[Ranma][Fanfic] Chasing the Wind - Part 8

[J. Austin Wilde]

Sorry about the delay in posting 8 to the RAAC. I am now a civilian,
having spent six years in the Navy. Today I was informed that two
installments of Chasing the Wind were picked as the some of the best
Ranma fanfiction of 1996. I thank those of you who read this story, for
it was your votes that made this possible. And don't worry about any
more delays in the story, as I have already written parts 9 and 10.

Enjoy!

J. Austin Wilde

-Chasing the Wind-
By J. Austin Wilde
Fission Park Press

J. Austin Wilde, K.B.C.S.
Minister of Propaganda and
Super Critical Reactor Axe Man,
Fission Park Press
jau...@aloha.net

Synopsis

Ranma and Akane are caught in a science experiment in Nerima that
affects their ki. They experience terrible nightmares and lose their
fighting focus. Neither can get any sleep without being in close
proximity with the other. They call upon the scientists to help them
through Ranma's friend from the Second Korean War, Hiro Ohata. Hiro
works for Professor Balthazar McFogg, the leader of the scientists, as
a kind of 'Man Friday'.
Hiro sends them to England where they become embroiled in a
worldwide search for electromagnetic 'events' like the one that
affected them in Nerima. In chasing these events they hope to find a
cure, but what they do find is that there is more going on than they
ever imagined.
Ranma meets a mysterious woman named Anazali, who is following
them. She claims to be their friend, and hints that the end of their
search will not only cure their ki problems, but may also end Ranma's
Jusenkyo curse. They receive a vision during the event in Scotland that
takes them to Granada, Spain. From there they experience the next
event, and a very disturbing vision hinting not only at a world wide
disaster, but of the end of their blossoming relationship as well.
Ukyo, Kuno and Nabiki are kidnapped by agents working for Ivan
Tarchenko, an assistant of a second research group that is studying
these events. They are taken to a dacha outside of Odessa, where Ukyo
is tortured. Kuno breaks them free and they flee across the southern
Ukraine. Tarchenko sends a group of men to pursue them
They are rescued from their pursuer, a vicious man named Fyodor,
by a stranger, who takes them to a ship belonging to his brother. His
brother, named Aerandir, is no less unusual, and he sails them to an
island in the Aegean sea to stay with his uncle.
Aerandir reveals to them that he is an 8000 year old descendant of
an ancient people whose land was destroyed by forces similar to the
event the scientists are looking for. He explains to them the history
of his people and that if steps are not taken, a second disaster will
befall the Earth.
Ranma and Akane in the company of Professor McFogg's research
group come to Monaco for the Prince's Charity Ball. Aerandir leaves his
uncle, taking Nabiki and Kuno with him, and sails to Monaco. Doctor
Casimir appears as well, hoping to talk to McFogg and the Wayfinders,
Ranma and Akane. They are all brought together at the Charity Ball,
including Fyodor, who has his own agenda.
Ranma proposes to Akane that night, but before they can share
their joyous announcement with anyone, Fyodor and his agents attack.
Hiro and Kuno try to stop Fyodor, but succeed only in killing one of
his men and rescuing Akane. Ranma is taken away into the night.

Part Eight:
At What Price Ranma?

Chapter One

Ivan Tarchenko looked through the soundproof glass window to the
examination table where Ranma Saotome lay. He was unconscious and
strapped down with thick leather thongs. Several men in white lab coats
hovered over him, monitoring his vital functions. A large gas-plasma
display over the table projected a series of Electroencephalo-gram
(EEG) waveforms in both real-time and a scaled time-index format
simultaneously. A little over a hundred electrode leads were glued to
various points on his head and base of his neck, trailing to the EEG
processor.
Fyodor entered the side room where Tarchenko stood.
"I see that 'Bronze Horseman' wasn't quite a success," he observed
to the huge Ukrainian.
"There were complications," Fyodor admitted.
"Quite correct Fyodor. Two agents dead, a third with a ruptured
liver that isn't expected to survive the week, a fourth who will have
to live on broth and gelatin for the next six weeks while his jaw heals
enough to support upper and lower dental prosthesis. Yes I quite agree
there were complications."
He gestured to the window. His finger pointed directly to Ranma.
"Not the least of which is that I only see Yevgeny lying in
there."
Fyodor swallowed.
"Where is his beloved Parasha?" Tarchenko asked sternly.
"We were unable to escape with her. We were unaware that they
enjoyed the support and protection of the Prince."
"It was your job to know such things!"
"Authorization was given at the very last minute!" Fyodor
thundered. "Had you ordered me to act in Spain where we had set up
detailed surveillance and the use of indigenous support -to say nothing
of the lack of security around them, your precious 'Bronze Horseman'
scheme would have worked! Instead you order me into a desperate
unrehearsed extraction against formidable opposition!"
"It is of little matter now," Tarchenko sighed, his demeanor
distant and cool. "A second attempt would be too risky from a political
standpoint. The Prince of Monaco may be restraining himself for the
moment, but I do not think he will a second time."
Fyodor seethed a little more.
"Calm yourself Fyodor."
"I find it difficult under the circumstances."
"Did you find your remuneration to your liking?"
"It is the only reason I am still here, Ivan Mikhailyvich."
"Good. I may still have some work for you then."
Fyodor raised an eyebrow.
"Yes, Fyodor. Work more suited to your talents. Far less delicate
work than I've asked of you in the recent past."
"Who do you want me to kill?"
"Patience Fyodor. Not yet. I shall contact you. In the meantime
enjoy your money."
Fyodor grunted once and stared down at Tarchenko with hard dark
eyes. Then he turned and left the room. A middle-aged man in a lab coat
carrying a clipboard entered not long after.
"Ah, Doctor Pulatski. What news?"
Pulatski consulted his clipboard.
"Subject is a Japanese male, aged approximately 18 to 21 years.
Subject is well nourished and well developed, indicative of regular
intensive physical conditioning. The subject is in a barbiturate
induced state of unconsciousness, time approximately nine hours. He is
normalocephalic, and stable, with no acute traumas. Preliminary blood
work indicates that he was exposed to enough Nembutal to drop a bull
elephant, and I'm told it was necessary to affect extraction without
further casualties to the team. Other than that the subject is clear of
steroids, narcotics, alcohol, and nicotine."
"In layman's terms?"
The doctor gestured to Ranma through the glass.
"You've got a young healthy clean-living Japanese man in there who
is as strong as an ox and requires dangerous levels of intramuscular
barbiturates to put him down."
"I understand the dangers of the drugs, but what can you tell me
from a more, shall we say, _esoteric_ viewpoint?"
The doctor understood immediately what Tarchenko referred to. That
was the reason he was here.
"His EEG's normal for a man in drug induced narcosis. If you want
anymore answers you'll have to let him dry out. I can't administer the
multiphasic personality inventory or any kind of intelligence
examinations with him doped up. I recommend the immediate suspension of
his Diprivan injections."
"That may be dangerous doctor, for reasons you have already
pointed out."
"You can still restrain him physically, but I need him coherent
for my tests."
Tarchenko nodded.
"I see... Very well doctor, do what you must. But see to it that
he is well restrained."
The doctor agreed with a murmur.
"May I may an alternative suggestion?"
Tarchenko was willing to hear what the doctor had to say.
"Go on."
"The subject is closely attached to a woman, a fiancee or some
sort of lover. As he has been unconscious since his extraction, he is
unaware that we do not have her in our possession."
Tarchenko smiled evilly.
"I see where you are going with this. Yes, I'm sure if we
convinced him that his cooperation was necessary for the well being of
his fiancee, he would be most compliant."
"I shall see that he is made aware of his circumstances when he
regains consciousness."
"How long will that take?"
"A few hours at the most. His body is proving to be quite
resistant to the drugs."

* * *

It was the third day since Ranma had been taken, and still there
was no word on his whereabouts. McFogg's group had taken up residence
in the Palace, where Akane could be protected from a second kidnapping
attempt. In addition to the Prince's men, Nabiki and Hiro alternated
their watch over her, but she remained withdrawn and silent. The
nightmares had also returned without Ranma's proximity, and she was
physically and emotionally a wreck.
Thus far they had been following Doctor Casimir's advice, and had
made no official recognition that the events of that terrible night had
even happened. At the Prince's insistence, the police had dropped their
investigation into the kidnapping, and into a possible manslaughter
charge against Hiro Ohata for the death of Fyodor's agent. It was
fairly obvious that you couldn't acknowledge one event without the
other, and if there was no kidnapping, then there could be no
manslaughter related to that kidnapping. The luckless agent was being
cremated that very day. No autopsy had been performed, and no one had
come asking for the remains. It was if the man never existed.
That suited Hiro well enough. If he had his way, there would have
been a few more John Does on their way to anonymous graves via the
state funeral home. He paced moodily outside Akane's room deep in
thought.
"<They should have learned something by now,>" he muttered.
"<Spook work always takes time,>" Heironymous Durango replied from
a heavy upholstered chair opposite him. "<Pacing isn't going to get
anything done faster.>"
"<I can't help it,>" Hiro said bitterly. "<I just feel so
helpless.>"
He sunk against the wall and slid down, clenching his fists tight.
"I was supposed to protect them!" He hissed to himself.
Durango looked across the hall to Hiro, who now sat on the floor
and stewed.
"<Don't worry. We'll find him. And then it's pay-back time.>"
Hiro looked up at Durango. He said nothing, but the fire in his
eyes spoke volumes.
Aerandir walked down the hall towards them. Anazali and Nabiki
were with him. Hiro wasn't sure what to make of the tall man with the
pale hair and the sea-colored eyes. Nabiki had told him a little about
Aerandir, but Hiro still had his misgivings. Anazali only ranked
slightly higher on his list of people he could trust.
One of the Prince's men stopped them, but when Aerandir identified
himself he was allowed to pass. He stepped up to the door and waited.
Hiro looked up at him.
Aerandir's face was calm as he addressed Hiro.
"Mister Ohata, may I speak with Akane?"
"Something tells me I wouldn't be able to stop you," Hiro replied.
Aerandir offered him a nod of agreement.
"Be that as it may, I do wish to have your approval."
Hiro stood. "Sure. Follow me."
He knocked at the door and entered.
Akane was standing at the window, looking out to the sea. Merchant
ships plied the Mediterranean beyond the window. Tall masted sailing
yachts darted between the bulky freighters and tankers.
She was still in a nightgown. The bed next to her was unmade. When
she turned around to face them Hiro felt his heart sink to behold her.
She was weary beyond the words it would take to describe her. Weary and
heartsick and emotionally spent. She didn't have a tear left in her,
but still her eyes ached to shed more.
"Hello Akane," Aerandir greeted pleasantly. "I'm told you're
having trouble sleeping?"
Akane managed a short, bitter laugh.
"I can help you perhaps," he said soothingly. "If you would permit
me, of course."
"I can't sleep," she replied in a hoarse voice. "The nightmares...
Without Ranma close by, the nightmares return. It's too much for me."
"Aerandir can help you sleep, dear." It was Anazali who said this
to her. "He can keep the nightmares from you."
"Please let him help you sis," Nabiki added.
Akane did want to sleep. Desperately. But the terror of those
nightmares she had experienced were far worse than any she had endured
in Nerima. Now that Ranma had pledged to share his very life with her,
the thought of losing him forever was beyond endurance. Her nightmares
reflected that loss with a dull edged pain that had sawed pitilessly
through her soul in the last three days.
"I can't," she sobbed. Hiro was ready to kick them all out and
force them to leave her alone. At least then it would lessen the pain
that their presence was inflicting upon her. Aerandir nodded sadly,
then pulled his flute from his tunic.
Nabiki's songbirds suddenly flew through the door and alighted
upon her shoulder. Nabiki looked to them, and they sang brightly for
her. In spite of herself, Akane smiled.
Aerandir offered a hand to Akane, and begged that she sit upon the
bed. "Very well then, I won't force you to sleep. Allow me instead to
sing for you, that I may ease your worries."
Akane found that she couldn't resist him. She sat back on the bed
and waited for him to begin. Aerandir looked to the little songbirds
who perched upon Nabiki's shoulder, and they trilled in reply. He put
the flute to his lips, and blew a soft haunting note.
The birds had their key, and began to sing.
Aerandir joined them, and they fell into harmony.

"What skies upon the east do glow
That sound the harken to sun's warm grace
To make the new world stir and grow
And brings light to shine upon man's face

Farewell to ice and bitter cold
Abjure the snow and banish the waste
Bring forth the rays that shine like gold
Arise ye men, Spring's sweet dew to taste."

As Aerandir sang, Akane began to sink down upon the bed. Her eyes
became heavy and she started to drift away. The song was an ancient
one, from an epic that detailed the rise of the Maiar. Hiro watched
dumbfounded at Aerandir as he began another song: a lullaby to the
accompaniment of the songbirds, and of Anazali who joined him, though
her voice was in the tongue of the Maiar.

"Sing we now sweetly and dreams let us weave her,
Wind her in slumber and there let us leave her!

The lady does sleepeth, now light be her heart!
Love is her armor, we are her shield,
Of all that we wish her, our hopes are revealed:
Never from her light, nor love shall she part!

Sing we now sweetly and dreams let us weave her,
Wind her in slumber and there let us leave her!"

Akane was now fast asleep. Aerandir placed a hand softly upon her
brow and whispered something in her ear. She murmured a reply and sank
back into the bed with a slight smile pursed upon her lips. The
songbirds fell silent upon Nabiki's shoulder.
The mariner sank back upon a chair and rubbed at his temple. He
looked suddenly very tired and at once showed perhaps a sign of his
vast age. Anazali gave him the fondest smile then and retired from the
room.
"You should see to her Mister Ohata," Aerandir said to him.
Hiro shook his head as if awakening from a dream. He saw that
Akane was slumbering peacefully, the first time he had seen her do so
in three days. With the greatest care he lifted the sheets from the bed
and set her beneath them. Nabiki was nearly bursting with relief.
She leaned over and kissed Aerandir's brow.
"Thank you Aerandir," she said to him.
"As always; I am your servant, Nabiki."
He rubbed at his temple again. "She will sleep very deeply, free
from the imbalances to her essence which have brought her such torment.
I have lent her a bit of my own to carry her through this day, and I
have given her a very special dream as well. When she awakens tomorrow
morning she will be restored to health."
Hiro looked to Aerandir. His opinion of the man had just grown by
an order of magnitude. Then he returned his attention to Akane, and
watched over her. It was in some small way a redress for having failed
them once.
"Look after her well, Mister Ohata," Aerandir admonished him as he
rose from the chair. "I shall retire to Kelebros. Look for me there if
any should need me."
Nabiki stopped him gently with a hand at his arm. When he turned
to see what she wanted, she cocked her head to the songbirds that were
now silent on her shoulder.
"I thought you didn't like them, so how did you get them to
cooperate like that with the songs?"
"I have reached an understanding with them," he replied. "In
return for their silence to my uncle, I continue to allow them to be
near you. They're rather fond of you actually, so I think we have
nothing to worry about."
This was still all so weird for her, but when he told her that the
songbirds liked her, she became very pleased with the idea. It
reinforced her notion that they were hers, sort of. Sensing this, the
birds suddenly twittered affectionately in her ear.
"Do they have names?" She found herself asking him.
Aerandir nodded.
"Their personal names to each other do not translate very well I'm
afraid. My uncle calls them Innael, Birathiel, and Gliredhel."
The three birds each chirped at the mention of their name
"They are named for my uncle's three sisters who perished with the
drowning of Maianar. He would sometimes speak to me about them and
their beautiful singing voices, but I'm afraid these three birds are
all that I will ever know of them... My uncle granted them a remarkable
span of years."
Nabiki let him go after that. She didn't have anything she could
say in reply. Innael took wing then and flew over to the headboard of
the bed where Akane slept. Birathiel and Gliredhel chirped once and
then joined their sister. Together on the headboard they began to sing
very softly to Akane, and Nabiki beamed at them.
Hiro watched all of this still a little confused. In any event he
was happy to see Akane resting peacefully and the sight of Nabiki and
her wondrous songbirds made him feel as if they had a powerful ally in
the mariner named Aerandir. For the first time since Ranma's abduction,
he felt hope.
"Are you going to stay here awhile?" He asked Nabiki.
Nabiki nodded and sat down to listen to the birds and to watch
over her baby sister.
"I was going to see about lunch. Would you like anything?" He
continued.
"If you would please. That would be nice." She had found herself
liking Hiro even though it could be argued that he and his scientist
employers had gotten them in this mess in the first place.
"I'll see what I can do."
"Thank you, Hiro."
Hiro nodded and got up on his feet. He glanced once at Akane and
left the room.
Tatewaki Kuno appeared some time later. Nabiki gestured for him to
be silent, and pointed to Akane's sleeping form. Kuno began to beam
with happiness.
"Hello Kuno-baby," she said to him quietly.
Kuno was relieved that she hadn't called him 'Tate-chan' again. To
hear that name from her lips confused him so. That it was presumption
beyond forgiveness was certain, but why he had been unable to reproach
her for such familiarity was the source of his confusion. He settled
for a short nod of acknowledgment.
"I see the lovely Akane is at last within the sheltering arms of
Morpheus," he observed.
"Aerandir sang her a lullaby. She went right out."
Kuno nodded sagely.
After that, their store of small talk was exhausted.
They stood or sat in silence. The only sounds in the room were the
soft singing of Nabiki's birds, the deep even breaths Akane took, and
the ticking of a clock on the mantle of the fireplace. It was almost
laughable, except that the two of them were too busy thinking about
others things to notice how quiet the room had become.
Nabiki was still trying to figure out what had been going through
her head when she engaged Kuno in that kiss. **It was a stupid thing to
do,** she told herself. **You're lucky he didn't attach himself to you
on the spot.**
She wanted to chalk it up to the romance of the moment. Attaching
that rationalization to her thoughts wasn't coming very easy though.
She thought back to that night, and their kiss. She had never been
kissed like that before. Ever. It felt so good to be loved like that,
even if just for a few moments. Even by Tatewaki Kuno.
Her eyes drifted over to Kuno, who stood solemnly watching over
Akane. There wasn't any of the usual adoration in his eyes when he
looked at Akane, meaning that he was in his Protector mode again. It
was the mantle he had assumed over Ukyo and herself when they had
escaped from the Russians.
**Had all of that just been part of the little dramas he played
out in his head?** She suddenly wondered. She thought of how caring and
strong he had been for the three of them. How open he had been with her
as they walked for many kilometers across the southern Ukraine. It was
so unlike him that it had to be genuine.
She laughed quietly to herself about how ridiculous that sounded.
**One way to find out...**
She had to know. Even if she wasn't sure she wanted to find out.
She gave herself a mental kick in the rear and pressed on. Timid was an
adjective that did not apply to Nabiki Tendo, and she wasn't going to
have that sentiment proved wrong.
She cleared her throat for attention.
"Hey Kuno-baby," she said to him.
Tatewaki Kuno was jolted out of his reflection and cast a
questioning glance in her direction.
"Yes Nabiki?" He asked.
**Yes Nabiki-? Not 'Yes Nabiki Tendo?'**
All of a sudden she felt very nervous. Maybe Kuno _was_ a little
hung up on her. She mustered her cool again and rose to her feet.
"I wanted to talk to you about the other night," she began. It was
true enough: they hadn't said a word about it to each other since then.
She had downplayed it in her own mind, and Kuno was trying his best to
deny that it had ever happened.
"Yes Nabiki?" He seemed quite oblivious to her intentions.
She walked over to him. He watched her approach with a casual eye
but said nothing. When she was standing before him and looking up into
his eyes he began to cross his arms over his chest.
She stopped him with a hand on his arm and brought it down to his
side, never taking her eyes off his. Her gall was astounding, even if
Kuno expected as much from her. He began to say something, but Nabiki
cut him off.
"I want to know if what happened between us was just a heat of the
moment thing, or if there was more to it."
"Whatever are you talking about, Nabiki Tendo?" Kuno replied, just
a hint of defensiveness in his voice.
**How can he be so stubbornly ignorant?** Nabiki railed inwardly.
**Just how big _is_ that fantasy world of his?**
"I'm talking about _this,_" she said sternly.
She stood up on her toes and kissed him warmly, throwing her arms
around his neck and pulling herself close to him. She was about to
break the kiss when it seemed he wasn't going to respond, but then his
arms went around her and he deepened their embrace. _Then_ she broke
the kiss.
She bobbed back down on her heels and looked at him for a minute.
He looked a little surprised, and did she dare think _hurt_ by her
sudden suspension of affection? She turned her back to him and returned
to her chair.
"Thanks Kuno-baby, that's all I wanted to know."
Tatewaki Kuno stood paralyzed in the middle of the room. When at
last he could move he spared a single guilty look to Akane, then a
confused one for Nabiki. Nabiki watched him with sharp eyes, taking in
his distress.
**It serves him right for being such an insensitive clod about the
whole affair.**
"If you're looking for poetic words of undying love to Akane, you
had best save your breath Kuno-baby," she told him after he turned
longing eyes to her sleeping sister.
He didn't reply, he just watched Akane and sighed.
"Ranma proposed to her that night," Nabiki went on. "She said
'yes'."
Kuno sighed again. He had heard vicious rumors to this effect, but
the tone of Nabiki's voice told him that the rumors were true. It was
one thing to be trapped in an arranged marriage and still pine for
one's true love. It was another to commit to that marriage out of one's
own free will. As disgusting and terrible as being the wife of the
contemptible Ranma Saotome seemed to him, he realized that Akane Tendo
was forever lost to him.
He was an honorable man. As much as he disliked Saotome (and even
more so for finally stealing Akane away from him), he would abide by
their engagement. Unless he could prove that Saotome had used some sort
of coercion, their engagement was valid, and he would do what he could
for Akane that she would be happy.
Nabiki could see the sudden sad turn in Kuno's expression. It had
gone beyond the noble melancholy he affected when things didn't go his
way, it was grievous injury. She felt very sorry for him then. It
bothered her to see him that way.
Suddenly it seemed as if a light bulb lit up above his head.
Granted, it was only a twenty watt bulb, but something had instantly
jerked him out of his sad reflection and put an ever growing smile on
his face. His eyes took on that mad glow that occurred when his ego
ballooned out of control. Nabiki tensed in her chair, waiting for him
to spill forth whatever epiphany he had.
"If Akane Tendo be the fiancee of the accursed Saotome of her own
will, then he has no more hold upon the Pig-Tailed Girl! At last this
cup has passed from me! My way is clear! Oh Love reveals her true face
at last!"
He struck a dramatic pose and raised his sword on high. Tears
streamed down his face.

" 'Let not my love be call'd idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike are my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Kind is my love today, tomorrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to consistency confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
'Fair, kind, and true,' is all my argument,
'Fair, kind, and true,' varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
'Fair, kind, and true,' have often lived alone,
Which three till now never kept seat in one.'"

The three songbirds stopped their quiet lullaby for Akane and
turned their attention to Kuno. Even for birds, the look they gave him
was one of alarm for his madness. Part of Nabiki wanted to scream at
him. The other part, the one still in control, instead offered him a
fond smile.
"I'm glad you worked this out Kuno-baby," she told him.
"Oh would that this adventure was of its conclusion reached!" He
cried in rare form. "That I may return to bask in the sweet glow of the
Pig-Tailed Girl's love!"
With that he started for the door, bowing low once for Akane, who
continued to sleep oblivious to Kuno's passionate outburst, before
leaving.
Nabiki shook her head sadly.
**Oh Tate-chan, you are so hopeless...**
Hiro appeared with a knock at the door. He had a wheeled tray with
lunch at his side. He pushed the tray into the room quietly for fear of
awakening Akane.
"Don't worry about the noise, Hiro," Nabiki said to him. "Kuno was
just in here bellowing, and she didn't move a muscle."
"I thought I heard a familiar voice from down the hall.
Shakespeare?"
Nabiki gave him a knowing smile. "One of the stanzas from the
Sonnets I believe."
"That wasn't hard to guess," Hiro said flatly. He gestured to the
tray. "Any preferences?"
Nabiki found that she didn't have much of an appetite anymore, but
gamely reached for a bowl of consomme and a piece of bread from the
basket to keep up appearances.

Chapter Two

Ranma glared at the man who had introduced himself as Ivan. The
Russian for his part sat calmly across a table from him while a few men
in lab coats finished last minute touches on the array of sensory gear
emplaced around the martial artist. Doctor Pulatski and an unkempt
gentleman in a dirty sweater and stained trousers watched from the
corner of the room. A man acting as a translator took his place by
Tarchenko's side.
Ranma had a splitting headache, no doubt the side effects of
whatever they had dosed him with in Monaco. Ever since his awakening he
had been questioned, prodded, probed, scanned, and in general turned
into their guinea pig. That was three days ago. He recognized some of
the tests they had performed on him as being similar to ones McFogg's
researchers had used on himself and Akane when they first came to
London. McFogg's men had been a bit more civil about it than the
Russians.
He looked around him. He was in the examination room, a short walk
from his windowless holding cell. He had no idea where in the world he
was, but had the sinking feeling it wasn't anywhere near Monaco.
"<Are we comfortable?>" Tarchenko asked. The translator repeated
the question in Japanese.
"Go fuck yourself," Ranma replied curtly.
"<Tut tut, Mister Saotome, that's no way to speak to someone who
literally holds your fiancee's life in his hands.>"
Ranma took the translator's words with a snarl, trying to leap up
out of his chair. For a moment in his rage he had forgotten that he was
bound in a straight-jacket and chained down to the floor. They had
learned about his prodigious strength soon after he had regained
consciousness. An agent was learning to live with one arm broken
backwards at the elbow for his carelessness.
Tarchenko made a gesture to the straight-jacket.
"<Are we quite finished yet?>"
"Let me see that Akane's all right and I will be!"
"<You are just going to have to take my word for her well being,>"
Tarchenko replied. "<By now you realize what terrible things are in our
power to do to her if you don't cooperate. Know that I am quite capable
of turning these men loose upon her.>"
Tarchenko gestured to Ranma's three hulking playmates for the last
three days. They were the ones who were for a lack of a better term his
handlers. They were ones who moved him from his cell to the examination
room and back again, who lashed him down and beat him whenever they
felt he wasn't cooperating. Which was often. Ranma's body in fact was a
wealth of welts, bruises, and contusions.
Ranma wasn't all that sure they had Akane anymore. Before he
blacked out he had heard Hiro and Kuno's voices approaching. It was
possible that they could have rescued her, and that the Russian was
just bluffing. On the other hand there was no way he was going to take
any chances with Akane's life.
"<Let's begin the interview, shall we?>" Tarchenko asked.
Instruments flicked on with hums and whirs. A tape recorder was
switched on. Ranma could see other men enter the room in the shadows
behind Tarchenko.

When the 'interview' was over, Ranma's handlers dragged his dazed
body out of the examination room and to his holding cell. The beatings
hadn't been very bad, it was just that he hadn't been getting any sleep
because of the nightmares. The questions Ivan had asked were absolutely
nonsensical. They had nothing to do with McFogg's group, or the events,
or how Ranma could sense them. Nevertheless the assembled interrogators
took them quite seriously, and forced him to answer with the first
thing that came to mind.
The cell door swung open and he was thrown inside. He wished they
would take the straight-jacket off so he could move his arms. The leg
irons they gave him were digging into the flesh of his ankles. What was
left of his tuxedo was mostly tatters.
The door slammed shut and he was in darkness again. He felt his
way to the foam mattress in the corner and dragged himself onto it. He
had no desire to sleep, even though he was exhausted. The nightmares
would come for him if he slept.
He sobbed just once before catching himself. His tears weren't for
himself, they were for Akane. Even if the Russians didn't have her, she
would be prey to the nightmares the same as he. The thought that she
was also suffering, no matter where, was a cold spike through his
heart.

"Well Doctor?" Tarchenko asked.
Pulatski consulted his notes.
"He is only of average intelligence. Personality tests indicate a
strong moral core coupled with an abnormally independent motivational
center. He's tough, opinionated, inflexible, and confrontational. In
addition he has a strong value sense concerning life and the well being
of others -provided they don't conflict with his personal value system.
We had a good example of this during his extraction: he was capable of
killing a man barehanded to protect his fiancee, and seriously injured
several others.
"Analysis of neural pathways is indicative of advanced motor and
reflex control. That's in keeping with his martial artist profession,
but we've found some other interesting indications as well."
"Go on."
"While his neural architecture is not compliant with accepted
standards of psionic aptitude, his fourth brain structures are highly
developed. There is no corresponding cerebellum enlargement or pons
activity under PET scan, however. Kirlian analysis supports the theory
that while he is capable of focusing large amounts of psionic
potential, he has none of the accepted psionic talents."
"Then he's a latent psychic?" Tarchenko asked.
"No," the unkempt man interjected. "Not at all. He displays no
aptitude for the so called sensitive talents. No telepathy, no empathic
transference, no precognition, no psychometry. He has a slight Kirlian
awareness, but his index isn't remarkably higher than an average
person. I can sense no parapsionic awareness within him."
"What are you getting at, gentlemen?"
Pulatski fielded this one. "Given separately, his physical
aptitude and his fourth brain development are meaningless. However,
when combined we believe he may be able to gather, focus, and project
energy from himself and his surroundings. That would make him an
advanced physical archetype."
Tarchenko had heard that term before. He'd never seen one in
action, but the stories were fascinating. Men who could perform
ridiculous feats of strength and agility, some who could even project
psionic energy blasts! Now he felt better about keeping his young
Japanese prisoner tightly bound.
"You think he is one?"
"Current evidence supports this conclusion," Pulatski replied.
Tarchenko nodded slowly.
"In regards to his sensitivity to the events. What is his
connection?"
The two men conferred for a moment.
Pulatski spoke up. "We don't have any quantitative evidence to
support any theories, but..."
"Tell me what you think."
"We don't think that he is, in and of himself, sensitive to these
events. There is an outside influence at work here. We believe that it
may be in part responsible for the traumatic dream states that plague
him in REM sleep."
Tarchenko felt as if they were holding back from him. He would
have none of that.
"There's more to it of course. Do go on."
"It's possible that an outside presence is directing him. Although
we are at a loss to localize such a presence if it exists."
"I see... So his usefulness has reached its end?"
The men understood what Tarchenko was implying.
Pulatski again spoke up. "We would like to observe him for another
two or three days if possible. There is so much we can learn from him
regarding other paranormal fields, that it would be a waste to get rid
of him so soon."
"You must understand my position as well," Tarchenko cautioned.
"Our presence with this young man is making our landlords nervous." He
gestured to the ceiling, where above them was the bustling activity of
the Russian Embassy to France. "I give you forty-eight hours."
"We understand," Pulatski replied. He and the unkempt man known as
Toschev offered good-days and left the examination room.

* * *

Doctor Casimir entered the Salon in the early evening with a pile
of papers in his hands and a broad smile upon his face. Professor
McFogg, Prince Rainier, Clay and Ferguson, Heironymous Durango and
D-Day, Hiro, and Kuno were already present. They were smoking, drinking
tea, and conferring among themselves. The mood in the room was subdued,
even angry.
"<I have found him!>" Casimir cried.
This garnered immediate attention.
"<Ranma?>" McFogg asked hopefully.
"<He's in Paris,>" Casimir told them.
"<How did you ever discover this, Grigory?>" Prince Rainier asked
in wonderment. None of his discreet inquiries with the French had been
successful.
Casimir took a seat in a leather bound chair and reached for the
silver teapot. Only after pouring himself a cup of Earl Grey did he
speak. The room was silent in expectation.
"<Tarchenko may have him, but he can't hope to do anything with
him without the assistance of certain specialists,>" Casimir began.
"<He would need Doctor Vladimir Pulatski->"
"<-The leading parapsychologist in the world,>" Clay was quick to
interject. It took one to know one.
"<And Mikhail Toschev, among others. Toschev is a very talented
psychic who found dubious employment with the Special Services Section
of the KGB. He is a pitiless and cruel man, and likely fits in with
Vanya's group.>" Casimir supplied mournfully. He had never fully
trusted Tarchenko, but this betrayal had been especially difficult to
put behind him.
"<So how does this tell us where Ranma is?>" Hiro asked.
"<I'm getting to that boy, patience! As I was saying, Vanya needs
these men to learn anything from Ranma. I made a few discreet phone
calls to some old friends in the establishment and learned that both of
these men and a small research team attached to them had been
themselves recently attached to the Diplomatic Mission in Paris. It
appears that Vanya doesn't yet know that I've thrown in with your lot,
or I suspect he would have taken steps to restrict my inquiries.>"
"<So you think this proves anything?>" Durango snorted.
"<Men like Pulatski and Toschev do not get attached to Diplomatic
units,>" Casimir said calmly. "<They work in well funded laboratories.
Even if Toschev was in Paris to ply his singular talents for the
Intelligence community, he would not require a full research staff to
do it.>"
"<I'm sold,>" Hiro declared. "<Now where in Paris are we
talking?>"
"<The Russian Embassy I'm afraid,>" Casimir replied.
Everyone gave a collective series of curses and groans.
"<Hitting a safe house would be one thing, but the goddamn
Embassy?>" Durango said bitterly. "<That's hairy. Real hairy.>"
"<Likely the reason they took him there,>" Ferguson noted.
Aerandir entered the room with Anazali. The men all stood for the
tall and graceful Maiar woman. Anazali chose to stand at the far end of
the salon, away from the others. Aerandir took a chair next to the
Prince.
"We would like it known that we pledge our support in rescuing
Ranma Saotome," Aerandir declared. Anazali nodded from across the room.
"<We are deeply in your debt Aerandir,>" Prince Rainier replied
fondly.
"<Well that's all well and good, but we need a plan for this to
work,>" Hiro said to them. "<We can't just waltz into the Russian
Embassy, find wherever they're hiding him, and spring him without
getting into the middle of serious trouble.>"
"<A diversion would be good,>" Durango announced.
"<From your tone I would say you already had an idea for one,
Mister Durango,>" the Professor replied.
"<You could say that,>" he replied. He lit up a Don Diego
Churchill and began to puff away.

* * *

It was well past midnight when Nabiki walked into the Salon. There
was a haze of cigar and pipe smoke hanging in the air, and the remains
of sandwiches and other no effort foods were scattered on tables.
Papers, maps, memo pads and other sundries were likewise scattered
about. A servant entered with a large silver coffee pot on a tray. He
set it next to the men as they gathered around a large table that had
been moved from one of the dining rooms to the salon. A few of them
grunted acknowledgment and poured fresh cups for themselves.
She thumbed through the papers. Most of them were faxes from all
over Europe, but mostly from Paris. One of them looked suspiciously
like a blueprint or technical drawing. For the public utilities of all
things.
Nabiki watched Heironymous Durango as he chewed on the end of a
pencil while he and D-Day pored over a navigational chart of the local
Paris airspace. They wrote down various communications frequencies,
informational squawks, and beacons on a set of notepads. D-Day checked
them with some other notes they'd taken earlier. Then he began rambling
on about fuel ladders. One of the Prince's men was on a phone line
getting them weather information.
She moved on to the others. Hiro was going over an inventory of
the small arms Durango and D-Day had with them aboard Bettie's Dare.
Kuno meditated in silence because he had little to offer the group
other than his sword.
McFogg was in the middle of a phone call on another line while one
of the Prince's men monitored the line against wiretaps from equipment
housed in a briefcase. Ferguson took down instructions and notes from
McFogg as he relayed information from where Nabiki presumed to be
London. He was puffing away rather furiously on his pipe as he spoke.
Clay was talking with Aerandir and Anazali in one corner of the
room. He seemed to be detailing some sort of plan to the two Maiar, who
would occasionally shake their heads and correct him on some point or
other. For the most part they seemed to be agreeing, which made Nabiki
feel a little better.
Casimir was on a third line, also being monitored against wiretap,
and speaking in animated Russian with whoever was on the other side of
the line. He jotted down notes and passed them over to McFogg and
Durango. Occasionally the Catalina pilot would have a question
regarding the scientist's sloppy handwriting, and particularly because
some of the notes taken were in Russian.
All of this James Bond stuff was a little overwhelming, even for a
woman who prided herself on being well connected in the right circles.
For a moment she wished Akane was awake just so she would have someone
she could talk to. She watched them work for awhile. At least the
activity indicated that they had some sort of plan to rescue Ranma from
Tarchenko.
"<Nabiki, could you be so kind as to come over here please?>" The
Professor asked her.
She had barely gotten to know the Professor in the last two days,
but it was easy to see why Ranma and Akane trusted him. She wondered if
she was looking like the fifth wheel that she felt she was. When she
joined him at the table he handed her a notepad with various
scribblings and asked her if she could make a few phone calls.
It was busy-work, but the alternative was sitting alone and
worrying. She took the notebook and proceeded to the last available
phone line that the Prince's people had hastily installed in the Salon.
She looked over the notes and got to work.
After awhile her old talents of making connections and getting
people to do what she wanted started paying off. Contacts she had never
known before began complying to her wishes as she applied a little
manipulation here, a little promise of grease there. Just like old
times. She looked over to the Professor, who was smiling in admiration
of her efforts, and wondered just what her sister had told the
Professor about her these last few weeks.

* * *

Akane awoke just before lunch the next day. She seemed to look
much better than she had the previous day. As Aerandir had promised,
she had suffered no nightmares, but in fact had a rather pleasant dream
featuring Ranma.
Reality asserted itself once again with consciousness. Hiro was
quick to allay her worries by telling her they had found where Ranma
was being kept and that they were going after him that night. Of course
Akane was adamant about going with them.
"Out of the question!" Hiro had protested. "It's too dangerous."
She had argued with him for awhile, then finally relented. Nabiki
wasn't too sure about her sister buckling so easy, but kept it to
herself. Her part in this plan detailed that she leave with Ferguson
and Anazali early that afternoon on a commercial air flight to set a
few things up in Paris. Akane was Hiro's problem after that.

* * *

The PBY-5A Catalina floated alongside the slip as the Monaco sky
began to darken with sunset. Hiro and Kuno loaded the last of the gear
they were bringing with them. D-Day crawled along the top of the wing,
checking that engine and control surface access panels were securely in
place. Aerandir could be seen through the cockpit canopy talking to
Durango as the pilot went through his preflight checklists. Clay poked
his head out of the dorsal hatch and took a heavy duffel bag from Hiro.
When they had finished stowing everything, Durango asked if they
were ready.
Hiro looked to Kuno, who looked to Clay, who looked to Aerandir.
The mariner was wearing a black cloak and an equally dark expression.
His sword lay over his lap in its scabbard. He nodded his head.
His reason for joining them was clear. It was likely that his
uncle Sarophan was ultimately behind the Russians, and that one of his
own kind was surreptitiously watching over the Embassy. He would deal
with that threat should it arise. He only hoped he could stop whoever
had been detailed for such an assignment without killing him.
"<Right!>" Durango cried. "<Cast us off!>"
D-Day scrambled over to the little cleat just outside the door
when he was pushed aside by Akane Tendo. She was dressed in a dark wool
pullover sweater and black sweatpants. Black running shoes completed
her outfit. Despite her efforts, the last thing she looked like was a
commando.
"<Hey!>" D-Day protested. She ignored him.
Akane climbed aboard Bettie's Dare.
"Where do you think you're going?" Hiro asked.
"I'm coming with you," she said matter-of-factly.
"Absolutely not!" Hiro yelled at her. "You are not going with us!
I don't want anything happening to you."
"I'm a martial artist!" Akane yelled back in protest. "I'm
prepared to get hurt!"
Hiro turned crimson. He ripped open his shirt to reveal an ugly
scar to the right of his breastbone. From his pocket he produced a
jagged, halfway unraveled piece of dull grey metal flecked with copper
and thrust it in her face.
"When one of these comes crashing into you at fifteen hundred feet
per second you'll wish all it did was 'hurt'!" He thundered. Kuno and
D-Day were about to step in and calm him down when Hiro lowered his
voice. Although Kuno wouldn't tolerate Hiro's outburst to Akane under
other circumstances, he knew from first hand experience that the former
infantryman and comrade in arms was correct.
"This thing hit me the day the North Koreans kicked us off our
hill. The same day your friend Gosunkugi got hit. It went in through my
body armor, drilled right through the chicken-plate, and entered into
my chest. From there it grazed my lung, missed my heart by about three
millimeters, gouged a nice groove through the edge of my spine, and was
about halfway out my backside when it hung up on one of my ribs."
Akane looked with horror at the oblong scar on Hiro's chest. She
tried to imagine what it was like for the jagged piece of metal in his
hand to have gone through him like that. It never occurred to her that
the reason it was so jagged and deformed was _because_ it had gone
through him. Now she understood why he had been reluctant to take his
tank top off at the beach.
"The bullet missed everything important, but I still felt like I
was being turned inside-out," he said in as grim and serious a voice as
he could. "I was in so much pain they had to shoot me up with morphine
just to get me to stop screaming."
He held the spent round up to the light.
"There are going to be hundreds of these little bastards flying
through the air if and when things go wrong. I don't want you anywhere
near them. The only way I ever want you to know about what it's like to
get shot is to hear it from someone else."
"I don't care!" Akane cried. "I'm going and you can't stop me!"
She glared at him with a look that bordered on despair.
Hiro was wounded to see that in her eyes, but his concern for her
overrode any ideas of placating her. He lowered his head wearily. For a
moment she thought he was going to give in.
"Are you going to be doing him any favors if you get yourself
killed?" He hissed angrily at her. He hated himself for being so mean
to her, but goddammit why couldn't she understand?
"I love him!" She protested. "Ranma would move Heaven and Earth
for me if our positions were reversed. Tell me he wouldn't!"
Hiro couldn't deny that. He'd seen it on a mountain in North
Korea.
"Now it's my turn to do this for him," she said sternly. "I am
going with you."
Hiro was about to take his life into his hands and try and remove
her forcibly from the Catalina when Aerandir stopped him with a gentle
tug of his arm. He turned around to glare at the mariner. His mouth
opened in rebuke. He didn't care what kind of powers the mariner had,
there was no way he would allow Akane to go.
Aerandir cut him off.
"Let her accompany us Mister Ohata. I sense that her presence will
be very necessary in locating Ranma." He looked to Clay. "Wouldn't you
agree, Mister Clay?"
Clay squinted his eyes at Akane for a moment.
"<You may be right Mister Aerandir,>" the parapsychologist
replied.
"<Excuse me?>" Hiro groused.
"Mister Clay and others who are sensitive to such things can see
something very special with Akane. They can use it to locate Ranma."
"Huh?" Hiro replied, wondering what Aerandir was driving at.
"Mister Clay?" Aerandir gestured to the parapsychologist that he
might explain.
Clay cleared his throat. "<I can see a red string floating from
her heart when I concentrate,>" he said solemnly. Akane suddenly
blushed furiously at the same time that enormous happiness welled
within her.
"<What?>"
"<I'm what you would call a psychic sensitive,>" Clay explained.
"<That's why I got into such a controversial field of science as
parapsychology. I don't have a lot of the abilities of most genuine
psychics, but I can see certain things that most people can't.>"
"<What's a red string got to do with anything?>" Hiro protested.
He thought he remembered a little folklore on the subject, but nothing
was coming to him.
"<The strongest of loves are bound to each other by discrete lines
of psionic force, too weak to be detected by conventional
electromagnetic instruments like the Kirlian. However, the human brain
can be sensitive enough to sense these lines of force. They connect to
people with very strong bonds. I can follow Akane's line straight to
Ranma if we can get the two close enough.>"
"<How close is that?>" Hiro asked. He could see his attempts at
getting Akane off the seaplane were failing and would argue anything at
this point.
"<Perhaps as far as a hundred meters away. I have seen their force
line from such a distance before.>"
Akane knew victory when she saw it. She took a seat next to
Aerandir and Kuno and offered him a wicked smile of smug satisfaction.
Hiro clenched his fists tight and stuffed his 'lucky bullet' in his
pocket.
"I don't fucking believe this," he cursed to himself.
Durango called down to them.
"<You guys through pissin' and moanin' so we can get this show on
the road?>"
"You may proceed at your discretion Mister Durango," Aerandir
replied.
"<'Bout goddamn time. Come on D-Day, let's go.>"
D-Day cast them off and secured the door. Then he proceeded to the
cockpit. The supercharged radial piston engines of Bettie's Dare
exploded to life moments later. As the engine noise increased, the
seaplane began to taxi out of the La Condamine marina.
Durango firewalled the engines once they got clear, and the
Catalina lurched into the air minutes later. He brought the plane into
a shallow turn and headed north by northwest, Paris bound. Hiro
retreated to the cockpit because he couldn't stand the thought of Akane
coming with them. It was bad enough that he was scared about losing his
own life, but to lose Akane's was beyond imagining.
"<We're talking about 500 nautical miles to Paris, or about three
hours at our present speed,>" Durango announced for them. They were
well aware of their time table, but a little reinforcement never hurt.
Bettie's Dare disappeared into a darkening cloud bank as the sun
sunk over the western horizon.

Chapter Three

Ranma awoke with great gasp for breath. Cold sweat rolled down his
face as he shook away the last vestiges of the nightmare he had
suffered. It was a very familiar one, and he started to wonder if there
was any meaning behind it.
Once again he dreamed that he was fighting people atop the Eiffel
Tower. Akane was there, and she was fighting them too. Then she was
pushed over the side, and he jumped after her, and together they
plummeted straight down. He woke up before they could hit the ground.
He wiped the sweat away from his eyes. Someone had eventually
prevailed upon his jailers to remove the straight-jacket during the
short periods when he was allowed sleep. Double sets of manacles took
the straight-jacket's place. At least he could move a little. Perhaps
even break them if he tried hard enough.
**If Kuno could do it,** he thought, remembering back to the short
bit of catching up they'd shared with Nabiki before the Ball. **I gotta
be able to do it.**
He was almost certain by now that they didn't have Akane in their
clutches. It was a little strange, but he felt as if he would _know_ if
she was around. It didn't feel like it, and the way he was treated
today suggested that it wouldn't matter shortly.
**All the more reason to try and get out of here. They aren't
going to just let me go when they're done with me. I gotta think of
something.**
He looked down at his manacles. They had a little play in them so
as not to cut off the circulation, but there was no way he was going to
wriggle them off his wrists.
**Unless I suddenly got a lot smaller...**
He looked over to the stainless steel toilet basin in the corner
by the dim crack of light from the bottom of the door. He didn't need a
lot, just enough to transform. He crawled over to the toilet and
splashed up water upon himself.
It was tepid, but just cold enough to do the job. He felt himself
shrink into the tattered fabric of his ruined tuxedo. His breasts
swelled from his chest even as his wrists and ankles shrunk in their
manacles. The things nearly fell off him as he became a girl.
Ranma-chan slipped off her manacles and stepped out of her leg
irons. It wasn't much, but this was the closest she'd been to freedom
in three days. She knew that she couldn't get the door open as a girl,
and doubted that she would have the strength or the focus to blast it
open. All she needed to do was bide her time and wait for them to come
for her.
And wouldn't they be in for a surprise.

* * *

Nabiki and Ferguson stopped the truck along the Right Bank of the
river Seine near Bercy. It was late evening and the many barges and
boats that plied the river were now moored. She could see the glow of
the Eiffel Tower in the distance, just barely in sight past the distant
Notre Dame Cathedral upon the Ile de la Cite, across the water. Anazali
stepped out from the passenger side and surveyed their surroundings.
They were on the eastern end of Paris. The express lanes along the
Right bank were to the west of them and a large industrial park was on
the other side of the river. There wasn't much traffic here, vehicular
or otherwise.
"I believe this is the place," she said to them.
"<Okay Fergy-baby, you know what to do,>" Nabiki told him.
Ferguson nodded and engaged the parking brake. He left the motor
running as he stepped out of the cab.
"<This would go a little faster if you helped, lass,>" he told
her.
Nabiki gestured to the cellular phone she held in her hand.
"<Timing is essential my dear Ferguson. You wouldn't want me to miss
our cue would you?>"
Ferguson grunted something inaudible and headed to the back of the
truck. Pulling back the canvas flap that covered the bed, he lowered
the tailgate, set two long four by sixes down as a ramp, and began to
carefully roll the ten 55 gallon drums down onto the pavement. Anazali
kept up the watch as Ferguson rolled each drum to the side of the
street and the masonry and wrought iron fence that protected against a
drop to the river twenty feet below. He stood the drums up on end and
reached into his back pocket for the bung wrench.
He loosened the bung caps on the drums, both the vent and the
siphon caps. For curiosity's sake he took the vent cap off of one and
took a whiff. A strong petroleum smell hit him square on.
Ferguson was standing beside 550 gallons of JP-8 high performance
military jet fuel.

"<Coming up on target,>" Heironymous Durango announced. He thumbed
one of the function keys on the GPS display, calling up a preprogrammed
position map. D-Day had the wheel, and made the course corrections as
Durango called them out. The light of Paris was a distant glow on the
horizon.
Hiro nodded in reply. Akane hunched next to him in the cockpit. He
still couldn't believe they were taking her with them. It was bad
enough that Clay had no experience in these matters, but the rest of
them save Akane were all warriors of one sort or the other. Even
Aerandir from the look of his broadsword. Akane may have been a martial
artist, but she had never pulled the trigger on someone, so to speak.
"<Did I tell you that I hate the French?>" Durango asked them
then.
"<No, I don't think you've ever mentioned that,>" Hiro replied.
"<Back in '86 old D-Day and I were side by side in our Vark flying
to some place we'd never even heard of before about two weeks previous.
Place called Tripoli. We were going there to bomb it.
"<We were flying out of the UK then, didn't transfer to Germany
until just before the Gulf War. It was a hell of a flight, and the
worst of it was the State Department couldn't get permission from those
French pantywaists to fly through their airspace. Once the French
refused, the Spanish refused as well. We had to fly clear around the
Iberian peninsula -another six friggin' hours in the air.>"
"<The Speed was nice,>" D-Day added sarcastically.
"<Oh yeah, two hundred feet off the deck at eight hundred knots
and you're amping on amphetamines. Great fun. That's why the computer
was flying the plane until we got 'feet dry'. Anyways we're taking
flight surgeon issued amphetamines to stay alert 'cause we're gonna be
in the air fourteen hours just to reach the target.
"<We were all pissed off at the French, and we had plenty of time
to stew over it. Finally after I pissed in my flightsuit for the second
time I decided to do something about it. Get a little payback you might
say.>"
He looked at them for a second to make sure they were getting all
of this.
"<Ever heard of a Paveway laser-guided bomb?>"
Hiro and Akane traded looks.
"<Not that I recall,>" Hiro answered.
"<They don't miss,>" he told them. "<Trust me, D-Day and I dropped
enough of them in Iraq, and we never once missed. They go exactly where
the Pavetack designator directs them.>"
Hiro wasn't sure where the pilot was going with this. Akane
listened patiently for the punch line.
"<I dropped a Paveway laser-guided bomb right into the French
Embassy courtyard in Tripoli,>" Durango said with an evil grin. D-Day
suddenly whooped with laughter at the memory of it.
"<The official story was that a bomb had missed, or that possibly
one of the SAMs the Libyans launched at us ran out of fuel and crashed
there. We weren't the only ones upset with the French, and the brass
swept the whole thing under the rug. I might have felt bad about it
afterwards, but when we learned that Ducky and Bull had crashed into
the drink on the way out I felt vindicated... We all knew the goddamn
speed made them so paranoid that they didn't use the computer and they
ended up crashing into the sea... We wouldn't have needed the speed if
it wasn't for those six extra hours in the air....
"<And that's why I hate the French,>" he finished. He turned back
to the GPS display. "<You two better get ready, you've got fifteen
minutes.>"
Hiro and Akane nodded and went aft.
"<Orly Approach is gonna want to hear from us soon,>" D-Day said
after the two headed back to the main cabin.
"<Screw 'em. They have a radio.>"
D-Day jerked a thumb aft.
"<This is just a little nuts, man.>"
"<A little?>" Durango asked.
"<Don't get me wrong man, I believe him if he says he can do it.
It's just that this isn't something that happens every day.>"
"<We must maintain a sense of wonder in this world my dear Daniel
Day.>"
"<Piss off. Call me D-Day.>"
"<Sure thing.>" Durango adjusted the display for the small pulse
Doppler weather radar they had retrofitted in the nose of the seaplane.
There was clear skies ahead, no nasty winds or other developments that
would preclude what they were going to attempt.
"<Why are we doing this again? Besides the adventure of it of
course. It ain't just payback on the French again, either.>"
"<I like that Saotome kid,>" Durango replied. "<And I like Akane.
It really burns my ass to hear how they attacked them right after the
guy proposed to her. What a bunch of bastards!>"
"<Proposed? I thought they were already engaged?>"
"<One of those arranged marriages I'm told.>"
"<They still do that?>"
Durango took over the wheel while D-Day got out of his seat to
energize the EW rig. Various signals posted themselves on the split
screen display. D-Day began to isolate and identify signals for their
use in the immediate future.
"<Guess so. They must have decided that they loved each other
after all or something. All the more reason to get them back
together.>"
He reached down to the radio transponder panel, and dialed in the
number that was taped next to it. Bettie's Dare suddenly became British
Airways Express Flight 4255 on the worksheets of Air Traffic
Controllers at Charles de Gaulle and Orly international airports.
British Airways Express Flight 4255 never existed; it was in fact a
flight plan filed by one of the people Nabiki had talked to on the
telephone the night before. The man was a friend of Durango's who ran a
dubious air-freight business out of Calais.
"<Okay people!>" Durango yelled aft to get their attention. "<Our
masquerade is in effect! Ten minutes!>"
The radio crackled for attention. A voice in French accented
English spoke to them.
"<Bravo One Seven Seven, Orly Approach; advising you of the outer
marker, over.>"
Durango keyed his transmitter.
"<Roger Orly Approach, this is Bravo One Seven Seven, requesting
permission to enter Class Bravo airspace, over.>"
"<Copy Bravo One Seven Seven, permission granted. Climb to flight
level one-zero-zero and turn left to course zero-three-five. Squawk
six-six-zero-zero, and await further instructions, over.>"
Durango complied and set his transponder to 6600. Then he picked
up the cellular phone taped to the side of the console. He dialed a
number from a yellow post-it note on the control yoke.

Professor Balthazar McFogg sat in the study of his mansion in
London with Doctor Casimir, Doctor Vickers, MD; Katy Price, and Ames.
Several students from Cambridge University were there as well, one of
whom was online in a chat room via the Internet. The others in the chat
room made small talk, but they were 'virtually' assembled for one
purpose that evening.
A cellular phone began to ring. The Professor and Katy both made a
dive for it, with the Professor snatching it up and answering. The loud
thrum of supercharged radial piston engines greeted him.
"<Yes?>" he asked.
"<Eight minutes to contact,>" Heironymous Durango told him.
"<Everything's go unless I say otherwise. Out.>"
The line went dead.
The Professor looked at his pocket watch and waited.

Hiro checked his gear securely fastened to his body. Then he went
through his weapons. Sig Sauer P-220 and six magazines, that was his
backup weapon. The one he carried in hand was a Thompson SMG with 30
round stick magazine, and an army surplus magazine pouch with six more.
He had decided on the Tommygun over an MP-5PK because it was .45
caliber, the same as his pistol. It didn't have any suppresser on it,
but Hiro figured that if it came down to actually using it, it wouldn't
matter. An Ithaca Stakeout 12 gauge pump shotgun was slung over
shoulder.
Kuno carried his sword. That was all he needed, and would accept
no firearms. Hiro knew from experience that the swordsman was deadly
with his sword, even in the middle of a firefight, and so didn't press
too hard for him to accept at least a pistol.
Akane had no understanding of firearms nor any desire to carry
one. Hiro wasn't going to try and get her to carry one either. So armed
she could be as dangerous to them as the Russians. She was to stick
close to Aerandir's side in any event.
Clay took a matching Sig, but he had only done a little target
shooting on a range. Aerandir had his sword, plus whatever other
firepower he might suddenly muster in their defense. If it came down to
a firefight, Hiro was going to be the only one capable of shooting
back.
The point of the plan was that it wasn't supposed to get that far.
Hiro knew better than that, but had held his tongue. He resolved to be
ready for anything. The only martial art he knew was Ching Ching Pow.
His weapons were the extensions of his art. At least he told himself
this often whenever he saw a true martial artist at work.
Aerandir gathered them close to him. This was the part Hiro was
dreading. He was an accidental commando thanks to Operation Chancellor,
but a paratrooper was the last thing he had ever considered being in
his short career as a soldier. The dreadful part was that paratroopers
at least had parachutes. They didn't have that luxury.
"Hold tight to each other until we touch the ground," he
admonished them.
Akane looked to Hiro, who nodded his head and put his arm around
her waist. She wanted to go, he couldn't stop her, so be it. He just
wished everything would work out okay. She smiled gamely for him and
locked her arm around his waist. Aerandir took hold of her from the
other side. Kuno and Clay joined up and then Kuno took hold of Hiro.
"Are you scared?" Akane asked him. She looked very frightened, but
was still determined to go on. He wondered what he was looking like for
her to ask.
"Scared to death," he whispered in her ear.
"Me too," she admitted.
He gave her a squeeze which she returned gratefully.
They were ready. It was all in Durango's court now.

Nabiki nearly jumped out of her shoes when the cellular phone
rang. She turned it on.
"<Ready?>" She asked.
"<Five minutes to contact. Get ready.>" It was Durango's voice
over the roar of propeller wash.
"<Gotcha,>" she replied.
The line clicked dead.
She turned to Ferguson and gave him a 'thumbs up'. He returned her
gesture. Anazali came up next to her and began taking deep breaths.
Ferguson removed all of the bung caps from the drums and began
kicking them on their sides. JP-8 began gushing forth to spill down
into the river. The current was slow on this part of the Seine, and a
rapidly expanding slick of high performance jet fuel began to form.
"Are you going to be able to do this?" Nabiki asked her.
"Don't worry about me Nabiki," Anazali returned. "Now you and
Ferguson get out of here so we can continue with the plan."
"<All done here,>" Ferguson cried as the last of the drums
emptied. He began to pick up a drum.
"Leave them," Anazali cried. "I shall take care of them. Go now!"
Ferguson shrugged and jumped into the truck with Nabiki. He
released the brake and jumped on the gas. The truck sped away as
Anazali gathered in the energies around her. She felt something odd in
the wind. Something unexpected.

"<Talk to me D-Day,>" Durango said with a tight edge to his voice.
"<I've got Orly's air search radar locked down. Interference
patterns just as we thought. Gotta keep it low though. Charles de
Gaulle is screened by the big housing tracts around Saint-Denis to the
northeast of city center when we get in close.>"
"<It's a real bitch when the Paris skyline isn't any taller than
six stories. No where to hide.>"
"<You like a challenge, man.>"
Durango smiled. "<That I do.>" He turned back to the main cabin.
"<Four minutes!>"
"We are ready, Mister Durango." Aerandir called back to him.
Durango looked to D-Day, who rejoined him at the controls. D-Day
gave him a 'thumbs-up.' Durango nodded, laughed once, and then dialed
his transponder to 7700.
"<Here we go!>"
He took a deep breath and clicked on his radio transmitter to
121.5 MHz.

At first Orly Approach did not notice that B177's transponder
squawk had changed to 7700. He was busy directing the always crowded
airspace around two major airports. When Durango's voice came over the
radio, the controllers suddenly looked to their screens in the closest
they would allow themselves to panic. B177 was headed straight for
metropolitan Paris.

"<MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY... This is Bravo-1-7-7, British Air Express
Flight 4-2-5-5 declaring an in-flight emergency! I am twelve miles
northwest of Orly airport VOR, Heading 1-1-9 True, at flight level
1-0-0, speed two hundred knots. I have a hydraulic plant failure and a
fire light in number one engine! Request emergency clearance to land!>"

The ATC supervisor took immediate charge of the situation. He
consulted the displays while another controller pulled Flight 4255's
flight plan and manifest. He flashed the number 26 with his fingers,
indicating that Flight 4255's total list of flight crew and passengers
was 26 people.
"<Roger, Bravo-1-7-7-Heavy, this is Orly Approach. Can you
maintain flight level 1-0-0? Over.>"

"<Negative, Orly Approach, my elevons seem to be jammed with the
hydraulic failure, I'm dropping out.>" It was the best Durango could do
to keep a straight face.

"<Understood, Bravo-1-7-7-Heavy. Can you turn right to 1-6-5 True?
We are trying to clear a path for you, over.>"

Durango paused for a moment as if he was actually trying to turn.
Instead he began his shallow dive towards the heart of Paris a few
miles distant. His landmark was the Arc de Triomphe, which someone had
thoughtfully illuminated for him.
"<Negative, Orly Approach!>" He cried in his best panicked voice.
"<We have suffered a total hydraulic failure. It's knocked out all
controls, we're trying to hand pump them into position!>"

"<Copy, Bravo-1-7-7-Heavy. What are your intentions? Over.>" A
total hydraulic failure was as unlikely as they came, but the men at
Orly were too busy thinking about 26 people on a crippled aircraft and
who knew how many below if they should crash in the city.
"<Put out the alert to the Metropolitan Emergency Services!>" The
Supervisor ordered. A man scrambled to a telephone. "<Get the crash
teams on Runway 2-9 North and clear all traffic from there. I don't
care if you delay half our flights!>"

"<Orly Approach, I intend to crash land in Bois de Boulogne Park
if I cannot make the airport,>" Durango told them. Then added with a
cry, "<I have a fire light in number two engine! Losing electrical
power!>"

"<Bravo-1-7-7-Heavy, keep trying to turn,>" the ATC pleaded with
them. "<We have Runway 29 North cleared for emergency landing, but you
must turn to 1-7-2 True!>"

The radio began to crackle badly as if it was shorted out.
"<Orly Approach, Bravo-1-7-7, we can't hold it in the air any
longer. We think we have the gear locked down but electrical power is
failing and we can't get a 'locked' light. We--->"
Durango clicked off the radio and began sniggering, trying to hold
it in and keep his concentration.

The men in Orly ATC went silent. Eyes went to displays where the
blip marked 7700 dropped lower and lower, and headed straight for
downtown Paris. There was nothing they could do now but wait for the
inevitable.

Bettie's Dare howled over the rooftops of Nanterre on it's way
into Paris proper. D-Day had swiveled the GPS display to face him, and
now called out course corrections to Durango in his measured bombardier
drawl. The pilot dove the Catalina down to 500 feet. It was just like
the good old days, only instead of dropping a few thousand pounds of
high explosives they would be dropping about six hundred pounds of
people.
"<Nothing like screaming in over the rooftops of Paris at six
hundred knots, eh D-Day?>"
D-Day spared him a momentary frown. "<Six hundred knots?>"
"<Awright, so it's only two hundred, it's still a gas!>"
They were almost to the Arc de Triomphe. Durango made his bank
when D-Day called it out, and the Catalina slipped in midair to a
parallel track along the Champs Elysee headed southeast. Their target
was coming up: an older four story building better known as the Russian
Embassy to France.
"<Thirty seconds!>" He yelled.

Aerandir opened the door, and the wind howled and threatened to
suck them out. The lights of Paris glowed below them, though much
closer than Hiro and Akane and Clay would have preferred. Kuno of
course was fearless in this regard, and it was Aerandir who would
support them. He had no doubts in his mind. If he did it wouldn't work.
"Remember to hold tight to each other, the slipstream could be
treacherous," he admonished them.

Durango made the final adjustments to their heading. D-Day called
out the GPS cues as they howled in under 200 feet. With his other hand
D-Day throttled back on Bettie's engines. Durango began to pull up into
a slight climb and lowered the flaps. The Catalina began to flare out,
and airspeed bled off quickly. The final act was to switch off the
transponder and altimeter squawk.

"<Ten seconds!>" Durango yelled. "<And remember: I NEVER MISS!!!>"

Bettie's Dare screamed in within two city blocks of the Embassy at
two hundred feet. The preprogrammed GPS prompt began to flash on the
display. D-Day's voice rang out clear and loud over the roar of the
engines.
"<DROP! DROP! DROP!>"

Aerandir pushed them out the door with as much force as he dared.

"<They're clear!>" D-Day called as he watched out of the canopy.
He still couldn't believe they were doing this, but what the hell,
right?
Durango firewalled the engines, which roared in reply. The
Catalina began to level off as it shot straight over the roof of the
Russian Embassy. Durango slip turned back on course directly above the
always busy Champs Elysee at an altitude of one hundred and twenty
feet.
"<Keep this pig in the air, man!>" D-Day yelled.
"<I'm on it!>" Durango shot back.
"<You're gonna drop us straight into the Tulleries,>" D-Day
observed, gesturing to the park before them, and to the Louvre not so
far ahead. Like any good bombardier, he knew better than to try and
usurp Durango's control by grabbing his own control column.
"<I ain't gonna drop us in the Tullieries!>" Durango snarled back
as he wrenched at the control column. "<Have a little faith will ya?!>"

Ivan Tarchenko heard the sound of Bettie's Dare roaring overhead
and then felt the entire building shake with its passing.
**What on Earth was that?**
He and the others who enjoyed a late evening drink in the lounge
looked up to the ceiling. Someone declared that it sounded like a low
flying aircraft. Members of the diplomatic staff ran to the windows.
"<There is a plane crashing!>" One of them cried. That drew the
rest to the windows.

Nabiki and Ferguson were heading to the pickup point when they saw
the Catalina roar overhead, and dive for the river Seine. Ferguson
stopped the truck as he and Nabiki looked out the windows. The seaplane
was dropping like a dead duck.
"<Oh I hope Durango knows what he's doing,>" Ferguson remarked.
"<They should be out by now,>" Nabiki said, thinking of Hiro and
the others. She didn't know that Akane had accompanied them yet. She
looked down at the cellular phone in her lap. Soon it would ring, at
least she hoped it would.

Anazali drew in the energy around her, felt it build up within her
body. The seaplane was close, she could hear it diving towards the
river where she stood. This was not something she made a habit of. She
wasn't as strong as most of the others. Not like Aerandir, who was
stronger than he believed.
The air seemed to crackle around her.
Bettie's Dare was seconds away.

"<This is it!>" Durango cried. He jerked at the control column as
the Catalina dropped like a rock in a stall. D-Day grabbed at his
column in support of Durango. They risked all the engine power they had
in their final maneuver.
"<One way or another people're gonna think we crashed!>" He yelled
to no one in particular.
Bettie's Dare bounced along the water for an instant before
clawing it's way aloft. The two pilots had calculated their fuel
consumption very carefully to know how heavy they'd be when they hit.
It was close enough.

Anazali released the energy that had built up within her in a
furious lighting bolt. The bolt rippled across the river with a great
thunderclap, and the jet fuel exploded into the air with a blinding
fireball. Windows shattered close by, buildings shook, and the small
railway bridge over the Seine she had targeted disintegrated in a
roiling cloud of dust and shattered masonry.
Flames leaped across the river, rising fifty feet into the air.
She was nearly overwhelmed by the fierce heat, and found herself
stepping back in response. Debris from the destroyed bridge began
raining down around her. Traffic slowed on the nearby highway as the
fireball climbed into the sky.
As an afterthought she obliterated the ten empty fuel drums.
Fragments of scorched metal began to scatter around the street in
concert with the pieces of shattered stone. It was a scene straight out
of a disaster movie, and would keep emergency services busy for
sometime before anyone figured out that it was a hoax.
Feeling very tired, she ran away from the river to her next
objective. The nagging feeling that something was in the wind tugged at
her awareness. She couldn't put her finger on it yet.
The sing-song wail of French emergency and police sirens picked up
in the distance.

Ranma-chan felt the building shake above her. She had no idea what
it was, but it was followed moments later by the sounds of boot steps
coming down the short hallway outside. She tensed in expectation, ready
to explode into whoever was dumb enough to open the door.

Akane had never wanted to scream so badly in her life. Her voice
just wouldn't come. She was falling at a hundred miles per hour
straight at a building from a height of a two hundred feet. In fact
there were buildings all around them they could hit. She clutched onto
Hiro with all her strength as he was the first out of the door. She was
dimly aware that Kuno was now behind and above her.
Aerandir focused himself and began to pull at the winds around
them. There was ample energy to be found in the currents of the air,
and he was well accustomed to controlling them. The wind responded to
his wishes, twisting and pushing up at them. Their falls began to slow.
He then tugged at the four below him, catching them up in his
mind. He willed them to slow down even as the winds pushed against
their fall. He needed energy to do this, but there was plenty to be
found in a bustling city of ten million people.
With one last tug of his mind he stopped them three feet short of
the ground. He released them then, and they dropped to their feet upon
the grounds within the twenty foot compound walls of the Embassy. The
underground garage was only thirty meters away, and that was their best
access into the building.

Professor McFogg's watch read the appointed time. Durango had not
called, and therefore he had to assume that everything was going as
planned. He nodded his head to the Cambridge student at the computer
terminal.
The student got everyone's attention in the chat room. Upon giving
the proper code word, those who were involved acknowledged and left the
chat room. The student then disconnected.
McFogg looked to Doctor Casimir, who had his fingers crossed, and
to Doctor Vickers, who had brought two interns, a nurse and enough
surgical gear and supplies to provide immediate trauma care as
necessary when they arrived in England. McFogg prayed that it was an
unnecessary precaution.
Now all they could do was wait.

Emergency lines began ringing off the hook in Paris. Some of the
calls were legitimate calls from local Parisians who lived close to the
explosion Anazali had caused. The rest were a sudden influx of bogus
calls being bounced in from across Europe while looking like local
calls. They all said the same thing though: that a plane had crashed in
the river near Bercy.
Fire Companies scrambled to their trucks. Hospitals went on alert.
Police units called in off duty officers. The city responded as best it
could. No one knew exactly what was going on yet, but plenty of
misinformation was being fed to them.
That was why no one was terribly surprised when half of Paris went
black with the sudden disruption of electrical power.

Anazali couldn't keep this kind of destruction up all night. The
substation crackled merrily beneath the street after the Maiar woman
had summarily blown it up. Pink and gold flames launched into the air
from vents in the streets and manway covers. Lights went out all around
her as power was lost.

Aerandir had just enough warning to push the others clear before a
lightning bolt exploded at his feet. Hiro had his Tommygun to bear but
no one to aim it at. The Embassy went dark a moment later. Kuno caught
Akane before she could fall, and pulled her to safety beneath the
garage overhang. Clay threw himself against the wall and held out his
pistol. He had nothing to aim at, but felt much better with it in hand.
Aerandir looked up to see a man floating thirty feet above him. A
glitter of silver caught his eye, a large broadsword. He didn't have to
see who it was that nearly fried them with a lightning bolt. He felt
his familiar presence.
It was his brother Palandir.
"Sil Amarn! I will not allow you to betray us so!" Palandir cried
to him in the tongue of the Maia.
"It is you who betray the world!" Aerandir retorted. He detached a
part of his consciousness long enough to shout in the minds of Hiro,
Akane, Kuno, and Clay.
^Go! Find Ranma and get him to safety! I shall follow when I can!^
Hiro was the first to jump to action. He rushed the door to the
parking garage, jamming the butt of his Tommygun into the jaw of the
one man on guard. The Russian was stunned by the force of the
thunderclap, Hiro's strike put him out for the rest of the night.
"Come on!" He shouted to the others.

Palandir watched them run and raised another lighting bolt. It was
hard to find the energy with all of the power out in the neighborhood.
He was forced to reach farther from the center of the city. It took
more time than he had.
Aerandir lofted up at him with his sword ready. Palandir let go of
his tenuous hold on the energy and raised his sword in defense. Steel
rang against steel as the two brothers clashed in midair.
"Very clever, brother!" Palandir noted. The other four had escaped
within the garage, and there was no way he could reach them without
turning away from Aerandir. He did have other means of taking care of
them. As Aerandir had done moments earlier, he now detached a part of
his consciousness to sound the alarm within the minds of Ivan Tarchenko
and his cronies.

Ivan Tarchenko looked up at the lights as they went out. He saw
that lights had gone out all over that part of town. It didn't matter,
the Embassy had it's own backup diesel-driven generators on the
premises. They would start up automatically.
He suddenly wondered if the plane crash they had witnessed as a
huge ball of fire rising into the sky had been responsible. It made
sense. He looked to Fyodor and the other thugs in his employ. They
seemed unconcerned with the goings-on.
It was late. He was about to take his leave of the room and go to
bed when a sudden thought burst into his mind. Concern flashed across
his awareness. Something was very wrong and he must see that his
Japanese prisoner was secure.
It must have been the paranoia born of being a spy, but he trusted
gut instinct. Right now his gut was telling him to make certain Ranma
Saotome was secure. He yelled to Fyodor and his men and ordered them to
follow him to the examination cells in the basement.

Ranma-chan tried to contain her glee as the sounds of a bolt being
thrown back echoed in the silence of the basement. The door was opened.
Just then the lights went out. She saw her one favorite jailer look
dumbstruck at the sight of a young woman wearing a tattered tuxedo with
the sleeves and pant legs rolled up to her elbows and knees.
It was the last thing he saw. As the building's lights went out,
so did his.
Emergency lights flicked on. Ranma-chan cracked her knuckles with
righteous fury as the man bounced off the far wall and collapsed with a
heavy thud to the stone floor. Doctor Pulatski stood across the hall in
shock as he saw a strange red-haired girl step out of the cell and bash
the daylights out of Gennady.
Ranma-chan turned and saw Pulatski back against the far wall of
the hallway, stammering in broken Russian. She glowered at him and
started stomping towards him. It was the kind of walk that was only
intimidating if you were a full grown and muscular man. The hate filled
look in Ranma-chan's eyes more than made up for the fact that she
weighed 100 pounds soaking wet and holding a brick.
"You!" She yelled at him.
He didn't understand Japanese, but he had an idea what she was
saying as she stabbed a finger at him.
She backed him against the wall and then lashed out a hand to
collar him and lift him up on his toes. Nevermind the fact that he was
several heads taller than the mysterious and extremely violent girl
that grabbed him. Nevermind the fact that he was even now voiding his
bladder onto the stone floor. Ranma-chan seemed not to notice.
Ranma-chan switched to English. Hopefully the Russian had a
smattering of that. Otherwise she was just going to beat him to a pulp
and find someone else who could show her to the door.
"<Two things!>" She yelled in his face. "<Hot water and the way
out of here!>"
"<What?>" Pulatski cried. He understood the part about leaving,
but hot water?
"<I said...!>" Ranma-chan yelled, putting the squeeze on
Pulatski's throat. "<I want some hot water and the way out of here!>"
**Hot water?**
Ranma-chan gave him a tighter squeeze.
Pulatski gestured over to the examination room. Through the open
door she could see a coffee pot and some instant tea bags in a glass
bowl. Steam wafted from the pot.
She picked him up by the throat and dragged him with her to the
examination room. With one hand clamped firmly around his throat, she
reached out to the coffee pot and picked it up. This was going to hurt,
but beggars couldn't be choosy.
She dumped the contents of the pot on her head. It was coffee all
right. And it was hot. She screamed in pain, and her voice suddenly
took on a deeper timbre. Pulatski nearly fainted as he watched the girl
grow taller, muscles burst forth on her arms, a bit of five o'clock
shadow formed on the face, the jawline became tight and firm.
Suddenly there was a fully grown Japanese man with a black pigtail
holding him by the throat. It was Ranma Saotome! He couldn't believe
his eyes!
"<Now about the way outta here...>" Ranma growled menacingly at
him.
"<H-How did..?>" Pulatski stammered in Russian.
Ranma threw the man into a stack of computer equipment. Pulatski
crashed onto the floor whining in pain. Ranma stood over him and kicked
him sharply with his bare foot.
"<No time for that!>" He yelled at the fallen scientist. "<All I
want is for you to get me the hell out of here. Do that and I'll let
you live. Otherwise...>" He drew his hand across his throat in a
slicing motion.
Pulatski got the hint.

"<Which way?>" Hiro cried. They had made their way into the lower
levels of the Embassy with ease during the confusion. Casimir had drawn
them a fairly accurate map of the Embassy from his time spent there in
the 60s. Fortunately they hadn't done any major remodeling since then,
as Hiro found what he remembered to match up well with what he found.
So far so good...
They had Akane in the middle with Clay. Kuno followed as rearguard
with his katana drawn and ready. Aerandir hadn't caught up with them,
and Hiro could only presume that the mariner was busy outside.
Clay squinted hard at Akane. The excitement was interfering with
his concentration, but after a few moments he could see the red thread
of psionic force that lead from her heart point straight down and to
the left of them. Ranma was down there.
"<The basement!>" Clay responded. "<To the left and down.>"
That was good enough for Hiro Ohata. He introduced a burly GRU
major who had blundered into them from a side door to the butt of his
Tommygun. The two hit it off right from the start, but it was a short
friendship.
As the GRU major hit the floor, things went to hell from there. A
security man cried out and drew a machine pistol. Hiro barked a warning
for Akane and Kuno and brought the Tommygun to bear. Akane had just
enough time to cry out as the first of the Russian's burst chewed into
the fine oak paneled walls over her head before Hiro's answering burst
took the man apart at the midsection.
They ran past the fallen guard. Akane looked down with horror at
the dead Russian's body. There wasn't time for anything more as the
sounds of gunfire drew more attention. Clay pulled on her with them.
Suddenly she began to have a sense of appreciation for Hiro trying to
keep her from joining them.
Hiro led the way. The idea that they had been discovered rang in
his mind. It was to be expected, but they were counting on Aerandir's
support. Now it was up to him to get them out of this alive. It was
like being back in the middle of the war again. He had never felt more
alive in his life than when someone was actively trying to kill him.
Another burst of gunfire ripped apart an endtable in the hallway.
Hiro barked a short burst of suppression fire at the security man, who
ducked behind a door frame. The door to the stairwell was just past the
hallway.
"<Get Akane through that door! It leads to the basement!>" Hiro
yelled. He unlimbered his shotgun and cycled a shell.
Clay started to go, but the security man popped out from behind
the door while Hiro was busy and nearly blew the scientist apart in a
storm of 9mm hollowpoints. Akane saw the Russian just in time and
jerked him back behind the corner. Hiro fumbled up his Tommygun with
one hand and cut loose with the rest of the magazine. The Russian
ducked back behind the ruined door frame to reload. Kuno sounded like
he was hacking someone up down the hall.
Hiro was ready now with the shotgun.
"Go!" he yelled at them. "I'm covering!"
Clay swallowed hard and jumped into the open. Akane followed. The
Russian appeared, and he had a friend. Hiro clamped down on the shotgun
trigger and held on.
Hiro's shotgun blast annihilated the door behind the two Russians
as they jumped back inside at the last second. They popped back out,
guns blazing, before they thought Hiro could cycle another shell
through the breech. They were wrong.
9mm bullets whined past his head and shot down the hall. One very
nearly struck Akane, but it smashed into the paneled walls and showered
her with splinters. She cried out about the time Hiro fired a second
time with the shotgun.
Whereas Hiro's first shell had been double-ought buckshot, the
second shell was a 3 inch Nitromag .50 caliber discarding sabot slug.
It blasted clean through both mens' chests, through the wall behind
them, and out a first floor window via the closed steel shutters.
Hiro's wrist and the webbing between his thumb and forefinger were on
fire. That was just not the kind of shotgun shell you fired with a
roomsweeper like the Stakeout.
Kuno ran up to him as he winced in pain for his wrist.
"No time to dawdle, man!" Kuno rebuked. "This way! Onward!"
Kuno charged through the door with his bloodstained sword after
Clay and Akane. Hiro decided to sling the shotgun again and use the
Tommygun for awhile. At least as long as the ammo held up. He had
burned one magazine already and they still hadn't found Ranma. The way
things looked the whole building would realize they were under attack
before they could get out.
He jacked a fresh clip into the Tommygun and turned to follow
Kuno. He tried to ignore the two ruined corpses not ten meters away.
The sight of the cherries jubilee stain all over the hallway was a
little much even for him.

Aerandir leaped clear of Palandir's fiery sword. His brother was
ever the finer swordsman than he, and he suspected he was holding back
from him. He managed to hold his own against the renewed assault, but
it was taking all he had.
"Why do you insist in this Sil Amarn?" Palandir asked him. "We are
your family!"
"Ask yourself why you insist upon destroying the world, Sil
Amass," Aerandir retorted. "For that is what you seek!"
Palandir didn't reply to that. Instead he lashed savagely at his
brother and said, "In truth I did not expect to see you here, brother.
One would think the sea has too great a hold upon you."
"When the cause is noble enough, not even the sea may hold me fast
in its thrall."
"And the life of one man is noble enough for you?"
"Especially the life of one man!" Aerandir cried. His brilliantly
flaming sword stroke nearly took Palandir's nose off. "We were sworn to
protect these people since before you and I were born!"
"Then why do you betray us!?" Palandir thundered. His brilliant
sword strokes drove Aerandir down towards the ground. "Our uncle would
save this world and it's people from themselves!"
Aerandir called up a reserve of strength to fight him off to a
standstill. Palandir retreated in midair to fly back thirty meters from
him. The mariner rose up to the same height and waited.
"A hundred of our finest magi couldn't hold the Heart of the World
in the end. How do you imagine our dear uncle could hope to do so
alone?"
Palandir spit in reply. "Had any one of those hundred wise men
lived for twelve thousand years? I think not! Sarophan has the power to
tear this world in twain if that was his desire!"
"Sarophan may get his wish!"
They flew at each other again with renewed fury. They were no
longer brothers in each other's eyes. They were the deadliest of
enemies.

Ivan Tarchenko heard the sound of gunfire from the lower levels
and suddenly his worst fears were coming true. **How was this possible?
This was the sovereign territory of the Russian Federation. An attack
was unthinkable!** But he knew it to be true. He knew what they had
come for, whoever they were.
He wasn't going to let them have Ranma Saotome alive.
Fyodor and the others drew appropriate small arms and followed
Tarchenko to the basement holding area. Calls to the Paris Police had
been futile, every single man they had was converging on the site of
the plane crash. The local television stations, acting on anonymous
reports, were calling it the worst air disaster in French history.
If necessary he would have Saotome killed on the spot. It wasn't
as if he had any more use for him in any event. Fyodor grunted to his
men, and they began to file down the hallways. Staff types and pencil
pushers cowered behind doors, unsure of what was going on. They watched
timidly at them as they made their way to the stairwell. Others began
the process of destroying classified documents. He could hear the
shredders working overtime.
**I'm afraid I've worn out my welcome here,** Tarchenko thought
bitterly. **But if in the end I have the Heart of the World, it will
not matter.**

Ranma had Pulatski by the throat as the scientist directed him
towards the stairwell. If his luck held out, he could be free in ten
minutes. Maybe less. He didn't know what he would do once he escaped,
but he'd burn that bridge when he crossed it.

Chapter Four

Kuno had the point as they scrambled down the dimly lit stairwell.
His sword gleamed by the emergency lighting as he stomped down the
stairs. Akane stayed close to Clay. She was starting to understand why
Hiro had been so adamant about her staying in Monaco. The last thing
she wanted to think about was getting herself shot.
She just wanted to find Ranma. She needed to know that he was all
right. She vowed that she would do anything to see him safe and sound.
They had a future together, and no one was going

to take that from them.
Hiro snaked ahead of them again. He had powder burns on his face
from where a guard had nearly taken his head off at point blank range
with an AK-74. Akane didn't have to guess where the bright red splatter
across his brow had came from.
"<How much further?>" He cried. He was running out of ammo for the
Tommygun.
Clay knew they were close. The red thread of force was visible to
him without any effort now.
"<There!>" he cried, pointing down to the bottom of the stairwell.
"<He's down there for certain!>"
Hiro slammed up against the stairwell wall to make room for them
to pass. "Kuno! Cover them below while I cover from above!" He
unlimbered the shotgun again and remembered to extend the folding wire
stock this time. It wasn't much, but at least he could brace it against
his shoulder.
"You need not give orders to me Ohata!" Kuno bellowed. "Tatewaki
Kuno knows what must be done!" He leaped over the banister and down two
flights of steps to the bottom.
Ranma Saotome appeared through the door with Pulatski in his
grasp.
Kuno very nearly decapitated Ranma in his fury and haste. His
blade stopped just a centimeter shy of Ranma's throat. Both Ranma and
Pulatski breathed a sigh of relief. Pulatski because Kuno's blade was
going to go through him on the way out of Ranma's neck.
"Saotome!" Kuno announced. "I am a man of my word, and have come
to rescue you from these villains!"
"Hey uh, thanks Kuno," Ranma managed. As much as he hoped someone
would come, he honestly hadn't expected it.
"RANMA!" Akane cried out from a flight of stairs above.
Ranma looked up to see Akane, dressed in black mufti, looking down
at him. He didn't know if he wanted to cry out in delight or in rage at
seeing her here in the middle of this mess. Kuno took his burden from
him, throwing Pulatski against the wall and raising his sword to cut
him down.
"Thus ends thy sorry life!" Kuno cried wrathfully.
"Hold on a second Kuno!" Ranma told him. "We could always use a
hostage to get out of here." Even he had noticed the sounds of gunfire
raging above just minutes earlier, and figured the element of surprise
was quite thoroughly destroyed.
Kuno complied with a scowl and pushed the man before them at the
end of his sword. This sorry wretch deserved only a swift death by his
hands.
"Step lively knave, lest ye feel the steel of the Blue Thunder!"
A poke of the katana between the shoulder blades got Pulatski
moving, even though he didn't understand a word of Kuno's Japanese.
Akane wasted no time in jumping down over the banister to reach
Ranma. She ran up to him and threw her arms around him, eyes suddenly
dewing with tears. A tiny part of him knew better than to waste
precious time holding her tight against him, but that was the part that
didn't love her with all of his heart. He caught her up in what would
have been a crushing embrace if they weren't used to each other's shows
of affection.
"I thought I'd lost you forever," she whispered to him.
"You know me better than that," he replied quietly.
"Well you didn't have to scare me like that. Twice is enough for
one lifetime with you! Now three times?" She retorted once more in a
whisper. She kissed him on the cheek next to his ear and let him go.
"You okay Saotome?" Hiro called from above them.
"What took you so long?" Ranma shot back. "Hell, I was halfway out
of here on my own!"
"Finding out what city you were in took a little time," Hiro said
as the party climbed back up the steps. Pulatski was in front acting as
a convenient bullet stopper for them should the need arise. Clay
followed behind Kuno and Pulatski. Now that Ranma was found, he served
no more purpose, and was eager to get the hell out of here while the
getting was good.
"Oh yeah?" Ranma asked, holding Akane close to his side. "What
city is that?"
"Paris!" Akane said next to him.
"This ain't how I was hoping to visit Paris," he observed. He
reluctantly took the Tommygun Hiro gave him because he had been pretty
wasted over the last three days and had spent damn near all his
strength on Pulatski while in a rage. Hiro had the Stakeout in hand,
sweeping it along the winding stairwell banister above them as they
climbed.
"That's okay Saotome, I think we're in the process of leveling
most of it in order to make a diversion for your rescue," Hiro remarked
casually.
"That was nice of you."
"Anytime."
Ranma looked at the Tommygun.
"Feeling kinda light. What do I have left?"
Hiro handed him a stick magazine from his pouch. "Maybe half a
clip in the gun, plus this one. Don't spend it all in one place."
Ranma tucked the clip in his waist band. "I'll try not to."
"It's a Thompson, so it's got a low rate of fire compared to the
MP-5 you're used to. And the bullets are nice fat .45 hydrashoks, so
don't try shooting through any walls with it. They might make it
through, but not in any shape to do much good."
"I'll remember that."
They were just getting up to the right floor when a blast of
gunfire from high above them hit Pulatski. The scientist staggered back
against Kuno, his white lab coat suddenly soaked in red. The man
tumbled over as Kuno threw him aside and began moaning on the
stairwell.
Hiro only saw the muzzle flash for a second and fired his Stakeout
on reflex. Ranma jerked Akane behind him to shield her from any more
gunfire. Clay began shooting sporadically over their heads until his
Sig was empty.
"<Did you think you were going somewhere Mister Saotome?>" Ivan
Tarchenko yelled down at them in English. He looked to the others in
his group. Fyodor and his men readied hand grenades. Their fingers
locked around safety rings in preparation to arm and toss them at
Tarchenko's command.
"<I'm tired of your lousy hospitality!>" Ranma shot back.
"<Perhaps we should talk this over,>" Tarchenko told them. "<If
you would prefer your fiancee to live I suggest you listen to me.>"
"<Go to hell!>" Ranma yelled furiously.
Tarchenko nodded to Fyodor and the others. They pulled the
safeties on their grenades. The grenades' spoons flicked away and rang
upon the concrete stairs.
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark!" Kuno hissed
suddenly.
He wasted no time in busting down the door to the floor that
opened into the parking garage. He began waving his sword at them to
spur them on. Hiro finished off the rest of the shotgun's internal
magazine and began combat loading on the run.
"Make haste!" Kuno bellowed to the four of them. "Lest the foe
surround us!"
"Go!" Hiro yelled at Ranma and Akane. "While their heads are
down!" He kept up a blistering series of shotgun blasts.
Ranma pulled at Akane, practically dragging her through the door.
Clay was close behind them. Kuno was already charging down the hall
with his sword, chasing the staff types before him and ranting madly.
Hiro saw the dull egg shaped grenades falling towards them as they
made their break for the exit to the stairwell. His finger tensed on
the trigger of the shotgun once more as he leaped for the door. He just
hoped it wouldn't hurt as much as he was expecting.
"Fire in the hole!" He yelled.
Ranma caught and lifted Akane off her feet while still on the run.
He threw her a little roughly to the floor against the wall and then
dove over her body. She cried out in protest, but in that scant second
before the grenades went off she saw that he was too busy holding his
ears and yawning. In that instant she figured he knew something she
didn't, and copied him as best she could.
Six grenades exploded in unison at the door. The shockwave helped
to blast Hiro clear of the door. Glass windows set in doors shattered,
paintings and photographs were shaken off the walls. A wall of heat and
black smoke washed over them.
A consuming silence fell over them, broken only by the patter of
dust and small bits of the ceiling raining down.
"You okay?" Ranma asked her.
She was seeing stars from the noise of the explosions, but told
him she was all right. He wasted no time in pulling her to her feet.
Clay was already up and helped them along. Ranma cast a look back to
Hiro, who pulled himself up and hobbled towards them with a limp.
"Hiro!" Akane cried when she saw the bloodstains on his right leg.
Hiro waved them off and barked at them to keep moving.
"It ain't bad!" He protested. Actually it wasn't, but hurt like
blue blazes anyway just to spite him.

Aerandir knew he was outmatched against his brother's
swordsmanship. Part of his awareness informed him that Ranma had been
found alive and well, and for that he was glad. All he needed to do was
hold off his brother long enough for the others to escape.
He wasn't sure what Palandir would do if he saw Ranma escaping,
but wasn't prepared to take any chances with the young man's life. It
was possible that Palandir was merely around the Embassy awaiting
orders from their uncle to kill Ranma. Perhaps Sarophan had assessed
the man and his fiancee as the threat Anazali and her companions
believed them to be.
He didn't have too much time to dwell on such thoughts, as
Palandir drove home another series of glittering fiery sword strokes
upon him. He heard astonished voices in French and Russian below them
as he fought off the attack. He and his brother were putting on quite
an aerial show for them.
"You waste my time brother," Palandir told him curtly. "I have
other business here."
"If it concerns the life of Ranma Saotome and his fiancee than I'm
afraid you'll have to take it up with me, Sil Amass."
"So be it!" Palandir barked. "I did not wish to kill you, but if I
must than I shall!"
Aerandir braced for the all out assault he knew Palandir had been
holding back from him.

"<I wish I knew what was going on,>" Ferguson lamented.
The truck was at the assigned pickup point four blocks from the
embassy. Power was still out in this part of town, and the incessant
wail of police and emergency sirens echoed in the distance. The
Parisians hadn't figured out yet that the crash had been a hoax.
Nabiki silently agreed. Her thoughts drifted to Akane and Ranma.
Hiro. Even Tatewaki Kuno. She hoped they were all right.
Anazali appeared silently before them out of thin air. Both
Ferguson and Nabiki started in their seats within the truck. The
woman's oddly complected skin seemed to glow even in the darkness.
Nabiki found herself just a little jealous of her for a moment.
The Maia woman looked very weary. She walked over to the cab and
opened the door. Nabiki scooted over next to Ferguson to make room for
her. Anazali stepped up into the cab and sank into the bench seat.
"Are you okay?" Nabiki asked her.
Anazali nodded.
"I'm very worried," she told them. "I sense another presence here.
On par with Aerandir, and that frightens me."
"Huh? Who?" Nabiki asked. Ferguson was quite lost.
"There are few among my kind who are as old or as powerful as
Aerandir. I myself am but an eighth of his span of years... I fear it
may be Sil Amass, known as Palandir, his brother."
Nabiki remembered Aerandir mention his brother once to Ukyo. He
had been the one to pull them from the Dneister River. He had saved
them from Tarchenko's murder squad, and sent them to safety with
Aerandir that they be taken to Sarophan. If Palandir was their enemy,
then that meant that Sarophan was their enemy. And that meant that...
"Oh my God!" Nabiki cried in horror. "Ukyo!"
"What is it, Nabiki?" Anazali asked her.
"Ukyo! She's with Aerandir's uncle!"
Anazali was missing something here. So was Ferguson. Nabiki looked
at both of them and grit her teeth in frustration. There was too much
to explain to be doing it here.
Anazali didn't give her the chance. She jumped out of the truck
and started running towards the Embassy.
"Waitaminute!" Nabiki yelled at her. "Where do you think you're
going?"
"Aerandir needs my help!" Anazali cried in reply. Then she faded
from sight.
"Damn!" Nabiki cursed. She turned to Ferguson and gave him a sour
look. "<You know Fergy-baby, just once I'd like someone to sit me down
and explain to me absolutely everything that's going on around here.>"
Ferguson gave her a dubious look in reply, thinking back to what
he had said to begin this conversation. "<You'd like to know what's
going on? Bloody hell lass, I should think you know a damn sight more
than me!>"
The two of them harrumphed and turned back to face over the hood
of the truck. Nabiki felt very cold inside with the knowledge that Ukyo
was in the clutches of their enemy. **I won't lose Akane, Ranma, and
Ukyo too. I won't lose any of them!**

Tarchenko scrambled down the smoke filled stairwell when Fyodor
and his men had secured it. One of Fyodor's men had the dazed Doctor
Pulatski in his arms. Aside from the bullet wound in the arm, the
doctor was unhurt. Blind luck had him roll down the stairs far enough
to avoid the shrapnel of the grenades.
"<Where are they?>" He demanded.
Fyodor pointed down the hall.
"<Kill them, Fyodor!" Tarchenko thundered to the big Ukrainian.
"<They serve no further use to us, and are in fact aggravating me
greatly! Kill all of them!>"
Fyodor nodded and circled his finger to muster his men. Finally he
would be able to do what he did best. He was tired of treading lightly
upon eggshells. It was time to crush a few.

Kuno held off two guards at sword point. He had deftly disarmed
them, his blade having cut clean through their rifles. He was just
about to turn them into steak tartare when Ranma and the others came
running towards him from down the hall. The parking garage beyond was
now filled with armed soldiers. Unfortunately it was their only way
out.
"Leave 'em," Ranma told the swordsman. "We got other problems."
Kuno seethed at being told what to do, but conceded that Saotome
might have a point. He leaped at both of them, bringing his pommel down
upon their heads and knocking them out cold. He spat upon them in
contempt.
"Know ye that the mercy of the Blue Thunder is vast beyond even
your meager worth," he told them.
"<I hope you have a plan to get past all those soldiers,>" Clay
said in a hushed voice. The soldiers for their part were busy watching
two men outside wheel and dive around each other in midair. Silvery
flashes of light were punctuated by the ring of steel on steel.
"That's Aerandir!" Akane cried. "Who's he fighting?"
"Beats me," Ranma replied. He looked to Hiro, who was rubbing at
his leg and looking for the piece of shrapnel that hurt him so. "Got
any ideas?"
"You're the great martial artist," Hiro replied between clenched
teeth. He found it.
"If I thought I had the juice left in me, I'd rush 'em." Ranma
said bitterly. "But even if I did, it's too dangerous with Akane and
Mister Clay to worry about."
"Hah! You think I can't take a few?" Akane asked archly.
Ranma clenched his fists and glared at her. She glared back at
him.
"For Christ's sake, this is no time to start arguing," Hiro spat.
He pulled an inch long piece of bloody steel filament wire from his
leg. Standard anti-personnel shrapnel. "Give me a minute, and I'll give
us a little cover."
He bit back a few choicer curses as he shifted his weight on his
wounded leg. He reached into his satchel and produced a brace of four
canisters. He handed one to Ranma, Kuno and Akane, keeping the last for
himself.
Akane looked at hers. It had this ring pin on the top of the can.
"What?"
"Smoke grenade," Ranma supplied for her.
"If I had any I woulda brought a few frags, but we were kinda in a
hurry to find you."
"This'll work," Ranma said. He looked to Kuno, who readied his
without a word. Then he looked to Akane. "Just pull the pin when we do
and throw the grenade at them."
"On three," Hiro said. He pulled his pin and the rest followed.
"One...Two.. Three!"
He lobbed his smoke grenade as Clay held the door open. Ranma and
Kuno hurled theirs. Akane wound up and threw hers as hard as she could.
Hiro's grenade popped loudly in flight, then began spewing forth
voluminous clouds of thick blue smoke. At the sound the Russians
turned, only to get more grenades going off around them. The last
Russian in sight took Akane's grenade right in the forehead and was
cold-cocked before it went off.
"Well that wasn't quite what I had in mind, but whatever works!"
Ranma said to her as they watched the Russian fall over unconscious.
Hiro charged through the smoke blasting his shotgun blindly in the
direction of the Russians. Kuno let out a blood-curdling war cry and
leaped to follow. Ranma led Akane around the outskirts of the garage.
There was no way he was going to take her through the middle of Hiro
and Kuno's crazed charge.
The garage became pure pandemonium. Choking blue smoke filled the
space, billowing out of the open doors. Gunfire erupted in response to
Hiro's shotgun blasts. Kuno kept yelling something like "The Hundred
Blows!" and men screamed in terror and pain.
Akane coughed against the smoke and her eyes watered badly. Ranma
led them past the melee with Clay close behind. As they staggered out
into the open he saw a Russian raise his rifle against them. Akane
shrieked once. He remembered the Tommygun and emptied the clip into the
man's legs. The Russian dropped like a stone and began howling.
Hiro appeared through the smoke a second later. Kuno charged
through behind him. They were free of the building, there was just the
matter of the twenty foot high walls before them.
They looked towards the gate, which someone had finally sealed off
and posted with heavily armed security guards. They wouldn't be getting
out of there that way. They were still trapped.
"Aerandir was supposed to get us over the wall," Hiro said
bitterly.

Palandir had finally drawn blood. His brother had fought with all
his might, but the superior skill was beginning to tell. Aerandir
managed to disengage long enough to get a few meters between them.
Blood dripped down onto the grass of the courtyard below from a slash
across his side.
That was when Palandir saw that Ranma and the others had escaped
from the building.
"Very clever!" He commended Aerandir. "You play a marvelous
waiting game... All for naught I'm afraid."
Palandir began to gather the energy he needed. The electricity was
restored to the building, so there was no need to reach so far from
himself to collect it. He held Aerandir back with one arm pointing the
sword directly towards him, while the other arm lifted over his head.
St. Elmo's fire began to crackle in his hand.
Aerandir wasn't finished yet. He knew he couldn't charge his
brother without catching either the sword or the energy blast that was
being mustered. Instead he decided to affect a more localized defense.
He reached out with his mind, looking for something useful.
A gas main beneath the grounds ruptured at his prompt.
It didn't take much from there to get it lit.
A geyser of blue and orange flame rocketed skyward. The Russians
on the grounds cried out in panic and threw themselves to the grass.
The main blowtorched fifty feet into the black sky. The roar of the
ruptured gas main was deafening, distracting Palandir's attention back
towards Aerandir. Ranma and the others had a few more moments respite.

The exploding gas main sent Ranma and the others to the grass as
well.
"You get the feeling we're the minor players in this firefight?"
Hiro groused. He jerked a thumb into the air at the two dueling Maiar.
"We got ourselves another distraction," Ranma said. He scrambled
to his feet. "Come on, I got an idea!"
They got up with him and followed him to the corner of the wall
and away from all of the pyrotechnics. Kuno began to argue that a
charge upon the gate would succeed, but Hiro started yelling back that
it was crazy to charge across that much open ground. Clay kept watch
against the Russians, but for the moment it was clear that they were
still trying to deal with the exploding gas main to bother with the
five intruders.
Ranma ignored them and looked straight into Akane's eyes.
"I need your help for this," he told her. "I can't do it alone."
"Me?"
"Yeah. I don't have the juice for a ki-blast on my own. I haven't
slept in three days, really. The only thing keeping me up right now is
the adrenaline. I need you to power me up."
"What? I can't do any of that stuff!" Akane protested. It was a
bitter point with her, as she had felt very little like a martial
artist around people who could use such techniques.
"You're wrong, Akane!" Ranma told her sternly. "This attack
doesn't work unless you have the utmost confidence in yourself. You
have to believe you can do it! I'll get the thing started, but I need
you to help me give it some oomph!"
"What are you talking about? How am I supposed to give any power
to you?"
Ranma clasped his hand in hers. By this time Hiro and Kuno had
stopped arguing and spared them a look of wonderment. Then a stray
bullet whizzing by got their attention, and they focused themselves on
holding the Russians off. Clay had the Tommygun now, and began clipping
short bursts at them to the accompaniment of Hiro's shotgun and Kuno's
taunting oaths.
Ranma paid no attention to any of it, instead looking once more
into Akane's eyes.
"It's our ki's, Akane. We've got each other's ki's. Sort of. Parts
of them anyway. That's why we're skewed opposite of each other! You've
got a piece of me inside you, I've got a piece of you inside me! When
we're together, we're the same!"
Akane knew it to be true then. She didn't know what she could do
to help, but now as Ranma began to gather himself, she could feel that
part of him within her begin to glow with power. That inner flame was
infectious, spreading to the rest of her until she tingled at the
fingertips with heat.
"I know you can do this," he said to her. "I believe in you. You
just gotta believe in yourself."
He held out his right hand as he held her right in his left. She
put her free hand next to his as he directed. He took a deep breath. He
could feel what little power he had to spare rising within him. **It
would be enough, dammit!**
The fireball of ki energy began to coalesce in their hands. He was
giving it all he had. Akane gasped as she saw it, and more importantly
_felt_ it. There was power there: his power, her power, _their_ power.
She felt it flow out of her in a torrent.
The fireball grew and grew in their hands. It was all Ranma could
do to keep it together, Akane was busy feeding it her strength. When he
had all he could hope to contain and possibly a little bit more, he
flung it forth.

"MOKO TAKABISHA!!!" They cried in unison.

For an instant, if you knew what you were looking for, you could
see the image of a tiger swell around the two. The ki ball blossomed
forth into a lance of power that slammed straight through the stone
wall with runaway freight train force. The explosion blew them off
their feet, and for one panicked moment Hiro thought a Russian had
launched an RPG at them from the roof.
When the smoke and dust cleared, there was a seven foot hole
blasted through eighteen inches of stone. The edges of the hole were
scorched black. A faint sparkle of light dimmed to nothingness in the
wake of the blast. Clay lowered the Thompson and stared wide-eyed at
the huge hole through the wall.
"Let's go!" Ranma yelled. He sagged against Akane for a second,
and she helped to steady him.
"Are you okay?"
"Just a little shaky," he replied. He started towards the hole.
"Come on, I'll be fine."
Hiro didn't need a written invitation. He fired the last of his
three-inch Nitromags into the corner of the building where several
guards took shelter before running for the hole. The slug blew apart a
large stone, peppering the Russians with rock shrapnel and convincing
them that they had best wait a few moments before doing anything.

Aerandir felt the buildup and release of ki energy below. The
explosion that blew apart the wall surprised him. He hadn't expected
Saotome to be capable of such a feat in his current condition.
Palandir was of a like mind.
"It appears Nimatar's opinions of them are well founded," he said
to himself. His hand crackled with power and he directed it at the
fleeing party below. Aerandir realized that he didn't have much choice
at this point, and flung himself towards his brother with a great cry.
It wasn't Aerandir who connected with Palandir. It was Anazali's
blast that caught the Maia across the chest in a storm of radiant blue
light. Palandir staggered back in midair, stunned, but not hurt.
Anazali's attack wasn't strong enough to hurt him.
He snarled a curse and split his energies into a triple tined fork
of crimson red might. One blast stopped Aerandir cold, making him wince
against the blow but not seriously hurting him. Anazali was blasted to
the ground with a cry of pain. The third blast landed squarely between
Ranma and Akane, and the others.

The pavement was thrown up around them in a ear-splitting peal of
thunder. Angry red motes of light exploded around them, burning with an
icy touch upon exposed skin. Ranma and Akane stumbled forward, still
running, while Hiro and the others were thrown back.
Hiro, Kuno, and Clay were closest to the blast, and were knocked
silly by the concussion. They fell over face down and lay there with
their ears ringing loudly. It was the only thing that saved them when
Fyodor and his men came charging through the hole in pursuit of Ranma
and Akane.
Fyodor saw the smoking crater the three were laying around like
points on a clock face, and decided that they were quite dead. He saw
Ranma and Akane running away from their friends and that confirmed his
beliefs. He motioned for his men to pursue them. There was too much
cover for a clear shot at them down the tree lined boulevard.
They ran off in hot pursuit.
When Hiro got to his feet and the dust settled, he could see Ranma
and Akane running away as fast as they could. He could also see Fyodor
and his men chasing them. He yelled a warning but they were too far
away to hear him. He pulled himself painfully to his knees, waiting for
another blast to come raining down upon them, and praying that one
wouldn't. Kuno got back to his feet, and turned in time to cut down one
of the Russians with his sword as the man ran through the hole.
The scream cut short was enough to get Hiro moving again. Bullets
crashed around him as Kuno stepped away from the hole, and the rest of
the Russians opened up with AK-74s. Clay threw himself against the wall
and began edging away as fast as he could.
All he had left was the Sig. He drew it in one swift motion and
stood in the middle of the hail of bullets and fired twice. His shots
took the closest one square in the chest, pitching him back. He kept
firing, knowing that he was buying time for Ranma and Akane to escape.
The seventh round was gone and the slide locked back before he
realized what a stupid thing he was doing. A bullet grazed him across
the temple and confirmed it. As he spun around seeing stars he wished
he hadn't done it. When he hit the ground he saw that Ranma and Akane
had put a considerable distance between themselves and the Embassy. At
least he had kept more people from chasing after them for long enough
to let the trail grow cold.
**Hope it was worth it,** he thought before he blacked out.
Kuno saw Hiro spin around to the ground and felt the splatter of
fine droplets of hot blood upon his face. While Ohata had never been
his friend, he too was a comrade in arms, and he deserved to be
avenged. He would take that vengeance now.
"Oh wretched villains!" He raged at them, as heedless of the
bullets as Hiro had been. (Such courage must only be recognized in
kind.) "Your lives are forfeit! The Blue Thunder comes for thee!"
A growl arose from the depths of his throat. He raised his sword
on high, and at once sparkling blue flames lit up along the steel. If
he had known that he was doing it, he would have stopped and stared in
awe right there.
But this was Tatewaki Kuno, and when the red rage was upon him the
words 'tunnel vision' failed to describe his lack of awareness. He
charged right at ten men armed with AK-74s with fifty feet between
them. The Russians stood their ground and dropped into firing stances.
The rifles barked with foot long tongues of flame in the night.
Brass shell casings spurted high into the air in shimmering golden
streams. The sound of so many fully automatic reports was blurred into
an angry roar of gunfire.
They never touched him.
The first one was lifted up into the air with the steely stroke
and flung ten feet away. His uniform became wreathed in eery blue
flames as he hit the ground. The second one took a slash across the
chest and fell back with those same blue flames licking across his
clothes. The third was twisting away in panic and so only lost an arm
at the elbow.
The rest had enough time to scramble away in panic. They did not
face a man but a incoherently babbling demon with a fiery sword! Kuno
bellowed at them to stand and die with some honor. He shook his flaming
sword at them and berated them ceaselessly for their cowardice. He
still hadn't noticed the spectral flames that danced upon the blade.
Hiro had by this time come around. He had caught the tail end of
Kuno's suicide charge and grit his teeth expecting the swordsman to get
blown into hamburger. Instead the butcher shop belonged to Tatewaki
Kuno. Hiro shook his head in disbelief. This was just like Korea. His
thoughts drifted back to memories of Kuno standing upright in the
middle of artillery barrages unscathed. Of him taunting machine gun
nests as others worked their way in close with grenades.
**And by way, where the hell did those blue flames come from on
his sword?** Some terribly rational part of his mind squeaked in his
head.
"How the hell does he _do_ that?" Hiro said to himself. He brought
his hand up to his brow and it came away slicked in blood. It didn't
hurt, yet, and he had more pressing concerns.
Like finding Ranma and Akane before the Russians did.
The truck with Nabiki and Ferguson screeched to a halt next to
Hiro as he stood up. Hiro spun around ready to put his fresh magazine
through them. Nabiki raised her hands to her face, expecting to get
shot.
Hiro lowered the Sig and jumped inside next to Nabiki. She looked
at the dirty, bloody mess he had become, and reached for something to
staunch the free flowing wound at his temple. Hiro for his part was
screaming for Clay and Kuno to get in the truck. Clay appeared from
behind a tree and made his break for the bed. Kuno looked around him as
if he was hearing a ghost, which considering that he thought Hiro was
dead, was exactly what he was thinking. The sword was no longer alight.
"Kuno you blockhead!" Nabiki yelled at him.
"There isn't time for this!" Hiro yelled. "We gotta go now!"
Kuno stood there with his back to them looking very puzzled. He
couldn't possibly have heard the voice of Nabiki Tendo. Could he?
Nabiki brought out the big guns.
"Tate-chan!" She called to him sweetly.
This couldn't be a hallucination. Kuno turned around to see Nabiki
Tendo smiling winsomely for him from the window of a heavy truck. As
soon as he figured out that he wasn't seeing things, her expression
became very irate.
"Get in the truck you moron!" She yelled at him.
Kuno turned and ran back for the truck. He saw that Hiro was still
alive, and was about to say something in regards to it when Nabiki
collared him and dragged him halfway through the window.
"<Step on it Fergy-baby!>" She cried over Kuno's vehement
protestations.
Ferguson put the truck in gear and floored the accelerator. As the
truck sped off down the boulevard, police cars finally showed up in
response to the Embassy's pleas. The gas main continued to spew fifty
foot high flames into the night as they put distance between themselves
and the Russian Embassy.

Palandir wasn't expecting his brother to have fared so well after
his blast. He had thought that he had hurt him. He was mustering up the
power to incinerate the fallen Anazali when he felt another power surge
from behind. He spun around in midair as Aerandir brought his fists
down swiftly to his sides, and the winds spiraled around the
blowtorching gas main, turning it into a tornado of flame. Aerandir
directed the winds again, launching the tornado at his brother.
Palandir admired his brother's cleverness. He was always a master
of such elemental forces as the wind, never much for the raw power of
an energy blast. His wind attack was subtle in that Palandir was
expecting something flashier, something with a bit of give-away before
it hit.
It took all his will to muster sufficient moisture around him to
keep him from being broiled by the fiery tornado. As it was he felt the
waves of blistering heat all around him, driving him away as fast as he
could fly. He would have to flee or he would be burnt to a crisp. As
long as he was close to the burning gas main he was vulnerable to more
of those tornadoes. He didn't have a chance at contesting Aerandir for
control of the wind.
As he fled his awareness flicked out ahead of him. There was the
unfinished matter of the two Wayfinders. If anyone needed to die
tonight, it was them. Aerandir could wait. When Sarophan bound the
Heart of the World perhaps his brother would see his mistake. In time
they could be reconciled. It might take a few centuries, but that
wasn't an inordinately long amount of time to wait.

Aerandir knelt over Anazali. She yet lived, though her breathing
was labored. Her eyes had a dull gleam of pain in them.
"That was a stupid thing to do, woman," he told her softly in the
tongue of the Maia. "Had he not split his attack in three parts you
would have been slain."
Anazali looked up with a weary smile for him.
"I had to do something for the living legend of our people."
Aerandir took her up into his arms and carried her gently towards
the gate. The police were arriving, as well as a few fire trucks called
away from the bogus crash site. He walked past all of them, caressing
each man's mind, whispering to them that there was nothing to see. They
let him pass without comment.
He knew that Ranma and Akane had escaped. He could only hope that
they were on their way to the rendezvous point with Durango and his
seaplane for the quick hop across the English Channel. Palandir was out
there as well. He could be searching for them even as he delayed with
Anazali.
A sudden prickling sensation traveled up his spine. He sniffed at
the air then, not liking what he sensed. Anazali wriggled in his arms.
"There, did you feel it too?" She asked him.
"Yes."
"It's coming," she declared. "They won't be leaving Paris yet."
"You are likely correct," he responded.
"Set me down," she told him then. "I can manage for myself now.
You must protect them from Palandir."

Chapter Five

"<Where the hell are they?>" Heironymous Durango grumbled.
Bettie's Dare was making a slow and low orbital of the vast Bois de
Boulogne Park. They were sufficiently low enough and screened by the
low hills surrounding Paris proper from the air search radars of Orly
and Charles de Gaulle.
Numerous people who walked the park below could see them, but it
was of little matter. Even the emergency authorities would figure out
that the crash was a hoax sooner or later. It was too dark too make out
any details of the plane anyway.
"<They'll call,>" D-Day said not looking up from the Electronics
Warfare suite. A stray beam of radar energy occasionally hit them, but
not of sufficient strength for the kind of return signal an ATC would
consider to be anything more than ground clutter. He listened over the
headphones, dialing around the various radio and microwave frequencies
to monitor for signs of the rescuers' progress. (Or detection.)
So far there was mass confusion at the 'crash scene'. Radio calls
for scuba divers and a 100 ton mobile crane were traveling back and
forth across the ether. A frantic report of a gas main explosion at the
Russian Embassy got his attention. He didn't have enough French to get
any details, just enough to pick out key words.
The cellular phone rang then. Durango fumbled it up with one hand
as he kept the other on the control yoke. He turned it on and barked,
"<where are you guys?>"
Nabiki's voice replied. "<We have a little problem. It's going to
be awhile.>"
"<What's going on?>"
"<We got Ranma out, but we lost them in the confusion. We're
trying to find them now. We'll call you when we can.>"
Nabiki hung up.
"<Shit!>" Durango cursed. He looked up to the sky. "<I knew this
wasn't going to be easy, but work with me here, okay?! I thought we
were doing the right thing here!>"
D-Day looked at him after this outburst.
"<Since when did you get religious?>"
"<Since never, but a little intercession couldn't hurt right
now.>"
Bettie's Dare continued its impatient orbit of the park.

Ranma and Akane were about to stop running when they noticed that
Fyodor and his men were only two blocks behind. The Ukrainian and his
men were gaining on them. They couldn't see Hiro or the others
anywhere, and suddenly wondered when they had lost them.
Speaking of lost, they had no idea where they were. They were just
running now. Ranma doubted that he had the kind of horsepower left to
try and fight them. He would if it came down to it of course, but he
wasn't very optimistic about his chances.
**Maybe if I had a chance to rest.**
He tugged at Akane's hand and pulled her towards the river. There
was a small park here, perhaps they could lose them through it and
backtrack. Akane followed after, glad at least for bringing running
shoes. She had almost procured a pair of combat boots like Hiro's for
this. Ranma was barefoot. At least he was used to running barefoot.
"Any ideas?" He asked her.
"What are you asking me for?" She replied with nary a huff. She
was thankful for keeping in shape during their time with the Professor.
The running was paying off.
" 'Cause at the moment I'm fresh out," he declared. "I guess we
can just run all night until we find Hiro and the others."
They ducked through the park and twisted past tress and jumped
over hedgerows. They did everything they could think of to confuse
their pursuers. The park was smaller than they hoped though, and it
soon ended with a broad thoroughfare about a quarter mile from the Arc
de Triomphe. The Seine flowed leisurely before them, and the twin
lights of two raging fires glowed in the darkened Paris sky. The more
distant of the two began to fade, but the gas main fire still filled
the night with an orange glow.
Fyodor had anticipated their move, and sent three of his men
branching off towards the river while he and the rest stayed on the
trail. When Ranma and Akane burst free of the park they were only fifty
meters away from them.
AK-74s and an MP-5 spat a few dozen rounds in their direction.
With the Russians firing on the run, and Ranma and Akane moving
targets, the most they did was kick up fragments of stone and macadam
at their feet and make a lot of pretty sparks. The noise did however
direct Fyodor and the rest on which way the couple had run.

"Will you two shut up!" Hiro yelled to Nabiki and Kuno, who were
busy yelling at each other. He thought he heard something.
His outburst silenced them long enough for them to hear the second
burst of gunfire in the distance. Ferguson craned his neck out of the
window to locate the source.
"There, ya see?" He snarled at them. "Shut the hell up so we can
follow after that noise." He elbowed the back window out and pulled
himself gingerly through into the bed of the truck. He saw Clay sitting
there, he was not very content at the moment.
"<I'm not cut out for the commando business I'm afraid,>" the
parapsychologist remarked.
"<You did fine sir,>" Hiro replied. "<Did you get hurt?>"
"<Nothing compared to you, Hiro.>"
Hiro wiped at his temple again. It was starting to hurt, but
looked far worse than it was. A few stitches at the most. **Now if it
had been a centimeter to the right...**
A third burst of gunfire perked up his ears. He thumped on the
roof of the six by six truck to get Ferguson's attention.
"<To the left Mister Ferguson! Turn left!>"
"<I bloody well heard it too, Hiro,>" Ferguson replied, and jerked
the wheel to the left.
Hiro checked his Sig fully loaded. He was out of ammo for anything
else. Only five magazines too. At the rate he had been using
ammunition, it wouldn't last. He turned over his shoulder to look at
Clay.
"<You still have that pistol, sir?>"
Clay offered it up to him with the three magazines he had left.
Hiro took the other Sig and smiled. He tucked the extra Sig magazines
in his satchel.
"Just call me 'Pistolero'," he said to himself, holding the two
P-220s up in a gunfighter stance. Gods help those Russians when he got
within range.

They only had one way to go now. Ranma and Akane sprinted for the
bridge across the Seine to the Left Bank. Fyodor and his men pursued
them brandishing their rifles openly before the throngs of curious that
came out of their homes following the blackout.
Fyodor knocked them over whenever they got in his way. He wouldn't
let Ranma and his fiancee get away. When the crowds became too thick to
run through, he cut loose with burst of rifle fire and they obliged him
with screams and lots of diving for cover. Not having a police presence
was at last working for them now, he had no fears of running into a
policeman with them all back at the Embassy or the site of the plane
crash.
One of his men blasted away at the two again. He succeeded in
putting out a bunch of automobile windows, but little else. The gunfire
rightly inspired Ranma and Akane to run a little faster.
The Left Bank was on a separate power grid than across the river.
Thus it was still lit. Ornate street lamps glowed for them, which would
have been very pretty to look at and even a little romantic to stroll
under with the love of your life at your side if there weren't a bunch
of bloodthirsty Russians led by one particularly psychotic Ukrainian
hot on your heels. He looked to Akane. At least he had the love of his
life by his side.
At first Ranma didn't realize what he was running towards. He was
too busy trying to stay on his feet and avoid all of the people that
were outside to watch the disturbances in the city.
Fyodor and his goon squad shooting at them at least got the
citizens out of their way.
It was when Akane gasped in awe that he looked up. Not so far
ahead of them was the Eiffel Tower. His nightmare came back to him in a
rush. Every fiber in his being wanted to drag him in some other
direction.
The sudden appearance of Palandir above them gave him other ideas.
Like ducking for cover. He and Akane made a sudden juke to the right as
Palandir rained down a vicious blast of crimson heat death at them. The
blast dug a meter wide trench through the street. Fyodor and his men
pointed up into the sky and began shooting at Palandir.
The range was long, only a single round zipped through the Maia.
He clutched at his chest as blood spurted forth from the front and the
rear of his body. He felt the round pass straight through him. It
punctured his right lung, which was bad in and of itself, but at least
the tiny 5.45mm round hadn't struck bone. He could cope.
He coughed up a little blood, willing away the sudden fire in his
chest cavity from the collapsed lung. The pain at least fueled his
rage. He called up a bolt of hellfire from within him heedless of the
fact that he might need it to heal himself. This was the first time one
of these worms had injured him in a very long time. That insult would
not go unaddressed.
"DIE!!!" He told the offending rifleman. The hellfire spurted
forth from his hand to strike the Russian square in the chest. The man
burst into spectral flames and fell to the ground writhing in agony.
Fyodor and the rest dove for cover as the man's dying screams echoed
across the well to do neighborhood. There was just a pile of ashes when
it was over.
Palandir sank to the ground. It was too much to remain in the air
and try and repair the damage within him at the same time. He watched
Ranma and Akane sprint away like rabbits and gurgled an impotent curse
at them. He had spent the last of his offensive strength in that
wasteful lesson upon the rifleman.
Fyodor looked up to the sky, but the man was gone. He knew it was
the same man who had nearly killed him at the Dniester river. The same
man who had been ghosting Doctor Casimir's research group, and his own
men for months.
Cautiously he got to his feet. Upon seeing that no bolts of light
struck him down, the survivors joined him. They made their way forward,
using the parked cars for cover. When he got close to where the man had
floated, he saw a fresh pool of blood, still warm.
**He bleeds...** Fyodor thought to himself. The others saw the
blood and drew the same conclusion as himself. **We can kill this man
if he shows his face again. We must simply be faster on the draw.**
"<Keep after them,>" he told his men. "<But keep an eye out for
Georgi's killer.>"

Ranma and Akane didn't know that Palandir was wounded. They kept
running in the only direction they had available. That was in the
direction of the Eiffel Tower.
Once they scrambled across the marble tiles a hundred yards from
the Tower they realized that while Palandir was not chasing them
anymore, Fyodor and his goon squad were. The ironwork of the Tower
suddenly sounded like a good hiding spot.
**Maybe I could take them out one or two at a time up there. No
way I could do it out here in the open. I'd just get the both of us
shot.**
"Come on," he told her. "To the tower."
She followed him across the marble tiles and skirted around a
large pool. The fountains were spraying and cheerfully lit with white,
blue, and red lights. The massive ironwork frame of the Eiffel Tower
towered three hundred meters high before them.
The elevators were shut down, and the doors to the stairwells up
the four legs of the tower were locked. A few twenty-something
Parisians watched them scramble around for a way up in amusement.
Finally Ranma got mad enough to rip a door off it's hinges. The
Parisians decided to leave quickly at this point.
He and Akane clambered up the winding iron stairs as fast as they
could. The first observation deck was a good ways up. When they got
there they were starting to get winded.
"How far have we been running?" Akane asked him with a pant.
"Four, five miles. Plus all the fighting, running up these damn
stairs." Ranma paused to catch his breath. It was then that he realized
that he had caught a piece of shrapnel from those grenades. Either that
or piece of the pavement that Palandir blew up right behind them. His
back was sore, and fresh blood came away from his hand.
Akane gasped in fright.
"Ranma!" She cried.
"I'm all right. I don't think it's bad." He told her. "I just
noticed it myself."
She wasn't buying it. She turned him around and gingerly lifted
the tattered tuxedo jacket and shirt to inspect the wound. There was a
piece of steel wire just sticking out of the small of his back, to the
left of his spine. It was just like the piece Hiro had pulled out of
his leg. She couldn't tell how much was inside, and was afraid to touch
it for fear of hurting Ranma even worse.
"Oh my God, Ranma. There's a piece of metal in your back." She
said in a frightened voice. She thought of him huddling over her when
those grenades had exploded. The shrapnel was meant for her.
"I said I'll be okay. It ain't the first time for me you know.
It's just another scar to add to the collection, that's all."
**It would be nice if it would stop happening though...**
"It's the first time I've had to know about it," she told him
crossly. "You know I worry about you just as much as you worry about
me."
He looked softly at her. He knew she cared, but there was a time
and a place for it. This wasn't the time and it wasn't the place.
"I know you do Akane. But right now we gotta think of a place to
hide from these guys. Come on." He took her by the hand.
The first observation deck was also a restaurant. It was also
locked. Ranma had committed enough property damage for one night. There
were other places they could hide.
"Higher?" Akane asked as they came to the next set of stairs.
"Yeah, that way we'll be able to hold them off easier." He
gestured to the way the four legs of the tower gracefully arched
inwards towards each other at the top. "If we get lucky they won't look
for us here. But don't count on it, 'cause so far our luck ain't been
so good."

"<They could have gone anywhere by now!>" Fyodor thundered. The
park was big and open, but with their head start they could have gone
in any direction and disappeared from sight by now.
The gaggle of Parisians ran by. He stopped them short with a quick
burst of rifle fire. He turned to Mikhail, who spoke French, and
pointed at the college students. Mikhail asked them if they had seen a
young Japanese couple, and that they had best answer as quickly and as
honestly as possible. Fyodor brandished his rifle and scowled at them
from beneath his dark forelocks for effect.
The students pointed frantically at the Eiffel Tower. Fyodor
looked at the imposing structure and nodded. With a quick word to
Mikhail and the others he started stomping off towards the tower. The
students huddled together, fully expecting to be shot. When the last of
the Russians turned his back, they ran away as fast and as quietly as
they could.

Ferguson didn't need to follow the sounds of gunfire anymore. He
just asked all of the frightened Parisians on the streets a few direct
questions and was rewarded with the direction they had run and how long
ago that was. The hard part was getting through the traffic.
It seemed everyone in the city was driving around to see what was
going on. Everyone was talking about the airplane crash they heard
about over battery operated radios. Now there was a terrorist bombing
at the Russian Embassy or something. A gas line had exploded and
threatened that part of the city.
Hiro stood in the bed of the six by six with his pistols lowered
in hand. They were catching up, but how far away were the Russians? At
least no one had said anything about two Japanese being killed.
"<A little traffic control if you would please Hiro,>" Ferguson
grunted as the cars moving across the Seine wouldn't let them get by
and onto the bridge.
Hiro complied. He jumped out of the truck, favoring his wounded
leg, and stumped over to the offending automobile drivers. He was in no
mood to mince around with pleasantries. His friends lives' were in
danger.
He casually smashed the driver's side window of the first car
trying to cut them off and jammed one of the Sigs against the driver's
nose. With the other Sig in hand he waved the truck through. The driver
of the car began to babble in terror. Hiro screamed at him to shut up
in Japanese and dug the pistol in a little deeper. The man shut up.
Ferguson rolled by.
"<Thank you, Hiro.>"
"<No problem Mister Ferguson.>" Hiro smiled.
When the truck was on the bridge Hiro removed the pistol from the
man's nose. There was a little .45 caliber sized circular indentation
pressed into the end. He bowed for the man and jogged at a limp to the
truck and hopped into the bed. The truck sped off across the bridge.
Nabiki gave him a wink and a grin through the broken back window of the
cab.
It was only when the queue of cars behind him began honking and
yelling at him that he remembered to start driving again.
They got across the bridge. About that time the Parisian students
who had narrowly escaped Fyodor with their lives came barreling
through. Hiro and Ferguson had seen enough of that in the last few
minutes to know that they were on the right track.
Ferguson yelled for them to stop. They kept going. Hiro waved the
pistols in their faces and they came to a weary halt, not believing
their ill fortune this evening. Ferguson asked them the standard
questions. They replied that a bunch of rifle toting thugs had also
asked them about Ranma and Akane. Then they pointed to the Eiffel
Tower.
Ferguson thanked them for their help and floored the accelerator.
The students decided to call it a night before someone _did_
decide to shoot them at the end of the interview.
Nabiki decided that now would be a good time to call Durango. She
picked up the cellular phone and began dialing. Kuno was sulking in his
seat next to her. He had wanted to swim in the hot flowing rivers of
his enemies' blood, but so far they had all just run away the minute he
started hacking up their companions. It just wasn't fair that no one
would give him a stand up fight.
"<Now where the hell are you?>" Heironymous Durango asked her in a
grouchy voice as he picked up the phone on his end.
"<No need to be rude,>" Nabiki berated him. "<We're coming up on
the Eiffel Tower. Can you land in the river to pick us up?>"
"<Sister, I can put this boat down anywhere you like,>" came
Durango's self-assured reply. "<Did you get them?>"
"<Not yet, but we're going to right now. You'd better hurry
though.>"
"<I copy. We're on the way.>"
Nabiki hung up.

"<Okay, we're cooking with gas now!>" Durango told D-Day. "<How's
it looking for the river near the Eiffel Tower?>"
D-Day consulted his chart. "<Looks good. Nice and wide. About a
quarter mile stretch between bridges.>"
"<Goddamn!>" Durango cried. "<How about a challenge already?>"
"<I'd settle for just pulling this one off now, man.>"
Durango had to concede that point. While the aerial phase of this
operation had gone off without a hitch (he knocked on a piece of the
plywood divider panel), the ground phase had gone straight to hell.
Drinking a stiff snort of the Professor's brandy and smoking a good
Churchill sounded really great right now.
He nosed the throttles forward a bit and pulled the Catalina into
a nice wide flat turn. He didn't have the altitude to try anything
terribly fancy. He set course straight for the Eiffel Tower, another
Paris landmark someone had thoughtfully illuminated for him. Then he
lit up one of his Don Diego Churchills, sucked in a huge drag, and then
began chewing on the end as the smoke spilled out of his grinning
mouth.

Ranma and Akane were up to the second observation deck now. It was
about halfway up the tower. They stopped to rest for a few minutes. At
least they would be able to see Fyodor and his goon squad approaching.
What they didn't know was that Fyodor and his goon squad were
already there. They had missed their approach as they climbed the many
steps to the second deck. They also didn't know that Mikhail knew where
the circuit breakers for the elevators were.
So when two of Fyodor's men stepped out of the elevator with
rifles at the ready, you can imagine Ranma and Akane's surprise.
They froze in place. The two men began to fan out, covering each
other with their rifles. The tower made the occasional settling noise,
even after over a century of standing, and the two would carefully
investigate each one. In one of those occupied moments Ranma pulled
Akane quietly up into the ironwork structure
When one of them nosed close, Ranma carefully made his way along
the ironwork and hung upside down over the man. His hands lashed out,
snapping the man's neck instantly. The Russian slumped to the deck.
Ranma pulled himself back up into the ironwork. Hopefully Akane
hadn't seen that. He may have gotten over his reluctance to kill when
necessary, but it was never an act he was proud of.
His partner lost sight of him and called out softly in Russian. If
Ranma had even a clue about that language he might have said something
softly in reply to allay the man's suspicions. Instead he waited very
patiently. This was for Akane's sake he told himself.
He reached down to snap his neck when he got close. At that moment
the piece of shrapnel in his back shifted, and a white hot sliver of
pain shot out to the ends of all his nerves. It was too sudden and too
intense to hold back a gasp of pain.
The Russian jumped back and cut loose with a long burst above him.
Bullets zinged and whined around him with bright firework flowers
of red and orange sparks. The Russian had misguessed his position, but
in the spray of light from the long muzzle flash he saw where Ranma
hung.
He dropped back and corrected his aim. Ranma flew out of the
girders and somersaulted onto the ground. The second burst went high,
ringing across the iron work. Ranma charged the man before he could get
a third burst off.
He took the man with a head butt in the midsection. The man nearly
dropped his rifle as Ranma slammed him against a beam. Then his back
spasmed again and he lost his leverage.
The Russian dropped his rifle down hard on Ranma's back. The young
martial artist felt his knees go weak and he slumped to the deck. The
Russian threw a loose knife-edge kick that caught him across the jaw.
Ranma flew backwards and splayed along the deck.
The Russian leveled his rifle to shoot Ranma through the chest
when Akane cried out in her most wrathful voice:
"DROP IT OR I'LL KILL YOU!!!"
It was at this point that the Russian noticed that Akane was
pointing an AK-74 at him. She had screamed at him in Japanese, which he
didn't understand a word of, but the rifle made her intent clear
enough. Ranma looked up from the floor in shock.
**She doesn't know how to use one of those! Does she...?**
The Russian decided she was serious enough to use the rifle. He
spun on her and squeezed the trigger. **Nothing! The rifle is empty!**
Her body was moving too fast for her mind to register this fact.
Akane closed her eyes and jerked at her trigger.
The AK-74 exploded into a fusillade of 5.45mm copper-jacketed
lead. Shell casings spilled all over the ironwork. She had no firm
concept of recoil, as the only guns she had ever really seen in action
before this night had been on television or the movies.
Thus when she began hosing her Russian-made heater at the man, she
quickly lost control. The assault rifle belched out its storm of fully
automatic fire totally out of control. She tried to walk it back in the
right direction, but just kept throwing the bullets around in crazy
circles. She was clamped down on the trigger in panic, too busy trying
to hold onto the damn thing to realize that if she let off the trigger
it would stop on its own.
**Guess not!** Ranma thought suddenly in terror.
He threw himself into a fetal position in the hopes that the wild
ricochets she was causing wouldn't hit him. Spent rounds crashed and
whined all over the second deck. The stroboscopic flashes of gunfire
made for interesting lighting effects upon the iron framework, but
Ranma was too busy fearing for his life to appreciate it.
About three seconds later the rifle was empty.
The Russian slid down the girder to the deck and lay very still.
Akane dropped the rifle and stared at the man in shock and self
loathing.
Ranma got back to his feet and looked at the Russian. Akane was
close to tears at this point, but something was very wrong here. There
should have been enough blood and gore splattered all over the place to
look like a slaughterhouse. He crept over to the man.
"Don't touch him," Akane gasped.
Ranma looked down to the man.
**Jeez... Full auto at point blank range and she couldn't hit him
once... He must have passed out from fright.**
Then the smell hit him. He jerked his face away and tried not to
gag.
**Yep... He was scared all right!**
He stood up and laughed at her.
"Akane, you are such a klutz!" He said with a wry smile.
"What?!" She spluttered.
"Next time let the professional handle it."
Akane began to realize that she hadn't killed the man. Her sense
of relief was suddenly cut short as her brain engaged again.
"Professional? If I hadn't done that you'd be dead now!" She
protested.
"You damn near killed me yourself with that thing," he nudged at
the depleted rifle with his foot. "Where'd you get it anyway?"
"From the guy whose neck you broke," she replied off-handedly. He
suddenly flushed with shame.
She punched him lightly in the arm. "I don't think badly of you
Ranma..." She said quietly. "You did what had to be done..."
"Come on," he said then, not wishing to discuss it further. He
snatched up the other guy's rifle and the few spare magazines. The
smell was really bad now. He decided the best thing he could do was
leave him there after taking everything he might use to fight with.
"This is bound to attract attention."

Fyodor and the others converged on the elevators from the third
and highest deck. At a radio prompt from Fyodor, Mikhail secured the
elevators from the first deck down so they couldn't escape the tower.
There was no radio contact from Sergei or from Anton, and that was a
bad sign.

Ranma and Akane took the elevator down to the first deck. If the
Russians could use them, they weren't going to argue about it.
Hopefully they could sneak away.
The doors opened onto the first deck. A Russian was there with his
back towards them. Another was standing on the other side of the first,
facing the elevator. He yelled, Ranma yelled, Akane yelled. The first
Russian turned around in time to catch Ranma's fist in his face. His
knees went out as Akane stabbed at the 'door close' button. The doors
slid shut and up they went.
Bullets slammed into the elevator, but with all of the iron
framework around them, they were just ricochets.

The truck stopped at the base of the tower. Hiro wasted no time in
shooting the Russian who stood guard over a service shack next to one
of the massive legs. It was Mikhail, and now he had a couple hydrashoks
in his gut to worry about. He clutched at his stomach as Hiro kicked
away his rifle.
The man wasn't in any shape to answer questions, so he and Kuno
looked at the stairway door ripped off its hinges and drew their own
conclusions. Hiro threw the rifle to Nabiki, who passed it immediately
to Ferguson. The scientist studied the weapon for a few moments before
setting it on the dash.
"<I don't know how to use it either, lass,>" he explained to her.
"<That's why we have Hiro.>"

They came out on the second deck again. For a minute Ranma
considered trying the stairs, but they all passed the first deck in big
wide open areas. It was possible to cover three legs of the tower from
one corner. That was asking to get shot.
As the doors opened, Ranma took a quick look around. There was
nothing in front of the doors. He poked his head out, and Fyodor jerked
him out of the elevator the rest of the way. The man's huge hand neatly
palmed the top of Ranma's head as he did so. As Ranma flew across the
observation deck, his rifle spilled over the side and was gone.
Fyodor's partner grabbed at Akane. She responded by cold-cocking
him with a shot to the jaw. The Russian made one startled cry before
flying into Fyodor, and knocking his rifle from his hand. Akane
launched a desperate kick at the weapon, punting it neatly over the
side.
The big Ukrainian backhanded her in response. She flew against the
elevator with a cry of pain. Fyodor palmed her head as well and threw
her in Ranma's direction. Ranma caught her up in his arms and kept her
from joining the two rifles over the side.
"I think we're in trouble," he whispered to her. This was starting
to look chillingly like their favorite nightmare. He turned over his
shoulder and looked out across Paris.
**Definitely looks familiar,** he thought darkly.
"I don't need a weapon," Fyodor menaced in badly accented
Japanese. He popped his knuckles and started walking towards them.
Ranma sighed tiredly. He was just about out of gas at this point.
He had maybe a minute of no holds barred fight left in him. Keeping
Akane at his back, he assumed a fighting stance appropriate for facing
off against Godzilla.
As Fyodor closed the range, two more of his men appeared from the
elevators. They had come from the first deck obviously.
"<Mikhail is hit,>" one of them stammered. "<He may be dead!>"
Fyodor stopped. "<What?!>" He bellowed, still keeping his eyes on
Ranma. "<Mikhail's on the ground! How could he be dead?>"
"<He isn't answering on the radio!>"
Ranma began to feel a peculiar tingling sensation at the base of
his spine. At first he thought it was the piece of metal stuck in him.
But when his tongue began to tingle he began to tremble with anger. The
wind began to pick up around them.
**Not now! Anytime but now! I don't need this kind of
distraction!**
Akane touched him worriedly. She could feel it too.
Fyodor decided that they had no time to play around. If Mikhail
was dead then the friends of these two were on their way. He gestured
to the two Japanese who were obviously quivering with fear.
"<Shoot them and let's get out of here,>" he ordered them.
The two leveled their rifles at Ranma and Akane.
"I love you Ranma," she whispered desperately.
"It ain't over yet."
Hiro and Kuno charged up the stairs at the run. Hiro couldn't even
feel his leg wound anymore he was so charged up. Hiro had the lead, and
body checked one of the gunmen. His burst cut loose into the overhead
and he fell to the ground. The second one spun around in time to catch
Kuno's katana in the belly. The swordsman opened him up like a can of
spam.
"Go Akane!" Ranma yelled, pushing her away from him. Sparkles of
light began to dance around them.
Fyodor was too fast for them. He palmed Akane by the face and
threw her over the side of the rail. Ranma twisted backwards to catch
her arm and was pulled over the side with her. They fell towards
unforgiving concrete hundreds of feet below.
"NO!!!" Hiro screamed. He emptied both Sigs into Fyodor's chest.
Every round struck dead on, but the giant didn't even flinch. Hiro
stared dumbfounded.
"Body armor," Fyodor replied smugly in his mangled Japanese.
"No coat of mail shall withstand the blade of the Blue Thunder!"
Kuno bellowed. Upon seeing Ranma and Akane plummet over the side his
heart twisted in rage beyond imagining. Once again his katana burst
forth with spectral blue flames, though once again he was unaware of
that fact.
Fyodor knew a few kevlar panels weren't going to stop a katana.
Particularly one that suddenly burst into flames. He wished now that he
had waited long enough in Monaco to kill this raving samurai lunatic.
**The man was relentless!**
He did the only thing he could in that situation, which was pick
up the stunned Maxim and throw him at Kuno.
The swordsman lashed out with his blade so swiftly that Maxim was
cut in neatly in half before his mortal remains could hit the ground.
It was just enough of a delay for Fyodor to make a break for the
stairs. He drew a Tokarev and emptied it ineffectually at them in
escape. Kuno tried to pursue but slipped on Maxim's blood and lost his
balance enough for the Ukrainian to get away.
The wind was bitter and cold and just getting stronger.
Hiro began to notice the sparkles of light in the air. Then he
heard a very faint cry for help.
He looked over the side to see Ranma hanging by one arm from the
framework, with Akane clutching tightly to his chest. They were a
_long_ way down.
"Saotome! Akane-chan!" He cried.
Ranma couldn't hold on for much longer. He was too weak and
wasted, and in addition to having himself to worry about there was
Akane weighing him down even more. He could feel his grip loosening
more and more. It was about a hundred feet to the ground. He looked up
to Hiro high above him. That was about two hundred and fifty feet of
climb, assuming he could get a foot hold somewhere. Which he couldn't.
The light began to sparkle around them. He grit his teeth in
anger. Who cared if the next event was here and now? They were gonna
die and it wouldn't make any difference. The wind became even stronger
now, rocking them back and forth as they hung.
"I can't look," Akane said in a soft voice.
"It ain't over yet," Ranma growled. He tried to make himself
believe it.
The sparkling lights became even brighter, more numerous, it was
just a matter of moments now before the next event unfolded around
them.

Ferguson felt the wind pick up. He looked up at the tower and saw
that it was shimmering faintly with a golden light. Motes of color
began to appear around it. Even Nabiki noticed it.
"<What the heck is that?>" She asked.
"<It's the next event!>" Clay cried from the bed of the truck. He
stood up and began to open himself to it as he had many times before.
"<Bloody hell!>" Ferguson yelled. "<We're missing it! My
equipment!>"

"I got an idea," he told her as they nearly fell. He clamped down
hard on the girder and garnered them an extra few seconds of purchase.
Akane was ready to hear him tell her they could fly.
"We're gonna fly," he told her.
Well, not quite ready for that.
She gave him a hopeless look in response. The wind was raging
around them now. They were oscillating pretty badly.
"No I mean it!" Ranma protested. "Anazali said I could draw on
this kinda stuff, that I just didn't know I was doing it. I don't have
the power left to try this now, and I don't think you do either, but
what about when the event gets here? You know how much power there is
when that happens."
She could already feel the enormous buildup of energy around them.
The event unfolded then with a flash of brilliant white light. A
rush of wind tore them free from the girder, and for a moment they were
actually heading upwards. Then they began their fall towards the
ground.
"Hold on tight!" Ranma cried. He had all the power he needed in
that moment.

"<There's your intercession, man!>" D-Day yelled as the Eiffel
Tower lit up before them. A column of golden light rose high into a
bank of clouds from the tower. Paris was aglow with the light, truly
living up to its name.
Durango grinned and put his sunglasses on.

"Oh God!" Nabiki cried as she looked up and saw Ranma and Akane
falling through waves of golden light.

**This is the only flying trick I know...** Ranma thought in that
instant before release. Akane could feel the air get very cold around
them as he drew the energy in for his blast.
He held onto Akane with one arm and thrust the other up into the
air as they plummeted straight down.

"HIRYU SHOTEN HA!!!"

He dropped his arm savagely towards the ground. The Dragon Cyclone
blowtorched through them and spiraled towards the ground. It rebounded
then and shot back up at them. Ranma nearly lost his hold on Akane as
the blast wave struck them.
Now they were flying. Flying straight through blinding amounts of
energy. Ten times what they'd endured in the Alhambra. It was like
being in the center of a brilliant and comfy warm sun.
In fact they were flying straight up the now golden sides of the
Eiffel Tower. Very fast. Hiro saw them coming and reached out with his
arms. Kuno held onto Hiro to keep him from going over the side.
At the very limit of his reach he caught them.

Ranma and Akane couldn't feel it, because they were somewhere and
somewhen else right then.

They saw an island nation in the very zenith of its existence.
Radiant people like Aerandir and Anazali walked the wide tree lined
streets. Baroque flying machines formed like butterflies, birds, and
even more esoteric creatures floated silently upon the air.
They found themselves standing in a great public square filled
with people. Before them was an enormous pyramid of white stone. Golden
light flowed from the top of the pyramid and bathed everything in its
radiance.
Akane turned, and there were the stone lion fountains of the
Alhambra standing next to them. Water continued to flow from their
mouths as they spoke to them. The water flowed around them and then
seemed to fade away.
"Watch," they told them. "Learn."
They looked back to the pyramid, which began to shimmer and quake.
People began to look around in distress. The radiant glow of light
began to change colors to an angry red. They watched as a hundred men
in flowing robes scaled the pyramid at a run. They raised their hands
to the sky, perhaps praying, perhaps fighting what was happening.
It was to no avail.
The pyramid exploded with the force of a hydrogen bomb. As the
blast wave rolled out to consume the island, Ranma and Akane saw that
the people did not disintegrate, but were instead drawn into the fiery
core of the blast. Everyone was sucked into the fireball even as the
seas drowned the entire island.
The lions were weeping water from their eyes as well as their
mouths.
"We are trapped in the Heart of the World," they told them. "But
you must not free us."
Ranma and Akane looked at them in puzzlement.
"If you're trapped then why don't you want to be free?" Akane
asked.
The stone lions looked at her. "To free us would mean to repeat
this tragedy. Never again."

The fireball faded away from their eyes. A small white pyramid
appeared then before them. Ranma could see into it, and he suddenly
knew how perfectly it was formed. He didn't know how he knew, but he
was getting used to the practice of ideas being planted into his head.
He also knew how important it was for the pyramid to remain
flawless within. And for some odd reason how important it was for the
pyramid, no, something corrected him; for the prism to be flawed
within. Very important. Part of his consciousness slapped him around
and told him to pay attention to that last part.

The world exploded back into view around them. Hiro heaved with
all his might and pulled them onto the observation deck. The night sky
went dark again and the wind died away around them.
Hiro held the two of them close to him. They trembled in his
embrace at the power and vision they had experienced. The Eiffel
Tower's radiance faded away and returned to its regular black iron
self. Kuno stood guard over them, his sword no longer burning.

* * *

Bettie's Dare was twenty minutes from the McFogg estate. Ferguson
and Clay sat on chairs and dozed idly. Kuno knelt on the floor of the
cabin and meditated upon his sword. Nabiki cleaned up the bloody mess
that was Hiro's face, clucking motherly every time he winced. The gash
on his temple was only going to need a few stitches. Hiro carried on
like he was mortally wounded.
Durango poked his head in to check on everyone while D-Day had the
wheel. They were bloody, they were hurting, and they were very tired.
One thing was certain however: When they looked to the other side of
the cabin, what they saw told each of them that the price they'd paid
was worth it.
Akane cradled Ranma in her lap. He was fast asleep, the first
decent sleep he'd had since his abduction. She was happy to hold him
close and occasionally whisper something in his ear. He never
responded, but he had a deep and contented smile.

* * *

That Ryoga Hibiki was lost was such a hopelessly regular
occurrence as to be cliche. That didn't change the fact that it was all
too true. He struggled on through the jungle, with no idea where he
was, and the sinking feeling that he was wandering in circles again.
That sinking feeling hit him in spades when he saw that he _was_
walking in circles again. He had passed this same crashed airplane
twice today. He knew it couldn't be a different plane, because the same
skeletal body of its pilot lay halfway out of the cockpit window
wearing the same faded floral pattern shirt. The jungle had long since
overgrown the wreck.
He was feeling pretty depressed, and just a little tired of all of
this. He sat down next to the wreckage of the plane and thought long
and hard about where he could possibly be. He hadn't heard Chinese in a
very long time, not since winter, and so he gathered that he was no
longer in China anymore.
He was positive that he had crossed no large bodies of water.
Positive! That had to put him in Asia. The locals he had seen had dark
skin and black hair. They spoke a language altogether unfamiliar to
him. Where did that put him?
**India maybe?**
It was a thought. India was close to China as far as he
remembered.
He heard a rustling through the jungle nearby. He looked up to see
three small boys looking at him. It was a look he was used to: locals
staring at the stranger. He was too tired and homesick to care.
The boys took another look at him. He wore camouflage pattern
trousers and combat boots that had seen a lot of marching by the look
of the worn soles. He wore a dingy tank top because wherever this place
was, it was sure hot and humid! A yellow and black headband completed
the ensemble.
It was when they saw his traveling pack that the children freaked.
"El Paraguo Rojo!" The oldest of them cried, pointing to the red
bamboo umbrella Ryoga carried with him, and then to Ryoga himself.
"El Javelino!!" The other two cried in unison. The three ran away
as fast as they could into the jungle.
Ryoga watched them go. He didn't think Indian children would be so
rude. He wished that he had spent enough time in one place to pick up a
little of the language. As it stood he knew enough to ask for work to
pay for his food and shelter, please and thank-you; politeness kinds of
words. Nothing substantial.
He sighed and went to sleep. Perhaps he'd figure it out over a
nap.
A voice woke him. He opened his eyes to see a man squatting down
on his haunches looking at him. He wore faded jeans, soft knee high
buckskin boots, and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. The man had a golden
complexion to his skin -not just a healthy tan, but a faint metallic
shimmer to it when the errant ray of sunshine poked through the jungle
canopy to strike it.
"Perhaps you'd be more comfortable in a bed?" The man asked him.
It sounded like Japanese, but Ryoga noticed that his mouth wasn't
moving correctly for the sounds he was making. Watching him speak was
like watching a badly dubbed movie.
He seemed friendly, and Ryoga was so lonely at this point he was
dying for the chance to talk to someone. Perhaps this stranger could
tell him where he was. Instead the man said to him:
"You look like you could use a good meal as well. Come. Follow me
and I shall see that you get both."
"Both?" Ryoga asked. He was still a little groggy when the man
first spoke to him.
"A bed and a meal," the man supplied. "It isn't far."
Ryoga had nothing better to do, so he followed him.

End of Part Eight

Author's Notes:

1) I had meant for a lot more to be discussed in this installment than
space permitted. Part 8 is really the rescue of Ranma now. I suppose if
you're happy then I'm happy. Part 9 was my buffer installment against
my dreaded literary elephantitus anyway.

2) I would like to thank Big T of Fission Park for his assistance with
the procedures for declaring in-flight emergencies and with general Air
Traffic Control protocols. Squawking '7700' with your transponder is an
emergency signal. 121.5 MHz is the distress radio frequency.

3) I would also like to thank Front 242, Gravity Kills, Metallica,
Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult for their invaluable inspiration
while I wrote this. For your own information, the original draft of
Part 8 was much bloodier because of them. Later I felt that the
violence needed to be toned down, although the recent spate of
snuff-fics on the FFML may have desensitized some of you.

4) Last of all I thank my proofreaders and Men in Europe, who kindly
pointed out all of my mistakes. These would be Jerome in Paris, Chris
Rijk in London (even if we rarely agree, thanks whole bunches), and
Bridget Engmen with her fine toothed comb. (Even if she isn't in
Europe, I'm including her anyway.)

5) You didn't really think I was going to have Akane kill someone did
you? Shame on you!

Free the Nukes!