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Sailor Ranko: Tunnel Vision: Chapter 24, Termination Order #1172.
by
Rebecca Ann Heineman
Ranma 1/2 and the characters therein are the property of Rumiko Takahashi. Based on "Sailor Ranko" by Duncan Zillman and "Twice in a Millennium" by Kevin D. Hammel.
I don't own these characters. Please don't sue me, kill me or make me upload chapters to FanFiction.net without checking them.
The door read "Mizuno." A man in a trench coat approached the door. He knocked gently. He didn't give a hint of emotion as he waited patiently for someone to answer. He called out, "Special delivery for Ami Mizuno. Could you please sign for it?"
A minute passed. The figure turned to his companion who was waiting at street. The other gave an all-clear signal and the first man grabbed the door handle and gently forced the door open. He entered the home and looked around. He found Ami's bedroom and started to go through her things. He found her computer and disassembled it and removed its hard drive. He put the drive in his pocket. He put the computer back together again.
The man continued to look around the room looking for any information he could use to locate her. It found maps to a shrine, several addresses and a small phone book. He found her diary. Every piece of printed material, the man simply looked at each and every page and placed the book exactly where it was found. The data would be analyzed in detail later.
The man went to Ami's mother's room. There he did the same thing again, stole her hard drive, viewed printed material of a personal nature and put everything back exactly where it was found.
The kitchen, bathroom, and dining room were searched. Scraps of paper by the answering machine were checked. There was no power in the apartment so the answering machine was useless.
Satisfied that the room had given all its secrets, the man went out the front door into the night.
The man joined his companion and they walked to a nearby alley. The first man stood there for half an hour digesting the information he had collected. He found what he was looking for. In a diary, there were the names of eleven people with a strange symbol next to most of the names. The symbols represented planets and the moon. The name Ranma Saotome had the Japanese symbol for "Ni" or Sun next to it and Akane Tendo had the symbols "Ah" "E" "O". The word Tendo was crossed out and Saotome was written above it in smaller script. The planet list matched the partial list of the names of the girls in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
He looked into the red eyes of his partner and via infrared transmission, transmitted a copy of all the data.
They both knew the most likely location of Ami Mizuno. She was probably with her mother at the hospital where she worked.
They left to pay a visit to Dr. Mizuno.
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News of the Senshi healing people in Juuban had reached all of Tokyo. The line stretched for kilometers. Sailor Mars thought that this was getting way out of hand. She, like all the other Senshi, wanted so desperately to help the people of Tokyo, but she didn't think this was the right way of doing it. She wanted to find the people responsible for the destruction of Japan and drop them into a pit of boiling acid.
Sailor Io and Sun felt the same way. They were playing nursemaid while Sailor Saturn was on the verge of collapse from exhaustion. Sailor Uranus and Neptune had to force Saturn to take breaks from time to time, but Saturn just saw the looks of happiness when someone saw a loved one who had come back from almost being dead. It kept her going. It was too much. After healing another burn victim, Saturn finally fell over. Neptune cradled her daughter in her arms and Uranus had to tell the people that they were going to wait until she got some rest.
The people in line were not happy about that and they almost started a riot. It took six Senshi over five minutes to calm the crowd down. Sun teleported Saturn to the space station. She would get some rest in private. She took a few more trips to shuttle Neptune and Uranus as well. The three Senshi got some badly needed rest.
Sun was about to leave back to the hospital when she spied on Pluto. Pluto had been at the computer console for days now. Sun used her stealth technique and snuck up on Pluto to see what she was doing.
On the screen was an image of Earth. Pluto was zooming in and out looking at locations on the planet for something. Earth looked strange. Instead of a familiar blue green planet, most of the northern hemisphere was covered in a black cloud. Pluto was muttering to herself about how the cloud as blocking her view.
Sun asked, "What's that cloud?"
Pluto jumped out of her chair and almost hit the ceiling, "AHHH!!!!" She came back down and tried to punch Sun. Sun easily dodged the blow.
"Don't scare me like that!" Pluto was trying to catch her breath.
"Well? Why is the Earth so dark?" Sun was curious.
"It's called nuclear winter. The bombs kicked up so much dirt and ash that some areas of the world are in complete darkness."
"Oh. Sorry I asked."
Pluto gave an evil smirk. "I need a favor from you."
Sun drooped and sunk to the floor. Favors for Pluto were never good, "Oh man."
Uranus and Neptune came running into the room. They wanted to see what the scream was for. Pluto calmed them, "Oh, it's just Sun being obnoxious."
Neptune and Uranus shrugged and went back to be with Saturn.
Sun muttered from her place on the floor, "I'm not obnoxious."
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There was a large crowd of people milling about the Juuban hospital. The word already got out that the healer had left and people were upset. Two men in different areas were asking questions. Where was Dr. Mizuno? Have you heard of Sailor Io? Have you seen Ami Mizuno? Do you know where I can find Sailor Pluto? Do you know Sailor Sun?
Most people had no idea who they were talking about. The men found a healthy young boy and he told them that the Sailor Senshi were in the hospital.
One of the men approached the main lobby. The guards denied him entrance. The man looked beyond the guards and sized up the entryway. He looked at the nearest guard and said, "I'll be back."
He walked away. He'll be back soon.
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Sailor Sun complained, "Now I'm a television."
Pluto was pushing her on. "Concentrate! What do you see?"
Sailor Sun was focusing her teleportation magic on an address on a map. Instead of actually invoking her spell and teleporting there, she was just looking at the destination as a quick way to see what Pluto was looking for. "I see a flattened landscape. I really mean flat. Like it was a plain of melted glass."
"Well I guess these Houston addresses are a lost cause." Pluto crossed off the address of an Omni-Consumer Products warehouse that was near the NASA space center.
Pluto sunk in her chair and gave out a deep sigh. "It's going to take months to go through these addresses." She tossed her list that she got from Mercury so long ago onto the desk.
Sun's mind was far away. She was thinking about her father. She gave out a big sigh.
"What's with the sigh?"
"I hope those men who killed my dad were barbecued. If they were, then there is some justice in the world."
Pluto wanted to listen to what happened to Sun's dad, "You never told me what happened to your father."
"My dad worked at a place called the Itabashi Spice factory. He was only there for a couple of days and then he disappeared. The police say he stole some chemicals and poisoned himself. I know my dad. He wouldn't do anything that stupid." Sun thought about how dumb her dad was, but he didn't do anything that would harm other people like that.
"Go on." Pluto was intrigued.
"Well, later I snuck in the place. It was totally automated. Almost no people worked there. I know he died there. They covered it up. I just don't know why on earth anyone would kill my dad."
"Automated? What was this place again?" Pluto grabbed the list of addresses and pulled out the section for Japan.
"It was the Itabashi Spice Factory."
Pluto looked up the city of Itabashi and there it was. It had a designation next to it as 'Automated'. Pluto remembered seeing several factories with this designation. She turned to Sun, "Want to take a trip to Itabashi?"
Sun shot a glance at Pluto. It was not a question. It was a demand. Sun slowly stood up and raised her arms. She turned her eyes to the ceiling, "One taxi coming right up."
Pluto wrapped her arms around Sun. Sun gave a half smirk, "We've got to stop meeting like this." They flashed out.
The two Senshi appeared at the remains of the Itabashi Spice factory. There was hardly anything left. Ground zero was only a few hundred meters away. It was as if someone wanted to wipe this place clean off the face of the earth.
The faint traces of the perimeter wall were still visible that gave an idea of how large the facility was. Pluto was impressed. She thought about this. "Sun, they made spice here? It's pretty big for just salt and pepper packaging."
"I wondered about that too. It was all automated. Io and I only sensed three people working here."
"Three people!" Pluto got wide eyed. She got a glimmer of hope. Wheels turned in her mind. "There has to be a power source somewhere."
"Power source? Oh no, you are not using me as a battery again!" Sun didn't like it when Mercury had her recharge the station's power cells. It was an experience she would rather forget.
"Not you! If my hunch is right, this factory made more than spice. They would have planned for the loss of power after an attack." Pluto started looking at the melted concrete looking for anything out of the ordinary.
"They made board games and stuffed toys." Sun let her body slump. Pluto was not listening to her. Sun remembered the large storage area, the one that looked so empty and out of place. She went over to that area.
The floor of the former storage room was flat except for a small indentation in the concrete like someone drained the filling from a pie and it sank. Sun stood at the edge of the sinkhole. It was only depressed by six centimeters, but it was there. She turned to Pluto to call her over but Pluto was already there.
"Sun, can you teleport down there?"
"Into solid rock? No way pal!"
"I mean, check if there is a room down there." Pluto was miffed.
"Ok, ok." Sun concentrated and found that there was a chamber down there, a pretty large one. "Well I'll be." Sun held Pluto and they flashed down.
It was pitch black. Sun concentrated her ki and made a small blue ball of light in her hands. It was not much better than a candle, but it was better than nothing.
Pluto tried to look around; she couldn't make out a thing. "Is there a way we can light up this place?"
"Sure!" Sun put out the ki and cast "Solar Beam!" A beam of light came from her index finger and started slicing into the wall. As she held onto the light beam, it lit up the room.
"Just what are you doing? Are you trying to get us killed?" Pluto was furious, Sun could have shot that beam into a box of dynamite for all she knew. Pluto then noticed the room was lit up enough to see. She sighed. "Ok, just try not to aim that at something flammable."
"All right." Sun just stood there drilling a hole into the wall with her beam.
The main entrance was completely sealed with concrete. The way it was splashed around gave away the fact that it was hastily poured to fill the elevator shaft and staircase that led to this chamber. Someone went to a lot of trouble to hide this room.
Pluto found where she was looking for. In the center of this large room was an array of power generators and thousands of barrels of fuel. This place could have run for months without any source of external power. She decided to tell Sun later who killed her father. She didn't trust that pyromaniac to be anywhere near those fuel barrels when she got the news.
There were no papers or other materials in the room of any real use. Only the inventory list of VX Nerve Gas had any meaning, but they were all marked, "Destroyed".
"Let's go back. I've seen enough." Pluto stood next to Sun.
"I've seen enough too." Sun dropped her beam. She didn't want to be here. It reminded her too much of the loss of her father. Sun took Pluto back to the station.
Sun fell to the floor snoozing. Pluto wondered if it was because of the teleportation or that new little trick with the light beam that Sun just showed her.
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Sailor Moon was not happy about the way people were reacting to the news that Saturn was sleeping. She understood that people wanted to be helped, but there were limits to even what the Senshi could do. She talked to the leader of the Japanese security force and told them that she wanted to make a speech later that day. She wanted to assure the people of Tokyo that things would be all right.
Moon had Mars and Jupiter help build a makeshift podium. It wasn't pretty, but will have to do.
Moon, Mars and Jupiter didn't notice the two men watching them from afar.
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Sun woke up and resumed her role as a remote camera. She was not happy about this.
Pluto found every factory on the list marked "Automated". It narrowed the field to forty-five locations. Only Itabashi was destroyed, all the others were spared the bombings. She thought that maybe Itabashi was destroyed intentionally since it was odd that the bomb should have hit Tokyo, but was conveniently off course. She was actually happy about that. Hundreds of thousands of lives were spared because of this near miss instead of a direct hit.
Pluto thought aloud, "If I was a super computer bent on world destruction, where would I be?"
Sun dropped her concentration, "As far away from you as possible."
Pluto turned to stone. "What did you say?"
Sun yawned, she was bored out of her mind, "I said, I would want to be as far away from you as possible."
Pluto thought aloud, "Where could I hide that would be far away from my enemies? Yet close enough so that I could keep control of my army?"
Sun thought about her recent victory, "You mean those things we fought?"
"What did you fight?" Pluto was confused.
"Those silver flying things. There were a whole bunch of them trying to kill these soldiers near Los Angeles. Moon had us blast them all." Sun smiled, she was proud of herself taking out two of them as soon as she woke up from her teleportation screw up.
"Describe them to me in detail." Pluto gave Sun a glare. Moon didn't tell her they came back from a battle.
Sun described the flying machines, Pluto turned white. She pulled out of her list the factory entry near Los Angeles. "Sun, look at Valencia California."
Sun held out her hand, "Hand me the map." She took the map. Concentrated, "I see... Whoa!"
Pluto got excited. "What is it?"
"They got a GREAT amusement park there. Those rides look like fun!"
Pluto dropped her head on the desk. "NO! Look at the factory!"
"Darn. Well, it looks like there is life there since there are a lot of people... Wait..."
"People? There are people there?" Pluto didn't expect that.
"Those aren't people. I can't sense anything from them. They are about two kilometers away from the amusement park. There is a huge factory like what I saw in Itabashi only much bigger. They have a lot of silver flyers and white rubber skinned people. There are also metal men, lots of them, I mean a lot of them."
Pluto turned to the console and directed the scanner to Valencia. She saw the army on her screen. The army was sending a large group to the north. The rest were working on building an extension to the factory.
Sun's communicator beeped. "Sun here."
Moon was on the screen. "We need you and Pluto to come here, I'm going to give a speech and I'd like as many Senshi with me."
Sun turned to Pluto, "Well?"
Pluto pulled out her communicator, "Moon, I'm really close to our enemy. I need to stay here."
"Ok, Pluto, do you need Sun with you right now?"
Sun got up, "I'd like to go." She wanted to be with Io.
Pluto pointed her finger at Sun, "Don't you dare turn off your communicator. I will call you and I'll need you quickly. Got that?"
"Fine. I'll keep it on." She flashed out. She really wanted to be as far away from her as possible. Eight light minutes just didn't seem far enough away.
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Sailor Moon approached the podium. Surrounding her were Sailors Mars, Jupiter, Io and Venus. Mercury was busy waking up Sun since she fell asleep again. Moon faced the crowd that was before her at the stairs to the hospital. She was completely nervous, but she had to do something to help her future subjects.
Sailor Moon took a deep breath and faced the people. "People of Japan. People of the world. I stand before you to let you know that everything that can be done is being done to bring those who did this to our nation, our world, will be brought to justice. We have to work together to get through this. We as human beings are capable of incredible amounts of compassion and hope. It's that compassion that I am asking you all to give for your fellow man. We are not the only nation suffering. We've been to other countries in the world and we are all victims of this horrible tragedy."
Moon placed her hands on the mike and held it close. She wanted so bad to have everyone in the audience to feel hope for the future. She wanted to make everyone forget the despair and pain of their losses if but for a moment.
"Please, don't hurt each other or lose trust in your fellow man. It's that distrust that our enemy wants. Our enemy is an enemy of mankind and it wants nothing more that the deaths of everyone you love. If you harm a fellow human, you are no better than our enemy. Let's work together. Let's show love to each other. Let's feel for one another. Let's show our enemy that we will not be defeated and we will not obey. Our enemy wants us to turn on each other."
"The Americans have a saying, 'United we stand, divided we fall.' I say we stand united. We must all live for the ideals of truth, justice and love for everyone."
Behind Sailor Moon came Sun and Mercury, they stood among the Senshi giving their support to their princess.
The two men scanned Mercury. They looked at each other and the first man left his place and started walking towards the podium.
"Right now medical supplies are coming in and we are helping everyone we can. Please understand that we are human as well and we need to rest. We will always be here for you. We love you all."
Sailor Moon took a little bow to the audience. The other Senshi bowed as well. The crowd made a gentle bow back to the Sailor Senshi.
Sailor Moon turned the mike off and started up the stairs back to the hospital. Io was walking behind Mercury and saw a red dot on the back of her head. "Mercury, what's that?"
Sun shoved Mercury to the floor right as a bullet went zooming over her head. Sun screamed, "Take cover!"
The Senshi scattered, some jumping to the third floor of the hospital, Venus jumped over the bush on the side of the stairs. Io jumped up to a second floor window and turned around to see who fired the shot. The man fired again and Sun took a bullet in the arm. She held Mercury and beamed out to the interior of the hospital.
The two appeared on a corridor floor about two meters in the air. They fell with a loud thud. "Sun, are you ok?" Mercury saw that Sun was bleeding.
"Just a flesh wound." Sun lied, she was holding a frown and held her wound closed and fighting the urge to collapse. "I don't think I can teleport again right now."
"I'll get you a bandage." Mercury ran off to the nursing station.
Sun thought about what just happened. She didn't sense any evil before the shot. Therefore it must have been one of those metal men in the audience and they wanted... Oh no! "Mercury!" Sun stood up and bumped into the wall and started briskly walking to the nursing station that Mercury went to.
Downstairs, the T-800 saw the teleportation flash and the target disappear. It concluded that they must have had a flash grenade and ran inside since it couldn't detect a heat signature of the two using infrared. It went to the front door and produced an UZI sub-machine gun. The soldiers fired at the man's chest, which did nothing to him. The man shot both soldiers dead and tried to open the door. A Crescent Beam came from Venus and hit the man in the back. His shirt ripped open but he ignored the damage and entered the building.
Venus was amazed, no one could have taken a hit like that and survived. She leapt to the third floor window where Moon and Jupiter ran into. She had to warn them.
Io was on the second floor when she saw her female husband teleport out. She breathed a sigh of relief that she and Mercury were safe. She saw the man walk into the front door and Venus blasted him. She thought he must have been killed. She went to the elevator to get to the third floor.
The T-800 terminator marched into the hospital and pushed everyone aside. He had already seen that Dr. Mizuno was stationed on the third floor on the hospital black board. He was going to start there. People were panicking and running out of the hospital away from the man with the gun. He got to the elevator and entered the first car. He pressed three. He turned to the two people in the elevator car who were cowering in the corner. He slowly ordered, "Get out!" They got out. The door shut.
Io heard the up elevator light go ding. She walked over and got a feeling of danger. Her martial arts skills were giving her the warning, not her Senshi senses. This was a bad thing. The door slid open and a man pointed a gun at Io. She quickly threw a ki blast and knocked the gun out of the man's hand. He reached into his coat and pulled out a shotgun. Io cast "Lava Blast" directly into the man's chest setting him afire. The elevator doors closed. Io ran to the stairway to make sure the job was done.
Moon, Jupiter and Mars met Sun and Mercury at the nursing station. Sun started the conversation, "Mercury, they seem to be after you."
Mercury was aghast, "Why would anyone want to kill me?"
Sun grimaced as Jupiter wrapped a bandage on her arm, "Ask Mr. Nice Guy. The one who shot at you? He had a laser sight on his gun, that's how I knew he was going to shoot."
Moon asked the group, "Do you think it knows about us?"
Venus came in the room out of breath, "I shot the thing and it didn't even phase it."
All the other girls gave a collective shout, "WHAT!"
They heard a scream from the elevator area; a burning man came out of the elevator car and slowly walked out and came around the corner. The Senshi couldn't believe what they were seeing. The man stopped in his tracks and fell face forward on the ground burning brightly and giving off a terrible smell of a burnt roast.
Mercury stood ahead and cast "Shabon Spray" to put out the fire. Sun called out, "Mercury, Don't go near it!"
The man heard the word Mercury and jumped off the ground and landed on Mercury. He held her throat tight and shattered her neck. The man had no flesh. It was a pure silver metal endoskeleton with glowing red eyes. It was a mockery of the human body.
Moon screamed "MERCURY!"
Jupiter cast "Supreme Thunder Dragon" at the terminator. The lightning shook the whole corridor and short-circuited the machine. The eyes went dark.
The Senshi went to their fallen comrade. It was too late. Mercury's head fell at an unnatural angle. Jupiter picked up the body of Mercury and carried it away with Moon and Venus following.
Mars and Io filled with rage. They each took turns blasting the metal corpse until only fragments remained. Sun had to stop them from destroying the hospital. Mars and Io collapsed in tears. Sun took them to where the rest of the Senshi were.
They were hiding in a closet. Mercury changed back into Ami. They felt her life force go out. Jupiter was crushed that her best friend lay dead in her arms. The others were stricken with grief.
Moon was the first to admit it. "We are not safe here anymore. We have to leave."
Sun didn't have to be told. She carried the body of their fallen friend and teleported her to the station. The remaining five formed a circle to do the Sailor Teleport. Io felt out of place that she was taking Mercury's spot. They beamed out.
Dr. Mizuno came from the fourth floor too late to see her daughter. She couldn't tell anyone why she was weeping for Mercury. She had to keep daughter's secret safe for all time.
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"REPORT: TERMINATION ORDER #1172 AMI MIZUNO COMPLETED."
"COMMAND: FIND AND TERMINATE IF POSSIBLE THE OTHER SAILOR SENSHI. LIST CONTAINS TEN NAMES. REINFORCEMENTS WILL ARRIVE SHORTLY."
Author's Notes: Please review my story. It makes me feel oh so happy and keeps me from making that bump in the night sound you hear at midnight.
Last edited on October 19, 2002