In an emergency conference meeting, government officials, military representatives and company managers were viewing the solution to their current problem. Since the solution was coming from Genom, they had some understandable misconceptions about the black clad figure shown leaping several stories in their demonstration footage. “Although it is understandable gentleman, Operative Füma is not an adroid, cyborg, or otherwise technologically empowered.”
Shifting the display to a series of still photos showing the suit with a man in and it somewhat deflated looking without someone in it, it was obviously mostly fabric. “The suit isn’t a new type of power armor either, it’s just a blend of rather standard body armor with the sort of high tech fabric modern mountain climbers wear to survive the elements.”
The Genom representative switched to a photo of the black-clad figure with his lower face unmasked to munch on a candy bar. “No gentleman, although supplied with good equipment, most of it is purchasable on the open market, Operative Füma is just a very interesting high school martial artist in a modern ninja suit.”
At that the representative of Vector Industries stood up to slap his hands on the table in indignation. “Are you seriously suggesting sending some high school brat playing ninja to rescue our scientist?”
The chuckling of one of the military representatives quickly snapped everyone’s attention to him. “Saying Füma is a high school kid is like saying Godzilla is a lizard. It might be technically accurate, but that sort of misinformation could be disastrous.”
The Genom rep nodded his head towards the military speaker. “Quite right, we’ve only been in contact with him for a few months ourselves, but that’s enough for us. Perhaps you’d care to enlighten them?”
Nodding, the military man took up the story with a bit of fondness. “Codename Füma has no formal military training, which is to say it was most informal. The first incident at age nine was when he showed up in the training zone for coalition but primarily US forces on Okinawa. He played tag with special forces honing their field craft stealth skills and won. For the next couple of years he returned for the yearly training exercises as one of the obstacles to be overcome.”
“Now the boy is a trained martial artists and passed some pointers along, but the men also gave him some informal military training just to keep up. After a training incident when he was thirteen, Japan and the U.S. agreed to certain conditions and gave him a codename to keep a rather embarrassing series of incidents quiet. I can’t go into details of course, but it started with teaching him how to drive, he was dared to do something, and now it’s a court martialable offense to dare Füma to do something. Just because it seemed physically impossible or ridiculous is not an acceptable excuse.”
The other military rep had a chuckle at the memory. “Is that the Car Henge incident?”
The original military rep had to muffle his own chuckle. “Mhmm, you know I can’t confirm that. To put Operative Füma into proper context, he is a young man that doesn’t have special security clearance documents to get into the restricted places he visits, mostly because he’s never stopped at the front door to check in. He simply finds where he needs to go and heads directly there.”
The Vector representative was still upset with the proceedings. “And you expect me to believe all that silliness? Why not use actual professionals?”
At that point, the military rep didn’t bother to hide his chuckle, rather enjoying the situation for once. “I wouldn’t expect you to believe, but he is that good.”
Pausing for a breath, the man began another story with a knowing grin. “As for skill, a team of half a dozen foreign assassins from a mainland group were sent to kill or kidnap him. They caught him in the bath with just his towel, and despite facing gun and knife toting professional killers, defeated all five with a wet towel and a grin. The sixth was a woman, and either fainted at the sight of his body, or was smacked in the face by his manhood. Reports are somewhat vague on that point. She’s currently in holding for security reasons, but wants to defect and join his team. Something about her tribal customs saying she’s his woman now.”
“He’s rather limited on the missions he’ll accept, but among those is rescuing women and children from bad situations, it’s almost a speciality of his.”
At that point the Vector rep jumped slightly as an arm came down around his shoulder in a friendly manner, an athletic man speaking up from far too close to be comfortable. “Can we just get to the actual mission? I’m getting tired of waiting. You can tell your stories afterwards.”
The military rep simply enjoyed another chuckle, enjoying the fond but strange memories. “Heh, I had a feeling you’d show up if I talked about you long enough.”
The mask not muffling his voice simply because Füma just happened to be a ventriloquist as well, the figure hidden beneath the black cloak leaned over to glance at the materials on the table. “Feh, just keep that woman away from me, I’ve got enough of that at home.”
Landing atop the building complex, Konatsu followed her lord as he casually walked over to a large rectangular container near the helipad and opened the door.
Inside the dimly lit small room were an assortment of boxes and a thin woman working at a small table to organize things. As the frazzled woman looked up and focused on Ranma, she paused with a frown at seeing the girl following him in the ratty kimono. “You brought a guest?”
Smirking, Ranma simply hitched his thumb back at Konatsu while walking forward. “She’s my plus-one for the mission. The spare suit is for her.”
Sighing lightly the technician let the issue drop, moving back to the table. “Alright then. What gear will she be using?”
Looking over the gear, Ranma pulled out his own suit and checked to make sure he had all the pieces. “Just blades, throwing knives, the ninja tools of the kit. I doubt Konatsu has seen a gun or other modern weapons.”
Not wasting any time, Ranma stripped and neatly folded his clothes before donning the synthetic stretchy black shorts and undershirt of his outfit.
Seeing Konatsu look uncomfortable and guessing it had to do with stripping and breaking the illusion of being female, Ranma pulled out a black cloak and handed it to her. “That’s the final layer, a heavy soft-armor cloak, you can change under that if ya want.”
Accepting the cloak gratefully and putting it on, Konatsu let her kimono drop to the floor beneath it with a blush.
Demonstrating the outfit, Ranma slipped into the tight body suit made of a laminate of several layers that made it almost finger thick in places. The outside of the suit was a dull black stretchy fabric in places like the underarm and inside of the leg, and a somewhat shiny dark gray stretchy vinyl looking material where the suit needed additional toughness like across the chest and the outside of the forearm.
After getting the indecently tight suit on, Ranma sighed with some relief as he slipped on a more traditional ninja suit over it. Split toe boots with thin soles and reinforced shin guards came up to the knee, which the loose black hakama style pants were tucked into. Tucked into the waist band of the hakama was the matching black kimono top, with a stylish black utility belt with pouches covering the waist band while providing storage options. Of course a ninja couldn’t forget armored gauntlets for parrying the many sharp objects they might face.
Outfit mostly on, Ranma looked through the selection of ninja tools to see which ones he’d want to keep and which ones he wanted to pass off to Konatsu. Of course it also gave the kunoichi time to get into her own unfamiliar outfit while still keeping up the girl image.
Once Konatsu had her outfit mostly in place, Ranma peeked under the cloak and helped straighten a few bits out before moving on to the gear. First came the ninja-to, a simple straight sword made of one piece of metal that went all the way to form the pommel with the blunt end. For a grip it was simply wrapped in cord and the guard was nothing more that a nub of steel on the front between blade and grip to keep the fingers from slipping past. All in a flat black of course. “Basic sword, you can still hide stuff in the grip, scabbard can do a few tricks, but pretty straight forward. The blade is a pretty hard alloy, so it’ll keep it’s edge well, but they can shatter if you hit wrong.”
Ranma then passed over a selection of throwing knives, stars, spikes and needles in various sheaths that held multiples. “Basic throwing stuff, I’m a big fan of the knives and spikes myself, feel free to carry plenty.”
Moving along, Ranma paused to pick up a short black club, like a night stick. Then with a grin he seperated one end as a barely hand-sized handle connected to the main body by a thin black cord. Then he flicked the main part to cause a blade to pop out that turned it into a short sickle before popping the blade again to make it point straight out like a sword. “This one I designed myself. Fighting stick, sickle, short sword, retractable cord to turn it into a garotte or weighted chain, it’s pretty versatile.” Shrugging lightly, Ranma folded it back up and tucked it into the back of his belt.
Adding a sword and an assortment of throwing pouches to his outfit, Ranma paused to glance at Konatsu. “I don’t suppose you know much about guns, explosives or other modern weapons?”
Eyes widening slightly, Konatsu bowed while apologizing softly. “I am afraid not Ranma-sama. I have learned only that my experiences are quite limited in regards to city life.”
Ranma simply gave her an easy smile in return. “I figured as much. Take what you need from here. You might want to bring spare swords too, I keep breaking mine.”
Gazing over the table, it was a bit overwhelming for the poor kunoichi. Not only were there spares of what Ranma was taking, but different lengths of swords and other somewhat familiar versions of ninja weapons and tools she knew. Gulping, she had to resist the urge to take it all, but that would have been more metal strapped to her body than her own body weight.
Folding his ponytail up and against his scalp, Ranma slipped on the thin fabric hood of his outfit that would hold is hair in place. After tucking a few stray hairs in place, Ranma considered his pony-tailed kunoichi. “While we’re on mission, we’ll be keeping our identities kinda secret. I’m known as Füma while on mission, so how about Nene for you?”
Glancing over to Ranma and seeing him putting on his cloth face mask, Konatsu paused slightly before turning to bow gently towards him. “Yes Füma-sama.”
Chuckling at Koantsu’s good manners, Ranma smiled under his mask as he slipped on his own cloak along with a mostly white face-mask. With the recent popularity of ninja in anime and manga and it being Japan, Ranma could actually get away with cosplaying for most of his layers. In designing his outfit he’d actually gone for that look with each layer, plus the extra cool factor.
Fully dressed, Ranma paused to look over Konatsu’s choices. “Well, finish getting ready. I’m gonna go and introduce myself. I gotta feeling some idiot’s talking about me.”
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(Posted Mon, 18 Apr 2011 08:15)
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