[FFML] [Fanfic][Ranma / X-COM] The Road to Cydonia Chapter 20

[Justin Wagner]

---notes---

Author's quick note: Takahashi's Chinese characters all have strange
names, as you've seen: Shampoo, Mousse, Cologne, Pink, Link, Saffron,
Rouge, Plum, etc. For the purposes of narration in TRTC, my tendency is
to spell out the names based on character POV. Shampoo 'thinks' and
pronounces her name 'Shan Pu' instead of 'Shampoo,' for example, and it
will be spelled in that respect during the narrative itself. When
talking in either English or Japanese, character's names will typically
be simplified. So Shan Pu, saying her name in English, may well come out
as "Shampoo." I think this is a little more consistent with the manga
and anime, where Shampoo does refer to herself in the third person
occasionally using the non-chinese pronunciation.

Previous chapters of TRTC can be found on FFN
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2314624/1/The_Road_to_Cydonia

or on my site (which also hosts a UFOpedia and Character Info)
http://www.wagnergrp.com/JBW_Website/Fanfiction/TRTC.htm

---/notes---

For six years, mankind has waged a Secret War against an enemy from
Beyond the Stars. The UNETCO timetable moves ever forward, but a new
complication has arisen as the alien forces in the Far East surge out in
unexpected numbers and with surprising fury. India and Juliet Squads
have taken the Procyon, a cargo ship operated by the alien enthralled
Sirius Group, and uncovered the existence of a terrible chemical weapon
based on Chryssalid Venom. But already the Amazon village has been made
a martyr - the first field test of a weapon the Sirius Group hopes to
use against the city of Singapore.

-----

The Road to Cydonia

Chapter XX
Twilight of the Amazons (Part 2)

-----

Written by:
Capn Chryssalid
jbraveboy at gmail.com

-----

Awesome.

She tried not to look overawed, but inside, Akane felt like she was a
kid again, riding in a bullet train for the first time. And her current
ride make even the most modern Shinkansen look like a snail by
comparison. Not only was this her first real mission as part of Golf
Squad, but she had gotten a berth in the pride of the UNETCO Arsenal:
Seiran Mountain's "Avenger" Advanced Multi-role fighter-transporter. It
was the fastest, most heavily armored, largest, and most expensive to
operate vehicle XCOM had at its disposal.

She stole a quick look out the tinted window just to her left, and saw
the world screaming by so fast it was less than a blur - it was a
smudge. She couldn't imagine how the pilot managed to steer the ship at
such a high speed over the rough contours of central China. Sure the
Avenger burned precious Elerium-115 like an American SUV, but when
Command simply needed to get a squad or six to a spot anywhere on earth
in an hour or less, or take down an alien Battleship, there really was
no substitute! Ranma and Ryouga had yet to take a ride in an Avenger;
who among the two squads would ever have guessed that Akane Tendo would
be the first among them to do so?

As befitting XCOM's premier weapon of war, the inside of the Avenger was
ergonomic, efficient, and spacious. It was a true hybrid vessel; making
use of alien technology and human design, rather than being simply a
carbon copy of a UFO. There was ample room inside for up to twenty six
fully equipped soldiers, all wearing powered armor. Alternatively, ten
armored soldiers could accompany up to four HWPs, or Heavy Weapons
Platforms.

Presently, the ship was hauling a mixed compliment: in the center of the
hold were three HWPs, all in a row. One was tracked, and two were
hovering silently off the ground. The tracked one was (she recalled from
her training and 'reading rainbow' psionic indoctrination) a Type-3/L
Automatic Tank, equipped primarily with a single heavy laser cannon and
a small reserve of mini-missiles. Both weapons were mounted on a
swiveling turret on the main body, flanked by sheets of exotic alloy
armor, especially on the front. There were also handholds on the front
and top, and around the inset floodlights. A pull-out handlebar on the
front looked like it was also well suited to towing, or for mounting
frontal modifications like a bulldozer. Several armored 'eyes' stood out
on the sides and on the turret itself, giving the internal computer and
the human handler almost perfect one hundred and eighty degree vision in
any direction.

The two Plasma armed hovertanks looked less 'human' and resembled more
closely their alien forefathers: the Sectoid Cyberdisks. Their bodies
were smooth alien alloy, and Akane wondered if the engineers who
maintained them polished the surfaces to such a lustrous sheen, or if it
was just a natural consequence of how they were manufactured. The
hovertanks didn't have the ragged camouflage she saw draped and attached
onto the normal automated tanks, and if anything, they looked
conspicuous enough to be almost taunting the enemy. A round spherical
'head' was set in place of a turret on the top of the saucer shaped
body, with a small armored protrusion that was the exit point for the
internal plasma weapon. Looking closely, she could see the 'eyes' of the
machine safely set behind transparent alloy armor.

Hugging the walls of the cabin were the fourteen soldiers under the
command of Captain Bruce Banks, including Akane herself. It would have
been beyond cramped if they had all been wearing powered armor, but as
it was, only about half of them actually were. Captain Banks stood at
the back with his armor half on, describing the mission ahead, their
goals, and the individual squad objectives.

Most everyone present was, like their commanding officer, half in and
half out of their respective personal or powered armor. Not wanting to
stand out, Akane had done the same, though she had to fight against
feeling too embarrassed about doing so. XCOM armor was a climate
controlled body glove on the inside, and she had realized early on that,
in the interests of comfort, pretty much everyone made due with wearing
only undergarments. Reluctantly, she had done the same, agonizing over
it for some time before finally picking out a few light T-shirts to help
preserve a little extra modesty. It wasn't that she was embarrassed by
her body - she was in damn good shape, and contrary to Ranma's teasing,
most boys certainly liked how she looked - but she didn't want to
seem... immature compared to the women present.

She hated just thinking about feeling like that; it would be ten times
worse than when people compared her negatively to Kasumi. Both to her
mixed relief and annoyance, no one seemed to give her any real notice.
The longer it went on, though, the more it began to seem unflattering
instead of comforting. She'd been well prepared for the actual
prosecution of a mission, and in the technical execution of it all, but
nothing had really given her a feel for how different it would seem to
be among people like her team mates. Akane hugged her chest as she
listened to Banks describe how Echo Squad would be spearheading the
attack on the occupied Amazon village.

It made sense. Echo was probably the most decorated and elite squad in
Seiran, maybe even in the entire Eastern Theatre of the alien war. It
would be their job to escort and advance with the HWPs and blaze a trail
west from the LZ to the Amazon village and the landed alien ship there.
Even though she had personally been to the region before, Akane had
never seen overhead pictures of it, or seen the features mapped out. The
Guide's daughter, Plum, had possessed a really bad map (like the kind
Ryouga would draw on one of his good days) roughly indicating where
major settlements and landmarks were, but nothing like UNETCO Intel had
pulled together over the last half hour.

According to the Captain, the plan was for the primary assault elements
to leave Seiran in an Avenger and a Lightning, eventually landing east
of the Amazon village, near a town called Dongmenkou. Securing the
village and setting up a beachhead and 'active artillery zone,' the
assault and fire support squads would advance along the main road,
clearing out aliens and ferrying (if possible) any human survivors east
towards the safe rear area under XCOM control. The area to the south was
mostly swamps and cliffs, up to where it almost met the town. There was
an old coal mine there, and the remains of a railroad station. Both
would be used to house survivors, the wounded, and to cover the landed
Avenger.

They would sweep west, destroying and pushing back the aliens, until
they met up with the northern assault forces and took the Amazon village
itself. The village itself was in something of a cul-de-sac, flanked to
the southeast and west by mountains and broken hills. South of the
village was a swampland that Intel had identified, correctly, as
Jyusenkyou. There was also a pass there (called Pass 11 on the map) that
led further south to Phoenix Mountain. The south wasn't seen as being
very troublesome, given that they were facing Snakemen (a species that
preferred level terrain), but there were marshes and rice patties to
slog through in the north.

"Lastly," Banks said, coming to the end of the briefing. "I want
everyone to keep an eye out for this woman..."

He held up a picture, made sure everyone got a look at it, and then
passed it down to the closest soldier. It would be handed up and down
the ranks, so everyone got a good look. The Avenger was designed for in-
flight briefings, and it had a monitor built into the front and back,
but it couldn't have been uncommon for commanders to take a more
informal approach to it. For its part, XCOM gave a lot of operational
leeway in regards to officer's preference and style, probably because of
how diverse its troops were.

>From what Akane had seen of the picture, though, the woman was blonde
haired and blue eyed - the typical Caucasian woman one thought of. She
didn't have glasses or any real outstanding features otherwise, but
there couldn't be many with her Scandinavian features on the ground in
the middle of western China. Akane had never actually met any blue-eyed
and blonde-haired girls or women before joining UNETCO (or boys, for
that matter), and she had been secretly a little disappointed by how
serious and... normal they seemed. She'd sort of been hoping they would
be ditzy or hyper or something like that, but the personal pool at
UNETCO was, she supposed, inherently skewed against that sort of
personality anyway.

'She shouldn't be hard to find,' Akane thought, 'Unless a Chryssalid
catches her..."

"This woman is Dr. Erika Hatledal. She's one of ours," he said that last
part with a bit more passion and force than Akane had expected. It made
sense: XCOM passionately looked after and protected its own people.

"...about five foot seven, a little over a hundred ten pounds -
shouldn't be too hard to spot, considering where we're landing. She's an
anthropologist working for the Research Division. They imbedded her in
this area a month ago because of her xeno-archeology experience."

Banks paused, let the picture circulate a bit and then continued.

"If she's alive, you're to do whatever you can to get her to safety.
I'll leave it up to the squad leaders to determine if the situation is
worth the risk, but I will stress again that Command wants her back. The
brass and the RD also want her notes, which should be in her laptop.
We've got a tracer on both of 'em, so keep an eye out. Alright! That's
it ladies and gentlemen. ETA in thirty two and counting!"

The briefing now officially over, the room gradually dissolved into
chatting among the individual squads. There wasn't a lot of room to move
or mill around, and they were all segregated into teams, so most of the
talk was confined along those lines. There was something the briefing
hadn't covered that she was worried about, though, and after hesitating
for a few seconds, Akane stood and cleared her throat.

"C-Captain!" she still wasn't totally used to working in such a marked
hierarchy, and she would have been kidding herself if she had said she
wasn't slightly intimidated by those higher up than herself (Ranma and
Ryouga not included).

"Captain!" she shouted, just loud enough to be sure he would hear her
over the talking in the cabin. "Um, one question, sir?"

Banks, who had been in the middle of arranging his gear (including one
very conspicuous Blaster Bomb launcher), looked up at her. "What is it,
Squaddie?"

"I was wondering about India and Juliet Squads," she pressed on, getting
to the root of her concern. "You said they were doing recon and recovery
in the north. Are they all ok?"

Banks nodded, and went back to his man-portable guided artillery.

"They're all in the green," he replied. "I wouldn't worry about them if
I were you."

'Well, your fiance isn't one of them,' Akane thought. How could she not
worry, at least a little, after that idiot Ranma and her other friends?

"Thanks, sir," she said, and sat back down between Squaddies Lohse and
Khan. The former smiled at her in a friendly manner and handed her the
picture of Dr. Hatledal. Akane took a quick look at it and passed it
down to her Indian teammate, who seemed to be engaged in carefully
cleaning and double checking his rifle.

"I saw one of your friends fight, you know," Squaddie Lohse said, giving
Akane a friendly jab. "I did pretty well in close combat training back
home, but I don't think I'd have lasted two seconds against him."

Akane could see she was trying to be re-assuring, and appreciated the
gesture.

"Which one was it?" she asked.

"The guy with the little braid in his hair," Lohse answered, reaching
behind her head and miming where the described pigtail would have been.

"That's Ranma." Akane smiled a bit (not in pride, of course!). "Yeah,
he's pretty good... he's really good... but he's probably the biggest
jerk you'll ever find on base. And his ego... Don't get me started!"

Janis Lohse listened to her with a knowing expression on her face, as if
she could hear something in Akane's words that had nothing to do with
the quality of her English. After extolling Ranma's 'humble virtues,'
Akane paused, noting her teammate's discerning grin.

"...what?" Akane asked, a little pointedly.

"Nothing!" Squaddie Lohse replied, just a little too quickly. "Who was
the older guy he was fighting? Glasses? Headscarf?"

"That's his dad," Akane didn't like having to call Genma 'dad' in any
language, but it had slipped out before she had given it much thought.
If she had been speaking in Japanese, she would have been sure to say
'that's Genma, Ranma's father' or something like that.

"Genma," she quickly said. "He's pretty good, too, but he's 'retired.'
Meaning he just wants to sit around, play shogi, and eat."

"You seem to know them pretty well."

Akane casually shrugged. "They lived with my family for a while." She
laughed. "Actually about two years." She could see Janis was surprised
by this, so she explained, "My dad and Genma are old friends. They
trained under the same Master, you see, and I guess they were sort-of
rivals, too."

The older woman smirked at that. "Almost like family, huh?"

Akane huffed, but didn't disagree. "That's one way of putting it."

"Sorry to butt in ladies..." Sergeant Winther may have been sorry, but
that wouldn't stop him from doing just that. He stood over them, holding
a bandolier of grenades in one hand, and a pen in the other. It looked
as if he had just come back from the ship's armory.

"Sergeant!" Lohse immediately took a professional tone, but didn't
salute. The Sergeant had made it clear he didn't like being saluted or
anything of the sort, not the least because many Squaddies in XCOM had
been officers in their pre-admission careers. He liked an informal unit,
considering discipline in action far more important than discipline in
words.

"Sergeant," Akane greeted him, and stared at the grenades. There were a
lot there - XCOM troopers rarely carried so many.

"A little present for you, Tendo," Winther said, handing the bandolier
to her.

Akane took them, but with a look of surprise on her face. "These
are...!"

"You are fully certified for both alien grenades and the AN M14 TH3, are
you not?" It wasn't much of a question; he knew she was, and didn't wait
for her to answer. "You've got one Hell of an arm, Tendo. I've never
seen anyone throw as far or as accurate as you do."

Akane beamed; she wasn't the best shot, probably never would be, but she
could throw. The number of times she had beaned Ranma in the back of the
head with a statue or concrete block or other extremely-heavy-object-
that-should-not-be-thrown was proof of that fact. Normally (especially
for Ranma) this wasn't exactly her most endearing or attractive trait,
but it felt good - so damn good - to have someone acknowledge it and
her.

"Thank you, Sergeant!"

"It's the truth," he replied, "Just remember: those alien grenades are a
lot more powerful than an M61 or HG85. That means you have to be extra
careful of friendlies in the area, even the ones covered head to toe in
powered armor. As for the M14s... if you see anything dark and fast, you
don't hesitate to light it up. We'll be relying on you for that,
especially."

Akane nodded, and Sergeant Winter pulled Squaddie Lohse aside to
retrieve the incendiary ordinance she would be using in the upcoming
mission. Akane watched them go, and then carefully held the grenades
she'd been given. She was more familiar with the AN M14 TH3 than she was
with the alien grenades. The M14 was relatively cheap, so she'd been
able to practice with a few, but the alien grenades contained Elerium,
and were thus very expensive (to the point of being nearly irreplaceable
- Command never manufactured the grenades, though they could, instead
only using those captured during missions).

The AN M14 TH3 was an incendiary grenade built around a core of thermate
(as she understood it, it was an improved version of WW2 thermite),
allowing it to burn through more than a half inch of steel, even
underwater. When set off, a portion of the thermate mixture was
converted to 4,000 degree Fahrenheit molten iron. Needless to say, it
was a very dangerous weapon against organic targets; a single lit
particle could burn through skin, nerves, muscle, even bone. It was
probably illegal for military use, too, but XCOM maintained a ready
stockpile, both for general anti-alien operations and especially to
combat Chryssalids (which were resistant to most weapons except fire and
plasma). Luckily for XCOM operatives, powered armor was effectively
invulnerable to fire (even the powerful M14 TH3), and personal armor was
highly resistant.

The bulbous black alien grenade was another story altogether.

It had more than twice the lethal radius of an M61 (which had an
effective killing radius of 5 meters, and a 'likely' casualty radius of
15 meters), and instead of a spray of shrapnel or molten metal, it
created a short lived cloud of plasma (which, coincidentally, also then
kicked up a cloud of high speed debris). Like all alien weapons, it was
designed to be highly effective in both the vacuum of space and in an
atmosphere. Even a soldier in MARS Powered Armor had to be wary of an
alien grenade going off nearby, as exposure to the epicenter of the
blast was akin to standing on the surface of the sun (albeit only for a
second or so).

"ETA: Twenty minutes," the pilot reminded them. "There's a little shower
over the area, but it should be moving off by the time we get there."

Akane looked up, surprised so much time had passed. Everyone was getting
dressed. Picking up the torso section of her personal armor, she turned
it in her hands until she could see the little laminated sticker Nabiki
had printed out for her, bearing a crossed hammer/mallet and shinai (a
bamboo practice sword). On the sides, in Japanese, were the words
'kitchen destroyer.' Of course it was just the kind of insulting half-
joke that was typical of her older sister, but Akane found herself
smiling as she saw it. It reminded her of her family, and the people she
was fighting for, and just as importantly, the respect she was fighting
for. She'd put the sticker on the shoulder, where anyone could see it.

Twenty minutes later, the back of the Avenger opened wide, flooding the
cabin with sunlight. By then she was suited up, keyed in, and psyched.
The pilot's warning: "Hot LZ! Hot LZ!' could do little to diminish her
high spirits. Rushing out with the rest of Golf Squad, following close
behind the HWPs, Akane Tendo returned to Jyusenkyou.

-----

It was a weary and ragged looking India Squad that staggered into the
rough basecamp Ranma had organized. Despite the dwindling rain, their
stealth suits (having now gone right from one brutal mission into
another meat grinder) were a real mess in terms of splattered blood and
ripped up outer layers, though all were uncompromised in terms of NBC
coverage. Ranma made sure to personally be there to greet them and wave
them in along one of the safe routes.

"Yo," he called, as they came into view. "Rough morning?"

"About the usual," Ryu answered for the team, since he was on point. It
was their standard formation: Ryu in front, followed by Ryouga (lest he
get everyone lost), then Kuno and then Mousse. That last member of India
Squad was also saddled, this time, with two other burdens in the form of
the young brother and sister they had found in Yaocaicun itself.

It was amazing that the two children had survived, and Ranma was glad
that they had done so and unharmed by the ordeal no less. Taking refuge
in a meat freezer had been damn risky, since there apparently hadn't
been any way to unlock it from the inside. Had the attacking Amazons
been able to keep their wits about them then it certainly wouldn't have
worked. It was lucky in a way, then, that the Amazons had been too
crazed and blood lusted by the Venom weapon that they'd ignored or
overlooked any target that wasn't immediately obvious.

"Ranma." It was about as hearty a greeting as Ryouga ever gave, in
Ranma's opinion. Well, unless you were Akane or Akari, in which case
stuttering and mumbling while twiddling his thumbs became the order of
the day. Stopping with Ryu next to Juliet Squad's Lieutenant, he then
asked, "Where are you keeping the wounded?"

"Konatsu and Shampoo have got a little triage thing set up over there,
outside the poison glade," he pointed over to an intact building that
could once have been both a home and a store. It was at the very edge of
town, pretty much, next to a tiny outhouse that was missing two walls
and providing only half the privacy it should have. The building looked
pretty sturdy, though, and provided shelter from the rain and mud.

Beyond that point, though, the flora got pretty hostile.

"Ukyou's working the rounds, setting up Claymores and M86's," Ranma
pointed out, refreshing the other squad leader on the immediate
situation. "Since Command wants the area secure, I figure we can hold
out here 'till reinforcements let us take that road south. I've mapped
it out, and the topography and stuff looks pretty good; we just gotta
keep the southeast covered."

Ryouga nodded. "Mousse - find Ukyou and help secure the perimeter."

The walking arsenal of weapons and equipment that was Mousse chuckled at
the prospect. Unlike most anyone else in the two squads (save maybe
Ukyou), he actually enjoyed setting traps, seeing it as a clever and
skillful part of his fighting style and not a dishonorable means of
stealing victory.

"Gladly!" Mousse said, and then spoke briefly in Chinese to the boy
holding his hand (the older of the two children they had rescued). Kuno
took Mousse's place, silently holding out his hand for the boy to take.
His younger sister clung to him tightly, probably nearly as afraid of
the men in black armor as she was the madwomen that had attacked their
village.

Once Mousse was on his way, Ryouga addressed Kuno: "Get those kids over
to the triage center and check them out. If they're infected, have them
tranquilized. Then see if Konatsu needs any help."

"It shall be promptly done," Kuno pronounced, and started leading the
two children away. That left only Ranma, Ryouga, and Ryu.

"Sir?" Ryu asked, one word being more than enough to get across his
question.

"We could use someone out there on recon," Ranma said, and held out a
small device. It was Juliet Squad's 'Budd' Light - a pulsed IR beacon
used as an aid for vehicles and personnel identification and for marking
obstacles, passage points, helipads, and minefields. They had only been
given one per squad for Operation Winter Triangle. One would eventually
have to be used to signal the reinforcements and evacuation craft, while
the other could be used to mark any potential trouble spots in the field
(particularly where just describing it was difficult).

"Don't worry about the lost boy here; I'll keep him from wandering off!"
Ranma just couldn't help but include a little ribbing while he was at
it. Ryouga huffed angrily, but also inclined his head, silently giving
Ryu leave to scout around a bit. The Kumon heir seemed a little excited
about getting off on his own, and in no time at all he was gone.

After a few seconds of mutual silence, Ryouga sighed.

"How many will make it?" he asked. It was suitably blunt and to the
point, and just about what Ranma had expected Ryouga to ask.

"Well, we found eleven aside from Link," Ranma replied, voice a little
weary. He sighed, too. "Two of 'em are real bad. I think the rest will
be ok if we can get them to Chuqung. ... It is Chuqung, right?"

Ryouga shrugged. "Are we going to send anyone out with them? Command
won't be happy with unescorted civilians."

Ranma paused for a good long while before answering, "I'm sorta thinking
Shampoo."

The lost one didn't reply for a good long while either.

"You think that's a good idea?"

Ranma groaned and looked up at the cloudy sky. "She'll be pissed. But
I'm kinda worried about her, too. She's been real quiet, and her aura's
kinda... spiky." He laughed. "Kinda like yours, actually."

Ranma could see, even with both their faces obscured by their helmets,
that his counterpart and rival didn't quite agree.

"You don't think so, huh?" he asked, genuinely curious what Ryouga would
do.

"I'd say... let her see this through to the end," Ryouga said, resting
his rifle on his shoulder. "If you ask me, and you did, you need to stop
trying to protect her and the other girls."

Ranma scoffed, not so much at the concept, but who is was coming from.

"Anyway," Ryouga eventually said, after a few seconds. "Who has the most
medical experience here? We'll do the best job keeping those people
stable?"

"I'd rather not part with Konatsu," Ranma complained. "I'd rather not
lose any of 'em, actually."

Ryouga tilted his head, and the two stood in comfortable silence. Ranma
enjoyed it; he didn't have to give any commands, for once, and he could
momentarily relax. Shared command sounded like a pain, and it could be,
but there was a certain reassurance in it too. Maybe it was just the
knowledge that, if the shit hit the fan, it wasn't just you alone having
to make split second decisions. And maybe it was just because, all
things considered, he was probably closer to Ryouga than he was anyone
else around... and how sad was that?

"Good fight?" he asked, breaking the silence.

"It was ok," Ryouga replied, "Would've been great... under different
circumstances."

>From what he'd heard and guessed, Ranma couldn't help but honestly and
truly agree. Looking up, the sky continued to cry down on them, and on
the remains of the Amazon Tribe.

"You know who's really behind this, don't you? Who told them to attack
this place?"

There was a grunt of agreement - which meant Ryouga had figured it out,
too. Ranma closed his eyes; secretly, he was getting tired.

"What a fucking mess."

The two martial artists turned soldiers stood side by side in the rain,
just a few miles from where they had been cursed; from where their lives
had so radically clashed and changed. Jyusenkyou and the rain brought
back memories for them both- for Ranma, he could almost feel the
lingering curse within him straining to meet the rain and be free. He
could remember the shock, the fear, and uncertainty that he would be
able to live his life as a man. Then there were the more recent
memories...

"Ranma," Ryouga said, finally. It was time to get back to the present,
and leave the reminiscing to old men; they had more immediate concerns.

"Yeah," Ranma agreed. He could feel it, too. There was something bad
approaching. The sniper rifle in his hands suddenly seemed surprisingly
small and inadequate. But at the same time, and as cliche as it was,
Ranma knew he had team members and friends that he could count on,
absolutely, one hundred percent.

"Come on, P-chan. I'll show you where I want to set up the fire teams."

"Don't call me, P-chan, Ranko."

They both chuckled at the old names, from their old, easy going lives.
Normally either one would have rankled, or gotten confrontational ('who
are you calling P-chan/Ranko?"), but now concerns like that seemed so
pointlessly trivial. It helped that Ryouga's worst memories had been
wiped away along with his curse. Yes: all things considered, Ranma
figured they could both afford to laugh at each other's expense, in that
all too brief and pleasant moment between battles.

It was something they'd earned.

-----

"Do you know these children, woman?"

Lin Ke wiped away the tears from the little girl that had just jumped
into her arms. By the sound of this swordsman's voice, she could guess
he was male, and she had to resist the impulse to kick him for not
immediately rushing the two children he had been escorting out of the
rain sooner. After all they had to have been through, they would be
especially vulnerable to catching something out here.

"I do, yes," Link answered, picking up the pace as she led him to the
makeshift medical hut Mr. Konatsu had set up. He didn't seem to be in
any particular rush, and trailed behind as he continued to walk at a
leisurely pace. The rain didn't bother him one bit, sheltered as he was
behind his strange battle clothes or dogi or whatever it was.

As they entered, Konatsu raised his head from the table where he had set
out most of the medical equipment. Most of it was beyond Lin Ke's
training or experience. She had been well trained in the preparation of
herbal medicines (and poisons, though Pink was her superior there), and
in some holistic remedies as well, and she had even picked up and
learned how to use some modern city-type equipment over the last year.
Coming back from Japan had proven a golden opportunity to look into the
sort of things people learned in modern medical schools; she was much
more interested in the outside world in that respect than her twin
sister was. But the things Konatsu had unpacked...

"Ah!" Konatsu said, motioning them over while he retrieved a few things
from the table. "Tatewaki-san! These must be the children you found."

Behind Lin Ke, Kuno nodded half heartedly.

"They've been very quiet and well behaved," he observed. Even Lin Ke
could see what he was inferring: 'they probably don't have the Madness
Disease.'

Lin Ke led the two children over to Konatsu, while he told his comrade
(this 'Tatewaki-san') to wait by the door. The brother, who was walking
on his own, boldly approached Konatsu and asked what was happening; he
could see many of the wounded lying nearby on the floor with some
quickly salvaged dry blankets. Unfortunately, as Lin Ke had learned
herself, Konatsu didn't speak any proper Chinese. She answered instead,
explaining that the man was a doctor.

It helped that Konatsu had taken his helmet off, and thus offered people
a human face to look at instead of a frankly rather unnerving triad of
red orbs set against a near-black featureless mask. Konatsu immediately
showed the child what he had in his hand: it was one of the strange
diagnosis 'microchips' that Lin Ke had seen him use before. Holding the
chip up to the boy's finger, it made a tiny prick, just enough to draw
less than a drop of blood. He then did the same to the girl in Lin Ke's
arms.

"Ok-ay," he said, speaking in Japanese, which Lin Ke was mostly fluent
in. "Get them into something dry and warm while I check this."

She nodded, and led the two to a corner where she helped them out of
their cold and wet clothes. There wasn't much to wear, so they would
have to make do with some scavenged adult clothes. Drying them off, Lin
Ke took a moment to look back at Konatsu. He had inserted the chips into
some sort of computer, and he was talking softly into the head phone he
had taken out of his helmet.

She had her cell phone in a hidden pocket, but Lin Ke knew it wasn't
working. Somehow, it was being jammed or interfered with. It wouldn't
even start up, though she knew the batteries were almost fully charged.
Yet these people... they seemed to have no problem running their phones
and the like. What was going on? Were they the ones who had scrambled
her cell phone? The Amazons certainly wouldn't be capable of it.

"Lin Ke," the boy interrupted her thought, and she turned to smile
reassuringly at him.

"What is it?"

"What's going on?"

He had to ask a question she couldn't answer!

"I'm not entirely sure," she replied, resisting tacking on an 'over' to
the end of the sentence. It was easier to do when Pin Ke wasn't around.
She looked the boy in the eyes, and then did the same for his sister.
"Just sit quietly and wait. These people are going to take us someplace
safe."

Both nodded; they were tired and cold, and probably couldn't have put up
a lot of fuss or resistance even if they had wanted to. She knew them,
though not terribly well, since she had babysat them a few times when
she was younger. She noticed the boy looking around, and felt a pang of
grief. He was looking for his parents, and she knew they weren't here.

"Everything will be all right, I promise." She stood up, and quickly
headed over to Konatsu.

"Is they...?" she began to ask, switching to Japanese again.

"They're fine," Konatsu said, with palpable relief. Lin Ke wondered,
then, what they would have done if they hadn't been 'fine'?

"It seems no one in the village was directly exposed..." he mused, and
sat down on the edge of the table, looking over most of the wounded.
Everything that could be done for them had been. Lin Ke had let Konatsu
and Shampoo do most of the work while she ran errands for them,
gathering blankets, cleaning up messes, changing clothes, keeping watch
over the injured... She'd been able to make a few more bowls of anti-
toxin for those suffering from the poison glade, too, which allowed her
feel better for leading them into it in the first place.

After a short while, he turned to her. "Can you find Shampoo, please?"

Lin Ke bit back the urge to reject the request. Instead she silently
nodded, and watched as Konatsu walked off to talk with the 'Tatewaki-
san' person near the entrance. Lin Ke slipped out, and headed for the
outhouse. Knocking on one of the walls (it only had half the normally
required compliment) she stole a quick look, just quick enough to
confirm that no one was using the 'facilities.'

She looked around, and soon saw a muddy footprint. To her knowledge, no
one else had been out around back here, so chances were good that it
belonged to Shampoo. Following it and another in the mud nearby, Lin Ke
soon saw a dark shape of the sort she now identified as belonging to
Ranma's soldiers. Like with Konatsu, this one had its helmet off, and by
the long violet hair folded up behind its head, it had to be her.

Shampoo sat alone, her back against a tree and her face in her hands.

It occurred to Lin Ke then, for the first time, that Shampoo could
actually be crying. She froze, unsure whether to announce she was
nearby, or to try and take the situation in. Amazon women, as a rule,
didn't really cry. Not out of sadness, rarely in pain, usually only to
manipulate or trick men, who were then considered foolish for falling
for it. Lin Ke had seen some of that, for the first time, when she and
her sister had attacked Ranma and Shampoo in Nerima.

"Shan Pu," Lin Ke called out, walking over slowly to give her time to
compose herself.

"What do you want?" the Amazon girl snapped, not turning her head.

Lin Ke squatted down nearby under the same tree. Shampoo made no effort
to hide herself. She had obviously been crying, and she looked...
terrible. Even when poisoned and trapped in a cage of thorny vines, with
the walls dripping acid, she hadn't looked so haggard or so beaten.

"What?" Shampoo hissed. "You want to gloat? Huh?"

"No," Lin Ke lied. A part of her did want to gloat. She hated Shampoo,
simply hated her, even now. And she hated the Amazons, too.

"You want to pity me then?" Shampoo's voice dripped venom. It was as if
being pitied was worse than being mocked.

Lin Ke shook her head again.

Shampoo seemed surprised by this, and she paused for a second, before
guessing, "Konatsu sent you?"

Lin Ke's expression alone confirmed it. Shampoo laughed dryly and ran a
gloved hand through her hair, wiping back the bangs that normally fell
over her forehead. She seemed to struggle, inside, before closing her
eyes and sighing.

"It... it's regrettable... we never..." Shampoo shook her head,
regaining control of her voice. "We never found your parents. I... it
must be hard for you."

It was one little sentence. And it was more sympathy than Lin Ke had
believed Shampoo ever capable of. To her, Shampoo had always been this
heartless, unforgiving girl. Maybe Pin Ke had deserved a little roughing
up after what she did, but even after Shampoo had learned that they were
twins, and that Lin Ke had done nothing to her... she had still beaten
them both up, many, many times, simply out of principle. How often had
she tried to explain that she hadn't done anything wrong? How often had
she tried to explain things, somehow believing that Shampoo wasn't
acting out of malice, but out of a genuine misunderstanding?

"Was your father...?" Lin Ke started to ask, but Shampoo shook her head.

"No," she replied. "I talked him into staying... somewhere safe. Mu
Tzu's mother is there, too."

Lin Ke felt, then, that the moment was ripe to ask the big question.

"Shan Pu... why is this happening to us?"

Shampoo labored over her next few words.

"I... I can't say," but she did give some clarification. "But this isn't
the Amazon Tribe's fault. They are victims, too."

It wasn't much of an answer, but Lin Ke could tell it was probably all
she'd get. At least for now.

"What do we do now?" she cautiously asked.

"You leave," Shampoo replied, sepia eyes hard and overflowing with the
desire for vengeance. "I fight."

"I meant more... what are we going to do," Lin Ke clarified. "Now that
our homes are both... gone...?"

Shampoo almost immediately deflated.

"I..." She frowned, more sad than angry. "I don't know..."

-----

Zraz's consciousness floated through The Mind, swam at the periphery of
experience, and peered into a spectrum of a hundred eyes. It was
overwhelming, like trying to hold a waterfall in one's hands, but The
Mind was always there in the background - watching, waiting, guiding.
Zraz felt like an infant learning to slither, holding onto an adult's
hand. No doubt an Ethereal could manage on its own without much aid from
The Mind, but Zraz could not.

He could perceive the location of his terror units and his other
soldiers, spread out over the blanket of the planet below. It was a
God's Eye View of things, created through the perceptions and
experiences of more than a hundred individuals. As Commander, he was
privy to it, all the better to direct things and evaluate the situation.
The Mind preferred to Guide, and not to Command, at least on the
individual level.

The humans...

YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO

"I do."

-----

Face down in the mud, Akane tried desperately to control her breathing
and keep down the rising tide of panic. Throwing oneself to the ground
like she had went against years of martial arts training, but bracing
oneself was of little use if you were about to be hit by a tiny chunk of
the sun moving fifty times the speed of a bullet. A chunk of wall, solid
stone, shattered like flash frozen glass behind her. At the same time an
explosion somewhere out of sight shook the ground and rattled the teeth
in her jaw.

"Come on!" she hissed to herself, looking up from her prone position and
taking aim at the general direction of the enemy. Squeezing the trigger,
a beam of coherent laser light crossed the distance of forty meters and
missed its target by several feet. A tree several hundred feet away took
the hit instead, slicing a decades old branch cleanly off.

'Focus!' she mentally kicked herself. 'Focus!!'

Inching forward and behind the closest cover, she steadied her rifle and
fired again, this time at the wall the aliens had taken cover behind.
She fired twice, slicing into the stone, hoping to hit the alien behind
it by sheer volume of fire. There was another explosion, and a building
near the alien position shattered like a house of cards built around a
cherry bomb.

No shit the LZ had been hot.

The HWPs had drawn fire almost from the moment they rolled or hovered
out of the Avenger. Akane had been fired at before in practice, but...
not really fired at. Not fired at, as in fired at by live ammunition
that could disintegrate an arm or leg or burn clean through you. Tucking
in her legs and steeling her nerves, Akane remembered her training, why
she was here, who she was here with... Getting into a crouch, she fired
another quick snap shot and started to move towards one of the
buildings.

Dongmenkou had been mostly intact when they landed, but that status was
rapidly deteriorating. XCOM generally tried to eschew use of high
explosives during terror sites, or anywhere civilians are likely to be
present. The aliens, however, had fewer compunctions in that regard, and
XCOM was responding in kind, since Intel didn't find it likely any
civilians were left in the area. Another alien grenade went off around
the side of the building, tearing masonry apart and instantly turning
wood into ash.

"CHRYSSALID!!" Winther yelled over their squad-comm, and Akane could see
his tracer fire lancing out at the dark shape as it slipped out from an
abandoned building. It was fast - martial artist fast - and she couldn't
see much in the way of details. Just a blur of black and white.

"Torch!" Akane cried; a warning of what was to come. Even before she
said it, even before she had really seen the Chryssalid, she already had
the M14 thermate grenade in her left hand. Pulling out the pin on the
red cylinder, she popped the trigger and tossed it underhand towards the
dark creature ahead of her.

It flew through the air, twisting and turning, as she backed off, firing
rapidly at the oncoming Chryssalid. By pure good luck she nicked its
arm, but there was no spray of gore as the limb came off. The dark shape
kept coming, needle thin legs leaping, before disappearing into a sea of
fire. The M14 TH3 grenade went off perfectly, just as it hit the ground,
filling the world around it with molten iron and orange-blue flame.

Then, a second later, the black body of the creature stumbled forward,
parts of the hard outer shell glowing white and red. Greenish goo seeped
out from cracks in it - like the superheated insides were bubbling out
through the joints and weak spots. Amazingly, it wasn't quite dead yet,
even as it dribbled bits of its insides down its legs. It stumbled
several more feet, vicious crab-clawed hands snapping, before a trio of
plasma blasts sent it screaming to the ground.

"Tendo!" Winther said from nearby, snapping her out of staring at the
boiling, ruined corpse.

"Right!" She responded, shouldering her weapon smartly and following
behind him, watching the squad's rear quarter. They were the fire
support team for Hotel Squad and Lieutenant Gottwald. While Echo and
Foxtrot secured the southern side of the town, including the railway
station, Hotel and Golf were tasked with pushing into the main road and
the market. Bravo, meanwhile, would push in from the north, and Charlie
and Alpha would cut off the aliens from the northwest. When the aliens
pulled out, those two squads would be in position to pick them off out
in the open.

Her squad leader was easy to follow in his ARES Powered Armor; he
towered over any normal person in personal armor. The heavy plasma rifle
in his delivered death in just the same sort of terrifying package the
aliens were so used to dealing out. Akane's laser carbine seemed almost
toy-like by comparison, but it was more than lethal against the Snakemen
they were up against here. The Chryssalids were a bit more of a problem,
though...

"Tango!" Asghar Khan, their silent and somber point man, ducked into a
crouch and immediately fired down the length of the straight main road.
He and Squaddie Lohse were both armed with medium plasma rifles, the
standard weapon of choice for most missions and most personnel.
Generally it was only against the weaker alien races that XCOM used the
laser rifle as standard, and only against Mutons or Ethereals that they
used all-heavies.

An inhuman howl echoed down the street, and return fire stitched out,
burning glass craters in the muddy unpaved road. Khan backed away, and
ducked back to the cover of the side of the building they had emerged
behind. Firing around the corner, exposing only his weapon and part of
his hand, he pulled back again. More alien fire rained down.

"Prox!" He called, reaching down to his waist and one of the combat
pockets there. Akane joined him; she had the most grenades of all sorts
of any of them. Together, they tossed their grenades out into the road
and around the side of the building. Hiding back under cover, Akane saw
the Sergeant pull back his fist and bury it into the building they were
taking refuge behind. His armored fist plowed clean through the wall,
and he pulled it down with the sort of power-enhanced lack of effort one
would expect from Ranma or Ryouga.

Kicking open the last bits of wall and making an in-promptu door,
Winther led them through and into the building itself. It had once been
someone's home and castle, now it was a mess, even before they had caved
the wall in. Motioning them with his hand, "one" that way; "two" that
way; "three" cover us from here, they advanced. A few seconds later, two
thunderous explosions outside the building gave proof of the proximity
grenades' effectiveness.

Creeping up to one of the windows, Akane saw one of the enemy creatures
hiding behind an old car, parked at the side of the road. It was orange
colored, though much of its scaly underside was brown with mud, and it
carried a rifle that seemed a hell of a lot bigger than Akane's own. She
watched for a second, as it peeked out from behind cover, looking
towards where they had tried to emerge before.

Raising her weapon and taking careful aim, feeling as if she had
virtually all the time in the world, Akane licked her lips. Staring
straight down the iron sights of her rifle, she squeezed her index
finger down on the trigger. There was basically no natural recoil from a
laser weapon, only a little push from the escaping gasses in the barrel.
At the last second, her aim went a little low, and the beam of light cut
into the Snakeman's throat, dwelled there for a half second, and then
cut through everything in front of the spine.

It dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

"My first kill?" it came out as more a question than a statement. Her
blood was pumping, she was as excited as she had ever been, but there
was something missing that she had expected: that exultant rush of
enjoyment and endorphins. She felt a sense of accomplishment, of
definite pride and some satisfaction, but not a lot of joy.

My First Kill.

There wasn't much time to think about it anyway. With the death of one
of their own, the aliens turned on them, and Akane suddenly realized
that she hadn't warned anyone that she had sighted an enemy and was
about to take a shot. Given the shot-counter-shot nature of this sort of
fighting, it was SOP to say 'contact' or 'tango' or 'sighted.' She
ducked, and winced as a plasma blast blew a gaping hole in the wall. It
wasn't much for cover.

"Sorry!" she hastily apologized, as the rest of the team took firing
position and began to open up on the aliens. They weren't totally
outflanked yet, and seemed determined to hold onto their positions.

"Movement," Lohse shouted from deeper in the building. "Eight hours!"

That was behind and to their left!

"I'm on it!" Akane spun, kept herself pressed against the wall, and
tried to sight on whatever it was that had nearly gotten around them.
She saw it: black and fast, scuttling by the window in the back. Firing
into the wall, punching tiny laser light holes in it, this time Akane
didn't forget.

"Tango! Chryssalid!" She yelled, continuing to fire along the path she
was sure it had taken. Squaddie Lohse, instead, took aim at the back of
the building where they had come in. Sure enough, the Chryssalid rounded
the corner and smashed through the wall. It was quite wide, but just not
enough, forcing the savage creature to tear and smash aside part of the
wall with its clawed arm.

In this moment's distraction, Janis Lohse planted a ball of burning
plasma square it its chest. The Chryssalid hissed, a high pitched squeal
that hurt the ears and reminded Akane of a car burning its tires by
accelerating too fast. She added her own fire, too, shooting it twice in
the chest and once in its ugly face. This close, she could see it
clearly: the Chryssalid was a bipedal mass of black and black-red
chitin-like armor, snapping claws, and vicious spikes. The strange head
almost seemed to be making a face like an insane grin, with giant square
teeth and tiny purple eyes. It reminded her not just of a crab, but of a
horseshoe crab.

Another blast of plasma, and its face mostly disappeared.

"Bravo Squad's made contact!" Winther announced over the comm. "Let's
go! Let's go!"

Leaving the mostly ruined and pockmarked cover of the building, they
advanced down the road. The aliens were dividing their fire and
attention now, and the opposition was both distracted and pulling back.
Another Snakeman got caught out in the open, and swiftly shot down.
Akane hunkered down, keeping her body low and her target profile small,
as she fired down the street.

She glanced down at the motion sensor display, and saw green dots -
friendlies.

Gradually, the hectic back and forth fire died down and they advanced
mostly unopposed. A second after she started to relax and imagine that
the battle was over, a tremendous explosion - the largest so far by far
- landed in the center of the Dongmenkou marketplace. Shielding her face
from the flash of light and the hailstorm of debris, nearly bowled over
by the overpressure shockwave, she stared into the charred maelstrom.
Everything had been leveled, including two nearby buildings and the
market itself.

Of her own squad, Sergeant Winther was fine, and covering the rest.
Lohse had been knocked on her ass, and so had Squaddie Khan. Both were
slowly getting back on their feet.

"Khan," Winther called, taking a few steps closet to the man, more to
cover him from any fire than to help him up. "You alright?"

"Just a bit... rattled, Sergeant," the squad point man shook his head.
"Damn Golden BBs."

Akane recognized the name. 'Golden BBs' were slang for Blaster Bombs.

"They're falling back," Winther told them the news, since out of the
four only he was keyed into the command level comms. "Feretti and Hanley
seem to be having a fun time picking them apart as they run."

"Ben-Solomon's boys always get the easy jobs," Lohse said with a laugh.

"All right!" Winther's went back to giving orders instead of commentary.
"Lohse, you're with me. We're going to finish securing the road into
town. Tendo, Khan, police the wounded. You have four minutes."

"There's Gottwald and Hotel Squad," Lohse added, as four dusty figures
stepped out into the open on the other side of the smashed marketplace.
Looking up, Akane saw the sun peaking out from behind the clouds.

The rain had stopped.

-----

"Lieutenant Stirling! Look at this!"

The heavily armored figure kneeled down, staring at the odd sight. He'd
never seen such a young looking woman or man with such strange white
hair. Intel hadn't indicated that it was likely they'd find any civvies
in Dongmenkou itself (they would probably be a few in the countryside),
but it looked like they were just a little off in their estimate. The
poor kids had probably been knocked out for later experimentation or
something, which would explain why the aliens had stripped them of their
clothes.

Stirling stood back up, carrying the young woman in his arms.

"They look good to move," he said, and the other soldiers picked up the
young man. "Let's get them out of here."

-----

Zraz couldn't say he was exactly happy with the losses they'd incurred
pulling out of the western human habitat. The Chryssalids were actually
pretty replaceable, given how many he had at his disposal, but the loss
of trained Snakemen would he harder to make due with. His unhappiness
wasn't just from the loss of lives among his soldiers, so much, as it
was the fact that accomplishing this mission had made it harder to
fulfill the objectives of another. Sneer and the Sectoids had their own
little side plans, but Zraz's first and foremost objective (now that
they had made contact) was to hold the area and inflict casualties on
the enemy.

GOOD

Sneer was pleased, though, for what that was worth (and it was worth a
lot when he floated just a few feet away). His little Sectoids-turned-
humans had all been inserted here and there, and part of that plan
involved falling back from the western habitat and letting two of their
number fall into human hands. All Zraz and his men had to do was put up
a good fight and fall back.

"What now?" he asked.

DO NOT LET THEM APPROACH KILL THEM

"Well..."

He turned his head and glanced at the titian robed form. Sneer hovered
in midair, unmoving, while his Sectoid busboys worked around the watery
springs nearby. Zraz had been coiled on the ground, the Snakeman
equivalent of sitting cross legged, but now he straightened up and
slithered slowly away.

"That was always my intention, anyway."

-----

Konatsu saw them from afar and gently bit his lip as he counted their
numbers. The squad level chatter had died down, leaving a discomfiting
silence. Just out in the open, he could see at least a dozen Amazons
heading towards them. Unlike the ones before, these had thrown aside
their weapons, and the ones in the front seemed slightly misshapen.
Konatsu was no fool. He had studied his xenophysiology, even aside from
the information psionically jammed into his head, and he knew what that
meant.

Chryssalids.

The nightmare creatures would lay an egg in a victim, after injecting
him or her with a cocktail deadly venom. The poisons would warp and
disfigure the victim, making it tougher and driving it into a rabid
state where it would seek out and attack others. Inside the host, the
Chryssalid egg would gestate and grow, rapidly devouring and absorbing
nearby tissues and organs. Only the venom induced frenzy would keep the
host from dying in the three to six minutes it took for the egg to turn
into a near mature Chryssalid. Being eaten alive; having your humanity
stolen... it was no small wonder that Chryssalids were so universally
feared and loathed by all who encountered them.

Behind the gravid hosts, dark shapes moved through the tall grass,
followed at the last by slower, lighter colored shapes trying to keep
pace. There were a lot of them. Given that he could probably only see
half their true numbers from this far off, Konatsu had to assume that
there were at least twenty two, maybe twenty four Chryssalids, and eight
to ten Snakemen. It wasn't good odds.

Then again, when were they ever good odds?

He kept the commentary to himself and passed on his estimate of the
enemy's numbers. Ryu had traded shots with one of their scouts just a
few minutes ago; that had been the first warning. The squads had
scrambled to their positions, most of them behind defilade down on the
ground, two under well prepared concealment. Konatsu, however, had found
himself on the roof of the building where the wounded were housed. It
did offer a good vantage point, but it also left him relatively exposed
to return fire.

"Ok, everyone!" Ranma chose that moment, just when Konatsu had started
to dwell on the worst aspects of where he had been assigned, to address
the two squads in a confident and lively tone.

"Listen up!" he said, and Konatsu shook his head, because somehow
Ranma's mood was infectious. "This is usually the part where either me
or the lost boy say something cool, like 'duty is a mountain' or, you
know, like in Braveheart... Wait, how did that speech go?"

Muffled thumps reverberated amid the countryside.

"Braveheart?" That would be Ryouga's voice. "What are you talking
about?"

"It's a movie," Mousse supplied, helpfully. Everyone was already firing
downrange, Konatsu included; no one bothered to wait - they all knew
what to do anyway.

"What does a movie have to do with...?"

Ranma groaned in unabashed exasperation. "Nevermind! I want to say:
let's just stay calm, stick to the plan, and we'll all be eating lunch
in that alien battleship a few miles south! And when we get back to
base, we're all watching Braveheart, you got that?"

There were a few more distant thumps, and then a big one, tossing a
spray of red and green chunks into the air. Most of those explosions
were Claymore anti-personnel mines, but it seemed one very unlucky
Chryssalid had found a buried anti tank mine as well. Most of its torso
spun, intact, through the air like a bloody pinwheel. The enemy wasn't
just cutting through a muddy field, it was cutting through a 'claymore,
improvised explosive, and landmine strewn' muddy field, and a meat
grinder that the enemy's scout had been scared off before identifying.

Mousse snickered deviously in grim satisfaction. "Looks like I got
eleven, maybe twelve meters on that one!"

Konatsu concentrated on taking careful aim and firing, rather than
trying to assuage his nervousness with banter. Lying behind a rough
bulwark of bricks carried and set up on the roof, sniper rifle in hand,
he waited, trying to pick off those aliens not moving evasively. The
sudden silent kill was in his nature and his training, after all, and
there was a certain terrible beauty to it that he, as a shinobi, could
appreciate. The problem was that, despite the carnage caused downfield
by mines and other traps, their actual weapons were of rather limited
effectiveness.

A well aimed, and lucky, bullet hit a crouched Chryssalid square in what
passed for its face. The creature flinched, and Konatsu was sure he had
hit, but the alien simply reoriented itself and looked around, trying to
find the human that had thrown the high speed but ineffective stone at
it. The ninja genius hunkered down low, trying to disappear. The
Chryssalid in his scopes ducked down and then poked its head up again,
looking to the left and right.

Before he could ask for assistance from Shampoo and her heavy laser (the
only really effective anti-Chryssalid weapon they had) a flash of light
cut into the dark shelled monster. It whirled in the direction of what
had dared to cause it pain, or in this case cut deeply into its torso
and arm. Konatsu shot at it again, missed, and then again, hitting it in
the body. It turned and started to run, only to fall when the beam from
before cut off one of its legs.

Immediately searching for another target, Konatsu found one of the
Snakemen heading for cover behind a large rock. He fired and missed
again, unable to hit the creature before it got to safety. Like the
others in the two squads, Konatsu could be very deadly in close to
medium ranges with a firearm, if only by virtue of his speed and
strength giving him a steady aim and opportunity to strike. This
advantage faded away rapidly at longer ranges.

They had thinned out the enemy, but now things were about to get
hairy...

"Fall back!" Ranma's sounded anything but blithe this time.

Konatsu fired one last shot, and then the aliens started to zero in on
him. Burning plasma screamed through the air, and he rolled away and off
the roof. Checking his ammo, and mentally going over the rest of his
gear, Konatsu headed towards the only place he could fall back to. It
was the new extraction point, right next to the triage building which
still held the wounded.

They would hold those two objectives, or die trying.

-----

They were making good progress.

Akane's armored boot sloshed through one of the many muddy puddles that
pockmarked the south face of the road leading to the Amazon village. The
terrain here was rougher than it was on the north face, and it got worse
the further south you went, un til it merged into the jutting rock faces
of the mountains flanking Jyusenkyou. Up ahead of her, one of the hover-
type HWPs led the way, scanning for threats or ambushes.

There was still significant alien opposition in the fields around the
town, and they were often smart enough to ignore the spearpoint HWPs and
snipe at the smaller individuals behind it. Occasionally, a blaster bomb
came down on their heads as well, at which point everyone had to scatter
and drop to the ground, and hope that it either missed due to poor
guidance, or that when it went off (always where someone had just been
standing a second or so ago) no one was too badly hurt.

Being whacked by a BB meant there was an alien spotter somewhere nearby,
at which point everyone searched for the critter, and when it was found,
they relayed the position to the Arty Ops Squads. It usually wasn't long
before the alien was mind controlled and used to counter-recon enemy
positions, directing allied blaster bombs to hit enemy positions
(whereupon, Akane could assume, the aliens hid, scattered, or jumped to
the ground, praying to whatever gods they had that the bomb didn't
vaporize them).

It was grueling, nerve wracking work, but they were making good
progress.

Naturally, the armored elements, meaning those in powered armor, led the
advance. Those few with flying powered armor utilized it sparingly, not
wanting to stay overly exposed in the air for too long. Most of those
guys were up north, buzzing the numerous little farm houses and the like
in the countryside there, and guarding the advance's flank.

"Tango!" Sergeant Winther yelled, firing as he advanced, heavy plasma
rifle making one profound philosophical argument after another. Two were
sufficient. The dark shape collapsed with a screeching howl.

"Nailed it," he confirmed, and motioned for the rest of the squad to
follow as they continued. They kept low, as the aliens still took long
distance pot shots at them, most of which flew overhead. Akane kept her
focus on the north and west. Hotel Squad was up ahead and to the north,
closer to the road. Also visible, but further away, was the tracked HWP,
the one armed with a laser cannon mount.

To the west, she could just see the outline of the Amazon village. It
was, in true Spartan tradition, wall-less, and looming behind it all was
the four story tall bulk of the landed alien battleship. Akane had never
developed much of a liking for the Amazons she had met over the years,
and for pretty much all of them, the dislike was mutual. They were a
proud, insular people, either killing or assimilating those they
couldn't subdue or subordinate; strong unbowed female rivals were either
murdered or driven off, and strong males were forced (or tricked) into
an indentured form of marriage. Granted, Akane had never been privy to
the details, but that was the sort of impression and image she had
developed over the years.

Yet, they were caretakers and preservers of ancient and powerful martial
arts traditions, dating back over two thousand years. Which was why, as
a person, Akane found them rather despicable, but as a martial artist,
she couldn't help but respect and even admire them. Given several
hundred years of martial artist rule, what society wouldn't end up a
little... skewed by it? The thought of someone like Genma or Happosai
making the laws, simply because they ended up powerful and influential
in the Art, was a scary prospect.

Suddenly, her foot buried a little too deeply in a muddy pool,
interrupting her thoughts and her steady march towards the village.
Extraditing her boot with a wet 'plop' sound, she took another step
before something in the back of her mind triggered, and a chill ran down
her spine. It was as if she had stepped into a morgue, or a grave: there
was that intangible feeling of death, and of some unseen menace. This
wasn't normal fear or apprehension.

Could it have been... sakkijutsu?

Sakkijutsu was a warning sense that the most elite martial artists
developed, allowing them to do things like catch arrows fired at them
from behind. There was some sort of psionic aspect to it, since UNETCO
taught that powerful and well trained psi-ops could 'anticipate' enemy
attacks by subconsciously reading their thoughts, or by picking up on
'stray' thoughts around them. These were jumbled psionic signals that
couldn't, yet, be consciously sorted through. Only the primitive,
survival based part of the mind seemed to be able to sort through what
was harmless and what was a threat, all in a split second. As afraid as
Akane was of being wrong, she was even more afraid of being right, and
not doing something about it.

"Hey, I think we should stop or something," Akane said, and tried to
sound more convincing. "I think we're walking into some sort of trap,
Sergeant!"

Ahead of them, Sergeant Winthers stopped and held up a fist, motioning
the rest of them to do the same. He didn't turn around, but he did ask,
"A trap?"

"Yes, sir." Akane tacked on the sir there without even thinking, just
trying to say as much as possible as quickly as possible. "I've got...
well, a bad feeling, but it isn't just a feeling..."

"Hotel," Winther responded, but not to her. He was talking to Lieutenant
Gottwald and Hotel Squad. "Golf here. Recommend you proceed with
caution. Repeat: proceed with caution. ... Yes, that's right. Right."

He lowered his arm, and started to walk again, slowly.

"I hope you're wrong about this feeling of yours," Squaddie Lohse
commented.

"Me too," Akane replied, but a part of her was sort of hoping she was
right. Out of all her martial arts friends (or rather: out of all
Ranma's martial arts friends), she had perhaps the weakest sakkijutsu.
Part of the problem was that she really had never been in any life or
death sorts of situations before Ranma came to Nerima, and even
afterwards, she was rarely in real direct danger. Without that sort of
impulse, a real sakkijutsu could never develop. It literally took
repeated exposure to danger to learn to recognize it, even
subconsciously. If she was right this time, it meant she was getting
better and improving as a martial artist...

"Holy...! TANGO! TANGO! CHRYSSALID!!"

Her expectations turned, instantly, into shock and horror as Winther
suddenly pivoted, firing. Ahead of them, one of Hotel Squad's troopers
seemed to be struggling. Through the tall grass, Akane could see a claw
rising up, clamped around the man's upper body armor. Hotel Squad
became, in that moment, a free for all. Everyone started firing down at
the ground. Yet another Chryssalid erupted out of the muddy soil,
leaping at Lieutenant Gottwald from the side and bowling him over. A
third Chryssalid also burst out from cover, where it had been waiting
with uncharacteristic patience, heaving for the ambushed group of
soldiers.

Thinking quickly, so fast it was almost instinctive, Akane retrieved an
M14 thermate grenade and threw it, low and fast, into the ground around
the middle of Hotel Squad. At that range, Three Chryssalids (or more)
against four soldiers would almost surely equal seven or more
Chryssalids. It was better to take their chances with the fire. The
grenade exploded spectacularly, lighting up the entire area. The crab-
like aliens hissed and snarled and panicked as they caught fire,
momentarily forgetting about their targets and trying instead to
extinguish themselves or run away from what was hurting them.

Golf Squad showed them no mercy, and while they fired at the creatures,
Akane turned and threw another grenade at a suspicious patch of tall
grass. A blossom of fire cleared it out nicely, and two more Chryssalids
hissed and ran towards her. Plasma fire tore them to ribbons, and even
blew one inside out as its innards superheated to the point where even
its unearthly-tough shell shattered. Another 'lid, this one near the
fire but unburned, seemed to come to the conclusion that it was
pointless trying to hide, and instead took a great leap towards Golf
Squad (and away from the fire). A green bolt of sunfire hit it from the
side as the hovertank entered the fray.

"Captain!" The Sergeant yelled, plasma rifle spitting concentrated death
to his right and then in front of him, as the aliens seemed to come out
of the proverbial woodwork. "We need Psi Support!"

Akane concentrated on firing and backpedaling. She caught sight of a
trio of Chryssalids coming in at the same pace - immediately letting her
rifle fall to her side, and retrieved an alien grenade and a thermate
one, tossing them both with enough accuracy that they landed in front of
and behind the alien trio. For once, the incendiary explosion was
completely drowned out amid the conflagration; the alien grenade's
explosion dwarfed it, bathing the entire area in a tiny solar flare.

She caught sight of another Chryssalid wrestling with one of its
comrades, pincher claws snapping and slicing. A blaster bomb came down
nearby right on top of another of the aliens, gibbing it into a million
unrecognizable chunks and blowing away several tons of muddy earth. It
was the heart of madness, with everything killing everything, and Akane
had to bite her lip to keep focused and calm.

She listened to the comm.

There were no sounds of panic among the XCOM soldiers. Barely even
raised voices. Squaddie Lohse reported her weapon usage as a warning to
those nearby, indicating 'engaging Chryssalid with grenade' or 'falling
back and loading ATX.' Khan, armed with a deadly effective medium plasma
rifle, reported his position and his targets: 'Wounded Chryssalid
neutralized. Moving to team three hours.' Winther was their armored
anchor, drawing enemy fire now that the Snakemen were organizing a
counter attack and picking off the toughest targets. He said where to
go, what to do, and people moved - even Akane herself, without much
thinking about it.

An alien plasma blast hit the ground nearby, leaving a streak of black-
green glass behind. She lobbed another grenade, high, and got off a
crouching snap shot before it landed. The laser beam missed the aliens,
but the explosion at least rattled them, if not wounding at least one.
They hadn't seen the grenade, and at least one had just kept firing at
full auto even as it landed nearly in its lap. Another blaster bomb
added to the roar and tumult of combat.

Hearing a crashing sound, almost like a car hitting a fire hydrant, she
whirled in its direction and saw the plasma armed hovertank crash to the
ground. A Chryssalid had its claws sunk into the gap between the turret
and the disk like base. Another of the creatures hung onto the side
despite being on fire. A second later the hovertank sputtered,
disappeared behind the grass, and exploded. 'Judicious Self-Destruct,'
most likely. She couldn't see, but she hoped it had also taken out the
two Chryssalids nearby.

Moving towards it, keeping her head low and almost scrambling on all
fours, she saw one of the dark-shelled creatures stand up. It was
missing its arm, but like a terrestrial crab, the wound didn't seem to
be life threatening. Akane fired, ducked her head as a grenade-
explosives warning went off on her HUD (the actual explosion being
several meters away), and then pumped another beam into the staggering
and probably concussed Chryssalid. It started for her after the first
hit, the remaining black claw snapping wildly.

She kept firing, desperate now. A beam cut into its chest, burning past
alien organic armor, but it kept running. She could see the head - the
ever smiling 'face' - move back. It was a 'false face,' like some
animals had, and beneath it were two centipede like jaws lined with
teeth. She kept her aim on the body, doubting she could hit it in the
head and not wanting to risk missing more than she had to. Finally one
beam hit it in the upper leg and it stumbled, the muscle there shredded
and burned beyond repair. Another beam cut into the main body, and then
another. At last, it fell.

Slowly getting back on her feet, Akane wiped a bit of mud off her T-7A2
laser rifle and looked around. Things seemed to be dying down just a
little. She saw a smoky contrail as a missile streaked downrange and
exploded, engulfing yet more of the countryside in cleansing fire. It
was Squaddie Lohse's work, using the MK-600 missile with her M-144 ATX
launcher. The missile's two kilogram thermate warhead could spread its
special brand of 6,500 centigrade death over one hundred and eighty
cubic feet.

It was among the last few shots of the firefight.

Soon, all that was left was the clean up. A handful of mind controlled
aliens remained - two Chryssalids and a Snakeman. Since Elerium was
expensive and could only be salvaged from the aliens themselves, it fell
to the laser armed soldiers to give 'last rites' to mind controlled
aliens not slated to stay at the roach motel back at the base (aka
'alien containment'). Second generation laser weapons only used a tiny
fraction of elerium compared to the hefty clips of the stuff plasma
weapons required (and first gen lasers used none). It was thus smart in
terms of conservation to perform the executions with neat, clean laser
beams.

Akane fired into the first of the creatures. It stood still, out in the
open, and not a single shot of hers missed. It took a little while to
finish the two Chryssalids. The Snakeman died after a single shot to the
side of the head. Job done, Akane lowered her weapon and let herself
relax a fraction. She glanced over to where the remains of Hotel Squad
stood over their dead and turned away almost immediately. It was
fortunate that she couldn't smell anything outside her personal armor
and helmet. The stench of burning flesh would have probably turned her
stomach inside out.

"Tendo."

"Sergeant?" She asked, facing the man. She hadn't heard him walk up to
her. It was amazing that such heavy and bulky looking armor could move
so lightly and quietly. She'd imagined that it would be all servomotors
and generators, whirring and humming, but it was as quiet as a ghost. A
seven foot tall armored ghost.

"No one saw that coming but you," he said, and his helmet moved in a
small nod of approval. "I think you've got good instincts, Squaddie.
Listen to 'em."

She nodded back, not knowing just what to say.

Walking through the fire and still smoldering terrain, XCOM pushed
onward towards the heart of the enemy. Akane felt a grim determination
coalesce around her heart, and the sight of burning corpses unnerved her
no more than seeing charred earth or glassy craters. Most amazing of
all, she felt almost safe surrounded by her team mates, despite the
obvious danger all around her.

'No matter how many times they counter attack,' she thought, stepping
over the carbonized remains of one of the fallen aliens. 'We'll keep
moving forward!'

The Amazon village was just over the next rise.

-----

The situation wasn't exactly what one would call 'favorable.'

Everyone was down to using their weapons of last resort: their
individual special techniques and abilities. Shampoo, alone among them
in her lack of a long or medium range technique, nonetheless was the
most effective, putting her skill with the T-8A1 Advanced Tactical
"heavy" Laser to good use. The weapon was getting hot from the repeated
firings, and wafts of visible steam were rising from the sides of the
barrel.

The two squads had assembled a rough embankment to their left flank, and
with the building to the right, it offered a relatively workable
makeshift fallback point. Visible in the sky, she could see a Skyranger
craft carefully making its approach, VTOL engines roaring like twin jets
circling directly overhead. It was on final approach, and just like she
could see it, the aliens could as well. The sight of it, the means by
which their cornered prey might escape, only drove them more recklessly
into overwhelming the two squad's position.

All around Shampoo, her peers were cutting loose with special
techniques. Ranma had already unleashed the Hiryu Shoten Ha twice now,
the still twisting tornados having blown back or away the first
Chryssalids to get close enough to jump. Now both he and Ryouga were
firing ki blasts non stop from both hands. The attacks were concussive
and more than powerful enough to kill a regular human, but against the
clawed alien monsters... It blew them back and away, but didn't seem to
do any real lasting damage. Ryu's vacuum blades were likewise
ineffective, though he compensated somewhat by spamming them like there
was no tomorrow.

Mousse, Konatsu and Ukyou were in the second line of defense, filling
the area in front of them and to the pressed sides with metal chaff and
explosives. Mousse's fire based attack, the Ikkatsu Kakudo Hou, was
especially effective. Konatsu's use of wires and bolo-like weapons,
entangling an enemy so Mousse could burn it, was similarly impressive.
Then there was Ukyou, exhausting herself by firing off her new Kenran
Hinode ki technique, and shooting sticky tempura goo at the enemy like
she was some comic superhero. It wasn't bad enough that she had some
semi-useful improvised techniques in her ridiculous food based martial
art, but now she had a ki attack, too? Ukyou, of all people, had
something that even the greatest Amazon warriors had to struggle to
attain?

Something even she, Shampoo, had not been able to develop?

It was infuriating!

She stood in the back, in a protected position with a good vantage
point, with Kuno nearby in case anything managed to get past or around.
Lin Ke and the other villagers were huddled just behind them, waiting
for the Skyranger to land, screaming and praying and being otherwise
useless in Shampoo's evaluation of the situation. Ranma's plan had been
to fall back, draw them in, and then counterattack with the
reinforcements aboard the Skyranger, but updrafts and the fact that the
aliens were taking shots at the VTOL aircraft (a single heavy plasma
would easily destroy an engine)... it was no wonder things were such a
desperate mess.

She found herself once again thinking, briefly, about Ukyou... and
realizing she was jealous. She, Shampoo, was actually jealous... and of
that pancake flipping, cross dressing, crude, Japanese, hussy! She, the
pride of the Amazon village, the greatest of her generation! It just
hadn't really set in until now, seeing Ukyou use the technique in
desperate combat.

'Damnit! Damnit damnit!' Shampoo hissed in her mind. Dumping several
kilowatts of energy into an alien's face, splattering it like a melon,
didn't even help her mood. 'I'm not just a soldier; I'm a martial
artist, too!'

'And now I sound like that kitchen destroyer!' she realized. 'How did
this happen...? What good is there to being an Amazon if... if... just,
what point is there, if I'm cursed to play third string with an idiot
like Kuno? Damnit!!'

At that second, in midair, the back of the Skyranger opened wide.
Shampoo chanced a brief upward glance. The ship had to be over a hundred
feet up, still. Was someone going to jump? It was possible - powered
armored individuals could easily weather the fall, and someone in flying
powered armor could zip out easy as you please. Of course, doing so
would leave them in midair and exposed to alien fire. It would take a
real gung ho type to try it.

Sure enough, three figures emerged, jumping out of the swaying aircraft.
None were large and bulky enough to be wearing powered armor, though.
Right behind those three followed three more, these wearing the large
armor Shampoo had expected. The last three dropped like rocks, but the
first three were entirely different.

One actually seemed to float down to the ground. Another one, slightly
larger in build, wielded a weapon even larger than the 10.5 kilogram
heavy laser Shampoo carried. In fact, it looked even larger and heavier
than the 26 kilo monster Mechem NTW-20 Mousse had long since used up his
ammunition for and discarded. The third, a smaller framed warrior, sped
down to the ground like a comet, firing all the while. Only when he
touched the ground and vanished from sight did she grasp just how fast
he really was.

Together with the three powered armored figures, the new comers took
advantage of the cover given by India and Juliet squad's fierce defense
to rip into the enemy. Before Shampoo's own eyes, two Chryssalids
bounced upwards into the air, as if they had been hit by a ki blast from
below. The still slowly falling individual swept his arm to the side,
and a razor thin wave lashed out like a whip. It cut one of the
creatures cleanly in half and removed an arm and part of the upper body
and shoulder from the other.

'A ki attack?' she marveled. She had heard of attacks like that: finely
controlled and super-concentrated extensions of spiritual energy and
mental power, but she had never seen them. No Amazon except possibly
Cologne had ever seen anything like that. Whoever it was that had used
the attack had to be an Elder of the sort that even the Amazons would
respect.

Another of the reinforcements took aim with his rifle - in Shampoo's
opinion less a 'rifle' and more a hand held cannon - and fired. A beam
that was probably powerful enough to impale a main battle tank (or, for
that matter, shoot a small UFO from the sky) disintegrated the lower
body of a Chryssalid before sweeping into and across the ground,
spraying a column of superheated steam and ash into the air.

Meanwhile, the third member of that unusual squad, the one quick on his
feet, suddenly appeared up by Ukyou and Mousse and Konatsu. He held out
weapons: three fresh medium plasma rifles. The three took them without a
moment's hesitation, and contributed their own fire while Ranma and
Ryouga zipped out of the way. No one in their two squads had as much
experience with plasmas as they did with lasers and conventional arms.
The sheer volume of fire, however, made up for any real lack of initial
accuracy. A moment later, the delivery boy was handing one of the
weapons to Kuno, and then to Ranma and Ryouga.

The tide turned, and it left in its wake death and destruction.

The Chryssalids all charged and died in an unrelenting hellstorm of
plasma and mental energy. A lone Snakeman, his wits more about him,
tried to escape. He didn't get very far. In what felt like moments
(Shampoo's HUD chronometer disagreed) it was all over. The Skyranger
began its descent unhindered, though at least one plasma blast had come
close to grounding it for an undesired and unspecified amount of time.

"About time Dongchuan showed up and started to pull its weight!" Ranma
turned on one of the nearby newcomers, seemingly happy to exchange one
fight for another. "What the Hell took so long?"

One of the new arrivals obviously said something, as Ranma snickered at
the reply.

"Is that so?" he asked, speaking on a different officer level frequency.
"And people call me cocky. There's an English word I learned to describe
you, you know..."

"All right, you two," another voice interrupted, speaking over a band
that encompassed (Shampoo assumed) all their squad comms. "Stow it.
Romeo Squad: secure the area. Papa and Quebec, get those civvies aboard.
The sooner they're out of here, the sooner we can head south and add a
couple more notches to our rifles."

"Sir!" Ranma responded (the only officer level response she could hear).
"What about Juliet Squad, Colonel? And India?"

One of the men in powered armor stepped forward. He held a large weapon
different from any plasma or laser weapon. Her psi-training reminded her
that it was a Blaster Bomb launcher; used as pinpoint artillery. Next to
the markings on his shoulder that identified his rank as that of
Colonel, she could see a golden trio of stylized arrows. Given what
Ranma had said, she could guess who this was: he was the Colonel of the
smaller UNETCO base in Dongchuan, China.

"Sit down and take a break, soldier," the Colonel replied, looking from
one member of Juliet squad to the other. "You kids can bloody well
fight, that's for damn sure!"

While the late arrivals got to work, more than a few of Juliet and India
squad took the opportunity to collapse or fall straight down to the
ground, leaving back against a rock or even each other. The major ki
users were all spent, and Ukyou was hunched over trying to collect
herself. Only Kuno and herself remained unscathed and unburdened by
exhaustion, and the swordsman quickly headed for the company of his
fellows in India Squad, probably to inquire as to what was going on.
Shampoo was wondering the same thing, but first and foremost, she had
one other thing to see to.

Walking slowly over to where the civilians were being carried, loaded or
led into the Skyranger, Shampoo saw Lin Ke. She was standing by her
sister, who had slept through most of the ordeal, only waking up when
she had been moved out of the building. Pin Ke didn't recognize
Shampoo's approach, not with her personal armor on, but Lin Ke did. She
whispered something to her sister, and stood, following Shampoo as she
walked a short distance away. Pin Ke would probably hear about
everything later, but for now, there was no need to risk trouble by
talking too loudly around her.

The two stood in silence for a short while, the hot sun starting to dry
out the rough and rain soaked land Shampoo had grown up in. Behind her
were the remains of everything she had ever really known, and the only
place she had ever considered calling home. She had hoped, dreamed, to
bring Ranma back to the Amazon village as her willing and eager
bridegroom. That... that would never happen now.

Not ever.

Lin Ke started to turn to head back.

"I'm sorry."

The other girl nearly stumbled.

"What?" she asked, lowering her voice.

"I'm sorry," Shampoo repeated.

For a few very long seconds, Lin Ke thought about how to respond to
that. She opened her mouth as if to reply, but then closed it again.
Nodding sadly but saying nothing, the herbalist headed back to her
wounded twin sister leaving Shampoo alone. The Amazon, possibly the last
of her kind, closed her eyes and let Lin Ke go. She hadn't really
expected an 'I forgive you' or 'thank you,' not after all the
brutalization the innocent girl had endured over the years.

Her vision blurred, and Shampoo suddenly realized she was crying again.
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