Azumetal Panic!
An Azumanga Daioh fanfic
by hkmiller
10 June 2008 - FFML draft
The characters of Azumanga Daioh were created by Kiyohiko Azuma
and are copyrighted by ADV Manga in the United States.
The situations of Full Metal Panic! were created by Shouji Gatou.
No disrespect intended by my unlicensed usage.
- - - - - - - - - -
~~ Lost ~~
"Where do you think we are?" Kaorin asked in a low voice, licking
her lips nervously.
Most of the students in the plane were by now aware that something
was wrong. The plane on which they were supposed to be flying to
Okinawa was instead sitting on an airstrip in a inland mountainous
region. At least three different schools' class trips seemed to
be present on the plane.
Chiyo-chan frowned thoughtfully as she gazed out the window. "I
think we're in the Khanka Autonomous Region. Those mountains look
familiar."
"And where is that?"
"It's on the China-Russian border, northwest of North Korea. My
parents took me there a few years ago."
"How do you say 'I'm hungry' in Khankanese?" Osaka wondered.
"They just use Russian for most purposes here," Chiyo-chan
replied. "So you might say 'ya khochu est', for instance."
Osaka pressed her face against the airplane window, looking out at
the paved airstrip on which their plane sat, dotted with armed
soldiers, tanks, and what looked like large mecha, all aiming
weapons at the plane. "What kind of food do they have here? Are
their local specialities like in Okinawa?"
Chiyo-chan blinked twice. "Not that I ever heard of."
"Well, what do they have here?" Osaka asked, puzzled.
Chiyo-chan pondered the question. "I don't really remember the
food. All I remember are the 'dwarf' snow leopards we came to
study. They were so cute!"
One row behind Osaka and Chiyo-chan, Sakaki's head lifted. A
sudden gleam appeared in her eyes.
- - - - - - - - - -
~~ Lust ~~
"Oooo! Who's that dreamy-looking guy!?" Yukari exclaimed, nudging
Nyamo with her elbow. A dozen rows in front of them and in the
other aisle, a man in a suit was holding a gun pointed at a
teacher from another school, saying he wanted to use the girl to
make a hostage video.
"The confident way he holds his gun! The casual way he skipped
shaving this morning! That arrogant sneer on his face! I'm
getting hot just looking at him!" Yukari moaned, hearts in her
eyes.
"Your taste in men I do NOT understand," Nyamo complained. "That
guy looks like a creep to me. Besides, I think he likes high-
school age girls." Nyamo pointed to where the man in question
was conducting the high-school girl, a tall, well-proportioned
girl, off the plane.
"I've got to follow him and give him my phone number!" Yukari
moaned as she rubbed her hands up and down her thighs.
"Get it under control, girl! You're supposed to be setting a
good example for our students!" Nyamo hissed.
"Oh, I've never bothered with that," Yukari dismissed the idea.
- - - - - - - - - -
~~ Follow the Leader. Or Don't. ~~
"Hey, c'mon, Yomi, let's follow that guy!" Tomo remarked as she
unfastened her seat belt. Her nod indicated an unusually somber-
looking boy, one cheek marked with a scar, headed for the back of
the plane at a run.
"And why are we following him?" asked Yomi perfunctorily, given
that she was out of her seatbelt and right behind Tomo.
"He's up to something!" Tomo said confidently. "And we've got to
be a part of it!"
Shortly both girls, somehow accompanied by Osaka, Chiyo-chan,
Sakaki, Kaorin, and Kagura, found themselves squeezing through a
crawlspace leading to the plane's cargo hold. Tomo held them
back with an arm outstretched for a few minutes, then, once the
boy had left the cargo hold, the girls followed.
Outside the plane, the girls looked around. Arm Slaves, tanks,
and soldiers were scattered over the field, but the whereabouts
of boy they were following was no longer obvious.
"That's him over by those warehouses!" Tomo shouted, pointing at
a vague shadow in one direction. Tomo took off running in that
direction. With a curse, Yomi followed her.
"I think I smell food coming from over that way," Osaka commented.
Looking uncertain, Chiyo-chan followed Osaka.
The other three girls looked at each other and shrugged in
unison.
- - - - - - - - - -
~~ Convenient ~~
Moments later, Sakaki, Kagura, and Kaorin took cover behind a
stack of crates as a convoy of jeeps drove by. Judging by the
sound, one jeep came to a halt just on the other side of the
crates.
"Let's just get back on the plane. It's scary out here,"
Kaorin commented, wondering whether she dared lean against
Sakaki. Crossing her fingers, she slowly began to lean her
head against Sakaki's shoulder.
"Yeah, there's nothin' out here I wanna see," Kagura remarked.
Just then, a crackly radio voice came clearly to them from the
other side of the crates. "Sir, Rhostov just ran over one of
those big cats just outside the main gate. He's insisting on a
veterinarian. Apparently it's still alive."
Another voice came in over the radio. "Dammit! Trouble with
the eco-freaks we don't need. Get the vet out there and send
Rhostov to the brig!"
"Yessir!"
"I'm sure glad I'm not Rhostov," came a third, non-staticky
voice.
Sakaki stood up and strode confidently around the crates. "I'm
a veterinarian! Take me there at once!"
"Who the $%^&* are you?!" expostulated the enlisted man sitting
in the jeep.
"The veterinarian. Like I said. Now step on it."
Kagura and Kaorin scrambled into the jeep behind Sakaki.
- - - - - - - - - -
~~ List ~~
"Now what are we doing in here again?" Yomi asked Tomo.
"I know I saw that boy go inside one of these warehouses, and
look! This one's full of Arm Slaves!"
"At least one of these warehouses is bound to be, given how many
we saw outside."
"But this is our big chance! We can try driving one!"
"WHAT?!" Yomi practically screamed in Tomo's face. "You have
NO idea what you're talking about! You've never been trained
for one of these things!"
"I have natural talent!" Tomo replied positively, clenching a
fist.
"You crashed your Dad's lawn mover last time you tried to mow
the lawn," Yomi rejoined.
"That's a completely different user interface!" Tomo insisted,
beginning her climb up into one of the cockpits.
Yomi, unable to dissuade Tomo, moved over to a door to keep
watch for guards.
"Oh, lots of buttons, switches, and things," Tomo commented,
sounding uncertain. "Something's gotta work," she continued,
beginning to push buttons and flip switches at random.
Five minutes later the Arm Slave rose to its feet and began a
stumbling walk over towards Yomi.
"No! Go away!" Yomi said loudly, trying to wave Tomo off.
"Hey Yomi! I did it, I did it! Watch me!" Tomo shouted as she
continued to drive the Arm Slave right at Yomi.
"Watch where you're driving that thing!" Yomi snapped as one foot
missed her by a bare meter.
With the very next step, however, the Arm Slave leaned too far,
and began toppling slowly towards Yomi, who began running
desperately.
"I'm going to kill her, I'm going to kill her," Yomi muttered to
herself as she just missed being crushed by a flailing arm.
"Help! Yomi, get me out of here!" Tomo shouted, the Arm Slave
now lying flat on its face.
With a silent "Why me?", Yomi looked around for a tool to use to
pry Tomo out of her predicament.
- - - - - - - - - -
~~ Rest In Peace ~~
Sakaki, Kagura, and Kaorin solemnly regarded the dying dwarf snow
leopard mother. The cat's entire rear body was squashed flat,
with a jeep's tire mark clearly visible. Nuzzling the dying
mother cat was a dwarf snow leopard kitten.
"That's so sad," Kaorin sniffled.
"We should bury the mother," Kagura noted.
Sakaki said nothing, but knelt down and held out her arms. With
her last strength, the dying mother cat nudged her kitten towards
Sakaki's arms with her nose. Sakaki cuddled the kitten, who,
unusually for a cat in Sakaki's experience, showed no signs of
wanting to bite Sakaki's hand.
"I thought Chiyo-chan said these cats are very scarce," Kagura
noted as she dug a shallow grave using a makeshift tool. "Why
are they hanging around so close to a military base?."
"Maybe the soldiers feed them?" Kaorin shrugged, one hand
extended to pet the kitten in Sakaki's arms.
"What are you going to name it?" Kagura asked Sakaki.
Sakaki thought a moment. "How does 'Maya' sound?"
"Great!" Kaorin beamed at Sakaki.
- - - - - - - - - -
~~ Whispered ~~
"There has to be some Khankanese food around here somewhere,"
Osaka whined as she peered around the corner of the unmarked
trailer.
"It's not really that good, I'm telling you," Chiyo-chan said.
"I think we should look for the others."
"Maybe there's some food inside this trailer?" Osaka wondered,
as she reached for the door handle.
Opening the door, Osaka peered inside. Her eyes widened and she
gasped aloud. Chiyo-chan, alarmed, peered under her shoulder.
The inside of the trailer was equipped as a laboratory. A woman
in a white lab coat was just about to inject a solution into the
arm of the high school girl who'd been taken off the plane to
make the hostage video. The high school girl herself was
unconscious.
"Uh-oh," Chiyo-chan muttered to herself.
Osaka walked inside the trailer and began searching drawers.
"Hey," she asked the scientist, "do you have any Khankanese food
here?"
"You!" the scientist hissed in disbelief, her eyes fixed on Osaka.
"What are you doing here?!" she screeched, finger thrust out and
pointed rigidly at Osaka.
Noting that the scientist was so focused on Osaka that her own
presence was being completely ignored, Chiyo-chan crept around
the edge of the inside the trailer, headed for the chemical
supply.
"Looking for food, like I said," Osaka noted, glancing in a
cupboard, then turning to look at the frightened scientist.
"You can't be still alive," the scientist whispered to herself.
"Not after what I injected you with."
Chiyo-chan nodded to herself as if a long-held suspicion had
just been confirmed.
"Do I know you?" Osaka asked the scientist quizzically.
"Are you a ghost? Are you here to haunt me for my failure?"
the scientist asked Osaka mournfully.
The scientist's right hand, which still held a syringe, began to
relax in shock. Standing just behind the scientist, Chiyo-chan
plucked the syringe away just as it began to fall. The scientist
never noticed, her eyes continuing to stare at Osaka.
"Am I a ghost?" Osaka wondered, having never thought about the
question before. "People do say I'm not all here sometimes,"
she admitted.
Chiyo-chan opened the syringe and gave the contents a quick
sniff. With a grimace and a shake of her head, she poked around
among the nearby chemical supplies.
"It wasn't my fault! I was just beginning to research the
'whispered' then! You were my first test subject!" The
scientist began to babble. "I had no idea what the proper
dosage or formulation should be!"
Locating a pale yellow liquid among the supplies, Chiyo-chan
carefully extracted some with an eyedropper, then added
precisely three drops to the contents of the syringe. She
swirled it around once, sniffed it carefully, nodded, then lay
the syringe on a nearby table in plain sight and began to creep
back silently towards the door.
At that moment another figure burst into the trailer, the boy
they'd followed out of the plane. Now armed, he pointed the gun
unerringly at the white-coated scientist. "Release her!" he
demanded.
Might as well try it, Chiyo-chan thought. She might still have
enough left. 'Osaka!' Chiyo-chan whispered without sound.
'Let's get out of here! Squeeze past the boy and head out the
door!'
Osaka blinked twice, then turned her head towards the door. Her
eyes found Chiyo-chan's and she nodded.
- - - - - - - - - -
~~ Last ~~
"We're just lucky these U.N. evacuation planes showed up when
they did," Yomi noted as the girls fell into line to board the
nearest. "I wasn't looking forward to climbing back up through
the cargo hold."
"Aw, that wouldn't have been a problem," Tomo remarked. "It's
not like there's a trap or a bomb there or anything."
"Actually, there is a bomb," Chiyo-chan replied. "Didn't you
hear? That's why we're leaving on these other planes."
"Oh. But hey, what about Okinawa? Are these planes going to
fly us there to finish our school trip?"
"No, that's canceled," Chiyo-chan said, giving Tomo a funny look.
"Our parents want us home safe again after we've been held
hostage by terrorists. Does that surprise you?"
"Well, yeah, kinda," Tomo replied. "I mean, Okinawa!"
"I'm happy to go home," Sakaki said quietly from where she was
still cuddling her new kitten.
"I never got any Khankanese food, though," Osaka complained.
"Nobody cares!" the other six girls replied.
The End.
This and other fics posted at:
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Dojo/5058
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geocities.com/tokyo/Dojo) (
geocities.com/tokyo)