Disclaimer: The following is a fan-written fiction, the views and opinions in this story are not intended to be viewed as those of the author. Ranma 1/2, Urusei Yatsura, Inuyasha, and Five Pound Gospel are the creations of Rumiko Takahashi, property of their respective rights holders and publishers. Please support the official releases.

CW: This story will contain violence, strong language, sexual humor and situations, drug use, Moroboshi Ataru, and Happosai. You've been warned.

|The Belles of Madness|

Several blocks away was a rather nice park, where a number of students had gathered after giving the slip to the teachers and Black Sunglasses who'd popped up. Among these students were Kōsuke and Hokuto, who were resting by the jungle gym after having to run three blocks and through twice as many alleyways to lose their tails. There were numerous girls who'd arrived as well, many claiming to have come from the school itself, fresh from escaping Mendō's insidious plot.

"Good grief…" Kōsuke moaned. "They're freaking everywhere!"

Hokuto's arms were folded as he leaned against the jungle gym to Kōsuke's right, his gaze piercing as he looked off into the distance. When Kōsuke looked up at him, Hokuto took a deep, somber breath.

"… I'm so freaking hungry," he said in his deep, stoic voice.

Kōsuke hung his head. "Preaching to the choir, here. I don't wanna have to go back and eat food from Hamachiya!"

Another young man stepped up as he said that. "Careful… talk enough crap about Hamachiya and a Fujinami will show up to put you in your place."

Kōsuke looked up, and gave a start at the tall, downright pretty young man with long blonde hair worn free in clear defiance of school policy. A delinquent's delinquent if there ever was one, the young man rested his left hand on his hip and gestured to the two. "But if you insist, hope that it's the cute one."

Kōsuke was rather surprised. "Huh, Nanto? What are you doing out here?"

The blonde tossed his hair and looked aside. "Members of the Student Council have to eat, too, and I didn't know that Mendō was going to pull this crap." Spitting on the Mendō name, he joined the two and leaned against the jungle gym to Kosuke's left. "Why aren't you with Moroboshi or whatever?"

"We tried to beat the rush and walked right into the trap," Kōsuke lamented. "We've been on the run, since."

Nanto sighed. "It's the same wherever you go. I was only able to get away because the teachers thought I was in on it, too. I even got a few kids off the hook by claiming to 'take them into custody' on the teachers' behalf."

Hokuto and Kōsuke both chuckled, before the former asked. "How long did that last?"

His face turning a bit red in embarrassment, he looked at the ground. "Until I ran into Nurse Sakura. She saw right through me, and I had to run for my life."

Kōsuke grinned a bit. "I wouldn't mind being captured by her, yannowwhatImean?"

Nanto matched his perverse grin. "You and I are kindred spirits, more so than Hokuto, here."

Hokuto, who had a girlfriend, rolled his eyes. This allowed him to catch sight of the school's nurse herself walk onto the playground–her nurse attire swapped out for a jungle green dress and beret as if she were playing the part of a soldier. Looking back at his two friends, he gestured out towards her.

"Well, here's your opportunity," he said in a deadpan.

Spying the students gathered around the playground, Sakura raised her voice. "Tomobiki Students, that's enough running around! You're to return to school immediately!" She called out, and all the other students looked towards her with the alarm of startled deer.

"… Shit…" Nanto muttered, as Kōsuke jumped to his feet.

Sakura sighed when she saw how many students were here. There was no shortage of delinquents–she'd already captured a dozen and there were just more wherever she looked, cutting and running from her on sight as news of the crackdown spread quickly through phones and internet. It was as the radio calls she received earlier said, containment had been completely broken and now practically the entire school was on the loose.

This has gotten out of control, again. She lamented inwardly as the students loitering around the park faced her. She saw Kōsuke and Hokuto with Nanto, but fortunately no sign of Moroboshi.

"Running away will not make this any easier for you; you'll have to come back to class at some point," she warned them.

Kōsuke retorted. "We would've come back from lunch anyway! You're the ones making this into a chase!"

"Because you are breaking the rules!" Sakura argued back.

"And what a better way to enforce them," Hokuto spat, his voice heavy with frustration, "By starting a war that will go on well past the end of the last bell."

Kōsuke and Nanto both looked at him in surprise, the latter congratulating him with a "Well said."

"I'm freaking hungry," Hokuto snapped back.

Nanto shook his head. "More like hangry, damn…"

Sakura let out a sigh and closed her eyes. They were right, a simple problem was ridiculously complex now because of the pride of teachers, the ego of Mendō, and the general incompetence of both. She herself just wanted Moroboshi off the streets, and away from Furinkan High School, and this wasn't bringing her closer to that goal.

Though a solution was now presenting itself. "… I haven't had my lunch yet, either."

Kōsuke, Hokuto, and Nanto all perked up at Sakura's revelation.

She looked away, regretting what she was about to say, but knowing that if she wanted to restore order… she would have to sacrifice something.

"If you come back quietly and raise no more fuss–I will share that lunch with you."

The three young men all looked at one another again, then back at Sakura, with Hokuto speaking up. "For real?"

She folded her arms and turned her head to the left, to try concealing that she was clenching her teeth as hard as she could while dark thoughts flooded her mind. Yakisoba with chicken, and I'm just giving it away! Curse you, Mendō! Curse you, Moroboshi!

"I have more than enough for a few students," she said in spite of her seething thoughts. "I just want this mess to stop."

The three boys all looked to one another, apprehensive at first, but then genuinely considered the offer.

"Look, she's offering to have lunch with us-" Kōsuke said.

"To share her lunch," Nanto corrected. "I doubt we're getting some kind of candle-lit dining atop a rose petal-covered cot in the infirmary."

"Quit making it weird, blondie," the nurse warned him of his annoyingly specific imagery.

Nanto turned to her. "Don't deride a man's ambitions!"

Hokuto spoke out the corner of his mouth. "This is why Yuria didn't go out with you in first year."

"Yeah man, being pretty is not a get out of cringe free card," Kōsuke added.

"Shut up!" Nanto snapped at both of them.

Hokuto dropped a large hand atop Nanto's head and grabbed it to pull him aside and out of the way of the more pressing discussion. "As long as there's no tricks or scams, I'll come quietly. I just want to eat lunch, none of this running around crap."

Kōsuke nodded in agreement. "Yeah, lead the way Sakura-sensei."

Relief washed over Sakura. "Of course, but first… do you have any idea where Moroboshi is?"

Kōsuke quickly answered. "Not in the slightest; Hokuto and I got out of school first to forage, we haven't seen him since we left."

Hokuto nodded in agreement, and Nanto was more preoccupied with smoothing out his glorious locks to give half a damn about the likes of Moroboshi Ataru. They were really just boys out looking to get lunch, and that made this all the more annoying to Sakura.

Even if it is to keep Moroboshi away from wandering to other schools… this wasn't necessary at all, was it? She thought before she heard an unkind rumbling. "… Ah?"

Crashing through the fencing on the other side of the park, was a Type 10 Main Battle Tank of the Japan Ground Self Defense Forces. Or rather, a Type 10 Main Battle Tank of the Mendō Family's private army, given the cartoony sigil of a glaring Octopus Head painted on the front glacis. The tank ground to a halt, swiveled its gun, and fired an air cannon blast that sent bean bag rounds pelting other students gathered in the park as they tried to flee the massive machine.

Nanto, his face ashen, pointed at the machine. "That's a tank," he said in a voice that confirmed the identity of the vehicle while questioned his own sanity.

Two more vehicles pulled up beside it, wheeled Armored Personnel Carriers that spilled out not only more of the Mendō Family's men in black, but also soldiers armed with what looked like paintball rifles.

"Those are soldiers," Hokuto said, just as confused as Nanto with the mouthfeel of his own statement.

Sakura stared what was happening with a serenity that masked her exasperation perfectly. "What the fuck."

Several soldiers quickly lined up and aimed their paintball rifles at Nanto, Hokuto, and Kōsuke in particular, the lead soldier calling out. "Ryōko-sama has ordered the maximum non-lethal force permitted. Shoot to cripple!"

Compressed air hisses filled the air, and all three boys were suddenly pummeled with a deluge of rounds that burst into orange clouds of stinging, burning irritant. Covering her nose and mouth and quickly leaping back from the radius of the expanding cloud, Sakura grimaced in disgust as all three were left lying on the ground, clawing at their faces.

"AHHHH! IT'S IN MY EYES!" Kōsuke screamed.

Hokuto rolled from side to side. "I just wanted some freaking okonomiyaki!"

Nanto was on his knees, howling. "It's gonna turn my hair orange!"

Sakura's left eye twitched, as she looked around the park, and found soldiers gunning down students with more pepper balls, Black Sunglasses wrestling resisting students to the ground, and groaning students laid out all over the park in various states of duress. She clenched her teeth, this time at the sheer senselessness of it.

One of the Black Sunglasses walked over to her, with a cheerful smile. "Sakura-sensei, reinforcements have arrived!"

She turned to the man in black, her expression filled with a tranquil fury. "Who requested this?"

"Ryōko-sama, ma'am," the Black Sunglasses replied. "She expressly ordered us to support Shūtaro-sama in suppressing this riot."

"I see," she replied before she looked at the one-sided cleanup operation. "Where is Mendō Shūtaro?"

The Black Sunglasses shook his head. "I'm not sure, ma'am. Last I was told, he'd gone in pursuit of Moroboshi."

Sakura sighed and headed back towards the school. "I see."

The Black Sunglasses hesitated then called after her. "Ma'am, aren't you going to help round the enemy up so they can be returned to class?"

Sakura stopped and looked back at him, and the carnage he and his associates have wrought. "Moron, does it look like we can go back to classes after this?"

The man in black paused and looked back at the scene. His eyes widened behind his sunglasses, when he realized that students were either unconscious, fighting tooth and nail against chokeholds and headlocks, or coated head to toe in volatile crowd control chemicals. He reached up and lightly punched himself in the head.

"Oh… oops."

Sakura took in a deep breath, and let out a long, boiling sigh as she walked away from the park.

00000

Clouds of orange and black smoke began to rise over the Tomobiki neighborhood, the result of the pepper rounds used by the soldiers and dust kicked up by the armored fighting vehicles. The dull thuds of the air cannons resounded as if they were the doors of dungeon cells being slammed closed. Cries of terror and pain mixed to make the sonic paint to drape this area in the image of Hell itself.

Akane and Katie were well on their way to washing their hands of this mess when they both felt it. The trembling of the ground, the rattling of windows, before they heard the sound of motorized treads grinding up asphalt. Senpai and Kouhai looked at each other.

"What's that, and why does it sound like a tank?" Katie asked.

Akane quickly shook her head. "Forget it, senpai, it's Tomobiki. We just need to go back to where things are less crazy."

Katie grimaced and looked at the sidewalk they walked down. "I'm starting to wonder if the Okonomiyaki was worth it…"

It was shortly after her lament that a tank suddenly appeared at the street corner, blocking their path home. Both girl stopped and stared at the machine, as it ground to a halt and its turret turned to bring its main gun to bear on them.

"… That is a tank," Akane stated.

Katie didn't respond, she knew it was a tank. She had seen tanks before, up close and personal even. It wasn't the same type, it didn't even bear any resemblance, but that didn't matter. Just seeing it was enough to trigger something that lay just below the surface and bring her grinding to a complete halt.

Akane turned to look at Katie, and saw that she had gone completely still, but her eyes were wide and unfocused as her breathing gradually began to turn into short, shaky pants.

"… Senpai…?"

She didn't hear Akane, she didn't see the tank in front of them. She was not there anymore, on the side of a street in the Special Administration District of Tokyo. Where she was, the sound of the treads gave way to the sound of gunfire, of artillery ripping across the landscape, and then loudest of all the rain. Pelting, heavy, icy rain that fell like it was driven by a monsoon, trying to wash the blood and ash away. The hollowed-out shell of a destroyed tank provided very good acoustics, amplifying it enough to deafen the entire battlefield.

Here, amidst the distant reports and explosions, stood Katie and someone else. A woman of haunting beauty, with long wavy dark brown hair and skin a pale brown from a mixed heritage. She wore simple clothing, blue jeans, a black spaghetti-string top, and what appeared to be a sheer house coat inlaid with lace butterfly patterns. At her feet were more than five dozen men, broken, mentally, physically, literally.

Katie didn't look at them, just kept her eyes on the woman's own ice blue orbs; this thing that had appeared soundlessly, thoughtlessly, and turned trained soldiers into bloodied heaps. The rain continued to pound; the cold began to burn against her heated blood. This fight could not go on for long, if only because that just increased the likelihood of her very gruesome death.

Suddenly, over the rain, the sound of church bells began to resound, drowning out the rain and the thumping of Katie's heart. Rhythmic, oppressive rings slammed into her brain, warping time and space once more.

Where were they? Where was she…?

"Senpai...?" Akane's voice broke through the cacophony of rain and bells.

Katie blinked and the cold, the broken bodies, and that thing in the shape of a woman were all gone. She was back in the Special Administration District, standing in front of a tank, flanked by four Black Sunglasses and four more men dressed up in combat fatigues and brandishing collapsing batons and pepper ball rifles.

She blinked in confusion for a moment, before she realized that one of the men was saying something to her.

"Are you girls paying attention, delinquent students are to report back to their classes! If you resist you will be detained with force if necessary!"

"We're not Tomobiki students!" Akane snapped back at them.

The Black Sunglasses gestured to the soldiers. "Grab them and throw them in the APC, Mendō-sama wants every delinquent apprehended."

As two of the soldiers moved up to take them into custody, Akane asked Katie. "What do you want to do?"

The second the soldier going for her entered her reach, Katie grabbed his arm, kicked him in the shin, elbowed him in the stomach, then turned and drilled a spinning back kick into his solar plexus with enough force to send him crashing into another soldier before he could raise his pepper ball rifle to shoot her.

"Show them what happens when they don't let you walk away." Katie said, fire in her eyes, fury in her veins, the lust for blood in her breath.

Akane set her bookbag down, and rested her bento atop it, then in the next instant she was aloft, performing a tornado kick that tagged two of the soldiers and knocked them against the side of the tank. One of the Black Sunglasses, the very one who accosted them–swung a baton for her head.

She swung her arm into the descending baton in turn and ignored the painful throb that came when it struck her. She uppercut the sunglasses wearing man in a suit, launching him up to drape over the barrel of the tank unconscious. Behind the hapless mook, two more of the four Black Sunglasses slammed into the side of the tank and crumpled, after being struck by the body of the third Katie was swinging around by his arms to throw into the wall behind her.

"Akaneko," she said.

Akane snatched up her belongings. "Yes?"

"Forgive me for bringing you to this idiot-filled dumpster fire. We will never come here again, and if I see anyone from here in our part of town, I will join you in making sure they cannot walk back."

Her kohai responded with a single forgiving nod in affirmative.

A voice then called from inside the tank. "Hey! Don't move, or I will shoot!"

Both girls jumped onto the tank with no effort, and a squeak of fear came from inside the machine as its turret began to turn side to side to throw them off. "Hey! Get off, you delinquent brats!"

Katie wrenched open the tank's hatch and nodded to Akane. Handing her belongings to her senpai, Akane dropped into the turret with a quick hop. The next sound to come from the tank's loudspeakers were her furious kiais and the screams of the tank's crew as they were trapped inside with what amounted to a tiger in a dirndl-style school uniform that knew kung fu.

As she listened to the screams turn to quick pleas for some kind of mercy, Katie turned and saw the van that had been mentioned pull up behind the tank. Out stepped two more Black Sunglasses and another pair of soldiers. The driver of the van pointed at her. "Get down from there, you're supposed to be in school!"

Katie stared down at them. "We're trying to get back, but seems y'all are on a real strange power trip to be bringing tanks to a schoolyard scuffle."

The thump of an air cannon going off brought Katie's attention back up the street where she just came, and sure enough there was another tank with enough dust kicked up around it for her to realize what happened. It was the diversion the purported authorities needed to jump up onto the tank to confront her directly.

The first sunglasses wearer to land on the tank barely had his footing when Katie elbowed him in the face. He fell off the tank and into the arms of the soldiers. The second man landed next to her and swung a baton for her stomach, but her knee came up and snapped the weapon in half. The Black Sunglasses man had only a second to comprehend that a high school girl snapped a metal collapsing baton on her knee like a twig before the shin that knee was connected to connected with his stupid sunglasses. He went flying end over end, smacking into a light pole with an echoing clang.

"Not that yer much use with 'em," she added as the turret turned around and pointed at the remaining soldiers. "Oh hey, Akaneko. You got this?"

"I do, but the driver's in the-" Akane was cut off by the hatch to the tank's driver compartment opened and the driver bailed out in a fright.

"You can have it, I quit!" The tanker yelled.

Katie watched him go and nodded. "Cool." She turned back to the other men, but they were fleeing as well, climbing into their van and peeling backward down the street before fishtailing around and speeding off in the right direction.

She let out a hum, and then looked at the driver's compartment as Akane emerged from the turret.

"Have you ever driven a tank, senpai?" She asked.

"Nope." Katie got up and made her way over to the hull hatch. "But I always wanted to try."

00000

With another thump of compressed air, Mendō Ryōko's tank launched another projectile, this time a canister full of bean bags that slammed into numerous students now fleeing in a panic from the vehicle. Swiveling to point to the other side of the street it advanced down, the tank's cannon went off again, launching a single bean bag that bowled over a particularly stout male student who was lunging for a street corner. From her perch in the commander's hatch, Ryōko giggled behind the sleeve of her kimono as the turret turned again, this time targeting several girls as the tank's automatic loading system placed another round in the breech.

Onsen Mark, running alongside the tank, called up to her. "Ryōko-san! I am a teacher at Tomobiki High School! I am ordering you to stop this, immediately!"

Ryōko looked down at Onsen Mark. "I am only carrying on my brother's will, sensei. This is what he desired, a school of order and civility, so I am making his dream come true!"

"Since when did you care about what your brother wanted?!" Onsen Mark shouted at her, before the tank fired at the fleeing girls.

The beanbag round hurtled at the girls, who only had an instant to look back towards it before a blur imposed itself between them and the beanbag was stopped cold against the face of Moroboshi Ataru. Behind the groaning young man, holding his body up like a shield, was Ryūnosuke.

"You're a really twisted one, aren't you, Ryōko?" Ryūnosuke asked as she tossed aside the well-used Ataru like the garbage he was.

"Ryūnosuke-sama!" Ryōko gasped as the tank ground to a halt.

Ryūnosuke turned to the girls Ryōko had fired upon. "Oi! Get out of here, before that thing shoots again!"

They had nothing to worry about, because the barrel pointed at her. Ryōko smiled. "That was really cool, Ryūnosuke-sama. Are you the new rebel leader?"

The tank fired, but Ryūnosuke had dove away before the barrage of bean bags it fired this time left the barrel. Rolling back up to her feet, the tomboy looked back up at the tank as its turret turned to reacquire her, and she sprang straight up into a soaring backflip to avoid the next round it fired. She landed on the roof of a truck and crouched down to jump as the barrel swiveled up at her.

"This crazy bitch," Ryūnosuke muttered before she jumped again–the air cannon's next bean bag canister shot missing as she landed on the barrel of the gun.

"Oh!" Ryōko gasped.

The tank turned from side to side, trying to swing Ryūnosuke off the end of the gun, but she stayed on with simple sidesteps to her left and right. She pointed at Ryōko's face. "Knock it off or I'll knock your block off!"

Ryōko gasped, aghast at the threat upon her person. "Ryūnosuke-sama…!" She turned away, weeping. "I only wanted to help my dear brother and avenge him after he was struck down on the field of battle."

Ryūnosuke rolled her eyes. "Oi, you're the one who struck him."

Ryōko gasped and turned back to her. "Ah, you're right." She gently punched herself in the side of the head. "I'm such a klutz."

The barrel sharply elevated, the vertical movement catching Ryūnosuke off guard and launching her into the air. As she recovered at the top of her unexpected flight, she found Ryōko aiming a rocket launcher at her.

"I don't like hurting girls, but you're not much of one, so it's all right, isn't it?" Ryōko asked as she squeezed the trigger.

The missile shrieked from the launcher, but before Ryūnosuke could twist her body out of the way, the projectile was struck by several small spatula and it went flying on its own off course and into the sky above, where it exploded with dramatic force. Ryūnosuke flipped and landed back on the ground, as Ryōko's attention was drawn to the new interloper.

"Ah, the vendor responsible for all of this," Ryōko said.

Ucchan stood atop a streetlight, hand gripping the handle of his large spatula. He was looking down at the tank, and at the students laid out by Ryōko's asinine rampage down the street. The sight of dazed and unconscious students littered everywhere like the girl's discarded playthings made the okonomiyaki chef's blood boil.

"You Mendō have messed with my business for the last time," Ucchan seethed as he drew the spatula from his back.

Ryōko gasped in fright, both hands coming to cover her mouth. "Is this… killing intent?!"

Ucchan pitched himself from the streetlight towards the tank, but instead of striking he spun and threw several large cloth-filled bags. When they struck the tank, it was quickly engulfed in large billowing clouds of white.

Ryūnosuke took a step back, covering her nose instinctively, before she caught a whiff of the smoke. "… Wait… flour?"

"Oh my!" Ryōko gasped as she was shrouded in white.

Ucchan landed with a clang just behind her and grabbed her by the shoulder. "Gotcha, bitch!"

He yanked Ryōko upward, to haul her out of the machine, but only came up with a kimono in his grip. "Huh?"

Several blurs in black shot past Ucchan but did not strike him as the flour bomb smoke began to clear. Turning to face the direction they went, he found Ryōko standing in the middle of the street, wearing military fatigues and surrounded by three figures clad head to toe in black like Kuroko–the running crew in old timey theater not meant to be watched or interacted with as they worked on stage.

Twirling his battle spatula in hand, Ucchan cleared the flour away with a sweep of the weapon, revealing two more tanks behind him aiming their cannons at his back.

"You scare me, Vendor-sama. So I will carry on living in my dear brother's name. Farewell!" Ryōko called as her kuroko carried her off on a litter, like she was some foreign princess.

Ucchan seethed and threw several spatulas after them. "You're going to cut and run away the first time someone swings on you?!"

The kuroko weaved left and right, avoiding the thrown spatula as Ryōko called back. "Why yes! It's been fun, bye-bye!"

The Kuroko were already taking a right and going around the corner as Ucchan turned to deal with the tanks, skillfully jumping to avoid their air cannon shots and throwing spatula that cut into the cameras of one tank, blinding the crew buttoned up inside. As he landed on the turret of the blinded tank, the second brought its barrel to bear–but Ryūnosuke sprang up and connected a rising kick with the underside of the barrel, pushing it upward to send its projectile above Ucchan's head as he threw several more spatula to blind the second vehicle.

Jumping over the two armored vehicles, Ucchan and Ryūnosuke landed side by side as their hatches began to open.

"You got some sweet moves there, Ryū," he complimented.

Red bloomed on her face. "Er… thanks…"

"That won't stop us," the tank commander interrupted them as his tank turned its gun to bear on them. "You just took out the main camera!"

The soldier pointed at the two. "Fire!"

Both Ucchan and Ryūnosuke easily avoided the salvo of bean bag rounds, dashing up the street in a zig-zag pattern to avoid the auto-loading tank fire.

"It's useless, you'll never hit a real martial artist with such slow reaction time!" Ucchan taunted before a another large bean bag round fired from the other direction nearly clipped him. "Gah!"

Both he and Ryūnosuke looked ahead and found yet another tank waiting for them.

Now Ryūnosuke was exasperated. "How many of these stupid things are there?!"

The tank fired, and the two martial artists now found themselves in a crossfire of less than lethal projectiles traveling fast enough to make getting hit by them wish they were more than such.

"This is…" Ucchan ducked under a single shell, then used his battle spatula as a shield against a canister shot of many smaller bags. "… Why I quit school!"

Ryūnosuke jumped and spun to avoid a bean bag round, and then used a hard chop to deflect another away. "I wish… I could quit…!"

One of the dozen or so bean bags loaded into a canister shell clipped Ryūnosuke's right shoulder and spun her around to face the tank that had cut them off. "Shit…!"

"Ryū!" Ucchan yelled, before Ataru dove into and tackled Ryūnosuke to the ground out of the path of the bean bag shot

"Don't worry Ryū-chan!" Ataru said as he laid atop her, nuzzling her chest. "I will protect you with my life."

Before Ryūnosuke could punch Ataru off her, Ucchan scooped him up with his spatula, flipped him over, and swung to throw him into another bean bag shot fired from a tank. The bean bag struck Ataru and was deflected away, while he went crashing to the ground at Ucchan's feet.

"L-Lum…! A-Air support…!" He groaned.

Above the tanks Lum circled, reluctant to do anything for Ataru currently, but far less so for the sake of someone she considered a friend like Ryūnosuke. Pulling her sailor fuku top to reach into the cup of the striped bikini underneath, she pulled out a small remote control.

"This should do the trick," she said as she pointed it at one of the tanks and pressed a button.

A beam of light from the sky above shone on the tank blocking Ryūnosuke and Ucchan's escape, and effortlessly lifted it up. The beam then carried the tank back up the street and dropped it on the other two, their crews scrambling to escape their vehicles lest they be crushed underneath it.

Ucchan looked up at Lum and whistled. "Sheesh, this is why they didn't even try to fight, huh?"

Buzzing caught Lum's attention, and she turned around to see a quadrotor drone circle around her. Looking at in confusion, she followed it around. "There are more and more of these each…"

The quadrotor flew up to her and a bright pink gas blasted from all sides of it, engulfing Lum in the cloud. An instant later she began fluttering down like a leaf, unconscious. Seeing this, Ryūnosuke gasped in anger.

"What the hell?!" She yelled, as Ucchan drew a single spatula.

"Oh no you don't!" He shouted, throwing the spatula at the drone and striking it. Damaged, the quadrotor spun around and exploded with a pop.

Shinobu ran up, watching Lum's falling body, and joined the group. "Ryūnosuke-san! Ucchan-san!"

"It's just Ucchan…" Ucchan corrected.

"Are you all right?!" She asked. "Students are being rounded up left and right! There are soldiers coming, they have stun guns, and batons! This is getting out of hand!"

Ataru got up and shook the cobwebs out of his head. "So it's truly a war, now."

He clenched a fist. "We have no choice but to fight, then."

Shinobu turned to him in disbelief. "ATARU. THERE ARE GUYS. WITH GUNS. THEY HAVE TANKS."

Ataru faced her. "And we were just trying to eat lunch, Shinobu! If this madness must go on, then let it! But surrendering under force of arms means they know what it takes to crush our spirit, our youth, and our-"

Lum wafting down with her arms and legs splayed out, landed on Ataru's face backside first, and muffled his inspiring speech as her weight pushed him down into the ground.

"… Soft…" Ataru said in a daze of the sleeping oni sprawled out atop him.

"You are right, Miyake-kun," Onsen Mark said in a tired voice as he reached up and wiped his brow. He was accompanied by some of the very soldiers that she was trying to warn them about. "This has gone so wildly out of control that… I don't even know why I thought this was a good idea."

He looked at Ataru, laid out under Lum, and found their position distasteful. "This school… your school… it's a place of learning. Not a prison, not a day-care. You're there to learn how to become functional members of society, not wild animals. The world is a scary place, here inside these walls… and it's even worse out there. The carefree antics and doing whatever you please… it won't help you in the real world."

He wished he could light up a smoke, and really sell the dramatic effect. "You're our students, and our responsibility is to you. So… how about acknowledging our authority for once in your lives… and come back to class. I'm pretty sure there's plenty of Mendō's lunch left over for you all to enjoy if you agree to help stop this insanity."

As he said this, yet another tank pulled up, and pointed its gun at the students. Ataru managed to get out of his daze and shove the sleeping Lum off him, he stood up and faced Onsen Mark.

"You'd be out of your mind if you think I'd give up my lunch for that," he replied.

Onsen Mark bristled. "Moroboshi…!"

He pointed at Onsen Mark, cutting him off. "You say that carefree antics and doing whatever you please won't help you in the real world, so what will? Keeping our heads down and doing whatever some stuffy authority figure says? Doing the same menial crap day in day out like some washed up salary man who lives his whole life henpecked by his pestering housewife?!"

He hooked a thumb at himself. "Nuts to that! My life hasn't even begun outside these halls or the walls beyond them! I'm not going to go straight into it the same kind of beaten down dog you are! None of us are! If we want to eat lunch where we want, to make this miserable world you're trying to shove us into a little bit brighter, then why shouldn't we?!"

Ryūnosuke, Ucchan, and Shinobu all gawked in stunned silence at Ataru.

"A-Ataru…" Shinobu said after a few moments, in awe of his words.

"… Oi… Ryū… how hard did Moroboshi hit his head?" Ucchan asked.

Ryūnosuke was actually moved by Ataru's speech, and she freaking hated it because they made him sound really attractive almost. "I've never seen anything hit his head hard enough to get this out of him."

Onsen Mark palmed his face and groaned in frustration as he ordered the soldiers and Black Sunglasses. "Just… grab them already!"

The tank that had moved up lifted its air cannon ever slightly and fired–to the shock of Onsen Mark. He looked up, to shout at the tank to not fire at his students… but he instead found the men who'd gathered with him sprawling out in agony, struck by the canister bean bag shot fired from the vehicle. Swiveling a bit to the right, the tank fired again, bowling over the rest of the men.

The driver's hatch popped up, and a voice called out. "Dang, Moroboshi… you sound kinda cool."

Katie poked her head up from the driver's hatch and surveyed the damage done. She let out a whistle when she saw Mendō's men laid out by the tank's fire. "And you, Akaneko, you're a natural at this."

Akane emerged from the commander's hatch and called down. "Remember, Senpai, the Tendo School of Indiscriminate Grappling's expertise is in armed combat. If it's a weapon, I can wield it!"

Katie snickered. "I don't think it works like that exactly, hon."

"You came back for us!" Ataru sang as he leaped to embrace Katie.

And was summarily hammered into the pavement by the barrel of the tank.

"Oi," Akane said.

Katie hummed. "Maybe it does work like that." She turned to Ryūnosuke, Shinobu, and Ucchan. "You guys wanna drive around, breaking up this madness so people can eat some gosh darn lunch around here?"

Ucchan didn't need to be asked twice, leaping up onto the turret and sitting down next to the hatch by Akane. "Let's get a move on. I can serve okonomiyaki from up here while we roll."

Shinobu climbed up onto the tank as well, Ryūnosuke following carrying Lum in her arms. "Thank you so much," the former said gently to the Furinkan girls. "You really didn't have to come back for us."

"Weren't no thing," Katie replied. "Besides. Who in their right mind brings a tank…?"

She stopped when Shinobu shook her head, giving her a flat stare as she did.

"Nevermind, you ain't gonna be in your right mind if you're locked in this SAD house," she conceded.

Then she turned her gaze to Onsen Mark, her green eyes boring into him in an intensifying glare. "As fer you? Yer a goddamn teacher, who the hell do you think you are lettin' students get hurt like this, throwin' armed thugs on 'em like they're animals? Y'all oughta be ashamed of yourself."

Ataru was back on his feet, sitting right beside her hatch. "Yeah, exactly!"

She looked up at him.

He looked down at her.

There was a moment of silence between them as they met gazes.

"… So…" He spoke. "… Room for one more in there?"

"Nope." Katie ducked down and closed the hatch, locking and activating the NBC protection seals afterward.

Akane didn't even wait for an exchange with him, she followed Katie's lead–ducking down into the turret and buttoning it up tightly.

Undeterred, Ataru jumped up onto the tank's turret and began knocking on it. "Hey, I know we've gotten off on the wrong foot, but maybe we can talk it out over lunch! What do you say, my treat!"

"Absolutely not," Akane said through the tank's loudspeaker.

He brightened. "Oh, you can hear me! Come on… your senpai thought I was kinda cool just now, if you give me a chance-"

"Absolutely not!" Akane repeated.

As he gamely brushed off the rejection and asked Akane and Katie both about their contact info–to only be rejected again–Ucchan looked over to Shinobu and Ryūnosuke. "He's a persistent guy, huh?"

"It's the best and worst thing about him," Shinobu lamented.

Ryūnosuke, still cradling the sleeping Lum on her lap, thought about his defiant statement earlier. "I can't imagine the kind of monster he'd be if he put his energy into the ways he impresses people."

Shinobu dangled her legs off the right side of the tank's turret as it rolled along. "I don't think the world is ready for the Ataru he could be."

Ucchan glanced over at Ataru now just lying down by the turret hatch and trying to engage in small talk with Akane, and shook his head. "The world wasn't ready for the Ataru he is."

Ryūnosuke laughed. "Right?"

A/N: We're well and truly off the beaten path of anything the original Senpai offered. Next up, the aftermath.