Nabiki sighed with relief as she walked through the front gate into the family compound. She’d survived another day sharing a classroom with an increasingly suspicious Kuno. There’d been no way that Akane could return to school with her stalker on the grounds, but there’d also been no way to avoid attending herself — her delusional classmate was suspicious enough, having both sisters drop out would have raised a red flag that would almost certainly have spurred him into motion before the Tokyo Super Squad was ready.
Not that Kasumi’s exactly had it easy at home dealing with Akane, the way little sis keeps swinging from self-loathing because she almost gave those Hentai Horde assholes what they deserve to ranting about how it’s all Kuno’s fault. Toss in waiting for the Kuno attack that doesn’t come and it must be exhausting. And Father has been no help at all, of course.
“I’m home!” she called as she stepped through the front door, reaching down to change her school shoes for house slippers.
“Nabiki!” Kasumi called from the kitchen (a place, it occurred to the mercenary Tendo, where her older sister seemed to be spending more time than usual, since the Saotomes had left). Seconds later, the eldest sister hurried down the hallway, her usual placid smile belied by the dark circles under her eyes.
Scratch ‘must be’ exhausting, make that ‘is’, Nabiki thought , feeling her own anger churning in her gut for what was happening to her family. “Big sis, everything all right while I was gone?” she asked.
“As good as could be expected,” Kasumi replied. “There was a phone call for you a few minutes ago, some woman named Okichi that needs to talk to you about a loan.”
Nabiki fought to keep herself from tensing, even if only Kasumi could see her. The box of Akane’s belongings she’d arranged to send to the Tokyo Super Squad headquarters along with an address to send it to during their second meeting must have arrived and been sent on, and now it was time for Akane to make her escape.
Akane looked up from the schoolwork Sayuri and Yuka had dropped off the previous day when Nabiki knocked on her door.
Nabiki raised an eyebrow at the sight of the open textbook Akane had on her desk. “Schoolwork? Isn’t that a bit pointless?” she asked.
Akane shrugged tiredly. “It’s something to do. And if it takes long enough before I leave, turning in some work will help hide what’s going on.”
Nabiki’s other eyebrow went up. “Wow, planning ahead, I’m shocked!” Akane shot to her feet, chair falling back and her face going red, and her sister stepped back and raised her hands. “Whoa, easy! I was just kidding!” she said hastily. “Actually, it was a good idea, really.”
Akane closed her eyes, body tense as she fought for control. Finally, she opened them again to glare suspiciously at Nabiki. “Really?” she growled.
“Yes, really,” Nabiki assured her. “Fortunately, it isn’t necessary — it’s time.”
Akane’s eyes widened, then she whirled for the bookbag by her bed that she’d packed days before with what she’d need for the flight to Hudson City. “Great, let’s go!”
“Right, after you,” Nabiki agreed, waving Akane toward the door. “Say your goodbyes to Kasumi and Father, and we’ll be off.”
Akane hurried from the room, Nabiki ambling behind her. The middle Tendo waited until her younger sister disappeared down the stairs, then pulled out her cell phone and hit the speed dial. “Hey, Sasuke, I have some information for your master, but it’s going to cost him ... a lot.” ... “Oh, he’ll want this tidbit, Little sis is on the move.” ... “Oh, no, not until my bank account gets the charge, call it five times the general offer he announced.” ... “Not a yen less. When I see the payment in my account, I’ll let you know where — not before.”
Okay, that should do it, she thought as she hit the ‘end’ button and started down the stairs after Akane. It’ll take Kuno a little while to catch up, especially since Sasuke will be following us, and we’re a moving target. By the time he does, the switch will be made. And after that ... A vicious grin spread across the mercenary Tendo’s face. After that, I can count on Kuno being Kuno.
The plain if somewhat pretty brown-haired woman Nabiki recognized from her first meeting with two of the Tokyo Super Squad looked up as Nabiki approached the same table where she’d met them then, Akane at her side.
“So, Okichi,” Nabiki said, pulling out a chair and sitting without bothering to wait for an invitation, “the arrangements made?”
Chrysanthemum nodded even as an eyebrow rose. Her eyes started to lift to look over Nabiki’s shoulder, but paused, shifted back to Nabiki when the middle Tendo tapped gently on the metal table top’s surface.
“All taken care of, one ticket for Melbourne, then a bus ride into the Outback,” the out of uniform superhero said, then motioned to Akane, still standing uncertainly to the side, to have a seat. “At least you have some manners. Please, sit.”
Akane started to sit, then caught her sister’s subtle motion toward the restroom doors. Taking a deep breath and blushing slightly, she said, “Actually, I’ll be right back.” Glancing at Nabiki, she murmured, “The letters I gave you to pass out to my friends?” Nabiki’s nod was barely perceptible, but Akane gave her a wistful smile and turned away.
As Nabiki watched her sister hurry toward the restroom doors, she fought back a chuckle as she remembered Akane’s reaction when she learned that Zodiac — a man! — would be switching places with her in a women’s restroom. Nabiki had known pointing out that Zodiac wouldn’t be a man at that point wouldn’t help, but she just couldn’t help herself. Fortunately, Kasumi had managed to get Akane calmed down before her shouts about perverts got loud enough to be heard from outside the Tendo compound.
“Are you aware you are being followed?”
Nabiki reluctantly shifted her gaze from the closing restroom door her sister had vanished through back to Chrysanthemum. “I knew it would be a real possibility — I did mention that the Kunos employ at least one ninja, after all.”
“Yes, you did,” the martial artist murmured. “And he has some real stealth skills, too — and beyond into ki powers. Is he likely to tell Kuno-san that your sister has left home?”
“I can’t imagine he hasn’t,” Nabiki replied coolly with a shrug, keeping her disinterested Ice Queen face firmly in place.
“Right.” Chrysanthemum gazed at Nabiki steadily for a long moment, then reached over and touched a stud on her watch, glancing down at its face. “Tower, Baka Alert, the samurai will probably be arriving soon.” She glanced up as “Akane” strode out of the girl’s restroom, a duplicate of Akane’s new bookbag over her shoulder, and rose to her feet. “Let’s go.” The brown-haired woman strode toward the food court entrance, Nabiki and “Akane” falling in beside her.
The three stepped through the glass doors into the parking lot, but slammed to a stop at the sight of the tall figure of Kuno Tatewaki, dressed in the ancient style of the samurai’s robes that he affected, bokken in a two-handed grip pointed at them. “Hold, villains! The foul sorcerer may have succeeded for the nonce in stealing away like the coward he is with the pigtailed girl, seeking to reestablish his thrall after my hard-won success in banishing his malign influence, but you shall not re-enact his triumph! Nay, but the divine Akane of the fiery spirit shall remain here, where she may be protected from the machinations of evil incarnate!”
“Yeah, right, whatever you say,” Nabiki said sardonically, rolling her eyes even as she backed up toward the doors they had just come out of. “Of course it’s sorcery, how could any woman think you’re a delusional, stalking asshole if they weren’t under some sort of spell?”
Kuno growled, tensing, and an angry-red battle aura sprang to life like flames around him. He stepped forward, raising his bokken above his head, and Nabiki felt a stab of fear shoot through her. At this point he should have been cursing her for a ruthless money-hungry bitch with no concept of true honor — and Chrysanthemum abruptly slammed a palm between Nabiki’s shoulder blades as she kicked her feet out from underneath her. “Down!” the martial artist shouted (completely unnecessarily, in Nabiki’s opinion as her face hit the pavement), and dropped beside her as Kuno whipped the bokken down and a blast of ki slanted to pass over “Akane’s” head slashed through the space Nabiki and Chrysanthemum had just occupied and the doors behind them exploded inward to shower the (thankfully almost empty) food court with shards of glass.
Nabiki scrambled backwards on hands and knees through the now-nonexistent doors, uncaring of the broken glass. As soon as she was through she rolled to the side to find Chrysanthemum crouching beside her, somehow in her rainbow-colored, flower-embroidered, long-sleeved tight dress with slits up the sides, makeup in place and hair styled in her normal tight braids. “I know girls that would pay a fortune to be able to quick change like that,” Nabiki said as she sat up.
Ignoring her comment, the superhero grabbed at her, pulling her to her feet and thrusting her toward the hallway toward the mall’s stores. “Go!” Chrysanthemum shouted, even as “Akane’s” voice came to them through the doors, berating Kuno at full volume for attacking her sister.
Nabiki listened for a moment, impressed — word choice was off, but Kuno likely hadn’t been around Akane enough to notice and the tone was perfect. For a moment, she wondered where Zodiac had gotten footage of Akane in full fury (it certainly wasn’t from anything she had sold, and she put aside the implications to consider later). She shook her head. “No. I’ve never run from Kuno before, and I’m not starting now.” Then, as the martial artist started to step forward toward the doors, the Tendo grabbed her arm. “Wait! You can’t go out there, if you do Kuno might realize who ‘Akane’ is.”
Chrysanthemum paused, considering, then grinned as the thunder of jets echoed through the doors. “Not a problem,” she said.
“Hold, citizen!” Tower demanded as he thudded down onto the concrete sidewalk outside the shattered doors, the two inside feeling the vibrations from the Tokyo Super Squad’s battlesuited battlefield leader’s arrival through the soles of their feet.
“Is he for real?” Nabiki asked, grimacing as stunned silence fell outside.
Chrysanthemum rolled her eyes. “Yes, he really is a pompous stick-up-the-ass. But he puts his life on the line to protect others and is good at his job, and that makes up for a lot. Now, if you aren’t going to do the smart thing and leave, at least stay under cover.” She stepped through the doors and around green-enameled armored hero standing there. “Akane, get back, protect your sister!” she yelled. “We’ll take care of bokken-boy, here!”
That shook an unseen Kuno from his shock, and as “Akane” appeared, ducking around Tower’s bulk into the food court, the samurai-in-his-own-mind began to rant about how the foul sorcerer Saotome had corrupted even such stalwarts as the foremost defenders of the sacred isles of Japan.
“I was beginning to think I was actually going to have to attack the idiot to stay in character,” Zodiac chuckled softly in Akane’s voice, coming over to stand beside Nabiki as “she” intently watched what “she” could see of the battle (not much). “And wouldn’t that have — down!”
Nabiki bit back a shriek as she slammed back-down on the glass-covered floor, “Akane” on top of her. Tower smashed through the doorway, taking the door frames and what glass was left in place with him as he flew back over the pair and crashed down to plow a path through the food court’s tables and chairs. Rolling “Akane” off of her, Nabiki again sat up and stared in stunned disbelief at the showers of sparks fountaining from the long diagonal slash across the front of Tower’s armor.
“Able to use a bokken to cut through a full-grown tree with a single slash, right,” Zodiac muttered as “she” stood. “That’s it, we’re out of here.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Nabiki mumbled. She could let the poetry-spouting fool have the moral victory, this time — it wasn’t like he’d ever know, anyway.
A few hours later, Chrysanthemum walked into the Tokyo Super Squad’s common room and up to the table where Zodiac (shifted back to his normal utterly forgettable self) and Nabiki sat eating. “Nabiki-kun, how are you?” she asked.
“I’m all right — I needed a few stitches, but your doctor took care of that and most of the cuts are superficial,” the mercenary Tendo replied in her normal cool tone, not allowing her surprise at the concern in the older woman’s voice to show.
“Good to hear. Akane-kun?”
“Feedback called a few minutes ago. He was taking Akane out a different entrance about the time Tower was getting knocked through ours, and she’s on her way, even if it’s the long way around. Kuno?”
“I took care of him,” Chrysanthemum said, pulling out a chair and sitting down with a weary sigh of relief. “A few barbed ofuda in the right shiatsu points and he dropped. We’re just lucky he wasn’t wearing any armor. Tower’s still kicking himself for how badly he underestimated him.”
“So, what happens to the Blue Blunder now? Nothing good, I hope,” Nabiki asked with a smirk.
“Well, right now he’s in jail for assault and reckless endangerment, the usual, and I believe the mall owners are going to press charges and sue for damages. We’re going to try and see if we can get a competency hearing based on his rantings before he attacked, but it’s going to be tough — Kuno lawyers are already showing up, and our legal department has expressed surprise at their quality.”
Sighing, the martial artist straightened as she glanced at Nabiki’s plate. “If you’re done eating, I can take you home — in one of the team’s flashy air cars. That should finish focusing Kuno-san’s attention on us and off your family. Right?”
Ignoring the knowing smile on the two heroes’ faces, Nabiki quickly finished off the last of one of the best meals she’d had that Kasumi hadn’t cooked, then sighed contentedly. “That was good, you must be paying your chef a fortune. But I’d better get home, Father and Kasumi will be worried. Thanks for the offer of a ride.”
Chrysanthemum rose, and Nabiki rose to join her, wincing a little at bruises and stitches pulling slightly. As the two walked toward the door, Chrysanthemum murmured to the pageboy-haired girl beside her, “Nabiki-kun, a trap works better if the people expected to close it know that’s what they’re doing. You might want to keep that in mind in the future.”
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(Posted Sun, 03 Apr 2011 02:19)
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