It had taken several days, even with Ranma's help, to ascertain the position of their next target. Between Orion's keen tactical intellect and Ranma's capabilities for stealth and thiefcraft (not to mention him actually having a human body usually helped), they had followed up on the stories about Jindai High School and traced the rumors of some sort of hyper-paranoid student with a military obsession to an individual known as Sousuke Sagara.
Despite his fame in constantly destroying parts of the school (as well as random other areas of the district), Sousuke had proven surprisingly hard to check up on. Orion had looked at numerous incongruent records that Ranma had "borrowed" from local offices, and after a little fact-checking, had found tell-tale signs of cover-ups and intelligence interventions.
Ranma couldn't help but wonder why the moon cat seemed so damned pleased at having their progress stymied.
Still, it had all paid off when Orion finally ascertained a reliable address that wouldn't turn out to be another dead end! Sagara had covered his tracks well, but no primitive Earth soldier was a match for the premiere strategic advisor of the Moon Kingdom's Royal Military!
Of course, if you asked Ranma, he'd take all the credit for eventually asking a student down at the High School where Sousuke attended to point the guy out and then following him home. But Ranma's not the big important tactician, now is he? So nobody asked him.
Still, even Ranma had to admit that keeping tabs on the guy was damn difficult. The route Sousuke had taken back to his apartment wound through several completely redundant areas that seemed specifically chosen to force any following party to either abandon the cover that concealed them from view or lose sight of their target for a few precious minutes. It wasn't too big a problem for Ranma, who was following via rooftop, but Sousuke had more tricks up his sleeve, all of which he was willing to use apparently out of habit. When Ranma had ridden the roof of the train car that Sousuke had entered, it was only sheer luck that Orion (who was nestled in his arms) had seen the mercenary boy exit a completely different car near the rear of the train.
What Ranma found most strange was that the harder it got for him to track Sagara, the more visibly excited Orion would become. Cats were weird.
So here they were, standing in front of the open-air hallway in front of Sousuke's apartment, holding the various pieces of the three separate gas and electric traps that Orion had detected and Ranma had disarmed.
After double-checking that the doorbell wasn't trapped as well, Orion turned toward his first recruit. "Are you ready? Do it just like we planned."
Ranma was about to nod, but stopped short and frowned. "Hold on a minute." Dumping the items in his arms onto the ground, the martial artist promptly leapt over the railing separating the walkway from the open air over the sidewalk, and then swung down under it toward the floor below.
Orion was understandably confused. "Ranma? What are you-"
Bam! At that very moment, the door of the apartment next to the one he was standing in front of burst open, and a black-haired youth rolled out into a crouching position with a pistol aimed directly at the last source of noise: the gray-furred tomcat.
Sousuke was understandably confused upon seeing nothing in his crosshairs (figuratively, of course, this handgun didn't have a scope) except a relatively large, gray housecat. Even more confusing was that instead of freezing in place or simply scampering away, the feline immediately rolled to the side out of his line of fire and then crouched in the prone position, ready to dart for cover at a moment's notice and staring at him warily. Although Sousuke found the reaction oddly admirable, it was nothing that he had time to concern himself with.
Crouching low, Sousuke snuck around to check behind the door he had burst through to ensure that there were no enemies in the opposite direction.
'Odd, I know I heard voices,' Sousuke thought to himself, 'and I know someone was shadowing me earlier. Perhaps this was a diversion?'
Orion's mind raced. He had figured out by now that he and Ranma had fallen into an ambush, though Ranma seemed to have detected it and stayed out of sight. The plan was shot to hell; time to improvise.
"Hello there," said Orion experimentally, "nice day, isn't it? Don't shoot me."
Sousuke's gun immediately snapped around to aim directly at the moon cat. Orion repeated his earlier move and rolled to one side in a dodge.
"Please?" He asked somewhat bitterly, seeing that this time the mercenary had simply adjusted his aim. "Look, it's the talking cat thing, right? It's always the talking cat thing. That tends to freak people out, I know, but-"
Ranma made his move, darting over the railing and swiftly tackling the distracted Sousuke to the ground before subduing him in a fairly basic hold for neutralizing gun-wielding opponents.
Sousuke, being no amateur in any capacity, recognized what was happening and quickly abandoned his weapon in order to try to reverse the hold, rather than simply firing blindly as Ranma had expected. Still, when it came to grappling the pigtailed boy outclassed him by leaps and bounds, and Sousuke quickly found himself pressed onto the floor and helpless.
"Well, that was unpleasant," mumbled Orion. "How'd you know he was going to ambush us?"
"I didn't," Ranma admitted, making sure not to take his eyes off his captive. "I remember seeing the mailman comin', and I remembered that we didn't bother to disarm the trap on the postbox. He's okay, though. Or he will be, eventually."
"Ah," the moon cat sweatdropped. Though he admired Sousuke for the most part from what he'd seen, he'd have to learn to go a little easier on the traps. "Well, whatever. Get him inside before someone sees a kid and a talking cat kidnapping a resident."
Once they were inside, Orion and Ranma silently considered Sagara, who had remained absolutely silent and had provided little resistance since being subdued. As expected, Orion found the attitude admirable, if not troublesome. Ranma just found it creepy.
"Okay then, let's get this show on the road," the moon cat started, gesturing for Ranma to hold Sousuke up to him.
The mercenary's brow furrowed. He glanced behind him, then turned back around to stare at Orion. He remained silent.
"First, let me apologize for the... awkwardness of this situation," the tomcat began diplomatically. "Both in the vein of being captured in your own apartment and having a forced conversation with a talking cat. Let me assure you that my original plan of approach had dealt with these factors more gracefully."
He waited for a response from Sousuke. He didn't get one. "Okay. So, first off let me say that you're not going crazy; you can think of me as a magic talking cat from the distant past, though that's a vast simplification. Disregard it if you wish, but I AM a feline of human intelligence who possesses supernatural properties. My name is Orion. The fellow holding you is Ranma Saotome, an elite practitioner of the Saotome Ryu School of Indiscriminate Grappling."
"Hi, how ya doin'?" Ranma asked casually, not really expecting an answer and not getting one.
"So, can I assume you knew you were being followed, or do you always make yourself so difficult to track?" Orion asked.
Sousuke retained his stoic silence, although both assumptions were true.
"Not a talker. That's alright. We didn't come here to get information from you. We came here to recruit your help."
Sousuke raised an eyebrow.
"From what I've gathered, you're an international mercenary working for a larger mercenary organization," Orion said, pacing a bit and failing to realize how ridiculous it looked when he was a cat. "I couldn't find out which organization you work for, or what you're doing in Japan destroying parts of Tokyo, but that isn't important anyway. I want to hire your assistance for a low-level supernatural engagement in Tokyo."
Sousuke finally spoke. "This is NOT accepted procedure for approaching mercenary units for employment."
"Understood," Orion said immediately. "Unfortunately, many of those routes aren't available to me, for obvious reasons, and Ranma is hardly more viable an option for hiring commandos. Our only recourse was to force a meeting and explain the situation in person, hoping that you'd abandon your current plans to help defend Tokyo from monstrous shadow invaders." He stopped for a moment. "And I assure you, that plan didn't sound nearly as stupid then as it does now." He nodded at Ranma. "Do you have that article I gave you?"
Ranma released one of Sousuke's arms, removing a newspaper page from his pocket and flipping it in Orion's direction just in time to grab Sousuke's free hand and force the knife from his grip.
That both of his captors took his escape attempt in stride was not lost on Sousuke, who frowned as he looked over the newspaper article that Orion was laying out. "I've seen this article before."
The gray cat blinked in mild surprise. "You have?" The article was very recent, and it featured a blurry picture of a blonde girl in an unusually short skirt getting blasted aside by a hideous-looking green woman with unusually long arms. Despite the picture, the article detailed how Sailor Moon had eventually triumphed over the monster and rescued the reporter, among others, who seemed to be suffering extreme exhaustion.
Sousuke nodded slowly, deciding how much he could tell his current captors. Since they didn't appear to want to harm him, small, irrelevant admissions might hasten his release. "In my current assignment it's critical that I identify possible threats in the general area. An attack by a 'youma' seemed unlikely, but I have taken precautions."
"So you haven't written off these creatures as myth, then?"
"No matter what they actually are, they have proven to be a common enough occurence that they've been captured on film and accepted as fact by the mainstream media. A complete fabrication is unlikely."
Orion nodded. "Let me tell you a few things about these youma..."
_______________________
After a long talk, two more disarmings that finally cumulated in Ranma releasing Sousuke (he was starting to get cramps), and a demonstration of Ranma's curse just to further prove that Sousuke had either been yanked headfirst into a world of magic and chaos or he was going insane, the mercenary leaned back in his chair to consider what he'd been told.
"So I'm to believe that unlicensed and untrained civilians are being recruited as vigilante soldiers in order to combat a foothold operation by a supernatural army?"
Orion shrugged and patted the newspaper article. "That much is pretty much out in the open. I just gave you the details."
"And I'm also to believe that you, a... 'magic talking cat,' are gathering trained specialists to assist these vigilantes in the shadow war? And that Saotome is the first of these specialists that you've procured for this purpose?" He took another suspicious glance at Ranma-chan's breasts and neck, though the cursed boy had already confirmed the physical change to Sousuke's satisfaction (much to Ranma's personal humiliation).
"Correct. I can't imagine how this klutz has managed to stay alive this long, but the outcome of this battle could set the stage for a large-scale invasion, and I'm sure as hell not willing to put it all in her hands," Orion tapped the picture of Sailor Moon again for emphasis, and Sousuke had to admit that the picture of said heroine shouting and waving her arms around seemed to underline his point.
"Why the need for small-scale engagements?" Sousuke asked, steering the conversation in another direction. Normally he would perfectly able to embark on a mission with as much information as he had already been given, but these were certainly not normal circumstances. "Why do you not secure the help of public officials and the JSDF?"
"Political riffraff, mostly," Orion explained bluntly, "the various Japanese defense forces are already doing their best to root out the threat, but they have no idea what they're doing. They COULD coordinate with the Senshi or myself, but as soon as we expose our efforts such that government intervention is possible, we open ourselves up to political scrutiny."
"Understood," Sousuke said promptly, needing no further explanation. He was well aware of the complications political intervention could cause. "So this team will be small and exclusively covert in operations?"
"To a degree. Unfortunately most of our missions will have to be reactionary, but all the battles are expected to be small-scale and squad-based," Orion explained, "your flair for... well... explosives among other things would be extremely helpful to our efforts. What do you say?"
Ranma dumped some hot water over his head, distracting the mercenary for a moment as he watched the redhead grow several inches and change hair color.
"I'll have to think about it," Sousuke admitted, turning back to the cat and idly wondering just how the hell he had gotten used to the idea of a talking cat so quickly, "pending the completion of my current mission, which is due in approximately a week, and my passing of a psychological exam to ensure that you're not merely a hallucination, you may contact me again. I may then decide to go on an extended leave of duty from my current employers."
Ranma and Orion both sweatdropped at hearing how calmly and seriously the mercenary discussed the possibility of being insane, but were otherwise pleasantly surprised that Sousuke had agreed even to think about it. "Can we reach you here if we need to speak to you again?" Orion asked.
"No. Please understand that I must change residences immediately now that you've tracked me to my base and seen its interior. Standard procedure," Sousuke said in what Ranma guessed was an approximation of an apologetic tone. Orion merely nodded, smiling approvingly. Then Sousuke took out a piece of note paper and scribbled a few numbers on it before pushing it forward to Orion (he really was getting way too used to the idea that the cat was the leader and not Ranma). "This is a number you can contact me with. Do not attempt to triangulate the source of the signal." He was about to request that they memorize the number and destroy the note, but the words died on his lips as Orion nodded and then shredded the paper apart with his claws.
"Got it. We're all done here. Thank you for your time," the moon cat said politely before jumping into Ranma's lap.
"Cool. See ya later," Ranma said, scooping Orion up into his arms and getting ready to exit.
Sousuke frowned. "Pardon me; Saotome?"
Ranma turned around. "Yeah? What's up?"
"Tell me, why did you agree to this?" Sousuke asked. The mercenary boy was disturbed, not so much by the absurdity of the situation, but by the way the strange talking cat had made it all sound perfectly logical and reasonable. Orion had a way of speaking and certain mannerisms that Sousuke found comforting, to the point that he almost forgot that he was having a conversation with a talking animal about fighting magical monsters. To that end, he had hoped that talking to the human of the pair (if the shape-shifter really was human) would keep his mind more firmly grounded in reality.
Ranma considered the question for a few seconds, then shrugged. "Hey, the world's at stake, right? Am I just gonna stand back and let it all go to hell?"
"So then you believe that story?" Sousuke asked, his expression betraying nothing. Orion remained silent, willing to hear his prospective soldiers out.
Ranma shrugged. "I'm willing to find out if it's true or not. In the meantime, I 'aint got nothing better to do."
Sousuke nodded, his expression strangely grave. "I see. Good day then. Thank you for not destroying my trap components; they are expensive."
"No prob. See ya!"
_______________________
"Hey, Orion?" Ranma asked after they were away from the apartment, and after checking that nobody would be able to hear him talking to his cat.
"Yes?"
"When we were talking to Sagara, you said that you were going to 'hire' him, right? He's a mercenary."
Orion nodded. "Of course. Our request is dubious enough without asking him to do dangerous combat work for free."
"So, wait, you have money?" Ranma asked, feeling a bit cheated. Not that he cared if he was paid for saving the world, but as it was, he was still retreating back to the Tendo Dojo every day for meals. If the moon cat had money on him, Ranma felt the least he could do was spring for lunch.
"Of course not," Orion chided. "When the put me in stasis I only had about two hundred Silver credits to my name, and that currency is useless here."
Ranma raised an eyebrow. "Are those credits MADE of silver?"
"No, it's just the name. They're just refined quartz crystals."
"Oh... what a gyp."
"You're telling me."
The pigtailed boy frowned. "So, how do you plan on paying Sagara if you have no money?"
"Well, obviously, you'll have to get a job," Orion said calmly, as if this was a matter that had been decided long ago.
"Aww, man... so instead of getting paid to save the world like Sagara, I have to PAY to save the world?" Ranma complained.
"The path of a martial artist is fraught with peril," Orion parroted, remembering the line that Genma seemed to use whenever he shouldered Ranma with some unfair burden.
"Yeah, yeah..."
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(Posted Thu, 09 Nov 2006 01:09)
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