Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Chained World: The Fall of the House of Kuno ❯ Igniting the Charge ( Chapter 49 )

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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Nabiki stared out her window at the gathering shadows, nerves that had already been tight when her sister left now almost at the snapping point. Akane and Ukyo were late — well, not late for their revised schedule, that still had some time left....

But both times Akane had called, first to report that their connecting train had suffered a breakdown and later to say that it was fixed and on the move and ask what the revised timetable would be, something had been off. Nabiki couldn't put her finger on it, and on the face of it there was nothing out of the ordinary — Akane had been practically giddy with happiness that she was pregnant, frustrated by the delay getting home — but something about the conversation had set off an alarm in the back of her older sister's subconscious. Still, the delay was real, both the news and the online real time tracking for the transportation network had reported it.

She heard someone walking down the hallway toward her door, and then a knock. “Nabiki, can you come down to eat?” Kasumi asked through the door. “We won't wait for Akane and Ukyo, I've put their plates on a warmer.”

“Sure, big sis, I'll be right there,” Nabiki called back. The sound of Kasumi walking back toward the stairs came through the door as Nabiki sat down at her computer to put it on standby.

/oOo\

Xian Pu looked around the mostly-empty dining room of the Cat Café, and winced. The sun was setting, and the café should have been packed. But ever since Ranma was auctioned off, business had been falling off, and those customer that did show up ate and left quickly and weren't tipping as they had before. The drinking establishments were doing a booming business, but Mu Tse reported that it wasn't a happy business, you could cut the tension in the lording with a knife.

As she delivered the latest order to her great-grandmother, Xian Pu paused at a sudden thought — she was taking the business of the Cat Café seriously, instead of considering it as the excuse to stay in Nerima that it really was. After a moment she shook her head with a slight chuckle. She was going native, actually coming to like living here — and just as she was reaching that point, they were going to be returning to the village.

However it turns out, she thought, mood darkening with guilt and shame. When the final act played out, she would not be there. Neither would Mu Tse or Great-Grandmother — watching the catapults firing their rocks at the latest massive viewscreen, she'd decided the risk to the village of being seen to be that deeply involved was simply too great. She had advised her great-grandmother that they remain until it was over so that they could unlock Ranma's Jusenkyo curse but do no more, and as soon as that was done return to Nyuchiehzu,and Ku Lon had agreed.

“Xian Pu,” Ku Lon called from the kitchen, “you have a delivery.”

Xian Pu glanced again around the dining room and shrugged, before turning to her want-to-be fiancé standing by the back wall, waiting for a table to clear so he'd have something to do. “Duck Boy think he can handle crush?” she asked with a grin.

Mu Tse surveyed the few customers. “Yes, I believe so,” he replied with a chuckle. The news that they'd be dropping their support and eventually returning to the village had done wonders for him, her childhood friend was peeking through the mask of the love-besotted fool that had been so annoying — something that eased the pain of losing Ranma, however it turned out.

Almost bounding into the backroom, the young Amazon hastily pulled on the pants she wore under her skimpy dress when making deliveries, and grabbed her bike — Mu Tse wasn't the only one bored from the lack of business.

Ku Lon chuckled at her chosen heir's antics as she handed her the box and a slip of paper with an address she recognized as an old customer. “Be careful,” the Matriarch warned as Xian Pu opened the door and pushed the bike through into the alleyway.

Xian Pu gave her mentor a confident grin as she hopped on the bike. “Who be too too stupid to bother me?”

Ku Lon bounded up to rap her on the head. “Don't be overconfident! It's dusk, things are getting dangerous, and even the most skilled can have a bad day.”

“Yes, Great-Grandmother, Shampoo be careful,” Xian Pu agreed, rubbing her head, before putting the takeout in the bike's basket and starting down the alleyway.

/\

In the watch post across from the Cat Café, Abe Kyoji rubbed at tired eyes before refocusing on the stacked square of multiple monitors showing views all around the restaurant. While keeping an eye on such powerful outsiders was important, for years it had been a light duty post, a place for Kuno ninjas to relax and recuperate while the pattern recognition software did the work. No longer.

Both of the outpost's occupants twitched at the sound of a soft beep, and Sasaki Sik Won leaned back in his chair. “Fifteen minutes,” he murmured.

Kyoji was opening his mouth to make some meaningless lighthearted response to lessen the tension, when one of the screens flashed and he leaned forward, tensing up at what he saw — a purple-haired teenager hopping on her bike in the alley behind the café, a box of takeout in the bike's basket. “Oh, shit! Shampoo's leaving on a delivery!” he blurted, hand fumbling at the latch of a plastic cover on the panel.

Sik Won whirled to his vidphone and hit a speed dial button. Within moments, Pyo-sensei appeared on the screen. “Sensei, Shampoo is leaving on a delivery right now!” Sik Won almost shouted.

Pyo-sensei blanched. “Go!” he ordered.

Behind Sik Won, Kyoji's hand slammed down on the button the opened cover revealed.

/\

When the Amazons had first arrived in Nerima and set up the Cat Café, the Kuno ninjas had taken their measure, and found them terrifying. True, neither of the teenagers could match Lord Kuno's retainers for stealth. But then, stealth had never exactly been one of their concerns and few of the ninja could match them in combat. And Ku Lon was a match for the ninjas in stealth, at least — they'd never succeeded in determining her upper limit. And she was even worse in combat, she'd helped train the killer of Saffron!

And so months before Kuno the Elder's death, on the Master of Servant's own initiative, his subordinates had prepared the only defense they could think of that would guarantee that they could deal with the all possible vipers in the heart of their lording. Using an extensive clean up and survey of the sewers underneath the lording as an excuse, workers with absolutely no training in the Arts or in ki manipulation had planted enough high explosives under the Cat Café to reduce a building three times its size to flaming wreckage.

But now their timing was just a few seconds off, and when the massive explosion hurled the shattered, flaming pieces of the Cat Café — along the buildings on either side and on the other side of the back alley, and a chunk of road halfway across the street — into the air and the surrounding buildings, Xian Pu was already across the road and pedaling along the sidewalk toward an alley leading to their customer.

The Amazon Champion had no warning at all, but her great-grandmother had known that a warrior's worst danger was ambush and so had trained her heir until the teenager's reactions to a multitude of attacks were instinctual. So when the explosion picked her up and hurled her at the shop beside her, the same ki-powered focused shockwave than enabled her to ride her bike through walls blew out the large display window ... and the interior wall behind it, and the back exterior wall. She rolled across the bricks of the back alley and used the momentum to hurl herself at the back wall of the building on the other side ... and as the shop that should have been both her killer and her tomb was smashed apart by the shock wave and rubble, collapsing back to fill the alley with debris and shake the building behind it, Xian Pu blew through the shelves that had been against the inside of her new refuge's exterior wall and slid across the concrete floor to slam up against the storeroom door. The teenager slowly rolled to her hands and knees, choking and coughing on the rock dust that filled the air through the entrance hole she'd made, covered with splinters and bits and pieces of plaster and brick and concrete — just as the outer wall collapsed under the battering it had just taken.

/oOo\

“Fifteen minutes,” Jang Ma-zhi murmured into his throat mic from his position on the opposite slope of house roof across the street from the Tendo compound. “Remember Pyo-sensei's revised instructions, Kasumi-san and Nodoka-san are to be ignored if they allow it, the only primary targets are Genma-san and Nabiki-san. Acknowledge.”

The acknowledgments rolled in, in order down the circle around the compound. Ma-zhi rolled onto his back and stared for a moment at the first stars appearing in the dusky sky as he listened. He wondered what had led to the target revision — not that he was complaining, far from it, but Pyo-sensei had seemed adamant about removing anyone that might either be a direct threat or call attention to the planned mental alterations of Ranma-san and Akane-san. And he doubted he was the only one that had felt relief at the modified orders. It had to be his imagination, but he seemed to hear a new easing of tension in the rolling —

The massive shock of the explosion rolled over his thoughts, and he clutched at his handholds on the suddenly shuddering roof. What was that! ? he thought, jerking upright and staring ... at a massive spreading column of smoke and dust at the location of the Cat Café. The mine had been set off early! But that meant ... “Go, now! Go! Go! Go!” he shouted into his mic, and threw himself over the peak of the roof to slide down the slope toward the street.

/\

Nabiki, Kasumi, Nodoka and Genma were halfway through their evening meal when the shockwave of the explosion washed over the compound. Nabiki's head shot up as the Tendo home shook. “What was that!” she shouted as she sprang up from the traditional low table, leading the dash out into the yard. The four stared at the rising column of smoke visible in the darkening sky.

“Oh, my, that must have been the Cat Café,” Kasumi whispered. “But what could have happened?”

“What happened is Kuno,” Nabiki ground out, feeling suddenly sick — the calls from Akane hadn't actually been from Akane, Kuno was finally making his move, and she had never dreamed that he would be this ruthless.

Nabiki wasn't the only one suddenly feeling sick. Genma closed his eyes, reaching out for the feel of the ki around him, past his wife and future daughters by marriage, further ... further ... and there they were. They were good at hiding themselves, but not as good as he was, and they were coming down off the roofs around the compound, crossing the street — and the three martial artists he'd counted on to fight beside him when this night came weren't here, and their backup had just been obliterated. His eyes snapped open. “You're right, they're coming. Into the house now, Nabiki's room!”

Nabiki whirled and dashed for the house, Kasumi right behind her. Nodoka drew the Saotome honor blade as her eyes ran the length of the top of the wall, then turned and followed, Genma behind her. The two dashed through the twists in the hallway, up the stairs, and down the upstairs first hallway to the T-intersection and Nabiki's room in the center.

Nodoka rushed through the open doorway, Genma right behind her turning to close the door only to freeze when his wife asked, “Nabiki, where's Kasumi?”

Nabiki looked up from her seat in front of her desktop computer, glancing around frantically. “What? ! I thought she was right behind me!” She shot to her feet, and stepped toward the door only to stop, fists clenched at her side. I can't, I have to do this before we die, or it's all pointless. Oh, Kas-chan ...

She sat back down, just as the lights went out and her computer screen flickered as it switched to its battery. “Candles and matches on top of my bookshelf,” she said without looking up. She ignored Nodoka passing behind her to fetch them, fingers flying across a keyboard barely visible in the light from the monitor. Yup, they cut the landline for the Net and are jamming the wireless. And I thought I was being paranoid when I quietly set up a second landline. And ... yes! They still haven't found my backdoor into the Kuno network. Activating virus ... there's the all clear, now out clean.... Her shoulders slumped with relief as the connection closed down. That took care of the knife in the back, now for the hammer to the chest. She hastily brought up another preprogrammed routine, typed in the activation code, typed in the verification code, and the second verification code, and sighed with relief as the `action completed' button popped up. Her part was done, now she just needed to learn if she and her immediate family were going to live through the next half hour.

/\

Nabiki had been very impressed by her meeting with Juan de Oro what seemed like a lifetime ago, and had wondered how the same Bible that had produced Shinto Christianity, with its strong pacifistic streak, could produce such a man. And so in what little spare time she'd had since their meeting she had picked up and dove into a copy of the Bible, though the local Shinto Christians from whom she'd acquired it would have been appalled at which sections she was focusing on.

Now, one of the results of that study flashed out across Nerima, and people broke off whatever they were doing as piercing squeals, slight electric shocks, massively vibrating phones — whatever their chosen signal for an emergency alert — grabbed their attention. The disparate group was made up of men and some women, from late teenagers to almost elderly, respected local businessmen to almost beggars. The one thing they all had in common was that within arm's reach was one of the staves Genma had handed out at his classes, and they all listened to the message that made official what the explosion that had shaken Nerima had already told them. The time had come.

For every person contacted, the prerecorded message was the same — Nabiki's voice, cold as ice and hard as steel, reciting the verse that had become her mantra since she had first read it:

.

“Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and attacked all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God. When the Lord your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!”

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When I first read the Bible the verses I ended this episode with didn't impress me, being stuck in the middle of one of the more boring parts (Deuteronomy — not as bad as Leviticus or parts of Numbers or Chronicles, but bad enough). Then I eventually read Not for Glory, a scifi book by Joel Rosenberg set in an interstellar future where the Jews were driven off of Earth and are now supporting themselves as mercenaries. If I remember correctly, at one point the protagonist remembers how his uncle had turned a unit of worn out, beaten, demoralized soldiers into raving fanatics against their proudly Germanic (then current) enemies with a speech that ended with this quote. It's stuck with me ever since. (It also left the protagonist more than a bit prejudiced against those people proud of their German descent; not all wounds are physical, and sometimes those are the hardest to heal.)

I'm considering adding a last chapter after the epilogue consisting of more details on what I've come up with for the social/political workings of this world, naturally focused on Japan. If anyone wants to write their own sequel, either here or at Anime Addventures, they'll find it useful. It wouldn't be official, of course; I have my own ideas for a couple sequels even if I never write them. But fun playing with other people's work is the name of the game!