A fic for my bestest friend. I own nobody in this story except for Constantine D'Floran. & sorry if your eyes bleed, I tried to fix it o.O'
Sara. You are my best friend. You show me things that you like, & I think most of them are cool. Ranma ½ is actually pretty funny. But, I can't help but notice that you know nothing of my favorite characters. That was actually funny when you were naming off characters for me, you and Michael to be and I was like, "Yes, Mousse, Woo ling (or whatever)…and Raziel" and you're like, "No Jazzmyne. No. He's not from Ranma." The way you said it was funny…you're a funny girl.
Anyways! Since I know Nosgoth better than I know Japan, The Ranma peeps will be hurled into the Sarafan Stronghold, oh yeah! The ½ gang will get to know them, and hopefully you will too. By the way, Constantine can be a guy's name or a girl's name, so I don't want to hear any Keanu Reeves cracks about her. I made her up, though. You can make fun of me for that. & we're off!
w00t, the story!
"Man, I love ramen noodles." Ranma said, sitting in the Cat Café with all his friends around him. Well, friends, hot chicks and acquaintances. Mousse was kind of a loser, but he was okay. Come to think of it…Ryoga was a loser too. Oh, well. Ranma figured being the king of losers was better then being one himself. "Shampoo love Ranma." Shampoo said happily. "& I love Shampoo!" Mousse said. "& I love ladies!" Ryoga. "I love Ranma more!" Akane said. Shampoo glared at her. Yoko exploded. "I hate all of you." Cologne said. Kuno exploded.
As Ranma went to take another bite of his noodles the room around him disappeared. Everyone looked around confusedly, so obviously they saw it too. But then, there was nothing. Next thing he knew, Ranma landed his ass on a cold stone floor. Akane landed next to him and Ryoga landed on her knees. "Hey, baby…" he said. She backhanded him. Shampoo landed on Ranma's head. Cologne floated to the ground and Mousse, of course, landed on his face. "Oh, hello Ranma." Shampoo said flirtatiously.
"OMG where are we!" Ryoga shouted. His exclamation reverberated off the walls. They were in some sort of long hallway in a building made of stone. There were large stained glass windows with soft sunlight shining through the images of armed and armored angels. After staring at these for awhile Ranma said, "Man, let's find some people and find out where we are." So this large group of anime characters wondered through the labyrinthine halls of a fortress they did not know they were in. "This is like some medieval castle or something. It gives me the creeps." Akane said.
Kain had no idea what he was doing, really. It was better than just sitting and wasting away. The hope that Raziel's sacrifice had given him was deceitfully motivating. The phosphorous glow in the eye sockets of the hilt intensified momentarily, as if reading his mind. 'I hope he can't read my mind. That would be awkward.' Kain thought as he placed the skull-hilted sword back in the sheath along his back. That damn sword.
Kain wished he knew what in the hell the Ancient Vampires were thinking when they placed whatever enchantments on it that they had. What was the point of it? Sure the sword drank blood of whomever it vanquished (or anyone that cut themselves on the blade), but why devour souls. Why did the sword absorb Raziel's spirit just so it could devour souls? Destiny was really giving them a run for their money, and everyone else's, apparently.
Kain had used the time-streaming device, since obviously Moebius the Time streamer wasn't going to need it anymore. Raziel had made sure of that. The white haired vampire would try to leech information from Janos Audron, the last Ancient Vampire to exist. Talking to him while he was possessed by the Hylden Lord would not be wise, however. (Hylden Lord is a long story. To fit it in parenthesis: Hylden were the race that cursed Janos' race to be vampires. Then came up with a crazy evul plot when banished.) Kain decided to try and save Janos from falling into the portal that the Hylden had made to enter Nosgoth.
This would mean he would have to interrupt the fight he had in the past with the Hylden Lord. Oh well, things can't possibly get anymore screwed up. He stood at the lip of the entrance to the stage where it happened. He still didn't know what the hell that room was even there for. Now it was collapsing into the portal. He saw his younger self, around 200 years a vampire, still with five fingers.
He saw the Hylden Lord toss Janos over the edge. "Kain! NO!" Janos shouted. The Kain we are following did not hesitate and leapt out over the side. He caught Janos by the arm, but by now the toppling stage had fallen out of view. 'Hmm, should've thought that out better.' Kain contemplated. Then he must've blacked out or something to that effect, because everything disappeared.
Kain hit his tailbone hard on the ground and inhaled sharply. "Ah! My ass!" he winced as he got up. Janos had given up and was slumped in a blue-skinned, black-feathered heap of vampire. Kain only had to glance about him to realize he was in the Sarafan Stronghold. Before Kain was even born it stood as the fortress of Moebius' Sarafan warriors, dedicated to eradicating the 'Vampire Plague' from Nosgoth.
Raziel, on the other hand, had been born here, lived here, died here and raised from the dead in this building. "See that, Raziel. You're home." Kain said incoherently to the SoulReaver. Before he freaked himself out by realizing he was talking to a sword, he noticed the eyes of the skull in the hilt were no longer glowing.
He swung the sword experimentally. The signature sound it made (almost a scream, but Kain pushed that thought aside) did not come. "Raziel must be around here somewhere, then. Come Janos, I will explain as we look." Kain said. He put the sword, which was now only the Reaver since it was apparently empty of Raziel's soul, on his back and helped Janos Audron to his feet. "Oh, okay." Was all the Ancient Vampire had said. He was incredibly confused and tired.
The gang of humans was getting tired of walking. "I hear people! I don't see people!" Ryoga shouted. "There are too many doors." Akane whined. Shampoo had lagged behind to look more closely at a stained glass window. "Well, let's try this door…" Ranma said, oblivious to that fact. As he reached for the handle, it opened from the other side.
A tall, broad shouldered man walked out and almost right into Ranma. He was almost like a bronze color and had long white hair. Ranma sensed another person lingering behind the man. "You people have the strangest sense in clothes of any mortal I have ever seen." The man commented in a voice that would make a five year old cry, for being so scary.
"This could be trouble." Ryoga stated. "Its only trouble if you want it to be, human." Said the man. "Yeah? And what if I do want trouble?" Ryoga said, puffing up his chest. "…Then I'll break your neck and drain your blood." Ryoga shut up and looked closer at the man. Claws, yellow cat-pupil eyes, and long fangs. "Oh man! Vampire!" he said.
"Aiya! Demon!" Shampoo screamed from behind them. "I'll save you Shampoo!" Mousse exclaimed and charged to her rescue. "Mousse wait, you moron!" Ranma ran after him. He abruptly ran into him and knocked everyone down. As Shampoo hit Mousse for being stupid Ranma sat up off of the ground and came incredibly close up and face-to-face with the demon Shampoo had shouted about. He screamed and punched it in the forehead as a reflex.
The thing recoiled, but rocked back toward Ranma. He put his arm up in defense as it swiped with razor sharp claws resembling those of the man at the door. Ranma's shirt sleeve burst into ribbons and two large, long and deep gashes began to bleed profusely. "Ranma!" Shampoo shouted and came over to him, stepping over Mousse.
"What the hell was that for?" Ranma said at it. Its phosphorous, glowing white spheres of eyes widened. "Well, you did hit me in the blasted forehead!" it said. Ranma jumped, not expecting it to speak, especially in the smooth voice that it did. For being a skeletal blue thing, its voice seemed to be disembodied. It glared at Ranma and sharply said, "Yes, I talk."
Then the rest of Ranma's group had run to them and Akana shoved Shampoo out of the way. "Raziel?" the man with white hair said as he came up behind Ryoga. Shampoo angrily leapt on Akane as the demon looked up. "Kain? Kain!" it said and stood up. "I've never been this happy to see you ever…in all three of my existances!"
"Raziel?" the man no one had seen came out from behind the vampire who was Kain. This man was blue, like the demon, only with skin and yellow eyes and humongous black feathered wings. "Janos!" the demon that was Raziel said.
"Wait a second! Somebody's going to tell us what's going on before my arm gets infected and I become an amputee!" Ranma shouted. There was a silence. Even Akane and Shampoo stopped trying to pull each other's hair. "Keep your shirt on, human. Your arm will be fine." Raziel snapped.
"…Well…Janos and I are vampires. Raziel there is a soul devouring wraith, not a demon. & this is the Sarafan Stronghold." Kain said after awhile. He didn't want to get too deep into it; he didn't plan on having to stick around this group of strange humans. The key word in that sentence was plan.
The wraith heaved a heavy sigh and put his head in his hands. "And what about you, then? You look even odder than us." Janos asked. "What do you mean we look odd?" Cologne asked. The vampires looked at her, just noticing. Kain chuckled.
"What the hell are you?" he asked. "What do you mean what the hell am I? I'm an old woman!" Cologne shouted. "You look like a bird on a stick, is what you look like." The Vampire King replied. Cologne's hair flowed upwards, but she thought twice about striking Kain in the shin. Ryoga laughed. "Well, I'm Ranma. This is Akane, Shampoo, Mousse…that's Ryoga. That old crone's Cologne. We're from Japan." Ranma said, making a tourniquet with his torn sleeve.
"I thought my name was strange." Raziel commented. None of the 3-clawed, fanged folk of Nosgoth had any clue what or where a Japan was. "Well, we are going to find a time streaming device." Kain said and made to walk down the hallway. As Ryoga wondered what a time streaming device was Raziel hissed, "We? And why are you so sure we should be doing that?" "Listen, Raziel, I sympathize with you for once. I realize your recent experience must have been traumatizing. Don't push the limits as to when I'll backhand you." Kain said as they walked off.
"Hey wait a second! You can't just leave us here!" Ranma shouted. "Oh, yes we can." Kain said. But the humans followed them anyway. Kain peered into the next room through the cracked iron door. "Damn! Sarafan." He cursed. "Well why don't we just go in there and kill them?" Raziel asked. "Kill them!" Akane said surprised, but nobody paid attention to her. "Well, if you want to. They seem to be having a good time and …you know them." Kain said. "Oh God, don't tell me." Raziel sighed.
"Tell him what?" Ranma asked. "God, you humans are nosy. Yes, it's you and your brothers as humans." Kain looked again to make sure. Janos made a small noise in his throat, remembering how it had been the human Raziel that had ripped his heart out. "Is there any other way to Moebius' devices?" Kain wondered aloud. "Actually, there is a door behind that tapestry that goes to the upper level of that next room. At the end of the upper level there's a door going down, just as if we had gone straight through the room, you see, only higher up." Raziel said.
"How'd you know that?" Kain asked. Raziel shrugged his bony shoulders. They all filed into the door under the tapestry anyways, Raziel taking up the rear. His hips bumped Akane. She looked back at him angrily. "Oh, beg your pardon, madam." The wraith said. Akane then looked shocked. "Beg…my pardon? Nobody has ever been polite to me like that, RIGHT RANMA? It's nice to know this undead wraith has more class than you." "Shut up Akane!" Ranma shouted back. "Yeah Akane, why you have to be such a lesbian?" Shampoo yelled. Akane bristled.
Kain signaled for everyone to shut the hell up as they snuck over the heads of the Sarafan warriors. Raziel tried as hard as he could not to look at them. He did anyways. Indeed there were all five of his brothers as humans. He spotted himself. There was an Irish woman sitting on his lap. The wraith stopped abruptly to look at her. 'Oh my God, I was married.' He thought, horrified. She was beautiful. There was another woman sitting by his brother, Rahab. He didn't recognize her. There were three children running around the octagonal room. Raziel hoped to God none of those were his.
Next chapter coming soon! Most is done...but stick around b/c Shampoo's gonna drown Akane and Kain's gonna help cover it up I'm evil. And also Kuno and Yoko (sp?) come back from their spontaneously combusted deaths!