The final bell rang indicating the end of school, and Ranma bowed her head in profound respect – well, actually, relief. And boredom. And weariness.
Akane chuckled at her friend. “Come on,” she said, poking the redhead. “If you get moving quick, you can beat up your father before dinner!”
A single blue eye peered at her. “D’ya know Pops’ gotten back yet?”
“Well… no,” admitted Akane, “but you might be lucky.”
“Huh,” expressed Ranma, sitting up and beginning to prepare to leave. “Gee, what a choice. Go home quick on the off-chance Pops will be there to spar with, or laze around here. Hmmm. Well, I do recall one of the pearls of wisdom my father regurgitated for me: ‘When given a choice between two options, take the third’.”
“I wonder who he stole that from?” giggled Akane.
“Me too.”
“Hey, guys,” interrupted Yuka, “you two want to come to the ice cream shop?”
“Hmm, third option!” said Ranma with a grin.
“I can’t, Yuka,” said Akane regretfully. “Nabiki wants me to go with her this afternoon.”
Ranma twitched, turning to stare at Akane. Before she could protest, Yuka nodded understandingly. “The monthly bank run, isn’t it? I’d forgot about that.”
“Bank run?”
“Nabiki has a meeting with the bank manager every month,” explained Akane. “She likes me to walk her there and back…”
“Bodyguard duty.” Ranma shouldered her bag and started towards the door. “What are we waiting for?”
“What – hey, you don’t have to come,” protested Akane. “You go have some ice cream with Yuka and Sayuri and I’ll catch up with you all later…”
“Akane,” sighed Ranma, turning back in the doorway, “I need to do this. Pops might think he can mooch offa your dad forever, but I ain’t going to. So, come on. Where’re we meeting Nabiki anyway?”
“I don’t need any help, Ranma,” said Akane heatedly, stomping towards the redhead. Ranma slipped back into the hallway. “We’ve never had any trouble…”
“Pauric, Professor Kosin,” started Sander, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t know about you, but the flight is catching up on me.”
The younger woman nodded as firmly as her own weariness permitted.
“Ah?” uttered Pauric. He fumbled with his cuff and peered at his watch. “Oh, well, it’s still early in the afternoon…”
“Nonsense, Pauric,” retorted their host. “All four of you have been fighting fatigue since you arrived, and we have weeks to finish this. Go check into your hotel, have a good night’s sleep. I will send the request to the University Library to view these documents; we still won’t get in before Friday anyway.”
“Hrmmp. I’m perfectly capable of finishing this up tonight…”
“Uncle Pauric,” sighed Siobhan, “will you be able to – yawn – get back to the hotel afterwards? ‘Cause I don’t know if I can get there now.”
“The professor and Siobhan are right, Pauric,” asserted Sander. “We need to sleep. If nothing else, working when we’re this tired will lead to mistakes, and it’s not like we have a deadline.”
“Oh, very well,” grumped the eldest werewolf.
The Japanese professor rose. He picked up the list of documents they had compiled and said, “If you will excuse me, I will walk over to see my friend in the Library before he leaves. I will see you all tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, thank you Professor,” replied Sander, “See you then.”
“Go now.”
Yakubi Ryoken – known to his friends as ‘Daken’ (‘Mongrel’) because he didn’t like his real name – floored the throttle, popped the clutch and lunged into traffic without signalling. He grinned at the sound of tortured metal behind him as his sudden emergence caused a further distraction for the plan he and his friends were enacting.
They hadn’t had the chance to actually practice, but they had talked it through several times over beer and pizza, and even paced out the arrangement of the critical landmarks in the empty lot a couple of blocks from Daikun’s home. Daken had the job of driver because he had, among their circle, the reputation of the being fastest behind the wheel. Not that he was foolish enough to use his own car for this; no, the powerful four-door he drove now had been stolen that morning after its owner had boarded the subway to his city job. Even so, the number plates it currently carried were crude fakes and different at each end.
He was running just a little fast, for he rounded the corner just as Takuichi Daikun threw the second of the old cast-iron pistons. Dai had to fumble quickly for the bandoleer of CS gas grenades as the big car skidded to a stop between him and the target store. The clouds of smoke pouring from the doorway told the tale of Koriko Nagao’s grenades inside the shop, and Daken watched over his shoulder as he shoved his gloved hands though the shattered glass and began scooping millions of yens worth of jewellery into the bag. Dai snatched open the back door and scrambled in, resisting the temptation to also try grabbing the loot, and threw open the other door for Nagao.
Screams and shouts from the pedestrians around them indicated that panic was setting in, but Daken did see a couple of quick-witted shoppers producing mobile phones. He grinned again as Nagao abandoned the remaining few gewgaws and ran for the car – even if any of those telephones had a camera, it wouldn’t help because all three of them were wearing simple disguises – fake moustaches, hair dye, a bit of padding – so they would never be recognised.
Nagao pulled the drawstring closed and everything went to pot. A small figure emerged through the wreathes of smoke laid down by the grenades and hooked a leg between Nagao’s shins before doing something with her arm. Nagao flipped in the air and landed roughly on his head, the bag flying end over end with glittering chains slipping loose. By purest chance, it landed directly in front of Daken and slipped in front of the headlights, but he was watching Nagao and the girl fall on the pavement. When he turned his head at the sound, the loot was out of sight.
The girl fell better and rolled to her feet before Nagao could recover from his surprise, but she wiped frantically at her eyes. Daikun lunged out and grabbed Nagao by the shoulders as he scrambled to his feet, dragging him back towards the car.
“The take!” protested Nagao, looking around for the bag.
“No time!” replied Daikun. The girl turned towards them, orientating on their voices as she tried to peer though eyes that were now nearly as red as tomatoes. Deciding the minimal sight she had was sufficient, she surged towards the thieves, stepping into a high kick that clipped Nagao’s ear. Dai, remembering martial arts lessons from long before, dropped Nagao and swung a fist up into the girl’s calf, sending her off balance for the critical few seconds it took to shove his friend into the car.
Still half-blinded, the girl kicked again, landing her foot in Dai’s back and slamming him into the side of the car just behind the door. He staggered, his hand covering his face, but Nagao grabbed him and pulled. There was another thump as his head bounced off the edge of the roof, and then Nagao was yelling, “Go! I’ve got him, Go!”
Taking the brick-man at his word, Daken floored the throttle once more. The tyres smoked for a moment as he pulled away, Dai’s feet dragging on the pavement as he was dragged onto the back seat. Daken saw the road ahead was clear and slammed up into second gear to run for the first corner of the getaway route.
Something thumped on the roof, and he ignored it; nothing that could be thrown would slow them down. Then a pair of feet landed right in front of the windscreen. He had a moment to register this fact – time to wonder, first, why the cute redhead was wearing a boy’s school uniform, and second why her eyes showed no effect of the gas – before her bare fist descended through the glass and clamped around the wheel.
“Ya might wanna stop, ya know,” she said, almost calmly despite the wind of their passage.
Daken’s reply was the nearly thoughtless upchange to third. His conscious mind was too busy goggling at her faint grin to respond.
She shrugged. “I did say…” Before he could even wonder what she meant, the wheel jerked in his grip as she pulled. With his foot flat on the pedal, the car swerved towards the edge of the road; he hardly managed to react at all.
There was a crump as the front tyre mounted the curb and tore off the rim, and then the girl wasn’t on the metalwork anymore. Instead, she was flying backwards away from him, backflipping gracefully to a stand, and the airbag was slamming into his chest as Dai smacked into the back of the passenger seat and Nagao flew over his shoulder and through the shattered glass onto the huge concrete bollard the redhead had just steered them into.
Sander dropped his suitcase on the bed, and considered throwing himself after it. He held back, mostly because of the sneaking suspicion that if he did lie down he wouldn’t get up until tomorrow. Pauric let his wheeled case stand at the foot of the other bed. From the other room, they heard Japanese voices and snatches of music and sound effects as one of the girls channel surfed.
“Hrmmp. You may have been right about stopping early,” admitted Pauric. “Do you want to get room service, or go to the restaurant?”
“Restaurant,” replied Sander immediately. “Less risk of falling asleep before the food arrives.”
“Ah.”
“Whoa. Guys, get in here!”
“What is it?” asked Pauric, moving to the door linking the two suites.
“News report – yeeek!”
“Good God!”
Sander jerked to the doorway himself, and found himself staring over Pauric’s shoulder as a petite redhead landed and walked casually back towards a car wrapped around a very large lump of concrete. “What is this?”
“News report,” repeated Siobhan breathlessly. “Jewellers robbed this afternoon, she jumped on the getaway car and crashed it…”
“This is footage from someone’s mobile phone,” added Nissa.
The image on the screen cut back to a reporter standing in front of a shattered storefront. Soberly, he explained how the gang of three had positioned themselves to throw a cluster of gas grenades into the store before breaking the window, and that the first person to interrupt had in fact saved jewellery worth several million yen by causing the thief to drop it although the getaway car had actually run over the dropped bag. None of the witnesses had seen the second girl before she jumped onto the car and broke the windscreen. The view moved again to where the redhead, with two other girls, was talking with police officers; she spotted the camera and waved impishly before turning her attention back to the uniformed men. In voice over, the reporter finished, “So there we have it, a professional jewel heist foiled by two students of the little-known Musabetsu Kakuto school of martial arts. The thieves have been captured and the stolen goods recovered.”
The anchorman in the studio turned to his own camera as the remote feed reverted to a background image, and said, “A most satisfactory result for justice. Thank you Yuuta, and of course thank you to the two young women of the Musabetsu Kakuto. In other news tonight…”
Sander waved a hand, and Nissa snatched the remote from Siobhan and turned the TV off. “Where was this?”
“Nerima,” replied Siobhan. “Why?”
“What the newsreader said about none of the witnesses seeing that girl until she hit the car,” said Sander. “Not to mention red hair – she’s obviously Japanese otherwise.”
Pauric, who hadn’t understood the reporter, said, “You’re not thinking she’s one of these mages we’re looking for, are you? That’s a bit of a coincidence, really.”
“It is, rather. But we’d look complete idiots if we didn’t make sure.” He paused. “Nissa, this will be on the web by tomorrow morning. Get the full story, and see if you can locate this ‘Musabetsu Kakuto’.”
“I can do that now…”
Sander shook his head. “Food and sleep first. It’ll all be there tomorrow, and you won’t miss any.”
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(Posted Sat, 01 Dec 2007 13:27)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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