Sins of the Great-grandmothers
Chapter Four
By Ron Hino
Ranma 1/2 is the creation of Rumiko Takahashi. She has made lots and lots of money off it, and I'm not making a penny. Damn shame too.
Since were now wandering into crossover territory, I suppose I should mention that I didn't create Ah, Megami-sama either. :P
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The Necromancer, Toilet Duck, frowned at the collection of books that lined her shelves. Every one of them was bound in black leather, a sign of the nature of the spells and knowledge contained within. There was not a single white-bound volume on the shelves; not a single cure or spell generally intended to be beneficial (other than to herself, naturally) among her considerable collection. She'd known this very well beforehand. Nonetheless, she had reread every single volume in her collection, cover to cover, looking for some hint that might tell her how to break a Soul Eater curse. It had taken her nearly two months, and produced absolutely nothing.
She sighed.
There was no help for it. She was going to have to seek the aid of someone experienced in white magic. She prepared herself for a journey, packing her things, along with a single black book; the one bearing the description of the Soul Eater spell she'd accidentally cast upon Cologne's great-granddaughter. It was the only book that might possibly be of any small use to whoever she found.
She was only ten steps out the door of her mountain cottage when it occurred to her she had no idea where to look. Grumbling at the inefficiency of her aging mind, she stomped back into the house. Of course, one of the benefits to old age was that she could imagine that there was a time when she actually *was* less absentminded.
Unfortunately, there hadn't been. Magic was really the only area where Duck could claim any true competence, and only black magic at that.
She was over 250 years old now, but there had been a time during her youth, a happy, joyous time, when her bumbling (both physical and mental) hadn't seemed such an inconvenience. Calvin had actually found it cute, until that old whore Cologne had seduced him away, of course. One thing could be said for her old age; now that she was so shrunken, and her arms and legs a fair bit shorter* she didn't stumble about nearly as much as during her youth and young adulthood. Falling on her face was something she'd been immensely grateful to have grown out of.
*(A.N. Don't ask me how it's medically possible for an elderly person to shrink that much. It's a mystery of anime. In real life, it's the thinning of the pads between the vertebrae of the spine that causes old folks to lose a few inches in height, but their arms and legs obviously stay the same length. Bones themselves can't actually shrink, to the best of my knowledge.)
She supposed that her long life had brought her many gifts (even if a second true love was not among them). All the arcane knowledge she gained was something she valued very highly. It had even given her time to learn still more, instead of dropping dead at 75. The ki technique of Cologne's family for extending life was not known to her, but she had found another method:
In life, and especially in magic, there was usually at least two ways to go about doing something: pushing or pulling. Cologne's method was a 'push', bolstering the body's health and stretching one's life-span by slowing cellular degradation; adding to life, as it were. Duck had gone the opposite way; she warded off the force of Death with certain favours and even naked bribery. That was the 'pull' method. It was more costly in the long run than its alternative, but it worked.
Duck shook her head to cease its aimless wandering. She sat in her favorite chair and considered how to go about finding a white sorceress, or even a wizard with that bent. Magi were extraordinarily rare in this modern age, and Duck knew of only one other true magus (not that she had ever gone looking, before now). Since they had met through a mutual 'acquaintance' who lived in what could politely be referred to as 'a very warm climate', it was unlikely that the other black witch could be of any help, even if she was of a mind to do so. They weren't exactly friends.
However, Duck remembered a spell she'd used once or twice that could seek out her fellow black magus by her Dark magic, regardless of where the woman might be in the world. Could she possibly reorder that spell to seek out the Dark magic's opposite: White magic? It made a sort of sense. There had been a time when magi were plentiful, and those following the darker path might have wanted to keep track of their enemies' movements. She got out of her chair and began looking over the spines of her hundred-odd books, seeking the one wherein she had found that scyring spell.
It took some time. Duck's collection wasn't especially organised. The sun went down, ensuring that she wouldn't be leaving tonight, as she'd intended. She was an old woman! She might trip and fall in the dark, as ironically as that would be for a Dark sorceress.
Finding the spell, she read it over carefully by candlelight. It was just as she remembered. This time, however, she paid more attention to the footnote, which mentioned which words needed to be exchanged if one was seeking an enemy rather than an ally.
Memorising them quickly, Duck snapped the book closed and moved to her desk. She unrolled a map of the world, and carefully aligned it so that the North edge faced to the North, South to the South, etc.
Taking a small, wiggle-bladed dagger, she pricked her fingertip, and touched a spot of her blood to the compass marked on the corner of the map. This was necessary for the magic to recognize the otherwise meaningless patterns of ordinary ink that made up the map. So prepared, Duck spoke the modified words of the evil (if mostly harmless) spell.
"Eyes of Evil, search and find,"
"Wielders of magic, NOT my kind!
"Slaves to the Light, my vengeful blade does seek."
"Find the places in this world, where such do reek!"
Once the incantation finished, Duck examined the map carefully. Such a broad-scoped spell actually found nearly two-dozen such people. Tiny dots of white light, varying slightly in size, glowed at specific points upon the map. Most were too far away from here to do her much good, unless she wanted to travel halfway around the world. They were extremely tiny dots anyway, meaning the people they represented had only a little bit of power. Knowledge and power didn't necessarily go together, but it was a good rule to go by. Duck didn't desire to go on a long, difficult journey only to find that the person she sought was unable to help her.
She stared longest at a dense collection of white dots centred around Tokyo, Japan. It was hard to tell, since they were so close together and overlapped, but it looked like some of those might be fairly large, and therefore powerful. Tokyo wasn't too far away either, a day's journey at most.
Duck pulled out another map, showing that region of Japan in more detail, and recast the spell. Now she could see the white dots much more clearly.
She frowned at a collection of ten dots all in the same ward of Tokyo; Juuban ward, according to the map. Many of these odd white dots possessed a circle of a different color ringing them. Duck wasn't sure what that meant. Let's see... pink, red, green, gold, blue, pink again...
Duck blinked as she understood. Those must be the Sailor Senshi. She knew of them. They would be of no help to her; they were sorceresses only by the broadest of definitions. She'd looked them up at once point, trying to determine if they might be a threat to her, but determined that they could be easily handled if they ever came to bother her. Though fairly powerful, most of them were limited to two or three attack spells along their individual elemental lines: the significance of the coloured rings that identified their white magic markers on the map.
The only one Duck might have to watch out for was that Sailor Moon twit, who had a great deal of raw white magical power. Duck allowed herself a brief shudder as she imagined what the effect of being hit with one of those Moon Healing 'attacks': Just a harmless little old lady, dressed in black, skipping through sunny fields and picking daisies, giggling as she placed a pink ribbon on one of her many animal skulls.
BLEAH!
Duck had long-since decided that the Sailor Senshi were best dealt with by not drawing their attention to the little old witch who had made her home deep in the Japanese Alps. She could probably kill them, if she was careful and planned well, but why risk it at all?
They wouldn't be of much help in her present predicament. They were too limited in their understanding of their own magic. Duck briefly wondered if that Moon Healing (brrr!) spell might purify the demon from Shampoo, but she doubted it. Duck had chosen that spell specifically because the demon was very adept at hiding himself from any attempts to exorcise him. Such blunt, brute-force style magic, wielded by an ignorant child, probably wouldn't accomplish anything. Duck needed the help of an *expert* in white magic.
She carefully scanned the rest of the map. She blinked as she noticed a very strong concentration of power in another part of Tokyo, not far the Nekomi Institute of Technology (some sort of college, she assumed). It was hard to tell, but it looked like more than one individual, maybe as many as three. They must be very close to each other at the moment. They were all in the same town, possibly even the same building. Duck wished she had a smaller map of that area. At any rate, the size of the white dots indicated that at least one of these individuals was exceptionally powerful, possibly even beyond human capabilities. That worried Duck a little, since she didn't know how that could be.
Nonetheless, this was exactly what she'd been looking for: an individual with exceptionally powerful white magic. Marking the location with a pen, so she could find it once the spell was dispersed, Duck packed the Tokyo prefecture map with the rest of her things and headed for the door. Darkness greeted her outside.
Oh, that's right. She'd planned on leaving in the morning. She'd forgotten already.
Grumbling once more at her usual absentmindedness, Duck stalked back inside and went to bed, swearing that there had once been a time when her mind didn't play such tricks on her.
***
The next morning, bright and early (for Duck, at least. Meaning she left around 10:00) the Necromancer left her house and started down the mountain trail to the village several miles below. From there, she could catch a bus into Tokyo, and then ride trains stuffed full of the stinking, stupid, unwashed masses of the city to the Nekomi neighborhood.
In case it has escaped some, Toilet Duck did not much care for travel, or cities, for that matter.
She paused to look back at her little mountain cottage. While the inside was quite comfortable and homey, the outside was meant as a warning to all who might be stupid enough to come bothering a black sorceress who didn't like to be bothered. The walls were painted black, the shingles gray as a cloudy day. On various benches and windowsills rested a wide assortment of animal skulls, some with small bits of rotting meat still clinging to them. Those were being kept out in the sun until the flesh fell off them and they could be used as spell components. The smell they gave off was not so strong out here, due to the breeze that blew through this forest clearing, but it was still one more thing that kept unwanted visitors away.
Farther down the mountain trail, Duck paused to admire her other, even more effective deterrent.
Standing in the middle of the one and only path leading up to her house was an entire human skeleton. It was held up by a jagged, rusting metal spike set in the ground, which pierced right through the bottom of his pubic bone (about where the rectum once was) up through his ribcage, and under his jaw. It's point, which held the skull up by resting in the roof of his mouth, was actually nowhere near as sharp as one might think was required in order for a man to be so deeply impaled. Those who found the courage to look closely enough to note this little fact rarely held that courage long enough to take another step down the path, which was the whole point, naturally.
Those who did not immediately soil themselves at the sight, usually did so when the grinning skull turned of its own accord to look at new arrivals, and say hello.
"Mistress Duck! Good morning! Are you out for a stroll? Good for you! Sitting about the house all day does no good for a woman your age."
"Morning Kenny. Actually, I'm going on a little trip into Tokyo. I may be gone a few days. Longer if I actually find what I need, so I may be gone a long while."
The skull, which had turned 180 degrees to face backwards at her initial approach, slowly turned to follow her as she walked around him.
"Well then, safe journey and all that. I hope you find what you're looking for." The skull said cheerfully.
"I hope so too." Duck muttered. "I further hope that what I find doesn't kill me the second it sets eyes on me."
"Oh dear!" The concerned skull gasped. "Please be extremely careful then, Mistress. I'd hate to hear that something awful had happened to you."
Duck grunted in agreement, then paused. She turned back to face the skull. "Kenny dear, I never really got around to explaining this before, but in the event of my death, the magic that keeps your soul locked into that skull of yours will fade away within a few days. You'd go on to your eternal reward. You were a nice man in life, so it ought to be Heaven you're due for, despite your association with someone like me."
If the skull had the ability to animate anything below its neck, he might have shrugged. "Maybe so, Mistress, but I'm in no big hurry. It's nice here in the woods. There was actually a very pretty red-breasted robin that perched on my clavicle for a little while, just the other day."
Duck smiled at him. "Well... I'm glad you don't mind being my scarecrow, at least for a few more years."
The skull moved in a way that seemed to suggest a grin, even without the benefit of actual lips. "Hopefully for many more than just a few, Mistress. Good luck, and safe journey! I'd wave goodbye if I could."
Duck sighed. "I told you before, your ligaments are too dried and brittle to hold together for that kind of movement. If I let you, your arm would just drop off after a few swings of it. Besides, that much movement would probably scare off those birds you're so fond of."
The skull dipped forward slightly in what might have been a sigh. "I suppose you're right, Mistress. Farewell again."
"Bye-bye Kenny." She smiled, and then headed off down the path.
Most would assume, from the way Kenji (or 'Kenny' as she liked to call him) was positioned, that he had died in a most horrible fashion, skewered atop that jagged, irregular spike while he was still screaming; his punishment, perhaps, for trespassing upon the witch's land.
In actual fact, Kenji had been a trapper who lived on the mountainside about 150 years ago, in a cottage of his own a mile from where Duck built her little homestead. He'd been a friendly sort, and had actually helped her build her house, back when she'd first moved into the area. They'd gotten along quite neighborly, almost a necessity since no one else lived this high up in the mountain.
Kenji had died not for trespassing, but in his bed, suffering from a bad case of pneumonia, which he'd caught when he dove into the river one winter to save a small bear cub he'd seen slip from a crossing log. Kenji had been somewhat of a nature-lover, you see, especially in regard to cute little animals. Perhaps that was not the best inclination to have for a man who made his living trapping them. With the amount of game on this mountain, he could have made a much better living of it if he didn't always let the young, healthy animals loose when he caught them. He killed only the old or sickly. He even brought Duck the bones once he'd cleaned them.
The rusty iron spike had actually been a dismal failure of Duck's extremely brief attempt at neo-gothic modern art sculpture. On the day she discovered her old friend dead in his bed, she finally found a good use for the damned thing.
Kenji didn't mind. She'd allowed him to spend many more years out enjoying nature as a dead man than he'd enjoyed in life. Sometimes, she even removed his skull and took him out to visit a nearby waterfall, where he could watch the new bear cubs come to learn how to fish ("Aww! So kyewt!"). In return, he politely informed tourists and hikers that Duck would rather not have visitors. Why they always ran screaming when he gave them a cheerful hello confused him to no end.
Yes, it was the sad truth; for all her considerable talent with black magic, Duck was not all that evil an evil sorceress. Oh she wasn't exactly what you would call a nice person, but she couldn't rid herself of the annoying little burden of her conscience, despite hanging around with demons for more than two centuries. It was humiliating, really! That was part of the reason she sequestered herself away from the general population, and hardly ever made contact with others in her profession. Only her bitter hatred of Cologne had given her the intestinal fortitude to actually attempt to kill another human being. She had killed a few times in her long, long life, but those times had been in self-defense: obnoxious little do-gooder hero-types who thought she was a 'threat to all humanity' or something equally inane. Well, she supposed she was, technically, but to her great chagrin, she was more of an 'empty threat to humanity'.
Now, she was stuck on this mission of (big sigh) mercy. To make matters worse, once she tracked down this powerful source of white magic, she was going to have to convince them that she wasn't the sort of evil sorceress who actually went doing evil all the time. Talk about humiliating!
Oh well, at least she had lots of time to figure out how to phrase her request in the least embarrassing manner, yet still convince them to help. She hoped she could do it without anyone catching on that as powerful black mages went, she was really more of a big black weenie...
My, that sounded naughty, didn't it?
Duck smacked herself in the head. She was getting perverted in her old age. Must have been the result of spending time with that old whore, Cologne "The Sword-swallower" of the Joketsuzoku. Although... her little mental slip did bring back some very fond memories of her former husband, Calvin... except of course that he had been Caucasian...
Had anyone been passing her on the trail just then, they would probably have been unsettled by a most disturbing sight.
Have you ever seen a 250-year-old bag of wrinkles blush like a schoolgirl? It ain't pretty!
***
Crouching in an alley across the street from where you wanted to be was not a very dignified position for a powerful black magus to be in, Duck supposed. However, considering the sort of people she was intending to approach, great caution was warranted.
She had purchased a local map, and cast her scyring spell again, leading her to this old temple. She had drawn by hand an even smaller map, detailing the temple's location and the streets for about a block in each direction. A map this small allowed her to finally determine how many sources of powerful white magic were gathered in this unassuming little temple: Three.
One was almost absurdly powerful. Duck had never in her life sensed any individual with that level of power, white or black. She conceded it as likely more than she was capable of dealing with if negotiations degenerated into violence. The second was slightly weaker, but still well beyond what Duck thought to be the human limits of magical power. The third and final power was much weaker than either of the others; about what Duck imagined a mid-level white magus might be like. However, there was still some otherworldly quality to this smaller power that likened it to the other two. She began to seriously doubt that any of the three were human.
But then... what could they be?
Duck the Necromancer knew very well that the Forces of Darkness had all manner of inhuman beings on its side that occasionally escaped into the human world (sometimes with the help of a dark magus like herself). She was on speaking terms with a number of the less dangerous ones, as a matter of fact. However, in contrast to the wide variety of evil creatures Hell spawned, Heaven had relatively few types of defenders.
Goddesses or Gods would have no business being down on Earth for any length of time, unless perhaps Ragnorok (the final battle between Good and Evil) was starting up. Things seemed pretty peaceful around here for The War to End All Wars, however. For her part, Duck had long ago decided to find a very deep hole to hide in, rather than take either side, if such a cataclysmic event should unfortunately occur within her lifetime.
So, no actual divinities. What other possibilities were there? Angels, cherubs, and... what was that other type? Oh yes! Valkyries. There didn't look like any great battle had occurred around here anytime recently, so that ruled out valkyries dropping by to gather the souls of the heroic dead; besides which, there was no need for three of them to be in the same place.
Cherubs were basically love-sprites, and (despite what all the songs said about the power of love) not all that strong really. The weak power could conceivably be a very strong cherub (maybe even Cupid himself) but that didn't seem likely. Not only were the other two far too strong for cherubs, but there was the same question of why three of them were gathered all in one place. Each time Duck had checked her maps over the last 24 hours, these three energies were here in this town, if not actually in this very building (it had been difficult to tell with her larger maps). She couldn't understand why any divine beings would hang around that long in one spot.
Angels, Duck supposed, were her best bet so far. The souls of the faithful who were put to work for Heaven after death were known to work in groups on occasion. Usually though, their powers were well hidden, so as not to clue in the mortals that Angels were walking among them. Duck really had no idea whether Angels were considered to be weak or powerful, relatively speaking. She'd never seen one before.
Hmm... It seemed to her that there was one other group of holy beings that Duck was forgetting. What was it now? Ah! Divine beasts. They were more of a 'miscellaneous' category, and about the only rule she knew of that applied to all of them was that they were kept from making trouble by the careful hands of the gods and goddesses. Some of the more powerful ones, like the Fenrir Wolf, were even meant to be sealed away for all time. Mid-level, intelligent ones were kept busy, such as with Garm, watchdog to the Nibelhiem (a.k.a. the underworld, Hades, Hell, etc). Others, like the eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, were kept up in Heaven by the divinities, sort of like pets. In any case, none of them would be permitted to roam free on Earth. Scratch them too.
Hmm... Something quite out of the ordinary was happening here. Duck couldn't imagine what was going on. At any rate, she was probably lucky to find three such strong divine powers here on Earth at all. If the energy they radiated was any indication, one of them could almost certainly undo a little curse like the one she'd dropped in Shampoo's lap. Or, if not that, then they could put her in touch with someone who could.
All this assumed that they didn't blow her out of existence the second they sensed the Dark magic that seeped from her every pore. Spending the equivalent of four lifetimes using necromancy left its mark.
(It is worth noting that all of Duck's knowledge of things divine came from conversations she'd held with demonic beings. She thought it worth her time to learn who and what she ought to avoid. Of course, it was all second-hand information, from folks who didn't think much of the divine, so it might not have been as accurate as she thought it was.)
Having determined all she could from a safe distance, the ancient Dark magus took a deep breath, and approached the temple. She hid her ebony staff in the alley. It wouldn't do to approach them with anything that might be considered a weapon in her hands.
The first thing she noticed, the moment her foot touched the first step, was that this temple had active, and fairly powerful wards. This was as rare as it was irritating.
Nearly every temple these days was maintained by priests who really had no idea what they were doing (as far as warding off evil went, anyway). Most were simply going through the motions of the ceremonies they'd been taught, and never actually invoked any true power into their wards. They simply didn't know how anymore. Their wards were just scribbles on bits of paper.
This was not the case here, as she should have expected with three apparent divine beings in residence. The anti-demon wards were all first-rate and functioning perfectly. Only the fact that Duck was not, strictly speaking, a demon allowed her to take a single step onto the grounds. As it was, the holy force of the wards made her arms itch like crazy! She forced herself not to scratch. The sensation she felt was magical, not physical, and scratching would do nothing to relieve it.
Gritting her teeth, she climbed the stairs. Maybe the itching would go away once she was inside the actual circle of wards. Then again, perhaps they permeated the entire temple grounds with their cursed power (or 'blessed power' she should say, considering its source).
When she reached the top step, Duck came across a strange sight. Standing there in the yard was a... well, Duck wasn't completely certain what it was. It looked like a very weird robot with a head shaped like the wide straw hat of a Chinese field worker. It was sweeping the front steps.
Duck blinked as the strange contraption lifted its head to look at her. Suddenly alarms popped out from panels in its head, along with something that looked suspiciously similar to a grenade launcher...
***
*BOOM!*
Keiichi jumped in surprise as the explosion sounded from the front yard. It sounded as thought something had triggered Banpei's defensive functions again. He hoped it was Mara. Strange as it may seem that a person would actually prefer a demoness to be attacking his home, but at least that was preferable to Skuld's strange creation determining he needed to defend the house (and more to the point, Belldandy) from some innocent person. It had happened to Sayoko once already.
Rushing outside, he found the robot with its weapons systems out and ready to fire again, carefully watching the front steps, as though expecting the intruder to return.
Skuld came bouncing out a moment later. "Good work Banpei!"
"Uh... Skuld?" Keiichi asked carefully. "I don't suppose you saw what it was he attacked, did you?"
"No, I just got here. So?"
"Well then, how do you know he attacked the right target? It could have been the mailman or something."
Skuld jumped up into his face, a difficult feat for someone barely 4' tall. "ARE YOU CRITICISING MY PERFECT CREATION!?!"
"Uh... No! Not exactly!" Keiichi stammered. "I was just wondering if Mara was making trouble again, or if it was something else."
Skuld blinked. "Oh, that's okay then. Let me just check." Skuld stood in front of Banpei and spoke directly to him. "Banpei, identify most recent target of defensive countermeasures."
"{UNKNOWN.}"
Skuld blinked. "Unknown? You mean it wasn't Mara or Senbei?"
"{AFFIRMATIVE. RECENT TARGET IS UNKNOWN THREAT.}"
"Then why did he attack, then?" Keiichi wondered.
Skuld repeated the question in a syntax the robot would recognise. "Outline factors which resulted in defining the target as a potential threat."
"{RECENT TARGET EXHIBITED PASSIVE DEMONIC AURA.}"
Keiichi sighed. "So it *was* a demon."
"{NEGATIVE. RECENT TARGET WAS HUMAN.}"
Keiichi's eyes widened. "What! Why did you attack then!"
"{RECENT TARGET EXHIBITED PASSIVE DEMONIC AURA.}"
Skuld was scratching her head. "Banpei, list all possible attack target types from your list of threats that exhibit a passive demonic aura, yet are still considered human."
"{DEMONICALLY POSSESSED HUMAN. HUMAN UNDER CONTRACT WITH DEMON. HUMAN USING INFERNAL MAGIC. HUMAN CARRYING OBJECT WITH INFERNAL MAGICAL AURA.}"
Skuld beamed and turned to Keiichi. "See? It was a bad guy! No problem!"
Keiichi frowned. "What if it was just a normal human who happened to have picked up a demonic object? They wouldn't necessarily know what they had. They might even have been coming to ask Belldandy what it was, or to dispose of it in a safe manner."
Skuld rolled her eyes. Like that was likely! "Okay fine! Banpei, combine ALL scans taken of the recent target. Can you eliminate any possibilities from that list?"
"{AFFIRMATIVE.}"
"What possibilities remain?"
"{HUMAN UNDER CONTRACT WITH DEMON. HUMAN USING INFERNAL MAGIC.}"
Skuld turned to Keiichi and lifted an eyebrow. "See? It's a BAD guy! Someone working for the demons. Banpei did a good job!"
Keiichi sighed and nodded. He and Skuld went back into the house. "Okay. I was just thinking of how he jumped Sayoko last month."
"But Keiichi, Banpei only attacked her in normal attack mode; he just swung a broom at her for goodness sake! Any kind of *normal* threat like that results in a *normal* attack. You heard the explosion; Banpei responded with his Anti-demon attack mode."
"Is that the one where he fires off a bunch of wards?" Keiichi asked, wondering silently what part of Skuld's programming had made Banpei consider Sayoko a threat.
Skuld thought. "That's *one* of his anti-demon attacks, but from the sound of the 'boom', I'd say he decided to use his special 'Pretty Sparkle Nice-Nice Gas Bomb'."
Keiichi winced. "You came up with that name yourself, didn't you."
"Of course! What's wrong with it?"
"Never mind..."
***
Back in the alley, Duck was retching mightily into a dumpster. She didn't know what the hell that sparkling crap had been, but it was making her sick as a dog!
'All right!' She thought between dry heaves. 'No more Miss Nice evil witch! I'm gonna turn that stupid tin can into slag!'
Toilet Duck the Necromancer felt her legs give out as the purifying gas attacked her Dark magically maintained health. She collapsed bonelessly to the ground, her stomach still spasming, even though it was empty. Fortunately, that meant that she couldn't choke on her own bile.
'...Just as soon as I can stand up.'
***
The next day, Duck sat on a roof, peering down the street where the temple stood. She'd like to move a bit closer, but wasn't prepared to risk being spotted by the divine beings' little Terminator wanna-be.
"Damn! I can't cast any of my more destructive spells within the bounds of that temple, and most of the ones I could cast from outside would dissipate once they touch the circle of wards, assuming I could find an angle where I could see the walking trash can over the walls to aim." She grumbled as she considered her options. "Maybe I could summon a few demons to destroy the wards first, then go after the robot?"
There was a "poof" of gray smoke that reeked of brimstone, and a blonde demoness dressed in leather, spikes and chains appeared in a seated position beside the Dark magus.
"Forget it Ducky. I've been trying to get in there for months. If a First-Class Demon like me can't do it, there ain't likely any who can, or that could be bothered to help you in the first place."
"Well well, if it isn't Mara." Toilet Duck scowled. "And don't call me Ducky!"
Mara shrugged with a smirk. "Fine by me. I came up with a different way to translate your name anyway. How's it going, Shitter Fowl?"
Duck rolled her eyes. "Well, I've been better. I've got to get into that temple somehow, but they've got some sort of anti-demonic robot that's giving me trouble."
"The dumb-looking one with the mushroom shaped head?"
"That's the one. Any helpful advice to offer your old friend?" Duck muttered, not really expecting much.
"Sorry. That thing's a problem for me too. At least you're not made helpless by anti-demonic wards."
"No, they just make my arms itch like crazy."
"Better that than itchy AND paralyzed!"
"Count your blessings (or whatever you want to call them)." Duck muttered. "If you were a Third-Class demon, wards that strong would burn you to a crisp in an instant! I don't know what they might do to a Second-Class."
"Paralyze him, then fry him slowly, I suspect." Mara smirked unhappily. "Not that they're any fun for someone like me either."
"Hmm... A real dilemma. I can get past the wards, but they also prevent me from casting my spells. I haven't a chance against that stupid tin can without my magic."
Mara grunted in agreement. Then she frowned curiously and glanced at her friend. "What are you so hot to get in there for anyway?"
"I could ask you the same question." Duck countered, not relishing explaining her motives to the Demon. She had a reputation to keep. A largely false reputation, but a reputation nonetheless.
"Got me a grudge against the three goddesses living there." Mara grumbled. "You?"
Duck's eye's widened. "GODDESSES! There are actual *goddesses* in there? And *living* there, as in permanently? Just what are they doing?"
"The usual: making everyone around them revoltingly happy." Mara snorted. "You didn't even know they were in there?"
Duck shook her head. "Not exactly. I sensed some very powerful divine energies there, but I didn't think goddesses would stay in one place so long, so I assumed they were something else." She frowned and turned to Mara. "What can you tell me about them?"
Mara the Demoness, always happy to help someone else bring harm, shrugged. "They're three sisters known as the Three Fates in the Scandinavia."
"Norse mythology?"
"Right, except obviously not the 'myth' part." Mara snorted. "There's the little one, Skuld: Goddess of the Future. She's weak as hell, but she's got a talent for building machines. She'd the one who made that stupid Robot. She's a real brat too."
Mara smirked as she continued. "Then there's Urd: Goddess of the Past. She's strong enough, I suppose. She used to be First-Class, and the strongest of all three, but got busted down for lying and generally making mischief. She's almost naughty enough that I could like her, but she's loyal to the Lord. You'd think a half-demon like her would be easier to turn. I even tried it once, but her sisters managed to win her back."
"A half-demon? Interesting..."
Mara snorted. "Don't get any dumb ideas. She's still a goddess." She lay back on the roof, lounging like she did this all the time. "Last, and certainly most annoying, is Belldandy: Goddess of the Present. She's the most powerful now; a true First-Class goddess if ever you saw one. She's so disgustingly sweet and pure, it makes me nauseous just talking about her!"
Duck tapped her finger against her ebony staff as she thought. "So what are three goddesses doing living down here on Earth? Don't they have work to do upstairs?"
Mara nodded. "They did, but Belldandy was working for the Goddess Relief Office. You know, granting wishes? She granted one for this little putz named Keiichi who wished for a girl like her to stay with him forever. Poof! One grounded goddess. Then the other two showed up to keep her company, or something like that. I think Urd actually got herself into trouble and was temporarily banished from Heaven, but I don't know all the details."
Duck frowned in thought. This was all very useful information, but she didn't know what she could do with it yet. She intentionally didn't thank the demoness for the info. Mara had told her all this because she assumed it would benefit herself in some way, not as some kind of favour. Perhaps she thought a mortal like Duck could find some way to bring the circle of wards down, allowing the demoness free access into the home of the three goddesses.
Frankly, at another time, Duck might have considered that a fair exchange for valuable information, but letting a First-Class Demoness into someone's house to wreak havoc didn't seem like the best way to get them to do you a favour. Besides which, Duck had no means of accommodating the demoness' wishes.
"So..." Mara cooed. "I've told you pretty much all I know about the place you're trying to get into. You might at least tell me why."
Duck scowled. That was a warning, not a request. Any threat from a Second-Class demon or lower wasn't something a Dark Magus of Duck's ability really needed to worry about, but when dealing with First-Class demons like Mara, one was generally better off staying on their good side (so to speak). Were the two of them to actually fight, she could certainly give the demoness a hard time of it, perhaps even win. Still, that was a good deal more effort and risk than Duck was prepared to sacrifice just to save her dignity.
"I suppose I might as well tell you, but if you spread this around, I swear I'll find some way to make you regret your loose lips." Duck growled. "I may not be able to kill one as strong as you, but I can certainly bring you trouble not worth spreading embarrassing stories over."
Mara rolled her eyes at the threat. "Fine, fine. So spill."
"I miscast a spell." Duck sighed.
"So?"
"It hit the wrong person."
"Who cares? Just aim for the right one next time." Mara snorted.
"With some opponents, you only get one clear shot at them. This one is too dangerous to have after my blood now that she knows I'm after hers."
Mara frowned at that. It made sense, at least. "That still doesn't explain why you're trying to get into the temple. Keep talking."
Duck grumbled, but continued. "My spell missed her and hit her great-granddaughter. Nice kid; you'd hate her. My most dangerous enemy ever agreed to let me live only if I undid the harm to her great-grandchild, who is presently slowly dying. I can't undo my own spell, not one that powerful anyway. I need to find an expert in White magic to do it. These goddesses were the most powerful sources of White magic I sensed in Japan, so I came here."
Mara sat up, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "Let me get this straight. You hurt an innocent little girl (good for you, by the way) so her big, bad great-grandmother is forcing you to *cure* her! Instead of just saying you'll do it and waiting for the little brat to croak, you're actually going to go groveling to *goddesses* of all people to aid you in *helping* someone else?"
"Well... I wouldn't say 'groveling'." Duck muttered.
"Why the hell don't you just lay low for a while?" Mara snorted in disgust.
"This enemy is the one I could never defeat in my youth, and she's only grown more powerful and cunning." Duck grumbled. She was getting a real good grumble going. She made up her mind to spend more time with demons like Mara. They were a bad influence on her (which was good... er...). "I would not be able to hide from this one for long, if she was of a mind to hunt me down. I waited over 200 years for her guard to drop, and I somehow managed to screw it up. I wasn't expecting her descendant to throw her fool self in front of the spell. How in the hell does a backstabbing old whore like that inspire such loyalty? Must be the ignorance of youth!"
Mara didn't really care what Duck was rambling about any more. "You're going to ask the goddesses for help?" She asked yet again, shaking her head in disgust. "Talk about the wrong way to do things!"
Duck lifted an eyebrow. "You have a better idea? Then again, I haven't even asked you yet; you, a powerful First-Class demoness. I don't suppose you're strong enough to remove an entrenched Soul Eater demon?"
Mara scowled at the Dark sorceress, who (in her eyes) was dancing on the line of treason. "Even if I could, I wouldn't, you worm! You're pathetic! A pathetic little goody-goody!"
Duck smirked. "Ah, I see. I, with my back against the wall, and next to no options, choose to betray my associations and benefactors in order to save my own skin. What part of that strikes you as 'goody-goody'?"
Mara blinked, temporarily confused. She attempted to clarify matters. "You're... betraying all those who have helped you, who trust you (to a degree, at least) in an utterly selfish attempt to pick your own fat out of the fire?"
"That's pretty much it, yes." Duck smirked.
Mara developed a big grin. "Welcome back to the fold, babe! You're definitely one of us!" She vanished in another cloud of stinking smoke.
"You have no idea just how flattered I am to hear that." Duck muttered sarcastically to the empty air.
Demons weren't so hard to handle, if you knew what you were doing. Duck had a lifetime of experience at it.
***
Despite her 'encouraging' conversation with the demoness a few days ago, Duck was having no greater luck penetrating the temple's defenses. She'd come up with the idea to mob the entrance with lesser, more expendable demons and other evil creatures.
She slated the attack for midnight, naturally, since the darkness would give her creatures more strength. Some of them could even be harmed by the light of day. She waited, with her small army of cannon fodder (gremlins, skeletons, goblins, zombies, etc) until the moon went behind a cloud. Then she gave them the signal to charge. Their orders were to destroy the robot and, if possible, the wards too. She had no absurd expectations that these relatively weak creatures could face even the weakest of the three goddesses in residence.
In point of fact, Skuld probably would have taken one look and run screaming in terror, but Duck was unaware of that, or the little goddess' inability to use her power.
With a cacophony of inhuman roars, the mob of minions moved en-mass toward the temple at a charge. Some of them began to burn when they came into contact with the powerful wards, but said wards had never been intended to turn back an assault of this many infernal beings at once. For every five that dropped, one got through. It looked like a decent-sized squad was actually going to be left to smash that damned robot! They were still smoking a little in the weaker warded area inside the wall, but if they kept moving, they should survive long enough to finish their job.
Then said robot stepped onto the front porch and activated its anti-demon special assault mode: Darkness elemental countermeasures. Huge floodlights popped out of panels in his hips, and turned night into day. These particular floodlights were personally designed by Skuld, and could produce a degree of brightness equivalent to that of the Earth's sun... at noon... in the middle of the Sahara desert... underneath a big-ass hole in the ozone layer.
Any of the creatures who were not instantly fried, became blinded. They fell down to the ground, screeching and wailing, and more to the point, not moving around much. With the assault on the outer wards effectively obliterated, all the wards' power was now focusing inward. The rest of the creatures were barbecued within half a minute.
Banpei, his job done, returned inside the house and re-initiated his recharge mode, plugging himself into a wall outlet. None of the temple's other residents had even come to see what all the screaming had been about. Apparently, they were heavy sleepers.
Duck, who had been watching the entire thing from the roof directly across the street, cursed violently as she stumbled around, unable to see a single thing since the moment the little bastard in the tin jockey shorts had flashblinded her! She fumbled around blindly for her staff. With it, she might feel her way about and maybe manage not to fall off the damn roof. She felt her foot run into it, sending it skittering several feet farther ahead of her.
"Aha!" She crowed in triumph, she heard it stop sliding about four feet in front of her, so she scurried after it.
Three and a half feet beyond where she'd started, her feet ran out of roof. Just as she began to totter over, she heard the clatter of her staff as it eventually hit the ground, two stories below.
Well, wasn't that helpful? Now she knew where the ground was!
*THUD*
***
It was a week later when Duck felt ready to try again. It had taken a day for her vision to return, but healing the other injuries from her tumble off the roof had taken longer.
Any form of reasonable thought had been left behind in Duck's sickbed. Now she wanted the metallic little fucker to DIE!
Magic was obviously not working out too well. The goddesses and the robot were too well prepared for an attack on that front, so Duck made careful plans to breach the walls of the innocent-looking fortress by more mundane methods. Then she was going to let that stupid tin can have it!
Planning was required in an assault of this importance. While she had healed, Duck had planted crow demons to watch the place carefully, if from a distance. What they saw was transmitted back to Duck's motel room and displayed on a large mirror she'd removed from the bathroom wall. Through this method, she paid close attention to the comings and goings of the non-mechanical residents. She made note of when each person left, when they came back, who usually went with who, and who was left behind to watch the house.
Banpei, the little tin soldier, always fell into the final category. He never left the house. Duck would have preferred to catch him alone somewhere where the wards couldn't protect him from a direct attack from her magic, but he seemed dedicated to his job as the guard robot.
That was fine, as long as she could get him alone by some means. Being on the temple grounds made things more difficult, but not impossible. There was no way Toilet Duck, a wise and powerful magus, was going to accept being outsmarted by something that ran on batteries!
Then came her lucky day! One Sunday afternoon, all the human (or apparently human) residents left the house together! They had abandoned the little guard-bot! How sad for it! Hee hee hee!
Watching from a distant roof through a pair of binoculars, Duck straightened her camo fatigues and buttoned her combat helmet. Shouldering her chosen weapon, she took one last note of her target's position: out front, sweeping the walk.
She bolted down to the street and around and past the temple. They had neighbors on either side, and trespassing was not something that Duck particularly gave a damn about right now! She hopped the very low retracting fence that the neighbors locked at night to insure no one stole their car, then sprinted around to their back yard. A woman watering her plants jumped a bit at the ancient and diminutive soldier-figure invading her property.
Duck paid her no heed, and used her black staff to vault to the top of the wall this property shared with the temple, letting it fall to the ground in the woman's yard. Duck wasn't sure if the robot was built to detect the dark magic in an object like that or not, but she couldn't chance it. She'd recover it later. The instant she rolled over the wall, she felt the wards show her their displeasure at her arrival. She paid them no heed. She crept forward at a swift, yet silent pace, eyes scanning left and right for any sign of the enemy. She drew her weapon and prepared to use it.
Finding the back door, which connected to the kitchen, Duck tested it, finding it unlocked. Awfully trusting people, these folk, but then she supposed that wasn't surprising, considering who they were. As she shut the door, she noticed the itchy feeling from the wards vanished. Apparently, their power did not go through walls. That was fine with her. Aside from not having to suffer the irritation, this suggested to her that her enemy would not be able to sense her being in the house, at least not by the aura of her dark magic. She should try and avoid making a racket, though.
The floor to this old kitchen was stone, and a foot lower than the rest of the building's wooden floors. Being stone, it was also cold to the feet. Duck smiled at seeing a fuzzy pair of slippers right there by the inner door. They sure were making this easy for her.
Duck slipped her tiny feet straight into the much larger slippers, not needing or bothering to take off her own footwear. With this padding, her own combat boots made no noise along the hard wooden floor of the hallway, as she made her way towards the front door.
Being extremely wary, Duck held her weapon in one hand as she gently, slowly, silently opened the door a bare crack. She could hear the sound of sweeping. She peeked through the tiny crack and saw a line of the garish colours his tasteless creator had painted him. She had his position now. He hadn't detected her. She had her weapon readied in both her trembling hands. She took several deep breaths to steady herself... then she kicked open the door and charged with a blood-curdling scream!
Banpei whirled as quickly as his design enabled him to. His camera-lens eyes widened!
*SMASH*
"Ha!" Duck crowed, raising the sledgehammer again for another swing.
*SMASH*
"Take that!"
*SMASH*
"And that!"
*SMASH*
"You stupid machine!"
*SMASH*
"Blind me, will you!?"
*SMASH*
"Gag me with your stupid smoke!?"
*SMASH*
"Toast all my hard-summoned creatures and make me..." *SMASH* "FALL" *SMASH* "OFF" *SMASH* "THE" *SMASH* "FUCKING" *SMASH* "**ROOF**!?!"
Panting and wheezing, the old woman in the combat fatigues finally let the extremely heavy sledge drop from her aching fingers. She sat down on the step, trying desperately to catch her breath. She wasn't young anymore, not by any means, but pure fury had given her the strength to pummel that cursed contraption into complete dysfunction. The technologically-oriented goddess could probably fix it, but it would take a heck of a long time.
Duck fervently hoped the damn thing would never work again!
She had retained enough level-headedness to carefully direct her blows. Just denting its outer casing wasn't likely to keep it from counter attacking with another one of those anti-demon weapons. She had first knocked it off his feet with a horizontal swing to its head, then crushed both its legs, then its arms, so it couldn't get back up. When it was down and crippled, she didn't know where to hit next, since she had no idea which of the little panels held the most dangerous weapons to her, so she had taken aim at the rectangular box mounted on it's back. As it happened, this was the battery casing, and a few solid blows to that section 'convinced' the little robot to stop struggling against the inevitable. It stopped moving shortly after that.
The rest of the blows had just been for therapy's sake.
Duck sighed as her breath began coming more easily. "Mission accomplished!"
She leaned back a bit on the steps. "Now I can just wait for them to come home and..."
Duck sat up abruptly! "ARRGH! What am I doing?"
Somewhere along the line, she'd forgotten about asking the goddesses for help, and become completely obsessed with the destruction of the stupid robot! How was she supposed to ask them for help now? They weren't likely to appreciate her smashing up their guard-bot, especially since she'd watched them pat him and talk to him while she'd been healing, as though he was practically a member of the family, or maybe a beloved pet.
Duck was doomed!
Panicking, Duck bolted to the street, taking a quick look left and right to make sure no one saw her, then fled the scene of the crime.
***
It was another week before Duck had the courage to approach the temple again. After her successful assault, she hadn't even wanted to monitor the group's reaction to finding what was effectively their friend's corpse lying on their front lawn. Duck still hated the little robot, but she did feel a bit guilty about how his family must have felt.
This morning, she'd sent a crow demon to reconnoiter. Through it, she saw that the robot was now functional again, if a little dented-looking. Now that the damage from her little temper tantrum was fixed, she felt it might be safe to try and enter through the front door again. Maybe if she could greet a person first?
That afternoon, Duck hesitantly climbed the temple steps, watching carefully for the little pest. Not seeing him, she breathed a sigh of relief and stepped past the wall and down the front walk.
"{WARNING! INTRUDER!}"
Duck's blood ran cold as she spun to see the dented contraption off to the right, apparently having just come around the corner of the house.
"{BEGINNING INTRUDER/GUEST THREAT RECOGNITION PROGRAM.}"
Duck blinked. That was new. Obviously the little goddess had added some software to the dangerous machine to prevent it from attacking people who came here with no ill intentions. She breathed a sigh of relief.
"{INTRUDER RECOGNISED: SUPER MEANIE JERK #1. INITIATE NEW ATTACK SUBPROGRAM: 'MAKE STICKY RED MESS'.}"
Duck's eyes bugged out as, from somewhere behind his backpack (which looked a fair bit bigger than before, she noticed belatedly) Banpei unfolded a chaingun, railgun, rocket launcher, grenade launcher, shotgun, uzi, and (just to round things out) a 16th century ship's cannon.
Duck promptly wet herself.
Belldandy was on her way home from the market, only half a block from home, when she heard a simply *tremendous* explosion. Somehow she knew, even before the smoke became visible, that it had come from her own house. She sighed wearily. She was going to have to have a talk with Skuld.
As she drew closer to the bottom of the temple steps, Belldandy saw a small black shape rolling limply down them. The shape was still smoldering, and sending up a fair amount of smoke all by itself.
To her shock and horror, Belldandy soon realized that this charred lump was actually a person.
"Goodness! What happened to you!" She cried.
"Much as I might like to deny it," Duck wheezed, "I'm afraid it might have been Karma."
Belldandy knelt down beside the blackened black mage, her eyes filled with concern. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
Still somewhat dazed, Duck blinked. This was one of the goddesses, and judging from Mara's description, the one most likely to hear out her request. "Actually, Miss Belldandy, there was something very important I wanted to speak to you about."
As Duck idly noticed an unburned part of her black robes catching flame from the cinders of the rest, it occurred to her that she could have saved herself a lot of trouble had she just waited at the base of the steps in the first place.
Well wasn't that just something?
________________________________________________________________________________
End Chapter Four
I have only one thing to say about this chapter:
Hee hee... That was fun!
As for the NEXT chapter, I think we're due to check on Ranma and Shampoo, and their arrival at the Amazon village. I make no promises about when that chapter will get written, however. I've got two or three other projects on the go.
"My religion? I'm believe in Frisbeetarianism. For those of you who don't know, that's the belief that, when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck there." -Unknown
Ja na!
-Ron Hino.
C&C to hinoron1@hotmail.com
P.S. Remember, if you expect an answer from me, send reviews directly to my Email. I tend to take my sweet ass time looking at the reviews that don't come straight to me. (Yes I'm lazy. What's your point?)
Chapter Four
By Ron Hino
Ranma 1/2 is the creation of Rumiko Takahashi. She has made lots and lots of money off it, and I'm not making a penny. Damn shame too.
Since were now wandering into crossover territory, I suppose I should mention that I didn't create Ah, Megami-sama either. :P
________________________________________________________________________________
The Necromancer, Toilet Duck, frowned at the collection of books that lined her shelves. Every one of them was bound in black leather, a sign of the nature of the spells and knowledge contained within. There was not a single white-bound volume on the shelves; not a single cure or spell generally intended to be beneficial (other than to herself, naturally) among her considerable collection. She'd known this very well beforehand. Nonetheless, she had reread every single volume in her collection, cover to cover, looking for some hint that might tell her how to break a Soul Eater curse. It had taken her nearly two months, and produced absolutely nothing.
She sighed.
There was no help for it. She was going to have to seek the aid of someone experienced in white magic. She prepared herself for a journey, packing her things, along with a single black book; the one bearing the description of the Soul Eater spell she'd accidentally cast upon Cologne's great-granddaughter. It was the only book that might possibly be of any small use to whoever she found.
She was only ten steps out the door of her mountain cottage when it occurred to her she had no idea where to look. Grumbling at the inefficiency of her aging mind, she stomped back into the house. Of course, one of the benefits to old age was that she could imagine that there was a time when she actually *was* less absentminded.
Unfortunately, there hadn't been. Magic was really the only area where Duck could claim any true competence, and only black magic at that.
She was over 250 years old now, but there had been a time during her youth, a happy, joyous time, when her bumbling (both physical and mental) hadn't seemed such an inconvenience. Calvin had actually found it cute, until that old whore Cologne had seduced him away, of course. One thing could be said for her old age; now that she was so shrunken, and her arms and legs a fair bit shorter* she didn't stumble about nearly as much as during her youth and young adulthood. Falling on her face was something she'd been immensely grateful to have grown out of.
*(A.N. Don't ask me how it's medically possible for an elderly person to shrink that much. It's a mystery of anime. In real life, it's the thinning of the pads between the vertebrae of the spine that causes old folks to lose a few inches in height, but their arms and legs obviously stay the same length. Bones themselves can't actually shrink, to the best of my knowledge.)
She supposed that her long life had brought her many gifts (even if a second true love was not among them). All the arcane knowledge she gained was something she valued very highly. It had even given her time to learn still more, instead of dropping dead at 75. The ki technique of Cologne's family for extending life was not known to her, but she had found another method:
In life, and especially in magic, there was usually at least two ways to go about doing something: pushing or pulling. Cologne's method was a 'push', bolstering the body's health and stretching one's life-span by slowing cellular degradation; adding to life, as it were. Duck had gone the opposite way; she warded off the force of Death with certain favours and even naked bribery. That was the 'pull' method. It was more costly in the long run than its alternative, but it worked.
Duck shook her head to cease its aimless wandering. She sat in her favorite chair and considered how to go about finding a white sorceress, or even a wizard with that bent. Magi were extraordinarily rare in this modern age, and Duck knew of only one other true magus (not that she had ever gone looking, before now). Since they had met through a mutual 'acquaintance' who lived in what could politely be referred to as 'a very warm climate', it was unlikely that the other black witch could be of any help, even if she was of a mind to do so. They weren't exactly friends.
However, Duck remembered a spell she'd used once or twice that could seek out her fellow black magus by her Dark magic, regardless of where the woman might be in the world. Could she possibly reorder that spell to seek out the Dark magic's opposite: White magic? It made a sort of sense. There had been a time when magi were plentiful, and those following the darker path might have wanted to keep track of their enemies' movements. She got out of her chair and began looking over the spines of her hundred-odd books, seeking the one wherein she had found that scyring spell.
It took some time. Duck's collection wasn't especially organised. The sun went down, ensuring that she wouldn't be leaving tonight, as she'd intended. She was an old woman! She might trip and fall in the dark, as ironically as that would be for a Dark sorceress.
Finding the spell, she read it over carefully by candlelight. It was just as she remembered. This time, however, she paid more attention to the footnote, which mentioned which words needed to be exchanged if one was seeking an enemy rather than an ally.
Memorising them quickly, Duck snapped the book closed and moved to her desk. She unrolled a map of the world, and carefully aligned it so that the North edge faced to the North, South to the South, etc.
Taking a small, wiggle-bladed dagger, she pricked her fingertip, and touched a spot of her blood to the compass marked on the corner of the map. This was necessary for the magic to recognize the otherwise meaningless patterns of ordinary ink that made up the map. So prepared, Duck spoke the modified words of the evil (if mostly harmless) spell.
"Eyes of Evil, search and find,"
"Wielders of magic, NOT my kind!
"Slaves to the Light, my vengeful blade does seek."
"Find the places in this world, where such do reek!"
Once the incantation finished, Duck examined the map carefully. Such a broad-scoped spell actually found nearly two-dozen such people. Tiny dots of white light, varying slightly in size, glowed at specific points upon the map. Most were too far away from here to do her much good, unless she wanted to travel halfway around the world. They were extremely tiny dots anyway, meaning the people they represented had only a little bit of power. Knowledge and power didn't necessarily go together, but it was a good rule to go by. Duck didn't desire to go on a long, difficult journey only to find that the person she sought was unable to help her.
She stared longest at a dense collection of white dots centred around Tokyo, Japan. It was hard to tell, since they were so close together and overlapped, but it looked like some of those might be fairly large, and therefore powerful. Tokyo wasn't too far away either, a day's journey at most.
Duck pulled out another map, showing that region of Japan in more detail, and recast the spell. Now she could see the white dots much more clearly.
She frowned at a collection of ten dots all in the same ward of Tokyo; Juuban ward, according to the map. Many of these odd white dots possessed a circle of a different color ringing them. Duck wasn't sure what that meant. Let's see... pink, red, green, gold, blue, pink again...
Duck blinked as she understood. Those must be the Sailor Senshi. She knew of them. They would be of no help to her; they were sorceresses only by the broadest of definitions. She'd looked them up at once point, trying to determine if they might be a threat to her, but determined that they could be easily handled if they ever came to bother her. Though fairly powerful, most of them were limited to two or three attack spells along their individual elemental lines: the significance of the coloured rings that identified their white magic markers on the map.
The only one Duck might have to watch out for was that Sailor Moon twit, who had a great deal of raw white magical power. Duck allowed herself a brief shudder as she imagined what the effect of being hit with one of those Moon Healing 'attacks': Just a harmless little old lady, dressed in black, skipping through sunny fields and picking daisies, giggling as she placed a pink ribbon on one of her many animal skulls.
BLEAH!
Duck had long-since decided that the Sailor Senshi were best dealt with by not drawing their attention to the little old witch who had made her home deep in the Japanese Alps. She could probably kill them, if she was careful and planned well, but why risk it at all?
They wouldn't be of much help in her present predicament. They were too limited in their understanding of their own magic. Duck briefly wondered if that Moon Healing (brrr!) spell might purify the demon from Shampoo, but she doubted it. Duck had chosen that spell specifically because the demon was very adept at hiding himself from any attempts to exorcise him. Such blunt, brute-force style magic, wielded by an ignorant child, probably wouldn't accomplish anything. Duck needed the help of an *expert* in white magic.
She carefully scanned the rest of the map. She blinked as she noticed a very strong concentration of power in another part of Tokyo, not far the Nekomi Institute of Technology (some sort of college, she assumed). It was hard to tell, but it looked like more than one individual, maybe as many as three. They must be very close to each other at the moment. They were all in the same town, possibly even the same building. Duck wished she had a smaller map of that area. At any rate, the size of the white dots indicated that at least one of these individuals was exceptionally powerful, possibly even beyond human capabilities. That worried Duck a little, since she didn't know how that could be.
Nonetheless, this was exactly what she'd been looking for: an individual with exceptionally powerful white magic. Marking the location with a pen, so she could find it once the spell was dispersed, Duck packed the Tokyo prefecture map with the rest of her things and headed for the door. Darkness greeted her outside.
Oh, that's right. She'd planned on leaving in the morning. She'd forgotten already.
Grumbling once more at her usual absentmindedness, Duck stalked back inside and went to bed, swearing that there had once been a time when her mind didn't play such tricks on her.
***
The next morning, bright and early (for Duck, at least. Meaning she left around 10:00) the Necromancer left her house and started down the mountain trail to the village several miles below. From there, she could catch a bus into Tokyo, and then ride trains stuffed full of the stinking, stupid, unwashed masses of the city to the Nekomi neighborhood.
In case it has escaped some, Toilet Duck did not much care for travel, or cities, for that matter.
She paused to look back at her little mountain cottage. While the inside was quite comfortable and homey, the outside was meant as a warning to all who might be stupid enough to come bothering a black sorceress who didn't like to be bothered. The walls were painted black, the shingles gray as a cloudy day. On various benches and windowsills rested a wide assortment of animal skulls, some with small bits of rotting meat still clinging to them. Those were being kept out in the sun until the flesh fell off them and they could be used as spell components. The smell they gave off was not so strong out here, due to the breeze that blew through this forest clearing, but it was still one more thing that kept unwanted visitors away.
Farther down the mountain trail, Duck paused to admire her other, even more effective deterrent.
Standing in the middle of the one and only path leading up to her house was an entire human skeleton. It was held up by a jagged, rusting metal spike set in the ground, which pierced right through the bottom of his pubic bone (about where the rectum once was) up through his ribcage, and under his jaw. It's point, which held the skull up by resting in the roof of his mouth, was actually nowhere near as sharp as one might think was required in order for a man to be so deeply impaled. Those who found the courage to look closely enough to note this little fact rarely held that courage long enough to take another step down the path, which was the whole point, naturally.
Those who did not immediately soil themselves at the sight, usually did so when the grinning skull turned of its own accord to look at new arrivals, and say hello.
"Mistress Duck! Good morning! Are you out for a stroll? Good for you! Sitting about the house all day does no good for a woman your age."
"Morning Kenny. Actually, I'm going on a little trip into Tokyo. I may be gone a few days. Longer if I actually find what I need, so I may be gone a long while."
The skull, which had turned 180 degrees to face backwards at her initial approach, slowly turned to follow her as she walked around him.
"Well then, safe journey and all that. I hope you find what you're looking for." The skull said cheerfully.
"I hope so too." Duck muttered. "I further hope that what I find doesn't kill me the second it sets eyes on me."
"Oh dear!" The concerned skull gasped. "Please be extremely careful then, Mistress. I'd hate to hear that something awful had happened to you."
Duck grunted in agreement, then paused. She turned back to face the skull. "Kenny dear, I never really got around to explaining this before, but in the event of my death, the magic that keeps your soul locked into that skull of yours will fade away within a few days. You'd go on to your eternal reward. You were a nice man in life, so it ought to be Heaven you're due for, despite your association with someone like me."
If the skull had the ability to animate anything below its neck, he might have shrugged. "Maybe so, Mistress, but I'm in no big hurry. It's nice here in the woods. There was actually a very pretty red-breasted robin that perched on my clavicle for a little while, just the other day."
Duck smiled at him. "Well... I'm glad you don't mind being my scarecrow, at least for a few more years."
The skull moved in a way that seemed to suggest a grin, even without the benefit of actual lips. "Hopefully for many more than just a few, Mistress. Good luck, and safe journey! I'd wave goodbye if I could."
Duck sighed. "I told you before, your ligaments are too dried and brittle to hold together for that kind of movement. If I let you, your arm would just drop off after a few swings of it. Besides, that much movement would probably scare off those birds you're so fond of."
The skull dipped forward slightly in what might have been a sigh. "I suppose you're right, Mistress. Farewell again."
"Bye-bye Kenny." She smiled, and then headed off down the path.
Most would assume, from the way Kenji (or 'Kenny' as she liked to call him) was positioned, that he had died in a most horrible fashion, skewered atop that jagged, irregular spike while he was still screaming; his punishment, perhaps, for trespassing upon the witch's land.
In actual fact, Kenji had been a trapper who lived on the mountainside about 150 years ago, in a cottage of his own a mile from where Duck built her little homestead. He'd been a friendly sort, and had actually helped her build her house, back when she'd first moved into the area. They'd gotten along quite neighborly, almost a necessity since no one else lived this high up in the mountain.
Kenji had died not for trespassing, but in his bed, suffering from a bad case of pneumonia, which he'd caught when he dove into the river one winter to save a small bear cub he'd seen slip from a crossing log. Kenji had been somewhat of a nature-lover, you see, especially in regard to cute little animals. Perhaps that was not the best inclination to have for a man who made his living trapping them. With the amount of game on this mountain, he could have made a much better living of it if he didn't always let the young, healthy animals loose when he caught them. He killed only the old or sickly. He even brought Duck the bones once he'd cleaned them.
The rusty iron spike had actually been a dismal failure of Duck's extremely brief attempt at neo-gothic modern art sculpture. On the day she discovered her old friend dead in his bed, she finally found a good use for the damned thing.
Kenji didn't mind. She'd allowed him to spend many more years out enjoying nature as a dead man than he'd enjoyed in life. Sometimes, she even removed his skull and took him out to visit a nearby waterfall, where he could watch the new bear cubs come to learn how to fish ("Aww! So kyewt!"). In return, he politely informed tourists and hikers that Duck would rather not have visitors. Why they always ran screaming when he gave them a cheerful hello confused him to no end.
Yes, it was the sad truth; for all her considerable talent with black magic, Duck was not all that evil an evil sorceress. Oh she wasn't exactly what you would call a nice person, but she couldn't rid herself of the annoying little burden of her conscience, despite hanging around with demons for more than two centuries. It was humiliating, really! That was part of the reason she sequestered herself away from the general population, and hardly ever made contact with others in her profession. Only her bitter hatred of Cologne had given her the intestinal fortitude to actually attempt to kill another human being. She had killed a few times in her long, long life, but those times had been in self-defense: obnoxious little do-gooder hero-types who thought she was a 'threat to all humanity' or something equally inane. Well, she supposed she was, technically, but to her great chagrin, she was more of an 'empty threat to humanity'.
Now, she was stuck on this mission of (big sigh) mercy. To make matters worse, once she tracked down this powerful source of white magic, she was going to have to convince them that she wasn't the sort of evil sorceress who actually went doing evil all the time. Talk about humiliating!
Oh well, at least she had lots of time to figure out how to phrase her request in the least embarrassing manner, yet still convince them to help. She hoped she could do it without anyone catching on that as powerful black mages went, she was really more of a big black weenie...
My, that sounded naughty, didn't it?
Duck smacked herself in the head. She was getting perverted in her old age. Must have been the result of spending time with that old whore, Cologne "The Sword-swallower" of the Joketsuzoku. Although... her little mental slip did bring back some very fond memories of her former husband, Calvin... except of course that he had been Caucasian...
Had anyone been passing her on the trail just then, they would probably have been unsettled by a most disturbing sight.
Have you ever seen a 250-year-old bag of wrinkles blush like a schoolgirl? It ain't pretty!
***
Crouching in an alley across the street from where you wanted to be was not a very dignified position for a powerful black magus to be in, Duck supposed. However, considering the sort of people she was intending to approach, great caution was warranted.
She had purchased a local map, and cast her scyring spell again, leading her to this old temple. She had drawn by hand an even smaller map, detailing the temple's location and the streets for about a block in each direction. A map this small allowed her to finally determine how many sources of powerful white magic were gathered in this unassuming little temple: Three.
One was almost absurdly powerful. Duck had never in her life sensed any individual with that level of power, white or black. She conceded it as likely more than she was capable of dealing with if negotiations degenerated into violence. The second was slightly weaker, but still well beyond what Duck thought to be the human limits of magical power. The third and final power was much weaker than either of the others; about what Duck imagined a mid-level white magus might be like. However, there was still some otherworldly quality to this smaller power that likened it to the other two. She began to seriously doubt that any of the three were human.
But then... what could they be?
Duck the Necromancer knew very well that the Forces of Darkness had all manner of inhuman beings on its side that occasionally escaped into the human world (sometimes with the help of a dark magus like herself). She was on speaking terms with a number of the less dangerous ones, as a matter of fact. However, in contrast to the wide variety of evil creatures Hell spawned, Heaven had relatively few types of defenders.
Goddesses or Gods would have no business being down on Earth for any length of time, unless perhaps Ragnorok (the final battle between Good and Evil) was starting up. Things seemed pretty peaceful around here for The War to End All Wars, however. For her part, Duck had long ago decided to find a very deep hole to hide in, rather than take either side, if such a cataclysmic event should unfortunately occur within her lifetime.
So, no actual divinities. What other possibilities were there? Angels, cherubs, and... what was that other type? Oh yes! Valkyries. There didn't look like any great battle had occurred around here anytime recently, so that ruled out valkyries dropping by to gather the souls of the heroic dead; besides which, there was no need for three of them to be in the same place.
Cherubs were basically love-sprites, and (despite what all the songs said about the power of love) not all that strong really. The weak power could conceivably be a very strong cherub (maybe even Cupid himself) but that didn't seem likely. Not only were the other two far too strong for cherubs, but there was the same question of why three of them were gathered all in one place. Each time Duck had checked her maps over the last 24 hours, these three energies were here in this town, if not actually in this very building (it had been difficult to tell with her larger maps). She couldn't understand why any divine beings would hang around that long in one spot.
Angels, Duck supposed, were her best bet so far. The souls of the faithful who were put to work for Heaven after death were known to work in groups on occasion. Usually though, their powers were well hidden, so as not to clue in the mortals that Angels were walking among them. Duck really had no idea whether Angels were considered to be weak or powerful, relatively speaking. She'd never seen one before.
Hmm... It seemed to her that there was one other group of holy beings that Duck was forgetting. What was it now? Ah! Divine beasts. They were more of a 'miscellaneous' category, and about the only rule she knew of that applied to all of them was that they were kept from making trouble by the careful hands of the gods and goddesses. Some of the more powerful ones, like the Fenrir Wolf, were even meant to be sealed away for all time. Mid-level, intelligent ones were kept busy, such as with Garm, watchdog to the Nibelhiem (a.k.a. the underworld, Hades, Hell, etc). Others, like the eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, were kept up in Heaven by the divinities, sort of like pets. In any case, none of them would be permitted to roam free on Earth. Scratch them too.
Hmm... Something quite out of the ordinary was happening here. Duck couldn't imagine what was going on. At any rate, she was probably lucky to find three such strong divine powers here on Earth at all. If the energy they radiated was any indication, one of them could almost certainly undo a little curse like the one she'd dropped in Shampoo's lap. Or, if not that, then they could put her in touch with someone who could.
All this assumed that they didn't blow her out of existence the second they sensed the Dark magic that seeped from her every pore. Spending the equivalent of four lifetimes using necromancy left its mark.
(It is worth noting that all of Duck's knowledge of things divine came from conversations she'd held with demonic beings. She thought it worth her time to learn who and what she ought to avoid. Of course, it was all second-hand information, from folks who didn't think much of the divine, so it might not have been as accurate as she thought it was.)
Having determined all she could from a safe distance, the ancient Dark magus took a deep breath, and approached the temple. She hid her ebony staff in the alley. It wouldn't do to approach them with anything that might be considered a weapon in her hands.
The first thing she noticed, the moment her foot touched the first step, was that this temple had active, and fairly powerful wards. This was as rare as it was irritating.
Nearly every temple these days was maintained by priests who really had no idea what they were doing (as far as warding off evil went, anyway). Most were simply going through the motions of the ceremonies they'd been taught, and never actually invoked any true power into their wards. They simply didn't know how anymore. Their wards were just scribbles on bits of paper.
This was not the case here, as she should have expected with three apparent divine beings in residence. The anti-demon wards were all first-rate and functioning perfectly. Only the fact that Duck was not, strictly speaking, a demon allowed her to take a single step onto the grounds. As it was, the holy force of the wards made her arms itch like crazy! She forced herself not to scratch. The sensation she felt was magical, not physical, and scratching would do nothing to relieve it.
Gritting her teeth, she climbed the stairs. Maybe the itching would go away once she was inside the actual circle of wards. Then again, perhaps they permeated the entire temple grounds with their cursed power (or 'blessed power' she should say, considering its source).
When she reached the top step, Duck came across a strange sight. Standing there in the yard was a... well, Duck wasn't completely certain what it was. It looked like a very weird robot with a head shaped like the wide straw hat of a Chinese field worker. It was sweeping the front steps.
Duck blinked as the strange contraption lifted its head to look at her. Suddenly alarms popped out from panels in its head, along with something that looked suspiciously similar to a grenade launcher...
***
*BOOM!*
Keiichi jumped in surprise as the explosion sounded from the front yard. It sounded as thought something had triggered Banpei's defensive functions again. He hoped it was Mara. Strange as it may seem that a person would actually prefer a demoness to be attacking his home, but at least that was preferable to Skuld's strange creation determining he needed to defend the house (and more to the point, Belldandy) from some innocent person. It had happened to Sayoko once already.
Rushing outside, he found the robot with its weapons systems out and ready to fire again, carefully watching the front steps, as though expecting the intruder to return.
Skuld came bouncing out a moment later. "Good work Banpei!"
"Uh... Skuld?" Keiichi asked carefully. "I don't suppose you saw what it was he attacked, did you?"
"No, I just got here. So?"
"Well then, how do you know he attacked the right target? It could have been the mailman or something."
Skuld jumped up into his face, a difficult feat for someone barely 4' tall. "ARE YOU CRITICISING MY PERFECT CREATION!?!"
"Uh... No! Not exactly!" Keiichi stammered. "I was just wondering if Mara was making trouble again, or if it was something else."
Skuld blinked. "Oh, that's okay then. Let me just check." Skuld stood in front of Banpei and spoke directly to him. "Banpei, identify most recent target of defensive countermeasures."
"{UNKNOWN.}"
Skuld blinked. "Unknown? You mean it wasn't Mara or Senbei?"
"{AFFIRMATIVE. RECENT TARGET IS UNKNOWN THREAT.}"
"Then why did he attack, then?" Keiichi wondered.
Skuld repeated the question in a syntax the robot would recognise. "Outline factors which resulted in defining the target as a potential threat."
"{RECENT TARGET EXHIBITED PASSIVE DEMONIC AURA.}"
Keiichi sighed. "So it *was* a demon."
"{NEGATIVE. RECENT TARGET WAS HUMAN.}"
Keiichi's eyes widened. "What! Why did you attack then!"
"{RECENT TARGET EXHIBITED PASSIVE DEMONIC AURA.}"
Skuld was scratching her head. "Banpei, list all possible attack target types from your list of threats that exhibit a passive demonic aura, yet are still considered human."
"{DEMONICALLY POSSESSED HUMAN. HUMAN UNDER CONTRACT WITH DEMON. HUMAN USING INFERNAL MAGIC. HUMAN CARRYING OBJECT WITH INFERNAL MAGICAL AURA.}"
Skuld beamed and turned to Keiichi. "See? It was a bad guy! No problem!"
Keiichi frowned. "What if it was just a normal human who happened to have picked up a demonic object? They wouldn't necessarily know what they had. They might even have been coming to ask Belldandy what it was, or to dispose of it in a safe manner."
Skuld rolled her eyes. Like that was likely! "Okay fine! Banpei, combine ALL scans taken of the recent target. Can you eliminate any possibilities from that list?"
"{AFFIRMATIVE.}"
"What possibilities remain?"
"{HUMAN UNDER CONTRACT WITH DEMON. HUMAN USING INFERNAL MAGIC.}"
Skuld turned to Keiichi and lifted an eyebrow. "See? It's a BAD guy! Someone working for the demons. Banpei did a good job!"
Keiichi sighed and nodded. He and Skuld went back into the house. "Okay. I was just thinking of how he jumped Sayoko last month."
"But Keiichi, Banpei only attacked her in normal attack mode; he just swung a broom at her for goodness sake! Any kind of *normal* threat like that results in a *normal* attack. You heard the explosion; Banpei responded with his Anti-demon attack mode."
"Is that the one where he fires off a bunch of wards?" Keiichi asked, wondering silently what part of Skuld's programming had made Banpei consider Sayoko a threat.
Skuld thought. "That's *one* of his anti-demon attacks, but from the sound of the 'boom', I'd say he decided to use his special 'Pretty Sparkle Nice-Nice Gas Bomb'."
Keiichi winced. "You came up with that name yourself, didn't you."
"Of course! What's wrong with it?"
"Never mind..."
***
Back in the alley, Duck was retching mightily into a dumpster. She didn't know what the hell that sparkling crap had been, but it was making her sick as a dog!
'All right!' She thought between dry heaves. 'No more Miss Nice evil witch! I'm gonna turn that stupid tin can into slag!'
Toilet Duck the Necromancer felt her legs give out as the purifying gas attacked her Dark magically maintained health. She collapsed bonelessly to the ground, her stomach still spasming, even though it was empty. Fortunately, that meant that she couldn't choke on her own bile.
'...Just as soon as I can stand up.'
***
The next day, Duck sat on a roof, peering down the street where the temple stood. She'd like to move a bit closer, but wasn't prepared to risk being spotted by the divine beings' little Terminator wanna-be.
"Damn! I can't cast any of my more destructive spells within the bounds of that temple, and most of the ones I could cast from outside would dissipate once they touch the circle of wards, assuming I could find an angle where I could see the walking trash can over the walls to aim." She grumbled as she considered her options. "Maybe I could summon a few demons to destroy the wards first, then go after the robot?"
There was a "poof" of gray smoke that reeked of brimstone, and a blonde demoness dressed in leather, spikes and chains appeared in a seated position beside the Dark magus.
"Forget it Ducky. I've been trying to get in there for months. If a First-Class Demon like me can't do it, there ain't likely any who can, or that could be bothered to help you in the first place."
"Well well, if it isn't Mara." Toilet Duck scowled. "And don't call me Ducky!"
Mara shrugged with a smirk. "Fine by me. I came up with a different way to translate your name anyway. How's it going, Shitter Fowl?"
Duck rolled her eyes. "Well, I've been better. I've got to get into that temple somehow, but they've got some sort of anti-demonic robot that's giving me trouble."
"The dumb-looking one with the mushroom shaped head?"
"That's the one. Any helpful advice to offer your old friend?" Duck muttered, not really expecting much.
"Sorry. That thing's a problem for me too. At least you're not made helpless by anti-demonic wards."
"No, they just make my arms itch like crazy."
"Better that than itchy AND paralyzed!"
"Count your blessings (or whatever you want to call them)." Duck muttered. "If you were a Third-Class demon, wards that strong would burn you to a crisp in an instant! I don't know what they might do to a Second-Class."
"Paralyze him, then fry him slowly, I suspect." Mara smirked unhappily. "Not that they're any fun for someone like me either."
"Hmm... A real dilemma. I can get past the wards, but they also prevent me from casting my spells. I haven't a chance against that stupid tin can without my magic."
Mara grunted in agreement. Then she frowned curiously and glanced at her friend. "What are you so hot to get in there for anyway?"
"I could ask you the same question." Duck countered, not relishing explaining her motives to the Demon. She had a reputation to keep. A largely false reputation, but a reputation nonetheless.
"Got me a grudge against the three goddesses living there." Mara grumbled. "You?"
Duck's eye's widened. "GODDESSES! There are actual *goddesses* in there? And *living* there, as in permanently? Just what are they doing?"
"The usual: making everyone around them revoltingly happy." Mara snorted. "You didn't even know they were in there?"
Duck shook her head. "Not exactly. I sensed some very powerful divine energies there, but I didn't think goddesses would stay in one place so long, so I assumed they were something else." She frowned and turned to Mara. "What can you tell me about them?"
Mara the Demoness, always happy to help someone else bring harm, shrugged. "They're three sisters known as the Three Fates in the Scandinavia."
"Norse mythology?"
"Right, except obviously not the 'myth' part." Mara snorted. "There's the little one, Skuld: Goddess of the Future. She's weak as hell, but she's got a talent for building machines. She'd the one who made that stupid Robot. She's a real brat too."
Mara smirked as she continued. "Then there's Urd: Goddess of the Past. She's strong enough, I suppose. She used to be First-Class, and the strongest of all three, but got busted down for lying and generally making mischief. She's almost naughty enough that I could like her, but she's loyal to the Lord. You'd think a half-demon like her would be easier to turn. I even tried it once, but her sisters managed to win her back."
"A half-demon? Interesting..."
Mara snorted. "Don't get any dumb ideas. She's still a goddess." She lay back on the roof, lounging like she did this all the time. "Last, and certainly most annoying, is Belldandy: Goddess of the Present. She's the most powerful now; a true First-Class goddess if ever you saw one. She's so disgustingly sweet and pure, it makes me nauseous just talking about her!"
Duck tapped her finger against her ebony staff as she thought. "So what are three goddesses doing living down here on Earth? Don't they have work to do upstairs?"
Mara nodded. "They did, but Belldandy was working for the Goddess Relief Office. You know, granting wishes? She granted one for this little putz named Keiichi who wished for a girl like her to stay with him forever. Poof! One grounded goddess. Then the other two showed up to keep her company, or something like that. I think Urd actually got herself into trouble and was temporarily banished from Heaven, but I don't know all the details."
Duck frowned in thought. This was all very useful information, but she didn't know what she could do with it yet. She intentionally didn't thank the demoness for the info. Mara had told her all this because she assumed it would benefit herself in some way, not as some kind of favour. Perhaps she thought a mortal like Duck could find some way to bring the circle of wards down, allowing the demoness free access into the home of the three goddesses.
Frankly, at another time, Duck might have considered that a fair exchange for valuable information, but letting a First-Class Demoness into someone's house to wreak havoc didn't seem like the best way to get them to do you a favour. Besides which, Duck had no means of accommodating the demoness' wishes.
"So..." Mara cooed. "I've told you pretty much all I know about the place you're trying to get into. You might at least tell me why."
Duck scowled. That was a warning, not a request. Any threat from a Second-Class demon or lower wasn't something a Dark Magus of Duck's ability really needed to worry about, but when dealing with First-Class demons like Mara, one was generally better off staying on their good side (so to speak). Were the two of them to actually fight, she could certainly give the demoness a hard time of it, perhaps even win. Still, that was a good deal more effort and risk than Duck was prepared to sacrifice just to save her dignity.
"I suppose I might as well tell you, but if you spread this around, I swear I'll find some way to make you regret your loose lips." Duck growled. "I may not be able to kill one as strong as you, but I can certainly bring you trouble not worth spreading embarrassing stories over."
Mara rolled her eyes at the threat. "Fine, fine. So spill."
"I miscast a spell." Duck sighed.
"So?"
"It hit the wrong person."
"Who cares? Just aim for the right one next time." Mara snorted.
"With some opponents, you only get one clear shot at them. This one is too dangerous to have after my blood now that she knows I'm after hers."
Mara frowned at that. It made sense, at least. "That still doesn't explain why you're trying to get into the temple. Keep talking."
Duck grumbled, but continued. "My spell missed her and hit her great-granddaughter. Nice kid; you'd hate her. My most dangerous enemy ever agreed to let me live only if I undid the harm to her great-grandchild, who is presently slowly dying. I can't undo my own spell, not one that powerful anyway. I need to find an expert in White magic to do it. These goddesses were the most powerful sources of White magic I sensed in Japan, so I came here."
Mara sat up, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "Let me get this straight. You hurt an innocent little girl (good for you, by the way) so her big, bad great-grandmother is forcing you to *cure* her! Instead of just saying you'll do it and waiting for the little brat to croak, you're actually going to go groveling to *goddesses* of all people to aid you in *helping* someone else?"
"Well... I wouldn't say 'groveling'." Duck muttered.
"Why the hell don't you just lay low for a while?" Mara snorted in disgust.
"This enemy is the one I could never defeat in my youth, and she's only grown more powerful and cunning." Duck grumbled. She was getting a real good grumble going. She made up her mind to spend more time with demons like Mara. They were a bad influence on her (which was good... er...). "I would not be able to hide from this one for long, if she was of a mind to hunt me down. I waited over 200 years for her guard to drop, and I somehow managed to screw it up. I wasn't expecting her descendant to throw her fool self in front of the spell. How in the hell does a backstabbing old whore like that inspire such loyalty? Must be the ignorance of youth!"
Mara didn't really care what Duck was rambling about any more. "You're going to ask the goddesses for help?" She asked yet again, shaking her head in disgust. "Talk about the wrong way to do things!"
Duck lifted an eyebrow. "You have a better idea? Then again, I haven't even asked you yet; you, a powerful First-Class demoness. I don't suppose you're strong enough to remove an entrenched Soul Eater demon?"
Mara scowled at the Dark sorceress, who (in her eyes) was dancing on the line of treason. "Even if I could, I wouldn't, you worm! You're pathetic! A pathetic little goody-goody!"
Duck smirked. "Ah, I see. I, with my back against the wall, and next to no options, choose to betray my associations and benefactors in order to save my own skin. What part of that strikes you as 'goody-goody'?"
Mara blinked, temporarily confused. She attempted to clarify matters. "You're... betraying all those who have helped you, who trust you (to a degree, at least) in an utterly selfish attempt to pick your own fat out of the fire?"
"That's pretty much it, yes." Duck smirked.
Mara developed a big grin. "Welcome back to the fold, babe! You're definitely one of us!" She vanished in another cloud of stinking smoke.
"You have no idea just how flattered I am to hear that." Duck muttered sarcastically to the empty air.
Demons weren't so hard to handle, if you knew what you were doing. Duck had a lifetime of experience at it.
***
Despite her 'encouraging' conversation with the demoness a few days ago, Duck was having no greater luck penetrating the temple's defenses. She'd come up with the idea to mob the entrance with lesser, more expendable demons and other evil creatures.
She slated the attack for midnight, naturally, since the darkness would give her creatures more strength. Some of them could even be harmed by the light of day. She waited, with her small army of cannon fodder (gremlins, skeletons, goblins, zombies, etc) until the moon went behind a cloud. Then she gave them the signal to charge. Their orders were to destroy the robot and, if possible, the wards too. She had no absurd expectations that these relatively weak creatures could face even the weakest of the three goddesses in residence.
In point of fact, Skuld probably would have taken one look and run screaming in terror, but Duck was unaware of that, or the little goddess' inability to use her power.
With a cacophony of inhuman roars, the mob of minions moved en-mass toward the temple at a charge. Some of them began to burn when they came into contact with the powerful wards, but said wards had never been intended to turn back an assault of this many infernal beings at once. For every five that dropped, one got through. It looked like a decent-sized squad was actually going to be left to smash that damned robot! They were still smoking a little in the weaker warded area inside the wall, but if they kept moving, they should survive long enough to finish their job.
Then said robot stepped onto the front porch and activated its anti-demon special assault mode: Darkness elemental countermeasures. Huge floodlights popped out of panels in his hips, and turned night into day. These particular floodlights were personally designed by Skuld, and could produce a degree of brightness equivalent to that of the Earth's sun... at noon... in the middle of the Sahara desert... underneath a big-ass hole in the ozone layer.
Any of the creatures who were not instantly fried, became blinded. They fell down to the ground, screeching and wailing, and more to the point, not moving around much. With the assault on the outer wards effectively obliterated, all the wards' power was now focusing inward. The rest of the creatures were barbecued within half a minute.
Banpei, his job done, returned inside the house and re-initiated his recharge mode, plugging himself into a wall outlet. None of the temple's other residents had even come to see what all the screaming had been about. Apparently, they were heavy sleepers.
Duck, who had been watching the entire thing from the roof directly across the street, cursed violently as she stumbled around, unable to see a single thing since the moment the little bastard in the tin jockey shorts had flashblinded her! She fumbled around blindly for her staff. With it, she might feel her way about and maybe manage not to fall off the damn roof. She felt her foot run into it, sending it skittering several feet farther ahead of her.
"Aha!" She crowed in triumph, she heard it stop sliding about four feet in front of her, so she scurried after it.
Three and a half feet beyond where she'd started, her feet ran out of roof. Just as she began to totter over, she heard the clatter of her staff as it eventually hit the ground, two stories below.
Well, wasn't that helpful? Now she knew where the ground was!
*THUD*
***
It was a week later when Duck felt ready to try again. It had taken a day for her vision to return, but healing the other injuries from her tumble off the roof had taken longer.
Any form of reasonable thought had been left behind in Duck's sickbed. Now she wanted the metallic little fucker to DIE!
Magic was obviously not working out too well. The goddesses and the robot were too well prepared for an attack on that front, so Duck made careful plans to breach the walls of the innocent-looking fortress by more mundane methods. Then she was going to let that stupid tin can have it!
Planning was required in an assault of this importance. While she had healed, Duck had planted crow demons to watch the place carefully, if from a distance. What they saw was transmitted back to Duck's motel room and displayed on a large mirror she'd removed from the bathroom wall. Through this method, she paid close attention to the comings and goings of the non-mechanical residents. She made note of when each person left, when they came back, who usually went with who, and who was left behind to watch the house.
Banpei, the little tin soldier, always fell into the final category. He never left the house. Duck would have preferred to catch him alone somewhere where the wards couldn't protect him from a direct attack from her magic, but he seemed dedicated to his job as the guard robot.
That was fine, as long as she could get him alone by some means. Being on the temple grounds made things more difficult, but not impossible. There was no way Toilet Duck, a wise and powerful magus, was going to accept being outsmarted by something that ran on batteries!
Then came her lucky day! One Sunday afternoon, all the human (or apparently human) residents left the house together! They had abandoned the little guard-bot! How sad for it! Hee hee hee!
Watching from a distant roof through a pair of binoculars, Duck straightened her camo fatigues and buttoned her combat helmet. Shouldering her chosen weapon, she took one last note of her target's position: out front, sweeping the walk.
She bolted down to the street and around and past the temple. They had neighbors on either side, and trespassing was not something that Duck particularly gave a damn about right now! She hopped the very low retracting fence that the neighbors locked at night to insure no one stole their car, then sprinted around to their back yard. A woman watering her plants jumped a bit at the ancient and diminutive soldier-figure invading her property.
Duck paid her no heed, and used her black staff to vault to the top of the wall this property shared with the temple, letting it fall to the ground in the woman's yard. Duck wasn't sure if the robot was built to detect the dark magic in an object like that or not, but she couldn't chance it. She'd recover it later. The instant she rolled over the wall, she felt the wards show her their displeasure at her arrival. She paid them no heed. She crept forward at a swift, yet silent pace, eyes scanning left and right for any sign of the enemy. She drew her weapon and prepared to use it.
Finding the back door, which connected to the kitchen, Duck tested it, finding it unlocked. Awfully trusting people, these folk, but then she supposed that wasn't surprising, considering who they were. As she shut the door, she noticed the itchy feeling from the wards vanished. Apparently, their power did not go through walls. That was fine with her. Aside from not having to suffer the irritation, this suggested to her that her enemy would not be able to sense her being in the house, at least not by the aura of her dark magic. She should try and avoid making a racket, though.
The floor to this old kitchen was stone, and a foot lower than the rest of the building's wooden floors. Being stone, it was also cold to the feet. Duck smiled at seeing a fuzzy pair of slippers right there by the inner door. They sure were making this easy for her.
Duck slipped her tiny feet straight into the much larger slippers, not needing or bothering to take off her own footwear. With this padding, her own combat boots made no noise along the hard wooden floor of the hallway, as she made her way towards the front door.
Being extremely wary, Duck held her weapon in one hand as she gently, slowly, silently opened the door a bare crack. She could hear the sound of sweeping. She peeked through the tiny crack and saw a line of the garish colours his tasteless creator had painted him. She had his position now. He hadn't detected her. She had her weapon readied in both her trembling hands. She took several deep breaths to steady herself... then she kicked open the door and charged with a blood-curdling scream!
Banpei whirled as quickly as his design enabled him to. His camera-lens eyes widened!
*SMASH*
"Ha!" Duck crowed, raising the sledgehammer again for another swing.
*SMASH*
"Take that!"
*SMASH*
"And that!"
*SMASH*
"You stupid machine!"
*SMASH*
"Blind me, will you!?"
*SMASH*
"Gag me with your stupid smoke!?"
*SMASH*
"Toast all my hard-summoned creatures and make me..." *SMASH* "FALL" *SMASH* "OFF" *SMASH* "THE" *SMASH* "FUCKING" *SMASH* "**ROOF**!?!"
Panting and wheezing, the old woman in the combat fatigues finally let the extremely heavy sledge drop from her aching fingers. She sat down on the step, trying desperately to catch her breath. She wasn't young anymore, not by any means, but pure fury had given her the strength to pummel that cursed contraption into complete dysfunction. The technologically-oriented goddess could probably fix it, but it would take a heck of a long time.
Duck fervently hoped the damn thing would never work again!
She had retained enough level-headedness to carefully direct her blows. Just denting its outer casing wasn't likely to keep it from counter attacking with another one of those anti-demon weapons. She had first knocked it off his feet with a horizontal swing to its head, then crushed both its legs, then its arms, so it couldn't get back up. When it was down and crippled, she didn't know where to hit next, since she had no idea which of the little panels held the most dangerous weapons to her, so she had taken aim at the rectangular box mounted on it's back. As it happened, this was the battery casing, and a few solid blows to that section 'convinced' the little robot to stop struggling against the inevitable. It stopped moving shortly after that.
The rest of the blows had just been for therapy's sake.
Duck sighed as her breath began coming more easily. "Mission accomplished!"
She leaned back a bit on the steps. "Now I can just wait for them to come home and..."
Duck sat up abruptly! "ARRGH! What am I doing?"
Somewhere along the line, she'd forgotten about asking the goddesses for help, and become completely obsessed with the destruction of the stupid robot! How was she supposed to ask them for help now? They weren't likely to appreciate her smashing up their guard-bot, especially since she'd watched them pat him and talk to him while she'd been healing, as though he was practically a member of the family, or maybe a beloved pet.
Duck was doomed!
Panicking, Duck bolted to the street, taking a quick look left and right to make sure no one saw her, then fled the scene of the crime.
***
It was another week before Duck had the courage to approach the temple again. After her successful assault, she hadn't even wanted to monitor the group's reaction to finding what was effectively their friend's corpse lying on their front lawn. Duck still hated the little robot, but she did feel a bit guilty about how his family must have felt.
This morning, she'd sent a crow demon to reconnoiter. Through it, she saw that the robot was now functional again, if a little dented-looking. Now that the damage from her little temper tantrum was fixed, she felt it might be safe to try and enter through the front door again. Maybe if she could greet a person first?
That afternoon, Duck hesitantly climbed the temple steps, watching carefully for the little pest. Not seeing him, she breathed a sigh of relief and stepped past the wall and down the front walk.
"{WARNING! INTRUDER!}"
Duck's blood ran cold as she spun to see the dented contraption off to the right, apparently having just come around the corner of the house.
"{BEGINNING INTRUDER/GUEST THREAT RECOGNITION PROGRAM.}"
Duck blinked. That was new. Obviously the little goddess had added some software to the dangerous machine to prevent it from attacking people who came here with no ill intentions. She breathed a sigh of relief.
"{INTRUDER RECOGNISED: SUPER MEANIE JERK #1. INITIATE NEW ATTACK SUBPROGRAM: 'MAKE STICKY RED MESS'.}"
Duck's eyes bugged out as, from somewhere behind his backpack (which looked a fair bit bigger than before, she noticed belatedly) Banpei unfolded a chaingun, railgun, rocket launcher, grenade launcher, shotgun, uzi, and (just to round things out) a 16th century ship's cannon.
Duck promptly wet herself.
Belldandy was on her way home from the market, only half a block from home, when she heard a simply *tremendous* explosion. Somehow she knew, even before the smoke became visible, that it had come from her own house. She sighed wearily. She was going to have to have a talk with Skuld.
As she drew closer to the bottom of the temple steps, Belldandy saw a small black shape rolling limply down them. The shape was still smoldering, and sending up a fair amount of smoke all by itself.
To her shock and horror, Belldandy soon realized that this charred lump was actually a person.
"Goodness! What happened to you!" She cried.
"Much as I might like to deny it," Duck wheezed, "I'm afraid it might have been Karma."
Belldandy knelt down beside the blackened black mage, her eyes filled with concern. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
Still somewhat dazed, Duck blinked. This was one of the goddesses, and judging from Mara's description, the one most likely to hear out her request. "Actually, Miss Belldandy, there was something very important I wanted to speak to you about."
As Duck idly noticed an unburned part of her black robes catching flame from the cinders of the rest, it occurred to her that she could have saved herself a lot of trouble had she just waited at the base of the steps in the first place.
Well wasn't that just something?
________________________________________________________________________________
End Chapter Four
I have only one thing to say about this chapter:
Hee hee... That was fun!
As for the NEXT chapter, I think we're due to check on Ranma and Shampoo, and their arrival at the Amazon village. I make no promises about when that chapter will get written, however. I've got two or three other projects on the go.
"My religion? I'm believe in Frisbeetarianism. For those of you who don't know, that's the belief that, when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck there." -Unknown
Ja na!
-Ron Hino.
C&C to hinoron1@hotmail.com
P.S. Remember, if you expect an answer from me, send reviews directly to my Email. I tend to take my sweet ass time looking at the reviews that don't come straight to me. (Yes I'm lazy. What's your point?)