[Ranma][Fanfic] Adulthood of a Modern Dynasty - Chapter 15: The Black Wars "Viva Las Vegas" ======================================================================= Adulthood of a Modern Dynasty Chapter 15: The Black Wars "Viva Las Vegas" Ranma 1/2 characters/situations created and copyright by Rumiko Takahashi/Shogakukan/Kitty/Fuji/Viz - Used without permission Adulthood of a Modern Dynasty series created, written, and copyright 2000-2002 by Jim Lazar An ongoing series set after the end of the Ranma 1/2 manga and anime. For maximum enjoyment of this fanfic series, please read my Childhood of Modern Dynasty series before reading Adulthood. E-mail comments and/or criticisms to: jim [at] animeprime.com Make sure to check out my Modern Dynasty website for all released AMD stories, graphics files, and other information: http://www.animeprime.com/ff/md ======================================================================= The battle in the streets of Las Vegas that occurs in this chapter might be uncomfortable for those deeply upset by the events of September 11th, 2001. Please remember that this is a work of fiction. ======================================================================= November 11, 2009 - Las Vegas, Nevada (Black Wars Day 196) The not-quite-full Moon illuminated the mountains around Las Vegas, bathing them and the city below in a silver bath of light. Viewed from afar, the Moon's reflection seemed to ripple over the surface of a desert lake. Of course, that 'reflection' was actually the sparkling lights of the now ten-mile long Las Vegas Strip. Starting at the canopy of lights that covered the historic Fremont Street the lights spread without interruption all the way to Disneyland-Las Vegas. The later was hastily built beginning in two-thousand and one to offset the loss of revenue from the destruction of Disney World and to help fund the rebuilding of the vastly expanded Florida mega-resort. In between lay the ultra-modern hotels, casinos, and entertainment centers that Las Vegas was known for: The towering twin Stratosphere towers that straddled the northern end of the Las Vegas Boulevard, Moscow's Red Square--now unique on the planet--the Great Wall of Las Vegas, the Eiffel Tower, the Luxor pyramid, a huge statue of Elvis that offered tourists a view of the city from his own eyes, and a half scale replica of the Golden Gate Bridge were just a few of the many buildings and attractions that were ablaze with light in order to entice the gamblers into the brightly-lit casinos or the families to the faux-family entertainment centers. But the light enticed something else, as well. The Blackness. A horse pulling a carriage stopped suddenly, sniffing the air. The carriage driver snapped his reins to spur his steed back into motion, but the horse recoiled. "Come on, boy," the carriage driver said, turning his head to smile at the young newlyweds in the back of the carriage. "Sorry about this, he's a bit cranky to... ni..." He trailed off when his passengers' eyes grew wide. Turning his head around, he saw his horse floating mid air. This was naturally very shocking to him because horses don't normally fly. But that shock was nothing compared to the shock of seeing the horse ripped apart a second later. As the horseflesh was thrown in every direction a wave of red blood covered the driver and the newlyweds. It also covered the formerly invisible form that had torn the horse apart. The form shuffled forward on its tentacles toward the three blood-covered people. The bride screamed and fainted into the trembling hands of her new husband. "Run!!" the driver shouted as he jumped out of the carriage and stumbled away. The groom crouched in the back with his bride, trying to kick the side door open while he gathered his bride into his arms. The long, formerly white dress she wore didn't make it any easier. Just as he got out of the carriage with his bride, he tripped and crashed to the street. A tentacle flashed towards his chest. A shot rang out. The Buyierfei shifted towards the source of the shot, causing its tentacle to spear the groom's shoulder instead of his heart. Sliding away from the fallen newlyweds, the Buyierfei shambled towards the policeman who had pricked it with a bullet. The policeman had a second to realize he had saved the newlyweds before he was gutted. The driver of a SUV driving by applied his brakes when the officer's leg landed on his windshield. Screeching to a halt, he rammed a BMW convertible with his Ford Expedition. The laws of physics dictated which vehicle remained recognizable, while the blood of the BMW's occupants joined the pool of blood already forming on the Strip's pavement. As a curious crowd started to gather to gawk at the accident, the invisible Buyierfei all around them started to feed. -A- -M- -D- Further down the Strip, happy couples, families, and bums went about their business of losing money, spending money, and begging for money. Not necessarily in that order. Without warning, a black ball of fire dropped out of the sky and incinerated the base of one of the spires of the Excalibur Castle. The joyful chattering and casual wanderings of the crowds along the streets stopped instantly and turned into hysterical screaming and panicked running. Unfortunately, some of them ran right into the spot where the spire crashed to the ground, killing them instantly. In a chain reaction, the collapsing spire smashed into one side of an elevated pedestrian walkway and caused it to be pushed across the street where it crashed into a fireboat in the pond in front of the New York New York Casino. In turn, its spray of water was redirected and soaked the people running for their lives. One of them slipped and missed being incinerated by a second black fireball. He thanked his lucky stars until he saw his girlfriend engulfed in the black fire. The screams of the pedestrians drowned out even the honking horns and screeching brakes as the large black object that had fired the chi balls passed overhead, flapping its flat wings slowly. Almost casually, it fired more chi balls at the people and buildings below, killing dozens at a time and leaving a trail of destruction in its wake before it reached its primary target at the north end of the Strip. When it did, it crashed into the west Stratosphere Tower's base, sending a huge black fireball racing up the support legs that kept the tower vertical. At least for about the next ten minutes. As people swarmed down the emergency stairs from the top of the tower, the base of the tower caved in and caused the tower to tip precariously to the side. At first, it started to fall away from the identical tower across the street from it, but the looping roller coaster that ran between the tops of the two towers pulled taut and yanked the west tower to the side. As the two towers collided, steel and glass rained down on those lucky enough to have escaped the initial blast. Within seconds, over half of the escapees were buried under tons of twisted metal, glass, and concrete. -A- -M- -D- When the jets carrying Area Fifty-Two's Zebra Battalion reached Las Vegas, dozens of columns of smoke were already rising over the dark city. The night landscape around the outskirts of the city was still ablaze with streetlights, but the Strip was devoid of the bright lights that normally made it instantly recognizable from the air. Fires and the lights of abandoned cars were the only source of illumination from the center of the Strip. The red and blue flashing lights of emergency vehicles could also be seen interspersed among the dark streets, signs of valiant attempts by the local police and firefighters to come to the aid of the Buyierfeis' latest victims. As the jets neared their insertion points for the troops on board, a pair of F-35 fighters shot ahead of them and searched the sky for unfriendlies. Considering the black skin covering the avians and the black sky over Las Vegas, there wasn't much chance of spotting the enemy or their black fireballs before they were right on top of you. And by then it was too late. Fortunately, the pilots and gunners of those F-35s had more than their eyes to rely on. "Slasher, this is Killer. Keep your PEEPS up and at its highest settings," Captain Tyler instructed from the forward cockpit of his F-35. "Roger that. Let's make the first combat for these babies one to remember." Captain Tyler grinned, even if it was hidden by his facemask and only visible in the lines around his eyes. "You know it." Along with his gunner, he kept his attention divided between his heads-up displays and a digital display at the front of his cockpit. In it, a simulated holographic globe slowly rotated around a wire-frame representation of the F-35 fighter. Along the bottom of the globe, brown outlines of the buildings and terrain below scrolled by in sync with the jet's movement. A single green indicator marked the position of the other F-35 and several blue dots trailed behind both, indicating the jets carrying Zebra Battalion. After several minutes, Captain Tyler spoke again. "Insertion One, path is clear for insertion. Drop along fifty-five-seven." "Roger that. Drop in ten." Three heartbeats later, "Killer, boogie at five o'clock low." Captain Tyler swung his jet around a hundred and five degrees and rose into the air. "Insertion One... go around, five by five," he growled as he fought the G-forces his maneuver had inflicted on him. Before he pulled off the precision movement, his display showed a red dot approaching from behind him. After the maneuver, the red dot was in front of his jet and almost forty-five degrees below him. The other fighter had pulled back and taken up a defensive posture over Captain Tyler's jet. "Slasher, do you have visual on the boogie?" "Only on the PEEPS, looks like a large avian by the outline." "Oh, crap, back me up if I miss." "I always do, Killer." "Gunner, prepare two missiles. Lock them on the PEEPS profile and the tracers," Captain Tyler said, as he made sure his display still registered the target. Since radar was useless in detecting the Buyierfei, the Precision Eye and Environment Perception System relied on a combination of detection methods. In this case, it located the Buyierfei by visually scanning the sky in half-second increments and comparing each frame to the others. The black Buyierfei form moved at a different speed in relation to the black sky and occasionally obscured the stars behind it, thus allowing the computer to pick it out of the night sky. "Missiles ready," his gunner reported. "Paint it, Slasher," Captain Tyler said even as he keyed his own systems to do the same. Both F-35s projected an ice blue laser beam from a round optical pod located on the bottom or top of their jets, depending on the avian's relative position to each aircraft. Unlike what you would expect in a sci-fi movie, the avian didn't explode into a huge fireball when the two beams hit it. Instead, the two tracer beams scanned the Buyierfei's surface and made it visible to the naked eye. Not to mention the two missiles homing in on it. It spun out of the way, but the tracking system controlling the blue lasers did their best to follow it. One missile went wide, the other hit the avian's right wing flap. The gunner triggered the missile that hit. Unfortunately, the missile had gone straight through the thinner flesh of the Buyierfei's wing and exploded below it. The black creature took damage from the explosion, but was still in one piece when it turned towards its attackers. "Swing the other missile around and..." was all Captain Tyler had time to say to his gunner before the other missile was rammed up the Buyierfei's backside. His gunner pressed down on the top of the joystick he had just used to guide the missile, triggering the warhead. 'Buyierfei Killer' had finally earned its name. -A- -M- -D- With the two F-35s keeping the unfriendly skies under close watch, Zebra Battalion was inserted onto the Las Vegas strip. Five companies to the north, four to the south. The soldiers saved hundreds and maybe thousands of civilians as they advanced slowly through the bloody streets. A trapped family here, a mall-full of shoppers there, and even a Volkswagen Beetle full of Elvis impersonators. People had sought to escape from the latest news--bad mostly--out of the devastated areas in Africa and Iran by drowning themselves in the fake happiness offered by Las Vegas. Their escape from the war was interrupted when the war came to them. The regular soldiers were doing a good job of clearing the streets of Buyierfei and were joking amongst themselves that they didn't need the fireballs used by Inferno Company to fight the demons when they hit what could only be called a wall of Buyierfei. By the time that the jet carrying the newly activated Inferno Company reached Las Vegas, a third of Zebra Battalion was no more. Even with the best training available to U.S. Army soldiers since ninety-nine and the special training given to these particular soldiers at Area Fifty-Two, the number of Buyierfei was just too great and concentrated for the soldiers to combat effectively with swords and guns. The faces of Kamajirou and the other ninety-two men and women around him wore the same non-expression as they sat lined up against both sides and the center of the jet that was carrying them to the battlefield. The jet shook and bounced under them, causing them to tighten their grip on the netting that was strung down the length of the aircraft for just that purpose. They were all dressed in tan desert camouflage uniforms and had parachutes strapped to their backs. Between the parachute and their backs, their weapons were carefully packed to be easily reachable. In addition to the pistols strapped to their legs, most of them had twin swords and a M-116 automatic rifle on their backs. In addition, each student had a personal bladed weapon based on that student's own particular skills. Most of them were developed by the U.S. Military to specifically combat the Buyierfei. This would be the first time many of them were used in actual combat. The same thing was true of most of the ninety-three students-become-soldiers. Lieutenant Burns--who was dressed in a regular officer's dress uniform--walked out of the door separating the cockpit from the rear drop compartment. "Okay, maggots, get your quarters ready for the slots... five minutes to Vegas." The soldiers tensed more, if that was even possible. "Zebra Battalion was dropped into the north and south ends of the strip. They report heavy concentrations of the enemy on the surface and from the air. We'll drop you in just south of the northern battle where there appears to be little or no enemy activity. You're to move north and join with the northern force and then move southward until the enemy is destroyed." The lieutenant paused to let his words sink in. "There can be no containment with the Buyierfei. They will fight until dead." He scanned the nervous faces of the soldiers he had watched Ranma and Ranko train over the previous months. He could see what they were thinking, mostly since he was thinking the same thing. "You're the best of the best and those black maggots will never know what hit them. Go in there with fireballs blazing, but don't forget your traditional weapons. Keep to your assigned squads and back each other up." The lieutenant scanned his charges one last time. "Check your comm equipment and then prepare to drop." The hands of the soldiers went to their padded helmets, which contained integrated earpieces and microphone pickups. Like their uniforms, the helmets were made out of a tough fabric with plates of armor woven into them. Unlike standard-issue body armor, this armor was lighter and did not seriously restrict the movements of the soldiers. That was a hard learned lesson from the African battlefields, after which the old body armor was quickly redesigned. It too, would see its first combat use within the next few moments. It didn't help matters any that the students-become-soldiers knew that all too well. -A- -M- -D- Jumping out of an airplane is a traumatic event under the best of circumstances. Jumping into a bloody battlefield filled with invisible creatures from hell is a nightmare beyond imagination. Those thoughts and more flashed through the minds of Inferno Company as they dropped towards the dark streets below. For many of them, it was their first taste of combat against any opponent, Buyierfei or Human. For others, it was their first combat parachute drop. For half of them, it was both. As Kamajirou experienced his first combat parachute drop which would lead to his first taste of real combat, he tried to remember what his instructors had told him during his three training drops. Unfortunately, his screaming drowned out his thoughts. One of the lost thoughts was 'steer with your guide handles'. It was only after he found himself snagged at the top of the Eiffel Tower that Kamajirou remembered that important bit of information. "Crap..." he muttered as he struggled with his harness. Just before he released the straps holding his parachute pack on, he finally noticed he was dangling in midair with only a long uninterrupted drop below him. He gulped and slowly slipped his fingers away from his harness release. Looking around the dark sky he dangled in, he triggered a contact woven into his left sleeve. A light mounted on the side of his helmet turned on and cast its beam into the darkness. Panning around he located the steel structure of the half-scale Eiffel Tower beside him. Unfortunately, it was well out of his reach. Above, it would be quite a climb up to where his parachute was precariously snagged. Below, it was over a hundred feet to the roof of the Paris Hotel and Casino. With these options, he naturally decided to try for the steel girders to his left. Kicking out with his legs, he started to sway in the night sky. He reached out with his hands, but repeatedly came up short as he swung back and forth like a camouflaged pendulum. "Crap..." After another failed attempt to catch hold of the steel framed tower, red flashes of light from the streets below caught his eye. "Wha...." he gasped before recognition dawned on him. Still swaying back and forth on his parachute's tethers, he keyed another contact on his sleeve. "Ops, we have fire below." "Understood, I-four-three-seven, what is your status?" a voice replied over his helmet's headset. "Um... I'm on top of the Paris Casino, I think," he replied, leaving out the exact details of his embarrassing position. "Good... lay down cover fireballs around your squad." "Um... roger that." Kamajirou looked below and saw indistinct forms in the street fighting nothing. Taking a deep breath, he started to form a red chi ball between his hands. He used his confidence in his 'focus object' just as his teachers had drilled into him and his fellow students over the past two months. The fireball flickered and started to fade, prompting him to redouble his concentration. "Natural redhead... natural redhead..." His 'focus object' turned out to be his confidence in one day finding out for sure that Ranko was a natural redhead. Anything Goes, remember? Ranko would have slugged Kamajirou if she knew what his focus object was, but she would have been proud of the chi ball he managed to form. As the chi ball stabilized into a globe about a foot in diameter, he gave it a little 'push' with his mind. As the chi ball screamed into the darkness below, Kamajirou screamed as the blast sent him swinging in the opposite direction. He swore as he was slammed into the steel girders of the faux Eiffel Tower. Even as the pain from the collision vibrated up his spine, he realized that he should have grabbed hold instead of cursing. Even as his first blast incinerated a Buyierfei below and saved one of his squad mates from being impaled, he started to form another chi ball. Trying to aim so the recoil would allow him to grab hold of the scaffolding, he released the chi ball. Swinging across the dark sky, his arms flailed for a handhold. He smiled as his fingers wrapped around metal. Then the whole structure shook when the chi ball he had fired hit the opposite support leg. Not for the first time that night, he swore as his finger slipped from the metal. As the structure tilted slightly towards the damaged support leg, he slammed into the steel girders with a grunt. Gasping for breath, he wrapped his arms through the meshwork of girders to get a good grip on it. Once the tower stopped shaking, Kamajirou looked around and made sure he was secure. Then he pulled the release on his parachute pack. Sliding down the framework slightly, he looked down. "This could take a while," he muttered as he slipped his foot carefully down to the next foothold formed between the metal girders. The tower shook and creaked. The next hundred or so steps were taken much more quickly. -A- -M- -D- "Splash one!" Captain Tyler yelled out and swung his F-35 around next to his wingman. "Status, Slasher?" "B, C, and E flights are engaged with the enemy, but D flight has lost Fragger. Reaper doesn't think he was able to eject." "Henderson..." Captain Tyler muttered. "Damn... We should form up with..." "I already offered Reaper that, but he's formed up with B flight since we're almost dry." Captain Tyler glanced at his gauges. "Crap... how did I miss that?" His gunner chuckled. "I mentioned it a couple times during the last skirmish, Captain, but I think you were a bit occupied with blasting that mother-fucker out of the sky before it hit that orphanage." Captain Tyler chucked. They had no idea what the Buyierfei were really aiming for, of course. His gunner had started using the term 'orphanage' for anything they saved from enemy fire ever since their first training mission together years earlier. It was during that mission that they accidentally destroyed a house designated as an orphanage instead of the terrorist headquarters they had supposed to take out during the live fire exercise. "Never again," was Captain Tyler's usual dry come back. "Hmmm..." Captain Tyler checked his terrain displays. "Let's hit Nellis to refuel and rearm this puppy." No one could see it under his mask, but Captain Tyler's gunner frowned. "Not back to Fifty-Two?" "That'd take to long." "Will they be able to handle the F-35s at Nellis?" Captain Tyler grinned. "Don't worry." -A- -M- -D- "Unidentified aircraft approaching Nellis restricted airspace, be aware we are on full alert and you will be shot down unless you identify yourself immediately." "Nellis this is Buyierfei Killer and Buyierfei Slasher, requesting permission to land to refuel and rearm." "Who?" "Check your operational top secret orders. Page fifty-two." "Hold on." A pause. "Code phrase, please." "Sharks are here for chum." "Decoding." A pause. "Fuck!" Captain Tyler smiled at the reaction to reading the orders contained on page fifty-two. They were so secret, that only the pilots of Area Fifty-Two's secret air force knew to refer to them at U.S. military bases. "Buyierfei Killer and Slasher are cleared to land on any runway you need. Be aware that twenty-two is clear, but fifteen left and right have planes taxiing for take off." "Twenty-two will be fine. We'll need fuel and rearming as per the specifications on page thirty-five, code phrase 'baby wants to suckle on mother's teat so it can poop again'." "Understood..." A pause. "So that's what is in those..." A few minutes later, the two F-35s screamed onto the runway with less than ten meters separating them. They wasted no time in taxiing to a nearby hanger where a team of technicians waited. With the guidance of two airmen with flashlights in their hands, the two high tech jets came to a stop. The planes hadn't even fully stopped when Captain Tyler raised his canopy and unstrapped himself. Prying his helmet off his head, he put it on top of his forward instruments and then hopped out of his cockpit. Using a foothold in the side of the jet, he made it to the tarmac at the same time as his gunner. "Take care of refueling and reloading the ammo, I've got to take a dump." His gunner nodded. Captain Tyler's bodily functions were delayed when one of the airmen approached him. "What the heck is this?" Captain Tyler smiled. "If I told you, some men in black would have to kill you, so please don't ask." The airman gulped. "Okay..." In the meantime, his gunner had opened the weapons racks on the F-35. "We'll need these missile racks reloaded with packs five and ten, plus blades from pack twenty-five in the forward and rear blade launchers." The airmen in front of him just blinked at him. "Move it, soldiers!" The senior airman found his voice. "Sorry, sir, but we don't have anything that will fit this... this... plane." The gunner smiled. "According to my pilot, you should have two large black cargo containers marked 'fifty-two'?" The senior airman's jaw dropped open. "That's what those things are for?" The gunner smiled and nodded. "I hope so, because we're needed back in Vegas." Understanding appeared on the senior airman's face. "You're why our fighters were recalled." "Some sort of secret air force?" another airman muttered. "Don't ask those kinds of questions, Airman!" the gunner barked. "Yes, Sir! Err... no, Sir!!" the airman barked and then scurried off towards the nearby hanger. The senior airman was right behind him. -A- -M- -D- "Did you have to tell them that?" his gunner asked as they screamed back into the sky. "What?" "That we were never there." "Well, we weren't, were we?" "You enjoy our secret status a bit too much, Captain." "Well, my dad was a big James Bond fan, so I kind of picked it up from him." "James who?" "Very funny, Lieutenant Bond." "That's... Lieutenant Bond, James Bond." Captain Tyler chuckled at the assumed name his gunner had chosen. -A- -M- -D- November 11, 2009 - Area 52, USA (Black Wars Day 196) Akane, Ranma, Ranko, Sanma, and Ukyo stood on a circular platform as it dropped through a seemingly endless shaft. The platform had no walls and only a three-piece railing circled the occupants to keep them at arm's length from the shaft wall that rushed by. Their descent was so smooth that the only sense of motion was from the lights embedded in the walls of the shaft as they flashed by. Occasionally, a large steal hatch that lined up with the gaps in the railings would flash by as well. "Are the kids alright?" Akane asked Ukyo. Ukyo nodded. "Yeah... they'll be okay with the others." Sanma put a comforting hand on her wife's shoulder. "They know something is wrong." Akane sighed. "It's not like they've never been in the middle of a fight, but..." Ranma slipped his hand around Akane's back, meeting Ranko's, which was already there. "Of all the places in the world they can be safe, this is it." Ranko nodded. "That's why we brought our families here, after all." "I know, but..." Akane went silent when they reached the bottom of the long shaft that they had been dropping through for what seemed like hours, even though it was only a couple of minutes in reality. All of the amazing sights they had seen since they arrived at the ultra-secret base were forgotten as they saw the circular room spread out at the bottom of the shaft. The meeting rooms where they had usually met with General Smart and his staff paled in comparison to the high tech command center they were deposited in. The circular walls were divided into six sections with large multi-part video screens completely covering the curved walls. Each section had various maps and data displays covering the six inhabited continents, Antarctica being combined with Australia. In a pit between the monitors and the raised central podium the platform had deposited them on, were six rows of computer consoles with twin flat screen monitors at each workstation. Only about half of the stations were manned. Except for the section of the room that covered North America, that is. That section was brimming with activity and easy held three times as many people as there were seats at the workstations. The map of North America that took up a quarter of the large screen and had a big red dot over Las Vegas. Various other indicators in the area around the red dot were tracking various troop movements and plane traffic in and around Las Vegas. Another map displayed a close-up of the streets of Las Vegas. This map was littered with black dots, several black triangles, green dots--which were concentrated at the north and south ends of the strip--and many small, yellow question marks. Several white triangles seemed to be crossing the map in pairs, occasionally intercepting the paths of the black triangles. The focus of most of the eyes in the room seemed to be several closely spaced red dots that were near the northern end of the strip. So transfixed by all the displays and trying to guess what they represented, Akane and the others almost jumped out of their clothes when a voice suddenly called out to them above the dozens of voices that chattered an endless stream of information between groups of people. "General Smart has been waiting for you." They all looked over and saw that a young lieutenant was standing next to them. They had seen him around the base, but didn't know his name. "Um... yes. Thanks," Akane stammered and then looked over at where the lieutenant was gesturing. She saw the general and his senior aides sitting at several computer consoles that were overlooking the pit facing the North American monitors. The consoles seemed to be on a movable platform that could be moved to face any of the sections. As they started walking toward the group of officers, Ranma asked a question. "So this must be that 'Control' those three men always were talking about?" The lieutenant chuckled. "This is just the command center for this base. It's no where near as large as Control is." Akane scanned the command center's vast expanse, unable to picture a command center that was bigger than the nearly baseball field-sized command center they currently found themselves in. At least outside of a sci-fi movie, that is. Stepping off the platform that had brought them to the command center, the group walked over to where General Smart was busily monitoring the battle and issuing orders. "How long until Army One-oh-four is inserted?" General Smart asked. "Still five hours away." The general scanned his own monitors and then looked up at the big screens. "Have Inferno Company move northward." "Yes, Sir." "General?" The general frowned and turned around. His irritated look at being interrupted was replaced by a forced smile. "Ah, Mrs. Tendo-Saotome. Please have a seat and try not to interrupt my men." He indicated a series of chairs that overlooked the busy pit below. "But..." Ranma started to speak, but the general interrupted him. "You wanted to find out what's happening in the battle so I invited you down here, but please don't interrupt me or my men." They were a little taken back by the tone of the general's voice, Akane most of all. She didn't have to wait long for the answer to her question. The answer wasn't a good one. -A- -M- -D- November 11, 2009 - Las Vegas, Nevada (Black Wars Day 196) The almost full Moon cast its light over the dark streets of Las Vegas. Anyone who looked closely enough at the Moon would have recognized that the features on the surface were not exactly where they were supposed to be. Not only were some features shifted to the wrong side of the Moon, other craters and crevasses that had only been seen directly by eighteen pairs of Human eyes before in the entire history of the Human race could now be seen by anyone who cared to look up from the surface of the Earth at its formerly unchangeable face. But no one in Las Vegas had the time or inclination to look up at the Moon that particular night. They were fighting for their lives. Kamajirou crashed onto the debris-strewn concrete in front of the Paris Casino and Hotel. Taking a deep breath, he looked back at the swaying Eiffel Tower he had just descended. "I-four-three-seven is on the ground. Orders?" he inquired into his helmet's microphone pickup. He hoped no one asked why it took so long to descend, since he had only told his operator that he had been on the roof, not stuck on the Eiffel Tower. "Move north, circling across the street and provide rear suppression fire for the rest of Inferno Company until you form up with them." "Understood," Kamajirou said as he leapt onto Las Vegas Boulevard and scanned the area for friend or foe. He saw two of his fellow students right away. He grimaced and continued forward, not wanting to linger on the grotesque corpses of his friends. Of foes, he only saw scattered spots of black dust drifting in the gentle breeze that wafted down the deserted street. he thought, looking around for signs of life. Seeing none as he cautiously advanced. "I-four-three-seven here, what is the strength of Inferno Company?" An uneasy silence greeted his request. "Ops?" "Thirty-five confirmed casualties," an emotionless voice reported back. Kamajirou thought as he caught his first sign of life. That sign was a red ball of fire racing into the sky. he thought as he redoubled his pace down the street. Seeing movement ahead, he charged up a chi ball and leapt over a burning car. He landed and released the chi ball at a black form that was strangling a young soldier in a tan uniform. The Buyierfei shuddered as the chi ball tore a chunk out of his hide. Shifting slightly, it seemed to stare at Kamajirou with its eyeless body. Eyes or not, the gaze sent shivers up and down Kamajirou's spine. "Uppercut and push backwards!!" he screamed as he leapt straight up into the air and charged up a chi ball in one of his hands. As he came down on the Buyierfei with the chi ball thrust downwards, the soldier entangled in the Buyierfei's tentacles gave the creature a swift upper cut with both fists and then pushed away from the leathery skin. Kamajirou's chi ball was rammed right down through the Buyierfei's central mass with a sickening squelching sound. That was nothing compared to the mind numbing screech and scream when the chi ball exploded. The screech came from the dying Buyierfei. The scream came from Kamajirou. "Hot... hot... hot..." he yelped as he hopped around trying to soothe his burnt hand. "Let me take a look at that," the other solider said, digging in her med kit for some burn pads. That was when Kamajirou recognized who he had just saved. "Wow, never expected to have to save the best student in class." Li-Wen smiled weakly as she applied the self-adhesive pads to the worst wounds on his hand. "Thank you, but you should have released the chi ball downward when you contacted its skin to avoid burning your hand. You know... just like the teachers said." Kamajirou nodded and scanned the area. Further north, he could see a mix of burning fires and occasional red chi blasts. "We'd best move northward." "Yeah... I was covering the others' backs while they worked their way north." Li-Wen nodded and started northward with Kamajirou. "You still have a pistol?" Kamajirou nodded. "Better fire off a locator round so we don't walk into any invisible Buyierfei." Kamajirou pulled out his pistol, checked that it was loaded with the correct ammo, and pointed it in front of them. Just as he squeezed the trigger, he realized that this was why Li-Wen got caught: she had lost her pistol and ran into an unseen opponent. That thought vanished when about a dozen back spots in five or six clumps appeared from the small locator pellets that had sprayed out from the barrel of his gun. "Oh... fu..." His curse was interrupted when Li-Wen jumped into the air. "Two or three apiece, not a problem." His own courage buoyed by hers, Kamajirou leapt into the air right behind her and recited one of their teacher's 'lessons'. "Whatever you can see, you can kill." Li-Wen proved that seconds later when a barrage of chi balls blew apart one of their attackers and injured two more. The single chi ball thrown by Kamajirou sliced two tentacles off one Buyierfei before blowing apart another, but was not anywhere near as spectacular as Li-Wen's barrage. -A- -M- -D- November 12, 2009 - Area 52, USA (Black Wars Day 197) Over the course of the endless night they spent in the command center, Akane and the others looked on horrified as the soldiers calmly tallied causalities and victories in the ongoing battle. In a sense, it was probably for the best that they couldn't fully understand most of what was being said and displayed on the monitors or they'd have been even more horrified. "Current strength of the enemy?" General Smart asked. "From the visual sightings and using standard ratios from the African battles, an estimated five to ten thousand." Akane gulped. "Air strength?" "Thirty-eight confirmed killed by our F-35s, mostly large avians. Three in active combat with our planes." Having brought down a number of large avians during her time in Africa, Sanma was suitably impressed with that number of large avians being brought down over Las Vegas. "Nellis lost seventeen pilots and twenty planes before they were ordered out of the combat area. We've lost two planes, three aircrew." Sanma's gut tightened. "Current strength of Zebra Battalion? "Down to two hundred and sixty." "About thirty percent left then," the general muttered, but not softly enough not to be overheard. Ukyo clutched her chest. "Inferno Company?" The guts of all five visitors tightened. "Forty-five percent strength, but we haven't been able to confirm all potential losses yet." The three Ranmas stood up all at once. "Half... half of our students are dead?!" Ranma growled. The general looked calmly over at Ranma and the others. "Those numbers are unconfirmed." "Who cares!!" Ranko shouted. "Losing half of them in one night is proof that they weren't ready and that you should have sent us and the Amazons in!" Ranma insisted, his body trembling slightly. "The losses are unfortunate, but considering the strength of the enemy, understandable." "Not to us!!" Sanma insisted. "If you'd let us go, we could have saved some of them," Ranma growled. "Possibly, but you can't be everywhere and your students will have to fight by themselves eventually." Ranma was resisting the urge to ream the general a new one with a precisely placed chi ball. "Maybe, but it sounds like you just wasted three months of training on half of our students." "Only ninety-three of your students were activated. You can continue training the rest when they recover from their previous training." "So you can get them killed?" Ranma stood up and flames flickered around his body. "Not likely!!" Following Ranma's lead, Ranko and Sanma stood up. Akane and Ukyo knew something bad was about to happen, but they didn't care. It was very infrequent event, but they both agreed completely with the rage they could see building within their husbands. "I was just following orders to use them as needed," the general said softly. "That is something you will have to get used to when you are working with the military." It wasn't the best thing to say under the circumstances. Three auras sparked fully into life, flickering at the rage they felt at being used by the general and the pain of knowing that about fifty of their students were gone forever. "We're going to Las Vegas," Ranma stated forcefully. The general didn't look at them. "No, you are not. This is a military matter." "Try to stop us." "Lieutenant Hill!" "Yes, Sir!" a lieutenant next to the general snapped to his feet. "Escort them back to their rooms and make sure they stay there." "Yes, Sir!" "Try it..." The general glanced at the lieutenant, but that was enough to signal his intentions to the other officer. "Please come this way." Ranma and the others' eyes were locked onto the handgun that appeared in the lieutenant's hand. Each of them was calculating how to disarm the soldier, but each of them was also counting the other soldiers in the large control room. Against the Buyierfei they wouldn't have hesitated, but they weren't likely to attack other humans with the intensity that would be required to incapacitate the number of targets they would face if they attacked the soldiers. In other words, they weren't ready to kill at least half of the three hundred-some soldiers that were present. "General..." Akane finally broke the silence. "You made a mistake in not sending Ranma and Ranko in with the Amazons... or at least with their students. Don't make an even bigger mistake by threatening me or my family." "You were the first ones to take up an attack stance," the general still didn't look at them. "I know what you are capable of even without physical weapons, we are just defending ourselves and our base." Akane knew he was playing the same mind games that he was always playing. She just wished she had noticed his darker side before she brought her family to the secret base. "Let's go." She turned to leave. "We came here to help, General, too bad you're too pigheaded to accept it." The general didn't respond as the five of them stomped over to the lift platform. -A- -M- -D- Later, the adults from Nerima and the Amazon leaders were all sitting on the beach in a rough circle. Even in the dead of night, the artificial beach looked like a beautiful sunlit paradise. That beauty was lost on those gathered there. They had other things on their minds. Very important things. "This is a risky plan," Akane said, then remembered who she was speaking to. "Even for you, Ranma." "I know." "We can't be sure how they'll react." "I know." "All of our families are here." "I know." "Will half of the Amazons be enough?" "I don't know..." Ranma said, as his record stopped skipping. "But it's important that you and the children are protected in case that ass... the general snaps and does something crazy." "Crazier than sending our wet-behind-the-ears students to fight before they're ready?" Ranko interjected. "I think he's capable of doing anything if it suits his military view of the world. "He didn't seem the type," Ukyo said softly. Akane sighed. "I'm sorry that I didn't see this coming when I invited you all here." Ranma put his arm around Akane. "None of us did. We got spooked by that monolith on the Moon hanging over our heads." Trying to get back to the urgent matter at hand, Ranma looked at his team. "Are we going?" The Amazon leaders all nodded right away. Ranko nodded. Sanma and Ukyo exchanged a glance and then nodded. Both of them. "Ukyo, the kids..." Sanma gasped, never intending for them both to go. Ukyo smiled back at her husband. "Someone has to watch their father's back." "But will you be alright fighting them after what happened in ninety-nine?" "I can't say I didn't think of that when I fought the Buyierfei after they attacked the Compound, but I fought for my family. That's what I'll be doing this time too." "But..." Ukyo smiled and kissed her husband gently on her lips. "I appreciate you worrying about me, but I'm going with you." Sanma couldn't argue with his wife's kisses. All eyes fell onto the last remaining holdout. Mousse looked at his wife. Nabiki nodded reluctantly. "If I thought I could stop you, I would." She leaned over and hugged her husband. "You come back to me and our three kids, okay?" Mousse gulped and cleaned his glasses. "Um... three? Did I not see one of them?" Nabiki smiled. "We'll start on the third when you get back, okay?" She winked. Talk about incentive. Ranma smiled as his plan came together. "I hope this works." Akane's face fell into a scowl. "Hope?! You said it would!" Ranma gulped. -A- -M- -D- Several groups of heavily outfitted figures crept through the dark spots that littered Area Fifty-Two's enormous hanger, occasionally pausing when a soldier or flight crew would walk by. The voices and sounds of the military personnel going about their business echoed across the chamber and hid the faint sounds of the intruders as they slunk between the shadows. Hairwax, who scanned the hangar carefully before making her way to each shadowy 'safe zone', led the group in front. As she began towards the next one, she suddenly froze and gestured behind her. With the exception of the last Amazon, her group froze in place. The last Amazon in the group repeated the gesture to the next group behind them before freezing herself. Except for Ranma's grunt when he walked into the suddenly motionless Amazon in front of him, the shadowy groups became completely silent and motionless as a group of pilots walked across their path. Their silence went unnoticed in the cacophony of sounds that drifted across the hanger. After many close calls and near misses, they eventually made their way to their destination by way of a route that actually crossed paths twice. Once by accident and once to avoid a couple dozen soldiers rushing towards the first helicopter they had been heading towards. Ranma poked his head into the troop helicopter and smiled. "It's clear..." he whispered as he climbed in. Several Amazon's flooded in before they all froze and waited for several heavily armed MPs to march past the front of the twin rotor helicopter. After the soldiers had moved away, Mousse appeared at the hatch. "Not this one," he hissed quietly. "Why?" Ranma replied. "It's not fueled and prepped for flight." "Oh..." Ranma looked out the open hatch and the out the window on the opposite hatch. "Then which one?" "The one two rows in front of us..." Mousse gestured to the front of the helicopter. "I just saw them servicing it." Ranma nodded and then tackled Mousse. Mousse struggled until the beam of a flashlight danced over his head. Neither of them nor the Amazons giving the walls a lap dance breathed until the MPs moved on again. "You think they're looking for us?" Mousse whispered. "Not if our wives are convincing enough." -A- -M- -D- In several bedrooms buried deep within the mountain, Akane and her sisters put on performance guaranteed to make it clear to anyone listening that everyone was where they were intended to be. "Oh... Ranma!!" "Oh... Mousse!!" "Oh... Sanma!!!" For some reason, Kasumi's impersonation of Ukyo making love to Sanma was the most convincing. Not to mention the most listened to. -A- -M- -D- Mousse poked his head into the helicopter's cockpit and frowned. "Uh... oh..." Ranma craned his neck to look past Mousse. "What's the problem?" "It doesn't look anything like the cockpit of the F-35 I've been training in." "Does that matter?" Mousse shrugged his shoulders as he settled into the pilot's seat. "I'm not sure..." He squinted his eyes through his thick glasses. "What the heck is that?" Ranma gulped nervously. -A- -M- -D- When the dual rotor HTR-2000 troop transport helicopter slid out of the row of similar helicopters with only the hum of the electric motors driving the wheels making any sound, only the closest technicians to it took any notice. Most of them simply stepped out of the way of the slowly moving aircraft. One checked his palm organizer for the list of flights scheduled. When the helicopter took a shaky turn away from the main gate and then just as quickly veered back towards the open gate, other nearby soldiers took more notice. The technician frowned when his organizer showed that it was still an hour before the pilots of this helicopter were supposed to report for their support flight. He checked for updated orders. When the helicopter suddenly headed for the edge of the platform it was on--and thus a long drop into the depths of the multi-level hanger--several soldiers started to wave frantically to get the attention of the pilot while the whole hanger came alive with frenzied activity. The technician swore loudly over the cries of the others after he found out that the pilots were still up in the blue briefing room. The urgent warnings and orderly emergency procedures dissolved into chaos when the helicopter's twin jet engines roared into life and kept it from plunging to its destruction. With the rotating blades still not moving, the thrust of the jet engines was barely enough to cross the gap between the platform they were on and the platform in front of the main gate. Several long safety railings flew everywhere as the helicopter tore them from the edge of the platforms. When the helicopter finally made its exit from the chamber, several squads of soldiers were chasing after it with their M-116s--a high-tech, anti-Buyierfei automatic rifle with front and rear barrels, plus retractable front and rear bayonets--held ready. None of those advanced features were going to help them stop a helicopter, not even the assortment of anti-Buyierfei ammunition that the weapon could fire. So once they realized this, they reappeared and jumped into several Humvees parked in a motor pool near the gate. As they sped off in pursuit of the helicopter, other personnel were running all over trying to find out what had happened. Needless to say, this is not the normal way a helicopter left the secret base. -A- -M- -D- "Hurry..." Ranma muttered as the external gate started to close as they approached it. Mousse gritted his teeth, hoping he was going as fast as he thought the helicopter could go on the ground. Thought, because his quick examination of the helicopter's flight manual hadn't been that useful. First, it had been written for experienced military helicopter pilots. And second, it was written in English with very technical words used throughout. Since Mousse's English was mostly used to help his wife on business trips, he had never learned what a 'rotor engagement servo' or an 'afterburner boost' was. The former would soon be required, the later was desperately needed already. "We're going to crash!!" Ranma shouted. Mousse glared at Ranma, wishing he had a co-pilot that could actually help him fly the helicopter. "Shut up... I can't figure out the controls..." "Then just push one of them!!" "This is a high tech piece of military hardware, I can't just guess how to fly it!!" "If you don't, we'll die!!" Mousse opened his mouth to argue, but saw the gap of the main gate closing in on them. "Anything Goes Piloting..." he muttered as he closed his eyes and turned a big lever that looked important. As the helicopter's main rotors whined to life, Mousse smiled. "Ah, that must be that rotor engagement servo thing..." His smile quickly vanished when the helicopter started to slow down from the drag caused by the downward push of air from the rotors. He started to push other buttons and flip other switches in desperation. In addition to turning on the flood lamps, turning on the radio--on which a very angry man was insisting they stop and surrender the helicopter they were on--and turning on a infrared terrain map, his frantic search for something that would save them succeeded when he hit the aforementioned afterburner boost button on his flight stick. Ranma and Mousse were pushed back into their seats as the helicopter shot forward faster than it was designed to do while still on the ground. This caused seven of the sixteen tires to blow. Unfortunately, four of them were all on one landing gear. The helicopter lurched and sprayed a stream of sparks behind it as it slipped through the narrowing main gate with inches to spare. At least the main fuselage did. The narrowing gap scraped along the bottom of the long tail before clipping the tail rotor. The flight stick vibrated in Mousse's hand. "Uh... oh..." he gasped as all sort of warning buzzers started to go off and almost half of his flight system indicators lit up in red. Ranma opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, but it was snapped shut when Mousse yanked his flight stick backwards. "Grrrr..." Mousse growled as he fought to control the suddenly airborne helicopter. He had hoped that once he got the unfamiliar aircraft off the ground his natural flying instincts would take over. Unfortunately, at that moment his instincts were telling him that he was going to die. He decided to ignore his instincts and thought back to all his flight training with Captain Tyler. he thought as he toggled a large number of switches. The intense shaking of the helicopter stopped and it started to respond to his gentle nudges of the control stick. "I think we're going to..." After toggling his latest switch, the helicopter suddenly took a nosedive towards the desert below them. Quickly toggling the last switch back into its former position. "Rule one... don't touch that switch." Ranma agreed with that rule from where he sat with his fingers dug deeply into his seat's armrests. -A- -M- -D- In Area Fifty-Two's command center, several displays showed the hanger, the exit tunnel, and a shot of the helicopter making its way awkwardly into the pre-dawn sky. "Sorry, Sirs, they got out of the gate before it could close," a lieutenant called from the pit in front of General Smart and his senior officers. A major with a pointed nose and narrow eyes slammed his fits onto the console in front of him. "Dammit... scramble H flight and two Navaho attack copters to bring them back." As the personnel in the pit began to contact the parties necessary to carry out that order, General Smart studied the displays silently. "H flight is ready to launch..." "Recall them and the Navahos." Most of the eyes in the large command center turned to look at the general. "General?" the operations manager asked from the pit. "You heard me... recall them." "Yes, sir!!" The operations manager turned towards her staff and started issuing orders. The major at the general's side leaned over and spoke softly. "General, we have our orders..." "We were under orders to keep them from leaving the base... not to pursue them," the general said calmly without looking at the major. The major's eyes widened. "The General won't like that. You know that..." General Smart clasped his hands and rested his chin on them. "We have no orders to pursue civilians beyond the extent of this base, do we?" "No, but..." "And a firefight over the desert would risk revealing the base." "Yes, but..." General Smart finally looked at the major. "Remember who the enemy is, Major!" "Yes, Sir!" "Good," the general said, then turned back to study the myriad of displays tracking the battle in Las Vegas. With all the data scrolling past his eyes, his attention was focused on a red triangle heading north from the icon that indicated Area Fifty-Two. "I'll just log the main gates into the repair log." One of the general's eyebrows raised. "Huh?" "Well, a breakdown would be the only reason the main gates weren't closed in time, right?" the major asked, trying not to sound like he was accusing the general of anything. The general continued looking forward. "Right." His expression only changed when the red triangle continued heading north. -A- -M- -D- "How long to Las Vegas?" Ranma asked as the helicopter bobbed up and down over the desert below. Mousse didn't like how close that desert was to them. "Climb... dammit." "Mousse?" "I have no idea!" Mousse snapped as he fought his controls. "Why won't you climb!" "No idea?" "I don't know where we are, okay?!" Ranma's jaw dropped open. "You... you don't know where we are? After all that time training in the air?" "I only had local maps to refer to... all carefully made to avoid references to the area outside the test range." "Crap..." Ranma peered out through the glass canopy where he could see the sun rising over the dark desert. "So why are we headed north?" "Because whenever I got lost as a duck, I always had better luck flying north to get my bearings." "And that worked?" "Most of the time..." -A- -M- -D- November 12, 2009 - Las Vegas, Nevada (Black Wars Day 197) The sun hung over the mountains to the east of Las Vegas, spreading its golden rays across the streets that were now silent. Gone were the sounds of battle that had been heard by those fortunate to have survived the previous night. Silent, but not without signs of the battle. Abandoned cars, collapsed buildings, fallen streetlights and power lines, fallen facades from the casinos, uprooted palm trees, and other assorted debris. Although emergency teams were in the outskirts of Las Vegas to evacuate those fleeing from the battle and to treat the wounded--both civilian and military--that made it out of the battle zone, none dared go into the heart of Las Vegas after the initial calls for help had stopped and the armed soldiers from Area Fifty-Two had descended on the Buyierfei-infested Strip. Noticeably absent were large numbers of bodies. Human or Buyierfei. The black dust that littered the area and occasionally wafted down the deserted streets accounted for the later. The lack of the former had a much darker explanation. -A- -M- -D- In addition to Mousse and Ranma in the two flight seats, Ranko, Sanma, Ukyo, and Hairwax looked out through the helicopter's canopy at the silent cityscape visible in front of them. Columns of smoke billowed into the air from the myriad of fires burning throughout the city. "From the pictures that I've seen of it, I think that's Las Vegas," Ranma commented. "Or what's left of it," Hairwax noted stoically. "See, I told you flying north would work," Mousse said as he maneuvered the helicopter with a steady hand honed by almost three hours of flight time. Ranma stifled a laugh. "It only worked because we ran into a highway and followed all the billboards." "Which led us south," Sanma added. Mousse sunk slightly into his seat, looking a bit embarrassed. "So where are the Buyierfei?" Sanma asked, craning her neck to try and spot any sign of the enemy. Ranma looked ahead of them again. "I don't..." His eye's shot open. "Avian!" He pointed up and towards his side of the helicopter. Mousse looked at where Ranma pointed and swore. "We'd better get on the ground fast." He nudged his stick downwards. Ranma turned back towards the others. "Go and get strapped in, this could get..." "Incoming!!" Sanma shouted and pointed at a black chi ball that was heading right for them. Mousse pulled his stick to the left and avoided the chi ball, but also sent those standing in the hatch to the cockpit crashing to the side. Ranma began undoing his harness. "Mousse, get up higher into the sky so we can blast that thing." He looked back at Ranko. "Ready to hang out the doors again?" Ranko slid out from under Ukyo. "Oh... swell..." "No can do... we'd never get up high enough to take on that thing with the damage to the rear rotor." Mousse swung the helicopter around to avoid another blast from the avian, which was getting closer every second. "Dammit..." Ranma spat as he settled back into his seat, still looking up at the avian above. "There's no way we can blast it from down here with those stupid rotors in the way." "Look for someplace that's clear of debris so I can land us," Mousse instructed as he steered his aircraft close to the buildings below, hoping to put something between them and the avian. Unfortunately, the avian was staying up high where it could easily hit them no matter where they went in Las Vegas. Ranma pointed ahead. "There... near the half collapsed Eiffel Tower..." Mousse nodded. "Looks a lot worse than it did after Kenage pulled that girder out of the real one." Ranma nodded and then slammed his head on the controls when the helicopter shuddered and nosedived towards the street below. "Wha..." "We've been hit!!" Mousse shouted as he fought to keep them from slamming into the street. Several bruised and battered passengers later, he managed to pull the helicopter out of its death spiral and leveled it off. That's when he saw the avian flying straight at them with less than a hundred meters separating them. "We're dead..." Fifty meters before impact, the avian suddenly veered slightly. A half second later, a sleek jet raced directly between the helicopter and the avian. To avoid colliding with either of them, the jet pulled straight up into the air. The sudden maneuver caused the avian to veer downwards and flounder in mid air as it got caught in the jet's wake, while Mousse pulled up and to the right to avoid colliding with either flying object or the wake from the F-35; the later of which he had grown very familiar with as he practiced close formation drills with Justin and the other pilots of Area 52. The collision was avoided, but when a small air-mine was dropped from the jet and blew the avian apart, Mousse ended up flying straight through the resulting explosion. Mousse growled as he fought with his controls to steady the wildly oscillating aircraft. Already crippled from their escape from Area Fifty-Two, the explosion left Mousse with almost no vertical control. "Thanks, Justin, but that cut it a bit close for the swoop and poop." "Huh?" Ranma asked. Mousse smiled slightly. "Just thanking a friend..." The helicopter shook as a stabilizer fin cracked and fell from the tall. That is never a good thing when you're a couple hundred feet in the air. "Hold on... we're going down!!" Those in the back of the cockpit grabbed onto anything and everything as the helicopter started to spiral out of control. Considering they were already well packed into the tight quarters, they didn't have to reach far for the nearest person or object. Dodging a pedestrian overpass, Mousse did his best to get the helicopter onto the pavement of Las Vegas Boulevard before it decided to crash into any of the hotels covering both sides of the street, which was way too narrow for Mousse's taste. The damaged landing gear scrapped the pavement once before the tail slammed to the ground, sending the helicopter springing right towards a pyramid shaped hotel. Seconds later the helicopter slammed into the large glass windows leading to the hotel's lobby. Glass, shards of metal, and large sections of the helicopter's rotors flew everywhere as the helicopter tipped onto its side and slid into the Nile River. Or at least a concrete lined facsimile of the Nile. The now rotor-less engines at the top of the helicopter slowly whined down as the fuel feeding them disappeared down the aforementioned Nile. Inside the cockpit, Ranma looked around from where he dangled from his straps. "Mousse!! Are you..." A quack reassured him that Mousse had survived the crash. Looking away from the white duck floating in the pool of water filling the bottom of the helicopter, Ranma found Sanma between Ukyo's legs. "Now's not the time for that, you two." Sanma rubbed her head as she rose from where she had landed after the crash. "Very funny..." Helping her wife to her feet, she looked around. "Ranko, Hairwax?" "We're back here!" Ranko called from outside the open cockpit hatch. Quickly making sure everyone was okay--although some of the Amazons wouldn't be fighting due to an assortment of broken bones and other injuries--they climbed out of the helicopter and found themselves on the inside of the atrium formed inside the angled walls of the Luxor Hotel and Casino. "Welcome to Las Vegas..." Ranma muttered. *********************************************************************** >From the personal journal of James Davidson August 28, 2058 "So that's what he meant!" I exclaimed. Sanma flinched at my sudden outburst. "Huh?" I smiled at Sanma. "The old manager at the Luxor... he kept saying 'not again' over and over again after Hanaki and I crashed into that same hotel on our honeymoon." Sanma chuckled and transferred little Red to her other arm. My son gurgled contently in the old martial artist's motherly arms. "Ah... yes... I laughed when I heard that you crashed into the same hotel. Although Akane wasn't that happy about it when she had to sign the reimbursement vouchers." I gulped. "I hope it wasn't too expensive." Sanma smiled. "Don't worry about it... that sort of thing comes out of the Task Force's property damage allotment." "Quite substantial, is it?" This caused Sanma to laugh deeply. "Nabiki always said that it was larger than the Gross National Product of several small countries combined." Considering the amount of property damage I've seen first hand during my short association with this family, I can believe it. "So who ended up paying for the damage back in oh-nine?" "There really wasn't any time to worry about such things back then. We had a war to fight... as soon as we could find the enemy, that is." Remembering that I had been discussing the Las Vegas attack with Sanma, I slipped back into reporter mode. "Why were the streets deserted when you got there? I didn't think the Buyierfei had to sleep or rest?" Sanma shook his head. "They don't, but they did have a specific purpose in attacking Las Vegas at that particular moment in time." "Which was?" "To feed..." *********************************************************************** November 12, 2009 - Las Vegas, Nevada (Black Wars Day 197) Mousse rested in Ranma's arms as they and the others climbed out of the wreckage of the helicopter. Looking for signs of the enemy, Ranma almost blasted the first thing that moved. "Ddd... don't kill us... we're human!!" a trembling voice cried out in English. Ranma peered into the dust that was still settling around the crash site. "Who are you?" Several people dressed in torn and dirty clothes walked cautiously up to Ranma. "We're just tourists," a woman in a skintight dress that had seen better times said. "Why are you still here?" Ranma asked, as more people appeared. "Some people tried to flee, but they didn't make it far," an older man said, shuddering at the memories of his daughter and son-in-law making a break for it. He shuddered again. "The owners aren't going to like that hole..." the hotel's young assistant manager muttered as he surveyed the damage done by the helicopter's arrival in Egypt. Ranma smiled. "Since we're all alive, I think the pilot did a great job, thank you." The duck in Ranma's arm quacked his appreciation. "So are you here to save us?" a little girl about Daiji's age asked, looking up at Ranma with her way too cute eyes. Unfortunately, those eyes were perched upon a sad and dirty face. Ranma's heart wanted to jump out of his chest and go to the little girl. "Not exactly... but we will do what we can." He knelt down and straightened the girl's messed up hair. "Can I play with the duckie?" the girl said as her eyes locked onto Mousse. "Err... um...." Mousse quacked. Ranma looked at Mousse. "You sure?" The duck quacked again and nodded. Ranma put Mousse down and the smiled. "Okay, but only for a little bit." "Yaaaayyyy!!" the girl screeched as she pulled the duck into a bear hug. Mousse suddenly had second thoughts about playing with the girl. Ranma stood up and looked around for someone in charge. "What's the situation here?" The civilians parted and a young man in a green sergeant's uniform rushed forward. "Sir!" he barked after seeing Ranma's flight suit. "After the northern line collapsed, we fell back in light of an enormous number of enemies. Last we heard from Fifty-Two was that the southern force was completely gone and the Buyierfei were rapidly moving northward. We found a large number of civilians trapped in this hotel and decided to make a stand here." Ranma asked a question that he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to. "How... how many of Inferno Company are left?" "The last estimate we heard was twenty to twenty-five, but that was over three hours ago before we lost contact with Fifty-Two." It was at that moment that Ranma realized that the soldiers hadn't been warned about their escape from the secret base. Which meant that none of the long list of excuses and denials he had thought up during the flight to Las Vegas would be needed. "Okay, we've got some wounded who'll have to stay here when we go out to take care of the enemy." "Sir, we've lost most of Zebra Battalion and even Inferno Company couldn't do much..." "Why do you keep calling me sir?" Ranma asked. "I'm afraid I can't see your exact rank under your flight suit, Sir." That was when Ranma realized why the enlisted man was deferring him to. "Ah... well that's okay," he said, suddenly very conscious of his thick Japanese accent. Glancing down at the name on the flight suit he had 'borrowed', he looked back at the sergeant. The nametag included non-descript '52' in a slightly lighter shade of green. It blended so well with the rest of the nametag, that you might not notice it unless you were looking for it. "I'm Captain Davis. Help us with our wounded and we'll start searching for the enemy." "Yes, Captain." The sergeant stepped forward. "But I really don't see what a few more squads will be able to do that a full battalion and Inf... ern..." He finally saw who was climbing out of the helicopter. "Oh!!" Although some may say it was the Amazon's ample breasts that ignited the sergeant's spirit and gave him hope for the future, but after a seemingly endless night of seeing his men torn apart one after the other by the Buyierfei, it was the warriors he knew the Amazons to be that gave him hope for the first time since his squad was dropped into Las Vegas with the rest of Zebra Battalion. -A- -M- -D- They spent over an hour treating the major and minor wounds caused by the crash, getting additional information from the soldiers who had been in Las Vegas since the night before, and getting some hot water for Mousse so he could be more than a child's pet. Then, 'Captain' Ranma led his large group of warriors toward the gaping hole in the front of the hotel. Trying to keep up the idea that they were authorized to be there, Ranma had started calling his group Duck Company whenever the regular soldiers were within earshot. He had to explain their 'mascot' too, hence the name. 'Duck Company' consisted of himself, Ranko, Mousse, Sanma, Ukyo and the non-injured Amazons. Nine of the Amazons stayed behind because they were wounded, but half of them were still mobile enough to help guard the civilians and two dozen soldiers who had taken refuge in the once luxurious atrium formed by the pyramid walls. "So where do we look first for the Buyierfei?" Ukyo asked as she shielded her eyes from the bright sun outside. "North," Ranma said without hesitation. "Why north?" Sanma smiled slightly. "Because that's where his students were inserted." "Aren't they your students too?" Ukyo asked her husband, who--along with Soun--had been helping Ranma and Ranko train the thousand plus students over the previous few months. Sanma shook her head. "They were always Ranma and Ranko's students... I never really caught the teaching bug like they did." Ranma cleared his throat. "We're just going north since there may be more survivors from the northern force. The soldiers here said the southern force was completely wiped out." "Right..." Sanma said knowingly. "Just stop the chattering and get ready to fight, you never know when you're going to walk int... oooof!" Ranma suddenly bounced backwards and ended up on his butt. He looked up to see the Buyierfei he had just walked into already fading from view. A chi ball from Sanma made it permanently visible as it exploded and showered the fighters in front with black blood and guts. "Crap, they must have been attracted by the helicopter crash!" Ranko shouted as she leapt into the air and laid down a wide spread of medium powered chi balls. Her barrage was enough to locate and cripple several dozen Buyierfei. The others leapt into the battle as well, with weapons and chi balls blazing a trail of death through the attacking horde of Buyierfei. -A- -M- -D- Later, Duck Company passed by the leaning Tower of Eiffel on the lookout for the enemy. Ranma would deny it, but their movements were very military-like as they swept the area in front of them with darts, arrows, and chi balls in order to reveal any invisible Buyierfei that approached them. They had only encountered small groups of the enemy since destroying the few hundred that had attacked them in front of the Luxor, which had left another Amazon wounded back at the pyramid-shaped hotel. Pressing forward, Ranma led his company of renegade warriors through the debris-strewn street, past burned out and torn apart cars, over toppled palm trees, and around collapsed facades from the hotels that once lined the Las Vegas Strip with their false promises of riches and happiness. Some of the former customers of those casinos now lay on the streets in crumpled masses of flesh and bone. Many of them had seen corpses in the same condition during their time in Africa. The Buyierfei weren't content to just kill their victims, they pulled the internal organs into themselves in some sort of feeding frenzy. Ranma and the others tried not dwell on the barely recognizable mounds of flesh, even as they silently wondered why there were so few bodies compared to the large numbers of civilian casualties reported back in Area Fifty-Two's command center. It wasn't long before they came upon the remains of soldiers, only their scraps of uniforms differentiated them from the civilian casualties. The green or tan color revealed which soldiers were part of Zebra Battalion and which were part of Inferno Company. Ranko added to her mental list of students she had lost forever and then added her response. It was all that she could promise her former students. A chi ball explosion shook Ranko out of her grim tallying and into combat mode. Truth be told, there wasn't much difference in her mental state, she just stopped thinking about killing Buyierfei in retribution for the death of her students and started killing the Buyierfei made visible from the glancing blow of the chi ball. Only when they had reduced the Buyierfei to three-dozen piles of black dust did anyone ask who fired the chi ball. "I thought it was Ranko?" Ukyo mentioned. Ranko shook her head and looked to her right. "No, it came from beside me." "Welcome to Hell, Sensei." Ranma and Ranko turned towards the familiar voice. They both recognized the lanky teenager standing in the crumbling doors of the Moscow Red Square Casino and Hotel, despite the dirt and grime on his face. They recognized the sights of Red Square as well, but--like their trip to Moscow in May--they didn't have time to sightsee. "Kamajirou?" Ranma and Ranko both gasped. Kamajirou nodded and then gestured for his former teachers to come to him. "Come inside before another batch shows up, they do sweeps every fifteen minutes." Ranma thought back to the waves of Buyierfei they had battled since moving north from the Luxor. Then he spoke aloud. "But why..." "To feed..." Kamajirou said somberly. Ranma and the rest rushed over to the young man and peered into the dark interior of the casino. Ranma recognized three more of his students lined up in a defensive posture near the doors. Further inside, flashlights waved erratically around a group of people huddled in one corner of the dark casino. "What are you all here for? Ranma asked. Kamajirou looked at Li-Wen and then at the other students. "We soon realized that a frontal assault was pointless, so when we found this group of civilians hiding in here we figured we'd protect them until you arrived, Sensei." "Me?" Ranma asked, surprised. "How did you know I would come?" "Both times when I was your student, I saw how much concern you had for your students... even me." Ranma flinched and said something that Akane had heard more times than she'd wished. "Well... I just don't like to see anyone hurt. It's not like I like you or anything..." Much like his denials to Akane, this one didn't fool anyone. Not even himself. -A- -M- -D- "They always come from the north and head south on their sweeps," Kamajirou explained as the leaders of the newly arrived fighters crouched in the back of the dark casino. The rest of the Amazons spread out and made sure the building was secure. Li-Wen nodded. "Yes, so unless they circle around, they must have a lot of troops to the north. Ranma looked at Ranko and Sanma. "Could they be breeding infants in those pillars already?" Ranko shrugged her shoulders. "Hard to say. We don't really know how many Buyierfei originally attacked last... ni... ght." She faltered, amazed that so much destruction and death had occurred in so short of time. The African monolith killed hundreds of millions in seconds, but for individual Buyierfei to sweep through a heavily populated city like Las Vegas so quickly scared her no end. Sanma wasn't as shocked. She had seen how fast the Buyierfei moved during battle during her much longer time at the front lines in Africa. She had no problems picturing the Buyierfei gutting a city overnight, since she had seen the results of the Buyierfei's initial push through populated cities first hand. But there was a difference in what she saw there and saw in Las Vegas. "In Africa... they never repeatedly swept the same city. It was always a single pass to gather energy quickly and move on. They didn't care about any stragglers left behind." Hairwax scratched her chin. "The ancient battles with the Blackness rarely focused on occupying a city or territory." Ranma looked at the tall Amazon. "Rarely? When did they try to hold a city?" "Only when there was some kind of purpose to them staying in one place." "What purpose?" "I don't know... the ancient records didn't always detail each battle. They were usually more concerned with winning battles than documenting them." Ranma sighed and looked over at the front doors, now guarded by Amazon and several of his students. Ranko stood up. "We have to go north and find out what the Buyierfei are up to." Sanma stood up and nodded her agreement. After they reassembled the Amazons and headed towards the front doors leading to the Buyierfei infested Strip, a voice called out. "Wait, we're going with you." Ranma turned around and shook his head at his eighteen students. "Not a chance, you're not ready." "Last night we weren't ready..." Kamajirou looked at Li-Wen, who stepped forward. "Today we are." The small Chinese woman took a deep breath. "We have proven ourselves by surviving." Ranma's gut tightened, wondering how many had failed that test. A test that should have never happened. "You're needed here to protect the civilians." "We aren't all needed here," Kamajirou insisted. "I said no!" Ranma snapped, surprising Ranko and the others in his fugitive company with the ferocity in his voice. "You trained us to fight, Teacher," Li-Wen said calmly. "We were wrong to train you. And the general was wrong to send you out before you were ready." "Bullshit..." Ranma was a bit shocked to hear this from Kamajirou. Back when he first trained the young, cocky teenager in Nerima he wouldn't have been, but since he started training Kamajirou back at Area Fifty-Two he had come to know a different person. A mature person. So when that new person swore like the old person, Ranma took a step back in shock. "You don't think we knew what we would face when we signed on to be part of Inferno Company?" Kamajirou took a step forward. "We knew that we might die in battle, but we were still willing to serve." Ranma recognized the mature person once again in his student. "You've come a long way, Kamajirou, but today is not your day to fight thousands of Buyierfei. Maybe tomorrow." Kamajirou shook his head. "You always were reluctant to admit your students were ready to advance, even back in Japan." "You never were ready to advance." Much to Ranma's surprise, Kamajirou nodded his agreement. "I know I wasn't. But some of the other students were ready and you never let them advance. That above all was why I left... even if I mastered the lessons, I couldn't be sure you'd let me advance." Ranma shook his head. "They did advance... when they were ready. Don't base everything on the short time you were with us back in Nerima and the small group of students you trained with. And don't think that the training we gave you at Area Fifty-Two was enough to fight the Buyierfei." "How many Buyierfei do we have to kill before you think we're ready to fight?" Kamajirou gestured to the other students. "We've all killed our share of them since arriving here... we wouldn't be alive if we hadn't." Ranma cringed, knowing that that probably was what happened to the rest of his students that were currently missing. "For the last time... you're staying here!!" -A- -M- -D- Ranma was muttering incoherent curses as he led his group--now thirteen 'fighters' stronger--up the devastated Las Vega Strip. To protect the large number of civilians hiding in the Casino, two Amazons stayed behind with Ranma's other three students. Well, to Ranma they were still his students, but they considered themselves soldiers. They were both right. They had just spotted the old, rundown Circus-Circus Hotel and Casino, when one of the Amazon's locator darts stuck in mid-air. "That was less than fifteen minutes." The invisible Buyierfei was sliced, diced, and blown apart by several chi balls, in that order. "We don't *ALL* have to attack a single Buyierfei! Pick your targets carefully and conserve your energies," Ranma said, as he let the chi ball in his hands go. A couple meters in front of him it fragmented into dozens of tiny chi balls, which fanned out in front of him and traced a path through several more invisible Buyierfei. "There's always more to deal with." They moved forward and proved this as they dealt with the three-dozen or so attacking Buyierfei. Ranma came down from above and blew apart a Buyierfei with a precisely placed chi ball. As he flipped out of range of the expanding mass of black flesh, he saw Kamajirou performing the same maneuver. He smiled as his student released the chi ball at exactly the right time to avoid being burned. His silent praise was somewhat diminished when Kamajirou landed face first. Ranma winced. he thought as he danced around his latest opponent before finishing the black demon off with a fanciful sweep of his green-chi charged arms. Where the green chi touched the Buyierfei the flesh burned and bubbled away, much like Ranma's arms were the blades of a sword. he thought back to Akane's lessons on using Ukyo's spatula charging technique on body parts. Not only did it provide a useful shield against various attacks, it also increased the damage of physical blows ten to twenty-fold. Kamajirou was suitably impressed with his teacher's fancy movements, just as Ranma had hoped. -A- -M- -D- Kamajirou screamed as the giant clown crashed down on him, the fiberglass cracking and sending sharp splinters across the plaza in front of the Circus-Circus hotel. Dust billowed everywhere as the clown and parts of the sign it was perched upon buried him. "Kamajirou!!" Ranko screamed as the clown covered her student. As the others battled the Buyierfei around her, she ran toward her student. Blasting the half visible Buyierfei that had toppled the Circus-Circus sign first, she started to dig through the broken pieces of the clown. "Dammit..." she snapped as she strained to pull a large piece off the pile of debris. Seeing Ranko's plight, Hairwax hurried over and lent her substantial muscles to the rescue effort. Sliding the clown's face aside, Ranko shuddered when she saw the still body of her student lying under the rubble. "Kamajirou!!" she screamed as she pulled more debris away from the bruised and battered young man that she had spent endless hours training. "No..." she gasped as she reached a trembling hand towards her student. Shaking his shoulder, she willed Kamajirou to move or speak or do anything to tell her she hadn't lost another student to the deadly streets of Las Vegas. "Not you too... don't you die on me too!" With visions of the crumpled messes in the streets that used to be her students flashing through her mind, she tried to find some sign of life in Kamajirou. Her eyes widened and she looked at Hairwax. "He's... he's not breathing." Hairwax dropped the clown nose she was holding. "I'll get Pap-smear... she's our best field doctor." As the large Amazon hurried away, Ranko leaned down to give Kamajirou mouth-to-mouth. Alerted to Kamajirou's condition by Hairwax, Ranma hurried over just in time to see Ranko punch Kamajirou in the gut. "Ranko!!" he scolded in surprise at her actions. "You little jerk!" Ranko snarled as she pried Kamajirou's hand away from where he was fondling her butt. Ranma sighed and shook his head. "Maybe you haven't changed after all." Kamajirou smiled apologetically. "Err... sorry, but when I saw an angel bending down over me, I couldn't resist." He winked at Ranko. This earned him another punch and a well-placed knee. "Combat is not the time for fooling around, Kamajirou!!" -A- -M- -D- Kamajirou spent the rest of that day as far from his teachers as possible, doing his best to fight as hard as he could to make up for his slip up. He tried to tell himself he was just trying to break the tense mood, but he knew it was just because he couldn't resist a redhead leaning over him. Truth be told, his ability to focus chi balls increased dramatically since he was now focusing all his attention on the battle. And the memory of Ranko's butt in his hand, of course. His improvement wasn't lost on his teachers. "You have to knee him in his balls more often," Ranma commented after Kamajirou blasted apart five Buyierfei in a single blast. Ranko grinned mischievously as she blasted her latest opponent. "Don't tempt me." They spent most of their day fighting small pockets of Buyierfei and weaving up and down various side streets in an effort to find out what the Buyierfei were up to. They weren't sure what they were looking for, but when they found it they knew without a doubt they had arrived at their destination. Not only were the avians flying overhead usually headed towards this location or away from it, but most of the Buyierfei they fought on the streets of Las Vegas always seemed to come from this location. How could they be sure this was their destination? Imagine piles of rubble from the two Stratosphere towers plus the rubble from a dozen large hotels around the immediate area all piled up at what used to be the start of the Las Vegas Strip. Then imagine mounds of flesh piled on top of the rubble. Be it just red stains on the rubble, severed limbs, or gutted corpses, there was no mistaking what had happened to the remains of most of the people who had died in Las Vegas over the previous day and night. Above, imagine avian after avian--some large, some small--swooping in and 'pooping' great big globs of golden slime onto the pile of rubble. Add to that image untold thousands upon thousands of ground Buyierfei swarming up to the pile of rubble, all partially visible as their insides glowed with a similar golden aura. They seemed to move towards the top, where the glow left them and they vanished into invisibility once again. The flashes of golden energy flashing around the mound of Buyierfei caused the departing Buyierfei to be occasionally revealed as the moved back out into the city to gather more energy. To feed again. If that wasn't enough to send even the most veteran of Buyierfei fighters running away in terror, the single form at the apex of the mound would. "Shuma's son..." Ranma muttered as he and Ranko locked eyes on the being that had nearly killed them the last time they were in the Buyierfei realm. "One of them, at least." Ranko nodded. "That has to be the one that attacked the Compound." Ukyo gazed upon the being that had almost killed her family and her best friend. "It's a lot bigger than before." At their distance and with all the energy flashing around it would normally have been impossible to make out a single human sized Buyierfei in the mass of ground Buyierfei swarming up towards Shuma's son, but it had grown to at least ten times it's normal size. How it did that wasn't hard to figure out. "All the other Buyierfei are feeding it energy," Ranma explained needlessly. It was obvious to all those transfixed by the sight that the energy flowing around the mound between the smaller half-visible Buyierfei and being 'pooped' from the sky by the avians was flowing towards and into the giant glowing son of Shuma. "Any ideas on how to destroy that?" Mousse asked. No one had an answer. Maybe there wasn't an answer. As the vastly outnumbered group of fugitive fighters started to discuss their next move, the air around them suddenly sent them crashing forward when a gust of wind blasted them from behind. Their first thought was that an avian was attacking them, so they looked up. Instead of a black winged form, they saw five sleek fighter jets flash by overhead way too close to the ground for their comfort. Mousse's eyes followed the lead jet as each jet fired two missiles towards the Buyierfei mound. "It's Justin... it has to be." Ranma winced as the missiles hit the mound and exploded. Fire, flesh, and debris billowed up from the mound, obscuring it from sight. "Looks like the general may be of some use after all." Mousse watched the five jets veer off and start taking evasive maneuvers to avoid not only the large avians that had been chasing them, but additional avians that had been circling the mound. "Oh shit..." Sanma muttered as the cloud of debris parted and revealed the mound. Although the swarm of Buyierfei moving towards Shuma's son had thinned out a bit, the basic structure remained and the thousands of remaining Buyierfei still transferred their stolen energies to the glowing form at the top of the mound. "How can we do anything to that many Buyierfei?!" Li-Wen shouted out, practically in tears. Ranma looked back at his best student, understanding why she was so despondent. He understood because he felt the same way. He knew to the bottom of his being that there was no way ninety fighters--no matter how good--could fight that many Buyierfei in such a small area. He wasn't sure there was any way to fight that many at the same time no matter how much space was available. Sanma saw the situation differently. Although they had never faced such a large concentration of Buyierfei on the front lines in Africa, she had seen more than her fair share of massive concentrations of Buyierfei--no small thing considering Buyierfei were usually invisible until they were in contact with humans. That didn't mean she had an answer to fighting that many Buyierfei with only ninety fighters. Ukyo shuddered and reached out to take Sanma's hand. She flinched in surprise when she grasped the hand of her husband and found it shaking. "Sanma?" she whispered as she looked at her husband's green eyes. Ranma stepped forward. "We have to do something..." "What the hell can we do against all that?!" Ranko yelled. Before anyone could answer, the question became moot. Shuma's son suddenly screeched and started pulling in the nearest Buyierfei with its tentacles. Within moments, the light radiating from inside it brightened a hundred times over and exploded in a flood of golden light that blinded them all. When they dared to lower their hands that had saved them from permanent blindness, they saw thousands of glowing Buyierfei being sucked into a whirlpool of light where Shuma's son used to be. Although this seemed to remove the problem of how to destroy thousands of Buyierfei that were crowded into less than ten square city blocks, no one was rejoicing. Instead, they silently tilted their heads to follow the golden beam of light that rose from the spinning vortex. Even before their eyes settled on the beam's destination, they knew where it was headed. "The Moon..." Mousse muttered what they were all thinking as he saw the beam reach the faint lunar disk that hung in the late afternoon sky. They had no way of verifying it at that moment, but they all knew that it was headed right towards the relay monolith on the Moon. They knew because that monolith had only recently become visible from the Earth. It was something they had been expecting for the past few months with dread. As the beam cast a golden glow over the Moon's surface, the skull on the Moon started laughing at their feeble attempts to stop the Buyierfei. Before long, the golden beam started to brighten and grow in size as more and more power was funneled through it. The worse part of that was the direction the energy was flowing by that point. "It's... it's coming back!!" Ranma screamed. No one had to be told what to do. As distasteful as retreat was to them, they knew they had little chance of surviving the blast they assumed would follow. They had only gotten a block further away when the shock wave sent them crashing in all directions. Coughing, Ranko looked back in order to find out why they were still alive. The answer wasn't very reassuring. She had seen and destroyed many of them in the past ten years, but they all shared one common trait: they were all on the ground where you could get to them. "How the fuck can we destroy a monolith that's floating in mid-air!!" she bellowed, expressing the grief of all of the bruised and battered fighters. No one answered as they gazed silently at the monolith. The largest surface of the rectangular monolith faced the ground as it lay horizontally in the sky and slowly spun centered on where the mound of Buyierfei used to be. Now it was just a mound of concrete rubble and burning black flesh. The thousands of Buyierfei had served their primary purpose: To gather energy in order to allow the relay monolith on the Moon to create the floating monolith. As they all got to their feet and regrouped, Ranma looked at Mousse. "Any ideas on how to get up there to get into that thing?" "Even if we had a helicopter in one piece, I'm not sure we could get inside that thing. According to Justin, most aircraft that had ever gotten close to a monolith have been destroyed or crashed into the surface," Mousse said, then added, "Maybe with some cold water I could..." "One isn't enough. We need..." The problem of how to get into the monolith solved itself when it suddenly stopped rotating in place and shot away from them. Mousse glanced towards the sun that hung low in the western sky and then back at the direction the monolith had vanished. "Its... its headed right towards Area Fifty-Two." Ranma reached out and grasped Ranko's hand. "Akane..." A ripple of dread flowed over the assembled fighters. They weren't sure that the monolith could get to their families under the mountain that hid Area Fifty-Two from the world, but they sure knew that they never wanted their families to have to find out without them present. Ranma dropped to his knees and knew without a doubt that he made a mistake in coming to Las Vegas. He hoped it wasn't a fatal one. To punctuate their plight, the five F-35s streaked overhead and raced after the receding form of the monolith. Mousse--most of all--knew that they would chase it in vain. The F-35s were the worlds' most advanced fighter jets, but they had nothing that could destroy a monolith. There were very few things that could destroy a monolith. Several of those 'things' looked on horrified as the monolith raced away from them and towards their families. Their families who only had a few hundred feet of rock and soil to protect them. As illogical as it would seem, they suddenly thought their families would have been safer in Nerima. [End - Chapter 15] Coming soon: Chapter 16 - The Black Wars "Core" ======================================================================= The real author's (Jim Lazar) notes/ramblings: Most of this chapter was planned before September 11th, 2001, but I wrote it during the months that followed those horrible events in New York and Washington, D.C. The twin (there's only one in real life presently) Stratosphere Towers collapsing were always part of the story, but I do admit that as I wrote out those scenes the details were influenced by the real life events in New York. I debated leaving the collapse scene and the mound of ruins out of this chapter after writing it, but I would never feel right about censoring my work like that. I'm sorry if it upsets any of my readers. Kamajirou's wandering hands were inspired by a recurring joke in Inuyasha where Miroku (the priest) tends to let his hands wander as he lies dying under the care of a beautiful woman. I'd like to thank my pre-readers Michael A. Chase, Mish-chan, David Johnston, and Thomas C. Kinnen for helping me find and fix problems with this story. Thank you all. Of course in the end, any mistakes and botched characters are my fault. Revision 0.0 - Rough draft began (September 23, 2001) Revision 0.1 - Rough draft finished (December 2, 2001) Revision 0.3 - Pre-reader draft (December 19, 2001) Revision 1.0 - Final version (February 5, 2002) Revision 1.1 - First RAAC posting (March 6, 2002)