Ranma glanced around where she crouched behind her makeshift wall, trying to grow eyes in the back of her head — her enemy was getting too clever by half, and she had to be careful or they’d nail her again. Taking a chance, she briefly lifted her head above the top for a quick scan across the enemy positions before ducking back down, exulting. Yes! She’d caught movement on her right flank, they’d be making a rush soon, and this time she’d be ready for them!
Peeking around the end of her wall, the redhead grinned at the sight of four small heads bobbing as the children crawled toward her through the snow, including Kat. Cackling, Ranma rose to her feet, projectiles in hand — and shouted as half a dozen snowballs hit her in the back, dropping her own snowballs as the rules called for. Those little hellions did it to her again!
Seeing her snowballs fall, the four children in front of her leapt to their feet and dashed forward, shouting improvised battlecries as they closed the distance to Ranma’s snowfort to hurl their own snowballs at point blank range before she had time to stoop and pick up her own ammo.
“Okay, okay, you got me — hot chocolate for everyone, like I promised,” she said, laughing, and fixed her grinning half-sister with a mock-stern scowl. “You came up with that little plan, didn’t you?” she demanded.
Kat nodded, happy grin unshakeable.
“Well you’re getting sneaky — good for you!” Ranma complimented, matching her grin. “Now, let’s go!”
The children all cheered, and as their smiling mothers or minders watched, the small mob hauled the ponytailed redhead in the direction of the booth selling hot drinks and snacks to the park’s visitors, Ranma unconsciously rubbing the bracer locking the curse that she was wearing underneath her thick jacket.
Half an hour later, Ranma was swooping back and forth through the chilly air on a swing, holding Kat in her lap with one hand as her little sister squealed with glee, yelling, “Higher! Higher!” each time they peaked going forward. “Do the spin!” the little brunette shouted.
Ranma thought of the last time they’d done this, when she’d let go of the swing when they’d gotten as high as they could reach, arcing away and managing two flips with Kat in her arms before a perfect landing on the ground — now, that had been getting the most out of her Rhythmic Gymnastics training! But then she remembered the horrified expressions of the adults around them afterward. Looking around at the other people enjoying the park during their next swing, she reluctantly shook her head. “Sorry, Kitten, we don’t want to scare the grownups too much — they might complain to your mothers, and then we might not be able to keep spending these afternoons together. In fact, it’s probably about time I got you home. I’m surprised your Momma Jenny hasn’t called.”
“Awww, do we hafta?” Kat whined.
Ranma laughed. “Yes, Kitten, we ‘hafta’,” she replied even as she continued scanning those around them ... maybe if enough adults weren’t paying attention she could give her sister a treat —
The redhead’s heart froze. There were an unusual number of Japanese around ... and they were all male, young, and if there’d been a corresponding number of Japanese kids around they’d have been part of the snowball fight. Normally Ranma wouldn’t have worried, he could handle any number of punks and thugs any day ... but Kat was with her, they’d grabbed Deborah Manning and all she’d done was date the man they’d murdered, and there were men out there that preferred little girls.... Okay, Ranma, don’t panic. The guys at the park had guns, these guys probably do, too. So first, let’s get a lot of attention, get this away from the kids, get Kat hidden ... okay, you can do this.
“Kitten, we’re going to get that spin after all, get ready,” the redhead whispered in her sister’s ear as they dropped down in the backswing. Kat twisted to hug Ranma around the neck as they swung back, then they were dropping forward, sweeping up ... up ... up ... and Ranma let go of the swing’s side chain, pushed off from the seat as they arced, spun forward once ... twice as Kat shouted “Wheee!” in her ear, and then the redhead’s knees flexed as the pair landed. The brunette was laughing excitedly as Ranma lowered her to her feet and looked around at the shocked expressions on the faces of the adults. Good, they’re paying attention.
“Young lady, that was incredibly irresponsible,” one matronly woman nearby said sternly. “You could have been hurt!”
“Not as good as I am,” Ranma said with a smirk, apparently ignoring the Japanese man with his hands in his coat pockets standing nearby. As one hand started to slide out of its pocket, she continued, “Hey, Kat, what do you say we take a walk through the woods before heading home?”
“Sure, and you can show me some more moves like yesterday!” Kat enthused.
Ranma grinned. “You’re on!” Okay, everybody’s watching when we head off, let’s see if those guys follow us now.
The pair walked away from the playground toward the nearby patch of woods. As they stepped past the first of the trees, Ranma glanced over her shoulder. Damn! The men she’d noticed were following them, spreading out as they went. Keep an even pace, don’t let them know you’ve seen them....
“Katherine, we’re being followed by bad men,” she said quietly. “No, don’t look back,” she added hastily as the child started to turn around. “I’m going to toss you up into one of the trees. I want you to sit on a branch next to the trunk and don’t move while I keep going, so the punks will follow me. Stay there and don’t make a sound unless you hear me calling for you or see a cop. Okay?”
Kat nodded jerkily, and Ranma swept her up in her arms without breaking stride and looked around — okay, the thugs couldn’t see them, there was a nice big tree up ahead and to the side.... She angled to pass beneath the tree, glanced up, There’s a nice, wide branch. She stopped, legs still spread as if she was walking, gripped her little sister under her armpits and tossed her up ... and sighed in relief as Kat caught the branch and scrambled up to sit against the trunk, over twenty feet off the ground.
As soon as Kat was secure, Ranma softly called up, “Remember, be vewwy vewwy quiet!”
Kat giggled. “Right, ‘cause you’re hunting ‘wabbits’.”
Ranma grinned up at her and walked away while fishing in her coat’s breast pocket and glancing around ... good, her trail through the fresh snow looked like she’d walked past Kat’s tree without a pause.
Pulling out her cell phone, she typed in the speed dial number Sergeant Amado had insisted on.
Behind her, Kat slowly pulled the rock she confiscated from one of her playmates before the boy could build a snowball around it out of her pocket and held it in her lap.
Sergeant Amado was not a happy man. While DarkAngel’s “anonymous” handover of Bluejay’s inadvertent eavesdropping had been welcome, it had also vastly expanded the hunt for Deborah Manning, and presumably the kidnappers and eventual murderers of the Stanson sisters, from focusing on one particular faction of the yakuza to “focusing” on all the factions but one. That had meant more resources, and that someone had to handle coordinating everything. And he purely hated deskwork.
Sighing, he put aside a singularly uninformative report of the patchy surveillance they’d managed of the Hinagawa-kai. Now there was a likely prospect for replacing the Miyamiji-kai as the prime suspect — the largest and perhaps most powerful yakuza clan in the world, and the weakest in Hudson City. That had to grate on their nerves. Unfortunately, that very obviousness also made them a prime fall guy for some other clan — and his cell phone went off.
He quickly dug around in his suit coat pocket for the phone, eyebrow rising at the sound and a seed of worry awakening — that particular ringtone was assigned to his “might be in trouble” list, and ... pulling out the phone and checking the number, his other eyebrow rose to join the first, along with that seed of worry exploding into a full-grown bush. It was Ranma, and there was no way that girl would be calling him for a friendly chat. He hit the accept button. “Sergeant Amado speaking.”
“Sergeant, this is Ranma.” The sergeant frowned at how hard it was to hear the redhead — she had to be whispering. “I’m at LeMastre Park with Kat, and —”
“You mean Katherine Danville, Stacy’s daughter?”
“Yeah, her. Some Japanese guys showed up, maybe half a dozen or so, and followed us into the woods. I figure they probably have guns so I’ve got Kat up a tree out of sight, and I’m going to be playing cat and mouse in a minute. Thought you’d like to send some cops to pick them up when I’m done.”
Amado shivered. It had to be his imagination, given how quietly Ranma was speaking, but he would have sworn her voice was cold enough freeze the phones. “Remember, no killing if you can avoid it,” he warned. “Where in the park are you?”
“The woods east of the playgrounds on the west side, just north of the zoo,” Ranma replied, and the phone went dead.
It was only after he was in a police car heading for the park at top speed, siren howling, that Sergeant Amado considered the incongruity of telling a teenage girl being hunted by half a dozen armed men not to kill anyone.
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(Posted Fri, 19 Aug 2011 05:00)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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