[ Contents | 13. Monster Summoning I | 14. Surprise Encounters | 15. Trouble on the Waterfront, Redux ]

Yamucha's Student

By Dragoness Eclectic

Chapter 14. Surprise Encounters

Yamucha climbed down the pipes from the top of the water tank and dropped down beside Saisei. He flexed and stretched stiff muscles, and then bounced fully erect.

"I think I'm okay, now." The older fighter looked expectantly at Saisei.

"We have to go up to get out of here," Saisei said, "but the way will most certainly be guarded."

"So? I don't think they have anyone who can stand up to us in a fair fight. They only caught us by a dirty trick in the first place," Yamucha answered confidently.

Saisei nodded slowly. "That makes sense; why else would they go to such efforts to keep us from being able to use our true strength?"

"Still, we don't have to do what they expect," Yamucha grinned and pointed at the air ducts running along the high ceiling.

Saisei smirked in a way that raised the hairs on the back of Yamucha's neck, and leaped to the top of the water tank again, and from there bounded from conduit to pipe to pipe until he reached the air ducts. He quickly tore a hole in the insulation-wrapped sheet metal wide enough to admit a broad-shouldered man and crawled into the dark duct.

"Umm, yeah." Yamucha levitated up to the pipe and crawled after Saisei.

After they found the first group of dead guards on Level C, Haze's squad did not need to be warned; they moved cautiously, covering each other, checking each door and corner as if they were all booby-trapped. Haze cursed under his breath; they were too cautious for his purposes.

"Clean this mess up, and look sharp!" Haze barked. "The bastard's around here somewhere, and we're going to bag him!"

"Ain't you going to report this?" asked his second-in-command, a grey and tan Vargr, or wolf-man, of medium height. One clawed finger rested lightly on the trigger of his submachinegun.

Haze glared at him. "If I report this, Mist or one of the others will chase the bastard down and get all the credit... and the bonuses! Maybe you want to give away yer extra pay to a bunch of slackers that might be closer to the man than we are--but I'm not!"

The wolf-man growled. "Yeah, if you put it that way... forget I mentioned it." He moved his finger off the trigger of his weapon.

Haze's gaze flicked around the room. "That goes fer the rest of you, too. Got it?"

The soldiers nodded and grunted their assent, and Haze used his good hand to push open the unlocked steel door leading into the brig area.

Haze cursed again when they found the dead guards at the cell block guardpost. These guys had all been trained, heavily armed guards--how had one helpless, tortured prisoner done all this? He ran toward the cell he'd left Saisei to die in.

Someone else stood there, looking in--a lithe figure in grey fatigues with blonde hair tumbling down to her shoulders.

"Lunch!" snapped Haze, lowering his gun. "What are you doing here?"

She turned her head slowly to regard Haze with peridot-green eyes. Lunch's eyes narrowed as she looked him over; her forefinger rested on the trigger of the submachinegun slung under her arm.

"I was going to ask you the same thing, Haze. What did you do here? The logbooks say you brought 'Subject #12' to this cell; who was that? What happened to him?" Lunch's voice was even, and her words were very crisp and precise.

Haze smirked. "Number twelve was that kid who was with Yamucha. The doc wired him up, but they decided to use Yamucha instead, so I put him in his cell. He must have escaped."

Lunch's eyes narrowed still further. "'Wired him up'?"

Haze shrugged, paying little attention to Lunch's moods. "You know, with the monster control harness. Doc was playing with the pain circuits earlier; you should have heard the boy scream! Him and Yamucha both, let me tell ya!"

Lunch started slightly. "There's blood in the cell," she said, eyeing Haze narrowly.

Haze smirked. "Yeah, well, I had some fun with the boy after I put in him in his cell. A little payback for this," Haze lifted his broken arm in its sling.

"And Yamucha?" Lunch was breathing oddly fast.

Haze shrugged again. "Like I said, the doc was working on him last I saw. Had him screaming real well, too."

Almost too fast for Haze to see, the muzzle of Lunch's submachinegun whipped up and across--

"YOU BASTARD!" Lunch shouted--

Her submachinegun blazed; the sheer impact of the heavy slugs knocked Haze sprawling. Then Lunch traversed the room, blasting away at the rest of Haze's men. Blood coated the walls as men and creatures fell bleeding against them and slid to the floor. At last, all was silent.

"You're dead, Jerome," was all Lunch said as she ejected the spent clip and dropped it on Haze's punctured chest.

Puar gasped and covered her mouth with one fat paw. "Oh, my! Did you see what Lunch did?"

The twins peered over Puar's shoulder at the view through the ventilation grill. "Yes, she killed them all," they whispered.

"Eeep!" Puar squeaked very quietly. "I think it would be safer to search the lowest floor after all."

"Very wise," agreed the twins as they floated down the duct.

A few minutes later and one floor lower, Puar stopped. She crouched low and pricked her ears, listening intently.

"What is it?" asked the goddesses.

"I heard a funny noise," answered Puar. "There's something clunking just around the bend."

"Isn't that where the fan is?" they chorused. "Perhaps it was turned back on."

"I don't think so," said Puar. "I pulled the wires out. I'll go ahead and check." Puar floated forward into the dark.

"EEEEP!" A face loomed in front of Puar; in sheer fright the cat zoomed straight up--

CLONK! Puar's head smacked hard against the top of the duct; in a daze, the magical cat tried to dart away, only to bump into a warm human body. She panicked, lashing out blindly with her claws.

"Puar?" someone exclaimed, rolling about trying to avoid the panicked cat. "Puar! Stop that! Cut it out! PUAR!"

Puar froze. "Saisei?" She stretched out and sniffed. "Is that you?"

"Yes. Yamucha is here, too."

"Puar?" Yamucha's voice echoed faintly beyond Saisei in the dark duct.

"YAMUCHA!" Puar squeaked and hurried forward, wriggling over and past Saisei.

"Oof!" said Saisei as the heavy cat stepped on his wounded stomach.

"Puar!" Yamucha greeted his enchanted feline companion happily.

"Puar?" asked two distant voices in chorus. "What is happening?"

"Who is that?" Saisei hissed. He rolled over and peered forward, trying to see what lurked in the dark.

"It's okay, they're friends," Puar said cheerily. She climbed back over Saisei and called down the duct. "Come on, it's Yamucha and Saisei!"

A dim glow heralded the arrival of Puar's new friends; Saisei gaped in astonishment and awe at the tiny women. Introductions were quickly made between Yamucha and Saisei on the one hand, and the Twin Kami of Kyojin-shima on the other.

"Yamucha! We have to stop them--they're sending monsters to destroy a city!" Puar exclaimed.

"WHAT--Oww!" Yamucha banged his head against the top of the duct. "Tell me what's going on, but first let's get out of this pipe!"

A few minutes later, the bedraggled crew climbed down from the ventilator grill in the ceiling of Cellblock Two's main corridor.

Yamucha looked around at the grim remnants of Haze's squad. "What the hell happened here? And what about monsters?"

"Lunch did this," Puar said reluctantly. "She was angry..."

Saisei had yet to say a word; he smiled coldly as he looked down at a certain corpse with a bandaged arm still slung across its chest. "Whose side is this Lunch on?" He glanced at Yamucha. "First she captures us, then she kills... someone who needed killing." Saisei nudged Haze's corpse with his foot.

Yamucha looked sharply at Saisei, hearing the cold anger underneath the youth's relatively mild words. There was no mistaking the hardness in Saisei's eyes, nor the cold satisfaction in his smile. He smiles like Vegeta, Yamucha realized, and then shivered. He didn't used to do that!

Yamucha realized something else. "He's the one who was with Lunch, at the bar--your enemy," Yamucha said, looking hard at Saisei.

"Yes. He was one of them, the butchers of my village." The cold smile faded from Saisei's face, replaced by his usual seriousness, and the hardness in his eyes turned to sadness. "But what is Lunch?"

"Right now, I don't know." Yamucha ran his fingers through his hair. "She's always run on the wrong side of the law, but she hasn't done anything truly evil before. Maybe she just now found out what kind of people she's been working for."

Puar hovered, growing increasingly impatient. "Yamucha! That's not important--you have to stop the monsters!"

"What? Right. Uh, what monsters?" asked Yamucha.

"Gojira, Barugon and Rodan," chorused the tiny women, who landed gently on Yamucha's shoulders. "They will be sent to destroy the capital of the Northern People's Republic. We have called Mothra, but he will not get here before they leave, and he will have to fight very hard to stop all three of them. They also control Megalon and Reptilicus, who guard this island, and it may be that Mothra will have to fight them before he can stop the other three. You must stop them!"

"Five giant monsters; right." Yamucha curled his hands into fists. "What's the quickest way out of here?"

"This way," Saisei said, stepping over Haze's corpse. "This level is mostly laboratories and this prison; below us are huge garages and warehouses full of soldiers. If we are lucky, the soldiers will have left by now; they were getting ready for something."

"And if they are unlucky, they'll still be in our way," Yamucha said with a cocky grin. "I got you; garages have to have an outside exit."

"You can stop all five monsters?" the twin kami asked, surprised.

"Well, it won't be easy if I have to fight all five at once," Yamucha said as they walked down the hall. "Even fighting three at once, I won't be able to fight fair. I'll probably kill most of them."

The twins' eyes widened in horror. "Kill them?? You must not! Megalon protects the Seatopians, and Gojira protects Kyojin-shima! The kyojin are sacred; they defend the Earth."

"And don't forget Tao Pie Pie!" added Puar.

"Tao Pie Pie!" Yamucha exclaimed incredulously. "What's he doing here?"

"He's one of their leaders," Puar exclaimed. "We heard him giving orders about the monsters!"

Yamucha thwacked one hand against the other. "I can take him..." He frowned suddenly, "...but not if I have to fight the monsters at the same time."

Saisei glanced abruptly at Yamucha. "Don't worry about him; he's mine."

Yamucha raised one eyebrow. "You're good, kid, but Tao Pie Pie was the best student of Tsuresennin--the Crane Master--Kamesennin's only real rival. He used to be one of the best--he even beat Goku the first time they fought, and that was after Goku had trained with Kamesennin. I'm not Kamesennin, and you're not Goku. You wouldn't stand a chance."

"Ah. I was right--he is a master of the Crane School," Saisei said with a confident smile. "But you are wrong, honored sensei--I do have a chance. I have already fought him once."

"WHAT??"

[ Contents | 13. Monster Summoning I | 14. Surprise Encounters | 15. Trouble on the Waterfront, Redux ]

Disclaimer: See Credits.

Copyright 2001 by Dragoness Eclectic