Wild Sand Chapter 5
Yu-gi-oh crossover with Ranma 1/2
by Naquiel
Disclaimer - Ranma and Yu-gi-oh don't belong to me so please don't sue.
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Chapter 5
Ranma was quite happy. Well, perhaps not too much.
He was in the luxurious room provided for him. The others had ones like it, but his had a special vibe. It was that vibe that lured him to choose this room in particular.
Over the past few days, he had never really had much time alone, to think. He was always duelling or talking, or basically not trying to think, perhaps trying not to! But now, in the silent, lonely room, he had opportunity to think.
Why was he here? How? Who was the oddly dressed woman that attacked him? How was she connected through his transport through time?
Transport. That was it, transport. The special ability of the Puzzle is the ability to transport, in his reality at least! When he was attacked, the Puzzles magic must have tried to save him from the blast. The blast itself, or the energy in the attack must have interfered and shifted his 'flight-path' through the Shadow Realm. Time and space mean very little in the Shadow realm, so technically he could have easily been diverted and end up on a not-too dissimilar reality from his own. He didn't think that the blast was powerful enough to have diverted him to far, after all in this reality there were Duel Monsters and Millennium Items, even an alternate Yami spirit!
So, if he had it within his power to get here, surely it was within his power to travel back. And if time meant nothing to the Shadow realm, he may be able to go home for a length of time and return only seconds later in this reality and the same vice versa. He could go home and reappear only minutes later from when he disappeared.
Ranma smiled and collected his things.
Sailor Pluto saw her opponent disappear and was once more content. The threat to Crystal Tokyo was eliminated and the future was secure.
She looked around and saw to her surprise, the large explosion for the Dead Scream attracted no attention from the passing pedestrians, except those who walked around the rubble of the blown a part section of fencing.
She at first assumed they were under some sort of spell until a group of boys passed.
"Always in Nerima!" murmured one of the teens as he past.
Sailor Pluto, aka Setsuna Meiou, had no idea what was going on with these people, but just chalked it up to one of those inexplicable things in life, and planned to look into it later.
She reverted to her civilian form, again no one around really caring, and she walked happily away from the area.
Ranma appeared in a flash of golden light, disorientated and having a hard time feeling any rail under his feet.
He fell only have way, his magic lashed out and solidified a pocket of air under his foot, which he used as a foothold to go into a summersault to land on the pavement.
He shook himself off, checked his deck and checked everything off his mind. Deck, check; clothes, check; Nerima, check; urge to eat a lot of cheese, check; violent tomboy at two o'clock, check!
He promptly walked sharply away from school, to find a quite place to teleport to school without being spotted by the grand high bit...
"Owe," he hissed; a shard of concrete embedded in his foot. He removed it and set some magic to repair the minor injury.
He quickly continued on his way.
She couldn't believe it, wouldn't believe it. She killed him; she had secured the future! How could he, a normal human, survive her blast? Not an ordinary human, she reminded herself, he was obviously even more protected by the accursed Millennium Item than she had assumed.
She would need both the Inners and Outers now, if he really has tapped into the entirety of the Puzzles dark powers!
Ranma walked into the shop. It was lunchtime and he had teleported into Juuban to visit a card store that he had heard of at school earlier. It was quite popular apparently in both wards. He had become very curious and came in the hope of some really powerful Duel Monsters cards.
He was not disappointed.
He browsed the good-sized store and carefully selected a number of booster packs. He sensed some pretty interesting cards within. To his immense delight, he could tell one of them was another Red Eyes Black Dragon and another was a Magic Metal Force trap card, identical to the one he sensed from another finalist, Bandit Keith's, deck.
Also, to his surprise and great, great happiness, he also discovered one contained the rare and wondrously powerful Reiokou. The magic card had the ability to take half of the opponent's life-points and add them to a friendly monsters attack power.
He chuckled evilly as he took the pack from the shelf, and turned round to go to the till, to be met by a number of people looking at him oddly.
He laughed nervously and scratched the base of his pigtail with one hand, holding the packs in his other hand.
He walked towards the till; not noticing that some people hadn't yet taken their suspicious eyes of him.
Rei was sure of it, the boy looked just like the 'Golden Heart of Tokyo', but the boy had laughed, evilly. Good superheroes, just don't laugh evilly, they laugh nicely. Therefore she reached the conclusion that this boy was nothing to do with the golden armoured hero that she had been saved by, who cares it the others were saved, he probably just did it for her. Yeah, right!
She turned back towards the stacks of cool Duel Monsters cards. She selected one at random, as was her method and went to the till to buy it.
Ranma, before going to the till, sensed an odd power coming from the back room. It sent slight shivers down his spine. It felt like being touch by cool marble on every inch of his body, it was cool and calculatingly negative.
He, the wizard that he was made by due to his item, sent his power flowing, unobtrusively, through the trickling, stagnating streams of dark energy. He found it's source, a crystalline demon, similar to the demon Animated Ooze was before he caught it within a card. He could feel that it was using the prospering store to draw small amounts of spiritual energy from the unaware customers to power itself. He could also feel that it was deeply malevolent and only took such a slight amount of energy because it didn't want to draw attention to itself until it had repaired from a previous fight with the Sailor Scouts. But once it was healed, it would be difficult to destroy, perhaps costing many lives.
He sensed the creature controlling the couple who ran the store; it's foul presence within them.
Oddly enough, once he ran what he knew of the being through the parts of his Yami existence that was intimately aware of how to turn ordinary things into cards, he discovered that the demonic thing could be potentially useful.
He whispered a small spell of invisibility, and disappeared, mostly unnoticed by everyone in the store, due to his being in a shadow, between two stands.
He made his way confidently towards the back room, not wishing to teleport and to show all of his power to his demonic foe.
Rei, aka, Sailor Mars, was quite shocked to see the good-looking boy that she was appreciatively eyeing, just disappear from sight.
Definitely an abnormal occurrence, she decided intelligently, and calmly went somewhere quiet to contact the other Sailors.
Ranma reappeared in the back room of the store; it was filled with crates and filled with a homely musty smell of ageing wood. The store had been unknowingly built on a powerful lay-line, one of the many that converged in or around Tokyo, Juuban in particular, with Nerima a close second.
The crystalline creature was defiling the power of that lay-line by attempting to tap into its power, to power-up enough to heal and grow, and to make it's meagre meal the last of the small meals it would have to eat, in it's life-time. The next meals, it had most likely promised itself, would be much larger!
It disgusted him that such a creature could have touched something so pure, and not have any ramifications, at all, fall upon it. Well, in this case, it was Ranma who would be its ramification, of that he was determined.
Outside the store, in its eastern alley, five teenage girls met and conferred.
"Well, I was in the store next door," Sailor Mars, relayed to her fellow Scouts. "And I saw this guy, I mean he was really, well, different. He had these really intense blue eyes and pitch-black hair..."
"Wow, I guess he really must be an evil guy!" said Sailor Venus sarcastically. She was feeling sore because she had, had to halt right in the middle of trying to get a date from some poor soul. She was presently directing her irritation at Sailor Mars. "Kami, why can't a cute guy, be a cute guy, and not some evil thing come to devour us all, huh? Jeez!"
"Well normally I'd agree with you Venus..." Sailor Mars deadpanned. "But I saw the guy disappear into thin air, and he cackled evilly! What more proof do you need?"
Venus laughed sheepishly and blushed slightly.
Ranma walked fearlessly through the maze of crates. He could sense the creature trying to hides its presence futilely. He felt sure that this was an easy kill! He was wrong.
"Aaahhh!" shriek... um, screamed Ranma, in not a remotely feminine way, as he flew through the shop's front window.
The other customers screamed and ran out the building. They were; Ranma absently noticed from his uncomfortable position upside-down implanted in the face of the building directly across from the card store, mostly teenagers. They were followed closely by a slow-moving creature, the same thing Ranma was attempting to card.
It was similar to Animated Ooze, but made of crystal, and it was spearheaded by a figure, jutting out from the flowing, screeching mass of crystals. To look upon, the figure was quite pretty, with flowing white hair made of minute links of white crystals, and eyes made entirely of two large sapphires. She was tallish and regal, with a cold smirk on her otherwise emotionless face. Below her torso she became one with the mass of crystal.
A number of scantily clad magical girls ran towards Ranma, seeing him as a possible victim needing saving.
Sailor Mars was shocked to see the face of her mysterious boy, as he was upside-down, implanted into a wall, and yet looking perfectly comfortable.
Sailor Moon was a little more practical and spoke up, "Um, doesn't that really hurt?"
Ranma looked at her calmly and replied soundly. "You'd be surprised how much!"
"Um, need a hand down?"
"Hmm, let me think. Na, I just stay right where I am and remain in incredible pain for the rest of my natural life. Thanks for the offer though!" Ranma replied fully embracing the spirit of sarcasm.
"Oh, alright then!" said Sailor Moon and she and the other Scouts went to confront the monster, leaving an angry Ranma behind to seethe in his contempt for short skirted magical girls.
"I am Sailor Moon. A card store is for buying and, uh, trading and, uh, what ever a card store is used for, and not for you evil whims! For desecrating a card store, and harming the innocents within, I shall punish you!" the oddly hair-styled girl yelled at the irritated Youma.
The youma was a sleeper, used by either the Death Busters, or Sailor Galactica, even perhaps, the Negaverse. To look at it, it was quite impossible to tell, and it was as ignorant at its origins as the Scouts were. But, despite being a sleeper, it was still quite powerful and clever, dangerously so.
Ranma had carefully extricated himself from the unpleasant indentation that he left as a souvenir. Her surveyed the Scouts and their battle with the youma, as soon as he had regained his balance that is!
The fight was going badly, the scouts attacks were being absorbed by the creature and it laughed at their physical attacks. The few times and attacks made a difference, the creature healed up, again, laughing loudly in a spine-chilling chime-like way.
He could see that their was a tendril of the monster leading down, back into the building, it was quite possible that it was drawing power from the lay-line, if so, where were the Sailor's attack's power going?
He spotted out the corner of his eye, two middle-aged people; they were couple that ran the store. He could sense that the power from the attacks that hit with no apparent effect, were in fact going to the couple.
It was startlingly similar to Animated Ooze's ability to take an enemies power and give it to allied creatures. The only differences were the ways in which it was done, instead of trapping the opponent and diverting it's energies, the attacking energy is redirected and made to power-up a being.
Ranma connected the dots and came up with the, possibly correct, assumption that there was a relation between Animated Ooze and this new youma.
The Sailors were clustered together between Ranma and the monster. Each of them sported a number of bruises and painful cuts due to the diamond hard body of the youma. They had, had little or no luck trying to bring down the monster themselves, and more than just Sailor Moon hoped that Tuxedo Kamen were their at that moment to lift their spirits and give a hand!
What they got was better.
"Hey, wind-chime! Over here!" shouted a familiar voice. Both the Sailors and the Youma looked towards the source of the voice, as well as the hidden youma-controlled couple.
Before them was the young man they had seen earlier, the same one who had been crashed into the wall and bore a striking resemblance to the Golden Heart of Tokyo.
"I was having a perfectly happy time getting some Duel Monster cards, and you show up! I am getting real tired of you Youma! Go, Dark Magician!" he took a slip of card from his pocket and threw it down to the ground in front of him.
In an upwards-directed mist of purple mist, emitted by the card, a figure could be seen. It serenely took and step forwards, floating effortlessly above the pavement.
The mist dissipated and the card disappeared, leaving a tall man in purple, with a long staff, both staff and clothing having intermittent rings of a lighter shade of purple.
Ranma smiled.
Rei gasped. She recognised the tall, youngish figure of the Dark Magician, and she knew where she had recognised the purple skeleton-like creature that the Golden Heart of Tokyo had summoned.
"Duel Monsters!" she whispered, her voice hoarse, and unnoticed.
"Dark Magician: use Dark Magic attack!" shouted Ranma enthusiastically, throwing a magic card at the Dark Magician, at the same moment.
The Dark Magician shot a golden eye symbol enshrouded in purple mist out from the semi-submerged sphere at the end of his staff. It collided with the crystal creature's chest and imprinted the eye symbol upon the youma.
Its' eyes went blank and it stared into space, it's mind enshrouded with tendrils, controlling it as it had controlled the storeowners.
Ranma pumped the air with his fist. "Yes. My combo attack with Dark Magician and the Eye of Illusion worked perfectly. Now, your mine!" He closed his eyes and focused. Then threw out his hand and pulled viciously at the Youma's magical essence. He drew it up and wrapped in a card-like shape. He felt the energy in the youma coalesce and reform, flying towards his hand.
In reality it looked like the youma was fading out of existence, while a slip of card was fading into existence within Ranma's hand.
Finally the process was complete and the youma faded completely from view, the last of its energy drawn into the card.
He summed back the Dark Magician and the magic card.
Then he took his newest card and looked at it piercingly. He did not have the chance for any more than a glance when a horrendous scream pierced the air.
The store-owning couple, were out of hiding, the scream had came from the woman. She was screaming, as the enforced symbiote was turning to energy and escaping from her mouth. The stream flowed towards and into the man, in the same fashion as it escaped the crying woman.
"Kami!" exclaimed Usagi as she saw the poor woman thrashing as the horrible essence escaped from her. In all the time she had spent hunting and destroying Youma, this was the single most horrible thing she had ever seen.
The other sailor scouts felt the same.
Ranma did not.
Ranma was connected to the Shadow Realm, a place of impossibly beautiful dreams and unspeakable nightmares. To become as powerful as him, one had to not be effected, delirious or disgusted, by anything one could hope to encounter in the Shadow Realm.
Therefore, he felt quite unfeeling about the woman's plight, a sort of enforced emotionless state that he planned to use if he encountered a cat again, that left him calm and immobile.
Eventually the woman's screaming stopped and her husband stared forward, ignoring her collapsed form, just as he had throughout her torment.
He was facing Ranma, even when the changes began.
Slowly his back bulged, slowly and not soundlessly. The snaps and crunches from the bones reforming could be heard throughout the deserted street.
Then his shirt ripped and out from his back were freed a pair of large grey wings, from all appearances were made from steel. It was then that he screamed and lunged forward, the older man going at speeds that would be difficult for the Olympic athletes.
Unfortunately, for him, Ranma thought Olympic athletes were wimps!
In short order, Ranma dealt with the older man, with relative ease.
The man had tried to overpower Ranma, not bothering to use his wings, to give him an arial advantage. But Ranma had only ever been overpowered by one person since he had come to Nerima, Royoga, and the old man wouldn't be a challenge to Kuno!
The old man was currently at his feet, tired to the point of entering a coma. The parasite / symbiote that infested him had combined with the one that was within the woman in an attempt to destroy the one that en-captured their creator.
They had failed, and now it was time to pay the price.
Ranma held out his hand, and with barely a noise the wings turned into sparkles of silvery light, flowing as streamers towards Ranma's hand, where they took a card form.
Ranma held his other hand to the now completely human man. He sent some Chi into the man to heal his wounds, and some Sa to heal his spirit, now the healing was up to the man's strength of will.
He turned round and was faced by a group of five Sailor Scouts.
Ranma cut them off from asking any questions by answering all the possible questions that they could have had.
"Yes, they'll be fine. In a few weeks, depending on their medical care. Yes, I am also the Golden Heart of Tokyo, but that was just a joke. I'm Ranma Saotome. Nineteen and single, and no I'm not looking for a girlfriend. My powers are from my business. Goodbye."
Ranma smirked impishly and disappeared in a flash of multicoloured light.
Later that day, the girls had come from their respective schools and headed towards Rei's shrine, to chat, gossip and read manga.
"Hey, Rei, don't be a meanie. I've never read that issue!" stated Usagi, once step away from tears.
"This is mine. Mine. You don't take what's not yours! I don't want you to read my stuff, so don't!" raged Rei at the watery-eyed Usagi.
The other girls were doing their respective activities, gossiping, reading magazines or typing for some mysterious reason on the Mercury computer.
"But Rei..."
They were interrupted by a sudden appearance of four figures in the centre of the room. One second they weren't there, then they were.
They five girls relaxed slightly when they recognised the figures as being their fellow scouts, Sailors Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, the Outers, still, they were very distrusting of the Outers and their methods, and as such, kept their transformation pens close-by.
The four made themselves at home, and Sailor Pluto's presence tended to show that there was an important event on the horizon, so all looked at her questioningly.
"Come on, out with it!" sated Uranus. "Why did you drag us from our home to here?"
Pluto took a moment to think and then answered. "The world is in terrible danger!"
The scouts looked almost... relieved.
"Oh, only that! Well, we can deal with that can't we, girls?" laughed Sailor Jupiter, leading the other scouts into a feeling of confident ability and strength.
They were soon brought down to Earth by the look on Pluto's face. "This danger is unlike any other. The 'Golden heart of Tokyo', aka Ranma Saotome, is the possessor of an ancient magical item..."
"And?" asked Usagi.
"It is one of seven. He has already fused two of them together. Once he has all of them, he will become a God!
"At the price of the world, itself!"
Yu-gi-oh crossover with Ranma 1/2
by Naquiel
Disclaimer - Ranma and Yu-gi-oh don't belong to me so please don't sue.
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Chapter 5
Ranma was quite happy. Well, perhaps not too much.
He was in the luxurious room provided for him. The others had ones like it, but his had a special vibe. It was that vibe that lured him to choose this room in particular.
Over the past few days, he had never really had much time alone, to think. He was always duelling or talking, or basically not trying to think, perhaps trying not to! But now, in the silent, lonely room, he had opportunity to think.
Why was he here? How? Who was the oddly dressed woman that attacked him? How was she connected through his transport through time?
Transport. That was it, transport. The special ability of the Puzzle is the ability to transport, in his reality at least! When he was attacked, the Puzzles magic must have tried to save him from the blast. The blast itself, or the energy in the attack must have interfered and shifted his 'flight-path' through the Shadow Realm. Time and space mean very little in the Shadow realm, so technically he could have easily been diverted and end up on a not-too dissimilar reality from his own. He didn't think that the blast was powerful enough to have diverted him to far, after all in this reality there were Duel Monsters and Millennium Items, even an alternate Yami spirit!
So, if he had it within his power to get here, surely it was within his power to travel back. And if time meant nothing to the Shadow realm, he may be able to go home for a length of time and return only seconds later in this reality and the same vice versa. He could go home and reappear only minutes later from when he disappeared.
Ranma smiled and collected his things.
Sailor Pluto saw her opponent disappear and was once more content. The threat to Crystal Tokyo was eliminated and the future was secure.
She looked around and saw to her surprise, the large explosion for the Dead Scream attracted no attention from the passing pedestrians, except those who walked around the rubble of the blown a part section of fencing.
She at first assumed they were under some sort of spell until a group of boys passed.
"Always in Nerima!" murmured one of the teens as he past.
Sailor Pluto, aka Setsuna Meiou, had no idea what was going on with these people, but just chalked it up to one of those inexplicable things in life, and planned to look into it later.
She reverted to her civilian form, again no one around really caring, and she walked happily away from the area.
Ranma appeared in a flash of golden light, disorientated and having a hard time feeling any rail under his feet.
He fell only have way, his magic lashed out and solidified a pocket of air under his foot, which he used as a foothold to go into a summersault to land on the pavement.
He shook himself off, checked his deck and checked everything off his mind. Deck, check; clothes, check; Nerima, check; urge to eat a lot of cheese, check; violent tomboy at two o'clock, check!
He promptly walked sharply away from school, to find a quite place to teleport to school without being spotted by the grand high bit...
"Owe," he hissed; a shard of concrete embedded in his foot. He removed it and set some magic to repair the minor injury.
He quickly continued on his way.
She couldn't believe it, wouldn't believe it. She killed him; she had secured the future! How could he, a normal human, survive her blast? Not an ordinary human, she reminded herself, he was obviously even more protected by the accursed Millennium Item than she had assumed.
She would need both the Inners and Outers now, if he really has tapped into the entirety of the Puzzles dark powers!
Ranma walked into the shop. It was lunchtime and he had teleported into Juuban to visit a card store that he had heard of at school earlier. It was quite popular apparently in both wards. He had become very curious and came in the hope of some really powerful Duel Monsters cards.
He was not disappointed.
He browsed the good-sized store and carefully selected a number of booster packs. He sensed some pretty interesting cards within. To his immense delight, he could tell one of them was another Red Eyes Black Dragon and another was a Magic Metal Force trap card, identical to the one he sensed from another finalist, Bandit Keith's, deck.
Also, to his surprise and great, great happiness, he also discovered one contained the rare and wondrously powerful Reiokou. The magic card had the ability to take half of the opponent's life-points and add them to a friendly monsters attack power.
He chuckled evilly as he took the pack from the shelf, and turned round to go to the till, to be met by a number of people looking at him oddly.
He laughed nervously and scratched the base of his pigtail with one hand, holding the packs in his other hand.
He walked towards the till; not noticing that some people hadn't yet taken their suspicious eyes of him.
Rei was sure of it, the boy looked just like the 'Golden Heart of Tokyo', but the boy had laughed, evilly. Good superheroes, just don't laugh evilly, they laugh nicely. Therefore she reached the conclusion that this boy was nothing to do with the golden armoured hero that she had been saved by, who cares it the others were saved, he probably just did it for her. Yeah, right!
She turned back towards the stacks of cool Duel Monsters cards. She selected one at random, as was her method and went to the till to buy it.
Ranma, before going to the till, sensed an odd power coming from the back room. It sent slight shivers down his spine. It felt like being touch by cool marble on every inch of his body, it was cool and calculatingly negative.
He, the wizard that he was made by due to his item, sent his power flowing, unobtrusively, through the trickling, stagnating streams of dark energy. He found it's source, a crystalline demon, similar to the demon Animated Ooze was before he caught it within a card. He could feel that it was using the prospering store to draw small amounts of spiritual energy from the unaware customers to power itself. He could also feel that it was deeply malevolent and only took such a slight amount of energy because it didn't want to draw attention to itself until it had repaired from a previous fight with the Sailor Scouts. But once it was healed, it would be difficult to destroy, perhaps costing many lives.
He sensed the creature controlling the couple who ran the store; it's foul presence within them.
Oddly enough, once he ran what he knew of the being through the parts of his Yami existence that was intimately aware of how to turn ordinary things into cards, he discovered that the demonic thing could be potentially useful.
He whispered a small spell of invisibility, and disappeared, mostly unnoticed by everyone in the store, due to his being in a shadow, between two stands.
He made his way confidently towards the back room, not wishing to teleport and to show all of his power to his demonic foe.
Rei, aka, Sailor Mars, was quite shocked to see the good-looking boy that she was appreciatively eyeing, just disappear from sight.
Definitely an abnormal occurrence, she decided intelligently, and calmly went somewhere quiet to contact the other Sailors.
Ranma reappeared in the back room of the store; it was filled with crates and filled with a homely musty smell of ageing wood. The store had been unknowingly built on a powerful lay-line, one of the many that converged in or around Tokyo, Juuban in particular, with Nerima a close second.
The crystalline creature was defiling the power of that lay-line by attempting to tap into its power, to power-up enough to heal and grow, and to make it's meagre meal the last of the small meals it would have to eat, in it's life-time. The next meals, it had most likely promised itself, would be much larger!
It disgusted him that such a creature could have touched something so pure, and not have any ramifications, at all, fall upon it. Well, in this case, it was Ranma who would be its ramification, of that he was determined.
Outside the store, in its eastern alley, five teenage girls met and conferred.
"Well, I was in the store next door," Sailor Mars, relayed to her fellow Scouts. "And I saw this guy, I mean he was really, well, different. He had these really intense blue eyes and pitch-black hair..."
"Wow, I guess he really must be an evil guy!" said Sailor Venus sarcastically. She was feeling sore because she had, had to halt right in the middle of trying to get a date from some poor soul. She was presently directing her irritation at Sailor Mars. "Kami, why can't a cute guy, be a cute guy, and not some evil thing come to devour us all, huh? Jeez!"
"Well normally I'd agree with you Venus..." Sailor Mars deadpanned. "But I saw the guy disappear into thin air, and he cackled evilly! What more proof do you need?"
Venus laughed sheepishly and blushed slightly.
Ranma walked fearlessly through the maze of crates. He could sense the creature trying to hides its presence futilely. He felt sure that this was an easy kill! He was wrong.
"Aaahhh!" shriek... um, screamed Ranma, in not a remotely feminine way, as he flew through the shop's front window.
The other customers screamed and ran out the building. They were; Ranma absently noticed from his uncomfortable position upside-down implanted in the face of the building directly across from the card store, mostly teenagers. They were followed closely by a slow-moving creature, the same thing Ranma was attempting to card.
It was similar to Animated Ooze, but made of crystal, and it was spearheaded by a figure, jutting out from the flowing, screeching mass of crystals. To look upon, the figure was quite pretty, with flowing white hair made of minute links of white crystals, and eyes made entirely of two large sapphires. She was tallish and regal, with a cold smirk on her otherwise emotionless face. Below her torso she became one with the mass of crystal.
A number of scantily clad magical girls ran towards Ranma, seeing him as a possible victim needing saving.
Sailor Mars was shocked to see the face of her mysterious boy, as he was upside-down, implanted into a wall, and yet looking perfectly comfortable.
Sailor Moon was a little more practical and spoke up, "Um, doesn't that really hurt?"
Ranma looked at her calmly and replied soundly. "You'd be surprised how much!"
"Um, need a hand down?"
"Hmm, let me think. Na, I just stay right where I am and remain in incredible pain for the rest of my natural life. Thanks for the offer though!" Ranma replied fully embracing the spirit of sarcasm.
"Oh, alright then!" said Sailor Moon and she and the other Scouts went to confront the monster, leaving an angry Ranma behind to seethe in his contempt for short skirted magical girls.
"I am Sailor Moon. A card store is for buying and, uh, trading and, uh, what ever a card store is used for, and not for you evil whims! For desecrating a card store, and harming the innocents within, I shall punish you!" the oddly hair-styled girl yelled at the irritated Youma.
The youma was a sleeper, used by either the Death Busters, or Sailor Galactica, even perhaps, the Negaverse. To look at it, it was quite impossible to tell, and it was as ignorant at its origins as the Scouts were. But, despite being a sleeper, it was still quite powerful and clever, dangerously so.
Ranma had carefully extricated himself from the unpleasant indentation that he left as a souvenir. Her surveyed the Scouts and their battle with the youma, as soon as he had regained his balance that is!
The fight was going badly, the scouts attacks were being absorbed by the creature and it laughed at their physical attacks. The few times and attacks made a difference, the creature healed up, again, laughing loudly in a spine-chilling chime-like way.
He could see that their was a tendril of the monster leading down, back into the building, it was quite possible that it was drawing power from the lay-line, if so, where were the Sailor's attack's power going?
He spotted out the corner of his eye, two middle-aged people; they were couple that ran the store. He could sense that the power from the attacks that hit with no apparent effect, were in fact going to the couple.
It was startlingly similar to Animated Ooze's ability to take an enemies power and give it to allied creatures. The only differences were the ways in which it was done, instead of trapping the opponent and diverting it's energies, the attacking energy is redirected and made to power-up a being.
Ranma connected the dots and came up with the, possibly correct, assumption that there was a relation between Animated Ooze and this new youma.
The Sailors were clustered together between Ranma and the monster. Each of them sported a number of bruises and painful cuts due to the diamond hard body of the youma. They had, had little or no luck trying to bring down the monster themselves, and more than just Sailor Moon hoped that Tuxedo Kamen were their at that moment to lift their spirits and give a hand!
What they got was better.
"Hey, wind-chime! Over here!" shouted a familiar voice. Both the Sailors and the Youma looked towards the source of the voice, as well as the hidden youma-controlled couple.
Before them was the young man they had seen earlier, the same one who had been crashed into the wall and bore a striking resemblance to the Golden Heart of Tokyo.
"I was having a perfectly happy time getting some Duel Monster cards, and you show up! I am getting real tired of you Youma! Go, Dark Magician!" he took a slip of card from his pocket and threw it down to the ground in front of him.
In an upwards-directed mist of purple mist, emitted by the card, a figure could be seen. It serenely took and step forwards, floating effortlessly above the pavement.
The mist dissipated and the card disappeared, leaving a tall man in purple, with a long staff, both staff and clothing having intermittent rings of a lighter shade of purple.
Ranma smiled.
Rei gasped. She recognised the tall, youngish figure of the Dark Magician, and she knew where she had recognised the purple skeleton-like creature that the Golden Heart of Tokyo had summoned.
"Duel Monsters!" she whispered, her voice hoarse, and unnoticed.
"Dark Magician: use Dark Magic attack!" shouted Ranma enthusiastically, throwing a magic card at the Dark Magician, at the same moment.
The Dark Magician shot a golden eye symbol enshrouded in purple mist out from the semi-submerged sphere at the end of his staff. It collided with the crystal creature's chest and imprinted the eye symbol upon the youma.
Its' eyes went blank and it stared into space, it's mind enshrouded with tendrils, controlling it as it had controlled the storeowners.
Ranma pumped the air with his fist. "Yes. My combo attack with Dark Magician and the Eye of Illusion worked perfectly. Now, your mine!" He closed his eyes and focused. Then threw out his hand and pulled viciously at the Youma's magical essence. He drew it up and wrapped in a card-like shape. He felt the energy in the youma coalesce and reform, flying towards his hand.
In reality it looked like the youma was fading out of existence, while a slip of card was fading into existence within Ranma's hand.
Finally the process was complete and the youma faded completely from view, the last of its energy drawn into the card.
He summed back the Dark Magician and the magic card.
Then he took his newest card and looked at it piercingly. He did not have the chance for any more than a glance when a horrendous scream pierced the air.
The store-owning couple, were out of hiding, the scream had came from the woman. She was screaming, as the enforced symbiote was turning to energy and escaping from her mouth. The stream flowed towards and into the man, in the same fashion as it escaped the crying woman.
"Kami!" exclaimed Usagi as she saw the poor woman thrashing as the horrible essence escaped from her. In all the time she had spent hunting and destroying Youma, this was the single most horrible thing she had ever seen.
The other sailor scouts felt the same.
Ranma did not.
Ranma was connected to the Shadow Realm, a place of impossibly beautiful dreams and unspeakable nightmares. To become as powerful as him, one had to not be effected, delirious or disgusted, by anything one could hope to encounter in the Shadow Realm.
Therefore, he felt quite unfeeling about the woman's plight, a sort of enforced emotionless state that he planned to use if he encountered a cat again, that left him calm and immobile.
Eventually the woman's screaming stopped and her husband stared forward, ignoring her collapsed form, just as he had throughout her torment.
He was facing Ranma, even when the changes began.
Slowly his back bulged, slowly and not soundlessly. The snaps and crunches from the bones reforming could be heard throughout the deserted street.
Then his shirt ripped and out from his back were freed a pair of large grey wings, from all appearances were made from steel. It was then that he screamed and lunged forward, the older man going at speeds that would be difficult for the Olympic athletes.
Unfortunately, for him, Ranma thought Olympic athletes were wimps!
In short order, Ranma dealt with the older man, with relative ease.
The man had tried to overpower Ranma, not bothering to use his wings, to give him an arial advantage. But Ranma had only ever been overpowered by one person since he had come to Nerima, Royoga, and the old man wouldn't be a challenge to Kuno!
The old man was currently at his feet, tired to the point of entering a coma. The parasite / symbiote that infested him had combined with the one that was within the woman in an attempt to destroy the one that en-captured their creator.
They had failed, and now it was time to pay the price.
Ranma held out his hand, and with barely a noise the wings turned into sparkles of silvery light, flowing as streamers towards Ranma's hand, where they took a card form.
Ranma held his other hand to the now completely human man. He sent some Chi into the man to heal his wounds, and some Sa to heal his spirit, now the healing was up to the man's strength of will.
He turned round and was faced by a group of five Sailor Scouts.
Ranma cut them off from asking any questions by answering all the possible questions that they could have had.
"Yes, they'll be fine. In a few weeks, depending on their medical care. Yes, I am also the Golden Heart of Tokyo, but that was just a joke. I'm Ranma Saotome. Nineteen and single, and no I'm not looking for a girlfriend. My powers are from my business. Goodbye."
Ranma smirked impishly and disappeared in a flash of multicoloured light.
Later that day, the girls had come from their respective schools and headed towards Rei's shrine, to chat, gossip and read manga.
"Hey, Rei, don't be a meanie. I've never read that issue!" stated Usagi, once step away from tears.
"This is mine. Mine. You don't take what's not yours! I don't want you to read my stuff, so don't!" raged Rei at the watery-eyed Usagi.
The other girls were doing their respective activities, gossiping, reading magazines or typing for some mysterious reason on the Mercury computer.
"But Rei..."
They were interrupted by a sudden appearance of four figures in the centre of the room. One second they weren't there, then they were.
They five girls relaxed slightly when they recognised the figures as being their fellow scouts, Sailors Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, the Outers, still, they were very distrusting of the Outers and their methods, and as such, kept their transformation pens close-by.
The four made themselves at home, and Sailor Pluto's presence tended to show that there was an important event on the horizon, so all looked at her questioningly.
"Come on, out with it!" sated Uranus. "Why did you drag us from our home to here?"
Pluto took a moment to think and then answered. "The world is in terrible danger!"
The scouts looked almost... relieved.
"Oh, only that! Well, we can deal with that can't we, girls?" laughed Sailor Jupiter, leading the other scouts into a feeling of confident ability and strength.
They were soon brought down to Earth by the look on Pluto's face. "This danger is unlike any other. The 'Golden heart of Tokyo', aka Ranma Saotome, is the possessor of an ancient magical item..."
"And?" asked Usagi.
"It is one of seven. He has already fused two of them together. Once he has all of them, he will become a God!
"At the price of the world, itself!"