It was a calm day in Halloween town, the bats were flying under the blazing jack-o-lantern sun, skeletons were wandering the graveyard, ghosts soared above everyone's head and the terrifying citizens of this holiday themed world were starting their normal routines. This calm was short lived as a portal suddenly burst into existence right outside of the witches shop and three figures dashed from it. The first one out was a girl who appeared to be about eleven years old and had brilliant red hair
"Come on!" cried the red haired dimensional wanderer as she sprinted through the streets of Halloween town.
"Ranga wait up!" cried a living voodoo doll known as Ted; he had been running since they had left their world trying to catch up with his coffee addicted friend
"why did she drag us here again?" wondered a girl who looked exactly like an older version of Ranga except for the fact she had two normal eyes instead of one blue eye and one green swirl for an eye
"I have no idea" Ted answered as he ran alongside her
The trio of dimensional wanderers made their way to the fountain square and made it to the town hall where Ted finally caught up to Ranga and managed to ask: "why on earth are we here?"
"To see if jack will let us help with Halloween of course!" replied Ranga "let's get in there before all the good jobs are gone"
The trio ran into the town hall to volunteer for Halloween, little did they know that their lives would soon be changed forever
"Try it again" said Boogie Oogie the mistress of screams and sister of Oogie Boogie, the boogieman of Halloween town. The burlap sack woman watched as I tried to create a shadow clone of myself with my powers over darkness
"Ok ill give it another go" I said and began to focus all of my powers on my shadow manipulation, the darkness swirled and congealed as a humanlike silhouette began to take shape
"Yes that's it!" she cheered as the shadow clone began to look more and more like me, unfortunately her excitement was short lived as I soon lost control and the clone twisted into a horrible shadow monster and began to attack her
"Hold on Boogie! Ill stop it!" I cried and sent out vines of shadow to try and make the creature stop.
We didn't have to worry about the shadow monster for long, it just so happened that Ranga and company happened to be walking by at the time and mistook me for someone trying to harm the burlap woman who just happened to be a friend of hers
"FROST MIST!" screamed the coffee crazed red head, I was surrounded by a strange mist and was soon frozen solid, without my power to sustain it, the monster exploded into nothingness.
She walked over and inspected my frozen form suddenly a voice from the other end of the plaza shrieked "BLAZING FURY!" a dragon of fire hurled straight at the unusual girl, she quickly dove out of the way.
Ranga saw her attacker, it was a witch with black hair that bore a strange resemblance to the boy she had just frozen solid, she didn't have much time to ponder this as the witch began to unleash powerful spells the likes of which she had never seen.
"Don't you dare hurt her!" screamed a familiar voice, Ranga looked up to see her cousins Papa and Wench standing on the rooftops along with her brother Ginger, they jumped down and joined the fray.
The plaza was filled with all kinds of magic streaming through the air as the two sides tried to blast the other into submission
"Holy crap" I thought while still frozen "mom is going to kill someone, I have to stop her!"
I began to focus my powers, which was really rather hard to do as I was still frozen in a giant pillar of ice. Fortunately no one noticed my bid for freedom as they were too busy defending themselves.
Wench manipulated the flames that shot forth from her hands to create a giant snake that hurtled forward in an attempt to burn my mother into a crisp; her attack didn't work like she wanted it to because mom absorbed the blast into her hands and sent it right back at her.
"We need more power" gasped Papa as he avoided yet another attack from mom "let's take on our true forms and finish her off!"
The four relatives all at once seemed to get older right before our eyes and their bodies weren't the only things that changed, their powers became even stronger than ever but mom still held them off like it was nothing.
I finally managed to get free from my icy prison and I ran in between the two groups
"Stop" I cried as I spread my arms out in an attempt to draw their attention "cant we work this out like civilized…" I never go to finish my sentence as I was blasted backwards by a jet of lightening sent forth by Papa.
Shadow ran into the plaza and saw us fighting, she thought quickly and used her powers as a storyteller to disable everyone's powers long enough for her to get them calmed down she then noticed me and realized just who I was.
"It can't be, but it is"! She gasped "Jonathan?"
"How do you know my name?" I asked as I got back up
"You don't know me but you probably know my characters" she replied
I got my first good look at who had attacked me, "oh my god" I gasped "it's Ranga, and that must mean… shadow is that you?!" I asked her
"Yep it's me" she said "great to finally meet you face to face".
"Master how does he know your name?" Ranga asked, completely thrown out of whack by this conversation.
"This is a friend of mine who is also a storyteller just like me" she answered "he can control what happens in a story just like I can"
"Then who is in control now?" Papa wondered
"Oh I have the book set to auto write while I am here" I replied "but I can take over whenever I want to, watch!"
I suddenly vanished and they noticed that I had taken over as narrator
"So what now?" Ranga said while looking skyward, suddenly my voice rang out around them "now I come back"
I appeared a suddenly as I had vanished, we then decided to explore the worlds together, the perfect start to what undoubtedly would be the first in a long line of adventures yet to come…
Author's Note:
Ranga Tales and all related characters belong to Manga Ranga