"I really don't get this one at all. Does that mean that all the smart people are just victims?"
- Kyle Tekai

Black Dragon Productions presents...
A Guardian sequel/spinoff...
Which also happens to be a Sailor Moon crossover...

Please note that once AGAIN, ff.net has re-vamped their punctuation restrictions in what feels like their most determined attempt to piss me off yet. I'm changing the formatting to show Usagi's computer readouts in bold, but as always readers are encouraged to read each chapter on my home page rather than the communal train wreck.

All characters not created by me don't belong to me. Like, duh.
Knowledge of Guardian is required for full enjoyment of this fanfic. An unstable mind fueled by black rage and madness is NOT required, but recommended nonetheless.
Notes: Story may contain references to stuff in Guardian that haven't happened yet. To answer any and all inquiries to this effect, YES, that stuff will eventually happen.
Other Notes: Sounds, computer readouts, 'thoughts', (side comments)

Millennium
Chapter 9
The Purge

********************************************************************

"Hurry! Hurry!"

A young man wearing dark street clothes ushered a pair of other boys along into an alleyway as the sound of police sirens grew louder in the distance, spurring them onward.

"This is ridiculous! We didn't even get a chance to feed!" the pair mumbled as they bunched up their legs, vaulting upward a full three stories before they grabbed onto the edge of the roof and pulled themselves up.

The first man scowled, revealing his unusually pointed incisors as he heard the progress of the sirens.

He was incredibly relieved as a girl suddenly rounded the corner, her lips still stained red with fresh blood.

"You shouldn't have done that," he said nervously as the woman halted. "It was stupid! We can find other targets! This is no time to be killing cops!"

The girl flinched, and then her expression hardened. "What was I supposed to do? It's either kill or be killed from now on, and I was starving!"

The sirens kept approaching, and the man swallowed. "Oh, whatever. Come on!" He jumped on a wall and then deflected off of it, landing on the opposite roof as the female midian leapt straight up.

The other two vampires were crouching together on the edge of the roof, peeking over into the streets. "Dude, are you sure we can't just eat 'em? They're probably not even armed!"

"NO! No, we can't!" The oldest of the group snarled. "You idiot, that's the kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place! If we touch the cops, they'll hunt us down!"

The girl snorted. "When did you become such a coward?"

"When did you decide to throw your life away for a convenient snack?" He snapped back. "Look, the only way we'll survive is by hiding out and not drawing attention to ourselves! We have to lay low until Ran and the rest of those morons get themselves killed, and then hopefully things will cool down a little bit."

"I dunno man," one of the other boys said nervously. "Isuka isn't gonna like this..."

"Isuka won't be among the undead for much longer if he doesn't follow our example."

"I didn't give up my humanity to be hunted down like an animal!" The girl said angrily.

The young man gave her a leaden stare. "And I didn't give it up at all. It was taken from me. But if I have to live with it, I'm going to live with it as long as I can manage. If any of you are tired of this life, you're free to leave whenever you want."

They were all silent for a few moments, and one of the boys sighed as the noise of police sirens started to fade away into the distance. "So... what now? Where do we go from here?"

"First, we need to feed to keep our strength up," the eldest of the group said decisively. "But attacking random people can be problematic. Do any of you know anyone in this area?"

"What? We're going to go after people we know?" one of the boys asked nervously. He had several friends in the area who had all been more successful than he in finding romance before meeting a vampire, but as a rule vampires usually avoided killing people whom they had known and liked in their previous life. An unspoken rule, certainly, but vampires didn't abandon their memories or all of their emotions upon being turned.

"It's the best chance we've got. Then we can use their place and-"

Crash!

The sound of a pair of hinges shattering was all the warning the midians had before the door to the roof access stairway flew across the length of the roof and smashed into the apparent leader of the group, knocking him over roughly.

"Wh-What the hell?!"

The boy closest to the roof access glanced over at his friend as the vampire bounced off his hands and flipped to his feet, and then immediately turned back toward the doorway to see this new intruder.

That boy's moment of distraction cost him dearly, as he found himself staring down the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun.

BLAM! The young nosferatu's head vanished in a burst of blood and bone, and his body was sent spiraling to the side from the force of the blast.

"Yokiro!" The girl screamed, feeling fear and rage well up within her with equal passion. "You bastard! We'll kill you!"

The newcomer, who was a large foreign man wearing a trenchcoat and a large crucifix around his neck, took a few puffs on the cigarette hanging from the corner of his lips as the vampires glared hatefully at him.

"Who the hell are you?!" The leader of the little group snarled, slipping gradually into a crouch.

The foreigner didn't respond immediately, tossing his shotgun to the side neglectfully before placing both hands on a large object wrapped in dirty blankets that he held over his shoulder.

"Me? I am no one," he replied, his voice heavily tainted with a Russian accent. "An insignificant servant of the lord, a mere janitor come to wipe this filth from the dark corners of the city."

Before he had even finished that sentence, the second boy was already charging for him, his hand reaching to tear the throat out of the interloper.

Crack! The bundle came down hard on the back of that vampire's skull before he completed his attack, shattering his brain case and smashing him into the roof.

"Into the abyss, abomination," the Russian intoned, lifting one foot into the air above the gasping undead. CRUNCH!


The female of the group began to charge forward before she found herself being yanked back by the only other remaining midian.

"Come on! Run!" The leader shouted, trying to drag her forward.

"NO! Let go!" She snarled, her anger overcoming her fear. "We have to-"

The boy, situated as he was trying to pull his last unliving companion away from the apparently insanely dangerous man, was in a position to see the brief wind-up as said man dashed forward and swung his heavy bundle at them like a club.

BWAM! As the boy ducked, the girl sailed to the side, crashing into the short wall on the edge of the roof with enough force to break through it and roll out into the sky above the city streets.

The leader switched immediately from retreat to attack as the blow missed his head, and slashed for the newcomer's throat.

The Russian didn't even flinch as a thin spray of blood spurted from his neck, but instead punched for the vampire's head, missing by a hair as the creature hopped back.

"You think you can take us all on?" The midian snarled. "You're in over your head, human!"

The Russian took a long drag from his cigarette, then gazed long and hard at the vampire boy.

"Human? You say this like it is an insult," he mumbled, idly rubbing the shallow scratches on his neck.

"Just shut up! You won't get away with this!"

The gunman stood up straight, shifting his bundle onto one shoulder while fingering the cross hanging from his neck with the other. "It is not I who seeks salvation from earthly vengeance, creature. I do not hide in shadows. I do not prey on the weak and flee from the strong. My soul, stained as it is with blood and violence, is at peace. It is your weak, ashen spirit that hangs in the balance, clinging pitifully to this world."

Stepping back toward the shotgun lying on the roof, he slammed a foot down onto the very edge of the stock, sending the weapon flipping into the air and into his waiting hand. "I will release you from your torment tonight, pathetic creature."

"Fat chance, lurch! You'll have to catch me first!" The midian taunted, suddenly leaping away and grabbing onto the wall of the building adjacent to them before scrambling up toward the next roof.


Rayden Shikodan, infamous vigilante and dubiously Catholic crusader, snapped the sawed-off shotgun open and held it under his arm as he drew out a single shotgun shell. This particular cylinder was pure white, save a crudely-drawn sword sketched on the side in black pen.

With his free hand, Rayden calmly loaded the shell into the shotgun, grabbed the stock, and then flicked his wrist, snapping the weapon closed.

Then, taking another drag from his cigarette, he lifted the weapon up, aiming toward the roof and just to the left of the vampire staring down at him...

Up on the adjacent roof, the young vampire frowned in confusion as he saw the Russian man load his shotgun rather than pursuing.

He was reasonably perplexed when he saw the gunman aim up at him; at that range, a shotgun's burst would be next to useless.

Still, he was determined not to make any stupid mistakes by underestimating the stranger, and promptly turned to his right before he started to dash away.

BLAM! "Hrk!" The solid slug fired by the gun bored into his side unerringly, the outer casing of the bullet disintegrating from the ignition.

The nosferatu staggered to his knees, his eyes widening as he felt absolute agony blossom within his chest. "Gah! UWAH!! GLAAAAAUGH!!"

Within his ribcage, dozens of small silver shards scythed into his lungs, heart, and other, less important organs, having been scattered from a tiny secondary charge.

"AAAGH! NYAAAAAAH!!" The boy collapsed on the surface of the roof, blood leaking from his mouth as small fissures started to appear all over his body. "YAAAAAAUGH!! UWAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!"


Down below, Rayden calmly slipped the sawed-off shotgun back into his coat as he watched the vampire break apart.

Taking the burnt-out stub of his cigarette out of his mouth, he took a moment to crush it in his palm, and then he once again took hold of the crucifix around his neck.

"Lord, take pity on these weak, foul souls that turn to the darkness and defy the light. They are but insolent mortals driven mad with thoughts of power and drawn from the path of righteousness. May your mercy see their tainted spirits to their destination."

Then he turned away, staring at the breach in the wall surrounding the roof where the vampiress had been smashed into.

"Amen." Hefting his bundle over his shoulder, he stepped over to the edge of the roof, and then hopped down.

The sound of traffic and chirping birds greeted Usagi as she blinked in surprise at waking up. Long lines of code, status reports and generic messages (complete with an ominous Wraith Labs copyright note) scrolled across her field of vision, prompting the young cyborg to shake her head, disoriented.

She had tried her hardest to avoid judging her new abilities and qualities now that she was mostly machine – largely for fear that she would start enjoying her current form – but she had to admit it was kind of nice waking up entirely refreshed and active, rather than groggy and tired. Although she was still getting used to the little “booting” procedure she went through in the morning, it was far more convenient than dragging herself out of bed in the morning, or alternatively, dashing off at full speed because she was late.

Pushing herself off of Ranma’s guest bed – now her bed, she supposed – she promptly headed toward the closet.

Thud! “Ouch!”

After tripping on one of the many yet-to-be-unpacked boxes scattered around her new room and falling on her face, Usagi remembered that her closet was mostly empty at the moment, and started crawling about on her hands and knees trying to find the box that held her uniform.

“Awww... why didn’t I mark these or anything?” The blonde cyborg mumbled as she started rifling through one box and finding only dozens of socks.

Scratching her head, Usagi concentrated briefly and then activated her X-ray scope, grumbling some more about how ridiculous she felt using X-ray vision to get dressed in the morning.

“Found it!” Smiling, she stripped off her pajama top.

Naturally, that was when the door opened.

“Usagi-chan, are you rea-” Ranma promptly froze as Usagi flushed.

“EEEEEEEEK!!” Reacting on instinct, Usagi didn’t even realize that her new landlord had already closed the door before her wrist opened up into an energy cannon and then spat a sizzling bolt of plasma in his general direction.

Bwoom! Ranma winced as he watched the door in front of him collapse into broken cinders.

Usagi likewise winced as she realized what she’d done, sweatdropping at the sight of Ranma standing in front of her room, holding a scorched doorknob.

Then she remembered that she was still shirtless, and quickly wrapped herself in her blanket.

“........ So...” Ranma began awkwardly. “... Knocking. What do we think?”

“I like knocking,” Usagi said quickly. “Let’s do that.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Ranma scratched the back of his head nervously, then jabbed a thumb down the hall. “I’m gonna go make some breakfast. Why don’t you finish getting dressed, and then we can pretend this never happened?”

“Yes! I’d like that!” Usagi said, nodding rapidly.

“Okay! See ya in a bit.” The pigtailed man quickly turned and scurried away, contemplating the consequences of what had just happened. While it was kind of nice that Usagi didn't seem to be holding these occasional awkward confrontations against him (certainly meeting for the first time when Ranma was fondling her couldn't have left the best first impression), she really needed to tone down the lethality of her feminine reflexes; perhaps it was just him, but Ranma really didn't think that someone deserved to get shot just for walking in on a girl while she was changing.

Usagi was having similar thoughts, berating herself for nearly killing Ranma on accident.

'I've got to get it together!' she thought as she slipped on an undershirt and then put on her uniform. 'I'm not a bumbling high school superheroine anymore! I'm Usagi Tsukino, protector of the innocent! Public defender of love and justice!' Turning sharply toward the full-length mirror on the wall, the blonde cyborg admired her new outfit. 'Today is my first day as a super-elite crime-fighter! I have to make a good impression!'

"What are you so uptight about, Tsukino? Have a seat and grab a controller," Snake offered, leaning back on the couch set up in the DAPC main lobby as over-dramatic theme to Super Smash Bros. Brawl reverberated through the room.

Usagi sweatdropped as she watched Snake relax while Kyle and Tiro argued over the virtues of and drawbacks of various changes in the characters since this game's last incarnation. "So this is what super-elite crime-fighters do all day? Sit around and play Nintendo?"

"We used to have a Playstation, also," Snake offered as he scrolled through Kirby's varioius color schemes, "but I'm not willing to spend a penny of my armory funds on the monstrosity that Sony had the nerve to release as a next-generation system."

Usagi frowned and turned to Ranma, who merely turned away and pretended nothing was happening. "Huh. I wonder where Captain Takami is?"

"She's downstairs," Snake said. "She probably told us why, but I was thinking about pizza at the time."

Tiro and Kyle immediately froze in mid-argument.

"... Aw, great. Now I'M thinking about pizza too!" Kyle complained.

Tiro immediately stood up on the couch and planted one foot on the backrest while pointing toward the exit. "TO THE NEAREST ITALIAN RESTAURANT!!"

Usagi yelped and hopped aside as the three men stampeded toward the front entrance carelessly, each of them already arguing over toppings.

"Uhm... is today a holiday or something?" Usagi asked, confused. "I mean, I know what everyone says about you guys being totally unreliable, but I've been here often enough that I know that isn't true."

"A holiday? Sort of," Ranma hedged as he gestured for Usagi to follow him down the hall. "It's Wednesday."

The young woman seemed confused by this statement, as most would agree was more than reasonable. "So? Wednesday isn't a holiday."

"You have a lot to learn about working for the DAPC," Ranma chided as he pushed a button on the wall, causing the doors to the elevator leading to the sub-levels to slide open. "We need time to relax and stuff. People aren't machines," he began to lecture, before freezing in realization. "Uh... present company excluded, of course. Er... wait, let me rephrase that."

"I think I know what you're saying," Usagi offered as she and Ranma stepped into the elevator. "But why Wednesday and Friday? What about the weekends?"

"We can't take weekends off," Ranma mumbled, scratching the back of his head under his pigtail. "Oddly enough, most supernatural beings, evil scientists, and aliens either have day jobs or just have better things to do during the week, so most attacks, hauntings, and suspicious murders happen on the weekends."

Usagi frowned. "Hmph. The stupid youma were never that considerate."

"Right. So someone decided that we'd get Wednesdays and Fridays to do what we want and unwind. Of course, we've been under attack by vampires recently, so we're trying not to leave the HQ unattended, but some of us still lose focus pretty easily, I guess."

Usagi nodded as the elevator shakily ground to a halt. "I guess that's okay, then. Most of the time they're not like that, right?"

"Ha ha ha!" Ranma laughed cheerfully, sweating nervously as he peeked into the next room to search for Asuka among the containment vaults. "Well, we-LOOK! There's the captain! Hi, Captain!"

Asuka turned away from the cage of silver bars she had been looking through, and raised an eyebrow when she saw Ranma rushing toward her with Usagi in tow.

"Hmmm... okay, I think this could work."

Ranma stopped when he heard this. "What? What could work?" He noticed right away that Seras and some dark guy he didn't quite remember were with Asuka, standing in front of the cell that contained the captured vampire.

Seras decided to take the initiative and stumbled forward to speak. "Sheee, wah foun gauh vanpahr feeh dah blub, an'-" Thwack!

A fist upside the head sent the drunk brainiac spiraling away into a content heap next to the opened vault door.

Asuka took a moment to huff in annoyance at the DA's medical officer, and then addressed Ranma herself. "We've got a problem. Our prisoner is starving to death." She pointed into the cell, where Ranma could see the wasted, emaciated form of the vampire sitting in the middle of the cell. His formerly lush, brilliant hair was a tangled, curled mess, and his skin, normally a gentle if palid shade that looked soft and inviting, had turned ghastly white and was cracked, like wasted earth.

"I don't really see why that's a problem, but if it is, why don't we feed 'im?" Ranma asked gruffly, crossing his arms over his chest. Normally he was more compassionate, but he had seen the horrors these monsters inflicted regularly, the lives they destroyed without a thought, and these events had totally stripped away any sympathy for the creatures. As far as he was concerned, the monster that the DAPC held in the sub-levels was only worthy of unlife so long as the DAPC could extract information from it. Ranma actually felt that starvation, from an inability to massacre and feast upon humans after being imprisoned by them, was quite a fitting end.

"Well, it is a problem. Putting aside whatever abuses Snake has been inflicting upon the freak behind my back, I'm not comfortable with the idea of a prisoner starving to death on my watch," Asuka said firmly. "As for why we don't feed him, these two idiots squandered what little blood we were able to commandeer from the hospital."

Usagi frowned uneasily. "So... if you don't have any blood on hand..."

"Oh, we have plenty of blood on hand," Asuka corrected the cyborg. "The problems is that it's currently in use."

The blonde promptly paled while Ranma sighed. "Yeah, I figured it was something like that. You need a donor, huh?"

The bluette nodded, a smirk on her face. "Right on. And since you lose considerable quantities of blood on a regular basis and still manage to stay on your feet, that makes you the perfect volunteer."

Ranma nodded, apparently resigned to his charity.

"Ranma-kun! Wait! Are you really going to do that?" Usagi asked, alarmed.

"It's no big deal. I won't give him enough to really hurt me," the pigtailed man said flippantly. "Let's just get it over with."

Asuka nodded. "Great. Since Seras is out cold, this other guy who keeps following us around can draw the blood and then-"

"Nah, no need," Ranma said carelessly as he approached the cell and stopped just outside the gate. "Just open it up. I've got this."

Yamma, Asuka, and Usagi all shared a grimace.

"That sounds like a spectacularly bad idea," Asuka deadpanned. "I advise instead that you take the five minutes to do this already horrific and degenerate task in a safe and sanitary manner."

Were it not a Wednesday, Ranma would have gladly complied. However, while the other officers usually enjoyed shirking their official duties at will and slacking off, Ranma instead enjoyed the autonomy to do things in his usual reckless, short-sighted manner that had led to so many catastrophes in his youth.

"Don't worry about it, I can take this guy. Besides, I've been bitten before; it's not all that bad. C'mon, open it up!"

Asuka spent a moment rubbing her forehead, and then walked over the cell door controls. "Fine. Tsukino, wait with me at the entrance; if anything goes wrong, blast the freak to dust, got it?"

"C-Can't you just order Ranma-kun not to do this?" Usagi asked nervously as her wrist split apart with a blast of steam, revealing the glowing barrel of her plasma blaster.

"Of course I could, but I don't really feel like stamping down on Saotome-san's ego right now," Asuka mumbled as she input a code. "Besides, I DO expect that our martial arts star can handle a weak, starved, half-dead young vampire on his own."

"Of course I can," Ranma said negligently as the gate before him slowly started rising into the top of the entryway. "You're making a big fuss out of nothing."

Certainly, it should have been no big trial for Ranma to donate blood to the imprisoned creature, even through the questionable process of stepping into an enclosure with the vampire and feeding it directly.

Walking up to the center of the room, the martial artist didn't waste any effort on tact or ceremony. He walked right up to the creature, poked it in the shoulder, and then held his arm out.

"Here. Just a quick bite. And if you give me any trouble, I'll smash your teeth in. Then you'll starve to death anyway," Ranma snapped.

The vampire Garo turned slowly, his head pounding and his vision swimming.

Were he in his normal state of mind, the midian likely would have refused and simply starved to death, suffering the slow, painful demise of malnourishment rather than the arbitrary and humiliating torment of being at the DAPC's whim.

Being on the edge of starvation, however, had weakened his grip on his mind, and rendered him much more susceptible to the vampire's bestial instincts. Among those instincts were unquestioning submission to stronger creatures in order to survive.

As he was clearly being offered a chance to continue unliving, Garo wavered only for a moment before he silently and timidly reached for Ranma's wrist.

Ranma bravely forced himself not to flinch as the nosferatu opened its mouth, its teeth lengthening into needle-sharp fangs, and he managed to retain his stern, detached expression even as Garo closed trembling jaws around his arm, puncturing skin and digging into the soft, fluid-rich flesh beneath.

"Ghhgh!" Ranma grunted slightly as the vampire began to drink, already fighting the urge to tear his arm away; although the feeling of having his blood siphoned away didn't exactly hurt (though getting bitten certainly did), it was extremely unpleasant, to say the least.

"All right, all right, that's enough!" The pigtailed man snapped after a couple of seconds, yanking his arm away and nearly taking the vampire's teeth with it. "Calm down, you overgrown flea! Geez!"

Even as Ranma stepped back, however, Garo collapsed onto his hands and knees, his body convulsing weakly as blood dribbled from his mouth.

"The hell?" Asuka mumbled as she watched the creature spasm while the various humans (and near-humans) in the room stared awkwardly. "What's wrong with it now?"

"Uh... is it dying?" Usagi asked, scratching her head. "Is Ranma-kun's blood poisonous or something?"

Asuka frowned. "Well... Saotome's blood does contain a number of powerful microorganisms, but I can't fathom what they're doing to the vampire."

Ranma backed away uneasily, rubbing his arm as he watched the undead predator writhe on the ground. Though the midian LOOKED like he was in considerable pain, Garo was also regenerating rapidly; Ranma could already see the vampire's hair darken and the numerous cracks and scars in its skin sealing before his eyes.

"Guh! Grrghn!" Garo grunted as his eyes fluttered open, the last of his strength returning to him at last. He looked up at his confused captors, and then glanced down at the floor where numerous droplets of Ranma's precious life fluid had fallen.

Ranma winced and started backing away as the midian started licking the spilled blood off the floor desperately. "Ewww... was he THAT hungry?"

Unbidden, Usagi's scanner activated and began targeting Garo within a blinking red reticle. Warning! Vampire power level increasing rapidly! Advise target containment immediately!

"What's happening to it?" The cyborg asked nervously.

Target's biometric scan shows a significant increase in cellular respiration; target's body has entered a hyper-regenerative state. The volatility of the power shift has caused minor trauma to the target in this state.

"Haaah..." Garo let out a long breath as he lifted his face off the floor, desperately cleaning his teeth with his tongue to absorb the last few precious bits of blood. "More... MORE!"

"No more!" Ranma protested, holding his punctured arm while scowling. "You had your snack, now back off!"

With a bestial snarl, Garo launched forward toward the martial artist, snapping his teeth ferociously as he grabbed for the man's neck.

Ranma slugged the midian in the cheek before it could touch him, knocking it away, but was quite surprised when the vampire landed on all fours and then leapt up onto the ceiling rather than rolling away weakly or lying there stunned.

"Geez, what did I do to it?" Ranma asked as he watched the undead man cling to the ceiling like a spider and clamber toward him. "This guy was ready to lay down and die a second ago!"

"Give me more!" The nosferatu demanded, his eyes flaring a brilliant red as his gaunt frame swelled to its former, healthier stature. "I'll drain you of every last drop!" With his feet still clinging to the ceiling, Garo tucked into a crouch, ready to spring at his donor once again.

Blam! Blam! The vampire darted away as Asuka opened fire, running full tilt across the length of the cell ceiling as the two women at the door aimed their weapons.

Ranma frowned, then turned briefly. "Captain! Close the gate!"

"What? With you still inside?" Asuka asked through clenched teeth, snapping off another two shots as the midian bounced about the interior of the cell wildly. Usagi hadn't fired her own weapon yet, but Asuka was rather glad; Usagi's weaponry tended to be the sort more suitable to vaporizing tanks rather than shooting down undead.

"I got this! C'mon Captain!" Ranma shouted, bouncing backward as the vampire blurred toward him with a quick slash before darting away cautiously.

"Dammit, Saotome!" Asuka slammed her hand on the keypad controlling the secondary lock, and the silver-plated gate promptly slid shut, prompting Usagi to yelp and jump back.

'Just a little longer...' Ranma licked his lips as he stepped backward toward the gate, plotting the vampire's jumps in his mind. 'If I were crazy fast... and I AM... I would jump at me just... about... NOW!'

A hand stabbing toward his face was all the warning he received, but the martial artist was already in motion, ducking low as he performed a roundhouse sweep under the desperate vampire.

"Gwah?" Garo felt the surge of sensation and acuity that he had felt upon feeding suddenly sour as he felt his legs buckle and release his body to the cruel grip of gravity, sending him flying into the thick criss-crossed bars separating him from sweet, sweet freedom.

Clang! "UGWAAUGH!!" The midian screamed fiercely as smoke poured from his painful impact with the high-purity silver, testament to the intense burning he felt all over his face and upper body.

With a pitiful grunt, Garo pushed himself away, gasping painfully.

Thud! Whang! Ranma promptly planted his foot in the back of the vampire's head, slamming it back into the gate and eliciting another agonized scream. "I SAID not to give me any trouble, you blood-suckin' freak!" The pigtailed man growled. After a few seconds, he removed his foot and then grabbed the vampire by the arm before yanking him away and throwing him back into the cell proper. "Now shut up and lie down!"

The vampire did in fact lie down, if only because he was in too much agony to move, though he continued groaning mournfully even as Ranma glared at him.

Clank! The gate slid back into the ceiling, and Asuka shook her head as Ranma stepped out. "That was far more annoying than it had to be."

Usagi breathed a huge sigh of relief as her wrist stopped glowing with energy that she was too afraid to release. "That was scary..."

"What? The monster got fed and I got out just fine," Ranma protested, rubbing his wounded arm.

"Of course. What was I thinking, trying to accomplish that in a safe and responsible manner?" The bluette mumbled. "Now if we're done wasting time and ammo, we can get on to more important things, such as getting the Incredible Bionic Blonde here settled in."

"Uh? Oh! Me! Right!" Usagi said, straightening quickly and then saluting. "Officer Tsukino, reporting for duty!"

"Swell. Follow me," Asuka deadpanned, pressing a key that caused the massive vault door to close on the vampire's cell. "Normally I wouldn't start the tour with the sub-levels, but since we're already here I might as well."

Stepping out into the hall beyond the main lobby, the police captain gestured to the numerous smaller doors that were found all over the labyrinth, Usagi and Ranma falling into step behind her.

"The sub-levels are a group of reinforced, underground complexes that were only recently reintegrated into the DAPC headquarters proper. These tunnels are the only remotely safe place to keep organisms, weapons, poisons, or items that we don't choose to destroy for whatever reason. There are numerous vaults and labs down here for imprisoning monsters and holding dangerous materials, but in all honesty, you probably won't be seeing much of this area."

"Why? Is that because you'll want me in the field all the time?" Usagi asked.

"It's probably because we don't do much imprisoning or holding," Ranma clarified, shrugging. "We usually just blow up whatever we see as a threat."

"Saotome's correct," Asuka affirmed, nodding. "There was a time when researching the strange and paranormal was more important than preserving the safety of the public, but those days are gone now. As a rule, I try to keep our intake of prisoners to a minimum." Then she gave Ranma a hard stare. "Of course, we used to keep samples of certain potent biochemical weapons down here for study, but we stopped doing that too ever since SOMEONE started guzzling retrovirus like cheap beer."

"Huh?" Usagi scratched her head, confused as she saw Ranma chuckle nervously and divert his attention elsewhere.

"It's nothing. Moving on," Asuka said sharply before she pointed to a large, circular space at the end of the hall. Within the room were several large, metal capsules with old, deteriorated labels and patches of rust. "The other reason we try not to spend too much time down here is that we're not quite sure how safe it is," she admitted. "Sure, the vaults are top-notch, but then some of our officers can do a lot of damage without really meaning to."

She raised an eyebrow as she glanced back at Usagi. "Present company definitely included." As Usagi sweatdropped, Asuka turned back toward the room. "To make matters worse, we found several organisms down here when we integrated the sub-levels that were apparently imprisoned here and forgotten. Without knowing what they are, we can't easily dispose of them, so we pretty much just leave them alone and hope nothing happens to wake them up."

"Hmmm..." Usagi scratched her chin as she slowly glanced at each metal capsule in the room. Each one had several cables attached to it, and a cylinder on top that sported many glowing lights. Several of the cables were torn or frayed, however, and the first of the capsules had a huge crack in the important-looking cylinder at top.

Scanning... complete. Organism identified: "Zerg larvae." Status: Deceased. Remains primarily consist of carapace composed of heavy alloys. Approximate date of termination: 1980 A.D. Threat index: 0.

Scanning... complete. Organism identified: "Velociraptor." Status: Cryogenic stasis. Scans suggest that this creature was subjected to heavy genetic manipulation before being sealed. Cryogenic life support functioning at 62 percent. Threat index: 2.

Scanning... complete. Organism identified: "Asgard." Status: Deceased. Remains suggest that this organism was killed due to the slow decay of the capsule's cryogenic life support systems. Threat index: 0.

Scanning... complete. Organism identified: "Prinny." Status: Alive, but miserable. Scans cannot make any sense of this creature's biology. Cryogenic life support has failed, but somehow the organism remains alive, though comatose. Threat index: 3. 4, if thrown.

Scanning... complete. Organism identified: "Symbiote." Status: Cryogenic stasis. Scans register a constant level of cellular agitation despite being in stasis due to the fluid, metamorphic nature of this organism's form. Cryogenic life support functioning at 37 percent. Threat index: 6.

"Tsukino-kun? You okay? You're sort of spacing out there," Asuka mumbled as the blonde cyborg stared hard at each containment unit.

"Oh! Uh, sorry," Usagi said, rubbing her head as she turned away from the room. "I was just curious, that's all."

"This is probably one of the worst rooms to be curious in," Ranma mumbled. "There's some dangerous stuff in here."

"Right. Let's move on," Asuka insisted, turning around and gesturing for her subordinates to follow back down the hall. "Next I'll show you the locker rooms, offices, and armory. Then we can get down to business."

"Why bother showing her the armory? She IS an armory!" Ranma noted as he took up the rear once again.

"Hell, I dunno. Maybe she runs out of ammo or something," Asuka reasoned. "Besides that, it's just an important room, right?"

Usagi remained respectfully silent as the more experienced officers argued about her place in the department hierarchy, and gave the vault holding the vampire a long, curious stare as she followed Asuka into the elevator.

Were her attention not distracted, she probably would have been the only one to notice when one of the containment units down at the end of the hall started sparking ominously, eliciting a brief burst of electric arcs before two of the hoses spontaneously popped off of the top of the cylinder.

Shoomf! As it was, however, Usagi was worrying about other things as the elevator doors slipped shut.

"Do I have to carry a gun? They're so loud and scary..." Usagi flushed as Asuka rolled her eyes.

"Putting aside what other 'loud and scary' things you're carrying right now, no, I can't imagine you'd need to carry a gun." Then the police captain rubbed her chin. "Though I WILL need to run you through some tests to get a better idea of what you can do."

"T-T-T-Tests?" The blonde cyborg recoiled immediately, looking horrified. "You can't be serious! Even after getting out of college, I still have to take tests?!"

Asuka sweatdropped and glanced at Ranma. "Yeah, you and Snake found a real winner here, I can tell."

"Heh heh," Ranma chuckled gently and put a calming hand on Usagi's shoulder. "Usagi-chan, calm down. These tests are very different from the ones you take in school."

Usagi seemed to relax slightly, but still looked suspiciously at Asuka, as if being cautious would in any way affect what was about to happen. "Really? How different?"

"For my own peace of mind, I wouldn't dare give you a written test," the police captain deadpanned. "These tests will allow me to measure your physical abilities, not your mental ones. I've largely given up on hiring smart people."

Despite the admission, Asuka still had to fight down her annoyance when she saw Usagi sigh in relief. 'Is it worse that these people are such morons, or that they're all so comfortable being that way?'

"Okay then!" Usagi said, gripping her hands into fists. In all honesty, she wasn't that confident in her physical abilities either, but was herself curious about what her new body could do. 'This is it! It's a new beginning for me here, so I have to try hard to give it my all! I wonder what the tests will be like?'

"Test one will involve multiple target eradication. Your objective is to destroy every marker as quickly as possible," Asuka explained as she looked over her clipboard with a stopwatch in hand.

Usagi looked around the HQ training room uncertainly; scattered about the relatively large area were numerous carboard ring targets, some of them held up by posts or chains, while others were mounted on the ceiling or floor.

"Okay... how should I do that?" Usagi asked uncertainly.

"Don't care," Asuka said bluntly. "This room is heavily reinforced, so feel free to use anything less powerful than high-yield explosives. Other than that, your only concern is damaging every one of these targets as quickly as you can."

Ranma grinned and gave the cyborg girl a thumbs-up. "This'll be easy for you! Just concentrate and wipe them all out with one shot!"

Usagi gulped as Asuka prepped the stopwatch. 'One shot? Can I really... yes! I can do this!'

Asuka frowned briefly, and then took a few steps farther away from Usagi before she pressed the timer on the stopwatch. "Begin!"

"Haaah..." Usagi took a deep breath, and then squeezed her eyes shut as she crossed her arms over her chest.

Shnk! Chunk! Asuka took a few more steps back as two small racks of vertically-stacked mini missiles slid up out of Usagi's shoulders.

"Okay!" Usagi suddenly shouted, throwing her arms apart as she fired the entire volley.

Foosh! Foosh! Fwoosh! Fsssh! Two at a time, the missiles at the bottom of the rack launched and veered off toward their targets right before the racks slid back into Usagi's shoulders far enough to move the next missiles into firing position.

"Whoa! Look out!" Asuka shouted as she jumped toward the wall, wincing as a pair of the small projectiles veered upward in an arc that was way too close to where she had been standing.

Boom! Boom! Bwakoom! Blam! The police captain could only squeeze her eyes shut as the chain of detonations filled the room with the flare of blazing explosions.

'Okaaaay. Missile barrage. I'll give her points for that. And she is following the rules of the test. Though common sense would dictate WARNING us before turning the entire damn room into a blast zone.'

Usagi winced as she heard the last of her missiles detonate on the far wall, and then let out a small sigh as she cracked her eyes open.

Upon seeing the entire room obscured by rapidly fading smoke, she smiled. "Yes! I did it!"

Upon seeing the room not obscured after the ventilation fans spent a few seconds sucking smoke out of the area, her jaw dropped. "What? I MISSED? I missed ALL OF THEM?"

Asuka sweatdropped heavily as she looked at the dozens of scorch marks all over the walls of the room, none of which were centered on a target. "Well, technically, you burned some of the targets from near misses, which count as hits in this exercise..." then she glanced to the side. "Plus, you nailed Saotome pretty good. That's normally really hard to do, though I'm not going to congratulate you for it."

"Wh-Wh-What?!" Usagi whirled around, and her face turned white when she saw Ranma slowly standing up, his uniform covered in soot and ash. "Oh my god! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to do that! I don't know what went wrong! I'mjustreallynewtothistargetingsystemandIguessitworksdifferentlyonabunchoftargetsthanonetarget! WhenIuseditonthevampireladybeforeitseemedtobeallright! ThenagainIhadmyeyesclosedthistimethatwasreallystupidI'msosorryRanma-kunareyouokayshouldI-"

"Stop, stop, please," Ranma mumbled, chuckling as he dusted himself off. "I'm fine, really. Cough! None of the missiles hit me head-on. Cough! Besides, I wasn't paying enough attention and got caught by surprise. That was my fault."

Sniffle! Upon seeing Usagi's large, tearful eyes, Ranma forced himself to stop coughing and started dusting himself off faster. "Honest! I'm fine! Totally fine! I was going to change out of this jacket anyway! You barely even scratched me!"

"But... are... are you sure you're okay?" Usagi asked, her eyes shaking delicately.

Ranma, who felt his body trying to eject ash from his lungs once more, immediately clammed up and started nodding rapidly.

"Oh, thank goodness! I was really scared!" The blonde cyborg said, planting a hand over her heart.

"Tsukino-kun, not that I don't appreciate your concern for your fellow officer," Asuka began, "I mean, around here it's surprisingly rare to find someone who will even bother to apologize after they nearly kill a companion..." Then she held up the stopwatch. "... But the test isn't over yet."

"What? You're still timing me?" Usagi asked, shocked. "But Ranma-kun got hurt! Shouldn't we stop and start over? Or at least pause?"

"In the field a fight doesn't stop so you can take care of your friends," Asuka said, crossing her arms over her chest. "And Ranma wasn't seriously injured anyway, so it's not like we need to have him carried to the infirmary. Besides all that, this test isn't just to judge your combat efficiency. I'm also observing how you handle damage control and mistakes."

Usagi blinked, then gulped. "Uh... and how am I doing?"

"I can see why they booted you out of college," Asuka deadpanned. "By the way, the clock is STILL ticking, you know."

"What? Ah! Sorry! Sorry!"

Ranma grunted as he finished wiping his face with a wet towel, and then glanced over to where Asuka was grimacing at her clipboard. "So, she didn't do that badly overall, right?"

Asuka rolled her eyes and tucked the clipboard under her arm. "Well, she scored points thanks to her concern for your health... which compensated nicely for her being completely helpless to do anything to help." Then she frowned. "By the way, you're looking a bit pale..."

"Yeah... I didn't know this before, but apparently when your body wants to cough up dirt and smoke, it's a pretty bad idea to hold it in instead," the pigtailed man said weakly. "With that, plus the blood loss from earlier..."

"I get it. Are you sure you want to stick around?" The bluette asked. "It's Wednesday, and it's broad daylight outside. You can go home if you'd like."

"Nah, it's all right," Ranma insisted. "I think that Usagi-chan kind of needs the moral support."

He then pointed to the corner of the training room, where the cyborg in question was all curled up, sulking. "She does seem to be taking this awfully hard," Asuka admitted, walking over to the blonde and taking a deep breath.

Then, without warning, the police captain grabbed Usagi by the back of her collar and tried to pull her up to her feet.

Tried, that is, because she had not been informed that the blonde was far, far heavier than she looked. While Asuka was very strong by normal human standards, she didn't have anything near the power required to casually yank the cyborg girl off the floor.

"Gah!" Usagi instead ended up falling backwards onto the floor, and barely missed hitting Asuka's leg with her flailing arms. Thump!

Asuka frowned for a moment, and then shrugged. "All right Tsukino, time to get up. If you're going to feel sorry for yourself, then do it on break."

Usagi winced and slowly sat up again, staring at the floor. "S-Sorry..." Normally Usagi was far more cheery and difficult to discourage, but causing such damage by accident had provoked old, lingering fears about her cybernetic body that Ranma's casual acceptance and kind words hadn't quite exorcised completely.

Asuka grit her teeth in annoyance, and then crossed her arms over her chest. "Don't sit there apologizing! Get up!"

Usagi eeped and jumped to her feet, her ponytails waving about in the air as she barely managed to stand up straight without tumbling back to the floor.

"Listen here, Tsukino," Asuka barked, glaring up at the taller woman. "If we're going to be working together, there are a few things you need to know about me." She jabbed a thumb into her chest. "I know it doesn't seem like it, but I'm a damn patient woman. I can tolerate mistakes. I can tolerate failure. I can even tolerate outright incompetence, to say nothing of severe moral shortcomings and dysfunctional personalities."

"It's true! If she didn't, she'd have snapped by now!" Ranma reasoned.

Then she gripped her hand into a fist. "What I WON'T tolerate is my people turning into useless balls of self-pity! If you screw up, get up and get over it!"

As Usagi blinked her eyes clear, Asuka poked her in the chest. "If you want to take responsibility for your mistakes, GREAT. If you want to improve yourself so that you won't make mistakes anymore, SPECTACULAR." Then she retracted her hand as her expression lost much of its heat. "Or, you could at least do what everyone else does and simply accept all the terrible things you do without worrying about it. Believe me, you never hear Snake lamenting all the things he's pointlessly destroyed, or hear Kyle wondering about improving his intellect."

"Are... Are they that bad?" Usagi asked, mystified. To her, the idea of someone launching a poorly-aimed barrage of missiles indoors was a complete catastrophe; she couldn't understand how anyone could brush off such an incident as a "mistake".

"Tsukino-kun, trust me," Asuka said seriously, patting the cyborg on the shoulder, "you have a long way to go before you can prove yourself to be as big a liability as our seasoned officers. Almost killing Saotome happens so often nowadays that I usually don't even bother with a verbal reprimand."

Ranma nodded sharply. "Besides, no matter what happens, the captain will take care of it in the end. There's a reason they put her in charge, you know."

Asuka twitched in annoyance, pursing her lips. "I know that you meant it as a compliment, but it still bothers me." Then she glanced sharply at Usagi again. "Anyway, are you ready for the next test or not?"

"Y-Yes!" Usagi said, her expression hardening. "I promise to do better this time!"

"Good. Follow us into the next room," the bluette said, opening the door into the hallway.

"This is our weight room," Asuka said simply, crossing her arms over her chest.

Usagi gulped as she looked at the massive device that dominated the relatively small area. Around a raised platform were numerous padded levers and arms that in shape and design resembled the devices found on ordinary weight machines found in gyms, but after that the similarities ended. Thick cables ran through giant engines brimming with pistons and gears while other pieces were supported by heavy hydraulic presses. Many of the components were bolted to the ceiling with thick chains held perfectly taught, and the entire machine hummed gently as it leeched power from a huge outlet mounted on the side of the room.

"Wh-What... is THAT?" the cyborg asked nervously.

"THAT is what our elite officers use to work out most of the time," Asuka explained bluntly. "Or at least, Saotome and Tekai do. Whenever I try it just feels like a complete waste." She shrugged. "Because normal weight machines are child's play to Saotome and useless to Tekai, we had this whopper installed. We'll be using it to test the limits of your strength."

Usagi simply continued staring, obviously intimidated.

"Don't worry so much about it," Ranma said reassuringly, patting the cyborg on the shoulder. "This test's gonna be a lot less intense than the last one, so don't worry about it. Step on up!"

Still looking quite timid, Usagi slowly crept up onto the raised platform of the device and then turned around to face Asuka and Ranma. "Okay..."

"Beginning test one," Asuka said as she walked over to a computer console on the bottom of the machine. "Hold on just a moment..."

Vrrrrrmmm... The sound of engines working against massive weight filled the room, causing Usagi to flinch as she tried to determine exactly what was happening.

"You see the pad directly behind you?" Asuka asked.

Usagi turned around, and then timidly poked at what appeared to be a contact pad placed over the wall of solid metal that separated her from the noisy machinery working beyond. "This?"

"Yes. In this exercise we'll be analyzing your melee strength. Punch that area as hard as you can, repeatedly. Don't use any weapons, though."

"Oh. Okay. That sounds easy..." Usagi said uncertainly as she reared a fist back.

THWUD! Kssss! Usagi flinched as the engine let out a blast of steam after absorbing the shock of her blow. Pulling her fist back, she could see a considerable indentation in the pad, but it seemed that the machine hadn't suffered any damage.

"That's great! Keep going!" Ranma said encouragingly, though he couldn't make heads or tails of the funny graphs that Asuka was poring over.

THUD! WHUMP! POOMF! Usagi frowned as she continued assaulting the machine, feeling the massive device counter every strike with an equal burst of force. 'Don't I have more strength than this? I thought this body was tougher!'

Of course, the young cyborg had no idea how much strength she was using, only that the machine didn't seem to have any problem handling it. It wasn't as if she had a particularly great opinion of her power, but it just SEEMED like she should have been doing better.

Beep! Melee overdrive mode activated. Kinetic dampeners at maximum. Prepare for counter-shock.

"Melee what?" Usagi asked, blinking as she reared back her fist again.

Snap! Just below her wrist, her forearm split apart into what looked like half a dozen mini rocket engines clustered around an energy core.

THWOOM!! Whatever awkward noise Usagi made as her fist lurched forward and then hit the weight machine with all the force and speed of a bullet train was drowned out by the sound of the reinforced superstructure buckling inward, followed by the sounds of the main engine tearing apart from the shockwave generated by the attack.

Clank! Crunch! Pshoooof! Steam burst from the top of the device as the pistons broke down, and the entire machine started to shake from the continued vibrations.

"Uwah? What's happening?" Usagi asked, confused and a little frightened. Also, her right fist kind of hurt, and arcs of electricity were curling around her forearm, which she could only imagine was a bad thing.

Asuka twitched as the computer monitor started flashing erratically right before the entire screen cracked and went black. "The pressure! I don't think it can-"

BWOOM!! Usagi was tossed away as the engine finally exploded, throwing a badly dented impact plate into her.

"AAAAAAUGH!" Thwud! Whatever she could say about the events leading up to it, Usagi was pleasantly surprised to have something break her fall that seemed softer than the wall.

Asuka, who had ducked behind the console for safety, stood up and gaped at the remains of the weight machine.

Luckily - if one wanted to be optimistic about the turn of events - the machine was far too heavy and sturdy for the explosion to have blown the entire thing apart, so the detonation hadn't created too much debris or shrapnel.

Of course, no matter how fortunate that was, it didn't change the fact that a custom-built industrial grade device had just been gutted by accident.

"Tsukino! Are you okay?" Asuka shouted. She had intended to sound properly concerned for the girl's condition, but was already in the process of mentally estimating the damages, so the inquiry somehow ended up sounding quite threatening.

"Uh... yeah... I think..." Usagi mumbled, wobbling slightly as she tried to get her bearings.

A groaning noise from below her brought her attention to the object that had broken her fall.

"OH! Ranma-kun! Thank you for catching me!" The blonde said, flushing. "Are you all right, though?"

"Ugh... I forgot... you're much... heavier than you look..." The pigtailed man mumbled.

"HEY!! Don't be mean! That's not my fault!" Usagi shouted, a vein popping up on her head.

"Whatever. What the heck was that punch?" Ranma asked.

Usagi frowned and held up her hand, seemingly oblivious that she was still sitting on Ranma's chest. "I'm not sure..." then she smiled nervously at Asuka. "But I passed the test, right?"

Pop! Everybody blinked in surprise as Usagi's right arm came off mid-bicep, followed by a brief shower of sparks and a plume of smoke spurting from the dismembered limb.

"That can't be good," Asuka said wearily as Usagi started trembling.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!"

"Okay, so you've got a mean right hook. VERY mean," Asuka mumbled, writing furiously in her notebook to try and get her mind off the damage that Usagi had done. Having the cyborg's arm fall off in the aftermath went a long way in dispelling her initial rage, and if she made a big deal out of it after her earlier speech she'd look like a hypocrite. "There's only one more test I'd like to run..."

She sweatdropped as she looked toward the other end of the women's locker room. "Well, whenever you're ready, I suppose."

Pssssht! Psssssht! Ranma nervously held Usagi's arm up to the severed socket as the two spider-like repair droids rapidly worked around his hand.

Sniffle! "Ahhh... is it g-going to be o-okay?" The blonde asked tearfully, looking away for fear of seeing her one of her own limbs in such condition.

"Eh, I'm sure these little buggers know what they're doin'," Ranma said off-handedly, sweat starting to bead on his forehead.

One of the drones promptly turned, and a spark of electricity came from one of its legs as it jabbed Ranma's finger.

Bzrt! "Yow! Whaddya do that for?" Ranma yelled, barely holding his hand steady against his reflexes.

The drone started waving two of its limbs wildly at the pigtailed officer, and a few more sparks shot out of its welding torch.

"What's that? You wanna fight?" Ranma sneered at the tiny machine and raised his free hand, which started to glow an eerie blue.

Hearing Usagi whimper at the aggression surrounding one of her favorite limbs, Asuka sighed and turned toward the developing conflict. "Saotome, if you're going to pick fights with nearly defenseless metal bugs, at least wait until AFTER they're finished doing their job, would you?" Then her eyes narrowed. "And you two tin twits stop with the attitude and get back to work, or I'll personally ask Snake to melt you down into bullet casings."

Ranma and the drone provoking him both flinched back, and the automaton timidly lowered its body before retreating back to its partner.

"F-Fine," Ranma stuttered out as he turned away. "You're j-just lucky you're one of Usagi-chan's toys..."

"And what the hell is wrong with you, anyway?" Asuka asked Ranma suddenly. "Ever since we got here you've been stuttering like someone has a gun to your head. Is it that creepy for you to hold a robotic severed limb?"

Ranma flinched again, and swallowed deeply.

However creepy it was to hold a dismembered arm, even if it did flail about as if it were still attached to its owner, Ranma didn't think it was too big a deal after dealing with actual zombies so many times. Nor did the proximity of his hands next to super-heated welding torches faze him after being blown up by proper military-grade ordnance so many times.

"Uhm... yeah... it's just freakin' me out a little, that's all," he mumbled half-heartedly as he continued to glance back and forth nervously. 'Why the hell are we doing this in the girl's locker room? Don't we have a medical center, or a lab, or SOMETHING?' Just being in the area, even with the girls aware of his presence and fully clothed, sent a dark chill down his back as the memories of dozens of misunderstandings and mistakes as well as the beatings that resulted from them flashed through his head.

It certainly didn't help, either, that Usagi had perfect anti-pervert reflexes that incorporated some of the deadlier weapons on the experimental end of military technologies. Ranma had never been hit by a disruptor bolt, and he was very keen on keeping that streak alive.

"For goodness sake..." Asuka shook her head, and then glanced at Usagi. "The last test will be more utilitarian. Obviously you have considerable destructive power, and I imagine you'll be putting those functions to the test early and often."

Usagi blinked repeatedly, not being overly happy to hear that. "Well... okay... I can do that... but what about things like writing tickets and stuff? Cops have to do that too, right?"

"Well, actually-" Asuka began.

"We gave up doing those things a long time ago," Ranma said, shrugging. "After you've seen someone being eaten alive by hideous bioweapons, it just seems petty to bother a guy for driving too fast."

Asuka twitched as a vein popped up on her head. "Yes, thank you Saotome. Now shut up."

Ranma sweatdropped and was about to stutter an apology when he noticed that the drones were scrambling back into their holding bays. "Oh! It's done!"

"Uh? Already?" Usagi asked timidly, finally looking over as Ranma let go of her.

Extremity reassembly complete. Adjusting muscular capacitors... complete. Recalibrating sensory regulators... complete. Right arm component functioning at 100 percent capacity.

Usagi breathed out a sigh of relief, and then quickly turned and bowed to Ranma. "Thank you so much! I really appreciate you always helping me!"

Ranma jerked back in surprised, then chuckled nervously while tugging on his pigtail.

As a side note, repair unit 00 says that the additional pressure from Saotome's careless assistance extended the repair time by 60 percent. It is submitting a recommendation that he be severely damaged in retribution.

Usagi sweatdropped and turned away. 'There are parts of being this way that are convenient... and there are a lot that are very strange... I wonder if it's okay to have robots inside of me wanting to hurt my friends?'

"Well, whatever. If that's all over and done with, I'd like to move on with this," Asuka said bluntly, tapping her foot.

Usagi nodded, looking determined. "Right! I won't let you down! Just give me a minute..."

"Huh? A minute for what?"

The cyborg giggled as she rubbed her head. "Well, I'm pretty dirty from the explosion, and my shirt ripped at the shoulders earlier. Don't worry, I'll be quick," she said reassuringly before peeling her scorched uniform shirt up off of her body.

Sighing as she looked at the damaged article, she tossed it haphazardly over her shoulder before glancing at the lockers that lined the wall.

"Now... wait, which one was mine, again?" She frowned and turned back to Asuka, who was gaping at the sight of Usagi's neon pink brassiere. "We have a lot of lockers here for so few people, I can't... uh... Takami-san, what's wrong?"

"Uh... er..." Asuka mumbled, wondering what was going on. Were Usagi and Ranma so close after such a short period of time? She had freely stripped her shirt off right in front of the martial artist, who himself hadn't made a move...

Actually, as the police captain glanced at him, it appeared that he had frozen stiff; Usagi's shirt had landed right on his head and he hadn't moved a muscle to get it off.

Usagi saw the bluette's eyes shift to look at something behind her, and she turned to look in confusion.

The blonde blinked as Ranma stared back at her like a deer in the headlights, her torn and battered shirt draped over one eye.

"No, this is definitely not good," Asuka mumbled, rubbing her forehead. 'I guess it's more that she's distracted than that she's used to him...'

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!"

"Wait! No! I'm not-stop!"

Blam! Blam! BWEEEEM!

Asuka glared harshly at the young woman standing before her in a spare DAPC uniform and flushing badly.

"Tsukino... you..."

"Uh, I'm sorry! I'm really sorry!" Usagi shouted reflexively, bowing her head. "It was all my fault! I'll do better!"

"First of all, STOP apologizing to me. If you're going to be blubbering like that, at least do it to Saotome."

The cyborg girl immediately did as recommended, whirling around and bowing as quickly as she could to the man sitting next to them and sporting bandage wrappings on his head and arm. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean it! It was my fault!"

Ranma sweatdropped as he smiled and waved her off. "Aw, I know. Don't worry about it. This sort of thing happens all the time." 'Damn the girls' locker room! Someday I'll destroy that wretched chamber of pain once and for all!'

"Indeed, it does happen all the time," Asuka agreed, looking far less comfortable with the idea. "But that aside, Tsukino, in every combat test you've proven that you have enormous destructive potential complicated by equally enormous incompetence."

Usagi flinched, and her eyes started getting wet and dewey, which in turn caused Ranma to start panicking.

"So at the very least," Asuka continued obliviously, "you're a huge step up from our last blonde, who just had incompetence... or at least, you will be so long as you can keep from destroying our officers and property in the future."

Usagi blinked several times, and Ranma sighed in relief as he saw the cyborg's emotions settle.

"Though, as long as we're on the topic," Asuka began again, glancing at her clipboard. "In an hour you've managed to lightly damage three rooms, destroy a piece of equipment worth a billion yen and half a row of lockers, and inflict painful yet entirely temporary injuries upon Saotome three consecutive times. All during the simple and theoretically harmless process of taking a few stupid tests."

Ranma winced as Usagi flinched with each point, as if an arrow were striking her in the back each time.

Asuka sighed. "Congratulations: you're DAPC material, through and through."

"I'm what?" Usagi asked, a sweatdrop rolling down her head.

"It's not that I'm opposed, but I'm kind of worried about the kind of standards we have in place here," Ranma deadpanned.

"Don't tell me that," Asuka snapped back. "All in all Tsukino, you're plenty fit, and I can give you considerable leeway in assuming that the reason you keep messing up is because you're still not used to your new body. Welcome to the team."

Asuka had to squint against the shining, tearful smile on the young cyborg's face as waves of relief washed over her.

"It's really okay? I... I can be a police officer?"

"Sure, why not?" Asuka shrugged. "I really can't imagine any other place that could make use of a perfectly innocent-looking, clumsy, heavily armed college drop-out. Besides, it sure simplifies us having to keep an eye on you."

Usagi immediately launched herself forward and enveloped her superior in a surprise hug. "Oh, thank you! I won't let you down, Asuka-chan!"

Asuka twitched. "That's 'Captain,' Tsukino."

Before she had gotten to the second word of her sentence, however, Usagi had rounded on Ranma, giving him an equally vigorous hug.

"And you too, Ranma-kun! I promise I'll make all this up to you!"

"It's really okay," the martial artist protested weakly. "I'd really prefer that you just not shoot me anymore."

"I... I can't promise that, but I'll try hard!" Usagi said, nodding firmly.

'Can't promise? What's with that?' Ranma thought, his eye twitching.

"But... wait. Didn't you say there was another test?" Usagi asked, turning back toward Asuka.

"That's right. There is," the police captain confirmed, her eyes narrowing. "Naturally, combat duty is the most important and demanding work that you'll be doing as a member of this department. However, there will be plenty of times that more mundane tasks are demanded of you. I'd like to see how you use your abilities to deal with these obstacles."

"Oh. Okay, then!" Usagi said, smiling. She didn't really know what Asuka was talking about, but she was just glad that the next and final test wouldn't have anything to do with violence.

"Uh... why are we back in the target practice room?" Usagi asked, scratching her head. "I thought we were done with combat tests."

"We are," Asuka said bluntly. Clunk! Then she dropped a bucket full of soapy water down next to the cyborg. "This isn't about causing damage. It's about fixing the damage you've caused."

Usagi blinked, her face paling slightly. "Uwah?"

"Despite its budget surplus, the DAPC doesn't hire janitorial staff due to the numerous security risks involved. So I assign officers to cleaning shifts in order to keep the place tidy and repair the considerable damage that you people keep causing," she explained. Then she smirked. "That seems fair, doesn't it?"

"Er..." Usagi slowly looked around at the room and the numerous scorch marks all over the floor and walls. "I... I guess so... this isn't that bad..."

"No, not at all," Asuka agreed. "All you have to do here is throw away the shrapnel and scrub away the soot." Then her eye gleamed. "Of course, cleaning the weight room will be more of a challenge, as you'll have to take apart and dispose of the weight machine you destroyed."

"Grk!" Usagi flinched as her face darkened.

"But the real problem is the locker room. You ripped up the lockers pretty bad, but they can be repaired, at least."

Asuka stepped closer, and despite being taller than her superior, Usagi suddenly felt as if the police captain were staring down at her from high above, her eyes glimmering with subtle rage.

"I'm VERY interested to see how you clean up that mess. You have a welding torch or something, don't you?"

Usagi gulped. "I-I don't kn-know..."

"Ah, well, if you don't, we can work something out." Asuka crossed her arms over her chest. "Don't forget, I'll be watching the whole time, so make sure you do a good job, okay?"

"Okay..." Then Usagi brightened suddenly and turned toward Ranma. "Oh! Ranma-kun! Could you-"

"Ow! Ow!" Ranma held his injured arm tenderly as he headed toward the exit, being careful not to make eye contact with anyone. "Jeez, these injuries are starting to give me trouble. I'm gonna go lie down, okay?"

"Of course. You go relax," Asuka said dismissively, still keeping her eyes on Usagi.

The cyborg girl looked downcast as she stared at the cleaning bucket. 'Nobody told me about cleaning duty! This sucks!'

"Ah, man. This is the worst..."

People walking by the open market stared in awe and apprehension at the two Core infantrymen that were standing at attention on the sidewalk.

The new mk. II storm suits had replaced the aging protect-gear apparatus in light of the numerous unconventional weapons that Core soldiers had often faced in the field. While the older armor was still very effective against ordinary small arms, against opponents who could get close enough to fight in melee and attack the holes in the slow-moving soldiers' defenses, the armor barely provided enough protection to make up for the mobility that the soldiers lost.

The storm suits were an attempt to fix the problem by further ignoring mobility and simply making the soldier as much of a tank as was economically feasible; instead of armor pads in key areas secured around Kevlar suits, the men were instead sealed completely in a shell of reinforced metal and machinery. Nearly every bodily motion was assisted by all manner of servos and devices, and the entire suit could be locked up tight enough to pressurize itself and stay air-tight in case of gas attacks or other airborne hazards.

While a very impressive sight, the grandeur of such gear was surely wasted on the exercise of standing next to the finance minister as he browsed a jewelry stand. In the suits, even without the helmets, the two men stood at well over six feet and were a veritable barricade to anyone trying to move about freely (partially because of their bulk, and partially because nobody wanted to get too close to what looked like a pair of robots with human heads). At the same time, the men couldn't find an out-of-the-way spot to bide their time, as that would mean leaving their charge wide open to potential attack.

"Hey, what's the moneygrubber looking at, anyway?" asked the first man, whose armor was a solid gray decorated with red stripes.

The other soldier decked out in blue-shaded camouflage armor shrugged, which caused the bulky shoulderpads to nearly bowl over someone who had worked up the nerve to pass by. "I think it's for his girlfriend, isn't it?"

"Girlfriend? What about his wife?" The first soldier groused.

"Not a problem anymore. Not since she found out about the girlfriend," the man in blue chuckled. "Lifestyles of the rich and the famous, eh?"

"Yeesh! I haven't had a date in a month, and that rusty old geezer is drowning in women!" His lip curled slightly in a grin. "Then again, if the wife's out of the house, maybe I'll track her down. She was quite the fox..."

"Pfeh. It's better not to get involved at all," the soldier in blue muttered. "You know what they say about business and pleasure..."

The man in stripes snorted. "Business has been slow. Why is it that we have to spend our time babysitting this geezer when there's real work to do out there?"

"You got me," his companion mumbled. "Abductions, missing people everywhere, police murders, strange terrorist attacks... it seems like everyone in the entire city is panicking EXCEPT Core."

The first soldier blinked in surprise. "Eh? A strange terrorist attack? When?"

"You didn't hear? They burnt a night club to the ground and demolished the building next to it. It was really weird. They didn't kill everyone, and let go all the people they captured alive. All those witnesses were spouting stories about the cyborgs hunting monsters and them just being in the crossfire."

"What? Terrorists, fighting monsters?" The striped soldier scoffed.

"That's the rumor. Apparently the brass is quite embarrassed that criminals are making more headway than we are into dealing with whatever threat they're dealing with... although obviously we can't run around assaulting monster hangouts easily if there are civs around."

"Geez, what a drag..."

The striped soldier sighed and started toying with the helmet in his hand when he noticed a young boy running across the street, looking like he was in a panic.

"Eh? Hey! Hey, you! That's dangerous!" He yelled, glancing at the numerous cars quickly grinding to a halt as the boy dashed over the street. Luckily, traffic wasn't too bad at this hour, and these streets had a low speed limit because of all the pedestrian traffic as well, so none of the cars had any problem stopping in time.

The soldier was fairly surprised when the boy turned toward him and his partner; it was unusual to see someone dash toward them right after being scolded by the police.

"P-Please! Please help!" The boy shouted, reaching the sidewalk and then rushing up to the soldiers.

"What's wrong?" The man in blue asked quickly, his hand rising toward the rifle slung behind his back.

"Over there!" The boy turned and pointed toward an alley across the street where he had come from. "There's a girl there! She's injured! Please, help her!"

"All right, show us to 'er," the first man said firmly, dropping his helmet to the side.

The men didn't make it two steps before they attracted the attention of the man they were in the midst of protecting.

"Hey! Where do you think you're going? You can't leave me here!" The finance minister growled, promptly turning away from his impending purchase.

The man in blue promptly turned and saluted even as his companion followed the child without hesitation. "I'm sorry sir, but an emergency medical situation takes priority in this case!"

"What? Takes priority? Who do you think I am?"

"If it worries you, I would recommend following us or taking cover while the situation is contained, sir!" Without listening to the politician's blustered response, he turned sharply and raced into the street, his heavy metal boots thumping noisily against the asphalt.


"She's here! In here!" The boy nervously pointed into the alley as the two heavily armored men slowed their pace.

"Hello? Do you need an ambulance? Can you speak?" The man in stripes asked, slowly approaching the figure huddled at the end of the alley.

Trembling in the corner next to some garbage cans was a figure wrapped up in some sort of dirty, bloodstained blanket. Although it was facing away from the mouth of the alley, the soldiers could only assume that it was the girl that the child spoke of.

"That's her, right?" The man in blue asked the boy. "Do you know what her injuries are?"

The boy shook his head nervously. "I d-don't know... but there's blood all over her face... and when I tried to help her up she yelled at me."

"You should be careful in handling an injured person," the first soldier chided as he stepped closer to the girl. "If you move them, you can hurt them worse."

Then he stepped within arm's reach of the figure, who was squirming under her blanket silently. "Hey, lady, what's wrong? Can we help? Can you hear me?"

Slowly, as if afraid, the girl turned toward the soldier towering over her, still trembling.

The man frowned as he looked at her face, which did indeed have blood around the cheeks and chin, though most of it had apparently been wiped off. She looked like she was in her teens, and was clearly in bad shape; in addition to being huddled in an alley trembling weakly, her face was deathly pale, and was sweating feverishly.

"All right, just calm down. We'll call you an ambulance right away, all right?"

Given the girl's total silence up until that point, he was quite surprised when she suddenly grabbed onto his steel-encased arm in a panic.

"N-No!" She said nervously. "Please... just..." Hesitating, she shifted to the side, moving just enough to see between the striped soldier's legs.

The man blinked as the injured girl gasped.

"No... no... not here..."

Across the street, the finance minister fidgeted nervously as the owner of the jewelry stand rummaged through his back stock for the piece he had selected.

Not that the aging politician had any enemies that would dare or even want to hurt him physically - save perhaps for a few very upset women - but like many individuals in the upper echelons of the government, he assumed that the city's notorious terrorist menace was behind the mysterious and terrifying disappearances that were sweeping the city. Rumors of terrorist weapons fighting monsters notwithstanding, such mysterious and awful threats had only been engineered in the past by the Freedom's Angels, and the favorite target of murderous "freedom fighters" was always successful politicians.

Being in the grip of paranoia, it was only natural that he'd notice immediately when a large Russian man stepped past the stand he was browsing and then stopped next to him.

The minister froze, feeling his hackles rise as he slowly craned his head up to look at the man's face.

It didn't relieve his worry much that the foreigner appeared to be ignoring him completely while staring thoughtfully across the street into the alley where his bodyguards had run off to.

Nodding sharply, the Russian dropped a large, heavy bundle on the ground next to the minister before opening the breast pocket of his trench coat and digging for something.

The foreigner seemed quite nonplussed when he pulled out an empty cigarette carton, and the politician gulped when the stranger finally turned toward him.

"Pardon my rudeness, but may I trouble you for a cigarette?" The Russian said in flawless Japanese, tinted though it was by his accent.

"Ah... ah..." the finance minister trembled for a moment, glancing back at the alley where his soldiers were. "T-Take whatever you want! Just, please, don't hurt me!"

The Russian gave him a perplexed stare at the comment, frowning. "I have no intention of harming you. But if you're willing to spare a cigarette..." he suddenly found the aforementioned item being thrust in his face by the minister.

"Here! Here! Think nothing of it!"

Still regarding the politician strangely, the Russian plucked the item from his shaking fingers. "You have my utmost thanks, sir." Then he turned and brought the cigarette to his lips, once again completely disregarding the minister.

"You've got to help me!" The girl suddenly shouted, grabbing onto the soldier's arm like a life preserver. "He's going to kill me! Stop him, please!"

"What? Who's going to kill you?" The man in stripes asked seriously as his partner quickly drew his rifle, eyeing the entrance to the alleyway.

The first soldier waited patiently for a response, but the girl seemed to have frozen stiff while staring at him. "Miss? Are you okay? Miss? Look, if you're not too injured to move, we can take you someplace safe!"

The girl's response, oddly enough, was to lick her lips and start panting.

'He's so close... I can... I can smell it. Smell his blood...'

"Hey... kid, just what's wrong with you? Stop zoning out, all right?"

She promptly winced and pulled back. 'No... I can't. Not here. Not now. Hold it together! Just until night falls...' "That man! The foreigner in the trench coat! He's going to kill me!"

"Who... that guy?" The soldier in blue mumbled, pointing across the street toward the admittedly conspicuous figure towering above the crowd of shoppers.

"Yes! Please, kill him first!"

Both soldiers were startled at the request, and gave the young woman an uneasy glance before they turned toward the street.

"Hey, Rayden-san! Whatcha doing out here, screwball?"

Rayden blinked in surprise at hearing a familiar voice come from behind him, and his hesitation cost him as the cigarette he had just acquired was yanked out of his fingers.

"Gotta quit the sticks, man! You already get massive injections of lead on a regular basis, right? No need for this!"

Rayden twitched as Snake grinned at him from where he was hanging on the Russian's shoulder.

"It would be a shock and a blessing if my end were to be something so mundane as cancer," Rayden deadpanned, reaching for the cigarette in Snake's hands.

"Aw, c'mon! Don't be like that!" Kyle said, appearing on the other side of the gunman. "You should look forward to the future!"

"He's got it right, pal," Snake insisted as he flicked the cigarette away into a nearby trash can. "Besides, if you're going to live life as if death could come at any moment, you could at least try to have some fun with it."

"Is there a reason for your presence here?" The gunman asked wearily.

Tiro waved to a pretty girl the next booth over as he stepped up next to Snake. "Nah, we're just hanging out. You missed pizza."

"Regretful," the super-soldier said in a voice that indicated he didn't regret it one bit. "If that will be all..."

"H-Hey!" The finance minister, who had been dividing his attention between the newcomers and the stand owner counting his change, suddenly spoke up now that his purchase was complete. "Are you all police officers?"

Rayden was about to reply in the negative, when Snake continued his meddlesome streak by pushing past him and answering. "Yup! We're more or less on break right now, though. Why? Something wrong?"

The politician breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh. Then I suppose you must be an undercover officer, or something of that nature," he said, pointing to Rayden.

"... Yes. Something... of that nature," the gunman mumbled, his eyes carefully tracking something across the street.

"Excellent, excellent!" The minister said nervously, tucking his purchase under his arm. "You see, I was assigned a pair of bodyguards, but it seems they were distracted and left. If I could trouble you to accompany me until they return..."

"Okay, sure," Snake said casually, which surprised Tiro considerably. "What's your name?"

"I'm finance minister Tana Hikoshi. Now I was going to-"

"That's great, Hikoshi-san," Snake said immediately, saluting as he cut the elderly man off. "I'll ensure that nothing entirely fatal happens to you, probably." Then he turned toward Rayden. "Seriously though, what're you doing here? It's unusual to see you marching about out in the open without a target."

"Who are those people he's talking to? They look like police officers," the soldier in the striped armor said as he and his companion stepped out of the alley.

The vampiress smiled slightly when she heard this, feeling much of her nervousness wash away; whoever the Catholic gunman was, there was no way his actions were legal. If she could get him surrounded by the authorities, he'd either have to flee and abandon his hunt, or attack the police. If the latter occurred, it would be a simple matter to hide herself while the authorities swarmed the fool, and however the fight ended, she'd be safe and the vampires would have less enemies. Things finally looked to be going her way.

"Hey, I recognize that guy! He's DAPC!" The man in blue exclaimed.

Whatever reaction the Core soldiers experienced personally upon hearing that acronym was promptly eclipsed by confusion as the presumably injured girl suddenly scrambled past them and darted down the street as if she was being chased by hungry wolves.

"Wh-What? Hey, where are you going?"

"You shouldn't be... running? I... I guess she's not that badly injured..."

Rayden sighed, realizing that there was no way for him to leave without the DAPC officers following him. Not that their help was entirely unwanted, but the super-soldier found dealing with them at least as exhausting as anyone else did.

"I am not without a target. And she is making her escape even as we speak."

Hikoshi frowned. "That's unfortunate, but I would really appreciate it if you could accompany me-"

"Right away, sir!" Snake shouted suddenly, grabbing onto the man's arm. "You'll be safe with us! Come on!" Then he patted Rayden on the shoulder. "Lead the way, Jesus-lover!"

"Very well, but it's up to you to keep up," Rayden said gruffly as he started walking briskly down the street in the same direction as his prey. "She is not difficult to track, but when the sun falls, we will need to keep close."

"W-Wait! Where do you think you're going?" Hikoshi shouted as he was dragged along behind Snake. "You're supposed to be protecting me!"

"Yes sir!" Kyle said sharply as he followed behind Snake and the helpless politician. "We'll protect you with our lives!"

"Protect me with your lives in THAT direction!" The minister growled, trying to free his arm from Snake's grip. "We're not going this way!"

"Unfortunately, the elimination of dangerous enemy targets that pose an immediate threat to the general populace takes priority over things like protecting random politicians we find on the street," Snake explained bluntly. "If we were amateur soldiers like your previous bodyguards, we'd just ditch you." Then the American winked back at the increasingly frightened man. "Luckily, you happened to run into Tokyo's elite, here! We'll accomplish both tasks at once!"

"Well, you go ahead and do that," Tiro said suddenly, tugging on his collar as he stopped following, "but I think I'll sit this one out. It's my day off, and I've got a bad feeling..."

"Y-Yes! That's fine!" Hikoshi said desperately, snatching his arm free and dashing back toward Tiro. "I'll go with you, then!"

Before the politician got more than a few feet, Kyle grabbed the back of his shirt and then lifted the man up off his feet.

"H-Hey! What are you doing, fool!"

Kyle smiled brightly as he placed the finance minister over his shoulder and held him there firmly. "It would be bad if you went with Tiro; he's too weak to protect you!"

"Yup! You take good care of him, eh?" The lecher said, turning away so that no one could see his grin.

"No! Stop! Stop right now! Please! I'll leave on my own! I don't need a bodyguard!"

"That would be irresponsible!" Kyle said, ignoring the sudden surge of energy in his brain trying to inform him of the tremendous irony of that statement. "Besides, you're making a big fuss out of nothing. Rayden-san usually hunts down ordinary criminals, not the mutants and robots and stuff that we usually fight."

"M-Mutants? Robots?!"

"Yeah, really. If anything, it'll probably be a pretty boring fight," Snake agreed, nodding sharply.

Rayden sweatdropped as he saw their quarry trip on a crack in the pavement and then shove away a man that tried to help her up. "Well, actually..."

"Augh! This is so boring!" Usagi whined as she laid belly-up on one of the wooden benches lined up in the middle of the women's locker room, her hands clasped behind her head.

Asuka, who was seated nearby, sweatdropped as she regarded Usagi, and then she glanced over at the small spider drones that were busily welding together the shredded lockers.

"You know, most people in your position would be happy that they had it so easy," the bluette remarked. "The cleaning in the target room took maybe five minutes with those extra arms in your shoulders, you were able to atomize the wreckage in the weight room instead of having to carry it out - I'm going to have Seras check the physics on that as soon as he sobers up a bit, by the way - and now you get to take your time and relax while your robot minions do all the repair work for you."

Usagi had the decency to blush slightly as her superior's point sunk in. "Well... okay, fine, you're right. Still, if today is supposed to be the day off, you could at least let me take care of this stuff tomorrow."

"Tomorrow we're going to have real work to do. We DO have that whole vampire thing to take care of, you know?"

The blonde nodded despondently, then let her arms fall to her side lazily as the sizzling noises from the drones' torches filled the room.

"Hey, Asuka-chan..."

Asuka's eyes narrowed at Usagi's form of address, but she let it go. "What?"

"It's... It's about Ranma-kun..."

"What about him?" The police captain asked, preparing herself for an array of possible questions. The first ones that came to mind, considering who she was dealing with, were those that pertained to Ranma's relationship status, tastes, and other things that could be used to conquer the martial artist's heart, although she wouldn't have been entirely surprised to hear Usagi ask something regarding how Ranma was able to survive a small chunk of a missile barrage so easily.

"Well... why is he so..." Usagi frowned as she searched for the right word. "... Forgiving? I think that's right."

"Forgiving? How do you mean?" Asuka asked, scooting closer to the cyborg.

"I... I shot him. Repeatedly. But it's like he hardly even cares," the blonde mumbled, clearly perplexed.

Asuka snorted. "I assure you, he DOES care, but in the long run he knows that you're not doing it out of malice."

"Why does that matter?" Usagi asked, pushing herself up. "I could have killed him! But he just brushes it off like it's nothing! That's just not normal!"

"Hmmm..." Asuka scratched her chin, surprised that Usagi's inquiry was so thoughtful. 'Heh. She's a good kid after all.' "Well, when it comes to danger, Saotome's always been one to put others first," she explained. "I personally think it's a very bad habit, but he's the type that wouldn't hesitate to take a bullet for someone else if he could. I'm sure that if any of the missiles that you launched were headed for me, for example, he wouldn't have gotten off so lightly or forgiven you so easily."

Then her expression darkened slightly. "Besides that... Saotome has... an unfortunate past. It's not something overly dramatic, as I understand it, but apparently he didn't grow up with very good people."

"Huh? Was he abused or something?" Usagi asked.

"I assume so. As I understand it, he severed his ties to his past, and his family, when he joined the police force. There has to be a good reason for that; for you to forsake everyone in your life so completely... well, there must not have been too many good feelings tying him down." Even Asuka, daughter to despised criminals, still felt affection and some respect for her family. The fact that she kept such scarce contact with them was due to mutually agreed-upon necessity, and she couldn't really imagine leaving them for good.

She looked up at Usagi, her face hard and serious. "All told, I imagine that whenever someone treats Saotome kindly, or with respect, he elevates those people above him, in a way. They become sacred to him, to be protected at his own expense." Then she frowned. "It would seem that they also gain some inherent right to hurt him at their leisure. He'll usually complain about it, and in some cases he'll even exact retribution. But beyond that, his policy seems to be 'forgive and forget'. He simply doesn't take it seriously."

Sniffle!

Asuka winced as Usagi's eyes started flooding with emotion. "Eh... then again, it might be that fifteen years of intense martial arts experience and hardship has pounded all the sense out of him when it comes to danger. Pain and injury are such a common part of his life, it's no wonder he sees it in a different light than we do."

Usagi sniffled again, and scrubbed one of her eyes with her hand. "I feel so awful... he's always trying to help me, but I always end up causing so much trouble for him..."

"Well, that's how it is, isn't it?" Asuka said, smirking as she wagged a finger at her. "To him it's more important that you mean well than it is that you keep your gun barrels closed."

"Mmmm... I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not..." Usagi said, clearly worried.

"Well, as long as we're exploring this topic, why did you react so violently to him seeing you in your underwear? I'd think most girls would settle for throwing a washbin, or a shoe or something."

"I..." Usagi frowned deeply. "I have no idea. I never used to do things like that. But..." She held up one of her hands, and didn't even flinch as her fingers suddenly elongated and split apart at the joints, the pieces connected to each other by wires and metal bands. "It's like... a reflex, I think. I get embarrassed, and my first thought is to cover myself. But for some reason, instead of covering myself, I shoot at people. It's automatic."

Asuka sweatdropped. "So... you have an anti-pervert combat routine? Huh. No wonder Tiro hasn't touched you yet."

"I have a what?"

"It sounds like there's a program installed that activates a series of commands automatically under certain conditions. In this case, if a man sees you naked when you're not expecting it, you unleash hell without even realizing it." Asuka nodded thoughtfully. "Of course... that begs the question of why you have such a program to defend yourself from lechers when your ordinary combat skills are barely sufficient to defend yourself from actual enemies."

Yamiko blinked in surprise, and then slowly raised one eyebrow. "Professor Konta?"

"Yes?" Yoshi asked, lowering his head and arm once again so that he could go back to working on the shell of the mini-chronosphere.

The Russian scientist hesitated in asking her next question because she knew without a doubt the answer would be ridiculous, but her curiosity overwhelmed her. "Did you just flip off the ceiling?"

"Not quite," Yoshi explained, "I got the sudden feeling that someone was criticizing my work, is all. Now run the stream capacitors again; I believe I've eliminated the additional resistance."

Yamiko sighed and moved to comply. "Yes, Professor."

Knock! Knock! "Hello? Is anyone in here?"

Usagi hopped to her feet as she recognized the voice immediately, banishing thoughts of her injured landlord from her mind. "Ami-chan! Is that you?"

The doors to the locker room crept open, and Ami timidly poked her head in. "Usagi-chan? Are you here?"

Usagi waved brightly as her friend entered the room, which left Asuka wondering at the cyborg's ability to shift emotional states so quickly. "Hello! Did you come to see me on my first day at work?"

"Yes, we just thought we'd check up on you after our classes were over..." Ami said, glancing about.

Though she spent a few seconds staring at the two repair drones fixing the lockers, she eventually turned toward Asuka. "This place is really... quiet right now, huh? Is everyone out on patrol?"

"That depends on how loosely you define 'patrol'," Asuka mumbled, "but essentially, no. Everyone's just slacking off, is all."

"Did you come here by yourself?" Usagi asked.

Ami shook her head. "No, Mako-chan and Mina-chan came too. Rei had something important to do, though."

"Oh... so where are they?" Usagi asked.

"GAAAAAAAAH!! NO!! STOP IT!! GET AWAY!!"

"WHAT IS THAT THING, ANYWAY?!"

"SEEYAAUGH!"

As Usagi and Ami flinched back from the screams, Asuka slapped herself in the forehead and pushed past them, grumbling the whole time. "Typical, everyone else gets to take it easy, and I'm stuck here trying to keep our damn pet alien from killing our guests..."

Usagi and Ami shared a nervous glance before they followed the police captain out the door, and then sweatdropped as they found Makoto and Minako trying to both hide behind Ranma, who had his foot planted on the snarling alien's beak.

"I said cut it out, Hunter! Swipe at me again and I'm putting you on a diet!" Ranma threatened, his legs already sporting several curved, bleeding gashes.

"SHRAUGH!" Hunter screamed back in protest, its spine-mounted claws twitching back, as if deciding whether or not it was worth it to continue struggling.

In what the other girls could only consider an act of paramount stupidity, Asuka stalked up to the troubled alien and then gave it a swift kick in its side, causing the creature to scurry backwards away from Ranma and the others. It's doubtful that Hunter considered the attack anything more than a minor irritant, but still turned his blood-red gaze upon Asuka as he snapped his beak viciously.

"SREEEE-"

"Don't give me that!" Asuka shouted, cutting the zergling off. "I swear, if you don't have someone paying attention to you EVERY SINGLE MOMENT, you start flying off the handle and trying to eat our guests! You're worse than a cat!"

"Whoa, hey, there's no need for that kind of talk. Let's not lose our cool, here," Ranma said nervously, looking around to see if she had somehow summoned his feared enemy.

Hunter made a deep rumbling noise in the back of his throat, but finally lowered himself into a less aggressive pose and settled for glaring hatefully at the unfamiliar people.

"Wh-Why do you let that thing run around here without a leash or something?" Makoto gasped, too scared to even take the opportunity to jump into Ranma's arms and feel him up.

"That would involve both finding a leash strong enough to hold him and someone stupid enough to try and leash him," Asuka said. "So if you'd like to volunteer..."

"Well, then why don't you put it to bed?" Minako suggested, poking her head over Ranma's shoulder.

"The expression is 'put it to sleep,' but yeah, that's a good idea," Makoto said sourly.

Asuka snorted. "I'll have you know that Hunter is a valuable combat asset and a beloved, if not relentlessly violent, member of our team," the police captain insisted, planting her hands on her hips. "Besides, Snake causes FAR more damage than Hunter does. If I have to kill the zergling, then I'd have to put him down too. And I'd certainly have to put Kyle to sleep, or at least have him securely caged. And before you know it, my entire department is reduced to me, the drunk, and the lecherous idiot."

"S-So! Did you guys want to take a tour of the facility?" Usagi asked, wanting to distract her friends both from the deadly alien warbeast and the reputation of her new co-workers.

"No thanks. We got a pretty good view of the place when we spent the other night sweeping it clean," Makoto deadpanned.

"Uh... we did come to check up on Usagi-chan, but also..." Ami trailed off for a moment, glancing nervously at the brooding zergling. "You have a vampire prisoner here, don't you?"

"Yes. Why?" Asuka asked, not deigning to guess at her cousin's motives.

"Why else? We want to find out where the rest of those bloodsuckers are stashed away and blast 'em!" Makoto said enthusiastically, pounding a fist into her palm.

Asuka pressed her lips into a thin line as she considered the request. On the one hand, she figured these girls were already way in over their heads planning to assault the Freedom's Angels primary stronghold; she would hate to run into a bunch of short-skirted ghouls on the next DAPC raid, and not just because the conjured image was disgusting to think about.

On the other hand, for all their immature bluster, the Senshi were powerful and seasoned demon hunters, and Usagi herself was an arsenal which was more than a match for any undead she'd ever heard of.

"He's been very tight-lipped so far," Asuka warned, not being herself aware that Snake had broken the midian after a round of target practice and a swift kick. "How do you figure you're going to get anything out of him?"

"Just let us talk to him for now. If we really can't get anything out of him, we have other options," Ami explained.

Asuka shrugged her shoulders and then gestured past her. "All right, then. Follow me."

The other girls all flinched, and none of them took another step.

Sighing, Asuka rolled her eyes. "Right, right... Hunter, beat it, would you?"

The zergling turned his head toward the police captain curiously, his tail swaying lazily.

"Well? Go on! Get!" The police captain shouted, her eyes narrowing.

Making a rumbling noise deep in the back of his throat, Hunter moved to the center of the hallway, and then raised its spine-mounted arms high into the air, much to the confusion of those present.

Well, except for Ranma, who lived with the creature. "Wait! Hunter, no, don't-"

SKRAK! CRACK! THUMP! Everyone jumped back as the killer alien tore straight into the floor, ripping easily through the tiled surface and only taking slightly longer to utterly destroy the concrete and rebar below.

After a few seconds, Hunter was gone, and a circular portion of the floor had been reduced to shredded rubble.

"Well... Tsukino, after your bots are done with the lockers, see what you can do with that, would you?" Asuka requested, deciding to take the incident in stride and ignore it. Nowadays she didn't have the luxury of getting worked up over little things like aliens digging holes in her building, after all.

"What? But that wasn't my fault!" Usagi protested.

"I know. That's why it was phrased as a question, even though you know it's an order," the bluette explained. "So, if everyone else would follow me..."

"Awwwww!"

"Dang, this place could use some carpet," Makoto mumbled as she followed Ranma into the sub-levels of the DAPC headquarters, having attached herself to his arm at the first opportunity.

"Eh, I think dressing this area up would kind of ruin the atmosphere," Ranma protested, shrugging.

"Right," Asuka agreed from the front, "these environs are meant to say: 'You don't want to end up here, so shut up and be a good little freak of nature.' Had you girls caused us any trouble back when we first met, you would already be familiar with this area."

"How many life-forms do you have prisoner down here?" Ami asked, following Asuka closely and looking about with all the powerful curiosity of a scientific mind.

"Thirteen different organisms that we know about," the police captain responded as they made their way to the holding vault at the end of sub-level entrance room. Nobody present seemed surprised or concerned that Seras was sleeping soundly at the foot of the vault.

Ami promptly turned to stare at her cousin nervously. "That you know about? There are things in here you don't know of?"

"Well, obviously I can't answer that question definitively since I don't know about them, can I?" Asuka deadpanned. Reaching the vault, she stepped to the keypad on the side and input an eight-digit number, making sure that her body was between the keys and any prying eyes in the room.

"Wow... th-that's kinda creepy..." Minako mumbled as she started looking around the environment more carefully. "Eh? What's that?"

"Wh-What? Knock it off Mina!" Makoto said immediately, squeezing Ranma's bicep even more tightly.

Minako frowned over at a pile of rusting metal crates, and then shook her head. "Well... no, nevermind. Sorry." The blonde girl took a few steps closer to Asuka, though she forced herself to relax slightly. 'I'm just getting scared and jumping at shadows, that's all...'

VrrrrrrRRRRRRRHM!

Asuka turned around as the massive gears of the vault door began to turn, and planted her hands on her hips. "Calm down, ladies. There's nothing to be afraid of down here that isn't sealed behind thick layers of heavy metals and the occasional pattern of Shinto wards."

"She's right. Besides Hunter, we can practically guarantee that there are no aliens running around the base trying to eat you," Ranma said casually before turning pointedly to the brunette hanging off his arm. "So, really, it's safe to let go of me."

"I'll be the judge of that," Makoto challenged, a victorious grin on her face.

A loud creaking noise filled the room as the vault finished opening, revealing another wall of metal with a large gated doorway in the middle.

Minako raised an eyebrow as she stared at the dirty, shirtless man inside. "Hey, he's not bad looking."

"In my experience, they rarely are," Asuka said, shrugging. "It seems that even weak vampires are able to shift their appearance somewhat. However, instead of doing something useful with the power, like developing it to mimic people, they seem to just use it to clear up their complexion and smooth over their features and whatnot."

Garo said nothing as he continued to stare at the wall opposite the vault entrance, not at all concerned with the group gathering out in the front. The woman who apparently led this band of psychotics was there, so there was a good chance that he wouldn't be arbitrarily shot again. He had already made his escape attempt for the day, and wasn't eager to get into more trouble.

Sniff! Sniff!

Okay, so maybe he was SLIGHTLY concerned with the smell of freshly spilt blood that he recognized as being from the pigtailed man. Though he had calmed considerably from his initial hysteria upon tasting the sweet red nectar, the flavor and rush of power it had brought haunted his mind. Why did he react like this to the man's blood? Did his thirst for it mean that it had addictive properties, or was it a simple desire for superior nourishment? Were there any negative side effects in ingesting such a remarkable substance?

And, most importantly, should he kill the human if he got the chance, and gorge himself only to never experience that exquisite flavor for the rest of eternity? Was there an alternative?

Most people would have been too concerned with being locked up and periodically abused to worry about rationing a particularly tasty human, but Garo had always been one to think ahead.

"Excuse me... Hey! Vampire guy! You awake?"

Garo didn't bother turning, but if he had, he would have noticed a pretty blonde girl with a bow in her hair standing outside the gate. "Yes, I am. What do you want, human?"

"Would you be interested in telling us the location of all your friends and maybe some of the special powers they have with absolutely no promise of getting anything in return?" Minako ventured, causing Asuka to slap herself in the forehead.

This time the vampire did turn, if only to get some visual assurance that the newcomer was serious and not teasing him. "... No, not really." He turned back around.

Minako threw her arms up in dismay. "Well, I'm out of ideas. I'm pretty new to this interrogation thing."

"Yeah, we can tell," Makoto deadpanned. "Hey Ami-chan, do you have..." the brunette trailed off as she saw that Ami was standing behind the rest of the group guzzling a bottle of some murky white liquid that was presumably alcoholic. "Ami! Where did you get that?"

The genius Senshi gasped as she finally stopped chugging the wonderfully powerful booze, and pointed briefly to Seras, who was still sleeping quietly on the floor.

"Oh, forget it. I'LL do it," Makoto growled, reluctantly letting go of Ranma's arm to walk up to the doorway.

"Hey, bloodsucker. You got a name?" Makoto asked, crossing her arms under her breasts.

Garo was silent for a few seconds before he responded. "My name is Garo."

"Garo what?"

"Just Garo. Us... 'bloodsuckers' typically leave our family ties behind when we breach the veil between life and death. I do not have a surname." Of course, he could have told them what his was when he was turned, but that information was both unpleasant to divulge and could give his enemies a distant lead on investigating him.

"Okay Garo-san, I have a question: why do you kill innocent people?" Makoto asked bluntly.

"Innocent people..." the midian echoed. "Hard to say. For the same reason you presumably kill innocent fish, pigs, and cows, I would suppose."

Makoto's eyebrow twitched. "'Fish, pigs, and cows'? That's all people are to you? Food?"

"It would be more accurate to consider them a resource than just food, but yes." Garo looked up at the ceiling, smirking slightly. "The vampire is effectively a different, superior species to man. While humanity is the basis of our kind, and indeed is essential to us, you are of the same caliber as livestock."

Makoto grit her teeth at hearing this, and then snorted. "Well, you must feel pretty embarrassed then, being beaten and captured by a bunch of cows."

Garo nodded curtly. "Indeed. My inherent superiority over you worthless walking feedbags is my only comfort under these circumstances."

Asuka sighed as Makoto balled her hands into fists, her temper getting the better of her. "I knew it would go like this..."

"You bastard! People are dying!" Makoto shouted furiously, clutching one of the bars of the gate separating her from the vault interior. "The entire city is slowly falling apart, and you don't even care? Weren't you human once?"

"It is a condition that many will not outgrow, unfortunately," Garo said, his voice tinged with false regret. "Only the pure and virginal may join the ranks of the vampire. It is our gift to them for their fortitude. And we hope to spread this gift far and wide..."

"Yeah, yeah, we know all about that," Minako said dismissively. "You gather together a bunch of losers and seduce them. Real nice."

"You see it as a crude, twisted conversion. Understandable." The nosferatu chuckled. "To be honest, we vampires too are not so fond of those little 'fang factories'. To us, the conversion of a human is something special and sacred. But current circumstances don't allow for such sentiment."

"I'm still somewhat confused as to what the 'current circumstances' are," Asuka mentioned, looking somewhat annoyed.

"As you shall remain." The vampire turned his head just enough so that the humans outside could make out his grin. "Until you too are consumed."

Makoto glared at the midian's back for a few seconds, then made a disgusted grunt as she backed off. "Forget it. We're not going to get anything but back-talk from this idiot."

Ranma scratched his head for a moment, and then shrugged and stepped forward. "Hey, let me give it a go."

"Eh? If you could get information out of him, shouldn't you have done so already by now?" Minako asked.

"It isn't really my department," Ranma explained, dusting off his shirt and taking a deep breath.

Clang! Then he put his foot against the silver bars.

"Man, you know, I get injured so often nowadays, sometimes I don't even bother to put on bandages or change my clothes!" Ranma said loudly, causing the others on his side the gate to sweatdrop at the lack of acting.

Garo twitched.

"I mean, look at this! Hunter tore up my legs and I didn't put on so much as a Band-aid before coming down here!"

Garo twitched again.

"I should take care of this before it gets infected. I mean, my pants are soaked and the blood's barely even dried! Look, it's still dribbling all over the floor!"

"GYAH!"

Makoto and Minako flinched back as the vampire suddenly turned and crawled over to the vault entrance on his hands and knees, a crazed expression on his face.

"S-Stop, you fool! Don't waste it!" The midian shouted desperately, stopping just short of the silver bars keeping him from his jailors. He screamed incoherently as a few droplets fell from the wet, damaged pants and splattered on the floor. "Wrap that up! Wrap up that wound right now! Or at least get a cup or something! Augh!"

Minako paled slightly and stepped back. "Well... this is pretty disturbing."

Asuka rolled her eyes. "You weren't here for the earlier episode."

Ranma smirked as Garo glared at him. "What? You want this? You already had your fill today. Why should I give you any more blood?"

Garo trembled mightily, and clenched his teeth shut tightly as he wrestled with the intense craving surging through him.

In response to the vampire's silence, Ranma grabbed the ripped portion of his pants and then tore it off, removing one entire leg at mid-thigh.

"Wh-What are y-you... going to d-do with... that?" Garo asked nervously, a bit of drool leaking out of his mouth.

"What do you think? This thing is soaked and ripped up. It's going in the trash," the martial artist said matter-of-factly.

"N-No! Anything but that!" Garo protested, moving forward to grab through the gates, but then thinking better of it and backing off again.

Ranma snorted. "Why should I give it to you? You won't even tell us anything about the other vampires."

"You're asking me to turn my back on my own people!" Garo growled, slamming a fist into the floor of his cell.

"You turned your back on humanity when it was convenient for you, did you not?" Asuka said suddenly, leaning against the silver gate. "For your own survival and power, you'll forsake anything. Isn't that also what it means to be a vampire?"

Garo clenched his hands into fists as the humans stared at him. "I... I will... not divulge such information so that I may suck drying blood out of a soiled rag," he said with as much dignity as he could muster under the circumstances (which wasn't a whole lot).

"Hmmm..." Asuka rubbed her chin in thought. "Okay. How about a half vial of the good stuff, then?"

"Wh-What?" She instantly had the vampire's full attention.

"Now that I think about it, we have quite a few of Saotome's blood samples from when we began extracting the R-virus. Tuko uses them as growth catalysts, since he says the virus doesn't replicate in other solutions." Her gaze hardened as she looked down at the vampire. "You tell us what we want to know, and you get a Saotome snack. Deal?"

"... Ugh... Deal," the vampire said shamefully, hanging his head.

Ranma was looking exceptionally pleased by this turn of events until Makoto tugged on his sleeve. "What?"

"Vampire interrogations aside, Ranma-kun," the brunette said uneasily, "you really SHOULD get your legs bandaged up right away after you get injured. It's unsanitary to be walking around like that, especially with blood-drinking monsters running about."

Ranma flushed and scratched the back of his head. "Oh, yeah... that's true..."

"First question," Asuka began, "there's obviously been a sudden explosion in the vampire population. You said yourself that the individuals like yourselves don't appreciate it, so I assume you're being ordered or coerced in some way. Who are you taking orders from, and why are they building up the vampires' numbers?"

Garo groaned slightly, feeling his conflicting emotions and urges well up inside him. "Our master is Vampire Lord Ran. He is the eldest and most powerful of us, and all vampires in Tokyo essentially consider him their master."

"Why's that?" Makoto asked suddenly. "You claim to be all superior and stuff, but your entire race is a bunch of henchmen?"

Garo glared at her. "It is true that our power as nosferatu are restricted by the bonds of servitude; a new vampire obeys the one who turned them without exception. So a new vampire may go out and turn some humans into slaves for himself, but is still slave to the one who turned him. As such, most of the vampiric lines of servitude wind up to Lord Ran, and those that don't have pledged loyalty to him out of respect and fear."

"And what does Ran want?" Asuka asked bluntly.

Garo took a deep breath. "Ran wants to end human dominance on Earth."

Everyone in the room blanched at that.

"What? What's that supposed to mean?" Minako asked nervously.

"At present, despite our superior power, vampires are a race of outcasts that must hide constantly in fear of discovery and subsequent annihilation," Garo explained. "Humans are simply too numerous, organized, well-equipped, and resourceful. And, most important of all, they can pursue us during the day."

Asuka nodded. "Right. Any war that the vampires could wage would have to be put on hold every time the sun comes up. That's a pretty serious problem." Then her eyes narrowed. "Far too serious, actually. No matter how many new vampires you make, you'll never be able to approach the number of humans, and being weak and helpless in the daylight is a critical weakness. How does this clown Ran expect to overcome this?"

"That is..." Garo trailed off. "... Not entirely clear."

"Some leader ya got there," Ranma deadpanned.

"Our future has been foretold," Garo said, shrugging, "and our ascendency assured. This is what Lord Ran tells us. And we follow Lord Ran."

"Okay then. Final question," Asuka said, leaning closer so that she could peer into the midian's eyes. "Where is Lord Ran?"

Garo snorted. "So you would attempt to face a full vampire lord... very well, I will mourn only the loss of my new favorite food once you're all dead," he sneered, indicating Ranma.

"Yeah, yeah, spare us," Ranma said. "Where is the freak?"

"Unfortunately, I do not know where he lives. I have only seen him twice," Garo explained. "I can tell you where he frequents, though." The vampire grinned. "Ensure that you do not approach unprepared for death. Pray for a swift, merciful killing."

"Okay, fine, we'll do that," Asuka mumbled negligently, pulling out a notepad. "Address?"

Garo was silent for several seconds. "I really don't think you appreciate the level of terrifying power that you're recklessly pursuing."

Click! By the end of that sentence, the midian had a large, black pistol aimed through the bars of the gate directly at his forehead.

"I don't think YOU appreciate how annoying it is to have to bribe you for answers instead of shooting you in the head," Ranma said in irritation. "'Cause that's what I usually do to undead. It's very satisfying. Wanna see?"

Garo scooted to the side and tried his hardest to pretend that the incredibly tasty and well-armed human wasn't there threatening him. "So, as I was saying, he can be found on occasion at Gintoshi Night Club at Hijon and Mutsuke Avenue."

Asuka raised an eyebrow. "Is that another one of those vampire factories?"

"Not at all. While several usual patrons and staff are vampires, the club tailors to the rich and the famous, and would be a poor place to find virgins. Ran and some of the other elites of our kind go there simply to enjoy the comforts of high society like any comparable human. Our every waking hour doesn't have to involve feeding, you know."

Asuka snorted. "Well, that's the only activity we're interested in, thank you much." She turned around. "Ami-chan, are you..."

The police captain trailed off as she found Ami lying on the floor comatose next to Seras, snoring lightly with an empty liquor bottle lying next to her head.

"Er... sorry about that," Minako said awkwardly, rubbing the back of her head, "this is sort of a new thing for her, really!"

'New thing?' Asuka thought, frowning. 'When I saw her the other week, she said she didn't drink...' then her face darkened. 'Wait a minute... does that mean this is my fault?'

"Upsy daisy, Ami-chan!" Makoto called out as Minako pushed the insensate girl up into the piggyback position on top of Makoto. "You know, I don't really object to you turning into a lush, but you should really learn some moderation. This is just one of those places you do NOT want to pass out in."

Getting over her brief pang of guilt, Asuka snorted and glared at Seras. "Doesn't bother some people one bit."

"Mmmmhn," Ami mumbled in her sleep, her face tickled by Makoto's ponytail. "Must... spawn... more... overlords..."

After shooting Ami a strange look along with everyone else, Asuka reared back her leg and gave Seras a solid kick in the side. Whump!

"Ow! Wha the 'ell whazzat fer!" The sloshed doctor demanded, his eyes fluttering open as he struggled to sit up.

"That was for indirectly assisting in the corruption of my cousin," Asuka deadpanned, ignoring the minor pangs of her own guilt with practiced ease. "It also served as a quick way to get you up so that you can get fangs here a sample of Saotome's blood from the viral sample case."

"Mmm? Do a barrel roll," Ami murmured.

"Uh? I thought he already fed," Seras said, completely ignoring the insensate girl (he was quite familiar with drunken stupors himself).

"I have an assault to plan; I don't have time to be explaining everything that just happened to you! Now stop gawking and move!" Asuka shouted, causing the faux doctor to scurry away rapidly.

Makoto chuckled as she shifted Ami on her back. "Damn girl, you really lay down the law, don'cha?"

"That IS my job, both in the literal and the practical sense," Asuka murmured, not sure how to feel about the comment.

"Zzzzz... how I mine for fish?" Ami asked.

"Well, that whole experience was really creepy, but we got what we came for!" Minako said excitedly. "Now we can go find Snake and those other guys and then get the vampires!"

Asuka frowned deeply at the mention of Snake. "Hmm... you know, it's about dusk out right now... where ARE Snake and the others?"

Blam! Blam!

"Dear God! What's happening? What's going on?" Minister Hikoshi demanded as he crouched down onto the ground, covering his head with his arms.

"Ugh..." A man with shoulder-length hair staggered backward as blood slowly leaked from the two holes in his chest. "Who... Who the hell?"

As Snake and Rayden stared down the wounded man with pistols drawn, the scattered pedestrians rapidly scattered further, fleeing from what appeared to be a sudden, unprovoked street shooting.

The wounded man gasped as he looked more closely at the gunman in blue. "W-Wait? DAPC?"

Without waiting for an answer, he suddenly darted forward, apparently ignoring the bullet wounds in his ribcage.

Rayden wasted no time himself, and rushed forward to slam a fist into the charging man's stomach before he could reach his more fragile companions. Ignoring the desperate scratching at his arm, the Russian threw him hard into the wall adjacent to the sidewalk.

WHAM! The apparent vampire gasped in agony as his bones and the brick they were pressed against cracked at the same time, spraying bits of rubble out onto the concrete at the same time a glob of body fluids surged up his throat and gushed out of his mouth.

"Tekai, finish him off, would you?" Snake requested casually, scanning the street for any other targets. "Hmm, this guy was a bit early; the sunset hasn't even vanished yet..."

"Hey! Are you listening to me?" Hikoshi shouted, still crouched on the ground. "What's going on? Why did you kill that man?"

"Oh, he's not dead yet," Kyle said conversationally as he approached the trembling midian. "Well... in a way, he is. Sort of. But anyway..." He reared back a fist.

CRUNCH! The relatively small building shook visibly as Kyle pounded a fist into the wall, creating a spread of deep cracks and blood where the vampire's head had been just a second ago.

"There. NOW it's dead for real," the blonde explained happily, tugging his blood-soaked fist out of the wall as the corpse slowly turned to dust.

"Hurry up you two," Snake ordered, moving on once he saw Rayden start walking once more. "Chances are the chick heard the gunshots, so she'll probably pick up the pace."

"What are you saying? Please, let me go home!" Hikoshi begged as Kyle pulled him up by his shirt again and dragged him forward.

"Aw, don't worry about it. If we're running into vampires already, then this shouldn't take much longer. Just try to stay close to us, all right?" Kyle instructed, still apparently oblivious to the minister's terror.


As the group advanced down the street, ignoring the civilians rushing for safety, Rayden glanced over at Snake. "The speed of your attack was rather impressive. You, too, can sense these creatures?"

"Nope," the American said bluntly. "You pulled a gun on a random guy on the street who had clearly never met you before. I figured there was a fifty-fifty chance that either he was a monster, or you had decided to ditch the crusader of justice thing and just kill people for the fun of it. Obviously, I had to shoot one of you, and I had to do it fast."

Rayden's face darkened. "And you shot a complete stranger based on a fifty percent chance of it being the right thing to do?"

"Not entirely," Snake explained, "there's also the fact that I was already within arms' reach of you. Besides, I hit a non-vital point."

Then he frowned. "How come YOU can sense vampires?"

As he was wont to do, Rayden closed his eyes reverently and clutched the crucifix hanging around his neck. "My faith guides me in all things. The cross rejects these monstrosities and directs me toward their destruction."

"So basically, you listen for the voices in your head and do as they command," Snake offered.

Rayden twitched.

"That happened to me once," Kyle said, inserting his own thoughts to everyone else's dismay. "Everyone else said it was bad, but I kind of liked it; it was like having Captain Takami around all the time, except that all the orders were horrible atrocities."

"Please..." Minister Hikoshi sobbed, "please let me go home!"

"That would be unwise," Rayden said, finally addressing the frightened man once again. "Though I admit it was foolish to bring you into danger such as this, to release you now, when the vampires are emerging into the streets, would leave you in more danger than protecting you through the inevitable conflict ahead."

"If you knew that it was stupid to bring me, why did you let them do it?!" The politician screamed.

Rayden shrugged. "They are the chosen protectors of you and your people. I am but a hammer delivering the righteousness of Heaven upon the darkness. Who am I to judge their decisions on how best to assist a government official?"

Blam! "AAUGH!"

Whatever Hikoshi was going to say about Rayden's propriety in judging the police was forgotten as they suddenly focused their attention on Snake, who had, by the looks of things, suddenly shot someone on the other side of the street in the leg.

Rayden's eyes narrowed. "I thought you could not detect the undead. Why did you fire upon this stranger, then?"

Snake blinked, turning to regard the Russian gunman. "Oh, no, don't worry, I know that guy. He's not a stranger."

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" Screamed Mamoru Chiba as he writhed on the ground clutching his leg in pain.

"Oh, don't be such a crybaby! It was only a lousy nine millimeter slug!" The American snorted as he holstered his pistol and then started walking again. "The guy took a freaking Desert Eagle round before; a nine barely qualifies as a bee sting next to that."

"Agreed," Rayden admitted, having himself suffered wounds from both calibers. "However, your assault upon him seems completely arbitrary and quite immoral."

"Says the guy who seems to be hunting down a young woman whose only goal is to escape with her life," Snake countered smugly.

"......... I see." Rayden coughed into his fist, and then quickly stepped up his pace to pass by Snake and once again lead the small group. "On that note, we must hurry before the trail runs cold. Our target is becoming more agile and capable as the streets darken. Ideally, we should be able to track her to someplace where these creatures take sanctuary, and then crush the entire coven at once."

Snake chuckled. "That's what I'm talking about! Lead the way, church boy!"

Kyle grinned. "Awesome! If we can kill a whole bunch of 'em, maybe we'll get a bonus!"

Hikoshi hiccuped as tears leaked from his eyes. "Why? Why is this happening to me?"

The aforementioned vampiress stopped in her tracks to take a deep breath of the cool night air as the last glimmering rays of sunlight vanished over the horizon.

New strength and vigor filled her exhausted frame as night fell, and her eyes glowed slightly with the heady rush of energy.

Despite the surge of power, she wasted little time in building her pace back up to a sprint in the opposite direction of her pursuers. After all her bravado in the face of her companion and lover's cowardice, she herself knew when she was outclassed. Putting aside the strange, unnaturally tough Russian man whom she'd never heard of, there was no way that a month-dead vampire such as herself would survive an encounter with the DAPC. It was a mere fluke that she had lasted this long; if it weren't for a good head-start and her pursuers occasionally stopping to shoot other people, she would have been overtaken long ago.

"Just a bit farther," she mumbled to herself, dashing into an alley and leaping up onto the wall to reach the roof.

After looking both ways, she rushed to the edge and cautiously peeked out into the streets.

'Wow... except for the cars, it's almost completely empty,' she thought bleakly.

People in Tokyo at times seemed to have an almost precognitive sense for avoiding the supernatural hazards that dotted the city (probably to compensate for being foolish enough to live there in the first place), which probably served to explain why nine-tenths of showy, mystical battles conveniently occurred when there was nobody around to watch. Tokyo had an enormous population, and despite the growth of the vampire populace, their feeding had barely made a scratch in that number.

'They're adapting faster than Ran had guessed... than anyone had guessed. How long can we really expect these people to lay down and die without a struggle?'

"Hey! Who're you?"

The vampiress whirled around, her eyes wide and her fangs bared, ready to rip apart the newcomer or flee as the situation required.

After seeing and recognizing the intruder as another vampire, she relaxed her posture and immediately went about deciding whether it would be best to try her luck against the officers and the Russian.

"Hm. Don't recognize you," the man mumbled as he looked over the female midian. He was of German descent, and, like most male vampires, was tall and lean, with hard, chiseled muscles all over his body. His style of clothing consisted of a loosely buttoned dress shirt and scarf with wool pants, and his blond hair was done into thick, pointed locks that curled around his face.

Honestly, most people thought that the hairstyle looked like a head crab, but few individuals had the guts to tell him that. And some of those that did have the guts promptly lost them as a direct result of such impudence.

"Ah! I... I don't suppose you would! M-My name is Kimu!" the vampiress stuttered. "It's an honor to meet you, Kliff-sama!"

Kliff stepped closer to the young woman, looking at her more closely. "You've heard of me. That's a point in your favor. What're you doing here?"

Kimu gulped. "Er... why? Should I not be here?" She asked pensively. If he was asking because she was invading his hunting grounds - which only some of the elites such as Kliff kept private - then she could safely say she was being chased by vampire hunters and he would happily dispose of them. If there was another, more important reason, then bringing armed humans in this direction was a VERY bad idea.

Kliff's eyes narrowed, and he looked her up and down.

'PLEASE tell me he's mentally undressing me! Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease!' Not that she had any particular desire to make out with one of the elder vampires, but it was honestly the best turn of events that could occur at this point.

"You're wounded," Kliff said without a drop of sympathy. "Who did this?"

"I d-don't really know who he w-was," the vampiress stuttered before the elder vampire glared at her openly.

"I saw you approach here at a run. And then you immediately leapt up onto the roof and searched the streets," he said matter-of-factly. "Are you fleeing someone? Who?"

Kimu squeaked nervously and backed up a step. "N-Nobody! I mean, it was still daylight! I'll go back and take care of them right now!"

Kliff stared at the girl in disgust, and then snorted. "Don't be ridiculous. I can't let anyone interfere with the operation. I'll deal with this. Tell me who is pursuing you. What are they armed with?"

The vampiress gulped again. "They're... uh... well, like I said, I don't know... who the first man was, but he used guns! Powerful ones! And he was very tough!"

"I see. And the others?"

The desperately frightened vampire girl was planning on lying for this question, she really was. But for some reason, as the elder nosferatu gazed down at her, she felt the full and unblemished truth pouring out of her lips.

"They're the DAPC. They found the gunman and followed him to track me here; I imagine they'll be here any moment now."

Kliff's rage was palpable as she completed that sentence, and his eyes flared a bright, solid crimson. Kimu was glad that her heart was no longer beating, because if it had been, it would have punched right out of her ribcage.

"I see. Your idiocy is remarkable," the German snapped. "Now get out of my way."

Shooft! A sharp scuffing sound came from Kliff as he suddenly crossed the distance between them faster than even the midian girl could track, a slight blue haze surrounding him.

"Ah! S-Sorry!" Kimu shouted, stumbling backward.

Shooft! The same strange noise came from behind her, and she turned her head to look, fearing that Kliff had teleported behind her and that she was about to back into him.

That particular fear was quite unfounded. As a brief blue shimmer vanished, Kimu suddenly found herself looking over her shoulder at the brightly lit streets of Tokyo... which were about three kilometers away, below her.

"Wha-Wha-WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!"


Down below, Kliff smirked as he stared up at the night sky, his sharp, hawk-like vision able to make out the vampiress's plummeting body as it flailed uselessly in the air.

Connecting two portals over such a long distance was a tremendous waste of energy, but it was by far his favorite method of executing people; the long, drawn-out terror of the plunge was combined with a wonderfully graphic demise at the bottom.

It made a big impression, and not just in the street.

It also allowed him plenty of time to think over his decision to kill the individual and possibly change his mind without at all diminishing the horrifying experience of the victim.

Kliff was doing such a thing now. The girl was weak, and would be of no use to him as anything but a decoy. But at the same time... a decoy could be very useful. His best and oldest friends had been wiped out by the DAPC, and even he felt a tinge of nervousness at the thought of fighting them alone. At the same time, he couldn't ask the other vampires he had brought with him to help distract the police from interrupting the ambush; his absence would make things hard enough.

The elder vampire nodded reluctantly, preparing to generate another portal near the ground that would eject her straight up in front of him, on the roof. Gravity would undo its own work and kill her momentum, which would allow her to land painfully, but not fatally.

He didn't stop smirking one bit, though.

"Almost there," the nosferatu mumbled, his hands glowing slightly as the girl's descent neared the height of the tallest buildings in the area, marking the last segment of her fall. "Annnnnnd..."

Thoom! Kliff flinched in surprise as something punched through the girl's body at an angle from below, causing a violent burst of blood and bone, and stalling the body's fall only slightly before it dropped again.

"What in the Hells..."

"Huh. Not bad," Snake reasoned as he lowered the shortened anti-vehicle rifle. Then he turned toward Rayden, holding the weapon up by the barrel and eyeing it critically. "Good accuracy considering the length, but the kick is absurd. Obviously made for you three-hundred pound super-soldiers."

Rayden shrugged expressionlessly. "This is true. I do not prepare my weapons for use by others."

Splak! A small, brief deluge of blood hit the street several meters away, splattering all over the asphalt as dust fell from the sky at a calmer pace.

"My god! What WAS that? Where did all that blood come from?" Hikoshi howled, seeing no body or any other indication of what Snake had actually shot.

The American tossed the heavy rifle to Kyle, who caught it easily. "Okay, you got anything good in the close-range department? I left home without the heavy arms today, so I need a loaner."

"Of course," Rayden muttered, opening his coat and reaching into the folds before withdrawing his sawed-off shotgun. "Is this more to your liking?"

"Eh, good enough," Snake said, eagerly taking the weapon and checking to ensure it was loaded. "Just the double-barrel? Nothing in an automatic?"

"When it comes to shotguns I prefer simpler arms," the Catholic said simply. Personality-wise, he considered himself to be nearly the polar opposite of Snake, but the pair certainly shared a common skillset.

"I can see the appeal," Snake allowed, snapping the weapon shut and raising it into the air.

Then he lowered it to his side, pointing it straight at Kliff's nose. "What do you think, bloodsucker?"

Rayden's eyes promptly narrowed, and he took a step back at the same time Kyle took aim with the rifle he was given.

Kliff raised an eyebrow as he stared down the shotgun's barrel, mildly impressed that the human had picked up his presence even before he had adjusted his senses from the teleportation.

"I can't say I'm very fond of guns," the vampire admitted. "Loud, bothersome, irritating weapons. No elegance or finesse to them."

"Elitist jackass." Snake deadpanned. Then he pulled the trigger.

BLAM! Rayden's eyes widened as Snake was suddenly blasted forward into the street, immediately rolling to lessen the impact best he could when he hit the ground heavily.

"Hmph. So reckless, so hasty," the German said casually, a wave of translucent blue shimmering in front of his face. "Really, do you intend to do battle before introductions?"

"Snake! Snake, what happened?" Kyle asked in a panic, wondering if he should run out to help the American and leave the finance minister unprotected.

Hikoshi himself had finally resigned himself to silence, and was curled up in the fetal position behind Kyle's legs. He didn't know what was happening, and at least recognized that any further actions on his part could only reduce his chances of survival.

"Ghhuh! S-Sonuva..." Snake clenched his teeth as he fought against the pain in his back; though his armor vest had blocked the shot from penetrating, the force of the impact had been punishing.

Kliff smiled viciously, revealing his lengthened canines. "I am-"

"You are a dead man," Rayden said stonily, interrupting the midian. "The only right a dead man has to a name is the memories he leaves and the inscription on his headstone. Do not waste my time, vampire."

The elder vampire's mood soured immediately. "You're a cheeky one. Who are you supposed to be? You don't look like a cop."

The Russian snorted, and then grabbed the bundle over his shoulder with both hands before taking a firm hold of the cloth that it was wrapped up in. "I tire of speaking to walking cadavers. Begone, scum." Shrrp!

Rei panted lightly as she jogged down the main walk into the commercial plaza, her hands tucked into the pockets of a nylon jacket as she scanned the area.

The plaza was well-lit during the night and shielded from the wind by a veritable wall of large commercial structures, and in less dangerous times it was a favorite spot of the homeless and destitute to stay for the night.

In recent times, however, the plaza was perfectly empty and clean at night, which was a small comfort to the shop owners; they had thousands in janitor's fees cleaning up the bloodstains before the general public found out.

"Mmm... there!" Rei noticed a figure standing silently in the shadow of a shop awning, and slowed herself as she approached, looking perfectly composed.

"Nagase-kun?"

The figure turned slightly, though in the darkness Rei still couldn't make out the face.

"H... Hino-san?" A soft, scratchy voice said.

And then, without further delay, the figure burst from the shadows, dashing toward the Senshi of Mars.

"Ah! Hino-san!" Tsuna cried, latching onto the raven-haired woman desperately. "I'm so glad it's you! I was really scared!"

Rei sweatdropped as the aspiring journalist fought to contain her tears. "Well, why did you want to meet all the way out here at night, anyway?"

"I didn't think about it at the time!" Tsuna complained. "We always met in the evening in some place isolated before, right?"

"Well, yeah, but it's totally unnecessary," Rei said bluntly.

"But that's how it's done in the movies!"

The fire Senshi rolled her eyes as she patted the shorter girl on the shoulders. "Whatever. I'm just glad you're okay. I heard gunfire..."

"Yeah, I know! Do you think we should check it out?" Tsuna turned toward the main street worriedly.

"No, I really don't think we should," Rei said firmly. "Let's just find someplace inside where it's safe. I have a... feeling."

Letting go of Tsuna the raven-haired woman stared up at the crescent moon hanging in the sky.

"Yes... something bad is going to happen tonight. I can feel it..."

Vampires destroyed: 5
Plot pretexts established: 2
VG Cats references milked for cheap laughs: 1
Industrial-grade machines totaled: 1
Core soldiers granted an unexpected day off: 2

End Chapter 9