she couldn't see anything of interest ahead.
"The coordinates are clear," Sousuke's businesslike voice returned quickly. "Please keep this frequency clear if possible."
"Oh," the Chidori girl muttered, turning the radio off just as Sousuke was about to say something that she couldn't catch. "Jerk." She let off a soft sigh, having actually gotten used to the motion of the A.S. enough to enjoy the scenery and tried to do so, forgetting the fact that her uncle was bleeding copiously right next to her and she'd been shot at at least a few times tonight.
This activity was interrupted, however, when Ranma started to move again, and Kaname turned to settle the delirious mercenary down. She was spectacularly unsuccessful, as the pigtailed martial artist managed to sit up straight, turning her head to the side and staring fixedly into the distance.
"Uncle Ranma, you're going to make your injuries worse," the younger girl said, unsure if she should try to push the other down or leave her where she was.
Abruptly, Ranma's eyes snapped to lock onto Kaname's, and the Chidori girl gulped loudly when she saw that they seemed perfectly clear. "He's here," she said, levelly.
"He's here?" Kaname asked, confused. "Who's he?"
"Gauron," Ranma said, simply, causing Kaname to blink in confusion, before the redhead fell backwards, almost sending herself off of the side of Arbalest's hand before Kaname grabbed her. Frowning worriedly, the teal haired girl looked down at her radio.
"Who cares if he doesn't want to talk to me," she grumbled, before picking the thing up, flicking the power switch and pushing transmit. "Sousuke? Uncle Ranma just said 'Gauron' is here,' whatever that means."
Inside of the new Arm Slave's cockpit, Sousuke's eyes widened. She knew that Ranma was delirious, but she also knew that he or she had some very unusual abilities. Frowning, she also noted that if anyone was in the area, Kaname's unsecured radio transmission had probably already given them away. "A.I, initiate active scan for hostiles in the area," she ordered, quickly.
"Yes, Ma'am," the Arbalest's computer reported, and Sousuke briefly let her eyebrow raise, as most units were programmed with a simple affirmative, as they very rarely had good enough vocal recognition routines to recognize gender. "Seven contacts detected," the voice came again, and a topographical map appeared in the bottom of the cockpit's main view screen, several blips lit up nearby.
"Send this to Urzu 6 and request an opinion," Sousuke ordered, frowning darkly, as she suddenly saw the blips beginning to converge rapidly.
Moments later, Mao's voice came over the comm, angrily. "How the hell did they find us?" she demanded, irritably. "Sousuke, dump the passengers somewhere safe, and keep watch over them. with your loadout, you aren't prepared for action and I wouldn't trust a shiny new design like that farther than I could throw it."
"Yes, Ma'am," Sousuke replied, ignoring the fact that, for some reason, one of the cockpit's side windows was flashing a weapons manifest consisting of two anti-personnel Gatling cannons, an Arm Slave knife, and some sort of throwing projectile, along with a bright red exclamation mark.
HR.
"This is gunna be fun," Gauron licked his lips as the Codarl ran at the head of a squad of RK-92s, and he replayed the last message that they had managed to intercept. It had been the target, and she'd apparently been talking to Kashim. Even better, the bitch was there, too.
As an active radar signature was detected reflecting off of the red Arm Slave, its pilot grinned, letting the ECM suite zero in on the target and display it in front of him. "I'll get rid of the noisy one, you six cover me and take care of any interference," he ordered.
After getting a set of rather irritated acknowledgments, Gauron accelerated as quickly as he could, bursting out of the forest and into a field to see a white machine kneeling down, apparently moving something on the ground. "Too easy," he smirked, bringing up the gun he'd seized from one of the base's RK-92s and opening fire.
Unfortunately for him, the white Arm Slave apparently still had a lock on him with its radar, and it managed to roll out of the way just as the shells passed through the air that it had once occupied.
"Hey Kashim, that you?" Gauron asked, as he saw out of the corner of his eye that his six 'escorts' were engaging that damned annoying M9 which had shot at him earlier, along with some crazy woman hanging onto the machine's shoulder with a pair of assault rifles.
The white Arm Slave didn't respond to Gauron's comment, merely recovering from its dive, coming back at the brown haired man with its anti-personnel guns blazing and bouncing off of Codarl's armor even without the help of its Lambda driver.
"Oh now come on, that tickles!" the insane mercenary laughed, returning fire and grinning widely as the Mithril machine rapidly began dodging his fire. "Come on now, tell me you can do better than that!"
Several seconds later, when he saw that the white machine was just insisting on dodging his fire and returning it ineffectively, Gauron frowned darkly. "Now, now, this just isn't any fun," he grumbled. "How am I supposed to enjoy killing you when I can't even see your face, and you won't stand still?"
Turning slowly, though keeping an eye on the white Arm Slave to make sure it didn't close to melee range, his frown vanished when he noticed two figures reclining under a small rock outcropping near where he'd first seen the enemy. "Hey, I wonder, is that the little girl I was sent for?" he asked, grinning as he saw one of the figures flinching back into the grotto. "And I bet it's one of your friends with her, hmm white knight? Wonder what happens if I shoot 'em? I'm sure I could aim well enough to miss the girl... probably."
"Don't touch them," the voice wasn't yelled, but it was sudden enough to make the unbalanced man almost jump, especially since it wasn't the one he was expecting.
Looking over to his communications screen, Gauron's eyes widened as he saw a familiar face staring back at him, her eyes the cold, steel blue that they were whenever she was serious. "What?" he demanded, angrily. "I thought... where's Kashim?"
"Shut up!" The redhead on the communications screen said, and the older man was just barely in time to dodge as the white A.S. flew past him, knife extended to slice off Codarl's head.
"Heh, well, this is a surprise," he observed, spinning and letting a shot loose at the white machine's back, which it rolled underneath. "I could have sworn rammin an A.S. knife up your ass would kill you, but here you are, back for more. Unfortunately, you're not the one I wanted to fight, now where's Kashim? Honestly, did you actually think that you could pilot an Arm Slave well enough to beat me?" He began a long, arrogant laugh... right at about the time the white A.S. turned, letting fly with its knife and smashing Codarl in the left arm.
Abruptly, sirens began wailing, and every systems indicator in that appendage went red, and then black, before Gauron's wide eyes.
"I believe you'll find I'm an expert in piloting Arm Slaves," the redhead on the comm. screen said, her face completely devoid of Ranma's usual cocky expression.
"God damn it!" the psychotic mercenary snarled. "There's another one, and she's just as damned good!" He knew full well that Ranma couldn't beat him in an Arm Slave, or at least she couldn't five years ago, about the only thing he'd ever held over her head. She most definitely couldn't pull off the move that had just disabled his arm, as she insisted on not using weapons whenever possible, saying something about them being 'too easy to kill with.' "Feh, well if you wanna play it that way," he snarled, "activate the Lambda Driver."
A confused expression crossed the face of the redhead on the other end of Gauron's comm. line, as Codarl's computer acknowledged, and he could feel the sudden, energetic rush of the Lambda system kicking on. "Now, whoever you are, I'm afraid this suddenly isn't fun anymore," the brown haired man growled, charging at the white Arm Slave with a red corona building around him.
HR.
Boredom wasn't usually part of a Hibiki's life. Even for Ino, who had spent most of it on her family's pig farm or going to school, the mere act of raising Sumo pigs, of watching Katsunishiki take the top prize in the tournaments every year, or watching her father getting smashed through a wall before getting up as if nothing had happened, was interesting. As a result of this, the black and pink haired girl was going slowly, inexorably insane as she stared across a tiny, grey walled room at a set of bars, on the other side of which was a narrow, grey walled corridor.
She'd tried getting lost, but the room was far too small, and there was nothing in it but sanitary facilities and a bench. She'd gone through the pockets of the uniform jacket she was wearing, but had only found 20 franks, some lint, and an identification card, which she'd read three times, including the small print legal notice on the bottom, before tossing it at the bars. By this point, she was contemplating climbing up on the sink and changing back and forth from cursed form just to pass the time.
"Kami, I'm bored," she muttered, gazing up at the ceiling. "How long have I been in here? When am I going to get out? When am I going to talk to someone? Come to think of it, when am I going to get something to eat?" She sighed, slumping back against the wall, when a chuckle broke her silent sulking. Looking over sharply, she noticed a dark skinned man wearing a cast and carrying a cane leaning against the wall.
"You've only been in here for an hour, you know," he said, conversationally.
"It's... only been an hour?" the young girl asked, looking at the older man with eyes half full of tears. At his nod, she contemplated if she could knock herself unconscious on one of the walls.
"So, what're you in for?" the man asked, casually, extracting a small piece of jerky from his pocket and unwrapping it, before breaking off half and tossing it to her.
"Um, I followed the captain around for the last week," Ino said, before eagerly beginning to chew the food she'd been given.
"And that got you thrown in here because..." the black man asked, raising one eyebrow.
"She didn't know I was doing it," the Hibiki girl said, sheepishly.
"How did you..." the man stopped himself, shaking his head. "Come to think of it, that's probably classified so high I'll never see it in the rest of my life, but suddenly I'm a lot more embarrassed for getting this duty by letting a recruit shoot me in the foot."
"You got shot in the foot?" the dark haired girl asked, curiously.
"Look, it's a really embarrassing story, and I'd rather not tell it," her guard deferred, shaking his head.
"Come on, I'm dying of boredom here, please tell me," she begged, leaning forward and looking as cute as she possibly could.
"Damn it," the large black man said, before sighing. "Okay, but if you tell anyone, I'll..." He shrugged. "Probably do nothing, since you'll be out of here in a week regardless. Anyhow, I was at the training base in Scotland, and..."
HR.
Kaname bit her lip as she saw Sousuke staggering back from yet another onslaught from the glowing red Arm Slave. The advantage in the combat seemed to be running back and forth like a particularly destructive game of seesaw, as Sousuke had at first seemed totally outmatched, and then he had managed to take one of his enemy's arms off, before it had started glowing and outflanking him at every turn.
Unfortunately, the seesaw now appeared to have a ten ton weight on the red machine's side, as Sousuke hadn't landed a blow since the arm had been destroyed, and Kurz and Mao were busy closer to the forest, engaging the three Savages that were still standing.
To make things worse, as she watched the battle, the Chidori girl's view seemed to begin to distort, strange lines and numbers flickering on the edges of her awareness.
As the red machine effortlessly deflected a rapid knife attack from Sousuke, and a dome of crackling energy formed around it, she suddenly couldn't see for equations, trying to shake them out of her view, but failing. For a brief second, she wondered if she was still in the tank, with that crazy woman trying to give her sleep learning courses from hell, when Ranma's muttering voice broke through her thoughts. She missed what the redhead said at first, but just managed to tune back in to the real world, somewhat, when she spoke again. "Chi amplification, or something... Ryoga, no, too angry..."
Her conscious mind discarded that comment as yet another nonsensical thing said by a feverish individual, but suddenly, the equations in her field of view seemed to click into place, dumping knowledge into her mind as though she'd just broken the biggest study block in recorded history.
Her eyes widened, as she suddenly recognized what the red machine's glowing energy aura was, and she noted that on Sousuke's machine's back was a recognizable assembly. "Lambda driver," she whispered, before picking up her radio.
"Sousuke!" she called, quickly. "Activate the Lambda driver!"
"The what?" Sousuke asked, as she leapt away from Gauron, taking a defensive position and watching her opponent carefully.
Kaname didn't have to respond, as Arbalest's computer did it for her. "Lambda Driver is capable of activation. Activate?"
Normally, activating an untested system on a machine she'd never piloted would be about the same as aiming her pistol at her forehead and pulling the trigger, but since Gauron seemed very willing to do that without her input, the Sagara girl shrugged.
"Activate it," she ordered, and abruptly, Arbalest began to hum.
"Sousuke?" Gauron asked, turning from the white Arm Slave to Kaname. "Girlie, you must be confused. Maybe it's a good thing we're planning to rewire that pretty little head of yours."
Abruptly, the hum in Sousuke's cockpit began to rise in volume, and a set of gauges on a side panel began to rise along with the sound. "You're not going to touch her," the Mithril mercenary said, calmly.
"What? She thinks you're Kashim," the brown haired man said. "Come to think of it, who the hell are you?" He shrugged, and then shook his head. "It doesn't really matter, I guess. I'll just kill you and your friends, then take the girlie over there and hunt him down."
"Sousuke, you hear that?" Kaname asked, loudly. "He plans on killing your friends and Uncle Ranma. He plans on killing them all, and then he's going to take me back to have... things... hooked up to me. Do you want that, Sousuke?"
"Look, lady, I get you're confused, but STOP calling her Kashim!" Gauron roared, stepping towards Kaname and raising his knife. This turned out to be a mistake, as the redhead in the white Arm Slave responded to Kaname's question.
"No, I don't want that," she muttered, suddenly recalling the remnants of a rebel camp several years ago, Gauron standing in the open hatch of an Arm Slave and laughing down at the bodies. Without really having to think about it, she could see them slowly being replaced with Mao, slumped over a machine gun emplacement, Kurz laying dead on top of a stone hut, and Ranma, his body blown half away in the middle of the ground.
The last image she would rather not think about, as it was Kaname, being held up by the hair, while the brown haired man grinned down at her sadistically. "I won't let that happen!"
"What the hell?" Gauron managed to get out, before a bright blue light exploded from Sousuke's Arm Slave, washing the entire surrounding area, and seeming to wipe the Codarl out of existence without even slowing down.
HR.
Nabiki Mihama really, really needed a cup of coffee as she stood next to her car at Narita International Airport, trying to blink away the tiny orange cat-things that were floating around in her field of view. By this point, she was pretty sure that she fell under the category of legally intoxicated without having taken a drink, as she stared balefully at the arrivals and departures board, waiting for her younger sister's flight to appear on it.
The last time this had happened, ten years ago, it had involved Kasumi, Herb of the Musk and a marriage proposal. She hoped, for the sake of whoever had perpetrated this kidnapping, that this incident wasn't that stupid or she'd help her sister beat the hell out of them.
The businesswoman struggled to hold back an expansive yawn, and leaned against the side of her vehicle for just a moment. Closing her eyes and letting herself relax in the cool air of the early morning, she was abruptly shaken, jumping several inches into the air.
"Nabiki, are you all right?" she rapidly opened her eyes, only to see Akane looking at her, concerned, and the sun beginning to brighten the horizon behind the former youngest Tendo daughter.
"I didn't just fall asleep on my car, did I?" she asked, embarrassed, and was even more so when Akane smirked at her. "Never mind that," she quickly said. "And I mean it, or I'm not letting you stay at my place."
Abruptly, Akane's face lost its small grin, and she turned serious. "I'm not going to your place," she answered. "I'm headed to Kaname's."
"Oh, right," Nabiki said, shaking her head and chiding herself, before opening the car door and disengaging the locks.
"Have you heard anything else about her since the CNN report?" the blue-black haired woman asked, concerned, as she climbed into the passenger seat of the sports car.
"Not really," the brunette replied. "Apparently the kids were recovered, but they're keeping really tight lipped on the names and status, so..." She noticed Akane gulp nervously, and would really like to comfort her, but had no idea how to do it. "I've got some people I know trying to figure out where Kaname is, but it's taking a while because they're busy with something big and they won't tell me what it is."
"Hmm," Akane nodded, seemingly distracted by the city lights as her sister's car sped through traffic.
"So I noticed he didn't come," this comment was unusually tentative for Nabiki, which meant that it sounded perfectly casual and innocent.
"Apparently everyone over there's going nuts," Akane replied. "Russia and China are muttering about starting a shooting war over this incident."
"Urk," Nabiki gulped, now rather understanding why Akane's husband wasn't around, as she slowly turned into Kaname's district. "Don't worry, I've got someone set to notify me if they find out anything about Kaname."
"Thanks, Nabiki," Akane said, sighing and leaning back in her seat. The businesswoman really wished that she could join her sister in relaxation, but as she almost hit a cat, and then a garbage can, she quickly refocused on the road.
HR.
"Ma'am, Urzu 6 and the ARX-7 have been successfully recovered," a crewman reported from a station near the front of de Danaan's bridge, causing Tessa to sigh in relief.
"Did anyone see us when we were surfaced?" the grey haired girl asked, concerned, but was relieved when she received a shake of the head from a radar operator. "Did their injured passenger make it?"
"Yes, Ma'am, she's being looked after in the infirmary, and Angel is being moved to a holding area," Kalinin reported, crisply.
Tessa nodded, reclining slightly in her chair and resisting the urge to fall asleep, as by this point she'd been awake for about twenty hours. "All right," she said, sharply. "Order medical to conduct these tests, and inform me of the results when I wake up."
She produced a small piece of paper from a pocket on her uniform, handing it to Commander Mardukas. "Commander, you have the bridge."
"Yes, Ma'am," the older man said, saluting as the young girl exited the room, and then looking down at the paper she had given him. Reading it over, he raised an eyebrow. "Paternity test?"
"Excuse me?" Kalinin asked, curiously.
Mardukas was tempted to dismiss the captain's last order as her just being too tired, but shrugged. An order was an order, and both Sousuke and Ranma had given them permission to do things like this when they'd signed the paperwork. That was, of course, if Lieutenant Commander Kalinin didn't have Ranma fired for the troop transport stowaway stunt... possibly out of a torpedo tube.
END.
Sousuke: Take this, my Love, My Hatred, and ALL OF MY SORROW!
Kaname: Um, that's the wrong giant robot...
Sousuke: Not a problem.
Gauron: I'm not dead yet...
Kaname: Oh shut up, you'll be stone dead in a minute.
Gauron: But I'm getting better!
Sorry about that, folks. Please read and review!