Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Team Ranma ❯ Team Ranma ( Chapter 1 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Team Ranma, by Jayde




Team Ranma
by Jayde

"Chuukaisha-san."
"Joukyaku-san. I understand you wish something different than usual?"
The nervous man nodded. "Please understand, Team Amazon has always performed far beyond my expectations. But my current situation requires something slightly more...." He paused to try to find the right word, "subtle."
To his relief, his contact behind the desk laughed lightly. "I understand completely. The Amazons excel at property devaluation and brute force, but you require something else. A scalpel instead of a broadsword." He opened the laptop in front of him and struck several keys before turning it so they could both view the screen. A slowly rotating logo appeared, looking somewhat like a stylized line sketch of a dojo against the disk of the sun.
"Allow me to introduce Team Nerima." As he spoke he pressed another key, producing a group photo of several young men and women around 20 years old wearing black combat fatigues. Each of them had a two patches on their right arm, one with the dojo symbol and another that was different for each. "Like the Amazons, martial artists without equal, but these have a much wider range of skills and a correspondingly greater area of activity. Actually, hostage retrieval is one of their specialties. All of them have quite a bit of experience in rescuing kidnap victims."
Selecting the young man in the back row, Chuukaisha brought up a brief profile. "This is the team leader, Ranma." A collage of pictures loaded, centered around a full body shot of a young man with a short black pigtail and cocky grin. His individual patch was a red winged horse on a black background. The surrounding images ranged from practice kata and sparring matches to helping one of the other team members on the rifle range. "He's the first one in and the last one out. It's also entirely possible that he's the finest martial artist in the world, though that doesn't keep him from being a crack shot with any weapon he can get his hands on."
Joukyaku pointed to a small image in the corner of the screen. "Who's the redhead?" His contact selected and enlarged it with an apologetic shrug.
"I'm afraid we don't know. As you can see, she's wearing Ranma's uniform, though it's a bit large. She's showed up several times and simply replaced him without warning. The team treats her exactly the same and doesn't blink when she vanishes and he returns. None of them will say anything to us. Because of the resemblance we think she may be Ranma's sister, although no one has seen them together. We're calling her 'Ranko' for lack of anything better."
To change the subject to something more comfortable he punched up the next profile. "Ryoga, demolitions." The center picture was another black haired young man, although this one had shorter hair held back by a black and gold bandana. His patch was an umbrella over a four pointed compass rose. "I'm not sure how he does it, but I've seen the boy turn a concrete retaining wall into gravel on a moment's notice. He's half the reason we refer to this group as The Nerima Wrecking Crew."
The two men shared a laugh. Each team had a nickname given to them by one of the other teams, mostly as jokes. This was probably the only place in Tokyo where you could actually hire the Knight Sabers, Sailor Senshi, Dirty Pair, and Seven Samurai. Because of their ridiculous code names (at least, everyone thought they were code names) Team Amazon was AKA The Salon Squad. After they both finished Chuukaisha continued.
"Akane, Nabiki, and Kasumi are all together; Akane is heavy artillery, Nabiki is their intelligence expert, and Kasumi is the medic." Their patches were fairly simple. A mallet, a camera, and a red cross. "They're sisters, if you can believe it, but I've never seen anyone more different. Akane has a temper like a bottle of nitroglycerine, Nabiki could be carved out of ice, and Kasumi is the whole team's mother.
"She doesn't look strong enough to carry them, but Akane is amazing with the heavy weapons. Nabiki can find out anything about anyone; in my opinion, she's also the one who runs the finances. This group is semi-independent, so they have several sources of income besides us."
Joukyaku looked surprised. "You allow that?"
Chuukaisha grimaced. "We had no other option. Nabiki and Kasumi "negotiated" the contract, which is to say they wrote it and everyone signed. It was ugly to watch, I tell you. Nabiki would come at you like some sort of demon, and whenever you responded she turned you to Kasumi. Not even the most bloodthirsty, honorless lawyer we hired could make himself disagree when Kasumi smiled at him. Even the thought of upsetting her is like considering the desecration of a shrine."
He shook himself out of it and continued. "Like the sisters, these three seem to come as a set. Ukyou, communications and computers; Tsubasa, disguise and undercover; and Konatsu, sniper and sharpshooter." Konatsu and Tsubasa's patches made sense, a mask and throwing star respectively, but the spatula embroidered on Ukyou's arm was a little odd.
"Konatsu was raised as a kunoichi, and is excellent both with and without a gun. The undercover expert," Chuukaisha selected the image of a demure young woman in a kimono, "is a little odd."
"She looks like a nice girl."
His expression was pained. "That's the point. Tsubasa is male." He nodded at his customer's expression. "I don't know if it's continual practice at disguise or a lifestyle choice."
Joukyaku looked slightly concerned. "What other little quirks does this group have? One of the problems with Team Amazon is that distressing tendency of the weapon's expert to declare his love for the team leader at every opportunity."
"I won't deny that they all have their little idiosyncrasies," Chuukaisha admitted, "but they're still a good team." At his customer's look he continued, pulling up a horribly complicated diagram. "Both Konatsu and Tsubasa are attracted to Ukyou, who is attracted to Ranma. Ranma likes her as a friend and is attracted to Akane, but he seems to have some problems with open displays of affection. Akane is attracted to him but has the same problems. Ryoga is attracted to Akane but too terminally shy to ever admit it to her face. I'm fairly sure Nabiki runs a sideline doing blackmail, though of course there's no proof."
That took a moment to process. Actually, he was probably right- with that kind of tangle they would all be inseparable. "And Kasumi?"
"The only problem I could foresee arising there would be the discovery that she is actually a kami. As is she already too good for this world."
After another little chuckle Joukyaku nodded, satisfied. "I am sure they will prove excellent for my purposes." Opening his briefcase, he handed Chuukaisha a file folder and thick envelope. "The usual arrangements, I assume?"
"Of course. I'll see that these reach the team as soon as possible. You do understand that it will take a little time to make contact and set up a meet-"
"I'll take those."
Both men stared as the industrial paper shredder in the corner of the room waddled over, picked up the papers and money, and waddled out. After several seconds of silence Chuukaisha blinked.
"Damn. I had him pegged as the file cabinet."





---- Author's Notes ----

Joukyaku means 'good customer' or 'guest of honor' and chuukaisha is 'middleman' or 'go-between' according to my translator. I'm awful with names, and I figure you wouldn't use your real one in this sort of situation, so why not?

If anyone wants to write some sort of Ranma: Black Ops series off this, you're welcome to it. I'm not doing a sequel or series of any kind.

Jayde
arcenciel9@yahoo.com