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A
Ranma ½ Star Wars
Crossover Fanfic
Pathfinder: The Search for Earth
Book One: First Contact
By: Grounders10
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Chapter One
Hard Contact
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"So if we take this line," Ranma slammed her finger into the train station's map hard enough the painted metal out an audible 'bong' of complaint, "We'll get there ahead of Herb." The red-haired martial artist turned to face her two travelling companions.
"Doesn't that mean we'll also spend most of our money on train tickets?" Mousse asked. The long dark-haired, Chinese boy pushed his coke-bottle glasses up his nose as he leaned in to inspect the map. "Seriously, between that and food we aren't going to have enough for a bus ride."
"You're exaggerating," Ranma replied, rolling her eyes. She had done the math. They had more than enough for food and a trip there and back. Sure they'd have to walk the last bit rather than take a bus or get a cab to the foot of the mountain in question, but they'd have such a lead on Herb it wouldn't matter.
The mere thought of that Chinese Princess made her blood boil with anger. She was looking forward to a rematch after she managed to break the lock on her curse. Though she had to wonder why people who weren't cursed would be interested in the artefact in the first place. Perhaps they had used that ladle on someone they considered important enough to bother?
"We could just run there. It can't be that far," Ryouga, her other companion and long time rival, suggested. He was also, she noted, holding one of their maps upside down as he tried to make a plan. Not that she would listen to him when it came to directions. It was worse than asking a blind man for directions.
"Only if we want to get there second," Ranma said flatly, "Look, I've already got it planned out. So just follow my plan and we'll-" She never got a chance to finish telling them what the plan would be as, with a shriek that shattered windows, a bolt of green light fell out of the sky and blew the top ten floors off an office building several blocks away. All three stumbled as the ground heaved with the explosion. As they all turned towards the spectacle the air raid sirens started belatedly screaming.
"What was that?!" Ryouga demanded as the crowd on the above-ground platform screamed and scattered into the underground levels of the transit hub.
A second shot came down kilometres away in the direction of Tokyo Bay. The ground rumbled as more shattered additional skyscrapers in the distance. Ranma grabbed both boys by their shoulders and pushed them towards the stairs. "DOWN THE STEPS! GET TO SHELTER!" She shouted as she dashed ahead. Neither of them argued with her, but due to their staring the three of them were the last off the platform.
The ground kept rumbling for several minutes before the thunder of detonations ceased. Once the roof stopped shaking and the dust had stopped dropping from the floor tiles Ranma stood and started to climb the stairs back up.
"What are you doing girl? The sirens are still going!" An older man said, attempting to step in her way. She stepped around him without slowing down.
"I'll be fine," she said as she waved him off. The movement had given her a brief glance backwards. Both Ryouga and Mousse were close on her heels as she climbed up into the daylight. What daylight there was, anyways. The sky was hazy with smoke from a hundred fires that burned in every direction. Broken skyscrapers, shattered apartment blocks, and the endless wail of emergency services and the air raid sirens that underlined the devastated skyline.
"What the hell," Mousse breathed as he came up beside her, "What was that?"
"Energy weapons? Aliens maybe?" Ryouga suggested as Ranma stared. It had only been a couple of minutes at most, and somehow the city looked as though it had been bombed for days. There were great gaps in the skyline where chunks of skyscrapers had been toppled.
All three were shaken out of their stunned observation by the roar of engines. A moment later a thin bodied craft with flared wings at its aft that was maybe thirty or forty meters long at most rumbled into view as it cut between two teetering skyscrapers. Four vaguely whale shark-shaped craft followed it as it weaved between the towers. Another identical craft with its own escort rumbled in from the west, followed by another four. None of them made any indication of attempting to conceal themselves as they swept into the city. Then the larger craft slowed and started to descend around the city. Their escorts descended with them.
"Are those what I think they are?" Mousse demanded.
Ryouga rubbed his eyes. "They might be. I mean, what's the other possibility?" he asked.
Ranma paid them no attention as she watched the ship that came from the west descend to land. Her heart clenched as she realised where it was landing. "Ryouga," she said, grabbing him by the shoulder, "That one's coming down near the Dojo." She felt him tense up beneath her hand.
"Akane," he said and both broke into a run back towards the house. She overtook him despite the weight of the pack on her back. She bounced off the hood of a stationary car and up onto the roof of a house. Ryouga followed on her heels, probably a good thing given how often he got lost. She could faintly hear Mousse hurrying to follow them.
City blocks disappeared quickly as they ran full tilt across the roofs from the station. Occasionally they had to descend to ground level as they came across entire blocks of flattened apartments and shops. Ranma blocked out the shouts for help as she barreled in the direction of the Tendou Dojo. She wanted to help, but the thought of what actual aliens might be doing to Akane or her family at that moment spurred her on as she hopped from streetlight to car to pole to house to laundry line and even the broken fire escape of a teetering apartment block.
As they ran the skies above grew even more busy as the two existing ship types were joined by a third. A small beetle-like transport that was often escorted by two of the whale sharks. They landed with impunity around the city. That was not to say that there was no opposition. Five minutes into their run a wave of native fighters descended from over the horizon to engage the whale shark shaped craft in dogfights across the sky. Bolts of red light traded volleys with phosphorescent rounds and missiles spiralled about the melee with impunity. Oddly, the alien craft didn't appear to be faster than the jet fighters. They were swift, to be certain, but the speed was roughly on par with the nimble jet fighters.
Ranma glanced up as she leaped over an alleyway in time to catch sight of a burst of bullets crashing into a flashing barrier of light that appeared around one of the whale shark craft. A moment later another volley of rounds smashed into the alien craft even as it slammed a volley of colourful bolts into the back of a jet fighter. The starfighter staggered in mid-air as its shield failed, but continued flying as it arched towards the sky. The jet fighter, however, came apart like a hand grenade.
Five missiles streaked up from around the airspace to slam into the starfighter as it tried to accelerate into space. It fell back to the ground, billowing black smoke and flames as it dropped. But even as it did so two more of the native jets exploded under the guns of the alien craft.
That was when Ranma leaped the canal a couple of blocks from the house. Before her, she could see destroyed homes and a debris-filled street. She couldn't see the dojo from her spot on a street lamp that was leaning precariously to one side, but the devastation seemed to arc away from the home.
"See anything?" Ryouga called.
"It might have arced away from the Dojo!" she shouted, "But I can't see it from here either." She leaped ahead, landing on the crumbling tiles of a three-storey home. As she did the air and ground rumbled as from within that devastated stretch of buildings one of the long and thin ships lifted off. Its engines flared once it cleared the homes and it lunged forward, accelerating at an impossible rate as it arched towards the sky. Missiles attempted to follow it up, but failed as another set of engines kicked in and the ship jumped forward with a supersonic bang. It rapidly disappeared from the view of the naked eye into the sky.
Ranma doubled her pace and sailed over the next street without touching a street lamp or car. Ryouga and Mousse shouted for her to wait as the last couple of blocks disappeared beneath her feet. Her heart unclenched a minuscule bit as the dojo and house came into sight. She jumped the street without hesitation and her slippered feet touched the tiles of the outer wall. She came to a sudden, wobbling, halt overlooking the back garden.
The back wall was gone, blown away by a shockwave of some kind she guessed given the devastation that had levelled the properties across the street. Stonework covered the lawn and dirt and other debris filled the koi pond. An absent part of her mind noted that they were probably going to have to replace the fish after this. Several bodies lay in the open around the property line. Their skin was brown and had an odd rubbery look to it in the places she could see. They didn't appear to have all their limbs as they lay in large pools of blood. Then she caught sight of three figures on the porch.
Soun Tendo was sitting on the steps as his second daughter Nabiki Tendo, her short brown hair looking particularly dishevelled, bandaged a wound on his upper right arm. He was in full battle regalia, which bore more than a few scorch marks and was clutching his sword before him with both hands as his body shuddered and shook with what Ranma could tell was suppressed tears.
Beside him, wrapped in bandages, lay Genma Saotome, Ranma's father. The broad-shouldered and bulky martial artist looked far worse for wear than the more heavily armoured Soun.
"Pops!" Ranma shouted, hopping down and hurrying across the yard.
"Ranma? Ranma!" Her father looked up with a broad grin and made to stand, only to drop back to the deck with a wince. "Ah, good to see you alright boy. You're- erk- late."
"We came back when the bombardment stopped," Ranma replied as she knelt by his side to examine the bandages. Nabiki had seemingly done a fairly good job. It was hardly as good as her older sister's, but then few people who weren't medical professionals were as good with first aid as Kasumi Tendo. "Where're Kasumi and Akane?" she demanded as she spared a glance for the haggard-looking Tendos. Soun let out a sob and glutched tighter to the katana's hilt.
"Gone," Nabiki filled in as she finished applying disinfectant to a circular burn wound on her father's arm and reached for the bandages. "Bunch of freaks jumped out of that space ship with guns while we were tending to the damage. Kasumi and Akane were by the fence. They shot both with these blue pulses of light from their ray guns."
"And Akane went down?" Ranma asked, alarmed as she considered what that meant. Akane wasn't as durable as she or Ryouga were, but she was a capable enough martial artist. For her to go down meant that she needed to treat these weapons with more respect than she usually gave a hand gun.
"It took a couple of shots for Akane. They looked surprised when she shrugged the first shot off and punched one of them clear across the yard," Nabiki chuckled. It died quickly. "They dragged her and Akane into the ship before Daddy and Mr. Saotome showed up from checking the Dojo for damage."
"They took Akane!" Ranma leaped to her feet and started to turn to… to do something. She wasn't sure what, but she couldn't just stand there when aliens had Akane! Only for her father's hand to clamp down on her upper arm
"Listen well boy, their weapons seem to fire two different shots," Genma said, spinning her to look at him. He looked incredibly grim, his face drawn deep with lines of worry.
Behind her, Ryouga and Mousse landed in the yard and raced over to meet them. He shot them a look before continuing. "Red and blue. The blue look a bit like rings and seem to expand the further they travel. Range doesn't appear to be too long, but if you get hit by them they hurt a lot. It's like every nerve in your body lights up all at once. I took several shots during the fight. If Soun hadn't been there I would have gone down as well."
"And the red?" Ranma asked as she looked up at the sky.
"Traditional ray gun. Heat based on the wounds they leave. They hurt, but they aren't the most effective at rifle scale," her father said, "Try to not get hit with anything bigger. Even you boy," he looked pointedly at Ryouga, "wouldn't like the result I expect."
"Then we'll just dodge it. We need to go," she said to Ryouga, "They took Akane."
"And how do you expect to pursue them?! They took off in a spaceship!" Mousse shouted, waving upwards at the aerial duel above. As if to punctuate his statement a pair of American fighters exploded simultaneously as a flight of whale sharks mowed them down.
Ranma looked up and her eyes tracked onto another craft like the one that left. It was descending towards a park only a few blocks away. "They were kidnapping people, but they can't have filled the ship that fast," she said, thinking aloud, "Pops, you and Mr. Tendo were winning, right?"
"Painfully, but yes. I'm not that out of shape," Genma gruffly replied.
"Then that ship won't leave for a while unless it runs into similar issues," Ranma said, pointing it out, "We get on it, deal with the crew, and fly it back up to wherever these things are coming from."
"Fly it. Hey Ryouga, are you hiding the fact that you're a trained fighter pilot?" Mousse asked sarcastically.
"Do you have a better idea?" Ryouga asked pointedly.
"Yeah. We threaten one of their pilots to fly us up there," he said, "Well, fly you two. I'm going to go find Shampoo." He turned and started walking away.
"And if they already took her as well?" Ranma asked pointedly, bringing a halt to the duck boy's stride. "Or she was hit by one of the shots? What then? Either she's fine, or they hurt her. If she's fine then she can handle herself, but if they have her? That ship isn't going to stay on the ground forever. I'm going after it, you can follow or you can waste time running all the way back to the Cat Cafe."
She made to drop her bag on the ground, only for her father to catch her arm again. "Don't. You might need it," he said seriously. She nodded and re-shouldered it.
"Ranma…" Soun said looking at her for the first time since her arrival. "... I'm sorry for earlier. Please… Just bring them back." The earlier was probably the comment about making her marry him instead.
She laid a hand on an uninjured section of his arm. "Don't worry. I'll have them back by dinner," she said. Then she'd be off once more to try and get to the kettle before Herb. Otherwise, she'd have to try and run her down in China and who knew how long that would take her.
Soun nodded in a clear attempt to be solemn. It failed thanks to the tear tracks running down his face. Ranma rose to her feet and without another word burst into a sprint across the yard in the direction of the landing ship. The pounding of feet on debris told her the other two were following her at a swift pace.
Above them, the air battle continued to rage. Japanese and American jet fighters clashed with the wings of raiders in a spectacle of light and fire in which the local aircraft were coming off the worse. Several times a minute there would be an explosion somewhere above the city as the raider's whale shark styled vessels caught another jet. That wasn't to say that they weren't taking casualties in return. A few ships had been shot down, but many more simply endured the guns and missiles of the locals and pulled up into the sky, only to be replaced minutes later by reinforcements.
For all Ranma could tell, they might have been the same fighters.
The air war was, ultimately, none of their business. There was nothing any of them could do to assist the pilots, and even if they could Akane was far more important in Ranma's mind. Her mind was on how to approach the ship that had landed. Not that she was making much progress on that. There were far too many unknowns. How many aliens, how many guns, how much would they hurt if she was shot? Were they even going to be able to get on the ship?
Their first view of the landing site came after they finished scaling a six-story office building. Peering over the edge of the roof after creeping across it just out of sight the three of them spotted the ship in question. Maybe thirty meters long with a thin body and four wide blocks of engines, it was painted white with stripes of black like some sort of alien zebra. It was in the middle of what they remembered as a nice enough park. Now, the park was little more than a burnt crater dotted with the merrily crackling remains of burning trees.
Visible in the crater, and the broken-up roadway around it, were a mix of non-human figures. Some were like the bodies from back at the Dojo, that brown-grey skin with ridges like horns along their chins. Others had bald heads and long tendrils coming from the back of their head. Ranma spotted one who looked like a female human with blue skin wielding a small rifle as two of her cohorts dragged an unconscious woman and child from the building. There were a few other types of aliens, but those were the two prominent types in this group.
"I can see sixteen," Mousse said.
"Eighteen visible, probably a few more on the ship," Ranma said as she counted them off.
"I can't see anyone on the roofs," Ryouga added a moment later. A few screams echoed from down below as a pair of men and a woman were forced out of a cafe at gunpoint by a pair of…
"Are those two human?" Ranma asked as she pointed out the sight. Mousse stared for a moment, then cleaned off his glasses before staring again.
"I think so?" He said with a tone that showed he was as confused by the sight as she was.
The three of them watched with mutual feelings of bafflement at the presence of humans in the group of aliens. "So… Are we getting attacked by humans, or by aliens?" Ryouga asked.
"Doesn't really matter," Ranma sighed. Either way, that group had kidnapped Akane, and she needed to get her and Kasumi back. "Still need to beat them up."
"I guess. How do we want to do this? Left, right, middle?" Ryouga asked.
"One of us needs to get on that ship and make sure we get the pilot. If they take off without us we'll have to try and grab another one," she replied. As she said that another ship of the same design flew overhead escorted by a pair of fighters. It was angling to land somewhere to the north.
"Well, we'll have options if we fail," Mousse said with a snort of nervous laughter.
"I'll deal with the ship. You two clean up outside then join me, alright?" Ranma asked. Both of them nodded after a moment. It made more sense, really. They both had options for engaging at range that she didn't. Not unless she wanted to risk putting holes in the ship. She had no idea if it could withstand a ki blast, but now wasn't the time to find out.
"Sure."
"That works."
They shared a nod and as one stepped back from the edge. "Drop the bags once we hit the ground. Grab them when you come to join me," she added.
"Obviously, Saotome," Mousse said dryly.
"Just making sure," she replied before charging to the edge of the roof. She jumped from the small lip, and sailed over the two-lane road between the park and the office building. As she fell she loosened the straps of her bag. It slipped from her shoulder as her slippers touched the hot ground. She spun and released the bag.
The grey-skinned alien it hit went down with a startled scream at the same time as blades longer than her forearm sprouted from the chest of three more. A pair of bandanas carved effortlessly through the barrels of a pair of rifles that tried to swing their way. Their owners didn't even have time to complain as Ryouga ploughed into them a moment later. Both became impromptu projectiles that crashed into their allies a half-second later.
Ranma came up from her crouch in a sprint. There was only a pair of guards between her and the open ramp of the ship. The two humans she had seen and the small group they were in the process of escorting. They had barely turned around when she punched the first solidly in the jaw. The bone crumbled and the man followed immediately afterwards as the body flew from the force of her blow. She stepped aside as the other's rifle fired. With an odd 'blort' a red bolt of light zipped past her and hit the dirt.
It was the only shot he got off as she kicked the weapon out of his hand and slammed a fist into his diaphragm. Something broke in his chest as he flew out of the park and through the broken window of a convenience store. "Get down," she told the group as she turned on a heel and continued her sprint for the ship's ramp. Around the park the enemy's laser weapons barked, several shots of which she was forced to duck as they tried to stop her from boarding the ship.
Still, she made it in without injury, as she thundered up the metal ramp into the dimly lit interior of the ship. The room beyond was fairly small for a cargo area and had a faint sickly sweet scent in the air mixed with the faintest hint of chlorine. Two heavily armed guards in armour and full-face helmet were keeping an eye on a group of a dozen unarmed men, women and teenagers that were kept in a cage. The door was just slightly ajar with the foot of an unconscious woman in the gap.
They opened fire as she entered, the large bulky rifles spitting a stream of green bolts that she threw herself over. The man, at least he seemed male by his build, let out a shout right before her foot caught him in the chest. She rode him down, making sure to slam his head into the deck plating.
She didn't have to do anything about the second one as a large man in a white apron tackled him from the side. A second man in a rumpled suit promptly kicked the guard in the head allowing the first to wrestle the rifle away from him.
"Watch the door," she shouted, "And don't shoot the pilot, I need them!"
"We can do that," the second man said as he grabbed the other rifle, "The pilot should be upfront, through there." He pointed to the industrial door set back beneath a dim strip of light. There was no sign of a doorknob.
A quick inspection found a panel of buttons beside the door. The first button she hit turned the lights off and on. The second one opened the door with a pneumatic hiss of air to reveal a short ramp down and a young human woman maybe a year older than Ranma wearing a leather jacket and pointing a large pistol at her chest kneeling at the bottom of it. The room was a short hallway with a bit of a nook on the side that contained a fold-out table and two chairs. They stood there for a couple of seconds staring at each other. The woman's trigger finger twitched and Ranma moved.
The shot flickered past her shoulder as she jumped across to the table. The next scorched the wall, and the third was discharged into the ceiling as Ranma wrenched the gun out of her hands and slammed her into the deck plating. She caught the hand that tried to fish a knife out of her waistband.
"Stop fighting, damn it!" she snapped at the girl. All she received was a barrage of some incomprehensible gibberish. Not too surprising in hindsight. Her efforts to restrain the girl without hurting her too much were interrupted by soft hiss of air and a much louder 'blort' before her entire body lit up with pain. She tumbled to the side with a wordless scream of pain as the world went briefly white for a heartbeat.
It was painful, like every nerve in her body being lit aflame all at once. The sort of agony that could incapacitate even a hardened soldier in an instant. Unfortunately for the gunman, it was pain that she had had the misfortune to experience several times before in far greater quantities.
Her hand caught the wall as she fell and she pushed off even before her vision stopped swimming from the pain. The man, also in a leather jacket, was agape with shock as she kicked the short rifle from his grasp and grabbed him by the lapels. She swung him over her shoulder and dropped him, back first, onto his rising companion before she planted her foot on his chest with an angry growl.
"Bastard," she hissed as she clenched a trembling fist. Small muscle spasms rocked her body and she could feel a soreness already sinking into her that would take hours to go away. Whatever that weapon had done, it had completely bypassed her trained resistance to pain and injury. She could see why repeated shots had left her father so badly off.
The man she had her foot on tried to move and she levelled a finger towards his face. A small glowing orb of light formed and hovered there. The man froze and after a moment said something that prompted his companion to stop moving as well. Ranma nodded at him and the light disappeared.
So… she had two pilots by the looks of it. Now how was she supposed to communicate with them?
There was a crash from somewhere further into the vessel followed by a loud thunk and a voice. She tilted her head towards the source as the man let his head thunk against the floorplate with what had to be a curse. "Can I get someone in here to point a gun at these two?" she called out. A moment later a middle-aged woman poked her head in carrying a pistol. She pointed it at the two on the floor.
"Are you alright dear? We heard a scream," the woman asked.
"I'm fine," Ranma said, and she was rather fine honestly. Sore, but fine. Prince Toma's illusion might not have left lingering pain, but it had hurt a lot more than this had. "Just keep an eye on these two. There's something else moving back there."
"We can do that," she said as a young man joined her at the door with a less bulky rifle than the two guards had held.
The next door, also at the top of a short ramp, hissed open to reveal a tiny cockpit with an absolutely terrible field of view forwards, the front window was set into the slightly sloped roof Though the two pilot seats were elevated, so maybe they had better sight. There was another door on the far end of the cockpit which led to a small room with a double bunk on top of a pair of lockers. A narrow door at the end let out a small bang and she rolled her eyes as she walked over to it.
She hit the button, and promptly stepped back to avoid a pile of metal that fell out of what had to be the bathroom. The pile of metal turned out to be a robot built on the standard humanoid body style with what appeared to be a bucket on its head. It flailed its four limbs within its fairly limited range of motion. It said something in what she suspected was the same gibberish as the other two.
"They have robots. Great," she sighed. It stopped moving.
"Hello? Is someone there?" a slightly robotic male tone asked in Osakan accented Japanese.
She ripped the bucket off its head to reveal a silver plated head with a tiny slot for a mouth. Two dim lights glowed in what seemed to be its 'eyes', though she had to wonder how it could see. "How do you speak Japanese?" she demanded.
"Oh! Thank you and- Oh, yes…oh dear, this is a bit awkward. Erm… Might I bother you for a hand getting up?" it asked.
"No," she replied. It lay there for a moment.
"Oh…"
Ranma stood there awkwardly as she watched the robot slowly try and stand. "So. Japanese, how?" she demanded again as it rose.
"Oh, yes. My apologies. This is quite rude of me," it said in an aghast tone, "I am J4-3P0, a protocol droid. I am fluent in over six million forms of communication."
"That doesn't explain how an alien 'droid' knows Japanese," she said. The robot didn't seem like it was built for combat. She could tell its limbs had limited range of motion just by looking at the joints and the awkward-looking pistons visible on the inner side. So she was probably safe talking to it.
"I believe we have been listening to your communications for the last several days. You do provide a very complete broadcast of your people's many languages," it said.
Of course, it had learned from watching satellite tv. Of course, it had. She shook her head at the ridiculousness of it. "Well, then you can translate what I say to the ship's pilots?" she asked. It nodded, a jerky upper torso motion that was clearly not part of its designer's original intentions given the inflexible neck mounting.
"Oh yes, that is one of my functions," it acknowledged.
"Then let's go," she said, turning her back to it. She glanced over a shoulder at it as she ascended the steps to the cockpit. It was following her up the handful of steps with some difficulty. It certainly didn't appear to go for a gun of any sort.
Returning to the small hallway between the cockpit and the cargo area she found the two pilots with their hands against the wall and a middle-aged police officer checking them for weapons that he was handing off to the woman from earlier. The officer had a bandage wrapped around his upper arm and his body armour had a neat burn mark across the width of his chest.
"What are you doing?" she asked with arms crossed.
"Arresting them," he said without looking over at her.
"These two are pilots, right?" Ranma asked the droid as it came up behind her.
"Indeed they are," It confirmed. Its synthetic tones drew the immediate attention of both the officer and the woman. Ranma raised a hand as the woman raised her laser pistol.
"Woah, woah, easy. It claims to be a translator first, and it doesn't look all that useful for fighting. It nearly couldn't get up the few steps back there," Ranma said, gesturing over her shoulder.
"It spoke when this thing landed," the woman said and Ranma glanced at the droid.
It nodded in its awkward manner. "I did indeed translate for Trooper Commander Hak when we landed," it affirmed, "As a Protocol Droid fluent in more than six million forms of communication it is my purpose."
There was a moment of silence before Ranma shook her head. "Look, I get it. You want to shoot it," she said as she stepped in front of the droid, "But I need it, and I need them." She pointed at the pilots.
"Why the hell do you need a couple of invaders?" The Officer demanded. It was at that moment that Ryouga and Mousse appeared in the doorway behind the officer.
"So I suppose you're the one who's going to fly this ship then?" Ryouga asked as he dropped his and Ranma's bags by the entrance.
"The the- you three can't be thinking about stealing one of these ships. The military will shoot you down!" The officer protested, "Not to mention you would need one of these thugs to help you-"
"And I happened to find a robot that can speak Japanese and whatever it is they're chattering in," she looked pointedly at the two pilots who were mumbling back and forth while they argued. They shut up as they noticed her gaze.
"You have a robot?" Ryouga asked. Ranma waved exasperatedly over her shoulder at J4. "Huh."
Ranma walked down the ramp and leaned against the wall across from the two pilots. "Translate for me," she told J4.
"As you wish," the protocol droid said.
"I'm sure the two of you idiots have figured out that you're in serious trouble by now," she said. The man gave her an unimpressed look as the protocol droid rattled off the translation. "I'm sure you realise that we aren't very happy with you coming by to cause trouble." Not very happy was probably the biggest understatement she had ever said in her life.
"Now hang on. I'm the officer on the scene. These are my-" The officer tried to butt in, only for Ryouga to grab him by the arm and drag him out of the room without much effort.
She definitely wasn't supposed to hear Ryouga's hissed comment of, "Are you trying to be dumb?"
Ranma waited for the protocol droid to finish before she continued. "So I'm not going to insult you by trying to downplay this. You bastards took my Fiancee," she said as she walked over to them and placed a hand on the point where the neck met the shoulder. She squeezed in tightly enough to draw a whimper as the droid translated with a rather worried tone. The man's eyes went wide as the droid finished translating. Channelling a bit of Kodachi Kuno she flashed her most cruel and vicious grin at them. "So here's how it's going to be. You two are going to fly me and my friends up to whatever ship or station you use to keep your captured slaves. You're going to do so without letting your friends know we're on this ship. You will do everything you can to keep it secret and if you try to give the game away and I find out?"
She paused to let the droid catch up. Once it did she squeezed a bit harder and both of them gasped painfully. "I'll start by breaking your legs and work up from there. Are we clear?" she asked. She didn't really want to break all their limbs. It didn't feel right to torture someone, but if they thought she was crazy enough to do it, maybe she wouldn't have to.
"Oh dear. That's a bit much, isn't it?" the woman with the gun asked.
"I've had a rough few days. I really did not need to add an alien invasion to the bullshit I was dealing with," Ranma replied. She eased up on her grip as the two pilots babbled a scared reply.
"They both say yes," the robot said, sounding oddly disappointed. There was probably some form of programmed loyalty towards whatever group ran the ship or station these two came from.
"Good," She patted them on the shoulder and returned to her place against the wall. "You can turn around," she said. They did so and Ranma had to admit, the girl looked quite a bit younger when she was terrified. Maybe even younger than she was.
The man said something and the droid translated, "He says that he can probably get the ship onto the carrier, but that you're nuts to try and take on the entire Darkness Falls by yourself."
"Darkness Falls? Was it named by a goth?" The middle-aged woman asked. Ranma shrugged. It sounded like the sort of name that Gosunkugi would find appealing.
"We'll worry about that," Ranma replied to the pilot, "You two get us there without giving us away. Alright?" When the droid translated their agreement she turned to Mousse. "I'm going to make sure we aren't taking anyone who doesn't want to come with us. Think you can keep these two from blowing our cover?"
Mousse pushed his glasses up his nose and snorted. "Do you really need to ask," he said sarcastically before drawing a blade as long as his arm from his sleeve to stares from everyone but Ranma. He turned it over in his hands, checking it for something only his eyes could see as he rubbed the blade in a few spots. "Come on you two. Get the ship ready to leave," he said to them, "And don't do anything stupid. Your buddies are probably the type to just blow us up rather than come down and save you."
Ranma smirked at the worried expressions on both pilots as the protocol droid translated. She hadn't thought of that. It was a better threat than breaking their legs, and didn't come with the chance that they'd call her bluff. Well, she'd break their legs, but the rest of them was probably a bit further than she was willing to go.
They just weren't durable enough to live through it.
Ranma left them to it and headed into the cargo hold with the middle-aged woman. "Are you sure you need to go up there, dear?" the woman asked.
"They kidnapped my Fiancee. I don't really have a choice," Ranma replied. She couldn't just leave Akane to a bunch of alien slavers. As much as they argued she couldn't leave her to something like this. Who knew the horrible things they would do to her. Besides…
The woman placed a hand on her shoulder. "I understand. Do try and stay safe dear. As difficult as that might be. You saved us from something terrible here," she said, "I would hate for something bad to happen to the one who saved us from this."
She smiled awkwardly back. "I'm… We'll be careful," she promised. As careful as one could be when storming an alien ship. There was every chance that they would be captured the moment they set foot on it.
The woman smiled and wished her luck before heading over to a pair of young children and a man who was looking after them. The four of them waved to her and she waved back. Then they left. They were the last group to go from what she could see. Ryouga was standing by the ramp looking worried.
"Everyone else gone?" she asked as she walked over. The big guy looked worried like he always did when crazy things started happening.
"Just wondering how many aliens are up there. Kinda wondering about the humans as well," he added, "And… There's just the three of us. I hate to say it Ranma, but this might be too much for us."
Ranma sat down on a crate and crossed her legs. "Not the first time we've stormed the gates not knowing what was behind them," she replied. She rested her hands in her lap and sighed. "But… I'm worried about what else they're hiding," she confessed. Her muscles were still sore from getting hit by that weapon. She wasn't entirely certain how many shots like that she could take at once before it would drop her. Ten? Twenty? More? Less? She had no way to tell, and she really didn't want to find out the hard way.
"Hey, it'll be fine. Fancy toys will only get them so far," Ryouga scoffed and punched the palm of his hand, "Course, you have to wonder what sort of person commands a group like this."
Ranma snorted. "They aren't martial artists, so it's probably just a bureaucrat or a merchant," she replied. Not every group they ran into had to have some ancient martial artist from China behind their every action. Sometimes people were just people, not mystical ninja warriors hunting people down based on their preferred clothing brand.
That had been a weird week.
"Hey in there!" Both of them turned to the ramp as a man stuck his head into the ship. He was wearing the camouflaged uniform of the JGSDF. "Is it safe to come aboard?" he asked them.
"Sure," Ranma said slowly. Why was the JGSDF here? They can't have possibly already- No, wait, they could. There was a JGSDF base in Nerima. Not very far from their position in fact. It had probably been a small miracle that they had made it here before the soldiers had.
The man, several years older than them, stepped into view fully and climbed the ramp. "So, you two are the ones who took this thing, huh?" he asked.
"Mousse is back there," she jerked a finger over her shoulder in the direction of the cockpit. "Look, we're about to take this ship and leave, and we aren't taking no don't as an answer," she began. The soldier put a hand up.
"Woah, let me stop you there. We're not here to take the ship from you. Least, I don't think we are," he said, "I'm Private Watanabe, Third platoon, A Company, 1st Infantry. The rest of my platoon is outside. I'm just here to make sure you don't take off without talking to the Captain is all. So um… Is one of you in charge?" He looked from Ranma to Ryouga and back again.
They exchanged a look. Which one of them was in charge? Technically, Akane was her Fiancee, and they had been on a mission for her curse, but that didn't mean that Ryouga was going to follow her-
"She is," Ryouga waved at her with a smirk, derailing her thoughts.
"Uh," she blinked, "Yeah, I… I guess I am? Sure, I'll talk to your Captain. Just make it quick. I'd rather not blow our cover by taking too long."
"Great, um… Follow me, Miss," the soldier said. Ranma gave him an annoyed scowl as Ryouga snickered. She shot him an annoyed look as well before standing and following the soldier. Why did everyone- It wasn't like most of the ward didn't know at this point! Half the time she couldn't even make a pass at an ice cream attendant without someone blowing her cover anymore! So much lost ice cream… It was probably the most annoying bit about her curse being known, but it wasn't annoying like being called 'Miss' was.
Just at the base of the ramp, and beneath the cover of the ship, was a middle-aged man dressed like the soldier before. Only his greying hair and the three stars over a line insignia on his collar let her know he was an officer. "Ms. Saotome," he greeted her. Behind him she could see a handful of JGSDF trucks parked around the edge of the heavily damaged park.
"Well you're halfway there," she replied, crossing her arms as she stayed on the ramp just far enough back that her head was a foot higher than his.
He nodded. "My apologies. My name is Captain Kosho Omori, I am from A Company, First Battalion, 1st Infantry," he said, "My job was to take this ship, or at least drive it away. You have, it seems, beaten me to that."
"And we're about to fly off and hit the bastards doing this. Your point?" she asked pointedly.
"When the survivors informed me of what you were doing I radioed command," he said, "My orders are now to detach a platoon of my men to catch a ride with you and to request the use of this craft to ferry reinforcements to them afterwards."
"Assuming we don't get shot down, they won't keep falling for this you know," she said, "All I want to do is get two people off that ship then get back home."
"And they will most likely be with the rest of the kidnapees," the Captain replied, "Are you planning on leaving them as well? My troops are to see if we can arrange for a beachhead on the enemy vessel with the goal of rescuing as many as possible."
Ranma hesitated. How many others were in the same situation as Akane? "There can't be that many taken yet," she replied.
"These attacks have been ongoing for the last thirty-six hours," Captain Omori replied, "They've taken tens of thousands from over ten different cities around the world."
The young martial artist fell silent as she considered how many people that meant they had to have. You didn't kidnap tens of thousands without a plan to keep them in check, and the manpower to do so. "... How come we didn't hear a thing before the first shots were fired?" she asked.
"There was a media blackout while the government considered what to do. If you had been online you may have caught word, but all forms of traditional media were prevented from commenting on the attacks. At least here in Japan. As I understand it the Diet wished to prevent a panic when it was only Europe and North America being attacked at the time," he replied.
Ranma turned away and looked back up the ramp at Ryouga who stared back down with a wide-eyed look. Right, he wouldn't be of any help with this situation. Today started with her planning on punching a dragon princess in the face, how had she wound up at the forefront of an alien invasion?
"Okay. We'll give them a lift," she said, "I don't think we can fit too many. This thing isn't very roomy, even without the cage in the back."
"My men can handle a cramped environment," he turned away and shouted, "Lieutenant! Get your men loaded up!" A younger man shouted back from the trucks.
"Right away, Captain!" the younger officer shouted back, "Second Platoon! Move it!" A stream of men carrying their gear and crates charged down from the trucks and Ranma was forced to hop to the side to let them pass.
"Thirty-six men, full kit, with as much ammunition as we can spare. They'll be under the command of Lieutenant Haru Mizusawa," Captain Omori said, "We'll see how much this ship can fit."
"You've got five minutes," Ranma said as a stream of men pounded back down the ramp after dropping their boxes in the cargo hold.
"We'll be done by then," the Captain said, "We don't want to give the enemy a chance to notice something's gone wrong." She nodded as the last soldier thundered down the ramp past her.
"I'm going to make sure that we don't take off until then," Ranma said.
"Good luck, Mr. Saotome," Omori said with a nod, before turning away.
Ranma shook her head and walked back up the ramp. How the hell did she get in this situation?
"So, we're bringing an army," Ryouga said as she reached him.
"Not much of an army," she replied. They were probably going to get slaughtered.
"Then we'll have to give them a hand," he replied.
"And take time away from looking for Akane?" she asked pointedly.
"Like they'll know we're looking for her. We can search for her once this lot has a foothold," he replied, "At that point, they aren't our problem anymore."
"I guess… Be rather shitty to just leave them to die," she sighed while rubbing the back of her head, "I'll go and let Mousse and the pilots know not to leave yet."
"I'll stay here and keep an eye on them," Ryouga replied.
Leaving Ryouga she returned to the cockpit to find Mousse talking, slowly, with the pilots via the protocol droid. "Having fun?" she asked.
"Wasting time. We good to go?" Mousse asked, not taking his eyes off the two pilots. He may have been chatting, but he clearly hadn't been ignoring their actions.
"We've got passengers apparently. The SDF showed up," Ranma said, crossing her arms, "We'll be taking a platoon of soldiers up with us."
"... Lovely."
"Yeah, and they want to use this ship to send more up afterwards," she said, glancing over as the protocol droid translated what she said. The man looked rather annoyed while the girl looked terrified. Well, of course, they were. They were basically being held at swordpoint and told to fly to and from a ship that would probably be out to get them the moment they realised what was going on.
This was going to be an interesting trip.
-0-0-0-0-0-
It was a remarkably short trip.
After what Lieutenant Mizusawa's watch said was only a couple of minutes, the spaceship they were heading to could be clearly seen through the window. Clearly was a bit misleading. They could see the ship, but only in the corners of the windows where they were low enough for the people not sitting in the raised pilots' seats to look out.
"This doesn't seem like the greatest design choice," the Lieutenant observed as he, Ranma, Ryouga, Mousse, and a Sergeant by the name of Toriyama all peered through the corners of the windows.
The droid promptly translated what he said and the pilot let out a grim laugh before replying. "The HWK-290 is a great ship, she's just got a shitty cockpit design," he said.
"Shitty. I've got a few other choice words to use," Toriyama muttered.
"Why are you fixated on the windows when we're approaching that thing?" Ryouga asked as he waved out at the vessel beyond.
With a rusted, dusty red colour like it came from the surface of Mars the ship was a lance of metal that loomed larger with every passing second. With the binoculars she had brought Ranma was able to pick out the presence of at least three large dual turrets and more than twice that of smaller guns. Everything else was difficult to make out, either from the angle, or the simple fact that the intricate details of the ship all blended together under a layer of dirt and grim.
"... How big is it?" Ranma asked the pilot.
"He says… about eight-hundred and seventy-five of your meters," the protocol droid replied after spending a moment contemplating the reply.
"Nearly a kilometer… What the hell are we getting into," the Lieutenant muttered, "We knew it had to be big, but they never mentioned how big it was. Going to need more men… How long until we land?"
"Less than a minute until we reach the hangar," the droid translated.
"Then we need a plan. I thought we'd have more time," the Lieutenant said as he turned to Ranma and the rest, "I'll leave four of my men to keep an eye on these three. They'll ride the ship back down and get reinforcements once we've unloaded the ammunition."
"Right. We'll be first off the ship then, right?" Ranma looked at Ryouga and Mousse. The two boys nodded.
"Now hang on-" the Lieutenant started. She cut him off.
"We'll draw their attention. Make it look like we're the only ones. Cause a bit of chaos. That'll give you time to try and unload without getting shot at," Ranma continued, running over the officer, "We'll clear the hangar then go and look for the prisoners. I'm sure you can handle yourself from there, right?"
"It's as sound a plan as any, sir," the Sergeant said. Lieutenant Mizusawa nodded with a disgruntled look. She guessed he didn't appreciate being told what to do by a teenager.
"Well if you want to risk your necks, then fine. I won't say no to a distraction, but you tell me before you run off," he said. They nodded their agreement. There wasn't anything to be gained by mouthing off to the officer. "I'll get my men ready and send the four to take our places. Come on, Sergeant." The two military men left the cramped cockpit and Ranma turned her attention to the ever-looming wall of metal as their ship joined a queue of other ships and ducked beneath the bulk of the vessel to enter a hangar deck behind what appeared to be an emplaced cannon of some sort on the prow of the ship.
"There's going to be captives in the hangar and on those ships," Mousse observed as he adjusted his glasses, "If we make a move in the hangar there's a chance people are going to get caught in the crossfire."
"Not to mention those ships might be armed," Ryouga agreed.
"Are they?" Ranma asked the droid. It relayed the question to the pilot, who shook his head.
"No, the HWK-290 is unarmed, and none of the ones in use here have been upgunned," the droid finally said as they were sliding under the entrance of the hangar and through a shimmering blue energy field. At the same time, the door of the cockpit slid open and four armed soldiers entered the room.
"Miss, the Lieutenant is waiting for you and your friends," one of them said, looking uncomfortable as she shot him a glance.
"Time to go," Ranma said as she took one last glance out the windows. The view was filled with ships of the same make, though they had been painted in an array of different patterns. None of the fighters were present in the bay at least. With that, she turned and scooted past the soldiers.
The cargo hold was quiet when they entered. The thirty-plus soldiers were kneeling or standing around the room as they clutched their weapons. A few were mumbling prayers as they ran a final check of their weapons. The Lieutenant was standing by the ramp, holding onto a rail on the wall for stability as he held up his end of an ammunition crate.
"Ready for war, Ms. Saotome?" he asked. He ignored her annoyed glare, or the annoyed look she shot at her two snickering companions.
Bastards.
"Give us a minute to get their attention then follow," she told him as she stretched lightly, "Mind bringing our bags out with you?"
"We can do that. Just don't get shot. Takado, Yuichi, get their bags," the Lieutenant ordered as the ship shifted and Ranma got the vaguest sensation of turning.
"Oh god. Those things are going to be heavy," one of the two soldiers muttered.
"Lightweights," Ryouga scoffed as he shouldered his umbrella. Ranma nodded her agreement.
"Not everyone needs to bench press a car," another one said. The ship lurched and settled a moment later.
"Hey, focus people," the Lieutenant said, "I think we've landed. Ready?" Ranma nodded.
The door towards the rest of the ship slid open and the same soldier that told them to come back said, "We've landed. Pilot says to make it quick."
"Tell him not to leave until we're unloaded," Lieutenant Mizusawa said before slapping the button on the ramp. "Good luck you-" Ranma missed what he was going to say next as she launched herself down the ramp, sliding through the small gap that had just appeared, and straight into the chest of a waiting alien.
She rode him to the ground and sprang back up, driving her knee into the chin of a heavily armoured looking alien with blue-green skin and a large bulbous head. Something crunched with the strike as the alien flew back and crashed into the landing strut of another ship. Behind her, Ryouga caught two men with a swing of his umbrella that sent them into a row of wooden crates with what appeared to be German on their side. To her right, the entire group went down to a storm of knives. She pointedly ignored the blood that spattered the ground.
As the last of the immediate group fell Ranma looked out at the cavernous hangar. Other ships were busy unloading groups of people, only some conscious, and literally hundreds of eyes, human and alien, were turning towards them.
"That's a lot of people," she said conversationally.
"Not nearly enough," Ryouga replied as he drew a pair of bandanas from his hair.
"Are you both trying to be idiots?" Mousse asked as he drew a longsword from his sleeves. They both gave him a look and he shrugged. "I'm not carrying you if you get shot."
"Speak for yourself," they both replied. Their banter was interrupted with the whirr of something revving up and Ranma's head shot over to a tall green lizard man who was holding a rotary cannon that was spinning up.
Her foot came down on the butt of a raygun and the weapon flipped into the air where she kicked it towards the lizard man like a spear. There was a loud crunch and the lizard flew through the air, leaving his weapon behind. "Move!" She shouted and matched her action to her words as she leaped forward and under a wave of red and green energy bolts. She grabbed a rifle from the floor and launched it like a frisbee as she came out of her roll. It caught a human in the side of the head and sent him to the ground.
Simultaneously a wave of knives and a pair of bandanas flew out, scything down deckhands and cutting through the gun barrels of their enemies. Ryouga caught a few shots on his umbrella before slamming the hefty tool into the scattered ranks of pirates. Humans and aliens were scattered like dominos as the martial artist ducked and weaved through the shots with the superhuman skill that allowed him to be such competition for Ranma.
Mousse, however, seemed to disappear as he slipped between pallets and crates. Knives, shuriken, and other bladed weapons flickered out from behind cover as he closed the distance to the larger and more threatening opponents. Ranma paid little attention to the duck boy as she rolled over a stack of crates and slammed the back of her fist into a brown-skinned, butt-headed alien with large black eyes. She ducked the wild swing of the man next to him and tripped the alien head first into the edge of a crate as she stepped into the guard of another and grabbed his rifle. Nearly as long as she was tall, she wrenched the rifle from his hands and smacked him over the head with the weapon before she used it to sweep the feet from another and crack the last of this group, a human, in the face with the butt of it.
She dropped the weapon beside the stunned-looking civilians they had been moving. "Follow the soldier's lead," she told them then darted off, ducking behind the landing struts of another ship to dodge a burst of fire that was promptly cut off with a scream as Mousse came down with a mace to the gunman's back.
Without even glancing his way she crashed into the next group of enemies trying to stand their ground around captives, scattering them as she had before and leaving their weapons for the civilians. Around the room what had started as a brawl was swiftly turning into a gunbattle as various civilians, and what appeared to be a few police officers, grabbed their captor's weapons and joined the battle.
The air rumbled as another HWK-290 entered the hangar and trundled slowly across the battlefield. Ranma kept an eye on it as she slammed the butt of a rifle into another alien before tossing it like a boomerang around the corner of a landing strut to crack a human pirate across the face. She turned the toss into a spin and slammed her heel into the neck of a bright-green-skinned man. She felt the collar bone snap, followed by his neck. The body crashed into the ground unmoving as she spun low under a trio of red bolts before launching into a backflip over the next volley of shots. At the same moment the chatter of automatic weaponry joined the battle. The man shooting at her went down in a spray of blood and she twisted on her heel as she landed to go after a different target, the ship that was just landing not even twenty meters away.
They had the entire hangar to land, well not the entire hangar admittedly, but there was a couple of hundred meters for them to land in and yet these idiots had decided to land right by her. She sprinted through the weapons fire towards the ship, ducking and dodging the shots with incredible acrobatics. Nearly every motion felled one of the people shooting at her as guns, boxes, and bodies became projectiles. Despite feeling like dodging the rain at moments she made it to the ramp of the ship as it started to open. She jumped, grabbed a loose panel on the underside of the ship, and swung herself through the barely wide enough opening.
The alien she hit let out a dismayed squawk as she caught it, and she really couldn't tell what gender it was, in the chest. She slammed its beaked head into the ground and rolled forward into a handstand as she launched herself at the next guard, one of those lizardmen. Her flying kick carried it into the side of the cage where she leaped off and back across the room to a human who was scrambling for his pistol, his rifle on the ground with a half-loaded magazine. She grabbed him by the shoulders with both hands as she flipped over to land on her feet. The man let out a scream of terror as she carried him with her to slam face first, and upside down, into the wall.
She stepped back as he fell and slammed a fist into the chest of the last guard. Body armour broke as the alien, another lizard, was thrown into the cage atop his friend. She finished the small brawl by tossing the human, unconscious as he was, into the lizard. The pile of broken men and aliens fell silent as she brushed her braid back over her shoulder and walked over to the cage where she hit a button beside the door. With a click it swung open. The man who pushed it open nodded gratefully to her and said something…
In Korean.
They stared at each other for a moment. She pointed at herself. "Japanese, Ranma Saotome," she said. The man's eyes widened in understanding and he nodded. She picked up one of the guns and handed it to him before pointing at her eyes then the ramp. The man nodded and waved the few other conscious people in the cage out to grab weapons and guard the door.
As she turned towards the cockpit door it opened with a pneumatic hiss. She took three steps fast enough those around her jumped in surprise and slammed a fist into the very surprised face of a blue-skinned, and bald, female alien with two tentacles coming out of the back of her head. She pulled the blow to avoid killing her since she was probably one of the pilots, and caught the unconscious alien before she hit the ground. She dropped her in the small well beside the ramps and continued into the cockpit, which was pretty much identical to the one on the ship that had brought them here.
The door slid open and she flattened herself to the side, hanging off a handrail as a flurry of red energy bolts slapped the door she had come through. She hit the button and the door slammed shut. She rolled her eyes as the rounds continued to pound the door for a moment. She hadn't gotten a good look, but whoever was in there was clearly panicking. Right, she just needed to take a different angle.
Still hanging from the handrail, and with her feet firmly out of sight of the door, she hit the button and watched, unsurprised, as the shots resumed. They continued until the door automatically closed itself. She nodded. Exactly as expected, and precisely where the center mass of an average human male would be when opening the door. She smirked and swung herself towards the door as she hung off the railing, then back, then forward, then back again. As she repeated it one last time she slapped the open button on the door and pulled her feet up. As expected the shots came again… and she slid straight under them and across the floor of the cockpit. The gunner, an older man, let out a shout of surprise as she kicked the gun from his hand and snatched it from the air. She pointed the gun at his chest and it gave off an unfriendly beep.
The man laughed and flipped her off and said something. "He says," she blinked as she noticed the protocol droid lurking in the corner of the bridge without its legs, "That it is biometrics locked and to get fucked by a bantha you- well, I'd rather not translate that bit." She gave the man a hard look, weighed his value as a possible pilot, and cracked him across the chin with the rifle butt.
"Tell me that the girl from before can pilot this ship," she asked the droid. It nodded as best as it was able to on its pedestal in the corner of the cockpit.
"Oh yes. She's a much better pilot than he was. There is a reason he kept her as a slave," the droid said. She blinked and headed back out of the cockpit to the unconscious alien girl. Sure enough, there was a collar around her neck with a few ominous lights. She knelt down and examined it closely. Most of it was a leather strap with various bits of technology sewn onto it. She tested the metal joints. They didn't seem that strong, but looks could be deceiving with metal. Still, leaving it on her could be an issue.
She felt along the edges of the collar, looking for a good point to grasp, paused once she found them and stepped back towards the cockpit door. She would have one chance at this, and then whatever they put in these things would probably activate and kill her. Ranma took a moment to stretch, then hit the button on the cockpit door and dove for the alien woman. With one rapid movement she crushed the collar and ripped it off her before tossing it through the cockpit door. There was a panicked shout from the droid followed by a whump the moment after the door closed.
As Ranma fell back against the wall with a sigh the alien woman stirred. She groaned and opened her eyes. She rolled to her side and had pushed herself into a hunched kneeling position when she spotted Ranma. With wide terrified eyes she practically tripped over herself as she tried to get away from Ranma. Ranma caught her by the arm and knelt beside her, making calming gestures with her hand.
"Hey… Hey, don't worry," she said as soothingly as possible. She winced as she realised the woman was only panicking more at the language. She reached out, ignoring the light hits from the woman, and gently touched her neck. She froze up and the hand she had been hitting Ranma with slowly moved to her throat. She patted the spot with wide eyes and turned to Ranma. The redhead shrugged in response and promptly found herself in a tight hug from the alien woman who was sobbing.
Then the door to the cargo hold hissed open to reveal a JGSDF soldier who stared at her as she stared back.
"I don't know what you think this is, but it's not what you think," Ranma said reflexively.
The young man, who was at most a couple of years older than her, chuckled. "You know I heard you moved fast, but damn. This has got to be a record of some kind," he said with a wide shit eating grin. She flipped him off and pulled the girl's arms off her.
"I can, and will, break your legs," she replied, causing the soldier to go white, "Check to see if the robot in the cockpit survived. If it did, bring it over here. I've got a proposal for this one."
"... Are you sure-" she glared at him and he promptly scurried across the room and into the cockpit.
"Asshole," she muttered, then shook her head and guided the alien woman to a seat.
"It's alive," the soldier said as he returned a moment later with the robot in question.
"No thanks to her recklessness! Honestly! Throwing explosive collars around! You nearly blew me up. Again," the droid said heatedly.
"That's nice. Translate for me, would you?" she asked, "And no funny business."
It sniffed at her. "Such actions run contrary to my programming," it told her.
She ignored it. "I hear you were a slave," she said to the alien.
"Yes… for ten years," the woman replied through the droid.
"Well, we're looking to get a bit of revenge for trying to enslave our people," Ranma replied, "And we kinda need pilots. Do you mind flying this ship and helping us bring in more of our people?" She perked up and grinned a wide toothy smile.
"Sign me up."
Ranma smirked and looked at the soldier. "Message for Lieutenant Mizusawa, I've got another ship and another pilot for him," she said, "And she's more than happy to help."
-0-0-0-0-0-
Rays of energy pattered off the landing gear Lieutenant Haru Mizusawa was hiding behind. He had to hand the spaceships in the hangar some credit, they made excellent cover. Better than concrete and wooden fences anyway.
The constant barrage of shots ceased abruptly and he peaked around his cover to find the gunman responsible was dead with a large knife stuck in the back of his skull as that Chinese kid from the ship was carving through the rest of the men and aliens around that location with a broadsword. To the right an alien stepped out from behind a shipping container that had somehow been transported up to the ship and raised his rifle at the boy's back.
Three different rifles barked, Haru's included, and the blue-green alien dropped dead. Dropping back into cover, and mentally taking two more rounds off his magazine, Haru took a look around his team. Takado and Watanabe were still fine to his right behind a line of hurriedly arranged boxes firing their squad's light machine gun. The Minimi was tearing through the lightly armoured opposition and even putting holes in the large armoured lizards. And didn't they always seem surprised when they wandered out of cover only to get filled full of holes?
Sergeant Toriyama was covering the other side of the hangar with his team and they seemed to be making progress in the wake of that Hibiki kid. Corporal Yuichi was wrangling the Japanese civilians that had grabbed guns into something resembling coherence. They were doing better than he would have thought. Guns were not a common sight in Japan, especially not in Tokyo where these people had undoubtedly come from.
Throwing a wrench into those efforts was the fact that his men were reporting the presence of Koreans being offloaded from several ships. Clearly they had decided to spread out this raid further than they had realised. The issue was that none of his men spoke Korean, which was reducing their attempts at coordination to a game of charades. The least he could be happy for was the fact that they were contributing to the battle by providing covering fire for the Japanese.
"Another dropship, not ours," Private Miyoshi shouted as it coasted down the length of the hangar, ignoring the gun battle raging below. They had sent their dropship back the moment their equipment was unloaded. They were still waiting for its return ten minutes later. With luck it was just the loading that was slowing it down, but in the meantime they had to deal with the enemy dropping more people and more prisoners onto the field every minute or so. They certainly weren't as competent as a properly trained soldier, but the numbers were adding up.
"Don't worry about it. Focus on the guys in the open," Haru shouted before putting a burst of rounds down range. Three bulb-headed aliens ducked for cover as a fourth went down. The Lizardman with them just roared and sped up. "Watanabe, big guy, one o'clock," he shouted.
"I see him!" A line of gunfire stitched its way across the large alien and the lizard's charge turned into a roll that ended thirty meters from them in an undignified heap.
"Tough bastards," Takado commented.
"Just make sure they don't get close. I don't even want to think about what their throwing arms look like," Haru said. The last thing they needed was grenades getting tossed at them.
A volley of raygun fire from the right broke up another attempt to push forward by the opposition. "Nice work Yuichi," he said over the radio, "How're things on your end?"
Another ship rumbled to life and lifted off behind them. Corporal Hayate Miyata's team was supposed to be securing the front of the hangar, but his reports had made it clear they weren't making much progress. Unlike the other areas they didn't have one of the three wonder kid martial artists tearing a path through the opposition.
"Well enough. We're up to fifty additional armed men and women in my group. A few injured so far, but mostly near misses. Can't say for certain the rest. Maybe another hundred scattered about? It's like herding cats, Sir," Corpora Yuichi replied.
His radio crackled to life with the voice of Private Nara, who he had sent after Saotome when she boarded another dropship. "Private Nara to Lieutenant Mizusawa, Saotome took another ship and got us another pilot," he said.
Haru paused to process that. "Repeat last, Private Nara," he requested.
"One of the pilots on this ship was a slave, Sir. She's willing to fly the ship for us to get some payback," the private said, "She's an alien as well, sir, but I don't think she likes these guys anymore than we do."
Slaves. They had figured that was what this was about. So it wasn't just humans they were interested in. Nice to know. "Understood. Toriyama you heard that?" he asked.
"I did. I've got a couple of walking wounded. We could send them back with the ship. Should we push up and secure it, or ask them to fall back to the CP?" Toriyama asked.
He couldn't risk pushing so far forward with wounded men. "Private Nara, get that pilot to bring that ship back towards us. We'll send you and the wounded back with that spare transponder we brought," the Lieutenant ordered.
"Ship coming in! Looks like ours, sir!" His head jerked up as a familiarly painted dropship entered the hangar and made a beeline across the rows of ships to their CP.
"Looks like our ship is back boys. Prep for reinforcements. Nara, get that ship back this way. Tell her to land it beside our post if she can. Nara, is there a way we can tell if someone's a slave?" he asked. There was silence for a few moments then a reply came.
"Typically wearing some form of obvious collar. Might be decorative with a lot of leather, or bulky but they'll always have an explosive charge as part of it. Saotome got this one off with her bare hands. She says it exploded after a few moments when she pulled it off."
"Understood. All forces, spread the word. Watch for collared individuals, human or alien. They may be willing to help us if we can get the collars off, understood?" He ordered as the ship came in for a landing at their small command post. "Cover me," he told Watanabe and Takado. With that he sprinted back towards the, ostensible, command post. He had pushed up nearly a hundred feet from their landing site during their advance. Other groups, primarily of freed civilians, were farther forward, but the chaotic environment of the hangar with dozens of grounded ships and more coming and going every second made it impossible to form truly solid lines with so few soldiers.
Men in familiar camouflage poured off the ship the moment its ramp touched down. Every man carried something with him as he disembarked. Whether it was an ammunition crate, or the tripod for a heavy machine gun, each man carried more than just his rifle and backpack.
"Over there! Get the ammunition stored over there!" He shouted, waving the group of men towards where they had hurriedly set up an ammunition dump, in reality it was only a couple of dozen or so crates of ammunition and about half that in grenades surrounded by whatever they could find to make walls out of. Crates, a couple of pallets, what might have been a strut from some ship's landing gear. It was hardly the most secure location, but it was what they had.
A short haired woman with the bars of a Major ducked out of the swarm of men and ran over to him. "Are you Lieutenant Mizusawa?" she demanded.
"Yes sir," he said, placing a hand on the Major's shoulder and pulling her into cover behind a stack of crates.
The Major adjusted her helmet and glanced around. "Major Satomi Sando. Sorry we took so long. We decided to see how much we could fit," she said, "What's the situation?"
"The three Nerima kids have caused enough chaos for us to get a beachhead, but not much more," Haru replied, "That said, that ship right there is ours." He pointed to the one about to land.
She grabbed her own radio. "All forces, do not fire on the ship landing right next to us. It's friendly," she ordered, "How?" she asked a moment later.
"Saotome got onboard. Turns out one of the pilots was an alien slave and she really doesn't like these guys," he replied, "I've given orders for my men to keep an eye out for more slaves. We might be able to find pilots among them. We'll need the Nerima kids to get the bomb collars off, but after that…"
She nodded. "Agreed. I'll advise my men on that," she said.
An explosion shook the hangar as one of the ships further into the hangar on the other side exploded. Bits of metal and fire showered the corner of the hangar.
He grabbed his radio. "Toriyama, report," he barked.
"The Hibiki kid just threw one of those lizards into what might have been a fuel tank. Not sure," the sergeant replied.
"I'll add watching their fire to the list," the Major said dryly as two other Lieutenants dropped in beside them. "Lieutenant Mizusawa, meet Lieutenants Fukuda and Yagi." The two men nodded as they were introduced. "I'll have Fukuda's platoon take over from your sergeant… and I'll send Yagi to reinforce the push towards the hangar doors," Major Sando continued, "Your job will be to continue down this side of the hangar. Try and find more ships to secure. We brought five additional transponders."
"We've already secured over a dozen ships Ma'am. We're lacking pilots at the moment," he replied. She nodded.
"Still, make sure they can't take off. The brass do not want to deal with hunting down dozens of alien dropships," she replied, "Maybe you'll get lucky and find more slave pilots. We could use their help." A spattering of energy bolts smacked ineffectually into the side of their dropship as it started to take off once again.
"Everyone, let's keep the momentum going. I do not want to be trapped in this hangar, understood? Good, move out," she ordered and all three lieutenants immediately scattered.
Haru pulled out his radio. "Toriyama, you're getting relieved from that side. Lieutenant Fukuda is bringing his platoon over. Once he's there get your ass over to me. We're pushing down this side. Corporal Miyata, your team is getting reinforced by Lieutenant Yagi. You're under his command until you finish clearing the way to the door," he ordered. He nodded at the chorus of acknowledgements as he ducked back behind the cover of the landing strut.
"Everything good sir?" Takado asked.
"Looking that way. Ready to move up?" he asked as he peered down the firing lane. Yuichi's group was still holding a point far forward of them, but he couldn't see who they were shooting at through the forest of landing gear and equipment. The sheer clutter on the deck would have had anyone from the JMSDF screaming he was sure. Probably in terror at the number of possible explosions.
"We've been ready for a while, sir. Those kids are leaving us behind," Watanabe said as he folded up the bipods on this weapon.
"Great. All teams, the command team is advancing. Provide covering fire if you can," he ordered, "We'll head for that stack of crates and see what we see." He ordered, waving to a spot some forty metres ahead.
"Right."
"Understood."
"Three… two… one… go," he ducked out from behind the strut and sprinted. This hangar was massive, but they'd get it in the end. Now that they had backup he was sure of that.
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A/N: Hellooooooo peoples~ new Story~ New chapter~ Ranma and Star Wars~
Really sorry to everyone for taking so long to get new chapters out. I've been swamped working on multiple projects and not able to dedicated as much time to posting things as I'd like. My novel is about 25% complete so that's a nice thing, but writing that has eaten into my time elsewhere and really I don't have much of an excuse for not getting this one up here though because its been on for ages and I'm really sorry-
*takes a deep breath*
Right. Only barely remembered to use spaces on that one.
Hope you've enjoyed the story and don't worry I do have another chapter for this somewhere in my drive… somewhere… Ah yep, there it is… Unfinished… Oh dear.
Gekkou: *waves due to not being sure what to say* … *memory comes to mind from a game she used to play* "My loves so far away!~ my loves so far away!~" ~ says the Imp *wonders how many will get the reference*