Forcibly United

Yubitsume Fugitives: Chapter 4

oOo

As Ranma's head snapped back, Ryouga was launching himself forward, beyond his dead friend's body. He flew like a missile towards the man guarding Nodoka, who only had time to waver indecisively between pointing the gun at Ranma's mother or his attacker before Ryouga's foot struck him in the chest, blasting him through several of the shoji which made up the walls of the main floor, his umbrella snapping open, both guarding Nodoka and arresting his momentum as he crouched and pulled the woman closer, to shield her from the gunfire now directed towards them.

"Damn you, Ranma!" Ryouga swore, fighting the tears welling in his eyes as the gunfire stopped for a moment. Cautiously, he peered around the cover of his metal umbrella, seeing the insane young woman who'd shot his pigtailed rival.

She met Ryouga's eyes directly, waiting for him to take in her standing above Ranma's fallen form, before she pointed the gun directly at his chest and pulled the trigger another five times, each bullet ripping into the Saotome heir's unmoving body and shredding the shirt he wore.

"Are... Are we done?" Ryouga demanded, both angry and incredibly sad. Were it not for the woman he clenched to his side, he'd have thrown himself against the forces arrayed against him... But he had one thing he needed to do.

One thing he'd all but promised to do, even if he hadn't had time to promise it to Ranma. Before he'd... Before...

"I'm going to kill you both as well," the demented Yakuza girl promised, firing another pair of shots into the Saotome heir's downed form before she ejected the clip, pulling a fresh one from her obi and sliding it into place. "I see no reason to keep promises to a dead man, and I see no reason to allow a living enemy to remain so. That Ranma's mother will die as well will surely torment him in hell. It should at least give my father something to laugh at as he burns with them."

Were Ryouga alone, he could have easily escaped, but... As more gunfire shook his umbrella and created an unholy din of metal on metal, he realized he was pinned down. He couldn't move from where he was, and though a pair of Shi Shi Hokodans kept the forces of the insane Yakuza heir from getting a better angle on him, he wasn't sure he could dodge the concentrated gunfire on his position, not while carrying Ranma's mother.

If he picked up the umbrella to use it as mobile cover, he'd give them an angle. If he tried to escape directly away, they'd draw a bead and be able to fire faster than he could flee. Even charging into them, berserker-style, would only buy Nodoka a few more minutes of life before she, too, was killed by these mobsters.

The entire problem was that Nodoka was a soft target. By himself, the situation would have been manageable. With Nodoka, it was near-impossible. The second castle they were in was high enough that he wasn't certain he could block gunfire as they leaped while making the fall survivable for her.

He grimly began to retreat, holding his umbrella low to the ground and deflecting more gunfire, when the laughter began to penetrate.

As the laughter grew, it began to grow more hoarse, more unhinged.

The gunfire stopped, and all of the mobsters looked to the laughing corpse of Ranma Saotome, who continued to laugh like he'd heard a joke so funny, so special, that all he could do was laugh upon hearing it.

The pigtailed youth rose from his prone position, sitting up as he continued to laugh. He jumped to his feet, ripping the shredded shirt from his torso as he took up an Anything Goes stance, meeting Ryouga's eyes as he did so.

"I shot you!" The Yakuza girl declared, firing once more at Ranma as she did so.

The bullet struck, before deflecting into the ground with a sharp ping sound, a light bruise appearing on his chest where she'd fired. As Ranma's eyes met the girl's, Ryouga noted the slight red welt between his eyes, where he'd been shot in the face.

"And?" The pigtailed boy asked, as if the statement wasn't something that should be treated as a wonder. He looked to Ryouga for a moment. "This has gotta be the same rush you felt, man. When you stood up from that shattered cliffside like it weren't nothing at all, when we were fighting right after you'd done the Bakusai Tenketsu training. I get it, now."

"It's a rush," Ryouga agreed, standing from behind the cover. His grin showed every pointed tooth. "So guns can't hurt us, then?"

"How'd you put it?" Ranma chimed in, lightly. He snapped his fingers before his voice dropped, trying to imitate his rival's, "'They're as gentle a baby's kick', or something like that."

Several more shots from the demented Yakuza princess bounced off Ranma's chest and limbs as the girl continued to pull the trigger, still squeezing even as the gun clicked empty. With Ranma still standing in the courtyard with a smirk, the girl tossed the gun into the hard sand of the courtyard.

"What the fuck does it take to kill you?" She screamed, stomping one foot as she glared at him.

"It takes a more than you got," Ramma told her truthfully, folding his arms without saying anything else. "It takes something of legend. Something you've heard fairy tales about."

"Didn't you bitch-slap a phoenix who tried to kill you last time we were in China?" Ryouga asked innocently.

"You're right. It probably takes Ryouga over there to kill me. Too bad he's working with me right now, not against me," the pigtailed boy concluded, narrowing his eyes. One arm shot out, grabbing the girl by the arm. "You get to stay and watch. The rest of you get to flee in terror. In three minutes Ryouga and I are going to level this entire castle. Grab your friends and get out if you don't want to be buried with it!"

Ranma's free hand flew up, closing into a fist as he grabbed something mid-air. The crack of a sniper-rifle afterwards was the only indication Ryouga had of what had triggered his friend's senses. Opening his hand, Ranma considered the bullet in his hand, rolling it between his finger and thumb thoughtfully for a moment before flicking into the air.

His hand free, Ranma hurled a wordless Mouko Takabisha in the direction of the sniper, shattering the level of the castle he was on and causing it to drunkenly lean.

The pigtailed boy then snatched the bullet mid-flip, holding it up to gaze at it.

"I'm honestly curious, Ryouga... Why were we worried about these again?" Ranma wondered, twisting and turning the projectile in his hand. Ryouga snorted, and the pigtailed boy smirked in response. Without any word from the girl clenched in Ranma's hand, the remaining men in the compound began to flee.

"Let's get the hell out of here," Ryouga finally grunted, walking over to where Nodoka continued to sit behind his umbrella. He lifted it and snapped the device shut before sighing once, offering his arm to the older woman.

"What a dear," Nodoka chirped calmly, standing and clasping Ryouga's elbow. She tilted her head, observing the girl Ranma had grasped in his hand. She raised one hand to her mouth. "Poor little Motoko-chan. Her father was always a scoundrel, but I'd hoped she'd have been raised better. To think she'd threaten her Auntie Nodoka like that for a trick like this... Shameful."

The Lost Boy pondered the statement for a moment, flabbergasted. Then he asked himself why, precisely, he thought the woman who'd given unholy birth to the man who'd once been his most hated enemy would be any more sane or rational than the man who'd raised him, deciding to ignore the entire series of events with just a sigh. He returned to Ranma's side, escorting his pigtailed rival's mother.

"Motoko-chan, that's quite enough," Nodoka admonished, crossing to the girl and lightly knocking one knuckle to the girl's forehead. The younger woman was quite shocked, before she tucked her hands behind her back, beginning to trace a small pattern in the sand with one toe as Ranma's mother continued. "I know you wanted to present yourself as a strong contender for my son's hand, but really... Pretending to threaten me and actually shooting him? Don't you think that's going a little too far? You had to know that your father was going to die in his line of work, sooner or later. Men like him don't get a happy ending. That's why I wanted you to reschedule the omiai rather than do anything else. You deserve better, dear."

"Ranma-" Ryouga began, before his rival cut him off as he dropped the young woman's hand, purposefully moving away from her to stand next to the Lost Boy. "So, Ranma-"

"Ryouga, just... don't. Please." Ranma pleased, frowning at the two women who remained in the castle, calmly discussing things. He reached up to rub his temples with his his fingers in a calm, circling motion. He was doing a very admirable job of completely and totally ignoring the madness in front of him, Ryouga noted.

The two women were stopped talking briefly as Motoko disappeared into the house, before dragging a young woman's corpse, dressed much as she was, back out and laying it onto the ground next to a gas can. The girl peeled the cadaver's lips back, checking the teeth and using a hand mirror to compare the dental work to her own, before nodding in satisfaction once and turning back to the boys.

"Well, I'd always hoped to run my father's group after he passed, but between my gender and everything else, I always assumed that it'd all come crashing down around me," Motoko sighed, glancing around at the palace which had been her home. She tucked her hair behind her ears, before pouting. "I knew you were supposed to be strong, Ranma, but I thought Auntie Nodoka was lying when she said how strong you were. That sort of power just isn't fair for one person to have."

"What's this Auntie Nodoka crap anyway, mom?" The pigtailed boy finally demanded, almost glaring at the woman.

"Her father was a dear friend of mine. A childhood friend, in fact," his mother explained calmly. She tilted her head a bit, raising one hand to her mouth. "Why if I hadn't met your father, I do believe I might have wound up marrying him."

"So, I've got a question," Ryouga noted, waving one hand casually. When everyone stopped to look at him, he pointed to the corpse of the girl on the ground. "What's with the dead body, and why were you looking at the teeth?"

"Well, someone, and I don't have the slightest idea who, has stolen a lot of money from my father's accounts since his death," the girl noted, smiling wickedly. "Almost all of it. Since I've been handling my father's finances for the last two years, suspicion would naturally, and correctly, fall to me for the theft."

"Doesn't explain the corpse or the teeth," Ranma pointed out reasonably.

"Sure it does," Motoko chirped, picking up the can and dousing the body with the gas. She then began walking towards the main part of the castle, trailing a thin line of gasoline on the ground as she went, before hurling the can inside and pulling a zippo lighter from her obi. "Her dental records match mine, and the burns she's going to be covered in when the castle burns down will make that the only reasonable way to determine who the body belongs to. By the time any of my father's goons figure it out, I'll be sipping cold sake in a warm town in Tokara, earning 15% off my investments and living under a fake name."

"Motoko! Don't tell me you had some innocent girl killed just to serve as a distraction!" Nodoka gasped, frowning at the girl. She wagged her finger admonishingly. "I don't mind you pulling in my son or involving your father's thugs in this scheme of yours, but an innocent girl?"

"Auntie Nodoka!" The girl cried, pouting. "I can't believe you'd think that of me! This is a medical cadaver I bought off of a med student. She died of brain caner, not anything I did to her!"

"Oh, that's alright then," Nodoka nodded.

"Mom, she shot me in the head," Ranma deadpanned, frowning at the girl in question.

"And you're alright. As if my manly son would ever be felled by such a simple, simple thing," his mother said, waving off the pigtailed boy's concerns immedialy.

"I..." Ranma began, frustrated, before the pigtailed boy just shook his head, nodding weakly towards the exit. "Look, let's just go. I'm sure Rock's wondering what the hell we've been doing for the last few hours."

Trudging through the ruins of the castle, Ryouga looked at all the unconscious men and the damage the duo had done to the property of one of Balalaika's rivals.

"...We're probably getting another bonus," the Lost Boy mused, scratching his jaw with a finger. He gestured around them, wordlessly encompassing the carnage.

"Don't," Ranma grunted, ignoring the happily chatting women behind him.

OOo

Author's Notes:

Of course I was gonna cop out on the headshot. I can't just kill off the main character of a story in an unimportant way like that, right? No, this setup was entirely for the long-coming plot reveal that Ranma and Ryouga are, indeed, bullet proof.

If anyone wants to disagree with me, Ranma was tanking Yamasenken vacuum blades from Ryu Kumon, ergo something which is demonstrably much less damaging physically can be written off as much less damaging physically.

I know this is a bit of a tone shift, but it's intentional. It's what Takahashi would have done. Also... See you next week!

-Gaming Ikari