Chapter 17

Six

The wreckage of three Arm Slaves was still flaming behind them as the five girls left.

Spectre had stolen a jeep from somewhere, and she, Sailor Moon, Luna, and Shampoo were flying down what passed for a road while Mew Mint flew alongside.

Thusly they tore off into the Korean Jungle.

The fight had taken an interesting turn. Kaname was on the ground with Ranma and Akane running bodyguard detail. Mew Ichigo was bouncing around plaguing the ponytailed AS with energy blasts while Sousuke continued to fight it in a more… traditional manner. Sakura was playing support, still watching from The Fly while also using The Wood to recruit a small army of trees.

With the supernatural powers the machine was showing however, the battle was pretty evenly matched.

The balance was tipped with a roar as a jeep connected with the enemy's face and exploded.

The cavalry's cavalry was standing atop the cliff.

The battle wasn't going well.

At first, they had been doing fine, however it seemed that whatever forcefield the ponytailed AS was using, it only needed to see an attack once before learning how to no-sell it. Which was why they were understandably desperate. Desperate enough to try something stupid.

As their enemy made another grab for Chidori, Ranma charged it only to meet the now all too familiar invisible wall. Then Sakura hit him with The Rain.

Surprise, disbelief, line of sight, whatever it was; something broke the pilot's concentration for a split second. That was all the opening the Saotome heir needed. Once inside her opponent's guard, she broke into a full sprint, climbing the metal behemoth until she was able to slip one of Spectre's grenades into an armor plate that had been knocked loose.

She backflipped away as the colossus' shoulder exploded. The pilot screamed as the feedback from the explosion did neural damage to his left arm through the controls. At that point, his concentration was completely broken.

Akane was the first one in, slapping a second grenade into a gap in the knee armor. Another explosion, and now the AS unit was on one knee. The pilot's concentration was now shattered.

The titan tipped backwards slightly, and might have fallen had an enormous spear not sprouted out of its chest, nailing it in place. Luna and Shampoo ran up the wooden stalagmite, the Chinese girl widening a damaged point so that her fellow cat-girl could toss in explosives borrowed from the amazon. The left arm was now unresponsive and dangling in a way that would have been gruesome on a flesh and blood opponent. The pilot's focus was now irrecoverable.

The two Mew Mews present delivered a pair of energy blasts to where the machine's pectorals would have been at point blank range, driving the weapon even further onto the spike that had pierced it and sending themselves flying backwards with the recoil of the explosions. The left side hole exposed an important looking something where a heart would be, so Spectre emptied her grenade launcher into it.

The AS twitched, right arm starting to bring its weapon up in what seemed to be a final attempt to fight. One golden flash later, Sailor Moon was reaching up to catch her tiara and the mech's right arm was severed at the shoulder.

There was stillness. For an instant.

Then the pilot's decidedly unhealthy laughter began echoing out.

"This is getting ridiculous," Ranma panted.

Unseen, unknown to them, Gauron's broken sanity (more specifically the loss thereof) was standing in for the focus he could not presently achieve. His Lambda Driver overclocked, as did the miraculously only lightly damaged palladium reactor. Strange energies flowing through the oversized armor, it stood, even as the sound of tearing metal screeched out and the left arm was sheered from the torso by its own weight to join the right on the ground.

Crippled, armless, weaponless, and just shy of blowing up, the Arm Slave was forced to its feet. A wave of energy washed out, a pulse of kinetic and other energies rushing towards the assembled fighters.

Sousuke hit his moment of desperation. He drew his long since empty gun and pulled the trigger, knowing it could never work but still believing it would in the way only the truly desperate can. Because it had to.

The energy wave shattered under the force of the pseudo-bullet, though this was truly secondary to the hole that appeared between the now defeated AS's eyes.

In a single instant of agonizing slowness, the energy dimmed, then died, the metal groaned, then gave, and the enemy that had taken so much to overcome collapsed as its head erupted in flames.

The entire group had been assembled on top of the Tuatha de Danaan. If the ragtag group looked slightly out of place on the roof-cum-flight-deck, nobody was commenting.

All of them turned as Captain Testarossa, Sergeant Sagara, and Miss Chidori walked out of the ship. Tessa was the first to speak. "I've got good news, and I've got bad news.

"Bad news first. Agent Spectre, you did an excellent job responding to that muster call. Unfortunately your cover is now dangerously close to being compromised, so we cannot afford for you to continue working for MITHRIL's intelligence division. Your compensation check will be at the drop." The motorcycle helmet dipped in a sharp nod.

"The good news is that I was able to pull some strings. Also on its way to the drop right now is the paperwork to get you assigned as an undercover agent for Operations. Should you accept, your assignment will be to observe several potentially unstable situations in and around Nerima, and to render aid as needed." Tessa's lips gave an almost imperceptible twitch. "I'm afraid you'll have to set up your own cover.

"As the rest of you are considered civilians, I can't give you any formal acknowledgement, but I would like you to know that you have my personal gratitude. Thank you, today would have been disastrous without your help."

Kaname raised her hand. "Uh, by the way, what happened to my class?"

The Nerima crew exchanged glances. "Put it down as an unknown in the official stuff. Handwave as much as you think you can get away with. In answer to the next question, we're not entirely sure how it works either, but Ryoga just gets that lost. He stopped as soon as he met someone who spoke Japanese and had one of the kids call the number for the Tendo Dojo. They forwarded the message to the Mew Mews' headquarters, who passed it on to us. Near as we can gather they got there by way of Barcelona, Paris, and Moscow. Don't question it if you value your sanity."

Sousuke cleared his throat. "On the subject of paperwork, I have to ask for the sake of consistency; what should we call your group?"

Ranma rubbed the back of his neck. "Dunno. I mean, we ain't really just one group. Ya got people here from the Nerima Wrecking Crew, the Sailor Senshi, Cardcaptors, Mew Mews… don't really have a name for all of us."

Tessa coughed. "Actually, there is one name that's been floating around the ranks unofficially. The lieutenant in charge of the beachhead made a comment about how, quote, 'those children fought like dragons,' and some of the men ran with it. 'Children of the Dragons' isn't the worst appellation out there."

Another round of exchanged glances before Sailor Moon spoke, "That… should work. I don't think anybody sees any obvious issues at least. Which only really leaves us with one issue."

"Yes?" Tessa asked.

"Can we get a ride home? Our sorceress is running on fumes and none of us wanna go swimming because the bird disappears under us."

They were trying to be subtle as they snuck in from the direction of the baggage car, really they were. And yet, Madison, Gosunkugi, and Kogane were standing there waiting for them.

"How did you know we were here?" Sousuke asked, reaching for the gun that Kaname preemptively stole.

"What?" Kogane asked, "Did you think we'd miss the helicopter almost landing on the train?"

"Told you so." Ranma's smirk was audible. "Be as invisible as you want, it won't do a damn thing if you ain't silent too."

Nabiki (Who had slipped in from the baggage car a good ten minutes after the Korea team had shown up) and Akane were chatting with Sakura's dad and Madison's mom. "Really," the elder sister was saying, "It was no trouble at all. Having them over was a delight and they're welcome to visit anytime. We just wanted to make sure they got back alright."

The rest of the group was scattered through the compartment trying to be part of the background. Luckily neither parent was paying attention to anything but their daughters and the Tendo girls.

The scene was broken as a woman in an official looking uniform arrived, announced the train's imminent departure, and hustled the locals out the door. Both sisters sagged in relief, the younger rather more noticeably. "Thanks Luna," Akane breathed.

"No problem," The advisor smirked, "How'd you know it was me though?"

"Your voice," The bluenette explained, "The disguise pen doesn't change your voice."

"Hold on," Sousuke interjected with a raised hand, "Is the girl we met earlier just another disguise as well?"

"Ye… Well, she definitely started out that way." Luna now looked rather thoughtful.

"So what do you really look like?" Kaname asked.

The disguised cat's eyes flicked to where Ranma was sitting with his back to her. "Go ahead, I'm looking this way."

The woman nodded, then did a backflip. Black cat and disguise pen landed next to each other on the floor of the train, one distinctly louder than the other. Luna paused a moment before flicking the pen into the air and joining it a heartbeat after. One backflip later a familiar girl made a three point landing.

Everyone in the Tendo living room was buzzing with admittedly varying levels of excitement. They had a chance, it was so, so close. They might just pull it off this time.

The door slid open and Luna pelted in. "Major problem, Usagi, you'll need to cover for Sailor Moon again!" There were a number of emotions she would have expected in response to this. Disappointed groans were not among them.

The only explanation offered was Nabiki's verbalization of the annotation she made in her book: "Twenty-three hours, forty-two minutes, thirteen seconds."

Fate it seemed had won again. They were to be denied yet another normal day.