Tsuruko Aoyama slid into the front passenger seat of the large, late model Mercedes sedan and greeted the three men in the back seat and the woman in the driver's seat. Each was a veteran practitioner of the Shinmei Ryu and had a no-nonsense air about them.
"Where are we going?" the hard-eyed woman behind the wheel asked.
Tsuruko handed her a flashdrive which the woman took without comment and plugged it into the car's nav system. All the data Tsuruko had been able to collect on the location in the short time since her sister had called her was downloaded to the display screen. It wasn't much, primarily just the location and a satellite photo of the facility which appeared to be an affluent mountain-side mansion in a secluded rural area near Gunma.
"We can be there in four and a half to five hours," the driver indicated, ignoring the estimated seven hour trip time displayed on the nav system. "What is the status on the others?"
"They are still gathering the equipment and the specialists," Tsuruko answered. "They should be about an hour behind us. That should give us enough time to secure the site and make sure there are no surprises."
"Are we sure this is good information?" one of the men in the backseat asked. "Are you sure—sorry, Tsuruko-san—that this is really your sister and not some...creature...wearing her body setting a trap for us?"
The man gulped and sunk down in his seat under the glare Tsuruko pinned him with.
"If that's the case then I will deal with it personally," Tsuruko said icily. "Regardless of the situation, we now have a chance to find out more about these creatures that took my sister and begin exterminating them from our lands. It is an opportunity we cannot ignore even if we are walking into some sort of ambush."
"Of course, Tsuruko-san. I just thought the possibility should be mentioned," the man said apologetically.
"Just to be clear: Nobody attacks Motoko or the boy she has with her unless they prove themselves a threat. Is that understood?" Tsuruko met the eyes of each of the other occupants in the car, receiving an affirmative response from each.
Motoko struggled to her feet and followed Ranma out the window. She landed beside him just as he fired the last round at the fleeing vampire woman.
"Damn that bitch is fast," Ranma snarled as the woman disappeared into the trees, trailing a small amount of smoke from a couple of small tears in her suit where Ranma's shots had scored minor hits.
"Now we hunt," Motoko announced in a chilly tone while slinging her SMG and unsheathing her sword again.
Ranma grinned ferally and stowed his empty Mossberg.
"After you, Mi'lady," he said with a slight bow.
Motoko nodded and headed for the woods setting a significantly faster pace than she had been capable of before the vampires changed her into their worst nightmare. Ranma matched her effortlessly and took to the trees as soon as they reached them.
Dietz cursed to herself as she ran through the trees while trying to ignore the extremely painful burning sensations coming from the tears in her suit. The pain had faded a bit after she got out of the direct sunlight, and she was lucky she had escaped with only the damage she did. If even one of those shotgun blasts had scored a direct hit, she would have been flambé by now.
Luckily, Dietz did have some patching material on her she could use to repair her suit. She would have to stop soon to do so. However...
"You can run, but you'll only die tired!" her male pursuer's voice taunted her, seemingly from all directions as it echoed off the trees.
Clearly, stopping to fix her suit was tantamount to suicide at this point. Dietz redoubled her efforts to get back to the vehicle. If she could reach it before they caught her, she would be home free.
"Fuck!" Dietz shrieked as she was showered with bark where a bullet slammed into the tree by her head as she passed. Almost immediately after the impact a boom echoed through the woods. The fleeing vampire didn't pause though. She couldn't afford to get pinned down.
Motoko jumped up on to the branch Ranma was standing on from which he had just took a shot at the vampire with his FN-FAL.
"I have an idea," Motoko said quickly. "I'm going to cut her off. I just need you to keep up the pressure on her."
"How ya gonna cut her off?" Ranma asked. "We don't know where she's going."
"Oh, I have an idea of where she's going," Motoko smirked nastily, pointing down through a space in the trees. Ranma followed her finger and spotted a road winding around the mountain side. "My guess is she's headed for the vehicle they came in. I'm going down to the road to find where she's parked. Hopefully I'll be waiting for her when she comes out."
"Gotcha." Ranma nodded in understanding. "I'll see if I can't make her take a few detours to buy you some time."
With that, the pair split up. Ranma headed off in the direction the vampire had gone and Motoko ran toward the road. It didn't take long before the leather-clad swordswoman was standing at the top of a sheer one hundred foot drop off, at the bottom of which was the road she'd spotted where it curved around the other side of the valley.
Pausing for a moment, she considered the wisdom of what she was about to do. It would have been beyond her abilities just a few months before, but now something told her she would be fine. Taking a breath, she jumped off the cliff.
The air roared past her ears and her stomach rose to her throat as Motoko plunged downward toward the hard pavement below her. Luckily, she knew how to control her body to maintain her feet-first attitude. It was something she knew how to do from before, though she had never tried it from this height.
Motoko took the impact with surprising ease, though the pavement cracked slightly as she bent at the knees to absorb the energy. Coming up from her deep-knee bend position, she immediately began running up the road to find where the vampire strike team had parked.
"Thank god!" Dietz cheered as she burst from the trees and spotted their vehicles parked off the side of the road a short way down.
She spared the Mercedes SL55 AMG a longing glance as she ran by it. It would have been the better vehicle for a fast getaway, but Kristos had the electronic key on him so she had no way to start it. Instead she jumped in the Toyota Surf parked behind it and started it up.
Jamming the SUV into reverse, she floored the throttle. The V8 engine roared as the full-time four-wheel drive gripped the ground firmly, accelerating the Toyota backward hard even as a bullet slammed through the windshield. Dietz ignored the bullet and the ones that followed as she slid the SUV into a 180 and slammed it into drive. Several more bullets shattered the back glass as the SUV lunged forward down the moderately steep mountain road.
The vampire breathed a sigh of relief as she rounded a curve and the bullets stopped. She was home free now. Dietz pulled out her cell phone and divided her attention between the road and dialing, but stopped suddenly when she spotted something in the road ahead.
"What the fuck?" she screamed in dismay as the female test subject appeared in middle of the road with a sword. "Fine then, bitch, if that's the way you want it..."
Dietz pressed down harder on the gas and aimed the SUV right at the girl.
Motoko smirked evilly as the SUV bore down on her. The vampire bitch obviously had no idea who she was dealing with.
"Secret technique! Evil Splitting Sword!" Motoko shouted, bringing her sword down and releasing a burst of ki energy.
The energy hit the SUV when it was about twenty feet away from Motoko, splitting the vehicle cleanly in half lengthwise. The two halves split apart and passed to either side of the swordswoman, continuing down the road for another thirty feet before exploding violently.
"Whoa, awesome technique," Ranma complimented as he appeared beside Motoko.
"Indeed," Motoko replied calmly as she sheathed her sword. "Problem solved."
Just then, a scream was heard from the flaming wreckage. Ranma and Motoko whirled around to see a flaming figure stagger out of the conflagration only to stumble and fall after a few feet. The pair watched solemnly as the body was soon consumed to ash.
"Damn..." Ranma breathed. Sure he wanted to exterminate the bloodsucking freaks that had killed his friends and turned him in to a super-version of them, but being burned alive seemed like a horrible way to die.
"Yeah..." Motoko agreed, experiencing similar qualms on the subject.
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(Posted Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:47)
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