Notes - This story has been revised from what was originally posted some months ago. The original version was a total mess that didn't make much sense if one looked at it too closely. Over the next few weeks this story is going to be edited and rewritten into a far better story. Feel free to send me comments on this or any of my stories, I always like to hear from people.
Due to the size of this there is a good chance that I will probably miss a mistake here and there. Let me know if any major one's are found. Check out my site to find out which chapters are edited and ready to be sent out.
Site - http http://shi_hanna.tripod.com
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Strange Days
Chapter 14
By: Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(C)2003
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Amy knew something was going to happen because of her presence, but even this was a lot worse than anything she could have ever imagined. Neptune and Uranus were dead, vaporized by Siefried's blast, she hadn't expected him to be that violent, mainly because of the natural goodness of this world. He should have been able to push the edge, but not go over it that easily.
On her home world his kind had been known to destroy entire cities if they didn't do what they were told, it had taken centuries of fighting and several generations of willing men and women to finally stop their dark ways and let peace reign again, but every now and then some fool would summon one of them and it would start all over again.
The last time one of these things had been free had been nearly fifty years before and the last of the Master Demon Hunters had died in the battle that ended the Dark Demons' time in power.
The Populace had been both pleased and scared, the Demon Hunters were a class of fighter so far above normal fighters that only certain family's practiced the art and had the talents needed to win. With all of them dead they had taken DNA samples from all the families and cloned all of her brothers and sisters, raising them to be the ultimate warriors for when needed.
It had happened about five years before and all of them had been sent against the Dark Demon, of the forty clones, five of them survived the battle and it had leveled most of the city and killed nearly a million people before the fighting stopped.
The win had cost them everything, the remaining people started to look for better ways to defeat the things without the massive loss of life and ignored and ridiculed them as if they had been the cause of it in the first place. In secret they had all trained and trained for nearly four years and in that time they had learned many lessons.
They had also started to learn other things as well and had taken up jobs with certain Gods that used people like them to help others. She had killed innocents, destroyed lives, but on the other hand she had saved countless lives and they balanced each other out. Still it had caused her to change from the innocent being she had been born as and to turn into to a cold fighting machine she had been before coming to this world.
She had spent years learning to hide her emotions, to ignore her body's natural reactions and to control every aspect of her life. Then she had been kidnapped by this bastard and he had...changed her in way she couldn't understand.
The Gods had learned to depend on her and her remaining family as the time slowly passed for them. Then had come the secret war of Dark Demons that had taken place without anyone knowing. Five of the fuckers had been let loose upon an unsuspecting world that was still in the dark ages of it's evolution, Amy remembered that over 20 hunters had been sent through to defend that world.
The only survivors of that battle had been her and a few of her sisters. Most of them had had been driven insane by the Dark Demons evil perversions and methods. That fight had brought them many victories and enough blood to fill an ocean, they had learned how to use their powers on whole new levels as they fought, improvising attacks on the fly to catch them by surprise so that they couldn't adapt so quickly. Even worse was that those five had been able to find and use the summoning spells to bring more of their kind through to help them, even now she had the occasional nightmare about it.
Amy looked outside as she tried to decide the best way to end this battle, the only thing she could come up with is her ultimate attack. She had only ever practiced it a few times and that had been out in deep space where witnesses were very rare. She looked at her hands and remembered what happened whenever she used the full power of the attack, a shudder went through her, even worse than she had expected.
This would be a one time deal once she fired it off, after that she was as good as dead if she failed to kill the bastard. Amy looked over at Ranma on the bed beside her, the red head was in really bad shape, but Rei's grandfather had taken her in and said he would help out one of the city defenders gratefully. The old man's wink had startled her for a second, then she had laughed at him as she understood. He knew about Sailor Mars and her group.
Suddenly there is a loud commotion outside and Amy runs for the front of the shrine, the sounds of battle can be heard and she wonders what in the world is going on now. She skids out the front door and sees the Scouts falling to the ground as some kind of sleep gas and a dark blur moves among them and takes them out one by one.
Who the hell could take the Scouts this fast, was the first thing that went through Amy's mind as she surveyed the area, but the blur had vanished the instant she stepped outside. She noticed one of those concealed pockets near the shadows to the side of the shrine. There was movement in that little pocket and since she didn't want to deal with even more tricks today her arm came up and fired at it, turning a nearby tree into a hail of splinters with a concussion blast.
A small shape leapt out of the branches and moved faster than most mortals could move, but this was Amy. "Cologne, what are you doing here?"
The old woman stops and turns to face her and Amy takes in the old woman's new look. She has in a tiny ninja outfit like the pervert likes to wear, her long white hair done up into a long braid that wrapped around her shoulders. There were several magical amulets pined to her outfit, all of them glowing. "Damn, I didn't expect you to catch me this soon."
"Then why are you here?"
"It doesn't matter, you must be killed for my family's honor to be returned and I will do everything in my power to see to it that succeeds."
"That battle is between me an Shampoo old woman..."
"Shampoo is dead. Where she stopped I will take up the fight and regain our family honor."
"Oh please, the fight wasn't that bad and she was at fault anyways. As for the second fight, she was killed by the Outer Scouts when they fired on us as we fought, blame them. I was trying to take her down as softly as I could, without killing her."
"Lies, all of it, we saw what happened back at the village. She was carrying our most potent magical items as she fought you, we saw the truth of what you are demon and you are going to die before you take anymore lives down with you!" Cologne yelled as she stabbed her staff out to the right of Amy and fired off a beam of red light, she didn't even bother to dodge.
"What the hell was that?"
Cologne relaxed and hopped up on her staff to watch, her smile was evil as her eyes glowed. "3000 years of Amazon history has taught us a lot of lessons demon and the most potent one is to make your allies do the work for us."
"MARS FLAME SNIPER!!"
Amy dodged by instinct alone, her eyes wide with surprise, she jumped straight up in the air and flipped to the side as she landed. A number of little details were coming together in her mind as she ran, just how long had Cologne had one of the Sailors brainwashed like this? Mars had wanted her dead from the beginning and Amy had been pissed off ever since.
The girl had almost been one of the ones she took down a peg, but the time had never seemed right for some reason, and then Siefried had sent out his servants and she had devoted more time to that after she decided to call off her revenge against the Scouts for trying to kill her.
She heard the old woman cackling in the back round and Amy took note of the large bands of black that she had seen in the old woman's aura. She was a little relieved to know that this wasn't completely the old woman's fault and Shampoo's death must have been too much for her and driven her even further down this path. Amy spun and dodged as Mars powered up again, her eyes were blank, though a closer look revealed a couple of tears trailed down her cheeks as she fought against the thing making her do this.
"MARS FLAME SNIPER!!"
Amy didn't move this time, instead she brought up a shield and allowed it to deflect the arrow of fire at Cologne, at the same time she jumped forward and started to punch at Mars. The girl had training, but not enough, and Amy used a number of feints to confuse the girl and get her turned around. A quick blow to the back of the lower part of her head knocked her out, but Amy felt something break just as her fist impacted.
She hadn't hit that hard, she thought, as she bent down to check the girl. Amy moved the black hair to the side to reveal a small band of metal attached to Mar's neck. It had little claws imbedding it into her skin, her punch had caught the edge of it and broke it in half. Amy yanked it off and tossed it to the side where it flared for a second and disintegrated.
"Damn you demon, I will get my revenge on you if it is the last thing I do!" Cologne yelled and vanished in flare of light.
Amy breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed. "You can come on out old man, she is gone."
Rei's grandfather walked out of the Shrine and knelt down beside his granddaughter. He looked very worried as he examined his granddaughter's health. It surprised him to find that Amy hadn't hurt her all that much. "What did you take off of her neck?"
"Some kind of magical mind control device, I doubt she knew about it until it was used."
"How could she have not noticed it, she is always messing with her hair."
"Probably a suggestion to ignore it in some way, she shouldn't be after my blood any more, I hope."
Rei groaned and rolled her head to look up at Amy, a couple of tears running down her cheeks. "I'm sorry Amy. I never wanted to hurt you." Muttered Mars as she sat up and glared at her grandfather. "If you knew why I was being so secretive, why didn't you say anything, do you have any idea how relieved I would have been to be free of this secret? I never wanted to keep it in the first place."
"It was none of my business Rei. You're old enough to make your own decisions, why do you think I don't force you to do everything around here anymore? I even let you have your meetings by always taking Chad off the property at the perfect times. You never noticed?" Grandfather said innocently, his eyes wide and sparkling.
Mars sighs and looks back at Amy. "That old woman ambushed me on the way to our meeting at the school and made sure I would cause you problems. I couldn't resist her orders no matter how hard I tried."
"What about when Jupiter first attacked me?"
"That was all me, I had a vision in the Sacred Fire that showed you killing all the Scouts, I never even questioned it."
"I can forgive you I guess, but be more careful next time or I'll get my revenge on you too." Amy said with a lecherous smirk, rubbing her finger tip together.
Mar's blushed clear to her toes and the old man just looked confused.
"Amy?" Mercury asked.
She turned and noticed that the other Scouts were coming around, Sailor Moon was sitting up shaking her head, Mercury was beside her and looking over at them. Most of them were looking a little baffled as to what had happened, but silently decided look into it later.
"What?"
"Would it be possible for this Siefried to have affected Mar's fire reading in some way to cause you more problems and keep you off balance while he worked to gain a stronger food hold in this dimensions?"
Amy blinked and blinked again. "You know, I don't think he could have even come here without permission or being summoned. My presence may have had some effect on that, weakening the dimensional barriers with my illegal crossing and all that. I think you may be right Mercury, this all leads back to the day I first crossed over to this world. Why this world though, it is unsuited for his needs, Dark Demon's usually prefer places full of darkness and death. This world is actually a very peaceful one..."
"Amy, all of this leads back to you..." Mercury points out.
"...damn, it's so simple I didn't see it before. Thanks Mercury, that just ruins my whole day." Amy muttered.
"I don't understand." Moon said, looking confused.
"Her presence messed up the balance, but she is also maintaining the imbalance and that is allowing the other side to grow in power. If she leaves, the balance of good will shift back to us. This will give us that last little bit needed to win." Mercury said.
"Then we have a problem." Amy growled out.
"What do you mean?" Mercury asked.
"When Siefried sent me here, he cut off my source of power and all of you guys attacking me was depleting my much needed energies. At first I just absorbed a little energy out of the environment or from the demons that were out roaming around like that one from the mall.
Then the fighting got worse and worse and I ended up getting injured during a surge of darkness that affected a number of fighters in Nerima, I thought it was just a regular chaotic event created by the district. It may have been set in motion by Siefried instead and that event made me align my powers to this dimension."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that for the next twenty years I can't leave this world, and the only way left for me to leave is for me to die."
The Scouts all paled, they hadn't expected that kind of answer.
"NO!! I won't let you!" Ranma yelled from the Shrine as she staggers out, looking a lot better than she had.
"It's the only way!" Amy yells back.
"I don't care. I won't let you go after all this..." Ranma said quietly.
"You said it yourself Amy. We can only be friends because of all the problems in your life."
"That no longer matters, two of them have solved themselves. Ukyo has pretty much given up and Akane has Ryoga, Shampoo is dead according to what I just heard. You're all I have left Amy...please don't do this."
"Ranko if the circumstances were reversed it wouldn't stop you from sacrificing yourself. I don't think you would even hesitate to end your life to save the others if you had to. How does that make us so different?"
"I l-lo...care for you." Blush. "I don't want you to go away and not come back."
"I love you too, why do you think I have tried so hard to stay in this world after all this time. Even now I don't want to do this, but..."
"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!" A wailing Sailor Moon and Venus glomped both girl, scaring them half to death. "T-that was so b-beautiful!!"
Ranma and Amy turned bright red, they had forgotten the Scouts were there listening to them the whole time. "Baka!" Amy said and batted Ranma on the head with a tiny hammer made of air.
"Owww." Ranma complained, trying to hide a grin as she held her head.
"Amy. Let's get back to the matter at hand. Do you think that Siefried may have wanted you to kill yourself?"
"I don't know anymore Mercury, it may be possible that was his whole intention from the beginning. Make me kill myself so that he could gain free reign on his plane to do as he wishes..."
"I think you just hit it on the nose Amy, without you or Guardian Knight here, we have no chance of defeating him. I also think that Guardian Knight here is a wild card he hadn't counted on, he probably figured that his monsters would take care of us easily, then would move on to overwhelming you. He could do as he pleased and make this world over in whatever image he wanted." Mars said from the side.
"Hey, I have an idea..." Grandfather Hino said as he raised his hand.
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It was later that afternoon and Ranma was feeling much better, her healing abilities along with her Guardian Knight powers had fixed her up and all of them had decided to call it a day so that they could get some rest. They had spent the last six hours trying to come up with a decent plan to defeat Siefried. The old man's idea was actually pretty good one, but for it to work the thing would have to be on a scale the size of Tokyo itself.
They had tabled the idea and attempted to come up with others that would not have been as tricky or as dangerous as that one. Amy had also spent most of the day considering her options for the coming battle and had come to the conclusion that there was no way they could win unless she used her ultimate technique. She had spent about an hour explaining bits and pieces of her history to the Scouts, detailing several battles where she and several others had fought these things before and what the usual outcome was in those fights.
Unlike this world where the Scouts battled their enemies with all their heart and eventually won with a happy ending, in most cases, Amy had stressed to all of them that to beat one of these monsters would require great sacrifices on all their parts. Not once in the millennia that these things had been plaguing humans had one of them been defeated easily and was usually done at the expense of a lot of lives. They would fight tooth and nail until they were overwhelmed and destroyed entirely.
Amy could tell that her descriptions of some of the most basic battles, which she edited, had scared the daylights out of the Scouts. Even Ranma had turned a little pale as she described some of the sacrifices required to bring these monsters over into this world.
At the same time she stressed to all of them at that the use of the Silver Crystal would probably bring the odds of his defeat back into their favor after she fired off her ultimate attack. That statement had the Scouts pressing her for details on the nature and the power of this attack, but since Amy didn't want them to worry about the consequences if she was to fail, she only gave them a vague description of its power and its abilities.
"The Megasphere Blast is my final attack and one that I only ever use in the most extreme of emergencies. I normally use a powered down version of this that all you girls know of as my Nova Cannon, the same one that I used to defeat that monster the other day when me and Ranko started to help you out."
All the Scouts nodded as they remembered that attack.
"The Megasphere Blast is best described as a blast of energy that is about 1000 times more powerful than what you guys witnessed that day. Firing that off is going to drain me almost completely, so the rest of you are going to have to be ready to step in and take over the fight after that." Amy said coldly.
"What exactly will be my part in this?" Ranma asked.
"I'm not sure yet, but I'm going to be training you for the next several days to get you ready to takeover this fight once I've put everything I have into that blast, it is for this kind of fight that techniques like the 'Ascension of the Dragon God' were created in the first place. You just have a few steps to go before you master the technique completely and will become extremely dangerous. This is the same level of power that had Cologne so nervous a few weeks back when she wanted to erase the Ascension of the Dragon God Technique from your mind."
"Oh yeah, I had forgotten that she didn't like the attack all that much." Ranma said nervously. "Um..were going to set this plan in motion in a few days, is that enough time to train me in the last couple of steps?"
"It should be, but we will be pushing you to your limits Ranko."
Ranma nodded.
After that they had said good bye to everyone and headed back to the Tendo dojo to begin the final training, Ranma was in a hurry to learn it. Amy was amazed that it had been just that morning that they left to do a bit of training in the park, but it had only been about 6 hours or so since they were sparring for the fun of it.
Now they were returning from a war that was threatening to overwhelm the entire planet in darkness. Ranma and Amy were lost in their own thoughts when they arrived home. There was this feeling in the air that both girls missed because they were distracted with each other.
"I can't believe what has happened today." Ranma said.
"We all have to make a choice some time Ranma, I'm glad you finally made yours."
Ranma sighed. "But look at the price Amy, was it worth that much pain?"
"This situation can be blamed on your father Ranma, blame him."
"Maybe, but I just can't drop my responsibilities that easily. It is hard for me to do this, even restoring all the Tendo's memories after pop took them away took a lot of courage from me. I almost didn't do it."
"Why?"
"They would have been happier the way they were before this all started."
"It's easier to live in reality Ranma."
"I know, but with things the way they were I could have had a chance to make up with Ryoga. Then there was Akane, the two of us have been getting along better since you showed up, thought it was touch and go for a while there."
"Ranma."
The two girl's turned and saw a woman step out of the Tendo home. She was dressed in a kimono and carrying her sword. "Mom?" Ranma asked, eyeing the sword nervously.
"We have some things to discus tonight. Meet me and the others in the dinning room when you get changed back."
"Alright mom, I'll be just a few minutes." Ranma said and ran into the house.
Nodoka turned to Amy. "What exactly are your intentions towards Ranma?"
"Do you want the blunt full truth answer or the flowery evasive answer?" Amy asked.
Nodoka blinked. "The truth please."
"I hope to make him my husband and to train him up to be one of the strongest fighters in the world."
"And?"
"Two hours after I met him I fell in lust with him Mrs. Saotome, it took till the end of the day for that to turn to love. He already has several fiancé's, so I decided to keep my feelings to myself and let him do as he wanted. Then Mr. Saotome did something stupid and basically destroyed any relationship Ranma may have had with Akane and I changed my mind. I want him and her in every way of the word." Amy said.
Nodoka smiled. "He is so manly!"
"Quite true." Amy said with a grin.
"You said you could train him to be an even better fighter?"
"I'm teaching him on of the more powerful techniques right now, it's strong enough to blow up entire mountains if used at full force. If he masters it, I have a few others that he can learn to augment it."
"Oh, that sounds like a fine idea though I'm surprised that you know these things."
Amy just grinned. "Where I come from, the women can hit just as hard as the men."
"Really?"
"Oh yes."
"What about weapon techniques?" Nodoka asked, pointing at her katana.
Amy grinned and held out her hand. "We have learned to rely on more useful tools than those, though I rarely use them anymore." A ball of light formed in Amy's hand and it turned into a solid ball of red light. Then it seemed to morph and extend until it was shaped just like a fill sized katana, glowing slightly as she waved it back and forth.
"Oh my!" Nodoka said, feeling envious and proud of the girl her son seemed to be trying to win.
"There are others who are better with these than me Mrs. Saotome, but I know how to use them. Like Ranma I prefer to use unarmed skills when needed, I use these more for demonstrations of Ki control than anything else.
Nodoka blinked. "I see, well shall we head inside?"
"Sure, I'm curious about what you wanted to talk about." Amy said, grinning in amusement at the woman's glazed eyes. She relaxed and let the Ki blade vanish back into her aura.
They headed inside and Amy sat down beside Nabiki as Nodoka took up guard at the head of the table. The entire family was there for the meeting, Soun and Genma were looking angrily at Ranma as he came down stairs and took up his place beside Akane. Neither of the teens looked at each other, though Akane had developed a light colored red aura that was flaring around her as she seethed.
"Son?" Nodoka said.
"Yeah mom?"
"Can you tell me what happened between you and Akane that forced you to break the promise between Genma and Soun?"
"I didn't break the promise mother."
"Don't lie to me Ranma." Nodoka said, fingering the katana.
"Akane chose to marry Ryoga mother, she broke the arrangement between the families, not me."
"Ranma!" Akane growled.
"Pops and Mr. Tendo didn't agree with her decision so they used the Xi Fa Xiang Gao technique to remove everybody's memories mom, they made things the way they were before Akane chose Ryoga over me."
"That isn't what your father said Ranma."
"Whatever he said was probably meant to make him seem like the victim here, he's done if for years." Ranma said, glaring an his father. For once Genma didn't act like he was supposed to, slightly embarrassed and sweating nervously, instead he glared right back and seemed quite angry at those around him. His muscles were tense and strained as if he was expecting to go into battle at any moment.
Amy didn't like the looks of this and glanced over at him to get a reading on his aura, she noticed that it was attracting bands of black energy like a low powered magnet. She turned and looked everyone over as quickly as she could, they were all being affected in some way, even Kasumi.
Why hadn't she noticed it before? She wondered. Akane was the worst, she was being influenced in such a way that she seemed to barely be in control at the moment and was about ready to explode. This wasn't good, it was even worse than night all the martial artists attacked at once and she hadn't been able to put up a decent defense. She turned to tell Ranma, but was interrupted when all hell broke loose.
Genma growled and Amy saw an actual aura flare around him for a brief second as he launched himself at Ranma with a speed that he had never used before. Amy just reacted, grabbing Nabiki, she rolled them away just at the table was turned to splinters.
They stopped just in time to see Akane push Kasumi and Nodoka out of the way and for Ranma to be punched through the wall and into the furo on the other side. He impacted against the far wall and slumped to the ground, groaning in pain, but he was back up on his feet just as Genma stepped through the wall to confront him.
"Boy, your going to marry Akane and I won't take anymore excuses from you!" Genma shouted. "It's time for you to see just why I am your master boy, you will obey me or else!"
"Husband stop this!" Nodoka yelled, looking both pissed and...flushed.
"Or else what pop, you'll go panda and sit on me?" Ranma taunted.
"Ranma, he's being affected like Shampoo and Ukyo were the other day, be careful." Amy called.
Akane heard this and turned to growled at her, there was a huge amount of power being used against all of them. This didn't look good and Amy hadn't had time to prepare for anything like this, she had spent the whole day fighting and was in a very bad position if things got to out of hand.
Then Amy rolled away from the table as Akane stood up and shattered it with a single blow, the didn't seem to care about what kind of damage she was doing to her own house. Rolling to her feet Amy frowned, she needed at least a full nights sleep to deal with this kind of thing and she wasn't sure how to handle it at her current power level.
"So is Akane!"
Ranma paled as he watched the girl he cared about getting into yet another fight with his ex-fiancé, and then he turned and looked Genma over and nodded as he took up his newest stance. His face hardened as a huge aura flared up around him, it was a dark blue flame that roared up around him and nearly blew his father off his feet. It was more than enough to shatter some of the bathroom tilling and raise the dust into the air around him. "Bring it on old man, are you willing to level this house to punish me?" Ranma said in his coldest voice.
"You will marry Akane even if it is to your crippled corpse boy!" Genma snarled. "I've had enough of you avoiding your responsibilities!"
"You think I'm avoiding my responsibilities? Look who's talking old man, who sold me to every other family we came across so you could feed that bottomless pit you call a stomach? Who was it that has engaged me to over a dozen girl's because of your stomach old man? Huh?" Ranma taunted as he twisted around the old man's fist and kicked him in the face with his knee.
In the living room Nodoka gasped in shock as she learned even more of the truth of what had happened on that training trip. Little pieces of things she had heard from the Tendo girls and others began to come together for her, things she had been ignoring because she considered them impossible. "No..." She whispered.
Amy flipped to the side and blocked several of Akane's punches and redirected the girl's out of control aura away from everyone around her. She tossed the girl away and took a second to shake her head and moved to help a stunned Nabiki to her feet. Kasumi was still in shock and hadn't moved from her spot at the head of the table, there was a weird look on her face as she gazed at her little sister.
The youngest Tendo got to her feet with a dangerous look on her face and launcher herself at Amy, but was elbowed in the sternum and sent sprawling back to the floor. Wearily Amy moved to keep the rest of the family from getting harmed to much, but knew it was only a matter of time before her weakened condition would allow Akane to get the upper hand.
"Are you two alright?" Amy gasped out to the girls behind her, she noticed that Soun hadn't moved from where he was sitting. He just sat there in shock and watched what was going on around him as if trying to believe it.
"Yeah, it just caught me by surprise." Nabiki said, reevaluating her opinion of Amy.
"How about you Kasumi?"
Kasumi just gazed in horror at what was happening around her, unable to comprehend just what had caused it in the first place. "..."
"Can anyone tell me what is going on?" Soun asked in a stunned voice as he watched his best friend try to kill his own son.
"Genma is being influenced by his dark emotions." Amy answered.
"How do you know that?" Everyone asked.
"Read his aura, it is attracting dark elements like a magnet and those are amplifying his darker emotions."
"We have to stop them before this escalates." Soun said. "Genma stop this before you kill him!"
"Shut up! The boy is going to learn or die, there is no other options left!" Genma yelled as he punched Ranma in the head and kicked him in the back. Then he did something he hadn't done in years, he flared up with more power than Ranma had ever seen him use and surged forward to break through his defenses for a massive punch to his stomach, doubling Ranma over and sending him through the far wall of the property.
The wall exploded outward as Ranma flew out into the alley behind the Tendo dojo and barely managed to land and roll with the force of the landing. Correction, this was like fighting him when she was showing him the 'Ascension of the Dragon God' technique, it hurt just as much to, but he had never seen it used in this way before. Unlike his father though, Ranma had been learning how to control the massive power the move allowed and wasn't about to just roll up and die.
"Come on boy, you can do better than this pathetic defense." Genma said as he walked out of the hole in the wall, he was glowing a bright orange now and looked positively deranged.
"Old man, I'm tired of you always telling me what to do, this will be our final fight, do you understand? If I win this you will make me a master of the school, this is no holds barred."
"Agreed!" Genma yelled without hesitation.
"This is bad, they have been fighting each other for so long that they know how the other thinks and moves." Soun said as the family watched, he started when he heard a fist impacting flesh behind him and turned to see Amy hog tying Akane in the middle of the floor. "What are you doing?!"
"Akane is just as effected by this darkness as Genma, she will be fine until she lets the anger go." Amy said as she tapped the girl's sleep spot. She was a bit irritated that she hadn't been able to get to it during their fight, but Akane had encountered it somewhere before and knew how to defend against it with her new abilities and forced Amy to take her down the hard way.
She looked outside to see Ranma and Genma still going at with a savage with all the hatred in their bodies. "Other than the circumstances, it is about time Ranma went for his master's designation though, he should have been awarded that over a year ago." Amy said as she stood up. She hoped this would help things in the long run and it would help them with Siefried if Ranma was successful.
Nabiki nodded. "He should have done this several months ago."
"Aren't any of you worried about those two hurting each other?!" Nodoka yelled. "All I wanted to do was settle this engagement, not start a war!"
"Ranma will be perfectly fine Mrs. Saotome. He hasn't even come close to tapping his full power yet. Genma doesn't stand a chance." Amy said.
"Don't underestimate Genma, Miss. Lee, Genma is one of the Master's better students and was good enough to create his own school of martial arts." Soun said sadly, he had wanted to witness this for a long time now, but the circumstances had always been completely wrong. This was supposed to be a happy time, not a blood bath.
"It's a good thing I was in the area then or I would have never allowed this to be binding." Hopposai said as he landed on a rock by the Koi pond to observe the fight, he pulled out a pipe and lit it with a flare of Ki.
For once Soun kept his head and just nodded as he watched the fight, he had known the Master was around the area somewhere. Things had just come to this so quickly that he hadn't had time to think through the possible ramifications of this fight. After this if Ranma won he would never have to blindly obey again, he would be allowed to make his own decisions and take action when he saw fit. Soun just hoped that his friend didn't go overboard in his 'punishment' of his child, that would ruin all they had been striving to accomplish.
Outside the two men were moving at speeds that defied description, seemingly hovering twenty or so feet above the ground as they attacked each other. Their grunts and yells were echoing across the neighbor hood as they fought, their auras were such that they were lighting up the darkness around them. Genma yelled out as Ranma blocked his attack with his forearm and kicked him in the stomach, spun around and kicked him in the back of the head to send Genma flying back with a shower of sparks as their aura's clashed with each other.
From there the fight escalated until they had torn up the alley way, the Tendo back yard, the neighbors, and ended up in the abandoned lot across the street still trying to destroy each other. By this time they were also hurling Ki attacks at each other on every attack and block, leaving small craters in their wake as grisly reminders of just how strong each of them were.
Falling out of the sky, Ranma landed on his hands and used the momentum to kick Genma in the stomach as he came down on top of him. The old man went flying back, nearly out of control, but not before he launched a vacuum blade at his son. Ranma cried out as the thing cut deeply into his shoulder and had blood spray in his face and the ground around him. He rolled to his feet to his feet and growled, this fight wasn't going like he had figured, pops wasn't fighting like he usually did and that was giving him the advantage.
This time he was actually using his brain and using moves that could cripple or even kill him if they got too out of control. Ranma grinned as he decided that he liked this aspect of the old fart, it was change for the better really and was too bad it was because he was being affected by the dark energies gathering in his aura. For to many years the old man had been a coward and an idiot, but now he was showing just what he was capable of doing and it was quite remarkable, even worthy of respect.
With a little push of his Ki, Ranma flared up with power and lit up the entire area, doubling his power in a split second. He seemed to turn into a giant blue strobe light that pushed the old man back several feet and shattered the ground around his feet. Genma just scowled and copied the technique, flaring with pure Orange energy as he pitted his own strength against Ranma's aura. They smirked at each other and for the first time in all the time the Tendo's had known them, they finally saw the family resemblance of the two.
They rushed forward with a sonic boom and tore into each other like to mad men, moving so fast that only their after images were seen, but every now and then they would crash into the wall or a nearby house in an explosion of debris. Refusing to give into the other and determined to take this fight to the ultimate level, nothing else would be as satisfying.
As the fight progressed everyone that knew Genma was amazed that the coward and dishonorable fool could pull off anything like this. Usually he couldn't go to long against Ranma full fury, but this time he was shrugging off blows that would have killed anyone else. Still, the outcome was a given and Ranma pulled feint and wrist lock throw to send Genma into the ground with a mighty thump. Ranma came down on top of him and landed with his fist buried in the old man's stomach and blowing all the air out of his lungs with a Ki filled concussion blast.
"Good fight old man, I didn't think you had it in you to force me to power up this much. I'm amazed actually, speechless, and down right impressed." Ranma hissed into Genma's ear as he tapped several pressure points he had learned from Dr. Tofu and Cologne. Genma fell back and passed out as they took effect. "To bad it's unlikely to ever happen again."
Ranma stumbled back a few steps and fell to his knees as everyone came running up to him. "Ranma are you alright? That looks like a nasty wound." Amy said as she examined his shoulder, Kasumi nodding with a concerned smile.
"It's nothing."
"Right." Amy and Nabiki dead panned, they smiled at each other.
Soun and Nodoka went over to Genma and spent some time examining him. They were surprised to find that he was only unconscious and undamaged. "Ranma, what did you do to him?" Soun called.
"I'm both impressed with what he did and disappointed in the old fart, I didn't want to kill him so I just hit him with several pressure points as we fought. Eventually he just lost so much energy that he was easy to defeat. Cologne once used a point to make Ryoga release all of his Ki after it built up to a dangerous level. I used it on him a little while ago. It just took a little time take effect. Now witness...did I win?"
"Congratulations Master Saotome Ranma!" Soun Yelled, after a quick look at Hopposai.
"It's about time. I've wanted to do that for a very long time." Ranma said as he staggered into the house.
A few minutes later Kasumi had him sitting on the porch and was tending to the cut on his shoulder, sewing up the wound and making sure it wasn't worse than they had thought.
**********
To Be Continued...
Due to the size of this there is a good chance that I will probably miss a mistake here and there. Let me know if any major one's are found. Check out my site to find out which chapters are edited and ready to be sent out.
Site - http http://shi_hanna.tripod.com
*********
Strange Days
Chapter 14
By: Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(C)2003
*********
Amy knew something was going to happen because of her presence, but even this was a lot worse than anything she could have ever imagined. Neptune and Uranus were dead, vaporized by Siefried's blast, she hadn't expected him to be that violent, mainly because of the natural goodness of this world. He should have been able to push the edge, but not go over it that easily.
On her home world his kind had been known to destroy entire cities if they didn't do what they were told, it had taken centuries of fighting and several generations of willing men and women to finally stop their dark ways and let peace reign again, but every now and then some fool would summon one of them and it would start all over again.
The last time one of these things had been free had been nearly fifty years before and the last of the Master Demon Hunters had died in the battle that ended the Dark Demons' time in power.
The Populace had been both pleased and scared, the Demon Hunters were a class of fighter so far above normal fighters that only certain family's practiced the art and had the talents needed to win. With all of them dead they had taken DNA samples from all the families and cloned all of her brothers and sisters, raising them to be the ultimate warriors for when needed.
It had happened about five years before and all of them had been sent against the Dark Demon, of the forty clones, five of them survived the battle and it had leveled most of the city and killed nearly a million people before the fighting stopped.
The win had cost them everything, the remaining people started to look for better ways to defeat the things without the massive loss of life and ignored and ridiculed them as if they had been the cause of it in the first place. In secret they had all trained and trained for nearly four years and in that time they had learned many lessons.
They had also started to learn other things as well and had taken up jobs with certain Gods that used people like them to help others. She had killed innocents, destroyed lives, but on the other hand she had saved countless lives and they balanced each other out. Still it had caused her to change from the innocent being she had been born as and to turn into to a cold fighting machine she had been before coming to this world.
She had spent years learning to hide her emotions, to ignore her body's natural reactions and to control every aspect of her life. Then she had been kidnapped by this bastard and he had...changed her in way she couldn't understand.
The Gods had learned to depend on her and her remaining family as the time slowly passed for them. Then had come the secret war of Dark Demons that had taken place without anyone knowing. Five of the fuckers had been let loose upon an unsuspecting world that was still in the dark ages of it's evolution, Amy remembered that over 20 hunters had been sent through to defend that world.
The only survivors of that battle had been her and a few of her sisters. Most of them had had been driven insane by the Dark Demons evil perversions and methods. That fight had brought them many victories and enough blood to fill an ocean, they had learned how to use their powers on whole new levels as they fought, improvising attacks on the fly to catch them by surprise so that they couldn't adapt so quickly. Even worse was that those five had been able to find and use the summoning spells to bring more of their kind through to help them, even now she had the occasional nightmare about it.
Amy looked outside as she tried to decide the best way to end this battle, the only thing she could come up with is her ultimate attack. She had only ever practiced it a few times and that had been out in deep space where witnesses were very rare. She looked at her hands and remembered what happened whenever she used the full power of the attack, a shudder went through her, even worse than she had expected.
This would be a one time deal once she fired it off, after that she was as good as dead if she failed to kill the bastard. Amy looked over at Ranma on the bed beside her, the red head was in really bad shape, but Rei's grandfather had taken her in and said he would help out one of the city defenders gratefully. The old man's wink had startled her for a second, then she had laughed at him as she understood. He knew about Sailor Mars and her group.
Suddenly there is a loud commotion outside and Amy runs for the front of the shrine, the sounds of battle can be heard and she wonders what in the world is going on now. She skids out the front door and sees the Scouts falling to the ground as some kind of sleep gas and a dark blur moves among them and takes them out one by one.
Who the hell could take the Scouts this fast, was the first thing that went through Amy's mind as she surveyed the area, but the blur had vanished the instant she stepped outside. She noticed one of those concealed pockets near the shadows to the side of the shrine. There was movement in that little pocket and since she didn't want to deal with even more tricks today her arm came up and fired at it, turning a nearby tree into a hail of splinters with a concussion blast.
A small shape leapt out of the branches and moved faster than most mortals could move, but this was Amy. "Cologne, what are you doing here?"
The old woman stops and turns to face her and Amy takes in the old woman's new look. She has in a tiny ninja outfit like the pervert likes to wear, her long white hair done up into a long braid that wrapped around her shoulders. There were several magical amulets pined to her outfit, all of them glowing. "Damn, I didn't expect you to catch me this soon."
"Then why are you here?"
"It doesn't matter, you must be killed for my family's honor to be returned and I will do everything in my power to see to it that succeeds."
"That battle is between me an Shampoo old woman..."
"Shampoo is dead. Where she stopped I will take up the fight and regain our family honor."
"Oh please, the fight wasn't that bad and she was at fault anyways. As for the second fight, she was killed by the Outer Scouts when they fired on us as we fought, blame them. I was trying to take her down as softly as I could, without killing her."
"Lies, all of it, we saw what happened back at the village. She was carrying our most potent magical items as she fought you, we saw the truth of what you are demon and you are going to die before you take anymore lives down with you!" Cologne yelled as she stabbed her staff out to the right of Amy and fired off a beam of red light, she didn't even bother to dodge.
"What the hell was that?"
Cologne relaxed and hopped up on her staff to watch, her smile was evil as her eyes glowed. "3000 years of Amazon history has taught us a lot of lessons demon and the most potent one is to make your allies do the work for us."
"MARS FLAME SNIPER!!"
Amy dodged by instinct alone, her eyes wide with surprise, she jumped straight up in the air and flipped to the side as she landed. A number of little details were coming together in her mind as she ran, just how long had Cologne had one of the Sailors brainwashed like this? Mars had wanted her dead from the beginning and Amy had been pissed off ever since.
The girl had almost been one of the ones she took down a peg, but the time had never seemed right for some reason, and then Siefried had sent out his servants and she had devoted more time to that after she decided to call off her revenge against the Scouts for trying to kill her.
She heard the old woman cackling in the back round and Amy took note of the large bands of black that she had seen in the old woman's aura. She was a little relieved to know that this wasn't completely the old woman's fault and Shampoo's death must have been too much for her and driven her even further down this path. Amy spun and dodged as Mars powered up again, her eyes were blank, though a closer look revealed a couple of tears trailed down her cheeks as she fought against the thing making her do this.
"MARS FLAME SNIPER!!"
Amy didn't move this time, instead she brought up a shield and allowed it to deflect the arrow of fire at Cologne, at the same time she jumped forward and started to punch at Mars. The girl had training, but not enough, and Amy used a number of feints to confuse the girl and get her turned around. A quick blow to the back of the lower part of her head knocked her out, but Amy felt something break just as her fist impacted.
She hadn't hit that hard, she thought, as she bent down to check the girl. Amy moved the black hair to the side to reveal a small band of metal attached to Mar's neck. It had little claws imbedding it into her skin, her punch had caught the edge of it and broke it in half. Amy yanked it off and tossed it to the side where it flared for a second and disintegrated.
"Damn you demon, I will get my revenge on you if it is the last thing I do!" Cologne yelled and vanished in flare of light.
Amy breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed. "You can come on out old man, she is gone."
Rei's grandfather walked out of the Shrine and knelt down beside his granddaughter. He looked very worried as he examined his granddaughter's health. It surprised him to find that Amy hadn't hurt her all that much. "What did you take off of her neck?"
"Some kind of magical mind control device, I doubt she knew about it until it was used."
"How could she have not noticed it, she is always messing with her hair."
"Probably a suggestion to ignore it in some way, she shouldn't be after my blood any more, I hope."
Rei groaned and rolled her head to look up at Amy, a couple of tears running down her cheeks. "I'm sorry Amy. I never wanted to hurt you." Muttered Mars as she sat up and glared at her grandfather. "If you knew why I was being so secretive, why didn't you say anything, do you have any idea how relieved I would have been to be free of this secret? I never wanted to keep it in the first place."
"It was none of my business Rei. You're old enough to make your own decisions, why do you think I don't force you to do everything around here anymore? I even let you have your meetings by always taking Chad off the property at the perfect times. You never noticed?" Grandfather said innocently, his eyes wide and sparkling.
Mars sighs and looks back at Amy. "That old woman ambushed me on the way to our meeting at the school and made sure I would cause you problems. I couldn't resist her orders no matter how hard I tried."
"What about when Jupiter first attacked me?"
"That was all me, I had a vision in the Sacred Fire that showed you killing all the Scouts, I never even questioned it."
"I can forgive you I guess, but be more careful next time or I'll get my revenge on you too." Amy said with a lecherous smirk, rubbing her finger tip together.
Mar's blushed clear to her toes and the old man just looked confused.
"Amy?" Mercury asked.
She turned and noticed that the other Scouts were coming around, Sailor Moon was sitting up shaking her head, Mercury was beside her and looking over at them. Most of them were looking a little baffled as to what had happened, but silently decided look into it later.
"What?"
"Would it be possible for this Siefried to have affected Mar's fire reading in some way to cause you more problems and keep you off balance while he worked to gain a stronger food hold in this dimensions?"
Amy blinked and blinked again. "You know, I don't think he could have even come here without permission or being summoned. My presence may have had some effect on that, weakening the dimensional barriers with my illegal crossing and all that. I think you may be right Mercury, this all leads back to the day I first crossed over to this world. Why this world though, it is unsuited for his needs, Dark Demon's usually prefer places full of darkness and death. This world is actually a very peaceful one..."
"Amy, all of this leads back to you..." Mercury points out.
"...damn, it's so simple I didn't see it before. Thanks Mercury, that just ruins my whole day." Amy muttered.
"I don't understand." Moon said, looking confused.
"Her presence messed up the balance, but she is also maintaining the imbalance and that is allowing the other side to grow in power. If she leaves, the balance of good will shift back to us. This will give us that last little bit needed to win." Mercury said.
"Then we have a problem." Amy growled out.
"What do you mean?" Mercury asked.
"When Siefried sent me here, he cut off my source of power and all of you guys attacking me was depleting my much needed energies. At first I just absorbed a little energy out of the environment or from the demons that were out roaming around like that one from the mall.
Then the fighting got worse and worse and I ended up getting injured during a surge of darkness that affected a number of fighters in Nerima, I thought it was just a regular chaotic event created by the district. It may have been set in motion by Siefried instead and that event made me align my powers to this dimension."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that for the next twenty years I can't leave this world, and the only way left for me to leave is for me to die."
The Scouts all paled, they hadn't expected that kind of answer.
"NO!! I won't let you!" Ranma yelled from the Shrine as she staggers out, looking a lot better than she had.
"It's the only way!" Amy yells back.
"I don't care. I won't let you go after all this..." Ranma said quietly.
"You said it yourself Amy. We can only be friends because of all the problems in your life."
"That no longer matters, two of them have solved themselves. Ukyo has pretty much given up and Akane has Ryoga, Shampoo is dead according to what I just heard. You're all I have left Amy...please don't do this."
"Ranko if the circumstances were reversed it wouldn't stop you from sacrificing yourself. I don't think you would even hesitate to end your life to save the others if you had to. How does that make us so different?"
"I l-lo...care for you." Blush. "I don't want you to go away and not come back."
"I love you too, why do you think I have tried so hard to stay in this world after all this time. Even now I don't want to do this, but..."
"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!" A wailing Sailor Moon and Venus glomped both girl, scaring them half to death. "T-that was so b-beautiful!!"
Ranma and Amy turned bright red, they had forgotten the Scouts were there listening to them the whole time. "Baka!" Amy said and batted Ranma on the head with a tiny hammer made of air.
"Owww." Ranma complained, trying to hide a grin as she held her head.
"Amy. Let's get back to the matter at hand. Do you think that Siefried may have wanted you to kill yourself?"
"I don't know anymore Mercury, it may be possible that was his whole intention from the beginning. Make me kill myself so that he could gain free reign on his plane to do as he wishes..."
"I think you just hit it on the nose Amy, without you or Guardian Knight here, we have no chance of defeating him. I also think that Guardian Knight here is a wild card he hadn't counted on, he probably figured that his monsters would take care of us easily, then would move on to overwhelming you. He could do as he pleased and make this world over in whatever image he wanted." Mars said from the side.
"Hey, I have an idea..." Grandfather Hino said as he raised his hand.
**********
It was later that afternoon and Ranma was feeling much better, her healing abilities along with her Guardian Knight powers had fixed her up and all of them had decided to call it a day so that they could get some rest. They had spent the last six hours trying to come up with a decent plan to defeat Siefried. The old man's idea was actually pretty good one, but for it to work the thing would have to be on a scale the size of Tokyo itself.
They had tabled the idea and attempted to come up with others that would not have been as tricky or as dangerous as that one. Amy had also spent most of the day considering her options for the coming battle and had come to the conclusion that there was no way they could win unless she used her ultimate technique. She had spent about an hour explaining bits and pieces of her history to the Scouts, detailing several battles where she and several others had fought these things before and what the usual outcome was in those fights.
Unlike this world where the Scouts battled their enemies with all their heart and eventually won with a happy ending, in most cases, Amy had stressed to all of them that to beat one of these monsters would require great sacrifices on all their parts. Not once in the millennia that these things had been plaguing humans had one of them been defeated easily and was usually done at the expense of a lot of lives. They would fight tooth and nail until they were overwhelmed and destroyed entirely.
Amy could tell that her descriptions of some of the most basic battles, which she edited, had scared the daylights out of the Scouts. Even Ranma had turned a little pale as she described some of the sacrifices required to bring these monsters over into this world.
At the same time she stressed to all of them at that the use of the Silver Crystal would probably bring the odds of his defeat back into their favor after she fired off her ultimate attack. That statement had the Scouts pressing her for details on the nature and the power of this attack, but since Amy didn't want them to worry about the consequences if she was to fail, she only gave them a vague description of its power and its abilities.
"The Megasphere Blast is my final attack and one that I only ever use in the most extreme of emergencies. I normally use a powered down version of this that all you girls know of as my Nova Cannon, the same one that I used to defeat that monster the other day when me and Ranko started to help you out."
All the Scouts nodded as they remembered that attack.
"The Megasphere Blast is best described as a blast of energy that is about 1000 times more powerful than what you guys witnessed that day. Firing that off is going to drain me almost completely, so the rest of you are going to have to be ready to step in and take over the fight after that." Amy said coldly.
"What exactly will be my part in this?" Ranma asked.
"I'm not sure yet, but I'm going to be training you for the next several days to get you ready to takeover this fight once I've put everything I have into that blast, it is for this kind of fight that techniques like the 'Ascension of the Dragon God' were created in the first place. You just have a few steps to go before you master the technique completely and will become extremely dangerous. This is the same level of power that had Cologne so nervous a few weeks back when she wanted to erase the Ascension of the Dragon God Technique from your mind."
"Oh yeah, I had forgotten that she didn't like the attack all that much." Ranma said nervously. "Um..were going to set this plan in motion in a few days, is that enough time to train me in the last couple of steps?"
"It should be, but we will be pushing you to your limits Ranko."
Ranma nodded.
After that they had said good bye to everyone and headed back to the Tendo dojo to begin the final training, Ranma was in a hurry to learn it. Amy was amazed that it had been just that morning that they left to do a bit of training in the park, but it had only been about 6 hours or so since they were sparring for the fun of it.
Now they were returning from a war that was threatening to overwhelm the entire planet in darkness. Ranma and Amy were lost in their own thoughts when they arrived home. There was this feeling in the air that both girls missed because they were distracted with each other.
"I can't believe what has happened today." Ranma said.
"We all have to make a choice some time Ranma, I'm glad you finally made yours."
Ranma sighed. "But look at the price Amy, was it worth that much pain?"
"This situation can be blamed on your father Ranma, blame him."
"Maybe, but I just can't drop my responsibilities that easily. It is hard for me to do this, even restoring all the Tendo's memories after pop took them away took a lot of courage from me. I almost didn't do it."
"Why?"
"They would have been happier the way they were before this all started."
"It's easier to live in reality Ranma."
"I know, but with things the way they were I could have had a chance to make up with Ryoga. Then there was Akane, the two of us have been getting along better since you showed up, thought it was touch and go for a while there."
"Ranma."
The two girl's turned and saw a woman step out of the Tendo home. She was dressed in a kimono and carrying her sword. "Mom?" Ranma asked, eyeing the sword nervously.
"We have some things to discus tonight. Meet me and the others in the dinning room when you get changed back."
"Alright mom, I'll be just a few minutes." Ranma said and ran into the house.
Nodoka turned to Amy. "What exactly are your intentions towards Ranma?"
"Do you want the blunt full truth answer or the flowery evasive answer?" Amy asked.
Nodoka blinked. "The truth please."
"I hope to make him my husband and to train him up to be one of the strongest fighters in the world."
"And?"
"Two hours after I met him I fell in lust with him Mrs. Saotome, it took till the end of the day for that to turn to love. He already has several fiancé's, so I decided to keep my feelings to myself and let him do as he wanted. Then Mr. Saotome did something stupid and basically destroyed any relationship Ranma may have had with Akane and I changed my mind. I want him and her in every way of the word." Amy said.
Nodoka smiled. "He is so manly!"
"Quite true." Amy said with a grin.
"You said you could train him to be an even better fighter?"
"I'm teaching him on of the more powerful techniques right now, it's strong enough to blow up entire mountains if used at full force. If he masters it, I have a few others that he can learn to augment it."
"Oh, that sounds like a fine idea though I'm surprised that you know these things."
Amy just grinned. "Where I come from, the women can hit just as hard as the men."
"Really?"
"Oh yes."
"What about weapon techniques?" Nodoka asked, pointing at her katana.
Amy grinned and held out her hand. "We have learned to rely on more useful tools than those, though I rarely use them anymore." A ball of light formed in Amy's hand and it turned into a solid ball of red light. Then it seemed to morph and extend until it was shaped just like a fill sized katana, glowing slightly as she waved it back and forth.
"Oh my!" Nodoka said, feeling envious and proud of the girl her son seemed to be trying to win.
"There are others who are better with these than me Mrs. Saotome, but I know how to use them. Like Ranma I prefer to use unarmed skills when needed, I use these more for demonstrations of Ki control than anything else.
Nodoka blinked. "I see, well shall we head inside?"
"Sure, I'm curious about what you wanted to talk about." Amy said, grinning in amusement at the woman's glazed eyes. She relaxed and let the Ki blade vanish back into her aura.
They headed inside and Amy sat down beside Nabiki as Nodoka took up guard at the head of the table. The entire family was there for the meeting, Soun and Genma were looking angrily at Ranma as he came down stairs and took up his place beside Akane. Neither of the teens looked at each other, though Akane had developed a light colored red aura that was flaring around her as she seethed.
"Son?" Nodoka said.
"Yeah mom?"
"Can you tell me what happened between you and Akane that forced you to break the promise between Genma and Soun?"
"I didn't break the promise mother."
"Don't lie to me Ranma." Nodoka said, fingering the katana.
"Akane chose to marry Ryoga mother, she broke the arrangement between the families, not me."
"Ranma!" Akane growled.
"Pops and Mr. Tendo didn't agree with her decision so they used the Xi Fa Xiang Gao technique to remove everybody's memories mom, they made things the way they were before Akane chose Ryoga over me."
"That isn't what your father said Ranma."
"Whatever he said was probably meant to make him seem like the victim here, he's done if for years." Ranma said, glaring an his father. For once Genma didn't act like he was supposed to, slightly embarrassed and sweating nervously, instead he glared right back and seemed quite angry at those around him. His muscles were tense and strained as if he was expecting to go into battle at any moment.
Amy didn't like the looks of this and glanced over at him to get a reading on his aura, she noticed that it was attracting bands of black energy like a low powered magnet. She turned and looked everyone over as quickly as she could, they were all being affected in some way, even Kasumi.
Why hadn't she noticed it before? She wondered. Akane was the worst, she was being influenced in such a way that she seemed to barely be in control at the moment and was about ready to explode. This wasn't good, it was even worse than night all the martial artists attacked at once and she hadn't been able to put up a decent defense. She turned to tell Ranma, but was interrupted when all hell broke loose.
Genma growled and Amy saw an actual aura flare around him for a brief second as he launched himself at Ranma with a speed that he had never used before. Amy just reacted, grabbing Nabiki, she rolled them away just at the table was turned to splinters.
They stopped just in time to see Akane push Kasumi and Nodoka out of the way and for Ranma to be punched through the wall and into the furo on the other side. He impacted against the far wall and slumped to the ground, groaning in pain, but he was back up on his feet just as Genma stepped through the wall to confront him.
"Boy, your going to marry Akane and I won't take anymore excuses from you!" Genma shouted. "It's time for you to see just why I am your master boy, you will obey me or else!"
"Husband stop this!" Nodoka yelled, looking both pissed and...flushed.
"Or else what pop, you'll go panda and sit on me?" Ranma taunted.
"Ranma, he's being affected like Shampoo and Ukyo were the other day, be careful." Amy called.
Akane heard this and turned to growled at her, there was a huge amount of power being used against all of them. This didn't look good and Amy hadn't had time to prepare for anything like this, she had spent the whole day fighting and was in a very bad position if things got to out of hand.
Then Amy rolled away from the table as Akane stood up and shattered it with a single blow, the didn't seem to care about what kind of damage she was doing to her own house. Rolling to her feet Amy frowned, she needed at least a full nights sleep to deal with this kind of thing and she wasn't sure how to handle it at her current power level.
"So is Akane!"
Ranma paled as he watched the girl he cared about getting into yet another fight with his ex-fiancé, and then he turned and looked Genma over and nodded as he took up his newest stance. His face hardened as a huge aura flared up around him, it was a dark blue flame that roared up around him and nearly blew his father off his feet. It was more than enough to shatter some of the bathroom tilling and raise the dust into the air around him. "Bring it on old man, are you willing to level this house to punish me?" Ranma said in his coldest voice.
"You will marry Akane even if it is to your crippled corpse boy!" Genma snarled. "I've had enough of you avoiding your responsibilities!"
"You think I'm avoiding my responsibilities? Look who's talking old man, who sold me to every other family we came across so you could feed that bottomless pit you call a stomach? Who was it that has engaged me to over a dozen girl's because of your stomach old man? Huh?" Ranma taunted as he twisted around the old man's fist and kicked him in the face with his knee.
In the living room Nodoka gasped in shock as she learned even more of the truth of what had happened on that training trip. Little pieces of things she had heard from the Tendo girls and others began to come together for her, things she had been ignoring because she considered them impossible. "No..." She whispered.
Amy flipped to the side and blocked several of Akane's punches and redirected the girl's out of control aura away from everyone around her. She tossed the girl away and took a second to shake her head and moved to help a stunned Nabiki to her feet. Kasumi was still in shock and hadn't moved from her spot at the head of the table, there was a weird look on her face as she gazed at her little sister.
The youngest Tendo got to her feet with a dangerous look on her face and launcher herself at Amy, but was elbowed in the sternum and sent sprawling back to the floor. Wearily Amy moved to keep the rest of the family from getting harmed to much, but knew it was only a matter of time before her weakened condition would allow Akane to get the upper hand.
"Are you two alright?" Amy gasped out to the girls behind her, she noticed that Soun hadn't moved from where he was sitting. He just sat there in shock and watched what was going on around him as if trying to believe it.
"Yeah, it just caught me by surprise." Nabiki said, reevaluating her opinion of Amy.
"How about you Kasumi?"
Kasumi just gazed in horror at what was happening around her, unable to comprehend just what had caused it in the first place. "..."
"Can anyone tell me what is going on?" Soun asked in a stunned voice as he watched his best friend try to kill his own son.
"Genma is being influenced by his dark emotions." Amy answered.
"How do you know that?" Everyone asked.
"Read his aura, it is attracting dark elements like a magnet and those are amplifying his darker emotions."
"We have to stop them before this escalates." Soun said. "Genma stop this before you kill him!"
"Shut up! The boy is going to learn or die, there is no other options left!" Genma yelled as he punched Ranma in the head and kicked him in the back. Then he did something he hadn't done in years, he flared up with more power than Ranma had ever seen him use and surged forward to break through his defenses for a massive punch to his stomach, doubling Ranma over and sending him through the far wall of the property.
The wall exploded outward as Ranma flew out into the alley behind the Tendo dojo and barely managed to land and roll with the force of the landing. Correction, this was like fighting him when she was showing him the 'Ascension of the Dragon God' technique, it hurt just as much to, but he had never seen it used in this way before. Unlike his father though, Ranma had been learning how to control the massive power the move allowed and wasn't about to just roll up and die.
"Come on boy, you can do better than this pathetic defense." Genma said as he walked out of the hole in the wall, he was glowing a bright orange now and looked positively deranged.
"Old man, I'm tired of you always telling me what to do, this will be our final fight, do you understand? If I win this you will make me a master of the school, this is no holds barred."
"Agreed!" Genma yelled without hesitation.
"This is bad, they have been fighting each other for so long that they know how the other thinks and moves." Soun said as the family watched, he started when he heard a fist impacting flesh behind him and turned to see Amy hog tying Akane in the middle of the floor. "What are you doing?!"
"Akane is just as effected by this darkness as Genma, she will be fine until she lets the anger go." Amy said as she tapped the girl's sleep spot. She was a bit irritated that she hadn't been able to get to it during their fight, but Akane had encountered it somewhere before and knew how to defend against it with her new abilities and forced Amy to take her down the hard way.
She looked outside to see Ranma and Genma still going at with a savage with all the hatred in their bodies. "Other than the circumstances, it is about time Ranma went for his master's designation though, he should have been awarded that over a year ago." Amy said as she stood up. She hoped this would help things in the long run and it would help them with Siefried if Ranma was successful.
Nabiki nodded. "He should have done this several months ago."
"Aren't any of you worried about those two hurting each other?!" Nodoka yelled. "All I wanted to do was settle this engagement, not start a war!"
"Ranma will be perfectly fine Mrs. Saotome. He hasn't even come close to tapping his full power yet. Genma doesn't stand a chance." Amy said.
"Don't underestimate Genma, Miss. Lee, Genma is one of the Master's better students and was good enough to create his own school of martial arts." Soun said sadly, he had wanted to witness this for a long time now, but the circumstances had always been completely wrong. This was supposed to be a happy time, not a blood bath.
"It's a good thing I was in the area then or I would have never allowed this to be binding." Hopposai said as he landed on a rock by the Koi pond to observe the fight, he pulled out a pipe and lit it with a flare of Ki.
For once Soun kept his head and just nodded as he watched the fight, he had known the Master was around the area somewhere. Things had just come to this so quickly that he hadn't had time to think through the possible ramifications of this fight. After this if Ranma won he would never have to blindly obey again, he would be allowed to make his own decisions and take action when he saw fit. Soun just hoped that his friend didn't go overboard in his 'punishment' of his child, that would ruin all they had been striving to accomplish.
Outside the two men were moving at speeds that defied description, seemingly hovering twenty or so feet above the ground as they attacked each other. Their grunts and yells were echoing across the neighbor hood as they fought, their auras were such that they were lighting up the darkness around them. Genma yelled out as Ranma blocked his attack with his forearm and kicked him in the stomach, spun around and kicked him in the back of the head to send Genma flying back with a shower of sparks as their aura's clashed with each other.
From there the fight escalated until they had torn up the alley way, the Tendo back yard, the neighbors, and ended up in the abandoned lot across the street still trying to destroy each other. By this time they were also hurling Ki attacks at each other on every attack and block, leaving small craters in their wake as grisly reminders of just how strong each of them were.
Falling out of the sky, Ranma landed on his hands and used the momentum to kick Genma in the stomach as he came down on top of him. The old man went flying back, nearly out of control, but not before he launched a vacuum blade at his son. Ranma cried out as the thing cut deeply into his shoulder and had blood spray in his face and the ground around him. He rolled to his feet to his feet and growled, this fight wasn't going like he had figured, pops wasn't fighting like he usually did and that was giving him the advantage.
This time he was actually using his brain and using moves that could cripple or even kill him if they got too out of control. Ranma grinned as he decided that he liked this aspect of the old fart, it was change for the better really and was too bad it was because he was being affected by the dark energies gathering in his aura. For to many years the old man had been a coward and an idiot, but now he was showing just what he was capable of doing and it was quite remarkable, even worthy of respect.
With a little push of his Ki, Ranma flared up with power and lit up the entire area, doubling his power in a split second. He seemed to turn into a giant blue strobe light that pushed the old man back several feet and shattered the ground around his feet. Genma just scowled and copied the technique, flaring with pure Orange energy as he pitted his own strength against Ranma's aura. They smirked at each other and for the first time in all the time the Tendo's had known them, they finally saw the family resemblance of the two.
They rushed forward with a sonic boom and tore into each other like to mad men, moving so fast that only their after images were seen, but every now and then they would crash into the wall or a nearby house in an explosion of debris. Refusing to give into the other and determined to take this fight to the ultimate level, nothing else would be as satisfying.
As the fight progressed everyone that knew Genma was amazed that the coward and dishonorable fool could pull off anything like this. Usually he couldn't go to long against Ranma full fury, but this time he was shrugging off blows that would have killed anyone else. Still, the outcome was a given and Ranma pulled feint and wrist lock throw to send Genma into the ground with a mighty thump. Ranma came down on top of him and landed with his fist buried in the old man's stomach and blowing all the air out of his lungs with a Ki filled concussion blast.
"Good fight old man, I didn't think you had it in you to force me to power up this much. I'm amazed actually, speechless, and down right impressed." Ranma hissed into Genma's ear as he tapped several pressure points he had learned from Dr. Tofu and Cologne. Genma fell back and passed out as they took effect. "To bad it's unlikely to ever happen again."
Ranma stumbled back a few steps and fell to his knees as everyone came running up to him. "Ranma are you alright? That looks like a nasty wound." Amy said as she examined his shoulder, Kasumi nodding with a concerned smile.
"It's nothing."
"Right." Amy and Nabiki dead panned, they smiled at each other.
Soun and Nodoka went over to Genma and spent some time examining him. They were surprised to find that he was only unconscious and undamaged. "Ranma, what did you do to him?" Soun called.
"I'm both impressed with what he did and disappointed in the old fart, I didn't want to kill him so I just hit him with several pressure points as we fought. Eventually he just lost so much energy that he was easy to defeat. Cologne once used a point to make Ryoga release all of his Ki after it built up to a dangerous level. I used it on him a little while ago. It just took a little time take effect. Now witness...did I win?"
"Congratulations Master Saotome Ranma!" Soun Yelled, after a quick look at Hopposai.
"It's about time. I've wanted to do that for a very long time." Ranma said as he staggered into the house.
A few minutes later Kasumi had him sitting on the porch and was tending to the cut on his shoulder, sewing up the wound and making sure it wasn't worse than they had thought.
**********
To Be Continued...