Near the Fouzen Labour camp:

It had been almost three weeks now and Jeriik had still not gotten used to the 'passenger' he had somehow managed to pick-up in a godforsaken battlefield. The Valkyrur was something he had been expecting but he had now seen just what it could do but something was fundamentally different about this one. The Valkyrur had always been described in The Texts as being Holy beings of fury and vengeance that lashed out and brought down all that faced them without mercy. They were the ultimate beings of combat and ruthless in their conquests and completely unstoppable. Now part of this seemed to be completely true and, had she wanted, he had no doubts that the Valkyrur could have easily slaughtered his entire division. That was just it: "had she wanted" was the operative phrase there and he had actually lost no men at all in that confrontation to the Valkyrur. While the red-haired warrior had brought down a medium tank and almost half of his troops on her own, she hadn't killed anyone. Mercy seemed to be this Valkyrur's MO and Jeriik was actually almost starting to feel sorry that he had to bring her in after she seemed willing to literally sacrifice her own limbs to prevent casualties on either side.

It had taken a good half an hour for people to start getting up after that elemental blast flattened a good portion of the Kloden Wildwood and the remaining Darcsens were nowhere to be seen. The Valkyrur just laid there, her severed arm covered in an iridescent energy that seemed to keep her blood from flowing out. Her shirt had been shredded by the energies she commanded and it left her bandaged chest exposed. The fine fabric of her pants had fared better but still showed a generous amount of her legs. Deadly as she may be awake she was still a creature of great beauty. In an act of pity one of his men had actually tried to give the woman ragnaid. That had actually been extremely surprising as as soon as the canister was activated the Valkyrur screamed and the ragnaid went dark immediately and shattered all over the glowing stump of her arm. He had never seen anything like that happen and he forbade any others to bring anything ragnite related near the woman. Another odd occurrence was that it had taken three men to lift her properly into a makeshift cart to transport her, a fact that gave Jeriik pause as it meant that she weighed a great deal more than her slight frame would suggest.

Three weeks and she was still out of it. In fact, she almost looked worse. At night she seemed to get better at an almost exponential rate but she quickly deteriorated again once the day began and the convoy started moving. It was almost as if she was weakened by the presence of so many armoured units. Jeriik kept his hunches to himself out of a debt he felt that he owed the Valkyrur for sparing the lives of his men in that crater. Jeriik was an older soldier and felt bound by a code of honor that he knew a few of the more senior troops also subscribed to. Those from before Maximilian's bloody campaign.

After a long and rather frustrating conversation Jeriik had managed an escort and now sat atop a new light tank while it towed a heavy iron cage with a small cot in it that housed the still unconscious Valkyrur. Jeriik had actually managed to convince Maximilian to send him a full armoured escort. He now sat in the middle of no less than three medium tanks a handful of light tanks with infantry compliment and, as a bonus, a massive 45ton heavy tank brought up the rear. It seemed he was sparing no expense to get her to Ghirlandaio. It was only the third time Jeriik had seen a heavy fielded for something other than an instrumental or large-scale battle. This tank seemed to be content in pointing its 122mm cannon at a comatose Valkyrur.

Ranma floated somewhere between conscious thought and dreams and had been for some time now. She knew that she was currently a she. She knew she was wounded differently than she had ever been before. It was serious, that much she knew, but there was something...missing. She was also moving. There were small flickers of what she thought to be the waking world but she was too drained to know fact from fiction at this point. That was it: drained. She had little to no Ki and she just could not remember why. Why was she moving? Why could she not call upon her Ki? Most importantly: what was constantly draining her of what Ki she could scrape together. As time went on she managed longer periods where she was conscious enough to start pulling Ki and try to force it somewhere that would not be drained dry. She tried everything internal and almost gave up until she began to filter as much as she could to the chakra located in her head and she knew. She remembered the battle, the folly of creating a weapon with destructive capabilities that strong and she knew what was missing. What she still could not figure out was what was draining her. The remaining bracer, her anklets and her chocker were all strangely silent so it was something else. Something she was trying to save...there, that was it. There was something attached to what was left of her arm that was taking Ki and, in turn leaching energy to something else away from her body. She didn't know how long it took her to come to this conclusion but now that she knew how to get her Ki back, it was high time she acted.

Just as night was falling over the Fouzen Labour camp both Jeriik and Ranma opened their eyes and tracked the sun as it slowly made its way towards the horizon.

A/N

Ok bear with me here. Things with me and technology have been abysmal at best. I lost my laptop to what was described to me as "Catastrophic HDD failure". That meant I lost this once. Then it came back! and died again with a day. So twice. so I sent it away. then I got my backup out of storage. it then died as well. "Three times the cha...OH YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!". This is more of a teaser chapter than anything else and it helped get me centered into the whole writing thing. That and school is going into crazy mode with midterms etc. In essence this is all just excuses but please bear with me as things get sorted out. Once a new computer arrives I will be able to update more at my normal pace. I have no date as to when that will be but I will be continuing this story!

Notes to reviewers:

She lost an arm. Your reactions are very, very understandable and I do enjoy reading shocked messages. This means my writing is doing something right! It all has a meaning though which I will reveal in agonizing slowness! (not really it actually should play a roll in a couple chapters but we'll get there)

Thank you very much to everyone who reviewed! It helps me in ways you cannot fathom! ('-')