Akane jerked awake in her seat in the jet airliner as a hand lightly shook her shoulder, barely restraining herself from knocking the hand away.
“Excuse me, miss, but we will be landing at Los Angeles in a moment,” the apologetic flight attendant the hand belonged to said. “You need to return your seat to an upright position and refasten your seatbelt.”
Akane nodded to indicate she’d heard and straightened, raising the seat back up and rubbing at her eyes. It had been a long flight after a long flight before it, and she couldn’t remember how long a wait between them — and the fact that she hadn’t heard any news from either Nerima or Hudson City didn’t mix well with the fact that she hadn’t been sleeping well even before she left Nerima. Noticing that the stewardess was still there she refastened her seat belt
As the young woman smiled her thanks and moved on to the next passenger, Akane looked out the window. They were still over water, it would be awhile yet. She just hoped whoever was waiting for her when she got off the plane knew how to speak Japanese, she was finding that her high school English hadn’t prepared her as well as she’d expected.
{Thank you so much for your help, I would have been lost without you,} Akane said to the honeymooning couple on the way to Disneyland, very happy that they were actually from Japan and not fourth generation Japanese Americans from Hawaii and so could actually speak Japanese. {Actually, I was lost without you!}
{We were happy to help, Nakadan-san} the new husband replied, {Good luck with your new school.}
{Thank you, and to you, too, have fun at Disneyland.} A grateful Akane hastily made her farewells to the couple and hurried off down the concourse toward the terminal for her next flight. Now that she was away from the honeymooners, her nervousness at being alone was rapidly transforming into anger at being alone — which was both why she failed to recognize her assumed name for the trip when it was called out, and why the owner of the hand that caught her elbow had that elbow slammed into his midriff.
Fortunately for the stranger, the angle was bad and momentum almost nonexistent, so he only stumbled back, bent over and wheezing, rather than getting knock back through the crowd around them and into the nearest wall with ruptured organs. Looking at the way the people around them were staring at the abrupt confrontation, a few of the men and one woman looking ready to step forward to protect the teenaged female half of the scuffle, he forced himself to straighten and turn to Akane. “My apologies, Ms. Nakadan. You weren’t answering my calls, but I should have known better than to grab your elbow like that. Good hit, by the way.”
“Ah. You are ... person ... to meet me?” Akane asked carefully, reviewing every word to make sure it came out right in English and reflecting that she would have to reevaluate Xian Pu’s bimbo status — she had to sound just like that purple-haired menace.
“Yes, I’m David Jackson. I was delayed by an accident on the freeway and missed you at the terminal — of course, this flight actually arrived on schedule. ” Even as he appeared completely focused on the Japanese teenager, Jackson surreptitiously assessed the crowd and was satisfied — those ready to intervene had relaxed along with the girl they had been ready to defend, and a number of chuckles had risen at his comments. Security wasn’t going to be showing up. “Would you prefer to speak Japanese?” he asked, and hid a smile at Akane’s obvious relief.
{Yes, thank you! I thought I knew English from school, but ...}
{But studying a language and actually using it are very different propositions, I know. Come this way, please.} Jackson discreetly observed Akane’s tired eyes, slumped shoulders, the slight tremor of her hands, and decided to keep the conversation light. {How was your flight?}
Akane relaxed at the harmless conversation, even as her frustration grew at her inability to ask for news — her contact at the airport in Australia had shut down her attempt to ask, quietly saying that they couldn’t discuss it in public. So she simply followed her new minder, pulling her single carry-on on its wheels, until she noticed the direction they were headed. {Where are we going?} she asked. {We just passed the turn to my next flight.}
Jackson glanced over at the suddenly tense girl and sighed. {There’s been a change of plans, your arrival in Hudson City will be delayed.}
{What! Why? !} Akane demanded, slamming to a halt.
Realizing his charge was no longer following him, Jackson turned back. Considering the way Akane was abruptly ready for combat, he reluctantly decided at least some discussion couldn’t wait for complete privacy — he would simply have to hope that no one that could overhear could speak Japanese. {Ranma told you about what happened to her when she arrived in Hudson City?} he asked. At Akane’s jerky nod, he continued, {Well, things have ... heated up, and Ranma’s getting a lot of attention from the press. We thought you’d prefer to have Ranma help you settle in, and right now it’s not possible to do that quietly. There’s a private jet waiting to take you to Millennium City, with a TV and some recorded news programs to bring you up to speed.}
Akane stared at him suspiciously, but finally nodded and started forward again.
Her suspicion lasted until they reached their destination, and she found herself gaping at the “private jet” waiting for her on the tarmac, one even a native of Japan could recognize — the rounded wedge-shaped, backswept-winged primary transportation of the superteam that had over the previous decade grown to become the most famous in the world, the Champions. {That’s ... that’s ...}
{The V-Jet, yes,} Jackson finished. {At mach ten, we’ll be in Millennium City in less than an hour.}
As perhaps the most famous jet in the world taxied down the runway, Jackson brought up the first of the recorded news stories of the attack on Ranma and a child at a LeMastre Park, and suddenly where Akane was headed wasn’t nearly as important as where she wasn’t.
Nakamura Hideo, chief oyabun of the Sawakiri-gumi in Hudson City newly returned from Japan, ignored his jet lag and sat stolidly, watching as Morita was ushered into the small conference room in the Sawakiri-gumi’s headquarters in Hudson City. He kept his face expressionless, not allowing his distaste for the man joining him to show. Morita was a pig, and a wasteful one. The brutal treatment of the Western women he took into his own “service” inevitably broke them, and once he discarded them for new toys they never lasted long in whatever brothel they ended up in. But he was a useful pig, and certainly had done as fine a job as the Sawakiri-gumi’s mole in the Miyamiji-kai as circumstances allowed.
Morita started at the sight of the top-ranked leader of the Sawakiri-gumi in Hudson City waiting for him, bowed deeply, then when given handwaved permission took a seat across from his superior. Nakamura continued to gaze expressionlessly at him for a long minute before asking in their native Japanese, “You have seen the news reports of the attack you ordered on Saotome Ranma and Dansville Katherine?”
Morita nodded. “Yes, I have.”
Nakamura maintained his inscrutability for a moment, before allowing a hint of approval to show, tapping the folder on the table in front of him. “You have done as well as could be expected,” he said. “The attack itself was a complete failure, but seems to have accomplished its goal of focusing the attention of the police back on the Miyamiji-kai. Our sources inside the department say that the sergeant immediately in charge of the investigation has protested, saying that the attack is simply more of the same and changes nothing, but he has been overruled — the attack has cast doubt on the word from this ‘Bluejay’ of the Miyamiji-kai’s innocence in this matter.” He shrugged faintly. “Ridiculous, of course, but they are finding no leads anywhere else they are looking and the public pressure to ‘do something’ must be getting intense.
“Furthermore, the attack revealed something else important — just how well trained a martial artist Ranma is.”
He paused, and after a moment Morita hesitantly asked, “I don’t understand. True, from the reports the fight was brutally one-sided, but I don’t see why that is of concern to us. The attack on her has served its purpose, after all, there is no need to engage her again. And if we do not engage her, then she is no threat to us.”
“True, but what about her brother — her clone brother, if our police sources are correct? He has to be as skilled as she is if not more, and the Miyamiji-kai gurentai you ordered to search for him were unable to find a hint of his existence.”
Morita stiffened in his chair as a spike of fear shot through him, then was barely able to keep his shame off his face as his superior’s gaze sharpened. “No, they — I — failed,” he agreed.
Nakamura let the moment stretch before finally speaking. “No blame for that failure, the Sawakiri-gumi gurentai had no more success and greater resources. Nor have the police. But the fact that he has vanished completely in a city he doesn’t know means that someone is helping him. If it was some random stranger taking mercy on a lost and bereaved boy then there is no danger to our plans, but I find that unlikely — in that case, the authorities would have been contacted once it was clear they weren’t charging him with anything. No, most likely there is another player, perhaps one of the vigilantes that infest this place. And if that is the case, we will be facing him later.”
“I see,” Morita mused, quickly shuffling through the various vigilantes that called Hudson City home. “Going by location, I’d say DarkAngel is the most likely of the known vigilantes to run into the original Ranma — LeMastre Park is part of the territory she most commonly operates in — but the sheer viciousness with which the clone Ranma put down the attack on her and the child doesn’t fit well with DarkAngel’s usual ... delicacy.”
Nakamura considered his subordinate’s words for a moment, then glanced over his shoulder at the bodyguard he had brought from Japan — not a member of the clan, but the sheer lethality of the city’s vigilantes had made acquiring the services of someone with more than the usual yakuza’s fighting skills seem necessary, even one as young as Kumon Ryu. Though something about the young man had changed when he’d heard the Saotome name, made him more ... intense? Focused? Perhaps there was some history there.... “Kumon-kun, from the police records and news reports I gave you, would you say that the damage Ranma inflicted on the Miyamiji-kai gurentai was deliberate?”
“Absolutely,” Kumon responded instantly. “If they had managed to catch her at range and use their pistols they might have had at chance, but the way she got up close — no, they had no chance at all. I doubt she broke a sweat.”
“Which also means that the fact that they are still alive was her decision, as well?” Nakamura asked.
Kumon nodded. “Yes, that as well.”
Nakamura turned his gaze back to Morita, who shrugged. “An excellent point, sir, I agree — certainly, the fact that those gurentai are only in the hospital rather than the morgue means Ranma is unlikely to work with someone like the Harbinger of Justice or the Headless Hangman, much less the Scarecrow. And since the rumors heard by our police sources confirm my assassin’s impression that DarkAngel was present at the hospital when he killed Isamu-kun, she has taken an interest in the case. If the original Ranma has linked up with her and she is somehow able to trace the attacks back to the Sawakiri-gumi, we’ll be seeing him.”
Nakamura nodded, then glanced back at Ryu. “Kumon-kun, from the video we showed you, could you defeat DarkAngel?”
“Yes,” Ryu replied. “She has training, but not to my level.”
“And Ranma?”
“Ryu frowned thoughtfully. “I can’t say. Certainly his father, the man that trained him, was one of the best. But that doesn’t mean the training took, and the gurentai his clone took down wouldn’t be skilled enough give a decent measure — DarkAngel could have done as well, easily. But however good he is, if he isn’t willing to kill I can slow him down — a lot.”
“Very well, if Ranma joins DarkAngel in an attack here, he is to be your primary target.” Nakamura turned his focus back to Morita. “Now, tell me of your personal impressions of Miyamiji Junzo, and the top leaders of the Miyamiji-kai here in Hudson City immediately under him....”
Chrysanthemum sighed with relief as she walked through the exit gate from her flight from Las Vegas. The second flight had been shorter than the Tokyo-Las Vegas leg of her trip, but no less tiring — especially since she had been travelling incognito and so flying commercial rather than the first class accommodations that her membership in Japan’s premier superhero team would have given her.
She smirked a little as she collected her baggage, thinking of her teammate Zodiac’s mild envy of her ability to just fade into a crowd or get everyone’s attention with just a shift in attitude, but firmly reminded herself that this time that change came with a false name. Okay, first drop my luggage off at my hotel room, then a quick trip to Danville Stacy’s apartment to see what Ranma and DarkAngel have been up to since Genma-san was killed, she thought. Stacy was not going to be happy to see her, but she could live with that. Nabiki had been right — Japan owed a debt to the murdered sisters, and she was here to help pay it whether DarkAngel liked it or not.
Once again, the brunette martial artist decided that her decision to have a public identity rather than a secret one had been the right choice — true, it made it somewhat more difficult to just relax and have fun in public, but she couldn’t be blindsided the way DarkAngel was about to be. Chrysanthemum had been shocked at how easy it had been to figure out that Danville Stacy was DarkAngel once they had two points of contact — Genma and DarkAngel, and Ranma and Stacy.
But that’s something only martial artists familiar with Genma’s style are likely to pick up on, and the number that can pick it up is going to fall off now that he’s dead. She glanced at her watch as she strode toward the taxi pickup. It looked like if perhaps she’d have time for a short nap before her visit.
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(Posted Sun, 26 Feb 2012 06:05)
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