Identity, by Muphrid. A tribe of Chinese sorcerers captures Ranma to purge emotions from the hearts of men. A continuation story, set after the end of the manga.
What's going on here? Allies against the Sorcerers aren't meant to fight amongst themselves, but with evidence of Keema's duplicity, Cologne has no choice but to turn against the Phoenix and lead an assault against their hatchery—a sanctum second in sanctity and holiness only to the bedchambers of their king.
Substances Immiscible
Chapter Six, Act Four
Under a thin, leathery canopy, the forces of Amazon and Phoenix alike gathered in the shadow of madder. Truly it was a red shadow, for the blood of the living and dead mingled with the darkness, with the cold water that coated the floor. Korma and his band, a dozen strong, staggered about the platform with sightless eyes, grasping and clawing at the burns that turned their worlds black. One of their number lay toppled over Tendō Akane, who struggled to free herself from his weight.
And with an arrow in his back and a grossly disfigured kneecap, the lone Sorcerer who inflicted this damage knelt on his good leg, spent. The spike of ice he'd shot out stuck in the floor, wobbling in the wind.
It stuck through Shampoo's body. It spilled her blood on the floor.
"Bastard!"
The Sorcerer tumbled; a mad, crazed beast in white silk pounced upon him. It lashed the enemy's face with iron links. It bashed on his jaw and clawed his eyes.
"You think you can hurt Shampoo and get away with it?" cried Mousse, a savage fury driving his blows. "You think I'll let you live?"
The Sorcerer curled and wriggled his fingers, and from snowflake lines, spikes of ice shot wildly. They cut holes in the canopy, zipping blindly past Amazon and Phoenix alike.
"Bind him!" yelled Cologne. "By the neck!"
Mousse grinned. He dismounted his prey—a bloody pulp the Sorcerer was, with open cuts over his eyebrow and the bridge of his nose and deepening welts across his cheek and chin—and wrapped the magic chains he wielded about the Sorcerer's throat.
CRACK! The Sorcerer summoned a sharp slab of ice to his hand, beating on the chain links, but the metal held, shattering the block instead.
"There's more to my weaponry than what hides it up my sleeves," said Mousse. "I think you'll find it a bit stronger than you might expect, too. Stronger, even, than the spine that holds your head on your body."
In a powerful stride, Mousse dashed for the edge of the platform, dragging the Sorcerer to the floor. With the mountain looming on his left, Mousse gripped the chains with both hands. When the precipice approached, he planted his feet like an Olympian at the hammer throw, swinging the Sorcerer behind and around him, and gave his enemy a fearsome, neck-breaking spin.
CRACK!
He released the chains; he let them fly, and the Sorcerer flew with them. Not a controlled, magical flight. No, he'd have never flown this path.
Boom, boom boom. Somewhere in the deluge, a Sorcerer's body crunched against the rock face and tumbled to the earth below, and Mousse was the first to smile for it.
"Great-grandmother…"
But not for long.
"Lie back, child; lie still."
The threat extinguished, the members of the Nerima party gathered around Shampoo. The spike had pierced her cleanly, effortlessly.
It pinned her left thigh to the floor. Bent at the knee she kept the leg, for she had no other way to fall, to absorb her own weight from being caught unaware and mid-stride. The shaft bored a hole as wide as the handle of a baseball bat.
"You, Hibiki—cut some strips of cloth," said Cologne. "We need a bandage!"
"You're going to just leave that chunk of ice where it sits, sticking through her?" asked Ryōga.
"It's better than letting it bleed freely; as unsightly as it is, the ice is putting pressure on the wound. Kuonji! You have glue, don't you? A sealant?"
Ukyō made a perplexed face. "It's not for first-aid if that's what you're thinking!"
"It will have to do."
"Great-grandmother…" Shampoo's eyes wandered, drifting, vacant. "Is getting cold now."
"Child, you have the bloodline of hunters, leaders, queens! Do not let a flesh wound take that away from you!"
"Is hardly 'flesh wound.' "
"All things considered, you haven't bled out already. I've seen men fall from arrows to the leg much faster than this."
"So you think Shampoo will be okay?"
Shampoo twitched. As the others followed Cologne's commands, doing what they could to stabilize Shampoo, Akane looked on, peering over them at the damage her inaction had done.
"You have no right to ask that," said Shampoo. "No right to sound concerned."
Akane gaped, taken aback. "But I didn't—"
Shampoo lurched, her hands grasping at air, at space where Akane's neck had been.
"Sick of you!" she shouted. "Sick of Akane, sick of weak little girl! Weak of mind, of spirit, of body! What Ranma see in you I never understand! You worse than useless! You do nothing, and now my blood is spilled! This only way you know to hold on to Ranma, isn't it?"
"I did no such thing! I didn't!"
But as cold and uncertain gazes met hers, Akane wavered. Even Ryōga watched her with wary eyes.
"It was Keema!" she insisted, closing her eyes to block them out. "Keema did this; she held me back!"
"No one here is interested in your excuses," said Mousse.
"Akane-chan, really," said Ukyō. "How could you think that? How could you know that?"
"I felt her in my mind, all right? It was like her hands were keeping me from harming them!"
"Shut up, Tendō," said Cologne.
"But I—"
Cologne yanked her to the floor, cupping her chin with a vice-like, shaking grip.
"Be silent, you fool," she whispered.
Akane struggled, trying to catch her gaze, as if a look of earnestness would convince the matriarch, but Cologne's eyes looked elsewhere. From ropes tied higher up the mountain, the Phoenix people repelled down, landing three at a time, with Masala in the lead.
"My gods," he said. "What happened here? Did they break through?"
"Naught but one," said Cologne, greeting them. "A fortunate straggler, from their perspective."
"One Sorcerer did all this?"
"He had some fight in him." Cologne looked him up and down. "Taking ropes in the rain. You're wingless, Masala. I hope you didn't expect combat."
He pointed to a canteen tied to his belt. "We were ready to fight if needed. Yours was the last platform to report. The others had no incidents after the charges went off."
"A great and wondrous victory it is, then, for the combined forces of Phoenix and Amazon."
Masala sneered. "Mind your tongue, old crone. I hear the mocking in it." He turned to the gathering forces behind him, already a dozen strong. "Send word back to the captain—we'll be bringing wounded."
As two men headed back up the ropes, Cologne covered her mouth, whispering to Akane. "Before you blame your mistakes on another, think carefully about what would result, Tendō. There are more where Masala comes from, many more. We already have one enemy here. Do not sow the seeds of discord to cover for your own folly."
"I meant what I said. I had every intent to stop that Sorcerer before he did more damage. You have to believe me."
"Blind belief is not a luxury I can afford. If you mean to accuse our 'friends' here of working against us, I must have proof."
"What proof can I possibly give?"
Cologne eyed the ice spike, the one that rammed through her great-granddaughter's leg.
"The proof," she said, "is in shampoo."
#
It was a method of the Amazons Akane had known once before, but there are many formulas of the herbal, mind-altering shampoo. Some convince the victim they're a duck or a frog. Others weave a deeper magic, the power to relive the past in a clarity and depth long since depleted.
In the shadows of a stone-walled closet, Cologne sheltered Akane from outside influence and probed her mind to the fullest extent, from the moment they arrived in the Phoenix's hospitality to the thud of the ice spike as it pinned Shampoo to the platform floor.
"You're wrong," said Akane, her voice dull and dreary. "She freed me. I remember. The storm had just started. We returned from fighting Wuya, and I got my things from the prison. She freed me right there. She said so, and I remember…"
One, a story of how she must've been released, another of Keema's whispers blocking her strength. Both couldn't be true, yet the entranced Akane clung to them, a conflicting set of impossible facts.
"And us?" asked Konatsu, when at last Cologne left the shadow. "Are we safe?"
To that, Cologne had no answer. If Akane had truly been controlled again, were the rest of them clean?
They should be. Cologne herself batted away Korma and his aimless warriors. She felt no qualms about laying a hand on them. Nor, to her recollection, had any of the others.
"Why then?" asked Ukyō. "Why take Akane-chan and not the rest of us?"
A valuable question, and the answer to this one was no easier than the first. It was for both those queries that Cologne ordered the rest of the party to stay with Shampoo and Akane, the wounded among them in body and mind. She went to stroll about the mountain, to walk and think.
#
It used to be, on strolls around the village, the most that would disturb the silence were the calls of birds as clumsy children startled them. Even on the coldest day, the skies were clear and blue, and from the ledge above the village, one could scan the horizon and spot the mountains that guarded the edge of the plateau. Over the years, the birds had thinned in number, and the roars of propellers—then jets—dwarfed them. The mountains in the distance faded under the haze of coal and oil.
Or, perhaps, it was the clouding of Cologne's own eyes—of cataracts—that rendered them invisible instead.
It was the passage of time, the one inexorable quantity in human life, and Cologne knew it well. Grandparents, uncles, brothers, sisters—they'd all met their ends with time, and Cologne'd had a hand in burying each of them, if they died in peace, or burning them, if they died in war. Like her family passed on, so did many of the smaller tribes of the Plateau. As the waters of Koko Nor shrank, the fishermen of that blue lake scattered to the winds. The Phoenix closed in on themselves; the Sorcerers, too. After a time, there were only the Amazons left to deal and bargain with the armies of red.
Yet all throughout the decades, when the forces of change troubled Cologne, she embraced her thoughtful strolls, for though they reminded her of how much had gone, they also showed that something new would step into the void that the old had left behind. Where birds might no longer call, children cried and laughed at one another. That's what made a tribe, what made human civilization: the ability of mankind to have children and make them into adults.
To ensure a future for one's children, man will kill, enslave, torture—not all men will do those deeds, but most find it within them. Those who don't fear more for what their children would become if they did. The future is precious to us, after all. It can't be bought or given. It must be seized, whether with a hoe in the ground or a sword from the forge.
And Keema, the great captain of these Phoenix, wouldn't cross an ally, however fleeting that partnership might be, unless she thought it best for the children of her tribe, too.
Well, Captain Keema? How does holding Tendō's mind benefit your kin?
On her way up the mountain, Cologne bore witness to the dire state of Saffron's kingdom. Refugees crowded the tunnels, huddling wherever they may. Their rags dripped with seeping rainwater, and they'd be lucky if they smelled only of that. But nay, creeping mold and fungus weren't enough. For the displaced, the homeless, the wounded, the mountain had become their latrine.
The Phoenix weren't prepared for this war. They built their kingdom reliant on a mature Saffron's power to smite any enemy that dared step upon the open plain. And Keema? She'd bought a day, maybe two, but in time, she'd lose. She'd lose this battle and watch the Sorcerers slaughter her kind. Honorable deaths in resisting, to be sure, but unsatisfying. Honor is for warriors on the battlefield, not women and children fighting for their lives. No leader would be content with that fate. Cologne wouldn't be, and neither should Keema. No, Keema must've seen cause to give the Sorcerers delay, to let her plan unfurl and choke them when the time was right. To keep Akane under her control out of spite would be senseless. Vindictive as she might be, Keema was no fool. She'd have kept a hold on Akane only if it served her people, despite the risk that someone, like Cologne, would find out.
Cologne sighed. Betrayal she expected after the battle was won, but while the Sorcerers still stood?
Children. So aggressive, so impatient. They take the boar by its horn and stab stab stab until it no longer moves. Never content to set a trap and let the creature starve.
But now Cologne and her people were the boar, and Keema had already drawn the blade.
Perhaps I read this wrong, thought Cologne. It may well be Keema's only quarrel is with Tendō. Over what, I can't fathom. She was the one who showed mercy. Were I in Keema's place, I'd trust her more than any of us.
No, this was no time for uncertainty; that's what made Tendō so vulnerable. When it came time to strike, Cologne put aside her doubts. Her warrior's instinct took over, and she slew all her foes, Phoenix and Sorcerer alike, who might betray the truth of things to Keema. Were it not for Akane's hesitation then, they might still be favorite allies of the Phoenix even now. Curse Tendō Akane for her reluctance. It served no purpose.
Then again, was it wrong to have doubts when no course seemed to give victory?
If Keema already betrays us, there's no course to follow. If she means to kill us, we will fight and die—whether against her forces or the Guard's, it matters not. You're truly stupid, Keema! Could you not put aside your scheme until after the Sorcerers are dead? That way, if we fail, so be it, and if not, I'd feel no qualms about killing you.
Clearly Keema had no intention of being so cooperative.
"Hello? Surma?"
In the flooding throne room, Cologne tapped on the microphone to her radio set, but all that came out was static.
"Surma, do you read?"
Perhaps it was weakness for a teacher to rely on her student when she had no answers herself, but Cologne resolved to hear Surma's counsel all the same. She peered over top the metal casing of the transmitter…
And glimpsed her own reflection. A puddle of water straddled a seam in the casing, but where did it come from? Cologne searched the ceiling, yet no droplets fell from above. Was it an accident of weather? Did a gust of wind break through the curtains and throw rain on the sensitive electronics?
Hah! I think not. So be it, children of Saffron. You wish to fight two enemies in your castle?
She batted the microphone away, and it smashed on the stone floor, losing a screw.
Then fight we will, even if it condemns both of us to death.
#
"We'll never get anywhere against that."
Peering around a corner, Kuonji Ukyō shook her head. The target of her displeasure was an open doorway, flanked on both sides by Phoenix warriors. Within the chamber, rows of giant eggs stood upright, but more intimidating were the frozen, motionless servants who lay within as well.
"Pessimistic already?" said Cologne. "A well-prepared squad of our size could easily dismantle this force with the proper equipment and discipline."
Beside her, Konatsu smacked his lips, dabbing at them with cherry red lipstick. Mousse rubbed vigorously at his glasses, squinting at a crystal-clear lens.
"Then again, perhaps we four aren't so prepared."
With Shampoo laid out and Akane's mind untrusted, Cologne set out with these three—Mousse, Konatsu, and Ukyō—as her only company. To the two girls left behind, Ryōga would be their peacekeeper, tied to a stake if need be, just in case he got in his mind to wander off.
But such loss in capability Cologne sorely felt—to leave half of what she had to sit and heal crippled her. Where Ryōga, Shampoo, and Akane could well hold their own outside the egg chamber while Cologne led the others inside, now she found herself trying to do as much of that with half the effective strength. It was an unappetizing prospect, and there was no feeding this last meal to the dogs. It had to be swallowed, one gulp at a time.
And all talk of disadvantages aside, Cologne had to admit it: Keema had provided well for defense of the egg room. Who knew what traps might lie within or whether she'd sacrifice her minions to protect the eggs that were so sacrosanct to her. These extraordinary measures surely confirmed Keema's duplicity, but that certainty was of little comfort to Cologne. Better to be wrong and victorious than right and dead. If they couldn't take the eggs unnoticed or maim and kill every defender, Keema would surely hear them raise an alarm.
"Wait, wait, what the hell is that?"
A burst of Kansai dialect Japanese roused Cologne from her reverie. "Need you comment on everything that passes before your eyes?" she asked Ukyō.
"Trust me, you want to see this." Ukyō pointed around the corner. "Have a look."
Grumbling, Cologne inched toward the bend, leaning on her walking stick. At the entrance to the egg room, a young girl—tall, but thin, with brown spots on her folded wings—conversed with the two guards. A tray of cups she held flat and horizontal…
And each cup carried a single egg.
"It makes sense," said Mousse, peering over Cologne. "The Phoenix store the eggs here, but they have to come from somewhere else. Some kind of spell maybe? A ritual?"
"Perhaps something else entirely."
The girl smiled for the guards and made her way inside. When she came out again, she tucked the empty tray under her arm.
"They may store the eggs here," said Cologne, "but the most vulnerable point, the place we can best steal an egg for ourselves and free Tendō, may be elsewhere."
The courier girl strolled down the dark tunnels alone.
"Come!" Cologne turned away, marching down the cross-path with haste. "This way!"
"Where are we going?" asked Konatsu.
"This should lead around to the girl if she doesn't deviate from the straight path. If she does, we wait for the next delivery, but I think no one here would prefer to wait, yes?"
Ukyō frowned. "And what exactly do we do when we find her?"
"What do you think?" Cologne reached into her bag, eyed a bottle of shampoo, and shook. The stuff inside made no sound; the bottle was light and empty. "All gone," she mused. "Pity. We'll have to do as the ancestors did."
"And what's that?"
They rounded a bend. The girl with the wooden tray stretched her wings briefly but kept walking.
"Kuonji, Mousse, you see the doorway beyond her? Secure it. Whatever space lies beyond, we'll need room to…converse with this one."
"Wait," said Ukyō. "What are you going to—"
Cologne cocked her walking stick back like a batter at the Polo Grounds. She took a step, and the hunk of wood spun like a boomerang.
THWACK!
The girl tumbled; her tray plunked on the ground, but stunned, wounded prey wouldn't do for Cologne. She leapt off the tunnel walls, bouncing like a pinball, and snatched up her loose club.
WHAM! A single blow to the head, and the girl napped in the dirt.
"Help me!" hissed Cologne. "Take the tray, too. Drag her there if we must."
Konatsu and Cologne each took an arm, lugging the dazed Phoenix girl along the floor. As they approached the doorway beyond, a number of Phoenix people—women who carried babies in naught but blankets or the folds of their shirts, children whose grimy, filthy wings spread a foul sent and dust in the air—scattered through the exit, dispersing in the hall as a collective file.
"What was that?" Cologne demanded. "What were they doing? What did you tell them?"
"Refugees," said Mousse. "Stranded victims. We said the Sorcerers were coming, that they needed to get somewhere safe."
"You fool! Do you want them to alert Keema?"
"Nothing else would make them budge. What should I have done, held a knife to their throats?"
Cologne scowled, and together, she and Konatsu dragged the wounded bird into an abandoned cliffside home. But for the rags and pots of the stranded tribesmen, the floors were bare. The windows, though boarded, leaked rainwater and chilling, drafty wind.
With their prisoner laid out on the floor, Cologne slapped her across the cheek."Wake up, my dear. I have business with you."
She moaned. Her eyes fluttered, struggling to focus.
THWACK! Cologne clubbed her across the forehead.
"What are you doing?" asked Ukyō. "You're going to kill her before you get anything useful."
"Shut up!"
The Phoenix girl grabbed at her bleeding forehead, curling into a ball.
"What is your name, child?" asked Cologne.
"Besan."
"Besan, is it? A beautiful name. One I would've liked to give my granddaughter, if her mother hadn't set her mind on another. You resemble her, you know. Tall, sleek."
"I do?"
THWACK! The stick crunched against her ribcage.
"Wrong! Her hair was long and flowing and beautiful! So she was not—" THWACK! "Like you—" THWACK! "At all!" THWACK!
Ukyō planted her spatula, covered her face, and looked to an empty corner.
"My granddaughter needs to know about those eggs of yours," said Cologne. "The Sorcerers have her; they've held her for all these twenty years. Would you like it if you were taken from your family?"
"No!"
"Would you like it if they were free to do whatever they wished with you?" Cologne's finger ran down the girl's cheek. "To make you endure their experiments of magic? To make you lie with them, to bear their children?"
"No no no!"
"Then you understand, don't you, why I'm so desperate to find her? Why I must find her?"
Through teary eyes, the girl Besan lashed at Cologne. She clawed at the crone's fingers; she jabbed with her knees.
"Impudent!" SLAP! A backhand twisted Besan's neck. She moved not but to tremble and weep.
"Isn't that enough?" said Mousse. "Let's get what we want from her and leave. Those people are surely running to Keema, telling her we're here."
"If you're so concerned, watch the door."
"But—"
"Watch the door, young Mousse, or I'll have the Council forbid you from seeing Shampoo ever again. As much as you've interfered in her tribal duty, that would be the least of your punishments should I decide to exercise privilege. Watch the door!"
With a gulp and a nod, Mousse made to the exit, glancing down both ends of the tunnel.
"Well?" Cologne asked her captive. "The eggs—where do you get them?"
"I really shouldn't say—"
THWACK!
"From the nest!" She clutched her head, covering her face with both arms. "A few are laid every day; today was good. We usually only get five or six."
"And where is this nest?"
"In the aviary. Most of the caretakers fly, but there's a stairwell to it down the hall. I was going that way."
"Tell me about this aviary. Tell me about its defenses."
"Hurry it up," said Mousse, putting his back to the doorway. "I hear what sounds like a lot of trouble."
"It's usually the safest place on the mountain after Lord Saffron's chambers," said Besan. "But lately, since the Sorcerers attacked, Captain Keema moved all the guards away."
"Why?"
"She wouldn't say—"
THWACK! "Tell me why!"
"I—I asked her! I did! She said they weren't needed there anymore. She said the eggs would still be safe!"
Cologne narrowed her eyes. She leaned in, nose-to-nose with the battered girl.
"How could she say that," asked the Amazon matriarch, "if her people aren't the ones guarding the nests?"
"I think we need to go!" said Mousse. "Right now!"
Cologne overturned her bag, sorting through bottles of conditioner and shampoo. "Then go we shall," she said. "In a moment."
"I thought you weren't going to scramble her head!" said Ukyō.
"To extract information, no. I used all of that on Tendō, but there are many formulas of shampoo." She looked to her victim. "Now, Besan, where did you say the nests were in this aviary?"
"The very top; the highest point in the chamber."
"Good, good." She squeezed a dab into her palm and hovered over the prone girl. "Don't worry, child. When I'm done, you won't remember how you got these bruises, these broken bones, and while the pain may yet linger, I promise you…"
She rubbed shampoo into the tufts of short, light hair.
"Forgetting is for the best."
#
"You know, I understand the sense of urgency…"
On a spiral staircase, Ukyō doubled over, panting.
"But just what do you think we'll find in this aviary?"
"I think, if I were Keema, I wouldn't dare leave the source of my most potent weapon unguarded."
"What are we going to do, fight the Phoenix for their eggs? I thought the idea was to be discreet!"
"You heard the girl. There are no Phoenix guarding these eggs. No, I expect we'll find something else." She prodded Ukyō with the walking stick. "Come on!"
Nodding, Ukyō stood upright and dashed on with the group. The stairwell torches gave way to warm, white light.
Konatsu wandered at the top of the stair, shading his eyes, scanning the chamber. "What kind of place is this?"
The party emerged in a large, cavernous space—a hollow as tall as the Tōkyō Tower and spanning the whole width of the mountain. Massive pillars, as thick as skyscrapers in their own right, held the weight of the peak above them, and from the center support, water seeped out, flowing into a sparkling pond.
It was a water hole for the birds. Cranes dunked their long, nimble necks to sip and drink. Ducks floated on the surface, as if sitting at their home nests. Beyond these, many strange and obscure avian species partook of the water hole—birds with rainbow colors and shimmering wings.
Ka-PAM! A blast of wind pounded the rock.
"No time to admire the sights!" said Cologne, pouncing away. "Find the birds! Get to the top!"
Clinging to the sheer face of a rocky wall, the four searched for handholds on an impeccably flat surface.
"I don't understand," said Konatsu, digging his shuriken into stone. "What just attacked us? What just happened?"
"What do you think?" Dragging himself up by chains, Mousse adjusted his glasses and glanced over his shoulder. "We've been on the wrong end of their magic too much now."
They hovered to match the climbers' ascent. Cloth of solid black they wore. In one hand, each carried a martial, fighting staff, and with the other, the flows of ki bent to the caster's will.
Sorcerers, half a dozen of them, flew where Cologne and her comrades clawed at rock instead.
"Mousse, you have a spark or flame in those endless sleeves of yours?" asked Cologne.
"Yes!"
Cologne fished her pocket and came out with a handful of dust. "On my count! Three! Two! One!"
From her open fist, the powder flew. Mousse opened his sleeve, and a torrent of flame sprayed into the air. The powder ignited! POP-POP-POP-POP-POP!
"You have a flamethrower?" said Ukyō.
"I didn't think a cigarette lighter would be enough!"
The Sorcerers shrank away from the fireworks, but the reprieve was temporary at best. The flashy explosions dissipated, and the Sorcerers floated through the smoke undeterred.
Clinging to the rock face on the strength of her fingernails, Cologne looked down on the Sorcerers and the three companions who trailed her.
Children, she thought. They think themselves nimble and strong, yet always they prove themselves so slow. The four of us will never make it up and down this wall before the Sorcerers tear us apart. She glanced below. "Head back down!" she yelled. "We only need what we came for; this isn't a battle we need to win, just to survive! Go!"
"And when they come after you?" asked Ukyō.
Let them come.
Up the sheer wall, she bashed out handholds and pulled herself to the top, under the roof of the aviary itself.
And on that top ledge, the majestic creatures of orange and gold sat on their nests. Life fire softened to flesh and feathers, the birds shimmered and glowed—great, long-necked beasts with sharp, cutting beaks. The very personifications of the phoenix in all but flames guarded the most treasured of eggs.
"That's far enough," said a voice. "Don't you think?"
There, among the nests, the captain of the Phoenix people pet one of her prized birds on the head.
"I assure you this is all a misunderstanding."
"Like I believe that!" Cologne's fist slammed into the rocks!
CRUNCH-WHAM!
A wave of jagged rock slashed at Keema! The birds took flight, abandoning their nests, but the Phoenix captain stood her ground, bearing cuts on her arms and side to hold fast.
"You wish to cross the Amazons?" said Cologne, snatching an egg from an open nest. "Then face the wrath of a hundred years' coming!"
The egg flew!
POP! Keema flapped her wings, and the cutting wave of pressure shattered the shell.
"As I said, you misunderstand!" Keema opened her hands, spreading her arms and wings, inviting attack. "You think I have crossed you?"
"The presence of Sorcerers here confirms it! You conspire against me and my kin; no Sorcerers escaped that trap of yours. They can only be here because you invited them!"
"Oh?"
Behind Keema, the band of Sorcerers and Phoenix alike rose. They carried Mousse, Konatsu, and Ukyō. They dropped them rudely on the ledge.
"Look upon these Sorcerers, Cologne. Is there not one you know already?"
Cologne scanned their faces, and indeed, there was one who struck her. A face she'd only seen in shadow, in darkness, but she knew the look in his eyes. It was a dull, clouded look—the gaze of someone compelled to comply, to answer any question, for when Cologne met that Sorcerer, that's what he did. She met him in the bowels of the mountain, the Phoenix's brig below. She questioned him about her granddaughter, the one he didn't know.
"I made these Sorcerers no invitation," said Keema. "I captured them all, with these eggs you've sought. I command them, and they obey. These men I control will corrupt the Sorcerers' ranks from within. That is how we'll purge this invasion."
She grinned.
"That is how we ensure Lord Saffron's rebirth."
Next: With his Sorcerers beaten and bloodied from Phoenix resistance, Kohl lays out a bold plan—an invasion from above to take the mountain with insurmountable force—but neither he nor Ranma, who comes with Amazon aid, knows what Keema has in store for them. Four great forces spiral toward collision in "The Battle of Phoenix Mountain" Part V - "Converging Points of Compass Rose" - Coming January 28, 2010.
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