[Ranma][FanFic] Biker 1/2 chapter 27
Doghead Thirteen
My feet are not my fault either.
Words in "{this}" kind of brackets are spoken in Cantonese. Those in
"[this]" are in wolf-speak.
Chapter 27: The quick and the dead
"It doesn't matter if you're wrong or if you're right. It makes no
difference if you're black or if your white. All men are equal till the
victory is won, no colour or religion ever stopped a bullet from a gun." -
Thin Lizzy, 'Out in the fields'
"There's one constant in my life, has been since 1998. There's always a
battle to fight, always another war sitting round the corner and waiting to
try to get me and mine, my friends and my family. And in the Second Battle
of Nerima it got too damn close. Not as bad as the crap in China at the end
of that year. But fucking close and real nasty... and a lot of it was the
sort of nasty that effects you for a long, long time." - Ryoga Hibiki.
***********************************
The Saotome-Tendo house and grounds were a hive of activity. Amazons
sprinted every which what way. Nabiki was overseeing the dropping off of a
large tarpaulin covered shape by a JGSDF tank transporter. Ranma busied
himself making sure the defences were in some sort of order. Every house the
Amazons had managed to buy was turned into a strongpoint. Street corners
became machine gun nests. Other people were frantically offloading crates of
ammunition from trucks. Akira had called in the absolute best troops Clan
Saotome had. Nodoka was overseeing the armouring of her truck - after the
last battle they had stashed the sheet steel used to protect her rig. After
all, Nodoka had a nasty feeling they would need it again. Soun went down to
the basement and opened a box that had sat undisturbed for the last twenty
years - it contained a 'Chicago typewriter' drum fed Thompson sub-machine
gun his father had taken off a dead US Army trooper during the Second World
War and smuggled back into the country. He loaded it up with ammunition
scrounged off Akane then set to polishing his naginata. Happosai and Tiger
vanished into the dojo to do God-only-knows what.
Finally, three hours after Ranma and Nodoka had arrived back from the site
of the crash, everything was prepared. Werebird scouts took off in every
direction, searching for signs of the Conservative Amazons.
***********************************
Ranma shook his head.
"Goddamnit, we've been waitin' fer these fuckers fer six hours." He glanced
over at a scout who was gulping water from a flask, having arrived back
moments before. "Any signs?"
"No. I haven't seen a goddamn thing."
Another scout - a werefalcon - zoomed towards them at high speed, obviously
half panicked. She shifted back to human form and made a neat three point
landing on the roof of Nodoka's truck.
"THEY'RE-"
The unmistakable bellow of a .50 Browning heavy machine gun interrupted her.
Bullet holes appeared in the living room windows of the house. Shampoo, who
was going over some details with Kasumi, staggered as a slug hit her leg.
Ranma jerked round. A van marked as belonging to a local bakery had pulled
up; it's back doors were open and two Conservative Amazons were pelting the
house with shots from the machine gun they had set up in the back of the
van. He grabbed his rifle - an FN-FAL with an underslung 30mm grenade
launcher - and, firing from the hip, planted a frag grenade in the back of
the van. The vehicle exploded into a flaming wreck.
"BULLSEYE!" He leapt onto the roof of Nodoka's truck as she started it's
monster engine. A group of - obviously stolen - removal vans had skidded to
a halt and were disgorging Conservative troops at the end of the street.
The truck roared and belched black diesel smoke from it's mighty chrome
exhausts as Nodoka put the pedal to the metal.
Twenty tons of blue and chrome Kenworth doing 0-60 in three and a half
seconds is one hell of a sight. Add to that the express train like roar from
the gigantic Maybach V12 railway locomotive engine, the angular sheet steel
protecting the radiator, cab and wheels, the audible scream of the monstrous
supercharger sucking air through the two foot long airscoop mounted on the
bonnet, the twin plumes of fire and filthy black smoke that were now
belching from it's exhaust stacks and the minigun Akane had set up to fire
out of the passengers side windscreen - the glass had been hastily removed
and replaced with sheet steel - and you got the impression that this
particular truck had just come thundering straight out of the gates of Hell
with some form of blood-crazed speed demon behind the wheel. Said impression
wouldn't be far from the truth - Nodoka's personal way of dealing with
sorrow was to change it into anger and she was VERY upset about what had
happened to Godo Amachi.
The truck bore down on the tight group of Transit vans the forwards elements
of the Conservative Amazon forces had arrived in, AK bullets whining off
it's bodywork like angry wasps as the terrified Conservatives blasted away
at it.
Their fire was to no avail; this truck could plough through a police
roadblock without more than scratching it's huge bumper. The vans and their
former occupants were swept away like gnats before a charging rhinoceros.
Ranma smirked and jumped off the truck roof. The Amazon gunner opened fire
with her minigun as he jumped.
He landed in the middle of a pack of survivors who had been alert enough to
get clear of the vans in time.
It was at this point that he noticed something very odd. Around ninety
percent of said survivors were male. Male + Conservative Amazon front line
troops = Not.
The nearest man's eyes started glowing red as Ranma hit him.
"Oh shit! Fuckin' vampires!"
***********************************
"Mi Soon, do you see what I see?"
The blue-haired Amazon looked in the direction Mortise was pointing.
"Shit. Let's move it!"
Prince Herb spotted what they were looking at. He went from stationary to
Mach 1.6 in three feet and half a second.
So did Mi Soon and Mortise, rapidly followed by Akira and Genma.
***********************************
Five massive bangs - they sounded like thunderclaps - echoed across Nerima.
Nabiki glanced at the sky as she sprinted towards the chunk of hardware her
JASDF contacts had delivered using a tank transporter.
She skidded round a corner. A length of chain wrapped itself round her
ankles and she immediately went down, rolling with the fall like Ranma had
taught her.
"FUCKING MU TZE GET BENT!"
The shortsighted Chinese boy glanced at the source of the voice - Shampoo.
He immediately spotted the ragged bloody hole in her trousers.
A snarl appeared on his face and he pulled a pair of .50 machine guns out of
nowhere. Shampoo was halfway through recoiling from the sight when he opened
fire. At the Conservative Amazons.
Nabiki shrugged and kicked the chain clear of her legs then scrambled under
the tarp. A door slammed then a gas turbine began to spin up.
***********************************
Nodoka winced at the sight of Ranma suddenly becoming embroiled in a brawl
with a large group of vampires. If her own experience with the undead proved
true they would chew him up and spit out the pips.
Her foot crashed down on the Kenworth's brakes, bringing it screeching to a
halt in an unreasonably short distance.
She snapped a terse order to her Amazon gunner and dived out, drawing her
katana.
***********************************
Ranma launched punch after punch, burning ki at an insane rate. His fists
cracked like a machine gun as they snapped back and forth faster than even
his own eyes could see. Adrenaline surged through his blood. His aura
entered the visible range as it hit maximum intensity.
It wasn't just vampires who's eyes glowed. Streaks of red fire started
shooting from under Ranma's mirrorshades. He had long since run his FAL dry.
Ranma Saotome was fighting for his life.
And that meant he was getting serious.
A fireball screamed in from his left, detonating in the face of the vamp
behind him. Nodoka leapt into the fray, her katana going like a windmill.
Even the awesome quantity of damage she was dealing out wasn't enough. The
two of them rapidly found themselves being pushed back, forced to pull out
all the stops, throw all the switches and let go with every ounce of ability
they had.
Then a humanoid fireball dropped into the centre of the melee, producing a
massive thunderclap as he decelerated.
Prince Herb smirked.
"Heads up, Ranma! The cavalry has arrived!"
Mi Soon appeared one side of him with another thunderclap. Akira appeared
the other side of her. Sixteen feet of werebear appeared behind Nodoka and
reached out round her, ripping the vampire she was about to cream into
shreds.
Then a certain thirty foot winged minotaur dropped to the ground beside
Herb.
Ranma laughed out loud.
***********************************
Akane shot Mao Xing, Shampoo and Lin-Lin a cocky grin.
"Shall we?"
"Yes, let's."
She checked her minigun's ammo and casually spun it up, firing a quick
quarter second burst at the ground as a test.
"Perfect."
Mao hit the trigger on his bike; it morphed into powersuit form, the varied
armour plates fading into existence. He hefted the 25mm cannon.
"I ready when you is."
Shampoo cocked her M60. "I'm ready."
Lin-Lin nodded and gave her brand new Barrett Light 50 an affectionate pat.
Akane pulled a packet of chewing gum out of her pocket. She grinned.
"It's time to kick ass and chew bubblegum... and I got plenty of gum."
***********************************
Herb casually threw another foolhardy vampire out of the way, splattering
the unfortunate leech across the side of a house. He was starting to get
bored with this - ignore blow, grab vampire, throw away, ignore blow, grab
vampire, throw away, repeat ad nauseum.
This chain of actions and his daydream were interrupted when he grabbed
someone and they didn't go flying when he tried to throw them. Instead
whoever it was reversed the throw on him, sending him flat on his face on
the tarmac. Half a dozen vampires jumped on him. He blew them off by feeding
some hot ki into his battle aura and letting it explode, then stood up.
"Well," said a voice he hadn't heard in years. "Still throwing your weight
around, I see. You never do learn, do you?"
Herb turned round. "Flange. So we meet again... unfortunately."
"Yeah, you little shit. It's your turn to get your butt kicked, brother
dear."
"Shall we do it somewhere we won't blow up our differing allies?"
"Just what I was about to suggest. Meet you up there."
Flange jumped straight upwards. Much to everyone except Herb's surprise he
didn't drop back down. Herb smirked and sprung into the air to join him.
"Be warned, Flange. I've grown substantially stronger since Father threw you
out."
"Indeed? So have I."
Herb dispensed with formalities and blasted straight forwards. There was an
apocalyptic crack as he met Flange coming the other way.
***********************************
Happosai marched out of the dojo with a smug expression on his face. He was
no longer a two foot shrivelled old man - he had changed his human form back
into what it should be. In other words a clean shaven and marginally taller
version of Akira, only with about four feet of blazing red hair tied back in
a ponytail.
He observed the fight for a second, smirked then shapeshifted. Not into
anything anyone observing expected - oh no, he wasn't a werewolf any more.
Or a werecat. Or a werebear.
Instead he shapeshifted into a velociraptor.
Half a ton of warm-blooded, hyperactive, bloodthirsty prehistoric killing
machine named Happosai Saotome careered across the garden, smashed through a
wall and tore at full rip into the melee, bullets pinging harmlessly off his
scales.
He hit the fight head on and ripped a huge chunk out of a nearby
Conservative Amazon. Mortise was right - werewolf didn't taste too good.
But what the hell, Happosai was in dire need of a snack. A Conservative
Amazon tried to whack him on the head with her naginata. He casually blocked
the strike and ripped her in two with his spur claws then disembowelled
another three before anyone else had managed to react. He bit the next one's
head off even as she started spraying bullets at him - the slugs vaporised
on contact with his aura.
One gulp and said head shot down his gullet. At this point he realised the
only remaining Amazons in this particular patch of battle were 'friendly.'
He shot a toothsome grin at the nearest and bounded off towards the next
group of enemies. They naturally opened fire at him - not that it did them
any good.
Then one of them shapeshifted. Happosai muttered the velociraptor equivalent
of the words 'Oh shit.'
The Amazon he had been about to gobble expanded at an insane rate, finishing
at nearly fifty feet tall.
Big Momma T-Rex shot Happosai the Velociraptor a positively evil grin.
He shrugged. Being smaller than his opponents was something he was used to.
His next move was to catapult upwards, raking the Tyrannosaurus's face with
his spur claws. Unsurprisingly the slashes closed up; he landed neatly on
the T-Rex's back and started gnawing and clawing at the back of it's neck,
munching and hacking fast enough to prevent the wounds closing.
The T-Rex let out an enraged scream, ducked it's head down and charged a
nearby building, forcing Happosai to jump clear before he got a concrete
wall in the face.
***********************************
Ranma shot another glance at the ki blast firefight that was lighting up the
entire street. He shook his head and continued repeatedly introducing the
vampire in front of him to his knuckles. A swish and double thunk behind him
told him his mother had just decapitated another vampire. He planted a full
strength kick in the bouncing head before it could disintegrate, sending it
smashing through a window on the far side of the street. It burst into dust
with a puff of spent ki.
Genma zoomed past in front of him, piledriving another couple of vampires
into a nearby van wreck. Over to his left was a glittering, glowing disk of
naginata with a wildly pirouetting Soun Tendo in the middle, the odd clatter
of tommy gun shots arcing out to pepper any Amerai foolish enough to
approach the melee. Akira's pistol was crashing repeatedly off behind him.
All that was visible of Mi Soon was a flying cloud of punches, elbows,
knees, blocks, kicks, ki blasts and bites and the occasional cloud of dusted
vampire. Mortise was in his curse form and busying himself hammering
anything not Neriman within arm's reach into the ground. Considering he had
fifteen foot arms in his present form he could reach quite a lot.
There was another massive detonation above him as Herb unloaded another dump
truck sized ki blast at Flange.
***********************************
"Holy shit! Willya look at that?"
The soldier who had spoken glanced over at his squad lieutenant.
"What the fuck is that? Call the Colonel."
The radio operator grabbed the handset and spent a couple of minutes
fiddling with it. "No can do, Skipper. We've got broadband jamming active
right across half the city."
Lieutenant Asagiri shook her head. "Dana's love. Ah well, guess it's time to
follow his emergency orders. Everyone get your weapons ready, I suspect
we've got some supernatural ass to kick. Use explosive ammo."
"Some action? At fucking last."
"Can it, Sakamori. From the amount of ki flying around up there this is
gonna be bloody dangerous. No goddamn heroics, I don't wanna have to send
any of you boys home in a fucking box. Okay, Nikajima. Let's get this piece
of crap rolling!"
The squad's LAV-25 roared into life; it's blue beacon started pulsing and
the siren started it's eerie baying call. Nikajima rammed the vehicle into
gear and stomped on the throttle.
"I've gotten a directional on the jamming, Skipper."
"Good work. Guide us in!"
***********************************
"Fuck."
Ranko swore and grabbed the back of her knee. She threw herself flat on her
back against the rapidly cooling wreck of a van and let fly with her new leg
weapon. An FN Minimi light machine gun.
Much to her disgust it didn't have a lot of effect - her attackers didn't
even break their stride. "Shit!"
One of them suddenly flew over her head and impacted against the house
behind with an audible splat. Ryoga grinned at her half-sister.
"Hiya, Ranko. Need a hand?"
A large figure casually smashed another pair's heads together and threw them
away. Lime gave her a stupid grin."Uh - hi..."
A fourth attacker suddenly fell over in splattered pieces. Mint stepped
through the cloud of loose ki and sprayed blood.
"Can it, Lime. She's that Mortise guy's chick."
The three of them stopped beside her, turned round and gave the varied
people who had been attacking her three evil grins.
"Okay, you 'orrible lot! Try playing with someone your own size!"
***********************************
A missile whistled past between Akane and Mao Xing.
"Ha! They missed!"
The massive detonation behind them pointed out the fact the shot had been
right on target. Akane glanced over her shoulder and stopped dead in her
tracks.
"NABIKI!"
The blazing tarp didn't answer.
End of this bit.
NOTES
Next - And the battle continues...
Hmm, I could foresee people objecting to the death and destruction herein
after the occurrences in the US (you know what I mean) so I'll just point
out that I planned the plot of this story in November 2000. This is so
typical of my timing.
Something I think I'd better say; if at any stage during this story you
don't understand some of my terminology (I'd expect this to be technical
details about bikes and guns or obscure Scottish slang) PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
email me so I can put an explanation in the next chapter. After all, if one
person doesn't understand thing like chatter about carb jets then there's
sure to be a hundred who can't make head or tail of it...
Now, I must once again publicly thank/attempt to embarrass two people (ya,
this is copy-paste from a whole rake of other chapters...)
Firstly, thanks must go to my wonderful pre reader Paula Gray. Thankyou,
Paula. Your suggestions have been a great help since I am shite at plotting
battle scenes.
Biker 1/2 has been given a home on the web! Go to
http://www.kistunesden.com
to find the archive; it's in the 'hosted' section of the site (in fact last
time I looked it *was* the Hosted section!)
Thanks must go to the lovely Carrie for her good work HTMLising Biker 1/2
and setting up the web page; she requested my permission to host the fic.
This request was gratefully received since I know nothing about HTML...
Thankyou, Carrie. Without you Biker 1/2 would have probably been relegated
to the bottom of the TASS archive for years.
Please send any C&C to dog...@ratbike.org - my phone line is down once more
thus I can only access the freeserve email address once a week at most.
Thanks.
Calum.
I am hereforth putting character descriptions at the end of each episode,
hopefully eventually forming a 'who's who' of Biker 1/2. This is an idea I
got from reading the fics of Greg Sharp (i pray i spelt it right)
Next up are Herb, Nodoka and Tatewaki Kuno.
PRINCE HERB
Introduced - Chapter 8 (Calm before the storm)
Role - Walking weapon system.
Species - Musk (part dragon)
Special powers/abilities - Herb, being part dragon, has the strongest ki
aura on the planet, wide spectrum vision and supernatural strength (enough
to bench press several tons.) Not only that but he knows how to use his
abilities to devestating effect.
Motivation - To pull Ryoga and get rid of that ***********************
curse.
Appearance - In his natural form, Herb is a six foot six bullnecked platinum
blonde hunk with extremely pale skin and slitted, somehow reptillian eyes.
His curse form is a somewhat thinner but still extremely muscular woman with
the same almost white hair, pale skin and lizard-like eyes. He/she usually
dresses in extremely expensive motocross leathers, a kevlar jacket and a
large black cloak.
Personality at introduction - While not being an especially pleasent person,
Herb is honorable, polite, responsible and extremely honest. He was raised
to value these qualities in men, and to foster them in himself. He finds
women mildly unnerving due to his lack of experience with them, but that is
rapidly fading since he met Ryoga.
NODOKA SAOTOME
Introduced - Chapter 6 (I seen your mummy)
Role - Leading man's mother, trucker and hardass.
Species - Human (Moroboshi subspecies)
Special powers/abilities - Nodoka, being a demon hunter from the Moroboshi
clan, is extremely skilled with her katana. Not only that, she has a few
tricks of the paranormal kind up her sleeve - the Moroboshi clan weren't
picked to protect Japan from supernatural entities for nothing...
Motivation - To stay moderately sane.
Appearance - Nodoka is an attractive middle-aged woman, short and slightly
stocky with waist length black hair and an easy, open smile. She normally
wears a blue boiler suit and heavy safety boots - she needs them, she's a
truck driver.
Personality at introduction - Nodoka manages to be a professional truck
driver and somewhat old-fashioned at the same time, but she's beginning to
think that maybe the old ways aren't such a good idea after all. She's as
nice as a vetran demon hunter can be; despite her slightly jaundiced veiw of
the world she's at least moderately civil to everyone she meets outside of a
fight.
TATEWAKI KUNO
Introduced - Chapter 1 (In a World gone Bad)
Role - Minor villan and annoyance.
Species - Human.
Special powers/abilities - Kuno is a skillful but unimaginative swordsman
and a highly talented artist.
Appearance - A tallish (five foot eleven) and fairly handsome young Japanese
man, Tatewaki's good looks are spoilt by the incredibly blank expression he
normally wears. His mode of dress boils down to a school uniform,
traditional kendo gi or fairly expensive one peice motorcycle racer's
leathers.
Personality at introduction - Kuno is not stupid, he's mentally ill (a
paranoid scitzophrenic.) He thinks very highly of himself and is under the
impression that all homosexuals are demonically posessed.
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Alternator - Higher tech version of a generator.
Artic - The UK term for a semi truck. Short for 'articulated lorry'.
Binned - crashed. Normally means written off. Derived from 'bin' as in
'rubbish bin' (the British term for a trash can)
Chain lube - Motorbike chain lubrication oil. Comes in a spray can and
lookes a bit like snot.
Conrod (connecting rod) - The bit of metal that connects the piston to the
crankshaft. Shaped approximately like a flat dumbbell.
Engine clicking - An internal combustion engine heats up when run. Run it
hard and it heats up more, then when you switch off the engine will start
emitting a series of sharp clicks as the metal cools and contracts.
Final drive - the drive chain that goes from the gearbox to the back wheel
and the cogs (final drive sprockets) that it runs on. Not to be confused
with the primary drive - the chain/sprocket or belt/pulleys between the
engine and gearbox.
Gasflowing - trimming off excess metal from inside the cylinder heads to aid
the burn rate of fuel within the engine. Gives a small horsepower boost.
Gixer - Slang for a Suzuki GSXR (one of the craziest bikes they make).
Header tank - Tank that contains the spare water for the radiator on a
sealed cooling system as found in most cars and some high performance bikes.
Honda CG125 - Small single - cylinder 4-stroke road bike. Not very much of
anything but supremely reliable and dirt cheap. It's reliability stems from
having very little to go wrong and a low - revving 4-stroke engine.
Honda 250 Superdream - CB250. The next up the Honda model range from the
CG125 and just a bigger version of the same.
Honda 500 Superdream - CB500. A CB250 with a bigger bore and heavier frame.
Honda Fireblade - Insane Honda sportsbike. Mad but beginning to show it's
age.
Kill switch - The engine's 'off' switch. Turns off power to the ignition.
Lid / skidlid - Slang for a crash helmet.
Nitrous oxide - Laughing gas. A petrol - nitrous mix burns faster than a
petrol - air mix therefore produces more horsepower and more wear in the
engine.
Ratbike - A motorbike made to look as fucked up and unroadworthy as possible
while still being street legal. Normally painted flat black.
Steering damper - a long, thin shock absorber that fits between the forks
and the frame. Helps steady the steering. A steering damper is essential for
disabled bikers who have lost the use of one arm as without it there's no
way you'd be able to steer at low speed or pull away one armed.
Stocker - unmodified factory-built vehicle; I think this comes from the term
'sales stock'.
Supercharger - A pump driven off the crank that forces more air into the
engine thus forcing it to run faster.
Toby - An Inverness Collegeism; slang meaning something along the lines of
widget, gizmo or thingy. Derived from angling parlarance (toby = a small
wooden fish used as a lure.) May be related to the epithet 'Toby Tishbein'
and can be said 'Tobyracho' for no apparent reason. (I'm not making this up!
Honest!)
Top yoke - The yokes are two pieces of metal that hold the front forks
together and to the bike. The top yoke is the upper one. Known as triple
clamps in the US.
JASDF - Japanese Air Self Defence Force. The Japanese air force.
JGSDF - Japanese Ground Self Defence Force. The ground forces arm of the
Japanese military.
JSDF - Japanese Self Defence Force. The collective Japanese armed forces.
What likes - Slack Scottish grammar. Means something along the lines of
'please could you explain that'. Only considerably less posh.
Wheelie bin - a square green plastic trashcan about the size of a normal
bin, with a flip top and two wheels.