Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Chained World: The Fall of the House of Kuno ❯ Clean-up Duty ( Chapter 37 )

This was originally published by me under the name Anduril at Anime Addventures, with the only changes being a few corrections in spelling, punctuation and the occasional word choice. If you like the beginning of my story but think I've gone off the rails, or have your own ideas for a great branch-off, or think I'm taking too long to update and want to continue the story yourself, come to Anime Addventures and join in the fun!

I claim no ownership rights to any of the works of Rumiko Takahashi, or anyone else's published work.

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Sailor Pluto watched as the last of the massacre at the transshipment point played out in the Time Gates before her. With a sigh of relief, the emerald-haired young-seeming woman released her control and the Gates returned to their normal multi-colored staticy collection of images from the past, present, and all possible futures mixing together, each scene in the mix lasting only a few second before giving way to another.

Turning away, the Senshi of Time took a few moments to pull on her inscrutable all-knowing persona, then stepped through to the comfortable living room of the Hinako Shrine. “You can relax, we won't be needed,” she said calmly, hiding her smirk as three faces whipped around to look at her.

“Good!” Sailor Mars growled as she relaxed back into her seat. “I'm getting tired of helping that bastard!”

“He is not!” Sailor Jupiter disagreed vehemently.

“Yeah, buying a fourteen year old sex slave — why you defend that perverted rapist is beyond me after what he did to you,” Mars sneered.

Jupiter jerked to her feet, hands curling into fists. “It was my choice to be sold as a full use slave after my parents' deaths made me the only one responsible for the family debt, and he was only sixteen when he bought me — it could have been some real pervert, some middle-aged man that enjoyed abusing young girls!”

Now Mars was on her feet, face to face with her angry teammate. “And I suppose you were happy and eager every time he ordered you into his bed!”

Jupiter was opening her mouth for a shouted rebuttal, when a fresh voice broke in. “Cool it, you two, you're both half right,” Sailor Uranus said calmly, “sex slaves don't exactly have the right to refuse their masters' demands, and being sold as a sex slave was Jupiter's choice and she could have done a lot worse when it came to masters.

“That said,” the short-haired blonde continued, turning to Pluto, “Mars's other point is a good one — after what the Kunos did to Juuban, and our friends and their families, acting as unofficial Kuno security doesn't exactly thrill me, either. Are they that important to the future?”

Pluto smiled inscrutably, knowing even as she did that Uranus, at least, wasn't fooled in the slightest, not after she and her lover had shortstopped Pluto's self-hating pityfest three weeks ago with a night of hot sex, followed by being woken up by a happy Hotaru. There had been a couple of other evenings and nights with the two Outers and future Outer since, and she still wasn't sure how she felt about it — she'd spent literally millennia avoiding any possibility of having hostages to fortune, but she had found a part of her soul that she'd forgotten existed rejoicing at the time spent with the other three and had finally decided to simply let this part of her life develop as it would. She hadn't even examined its future in the Time Gates and found that lack of knowledge exhilarating (not to mention a little frightening).

Realizing that the others were still waiting for an answer, she replied in her normal distant calm, “Who ever said we're protecting the Kunos?” And with that, Pluto stepped out of the room while the other three senshi were still gaping at her.

Back at the Time Gates, she laughed until she cried, and ignored the hint of hysteria in the sound. Finally bringing herself under control, the normally regal woman wiped at her face and cursed mildly before stepping out to her personal washroom in her office suite. She had to look her imperious best for her next stop.

/oOo\

In a room at the Masaki shrine that had been set aside for practice in the Art of the Sword, a middle-aged woman, her auburn hair tied back at the base of her neck, desperately shifted her bokken across her body as she twisted to the side, striving to hold off the lightning-fast assault of the elderly man facing her.

“Good, good, very good,” her ancient instructor murmured as his own slashing bokken hammered his student's back against her side before she managed to twist it and slide his own harmlessly past her. He stepped back and let the younger woman bring her bokken back up to guard as she gasped for breath. “You let yourself get badly out of position and that move would get you laughed off any tournament floor, but it worked — and when the fighting's for real that's what counts. Now —”

Nodoka stiffened when her sensei abruptly broke off, his normally gentle gaze hardening even as it seemed to turn inward. After a moment his eyes again focused on his student. “Break,” he said, and returned her fatigue-shaky bow. “Now, practice the kata I showed you this morning. I must check out something, I will return as soon as I can,” Katsuhito told her quietly, then quickly strode from the room.

/\

Katsuhito stepped into the clearing where he'd met the Senshi of Time three weeks earlier, unsurprised to again find the same fuku-clad woman waiting. “So the Time Spider returns,” he said coldly. “What do you want this time?”

The emerald-haired woman gazed serenely at him for a long moment, then asked, “How is your student coming along?”

Katsuhito folded his arms, an eyebrow rising. “You haven't been watching?”

“Certainly I've been checking in from time to time,” Pluto replied with a shrug. “But I am no swordswoman, to judge her progress just from what I see.”

“I see.” Katsuhito frowned thoughtfully. “Actually, she has been doing very well, considering that she knew nothing when she arrived. She is certainly determined enough — she has been working herself into exhaustion daily since her arrival. But she is nowhere near ready for actual combat.”

Pluto sighed softly, and Katsuhito's eyes widened slightly as he seemed to catch a hint of regret in her normally expressionless face. “We aren't going to have the luxury of allowing her the time to get much better,” the senshi responded, “things are coming to a head in Nerima. She has one more week at most before she needs to return.”

“And her odds of surviving the coming battle?” Katsuhito inquired coldly.

“Fifty-fifty,” Pluto responded instantly. “But if she isn't there, the odds of anyone at the Tendo dojo surviving drop considerably.”

The Juraian noble gazed expressionlessly at her for a time, then finally nodded. “Very well, I will tell Nodoka-san what you have told me and let her make the choice.”

“And do you have any doubts how she will choose?”

“No ... no, I don't. It seems you will have another piece to remove from the board.” With that, the old man turned and stalked out of the clearing.

Pluto watched him leave, then murmured, “I hope not, Ranma's going to have a hard enough time recovering as it is, if he lives.”

/oOo\

Inaba Ryota snarled as he reviewed the latest reports his corrupt police in the Nerima district were sending him. His little test of the new lordling had not turned out the way he'd expected, or even feared.

Most of the girls at the transshipment point alive, he thought. Likewise all of the girls at the brothels that were raided at the same time because I couldn't pull out most of the guards and slaves there out without revealing that I knew the raids were coming. And the point of leaving them there was completely missed, all because those martial artists got involved!

In truth, it was that involvement by the Neriman martial arts community that most concerned him. The girls could be replaced easily enough, and the otokodate he'd lost only somewhat more difficult — there were always plenty of young men desperate for a chance to get out of the gutter. Furnishing the new brothels would actually be the most difficult task, and if the martial artists that had broken up his ambush were a portent for the future rather than a fluke, it would have to be somewhere other than Nerima. Considering that according to one of his bought and paid for cops, two of the martial artists had been the new lord's sister and newest full use slave, it wasn't likely to be a fluke.

Inaba had been so caught up in his thoughts that he hadn't noticed the flashing button signaling an incoming call from his secretary. It was only when the secondary soft chime sounded that he was jerked out of his ruminations. Scowling, he pressed the button for acceptance. “Yes, Kun Hee-chan?” he growled as the viewscreen lit up to show the gorgeous face of his highly skilled secretary (in bed and out).

“I'm sorry to disturb you, sir, but Sugiyama-san and Enoki-san are here to see you,” she replied nervously.

His anger vanished like a snuffed out candle, instantly replaced by nervous dread — he doubted that things had turned out as Ikari Gendo had expected, either. Straightening in his seat, he nodded. “Send them in,” he ordered.

A few seconds later the door to his office opened and Sugiyama Chojiro stepped in. Behind him, Inaba could see his partner lounging in one of the chairs in his waiting room. Enoki Ren waved genially just before the door closed.

Standing, Inaba waved his guest to one of the chairs in front of his desk. “Welcome,” he said. “Would you like some refreshments, something to drink?” Sugiyama shook his head as he sat, and Inaba resumed his own seat behind the desk. “So what is so important that Ikari-dono sent you over without letting me know you were coming?” he asked.

“It's because of the police raid in Nerima,” Sugiyama replied. “Ikari-dono sent us with a message to give you.” Reaching a gloved hand up underneath his jacket, he pulled out a semi-automatic pistol with a silencer attached to the end of the barrel. Even as Inaba lunged to his feet, hand yanking open a desk drawer, the gun coughed twice and the shots hammered him back into his chair. Tipping back, the chair spilled the corpse onto the floor.

Rising to his feet, Sugiyama stepped around the desk and laid the smoking pistol on the desk top, then pulled a memory stick from his pocket. Plugging it into a slot in Inaba's desk computer, he waited until a prompt asking for a password came up on the screen, typed quickly, waited again for a minute until a “task completed” prompt flashed, pulled the memory stick out of the slot and strode toward the door, leaving the pistol behind.

/\

Pyo Kun Hee was so riveted by the story being spun by the friendly, open-faced security guard sharing the outer office with her about his time in the Chinese fringe provinces that she almost chose to ignore the odd sounds coming from her master's office. But they were so different from even the sounds when one of his more desperate female “clients” visited.... Sighing, she turned back toward the welcome diversion from her normal boring routine. “My pardon, Ren-kun, but —” She broke off, stunned at the sight of the silenced pistol in his gloved hand. The gun coughed once, and her head slammed back as the bullet striking between her wide eyes splattered blood, brains and bone fragments over the wall behind her.

A minute later, Sugiyama stepped through the office door. His gaze swept the outer office, pausing for a moment on secretary's corpse sprawled across her desk in a spreading pool of red. “Good,” he said nonchalantly. “The memory wipe's under way, let's go.” Enoki nodded, placed his pistol onto the desk top beside his victim, and the two quietly left the office, locking the door behind them.

/oOo\

Ikari Gendo finished reading the report of Inaba's successful assassination and leaned back in his chair. Good, that takes care of one loose end that might be traced back to us. Dismissing the dead crimelord from his thoughts, he returned to what he'd been considering before the report's arrival in his inbox — Katsuragi Misato's speculation about why the new Lord Kuno had used the Nerima Lording police force instead of his own household security for such a sensitive operation when he obviously didn't trust it. If that delusional fool had trusted his own people, he would have told them about smuggling Ranma in beforehand — if only to avoid the possibility of the girl he was fixated on being shot by his own police when they broke in.

Finally, he sighed, straightened, and brought up his desk's phone function. A moment later, his desk's viewscreen lit up to show his raven-haired head of operations. “Katsuragi-kun, I have concluded that your ideas have merit,” he said without preamble. “Your suggested plans to keep the Kuno security forces spread thin are approved. But don't get overeager, even with the mansion security handled only by the Kuno Family ninjas its defenses are formidable — the strike team is to go in only when those defenses have been weakened somehow.”

Katsuragi dipped her head in a viewscreen bow. “Yes, my lord,” she responded.

Gendo broke off the connection and again leaned back in his chair. He stared at the wall, the lack of expression on his face at odds with the cold fury boiling in his eyes. Soon ... soon this untried fool will give us the opportunity we need, and all the pain the Kunos have inflicted on Yui will be repaid with interest. Soon ...