Naruto was just supposed to be an ordinary child in Konoha, but a series of sudden situations changed everything. In the first, Naruto lost his birth family and gained a giant, nine-tailed fox sealed in his stomach. In the second, Naruto gained a true friend. As he walked the path before him, Naruto couldn't help but wonder. Were the encounters that introduced him to the world of magic fate? Were they coincidence? Were they the work of the gods' meddling?
Naruto wasn't quite sure, but...
A tale of spectacular overkill begins now.
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Overkill,
A Naruto Fanfiction,
By Aleh
Chapter Five: Mokkori Trouble, Part One
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Disclaimer: I don't own any of the series used or referenced in this fic.
Also, I owe SoftRogue thanks for his suggestion of a cover story for the Seeds.
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A woman walked through the streets of Uminari as the breeze blew through her chestnut-colored hair. Her casual manner of dress and bearing belied the way she felt as she approached her brother and sister-in-law's café. Before she could enter, however, a man who she recognized as the kumicho of Japan's strongest Yakuza group exited, his eyes betraying the utter, complete terror that he felt to the woman's experienced eyes.
"Momoko-chan, Oniichan," Mikami Misato thought, "just what have you gotten yourselves involved in?"
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Slightly under a week later, Nanoha stood facing her school late at night, Raising Heart's staff form in her hand and her Barrier Jacket active. Yuuno was at her side, looking at his pupil and taking in the resolute expression she wore.
"Stand by, ready," Raising Heart declared.
"Lyrical, Magical," Nanoha chanted, swinging Raising Heart. "Jewel Seed Serial Twenty, Seal!"
"Sealing," Raising Heart confirmed.
The sky was lit with pink light for a moment and the Jewel Seed returned to its natural form, that of a small, blue stone. Raising Heart let out a burst of steam from its exhaust ports as the Seed approached.
"Nanoha, good job!" Yuuno told her.
Nanoha just panted from the effort as Raising Heart confirmed its receipt of the Jewel Seed.
"Oh no!" she exclaimed, suddenly. "I'm late!"
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In his hospital room, Naruto frowned. He was finally going to be discharged... and Nanoha wasn't there. She'd promised...
Then again, he'd sensed another Jewel Seed activate earlier. He supposed that Nanoha was still dealing with it, but he couldn't help but worry.
The time Naruto had spent in the hospital had passed excruciatingly slowly for him. Sure, his family kept him reasonably busy, rarely leaving him alone and giving him lessons on a variety of subjects. Nanoha even helped him keep up with his schoolwork and their studies at their juku. Alisa and Suzuka also visited as often as they could... and that was discounting the time Naruto spent with Hayate.
Still, it wasn't the same. Naruto had become used to living with his adopted family, spending far more time with his friends, and eating Momoko's cooking. Had it just been the change in rooms, he could have gotten used to it. Had it just been the hospital food, he could have taken it.
Even if his family wouldn't let him become truly lonely, he missed the sense of camaraderie that came with spending most of his time with his friends. He couldn't stand being unable to stand by Nanoha and protect her as she searched for the Jewel Seeds. Perhaps even more than that, he couldn't stand being forced to practically stay still for days on end. For an energetic person like him, it was the worst sort of torture.
The fact that Naruto knew that his legs were already fully healed and that the casts were just for appearances didn't help.
On the plus side, Naruto was showing steady progress in his studies of magic. Yuuno was more than a little impressed at how quickly he'd learned the basics of gathering power, but there was a ready explanation for that -- the techniques for gathering magical energy that Yuuno was teaching him were remarkably similar to the Mikami Fuwa's techniques for gathering spiritual energy.
When Kyouya had commented on this to Yuuno, the ferret-boy had been much more surprised that the Mikami Fuwa had techniques that used spiritual energy than that the techniques were similar. While Yuuno's initial explanation had been difficult for Naruto to fully follow, he had managed to gather that magical energy was made of a mix of spiritual energy and some other type of power which Yuuno called "iryoku" and that magic relied on using your spiritual energy to gather that "iryoku" from the surrounding area.
This was also apparently what made overusing magic put a strain on the user's body. According to Yuuno, spiritual energy coexisted and maintained a balance with yet another type of power in the user's body, something that Yuuno called "physical energy". Using too much of your spiritual energy upset the balance between the two powers, which led to your physical energy surging out of control and damaging your body.
Kyouya had simply nodded at that and made a comment about something called "ten-chi-jin". Yuuno had cheerfully agreed.
On the other hand, those same factors also made magic far safer than would otherwise be expected. "Iryoku" apparently mixed even more readily with that combination of physical and spiritual power than it did with spiritual power alone, creating yet another type of power. Yuuno described it with such words as "inert" and "unstable", which Naruto didn't quite understand, but he managed to gather that it was short-lived and apparently the sort of power more suited to people who spent all day contemplating their navels than the sort who actually did anything...
... which basically boiled down to the fact that it was a lot harder to kill someone with magic than most would expect. As his current situation proved, however, that was certainly not foolproof -- there were a number of ways around that issue, ranging from simply overpowering the victim with enough magical force to snuff their life-force out like a candle flame in a hurricane to using magic to form a physical structure or manipulate an existing physical object.
Naruto was broken out of his thoughts by the sound of Nanoha running down the stairs to his floor of the hospital. "Sorry I'm late," she frantically apologized, "but there was a Jewel Seed at school. I tried to seal it right away, but it still took time and--"
Chuckling at his daughter's antics, Shiro interrupted her. "That makes five so far, right? You're doing pretty well!"
"But there are still sixteen left!" Nanoha objected.
"Nanoha-chan," Naruto interjected, trying to calm his friend, "Dad's right. You've even managed to find one of them before it activated!"
"And with all of the people looking for them, there's not really much else you can do, Nanoha," Yuuno chided. "I think it'd be a good idea for you to rest tomorrow."
Logically speaking, Nanoha knew that Yuuno was right. The police had enough numbers that one more pair of eyes wouldn't make that much of a difference. "But..."
"Tomorrow, you will rest," Yuuno insisted. "If you don't, you won't be able to last. Besides, you already have plans, right?"
Nanoha smiled at that last reminder, remembering the welcome home party her friends and family were planning for Naruto. "Yeah," she agreed. "I guess that I'll take a small break from Jewel Seed hunting tomorrow."
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Around an hour later, a car pulled up to the Takamachi family's home. Shiro and Kyouya were the first to get out, setting up Naruto's wheelchair and helping him to get out. Nanoha exited with her highly embarrassed friend, lending what support she could.
"Welcome home," Momoko and Miyuki greeted in unison as the four of them entered the house.
"I'm back," Naruto returned, his eyes becoming moist with emotion.
The moment was broken, however, by Misato attaching herself to Naruto like a limpet, his wheelchair seemingly not posing even the slightest obstacle to her apparent efforts to hug the life out of him. "It's good to see you out of the hospital, Naruto-kun," she told her surrogate nephew while fussing over him and apparently inspecting him for injuries.
"Air," Naruto gasped. "Need... air."
"Oh dear," Momoko told her sister-in-law. "You might want to let Naruto-kun go, oneechan... he's not really used to this sort of thing..."
"I know, Momoko-chan," Misato answered, lightening her grip on Naruto enough to let him get a few desperate gulps of air in. "He's missed so much growing up..."
Although he was rather embarrassed by her behavior, Naruto was rather fond of Misato, her attempts to smother him with affection -- usually metaphorically but often literally as well -- aside. While they did manage to cause him considerable embarrassment, those attempts also made her feelings blatantly clear.
It was a nice feeling, the awkwardness of the situations she kept putting him into aside.
"So," Misato asked Kyouya, still clinging to Naruto like a barnacle and nuzzling her cheek against the top of her head while pressing his face into her chest, "how's my cute little nephew's training coming along?"
"He's doing pretty well on ken," Kyouya replied, referring to the Mikami's main healing technique. "He won't get much further with it until he can try some of our more advanced techniques. I think I'll start showing him shin tomorrow."
Naruto's reaction to that statement was pretty thoroughly muffled by Misato's breasts.
"Oneechan," Momoko observed, "I think Naruto-kun is trying to say something..."
"Oh dear," Misato answered, pulling herself back. "What was that?"
Naruto simply panted for a moment. "What's 'shin'?"
"It's the art of seeing things by their sound and other indicatory motions," Miyuki answered. "But why are you teaching him that so early?"
Kyouya nodded. "Yeah, it is early for him to learn that, but shin doesn't require much motion..."
"So you can see in the dark?" Naruto asked.
Shiro chuckled. "And through walls," he added. "But only living or moving things. At the more advanced levels of the technique, you're more sensing spiritual energy than listening per se, but even the basics can be useful."
"It's like a sixth sense, a heightened awareness of the environment, Naruto-kun," Misato explained before pausing and taking a look at the expression of dawning understanding on her nephew's face. A moment later, Naruto once again found his head buried between his surrogate aunt's breasts. "You're so cuuuute when you're confused!" Misato exclaimed, glomping him.
"Oh my," Momoko remarked as her youngest daughter suddenly slumped a bit, Nanoha's warm smile taking on a tired quality. "Nanoha, are you alright?"
"Mmph," Naruto tried to ask, unable to really say anything with his mouth pressed into his aunt's sternum.
"I'm alright," Nanoha told her mother. "Just a little tired..."
And, with those words, Naruto's friend collapsed, still smiling even as her face pressed into the floor of her home.
Several cries of "Nanoha!" echoed throughout the Takamachi home.
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Nanoha awoke to the sound of Yuuno's voice. "... I'm really sorry for not noticing," he apologized.
"No, Yuuno-kun," Shiro replied, his voice in the serious tone that Nanoha knew that he reserved for serious occasions. "You're doing the best you can. If anything, I'm upset with myself for not noticing either."
Feeling something warm briefly brush against her cheek, Nanoha opened her eyes. Finding herself staring into Naruto's sapphire orbs, the young magical girl quickly realized that what she'd felt had been her friend's hand.
"Nanoha-chan?" he asked, seeing her stir. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine, Naruto-kun," Nanoha softly answered.
"Nanoha-chan, you idiot!" Naruto cried, mirroring Nanoha's words to him after he woke up in the hospital. "Don't do that again! If anything happened to you, I'd..."
Naruto's speech was cut off by Nanoha squeezing his hand to draw his attention and starting to speak herself. "Now you know how I felt that day," she gently told him. "We're friends, aren't we? When you smile, I'm happy. When you cry, I'm sad. When you're hurt, I worry. To share feelings with those you care for is only natural... to care for those you are close to is part of what it means to be human... and to be close to your friends is to be a good friend."
While Naruto's eyes were no less dry at the end of her quiet speech, he seemed far less upset.
"Yes," Shiro stated, interrupting the moment. "That's certainly the case... but, Nanoha, I think we need to talk about some other things, like overworking yourself to the point where you pass out and hiding it from your family."
Nanoha gulped.
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In retrospect, Nanoha reflected as she lay in bed the next morning, she'd gotten off lightly. The lecture had been embarrassing, sure, and her family had certainly embarrassed her enough, but other than making her take it easy for the day and insisting she cut back on searching for the Jewel Seeds, her family hadn't done much. Since they'd already decided on that, it amounted to getting off with a warning.
Her actual "punishment" had been being confined to the house for the day with an understanding that she'd spend most of her time resting. She'd already planned to spend the day with Naruto, so that wasn't exactly a hardship.
Nanoha knew that it was because her parents understood the reasons why she'd pushed herself. What really chilled her, however, was one of the points that her father had insisted on making: what if one of the Jewel Seeds had activated while she was in that sort of condition?
She'd been hoping to prevent the Seeds from injuring anyone else by finding them as quickly as possible, but...
Nanoha rolled onto her back and held out the red jewel pendant that had become her constant companion over the last week.
"Confirmation," Raising Heart intoned, projecting the images of the five Jewel Seeds Nanoha had managed to collect so far into a circle around it. Nanoha spent a while just staring at the projections as they spent a while dancing around Raising Heart.
Sighing, Nanoha released Raising Heart. The images of the Jewel Seeds soon vanished, leaving behind a single, troubled young girl and her Intelligent Device.
Despite her uncertainties and her guilt over troubling her family, however, there was one thing that Nanoha was absolutely, utterly certain of.
Nanoha would do her best to make Naruto's welcome home celebration go off without a hitch.
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"So," Naruto asked, enjoying the feel of lying in his own bed after so long in the hospital, "what was that about..." Naruto paused. "Umm... 'physio'..."
"Physiological and psychological adaptation to an unfamiliar series of spell matrices?" Yuuno replied from the pillow next to the young boy. "We were talking about why it's tiring to use magic you're not used to."
Naruto blinked. "So you have to get used to new spells?"
Yuuno nodded. "Because Nanoha's not really used to using magic yet, it's much more tiring for her that it would be otherwise. I've never taught someone before, so I didn't really know how much it'd wear her out..."
"And Nanoha-chan didn't let you know how tired she was."
Yuuno lowered his head, resting it on his forepaws. "If only I'd noticed..."
Naruto sighed. "She seemed so... lively. I guess she was just faking it for our sakes, but..."
"Yeah..."
There was a moment of companionable silence before Naruto spoke up again. "Hey, Yuuno-kun?"
"Yes?"
"Magic is pretty dangerous, isn't it?"
Yuuno lifted his head and turned to his sometimes-student. "Why do you say that?"
"All of this talk about damaging your body and wearing yourself out and such..."
"That's not just magic, Naruto-kun," Yuuno replied. "Pushing yourself too hard is dangerous no matter what you're doing. There are a lot of things that are far more dangerous than magic... like traveling between dimensions unshielded or using kidou..."
Naruto blinked. "Kidou?" he asked. "What's that?"
Yuuno's voice suddenly became deadly serious. "Kidou are... like magical spells, but someone who uses kidou is using their spiritual energy in its pure form instead of gathering iryoku and forming magical energy... but because of the damage that causes, it's really dangerous... it's said that someone who uses kidou is using up their life with every attack."
"But Kyouya-niisan is teaching me to use my spiritual energy!"
"Yes, but you're not focusing it like you do magic or projecting it outside your body. Any energy you use in a kidou is effectively lost to you... you regain it eventually, but the strain that loss causes on your body is immense." Yuuno sighed, his voice becoming tinged with an undertone of sadness. "Magic's almost always easier and more effective, so kidou is a forgotten art to most."
Naruto briefly wondered how Yuuno knew about it if that was the case, but decided that it wasn't worth asking. He got the feeling that there was a story involved, and it probably wasn't a happy one given Yuuno's tone.
"I understand," he said, nodding slightly. "So why would anyone use kidou?"
Yuuno seemed quite pensive as he answered. "Because they felt that the price was worth it."
Naruto's initial response died on his tongue as he realized that Yuuno was speaking from experience. "Oh."
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Takamachi Shiro smiled as he watched his soccer team, the Midoriya JFC, eating his wife's cooking. Coaching them and guiding them to success was normally one of his greatest pleasures in life and, even if he'd rather be home, watching over his family, at the moment, his team had earned this little celebration. The Sakuradai JFC were ranked number two in their soccer league, and Shiro's players had managed to completely shut them out, winning 2-0.
Although he didn't let it show on his face, Shiro inwardly sighed. What had Nanoha been thinking, pushing herself like that?
The fact that Shiro knew the answer didn't help. He was genuinely proud of her for wanting to keep anyone else from being hurt, but her recklessness...
"Thank you for the food," the team chorused in unison after everyone had finished.
"Everyone, you did really well today," Shiro told them. "Let's do our best in practice next week and win the next match like we won this one!"
"Yes!" his team chorused.
"Well then, dismissed! Be careful on the way home."
"Thank you very much!"
As the team broke up and the members headed home, the team's goalkeeper took a small, blue, jewel-like stone from his bag and put it in his pocket. Having already headed back into the Midoriya, Shiro didn't notice the action or the Jewel Seed.
It would have prevented quite a bit of trouble if he had.
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Two young men exited Uminari's train station, chatting away as they walked to a nearby bus stop. The older, a dark-haired man with a serious demeanor, adjusted his glasses as he pointedly ignored the temptation to pull out the gun he had concealed in his trenchcoat and shoot his companion.
"Ryo," he exasperatedly asked, "could you be serious for once? This isn't a joking matter!"
"But, Makimura," the man's companion, a rather handsome man who wore an unbuttoned white shirt over a red undershirt and a pair of jeans, insisted, "it's not like you to worry about a bunch of people who were driven off by a eight-year-old... oh!"
Ryo's bearing underwent a sudden change as he noticed a brown-haired girl in a skintight sweatsuit jog by. "Thirty-two C," he commented, shamelessly leering at her.
Makimura pinched the bridge of his nose, recognizing the girl. "She was rather attractive, wasn't she?"
"Oh, yes," Ryo agreed, goofily nodding his head. "That was one mokkori babe..."
"I'm fairly sure that her husband would agree."
"What? Husband?"
"Yes," Makimura Hideyuki cheerfully confirmed. "He's the head of the Uminari Vegetarian's Association and a noted pacifist."
Ryo stared at his friend and business partner.
"Did I mention that she has a pilot's license?"
Saeba Ryo groaned. "Come on, Makimura... don't ruin all of a man's dreams," he whined. "How do you know that, anyway?" he asked after a moment.
"Well, I," Makimura began before catching a sudden flash of blue out of the corner of his eye. "Wasn't that..."
"Yeah," Ryo confirmed, his demeanor suddenly serious.
There were no further words exchanged between the two men as they approached the boy who they'd seen handling a Jewel Seed.
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Takamachi Nanoha collapsed into her bed, utterly exhausted. "Well, then," she told her mother as she nuzzled her pillow, "until dinnertime, good night."
Naruto's welcome back party had went pretty well, all things considered, even if Nanoha had needed to spend quite a bit of energy to seem her usual self. She was pretty sure that no one had noticed, but.... Utterly drained, Nanoha fell asleep before she could finish that thought.
Momoko stepped out of her youngest daughter's room and gently closed the door. "She's asleep," the Takamachi matriarch told her youngest child.
"I see," Naruto quietly replied, not wanting to wake his friend. "Nanoha-chan was really exhausted the whole time, wasn't she?"
"It seems so," Momoko agreed.
"But she seemed so cheerful earlier..." Naruto sighed and leaned against the back of his much-hated wheelchair. "She was faking again."
"She didn't want anything to take away from your return home," Momoko observed. "Such things are supposed to be happy occasions."
Naruto grimaced and clenched his fists. "If only I was stronger..."
Momoko's smile slipped for a moment before she regained her usual composure. "It is only natural to want to be able protect your friends, Naruto-kun, but be careful not to forget why you want that strength."
Naruto blinked. "What do you mean?"
"There are many reasons to want to become strong," Momoko replied, "but wanting to protect your friends is among the best of them. As long as you hold onto that desire and remember the reason why your power exists, you will not be led astray."
"The reason why my power exists?" Naruto asked.
"Yes," Momoko agreed.
Naruto's eyes widened for a moment. "Iryoku," he muttered under his breath before suddenly moving to run to his room.
Unfortunately for him, however, his wheelchair chose that moment to remind him that yes, he was still in it and that yes, his legs were still in casts. The young boy promptly tripped and fell, landing on his face.
"Oh dear," Momoko muttered, a sweatdrop rolling down her face.
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About a minute after his unfortunate fall, Naruto finally made it to his room. Quickly making a beeline for Yuuno, the young would-be mage promptly asked him a question.
"Yuuno-sensei," Naruto attentively inquired, "just what is that iryoku stuff you mentioned?"
Uncurling himself, Yuuno met his sometimes-student's eager gaze. "Iryoku is the energy of nature, the power of the world around us," Yuuno explained. "There's more, but... just what do you want to know about it?"
"Well," Naruto explained, "I was just talking to Mom and she mentioned something about the reasons for my power... I was thinking that my incantation..."
Yuuno nodded. "I see. Some people's incantations are like that. They're often something personal... some think that they have something to do with your nature, the type of power you use, or so on. Many mages who specialize in ice magic have incantations that have something to do with cold, peace, or rest, for example... but other times it can be a description of yourself or a reminder of something."
"So Nanoha-chan's incantation..."
"Is absolutely nothing like that!" Yuuno cheerfully completed.
"Right...," Naruto answered as a sweatdrop fell down his face. "So anyway, magic is a mix of iryoku and spiritual energy..."
"Yes. Since iryoku is all around you, magic is sometimes called the power of our soul's connections with the world."
"Connections," Naruto muttered, thinking for a moment as he turned inward. After a moment of that, his eyes lit up.
Naruto's bright-eyed expression only lasted a moment, however, as he suddenly felt the distinctive sensation of a Jewel Seed activating.
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Makimura Hideyuki placed a hand on his forehead and sighed. Finding one of the devices that the police had been searching for had been unexpected, but hardly a problem. That honor went to Ryo coming across an attractive female police officer when he was trying to turn it in.
Only Ryo, Makimura thought, would use an experimental weapon designed to cause mass hallucinations to try to get into a woman's pants.
The real problem, however, started when Ryo tried to cop a feel as he pressed the device into the officer's hand and made yet another request for "hot mokkori action". Before she could so much as slap him, the device had surrounded them with a white light. Makimura had only a moment to realize that his partner had somehow activated the device before he was staring at the base of a giant, ten-story...
Makimura's mind promptly shied away from what he was seeing. It was just a hallucination, after all. The best thing he could do was to ignore it and hope the effect passed. Since he was obviously effected by the device, he couldn't trust his senses.
Ignoring the panicking crowd, Makimura moved to sit down on a nearby bench. Walking past a man who was staring and muttering something about "10SBRC certification", whatever that was, Makimura calmly took a seat as the... thing... raised one of its two spherical "feet" and moved it forward as if to walk.
When the hallucination took its first step forward, however, Makimura's calm was shattered. The fleshy orb crashed into the pavement with enough force to shake the ground... and Makimura's bench.
"I felt that," he thought in stunned disbelief, knowing enough about hallucinations to understand what that meant.
In that moment of sudden epiphany, Makimura Hideyuki nearly froze out of shock. His reflexes narrowly prevented that, however, and he moved to protect the panicking civilians as they cleared out of the area. Drawing his gun in a single, smooth motion, the former police officer fired a shot at the creature's long shaft before the creature could take another step.
Three things quickly became readily apparent in the seconds that followed. The first, that Makimura's actions probably had been ill-advised, was first shown by the fact that the bullet bounced off of the cylindrical body. The second, that rampaging Jewel Seed incarnation had noticed the ineffective attack, was shown the creature swinging its bulbous head into a nearby building, causing considerable damage to its structure, before it suddenly turned and charged down the street.
The third, that the creature was not really a creature, per se, was revealed by a pained shout coming from between the creature's "legs".
"That was Ryo's voice," Makimura incredulously thought as he heard the yell.
A few moments later a piece of pavement struck him on the head and rendered him blissfully unconscious.
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"Yuuno-sensei!" Naruto exclaimed, pushing back on his wheelchair.
"Yeah," the ferret-changeling replied. "For a Jewel Seed to activate right now... and so strongly..."
"It felt different from usual," Naruto observed.
Yuuno nodded. "If a human puts their strongest wishes and desires into a Jewel Seed, it releases its strongest power. From the feeling this time, that's what happened."
Naruto paled. "And with Nanoha-chan as-"
The blond-haired boy's statement was interrupted by the sound of his closest friend running past his room. "Sorry, Mom, Dad!" Nanoha shouted, heading down the stairs. "It's important!"
"Nanoha-chan!" Naruto shouted, wheeling towards the door in panic. "Wait!"
It was, however, too late. By the time Naruto managed to leave his room, Nanoha had already left the house.
"Yuuno-sensei!" Naruto exclaimed, addressing the ferret that had jumped onto his shoulder in the panic.
"Yes!" Yuuno replied. Hopping off and jumping through an open window, the Midchildan ferret-changeling took after his wayward student in the arts of magic, using his own abilities to speed his movement as he bounced from building to building in his haste.
Naruto wheeled himself to follow his friends as quickly as he could. Approaching the staircase to the ground level of the house, he focused inward, remembering what little Yuuno had told him about the theory behind magical flight. "Lunas, solis," he incanted. "O ephemeral feathers of eternal fire, o threads of vanishing eternity! Heed my call and become my wings!"
Levitating slightly under the power of his magic, Naruto began to lower himself towards the door which his friend had failed to close in her haste to intercept the Jewel Seed.
"Naruto-kun!"
"Sorry, Mom, Dad! It's important!" Naruto shouted, unconsciously echoing his friend's earlier departure as he lowered his wheelchair to the ground and altered his spell to help propel him towards his destination.
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, Nanoha was the first of the three to catch sight of the activated Jewel Seed. Seeing it aim its tip towards a news helicopter and let loose with a burst of some sort of white goop, however, Nanoha paused. Fortunately, the helicopter dodged. The sticky projectile missed and struck a nearby building, promptly starting to eat through its façade like acid through Styrofoam.
"Eeeeh?!" she exclaimed, her eyes wide as she stared at the monster that was attacking her home.
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Elsewhere, Alisa Bannings picked up her cellular phone and triggered the speed dial. "Suzuka?" she asked as her friend picked up. "Are you watching the news?"
As she completed the safety checks on the Mishima Industries vectored jetlift aircraft commonly known as "Poison One", Tsukimura Suzuka wondered just how much trouble she'd be in for taking it out before she finished her pilot training. Then again, judging by the situation...
At least Farin would make a good copilot and gunner. She might be somewhat clumsy as a maid, but her combat programming was first-rate.
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A.N.: And herein the reason for me introducing City Hunter is revealed...
Anyway, please review.