Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Chained World: The Fall of the House of Kuno ❯ Brennschluss! ( Chapter 50 )

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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Kasumi was on her knees in the kitchen, carefully removing the glasses and ceramic bowls from the cabinet in which she'd hidden her gift just a few days before and setting them to the side. The need to hurry was burning within her, so strong she literally ached; but so, too, was the need to be absolutely silent, a hole in the air. And more than that, she simply couldn't bring herself to throw dishes around.

The last of the glassware out of the way, Kasumi reached back behind the round turntable of the shelves, grasped the box ... and gasped, freezing in place when the lights abruptly went out.

A few seconds later, in the absolute silence of the house, she heard the faint creak of the door to the yard opening, and could feel the presence of another person join her in the room. Her head turned as if it had a life of its own, and she looked up to stare at the figure barely visible in what little light was coming through the kitchen window and now-open doorway, the loose, dark-mottled clothing and hood making at almost impossible to tell where the edges were, much less determine sex.

The figure stared at her for a long moment, then turned and seemed to float away across the room and through the doorway into the house. Another figure followed the first, and another, and a third.

As the last figure vanished deeper into the house, Kasumi collapsed from her knees onto her side on the cool floor, curled herself around the box in her hands, and shook.

/\

Nodoka gasped as the lights went out.

“Candles and matches on top of my bookshelf,” Nabiki said without looking up, fingers flying over her desktop computer's keyboard as if the room was still brightly lit.

The Saotome matriarch looked around as her eyes adjusted to the dark, spotted the dark outline of a candle on top of the bookshelf beyond the middle Tendo, and started to walk past her toward the shelf only to pause when her husband gripped her shoulder from behind.

“No,” he murmured. “There's enough light once your eyes adjust. Lighting candles means flickering light, having no night vision if they get put out, and a possible fire hazard. Very bad, that last, if the house catches on fire they can set up a ring outside and wait for us to come to them out in the open.”

“I understand,” Nodoka replied quietly. “Where do you want me?”

Genma glanced around. The room was wide enough for his wife to use the katana clutched in her hands but that held for the ninjas as well, the bed underneath the open window ... “You take the doorway, I'll take the window.”

As Nodoka nodded and turned back to stand ready in front of the door, Nabiki slumped back in her seat. “Done,” she murmured, then glanced around. “Kasumi?”

“I don't know,” Genma replied, his focus on the window. “We thought she was right behind you, and we can't go looking for her. Get down underneath your desk, that should keep you out of the way and their attention on me and No-chan.”

“Right.” Nabiki stood, shoved her chair around so that it was against the wall beside her computer desk, then crouched and curled herself inside the little space now available.

Hearing the short exchange behind her, Nodoka smiled happily. He had called her No-chan, and he wasn't trying to hide anything or begging for forgiveness. She knew her husband loved her, but Genma wasn't a man that revealed his softer side easily. But he'd called her No-chan.

Then the happy moment was over as the door slammed open, and she slid forward in a perfect cross-slice, to disembowel the first ninja charging through the doorway.

/oOo\

Pluto stood in front of the Gates, the emerald-haired fuku-clad Senshi of Time's fists clenched around the shaft of the Time Staff and every muscle taut as she watched the image of Nabiki-san's face, the teenager's features lit by the light from her monitor as she typed away furiously. Then the middle Tendo sighed as she slumped back in her seat. “Done,” she murmured.

Pluto froze the scene. Yes, that's the point, the trap is set and the alert sent, and it isn't so far in the past that I'll set up a paradox. Now to find my Knight, she thought, remembering a discussion of chess versus go with Katsuhito-san, as she silently ordered the Gates to find a particular personal signature, and nodded satisfaction as the frozen image of Ryoga-san appeared in front of her. The large, less-than-clean befanged teenager was ... in the rain forest of the Oregon Coast Range shortly after dawn, apparently breaking camp and getting ready for another night of stalking Kuno territory — though he had been very careful since the refinery strike. She suspected that the extent of the chain reaction he had set off had stunned him as much as it had everyone else, though praise all the Powers, he hadn't killed anyone, neither in the attack nor in the days of fighting the out of control fires.

Her destination pinpointed, Pluto stepped and was instantly at the edge of the clearing where her target had spent the night. “Ryoga-san!” she yelled, running into the clearing. “The Tendos are being attacked, they need you now!”

“What! ?” he yelled, dropping the tent he was folding as he whirled and fell into a defensive stance at the sound of her shout. He stared at his sudden visitor, face going pale as the words registered through his shock at her abrupt appearance.

“The Kuno ninjas are over the walls and entering the house as we speak,” Pluto said urgently. “Akane-san, Ukyo-san and Konatsu-san aren't there, the Saotomes, Nabiki-san and Kasumi-san are alone and need you now, go!”

Without another word, the Lost Boy grabbed his umbrella and was off, charging into the woods at a dead run.

Pluto watched him vanish from sight, and nodded as the sounds of he made running through the woods abruptly cut off. He was gone. All right, you've done what you can for the Tendos, the coin flip will go their way or it won't. Now to mine the silver from the lining of this typhoon. With a step, the clearing was empty except for a crusader's abandoned bedroll, tent and backpack.

/oOo\

Xian Pu awoke, and opened her eyes to utter darkness, not a hint of light. What ... where was she ... ? A slow night at the Cat Café, a delivery to break the tedium, pedaling off on her bicycle ... the explosion! She surged to her feet, scattering the thin layer of rubble covering her, then dropped to her knees, choking and hacking in the concrete-dusty air, hands clutching at her temples as a spike of pain slammed into the center of her forehead. She mewed in pain, then leaned over and emptied her stomach of her early dinner.

Finally, she wiped her mouth as she looked around. The outer wall on the back alley was gone, the rubble that had covered her the bottom of a slope of debris that was all that was left of the building across the street from the Cat Café. The café!

Shakily forcing herself to her feet, she slowly staggered up the shifting slope. Reaching the top, she took one look at the scene before her and again fell to her knees, tears cutting through the brick and cement dust that coated her, pounding headache forgotten.

The Cat Café was gone. Not even a pile of rubble, where the building had stood was a deep crater rapidly filling with water from ruptured pipes. No one within that building could have survived, not even someone as powerful as her great-grandmother, not without some sort of warning. And there had been no warning.

For a time she simply knelt and stared, mind wiped clean by her pain, until finally a single thought forced its way through: why now? Not `what happened' or `who did this', the answers to those were obvious, but why now? The Amazons hadn't done anything, except join in the attacks on the auction center viewscreen....

But we did join those attacks, didn't we? The attacks may not have been much, but they showed we stand with the Tendos. And if Kuno has moved against us now, then — “The dojo!”

She forced herself to her feet and drew on her ki reserves, emotional and physical pain pushed to the side, and skip-slid down the side of the slope back into the alley. On firm ground, she paused to pull a couple of pieces of wood bracing from the rubble, then broke into a run to the street and took to the roofs across the lording toward the Tendo compound.

/oOo\

Genma heard the (thankfully male) shriek of mortal pain behind him, even as his first vacuum blade ripped out and the window in front of him exploded in splinters, plaster dust and blood, the halves left of the first ninja trying to swing in through the window dropping to the lawn below. Then his second vacuum blade tore away even more of the sides of the window, and the third.

Behind him, Nodoka's follow through from her first kill sliced into her second ninja's neck, and she stepped to the side to avoid the collapsing now-headless corpse. The third ninja jerked back into the hallway, stepped to the side, and the doorway was empty.

She waited, no more came. Nor was there sound from behind her. Keeping her gaze fixed on the doorway, she whispered, “Genma?”

“I'm fine, you?”

“I'm fine. What's going on? Why aren't they attacking?”

“I think you surprised them. They expected to be facing a master, and a typical student with one month's training. Now, they'll be considering how to deal with what they really face.”

“And what will they decide?”

Before Genma could reply, the shadows of more figures appeared in doorway and window, and even as blood splashed across the bed as a bisected body landed on it and Nodoka's blade slashed across a face at eye level, another ninja dove forward to tackle the Saotome matriarch, sending her tumbling back to the floor beside the computer desk.

The pair rolled over, the ninja coming out on top while two more charged through the vacated space, knives in hand. Genma turned at his wife's shouted warning and caught both thrusting knife hands, bones crunching under his grip. He yanked his shrieking attackers toward him, let go of the wrists to reach up and grab windpipes and crush — just as he felt an arm circle his throat.

Even as the knife slammed home in his lower back, he threw himself and his attacker backward toward the window, the two sweeping another ninja off the window sill. He felt the knife stab home twice more before they hit the ground, the ribs of the ninja beneath him crunching with the impact.

Genma rolled to his feet, ignoring the dying ninja as the one he'd knocked off the window sill was joined by two more — No-chan was alone up there, he had to get back! The ninjas spread out, charged forward, wakizashi in hand, only to find empty space as Genma leaped for the dark hole of the window. But another ninja from the window sill and one from the roof dove out to intercept him. Twisting in mid-air, he kicked one away as the other flew through where he'd just been — and pain from his wounds flashed through him as he slammed into the side of the house below the window and fell to the ground below.

Hauling himself to his feet, he made come hither motions to the three ninja forming a half-circle around him — no, four — doing his best to hide how he was weakening as blood ran down his side and back and legs from the knife wounds. Instead of immediately charging, they backed up and spread out, making room for another mottled-dark-clad ninja. He took advantage of their hesitation to reach for the Umisenken, wrap it around him ... only to have the comforting blanket of concealing ki shiver and shred as pain and blood loss shredded his concentration.

They began their charge, another vacuum blade ripped out, spread as wide as possible, and as three of the ninjas exploded in misty clouds of blood in the moonlight, Genma realized he'd made a mistake — they were the middle three. Instantly, he tried to charge the ninja on his left towards the corner of the house and the entrance to the family room, but stumbled, lightheaded with blood loss.

/\

Down in the kitchen, a young woman curled into a ball on the floor flinched at the sound of her sister's door getting kicked open, followed by a shriek of pain like she'd never heard. Her family was under attack, and she was failing them.

Come on, Kasumi, your father is a samurai, and his father before him, going back centuries. You can do this.

Forcing herself to uncurl, she sat up, opened the box she had clutched to her stomach and grabbed the revolver and the box of bullets, and sprang to her feet to race for the stairs on silent feet.

At the top of the stairs, she paused and glanced down. She couldn't see it in the dark, but she could feel her hands shaking. Crouching down, she silently placed the box of ammunition on the top stair before taking hold of the revolver with both hands as she tried to ignore the sounds of life and death violence reverberating down the hall over the hammering of her heart. Remember Yamaguchi-san's lesson — steady, deep breaths, center of mass.

Taking a deep breath and fighting to stop the shivers running through her body, the eldest Tendo stepped out into the dark hallway and trotted as silently as possible around the corner into the corridor leading to the T-intersection and the hall along the Tendos' bedrooms, only two instantly freeze at the sight of two dark man-shapes ahead of her at the T-junction.

She slowly let out the breath she'd been holding, just as slowly took a deep breath, and raised the revolver in hands suddenly without a hint of tremor.

Kasumi did remember her lesson, all of it — two shots at the man on the right, she switched to the left, three shots into the center of the figure that had whirled to face her, barely visible as a movement in the dark with her eyes dazzled by the flare of the muzzle flashes. Even as he staggered back under the impacts, she switched back to the first target only to send her last bullet into a new figure that had whipped around the corner into the hallway. At least, she thought it was a new target. Her first target might be the shapeless mass on the floor.

Ears ringing from the gunshots, she whirled to dash back to the stairs — she needed to reload, maybe she could grab the bullets and hide downstairs, they knew she was here now, make them search for her — and cried out as she collided with a massive figure behind her coming out of the stairs, bounced off and fell on her butt. She stared up at the ... male? ... figure through gunshot dazzled eyes, reaching down toward her. She was starting to shake again — as big as he was, he could break her like a twig.

But he simply pulled her to her feet, saying something she couldn't quite make out through the ringing in her ears, before striding past her toward the bedrooms.

She stared at his retreating back for a moment, before again whirling back to the stairs. Finding the box of ammo by feel, she tapped out the empty shells and fought to load in fresh bullets with hands shaking harder than ever.

/\

Nodoka twisted where she lay on her back, trying to throw off the ninja straddling her. Her hand still gripping her katana was pinned to the floor by the wrist, the ninja's other hand pulling a dagger from its sheath at his waist. He reversed the dagger and raised it, ready to hammer Nodoka with the pommel as another two ninjas ran past them toward the window.

Just as he started to bring the pommel down, Nabiki kicked out from her hiding place underneath the desk, catching him directly in the side and sending him rolling across the floor, tripping another ninja crossing the room.

Nodoka rolled to her feet, katana in both hands leveled at the ninjas, gasping for breath. The two ninjas did the same, a third stepping into the dark room. I can't wait, they'll mob me, Nabiki will be alone. Thinking over the practice her sensei had insisted on for dealing with multiple opponents, she took a deep breath, bracing herself to attack the ninja closest to the window, when the house seemed to shake with rolling gunshots.

Everyone in the room froze. “Kasumi. That has to be Kasumi,” Nabiki said with a grunt, and Nodoka realized the middle Tendo was getting out from under the desk.

“Nabiki, stay down!” she hissed.

“No. I am not going to die hiding in a hole.”

Suddenly, the sounds of breathless shrieks, an explosion, shouts, and bodies slamming into walls erupted outside the room. The three ninjas exchanged glances, then the two closest to the doorway rushed for the hall while the third sidled toward Nodoka.

Nodoka braced herself for an attack, only to be caught off guard as the ninja twisted around to her right just out of her reach, trying to get past her — he was going for Nabiki! She twisted, letting go of the katana's hilt with one hand to stretch out ... and she jerked as the doorway lit up with a thunderous red-blue explosion, and the ninja dropped underneath her swing, his wakizashi flashing up as he rose. Nodoka's right hand and the katana it clutched spun away toward the corner of the room between the foot of the bed and the bookshelf.

Without pause Nodoka thrust her stump toward the ninja's face, spouting blood splashing across his eyes. The ninja staggered back, swinging wildly with the wakizashi in one hand as he scrubbed at his eyes with the other, but it was Nodoka's turn to crouch beneath the swing, and her own wakizashi sliced across his abdomen. He dropped his blade, clutching at the gaping wound, and her follow-on strike swept back to sweep across his neck. As the ninja's head landed on the bed, Nodoka dropped to one knee, suddenly lightheaded.

Nabiki dropped to her knees and caught Nodoka as she fell back, pulling her back toward the bookshelf beside her computer desk, one hand squeezed tight around the spurting stump. “You did it, you got him,” she whispered, pulling the older woman against her where they sat.

“But what about the next?” Nodoka replied through gritted teeth, fighting not to whimper.

“Nodoka-san? Nabiki-san? Are you all right?”

At the sound of that familiar voice, the two women looked up at the figure standing in the darkness of the doorway, looking around the corpse-strewn bedroom in stunned amazement. “Ryoga!” Nabiki shouted out, a feral grin invisible in the night spreading across her face.

/oOo\

A few minutes earlier:

Ryoga stood in the kitchen, fighting to bring his panting under control as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark — he was in better shape than almost everyone else on Earth, but he'd put everything he had into his race through the flickering landscape to get to the Tendo home. At least, he thought it was the Tendo home; it looked familiar, what he could see in the moonlight coming through the window. The room whose doorway he'd stepped through to get here had had bright sunshine coming through its windows, so he wasn't somewhere in Europe anymore ... and from the shrieks and thumps coming through the floor, there was a serious fight going on up there.

Deciding that his breathing was quiet enough not to alert anyone he came across to his presence and his eyes adjusted enough to has a decent chance to see them first, Ryoga cautiously opened the door into the rest of the house — no one there. He moved down the hallway to the stairwell as soundlessly as he could, up the stairs cautious step by step ... and almost leaped through the roof as gunshot after gunshot echoed down the stairwell from the floor above. Guns! ? The Kuno ninjas brought guns? !

Abandoning stealth, he hurled himself up the rest of the stairs and through the doorway into the hall, just in time for someone racing down the hall to bounce off him. In the dark of the hallway he could barely tell that the figure on the floor was female, but the sound of her voice when she fell had been familiar ... and not many ninjas wore dresses....

“Kasumi, is that you?” he asked, reaching down to pull the woman — it was Kasumi — to her feet. Somehow, she was still alive. “Get downstairs, hide somewhere, I'll take care of everyone up here,” he said, and strode past her down the hallway toward the bedrooms. Whoever had fired gun would be reloading, so he had to move fast.

At he came to the T-intersection with the hall that ran along the three sisters' bedrooms, two figures whipped around the corners, blades in hand. Instantly, Ryoga slammed the ferrule of his umbrella through the chest of the one on the right, and swung the dying ninja left into his partner, bouncing him off the wall. As the ninja staggered, fighting to regain his balance, Ryoga let the umbrella sag, the corpse sliding off the end, and stepped forward and lightly kicked the off-balance ninja across the against the wall beside the open door to Nabiki's room. As the ninja bounced forward toward him, Ryoga's umbrella thrust forward to impale a new victim.

Letting the umbrella and its corpse drop to the floor, Ryoga cupped his hands, concentrated, and the reddish-blue ball of ki of his latest attack sprang to life. He hadn't named it yet, not seeing the need since he'd stopped shouting out his ki attacks, but now he stepped into the cross-corridor, turned to his left in the direction of Kasumi's room, and thrusting his hands forward, his shaped charge of righteous fury given fiery life blew two ninjas down to the end of the hall to smash through the door of the tiny bathroom there.

Whipping back around, he stepped to the side and caught the wrist of the knife-gripping hand thrusting toward him, twisted and yanked to place his victim between him and his next attacker, and the ninja shrieked as his wrist snapped in Ryoga's grip even as his partner's knife slammed into his kidney. Ryoga let go of the falling ninja's wrist and stepped forward to grab that partner's chin with one hand, the back of his head with the other and twisted, and the ninja's neck broke with a wet crack.

Looking down the hall, in the moonlight coming through the window across from Akane's bedroom he silently snarled at the sight of another four or five ninjas stepping back. Stupid, to give him a chance to prepare, but he wasn't going to waste it and another reddish-blue ball of ki gathered between his cupped hands.

Just as he thrust his hands forward, another two ninjas barreled out of Nabiki's bedroom right in front of his attack. The resulting back-blast forced Ryoga back even as it blew the newcomers down the hall toward their compatriots, and he brought his staggering retreat to a halt and charged forward in spite of his dazzled vision and ringing ears — they would be worse off, and he couldn't give them time to recover.

But as he charged he heard shattering glass, faintly saw figures throwing themselves through the window across from Akane's door and the other at the end of the hall. He stumbled over a smoking corpse, and barely managed to keep his stumbling run from sending him after the retreating ninjas through the end-hall window.

Gripping the window frame, unmindful of the broken glass around the edges, he slumped to his knees, gasping for breath. Compared to his bouts with Ranma this one had been short, but he'd never been in one so intense. Not even the raids on the Kuno holdings had been this bad. Nabiki-san, Nodoka-san, I have to find them. They should be with Saotome-san, so they should be all right, but … there had been a lot of ninjas…. forcing himself to his feet, her turned back to check the bedrooms … Akane-kun's, empty in the moonlight through her window … Nabiki-san's … and his shoulders slumped with relief at the sight of the Saotome matron and middle Tendo sister huddled together on the bedroom floor against the bookshelf beside the computer desk. “Nodoka-san? Nabiki-san? Are you all right?”

/\

Crouched in the tree by the corner of the house not far from the back gate, Ma-zhi supposed he should have felt pride, satisfaction as he watched Genma-san go down under a pile of his team, knives that would have been red in daylight flashing, but all he could feel was relief — the only major threat to his people was finished. But the price had been brutal, much worse than he'd expected, with over half of his strike force down — even as Genma-san had gone down, he'd managed to take several more with him. But there's more than enough left to deal with a noncombatant like Nabiki-san, he thought as he listened to the sounds of combat and the occasional murmured comment through his earpiece, and even if Nodoka-san is better trained than we expected we should be able to leave her alive — even with her training, she's no threat to Lord Kuno —

He jerked, almost falling out of the tree, as the sound of gunshots hammered him through the earpiece. Nabiki-san has a gun? ! But why didn't she use it before Genma-san — ?

“It's Kasumi! She got Thuc and Kazuki!” someone shouted into his throat mic, and Na-zhi felt his heart stop. Please, not Kasumi, he thought, mind racing. Really, with Genma-san down they didn't actually need to finish off Nabiki-san, not now. With Akane-san captured and Ukyo-san, Konatsu-san and the Amazons dead, she was completely uncovered, either she'd run, or they could come back and finish the job whenever —

The sound of violence broke out over his comlink again — extreme violence. That can't be Kasumi-san, or even Nodoka-san, not one half-trained woman with a katana, but who else is there … ? Then at the far end of the of the house from his tree, the night lit up with a frighteningly familiar reddish-blue flash as the second floor wall around the corner was blown out — the Lost Boy had joined the party.

No more. We've done the minimum needed, and the cost has been too high and is getting higher. “Strike force, Isei Fujio One. Break contact, regroup at rally point three. Interception teams, return to base.” He listened to relieved acknowledgements and the sound of breaking glass of what he assumed were windows used for escape as he twisted on his perch and leaped for the top of the Tendo compound wall.

A few minutes later on a rooftop less than a block away, Ma-zhi fought to hide his shock at the less than double handful of ninjas that were all that were left of the strike team. He'd known it was bad from what he'd listened to on his comlink, but this … ! “Were there any wounded, badly enough that they weren't able to break away?” he asked, voice toneless with his effort to keep it even.

“Noburo, perhaps,” Shinsaku, the highest-ranking member of the strike force left, replied. “Nodoka-san got him across the eyes. I told him to find a place out of the way to wait until it was over. Other than him … no — even Nodoka-san was very lethal.”

Ma-zhi's shoulders slumped for a moment, before he took a deep breath and straightened. “All right, with Genma-san's death we've accomplished the minimum necessary, let's —”

And a girl covered in white came shrieking out of the night, smashing aside the first ninjas at the edge of the roof with red-glowing broken wooden two-by-fours — Xian Pu!

“Ghost!” someone shouted just before a wildly swinging piece of wood split her head open, the ninja next to her spattered with bits and pieces of white, gray and red. The ninjas had had enough. In an instant, they were scattering in into the night even as Na-zhi, stumbling as a fleeing team member knocked him to the side, tried to shout that Xian Pu was no ghost, not with the blood running down the side of her head— and the last thing he ever saw was the red glow of a blood- and brains-stained square length of wood swinging straight at his face.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Genma, here, found himself in almost the worst possible situation for his School — pinned to one spot by the need to protect bystanders (the worst would be pinned down by the need to protect bystanders, out in the open). To be expected for a school designed by a thief, I think. Ryoga, on the other hand, was made for this kind of close quarters in your face beatdown.

And yes, I know Shampoo doesn't normally light up her weapons like that, but considering what she does with them she must be reinforcing them with ki — and after what just happened, she's really pushing her normal limits.

The title comes from a term for when a rocket's thrust cuts off, leaving it to coast the rest of the way on momentum.