Notes -
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The Replacement
Chapter 07
Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(c) 2002
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Two weeks ago it had been a tower, a tower that was once the center piece to a large city that had dominated everything within sight. Then over the course of just seven days a force of ungodly power had swept the city and thousands of others like it off the face of the earth and left nothing but shattered rubble in it's wake. The only thing to survive had been the tower and even it's purpose had been lost to the sands of time and fragile human memory. Over ten thousand years had passed since that time so long ago and the tower had stood undefeated through it all, surviving everything from tornados, to fire, to the most powerful of elements the planet had to throw at it. But as with all things it's strength had lessened with time and no one was there to make sure it stayed strong. Instead it just grew older and older, lost deep within the woods where no human being had ever seen it, or even recognized it for what it truly was. No, this tower of crystal that had once shone like a beacon in the night was itself now a pile of scorched and darkened rubble. Finally reduced to insignificance by a storm unlike anyone had ever seen.
It's purpose was unknown, but it's destruction had taken a mix of age, fire, wind, and the grand daddy of all lightning bolts to finally break the tower's hold and crack it open like an egg. Whatever was inside had been all but destroyed by the fire or blown away on the winds, but even then three floors of the tower still stood and most of the contents intact even after ten thousand years of neglect. Even now portions of the forest that had grown around the tower continued to burn and send a pillar of smoke high into the sky to tell of the fall of something nature had been trying to reclaim for thousands of years. This tower, you see, was a construction of Magic. By design and purpose and it was still strong enough to last another ten thousand years even in its current state. It had the potential to be dangerous if it's remaining store of knowledge and magic fell into the wrong hands. The wards that had been there to keep people from reaching the tower were no longer in place. Weakened by the fire and destroyed by the lightning. The contents of the top most floor had gone up in the explosion, sending things high into the air an landing as much as half a mile away. A couple hundred yards away, at the base of a smoldering tree, was a small cylinder.
It was about two feet long and several inches wide and nearly opaque with age. So it was impossible to see through the glass portion that made up it's center. A vague shape could be seen within its depths, but it wasn't moving and there didn't appear to be any way to even get into the device without breaking it. As the day slowly passed and the sun finally went down on the shattered tower, the world seemed to change in the blink of an eye. Several shadows moving from tree to tree converged on the tower and took up positions around it. They glided across the ground with ease that defied explanation. They rose up on the surviving trees and appeared to be look the area over for several minutes. Silently surveying everything around them. They didn't appear to have eyes, but as they moved around it was possible to tell that they were looking for something.
Here and there were the left over remains of a scroll or a book that the constant rain had kept from being destroyed in the fire that still raged around them. These were collected by the shadows by pulling them into their shadow like bodies when they touched that item with any part of their shadow. After several minutes they seemed to converge on the small pod and looked agitated as they waved their arms at each other in a silent argument for several seconds. In the end the pod was collected as well and they moved on to what remained of the tower and appeared to walk right through the walls. Using the shadows that the raging fire created all over the tower's surface they by passed the wards and entered the tower. From the outside nothing seemed to happen for close to an hour, but then the tower started to glow with a golden light shining from inside the structure. The light pushed itself out from every crack and hole and lit up the area for several minutes as it steadily increased in brightness and power.
With a rumble the land around the tower started to shimmer with energy as the light seemed to permeate this as well. Then in a sudden violent wave the fire around the tower was nearly blown out as a blast of energy exploded from the tower and it started to glow. In the blink of an eye it vanished, leaving a hole in the ground nearly a quarter of a mile deep and no signs at all that anything had ever been there in the first place. The golden energy washed over the devastated landscape and extinguished all the fires and blew the leaves off the closest trees for half a mile in ever direction.
At the same time, all across the world, items of power that had started to glow when the tower was brought down stopped glowing and lost whatever magic had caused them to react in the first place. One item had a different reaction, it was a small brown cat sleeping behind a dumpster in one of the seeder parts of Tokyo. Its brown fur was matted and grimy from years of living on the street. At the same time it was giving off a smell that could have dropped a dog at ten yards and had a set of claws peaking out from the ends of it's paws that could slice through nearly anything.
Between one second and the next it's eyes snapped open and started to glow with an eerie golden light. It opened its mouth to yowl in pain as the glow intensified and it brain started to heat up as if it was on fire. The pain was intense enough that the thing started to roll around in a panic, but the glow kept intensifying until it it's eyes rolled back up into it's head and it fell over gasping for air. The golden energy suddenly formed around it's head and started to shrink in on itself as it grew brighter and brighter. It centered in on it's forehead and took the shape of a wotans cross and burned the fur to a fine golden color and stabilized into cross shaped bit of fur. Its eyes snapped open and the cat looked up into the sky and truly saw the stars for first time in it's life and understood what she was seeing.
"Well $#%#, this is just what I need." The cat said to itself as it rolled to it's feet and looked down at it's body. "F&%$# Moon Magic strikes again." Then it's voice took on a higher pitched mocking tone. "Hey I got an idea, lets ruin the advisers lives by making them not only intelligent, but immortal as well. That way we never have to replace them and they can be subservient slaves forever and ever..."
"Damn those B&%#$!"
The cat sighed as it shook itself and tried to get a better idea of what had happened and ignored all the information cascading through its head. "I have to find the Princess and figure out what happened the others." It muttered to itself. "How the hell should I know where she might be? Probably bedding some outlander prince like they always did in the old days."
"Well Sol isn't going to take this body snatching $%&# sitting down!" It yelled out and swatted a trash can with it's hind legs and sent it flying out of the alley, arching over the street, and bouncing off some guys head. Instantly nearly knocking him out in the middle of the sidewalk, causing him to stagger several feet out into the road just as a bus was coming along. The screech of tires and screams of shock filled the background. Though Sol didn't seem to notice as she continued to grumble to herself. "I will figure out what the hell has happened and make that $%&# pay if the princess has been injured!"
"But first I need to take care of this little hair problem of mine." Sol muttered under her breath as she noticed that she was in major need of a good grooming. She licked her paw and started getting to work on the mess, then made a face and started spitting all over the sidewalk. "Someone is going to pay for doing this to me and when I get my paws on them they are going to be in a world of hurt!"
"The kitty is talking."
Sol turned and glared that the homeless bum sitting nearby, almost completely covered in garbage and papers. She wasn't even going to think about what he was wearing, looked like, or for the sake of her tortured nose, what he smelled like. The wotans cross on her forehead started to glow. "I do not need this crap right now human."
"You're cute."
Seconds later the alley lights up with a golden flash of energy that bursts from the mouth of the alley, startling several people who notice it, this is followed by a high pitched scream. As several people run from the scene or go to investigate a the small brown cat walks out of the alley looking as innocent as a smelly cat can without drawing to much notice. Then glares at all the people around her as they all start to smell something do by their feet and quickly leave the area as fast as they can. Then she hops up on the nearest fence and quickly begins to make her way down the street with her tail up in the air. Back in the alley there is a stunned homeless man laid out completely naked in the middle of the alley way in a pile of old boxes and rotting trash.
"I am not 'cute'." Sol mutters under her breath when she gets far enough away, then goes about looking for anything that might be familiar in any way. There had to be some reason why she had awoken, it wasn't often that the Earth Adviser was needed or even called to duty. Though there was one thing that she had to take care of above all others and that was making some improvements to her current body. How her Star Crystal had ended up in this mangy flee bag was beyond her, but there was no way she would allow things get any worse and that meant a bath. She shuddered, then after that would be a bit of grooming.
**********
Groaning in pain, Ranma crawled out of his sleeping bag and gasped for air as he held his ribs. Ryoga had worked him over pretty good, enough to have put him in the hospital for a few weeks if he hadn't had a magical healing ability to pull him back together in such a short time. Even now two days after the fight he felt like he had been kicked by a mule and was thanking the Kami that he didn't have to be back in school for another three weeks. By then, according to Ami, he should be back to normal. The only problem was that in about four days he had a fight with that girl and he knew that he wouldn't be ready for it. As he thought this he grabbed one of his silk shirts and grit his teeth as he slowly pulled it on over his bandages. He hadn't felt like this in a very long time, not since his old man had 'toughened' him up by subjecting his to an hour of being hit with a 2X4 on his legs, chest, back, and arms that one time a few years back. Oh that had been such a lovely and well meaning thing to experience.
The old fart hadn't held back either, hitting him as hard as he could and calling him a wimp when he fell down or he started bleeding. Enduring that once a week for three years had been mind numbingly painful, but it had worked, not matter how cruel the training itself was on the body. It normally took him about a week to recover from the training, though he was still forced, while injured, to go through the morning work out no matter how injured he was. The life of a martial artist is fraught with peril and all that crap, he had heard it enough times. So he had no plans to back out of his fight with that girl on the grounds that he was injured, she could throw those blasts of energy, but didn't seem to have any real training at all. Crawling to his knees he pulled his pants, socks, and a pair of shoes and backed his way out of the tent. Each step felt like someone was driving a red hot poker through his chest and side where Ryoga had bruised his internal organs.
The sun was just coming up as he stood up completely and looked into the sky. He had about an hour or so before Usagi showed up for their daily sparing. He hadn't been able to really do much the last few days, but she understood why he insisted she continue to show up. Surprisingly she had already started to unconsciously use a bit of that weird magical aura of hers in her sparing with him. Increasing her speed and sense of awareness ten fold. The only thing he couldn't get her to see was that he was teaching her how to fight, not a new sport. She did not have the drive that drove most fighters to do better and better, instead she learned simply because he said so. He didn't like that, but had been hesitant about pushing her on the subject because he really couldn't see any really good reason to change her. Her heart guided her in all her decisions and it made her fight defensively.
Anything Goes was a 'hard' art, designed for maximum damage and destruction. While Usagi would make an expert in judo and tai chi envious of her control and speed. Ranma didn't know those styles as well as once did, the old man had only covered the basics and let him adapt the moves into Anything Goes however he wished. To correct that he would have to practice them again, but with his current injuries he couldn't even call up his new gravity technique to work his muscles. Moving away from the tent he took up a soft stance and started to move through a couple of the kata he remembered that tai chi master showing him several years ago, running the lesson through his mind as he went from position to position. At the same time another part of his mind was filling his body with Ki and trying to speed up his healing abilities a bit. It would work to a certain extent if he kept it up for a few hours, but after that he would need to rest for a few hours.
He didn't pay any attention to the time as he ran through his morning work out and was quite surprised when he suddenly got a flash of something through his mind. Stopping, he looked around to see if something had distracted him, but the park was till quiet this early in the morning. Closing his eyes again he started over and focused his mind to speeding up his healing again, but there was another flash of something and he was just able to get a direction as he turned and looked out of the park entrance. There was something there, something he couldn't quite identify with all his experience as a fighter. Whatever it was it was growing stronger and heading this way at a high rate of speed.
Frowning, he stepped into a crouching stance beside a nearby tree and watched the area around him. The feeling was stronger now and he could feel apprehension and happiness within his mind along with something he had never experienced before. Figuring out emotions had never been a skill he could pick up with any accuracy. Then there was a flash of relief in the back of his mind and he watched as Usagi ran into the park at a full run, her long blond hair trailing out behind her. She ran over to his camp site and looked around and he felt a bit of worry and annoyance run through his mind. Shaking his head he stepped out from beside the tree and walked over to the campsite where Usagi had just ducked into his tent. Her legs were sticking out of the tent flap as he got close enough to get a good look at her pink shoes.
He smirked as she crawled the rest of the way in, turned around and stuck her head out the flap and glared at him. "Hi." He declared with a small wave.
"Where were you?"
"Over in those trees." He indicated with a flip of his thumb in the right direction.
"What in the world were you doing over there?" She asked.
"I felt something heading in this direction and thought it might be another enemy so I ducked back there to keep it from seeing me, then you come along..."
"You thought I was a monster?!" Usagi yells.
"I think it was the link we share, I could feel your emotions somewhat and I didn't know why until you came into the park."
Usagi crawled out of the tent and Ranma got a good look at her normal half shirt that showed off her belly and tight shorts. Just seeing it made him feel weird, kind of perverted, but he tried to not to show it as she gave him an odd look and smiled at him. "So what kind of training will we be doing today?"
"I had a few things in mind earlier, but I wasn't sure if you would want to learn them or not."
"Like what?"
"I was considering teaching you some of the soft martial arts styles, the ones where you can use your opponents strength against them instead of overpowering them in savage hand to hand combat. I was thinking of a few Tai Chi moves and perhaps some basic Judo."
"What about this Anything Goes you've been showing me?"
"These are going to be the Anything Goes versions of Tai Chi and Judo. The moves are very adaptable in a fight and can give your enemy quite a nasty surprise if you use them right."
"Sure!" Usagi gushed and blinked as she suddenly remembered something. "Oh yeah, Makoto wanted to know if she could come by and practice with you in the mornings."
Ranma froze for a second, on the verge of telling her no, when her eyes went huge and she was suddenly right before him begging him to accept. "PLEASE?!"
"Why?"
"She feels bad about what she did to you and wants to make up for it by making breakfast and sparing with you."
He frowned a little. "She tried to have me branded a pervert in front of the whole school and has been going out of her way to ignore me for over a week. Why now?"
Usagi sighed. "She and Minako both feel bad about the way they were treating you, that thing on the roof of the school you fought filled them with a kind of dark energy that made them act that way and after it was taken out instead of the energy going away like it normally does it just sat there and festered."
"Even Ami was treating me pretty badly Usagi, though no where near as bad as those two."
She nodded. "Yes, but that Youma was affecting you too, remember how you used your looks to steal Umino's books? That was the creature as well, it made Ami and everybody else distrust you to make things even worse."
Nodding to himself he figured that could have been it. "So Makoto doesn't want to kill me anymore?"
"No!" Usagi yelled and glared at him for being so stubborn.
"Then she can come by in the morning and spar, but right now we need to get to your training so less talk and more work!" Ranma yelled and moved into his tickle attack.
Usagi screamed and giggled as he chased her back and forth across the area for their morning run.
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Two days, eight hours, thirty four minutes, and twelve seconds. Minako looked over the edge of the bed as Artemis glared at her from his position on her pillow and whimpered a bit. The cat had been lecturing her about her conduct and total lack of common sense for her attacks on Ranma at school a few days before. For blaming him for her attack when it accidentally hit her and sent her and everybody else into that lustful frenzy. So she had made a tiny little mistake, chased after a boy with a tight buns in an attempt to see what he was like in bed, on the floor, in the grass, and the kitchen. It wasn't her fault! The cat had to shut up eventually and she would be able to finally get this mess put behind her and move on. All she had to do was apologies to Ranma for her actions, treating him like dirt, and trying to seduce or embarrass him in public. She had tried to do both now.
Minako whimpered a little more.
"When are you going to apologize to Ranma for your actions Minako?!" Artemis snapped.
"The next time I see him."
"You know where he is, go and do it now, other wise it's going to be weeks before you see him again and you need to put this whole thing behind you."
"The longer the wait the better it will be!" Minako muttered.
"Yeah right! For you! Now go over there and apologize to him before he holds your actions against you for the next few years."
"I don't wanna!" Minako pouted and folded her arms.
Artemis sighed. He had no idea why, but Minako had these rather odd mood swings that made her totally irresponsible and flighty. She could swing from serious during a battle to mischievous at the drop of a hat, from extremely flighty to a stalker even quicker than that if the right guy came along. It was perfectly normal for a person from Venus to be like this, it was the way their brains were wired after all. Still there were times that the whole race just drove him up the wall with the ways they did things. As Sailor Venus Minako was even worse than most of her people, she was the Scout of Love and could actually feel people emotions with a bit of low level empathy that would grow over the years. Now if only he get her to grow up and take a bit of responsibility for her actions. That course of action seemed to be completely impossible though.
For a second the irritated white moon cat considered trying to talk Ranma into making a pass at her to quicken things up, but had to slam his head against the wall to get the picture of Minako being more than willing to play around with him out of his head. He got thrown out the window enough already, whenever she wanted some privacy, he didn't need to add bedroom fun to the list of reasons to lose a night of sleep as well. "Minako! You are going to have to take care of this eventually, do it now and save yourself a bunch of aggravation and time."
"I'll do it later." Minako muttered stubbornly.
Now he was starting to lose his temper, again. Narrowing his eyes, he hissed at her and bound out of the room before he tried to claw up her ankle to relieve a bit of stress. Minako sighed as he left and slowly peaked around the edge of the bed to see if the white cat was playing a trick on her. When his head didn't appear around the edge of the door she slowly stood up and shook her hair out. Finally she had a bit of time to think for herself without the cat nagging at her to fix all her problems. Like an apology was going to cut it, she had plans to do just that, but she had to take care of the girls at school as well. It was still three weeks away and she was going to try and explain to everyone that she had made a mistake about him. There were already rumors going around about how the guy hadn't been seen since that day at school when she and Makoto had attacked him.
She felt bad about that now, though at the time she had been way to angry with him to even think straight. There had to be a way to make up with him that wouldn't require a night in the sack. He was cute, so the thought had come to her almost instantly and she had nearly went off and done just that. Then Artemis the Nag had appeared and spent the last two days lecturing her about what she should do and she had shelved the plan as nearly impossible. He didn't like her anymore and seducing him was next to impossible if that little scene at the shrine was any indication. She wanted to rage at the heavens for giving all the good looking guys to Usagi, how the girl pulled it off she had no clue. Theories yes, but no clue how she did it except that she had drawn in Mamoru, Seiya, and now Ranma like a magnet draws in metal. All cute, all built, all of them with enough sex appeal to satisfy three women at once.
She sighed again, her love life was in the toilet and she was standing here wondering how many more hunks her best friend and Queen was going to pull into their little circle. Would it be to much to ask for her to have on boyfriend that could be the perfect man for her? Cute, rich, and willing to let her fight monsters in her spare time? No, the only guy she had ever found like that was Alan and he had fallen in love with her old best friend and did it all right behind her back while she was fighting crime. She wanted to kick him one right in the balls for doing that to her, but she loved them both too much for that to happen. Then she would just slap the across the head a few times to show them what she thought to their relationship. Now she had to put up with Ranma, someone she wanted for herself and at the same time made her want to smack him a few times just for good measure.
Clenching her fist she glared at the unseen Ranma and growled, she would find a way to make up with him. Then she would belt him one right in the nose for leading her on! Out in the hallway Artemis hung his head and sweatdropped as his charge shifted through another completely unpredictable series of thoughts and emotions that would, in the end, lead to her either making things right again or putting Ranma in the hospital. As quitely as he could, he walked down the stairs and into the living room to let her get over whatever her flighty mind had come up with now. As he lay down he was happy for one thing though, at least she wasn't hiding behind her bed now.
"RANMA SAOTOME I WILL APOLOGISE TO YOU AND BELT YOU ONE RIGHT IN THE NOSE!!" Minako screamed suddenly.
'Oh yeah, she's getting back to normal.' Artemis thought to himself and then wondered what exactly this would lead to.
**********
Several days later just as the sun was beginning to come up over the horizon Ranma was packing up the last of his camp site and making sure that he left little or no trace that he'd ever been there in the first place. His body was once again working perfectly as he moved around picking things up and making sure he had everything in order. He didn't have to train with Usagi today and had given her the weekend off to go and be with her friends. Not like she didn't do that anyway, but this was and official break from the training. Along the same lines he still hadn't trained with Makoto either. Even after Usagi had agreed, so he wasn't to sure what she was up to. Still, he figured she would be hanging around Usagi today so he didn't have anything to worry about.
He hadn't told her about the fight he would have with that Ryoko chick today and if all went well she would never know about it. If she even disapproved of the challenge he had a feeling that he might not put his all into it and he had to make sure that didn't happen. Usagi had made it quite clear she didn't like people fighting unless it was for a good reason, like a life or death situation. His fight with Ryoko was a grudge match pure and simple and didn't even come close to what she would find acceptable. So he would have to make things quick if the fight went in a direction he didn't expect.
A couple days earlier he had come up with the idea of moving his camp and had told her that he would spend the day hiking around the city looking some place else to live. Usagi hadn't liked the idea very much, but he wasn't going to just set up in some back alley somewhere. If he did that he would never get a decent nights sleep. Those places had some strange things happen in the middle of the night. He could remember more than once waking up in the middle of the night with some thief trying to steal him and the old man's backpacks and finding out the hard way just how heavy the things were, even when empty. Now that he had the option he didn't want to put up with the hassle. Then he started thinking of the Shrine where the fight was going to be held and what Usagi would think if she found out.
The last time he had been at the shrine where that girl lived had been quite an adventure and ended up with him leaving in a set of stolen clothes and out witting two girls in their own bathroom, sorta. He picked up the clothes he had borrowed from that guy with the pony tail and sat them inside the pack, right on top so that he could return them when he arrived. On the sly of course. Usagi had allowed him to borrow her parents washer and dryer the day before to clean all his clothes, so most of his stuff was in good shape again and didn't smell. With a flip of the canvas top he closed the pack, secured the ties to make sure nothing would fall off, and lifted it to his shoulder as he stood there and glanced at the sun. He had a few hours to get back to that shrine.
For just a second he considered telling one of the Scouts where he would be after all, then decided against it. Just because a part of him wanted one of them there to see him win didn't mean he would admit to it, he was a man after all. That would be weak and he would never be weak in anyones eyes if he could avoid it. Hell if things got bad he could always transform into Vulcan, though he had no intention of that unless the girl was insanely strong. She was quite strong if he remembered her right, but he'd seen her in action twice now and knew that he could beat her with ease. In the last few weeks he'd learned a few things and he was looking forward to testing them out in a real fight against an opponent that could hit back. That made him sigh a little. He was getting rust with all his training and it bothered him just a little. Sure he could do the forms better and faster, but he had no one around to test them on and it wasn't like he could just haul off and start hitting Usagi in their morning training sessions.
The girl had told him more than once that if she was going to learn how to fight it would be simply as a way to get faster and stronger and she would depend on her abilities as Sailor Moon to fight. He didn't like it, but he just couldn't tell the girl that it was for her own good. She would look up at him with those large blue eyes of hers and turn his spine to jelly. If that wasn't the worst bit, he still couldn't figure out what the hell his emotions were trying to tell him every time she did it and that irritated the hell out of him. He just figured he would just never understand girls and left it at that. So he trained, and trained, and trained until he couldn't stand anymore and then he would sit down and start to work on his Ki control. There was an area where he was making leaps and bounds with control and power.
The power that he got as Vulcan seemed to be bleeding over into his untransformed state and it was giving him a minor power up. At first it had been incredibly hard to control and he'd had to limit himself to doing just the most basic attacks, but that had changed in the last few weeks. He was even faster than he had ever been and if that wasn't enough he had learned how to focus his strength as well. That one made him smirk a bit, because when Ryoga showed up again things were going to be on a whole different level than they had before. The last time he practiced with his strength alone he found he could lift a car over his head, toss it a few feet in the air and catch it with only a little difficulty. He'd seen Ryoga lift weights that had to be close to a thousand pounds with one arm, ripping a telephone pole out of the ground and swing it around like a large club, and even shift large ice blocks with his bare hands. The guy was strong, insanely strong, but Ranma had a feeling that he'd finally surpassed him in that one area. Though with two weeks training, even at this advanced level, he might just be imagining things.
With a shrug he adjusted the weight of the pack again and headed out of the park. It would take him nearly two hours of running on fences and over roofs to get out of the city and to the temple where that girl lived. He wanted to be early to make sure he was there first and they couldn't say he was a coward for showing up late. That was another thing about Ryoga that needed to be pounded on a bit. Ranma spotted the direction he wanted to go and jumped to a nearby fence, then to a roof, and started making his way out of the city in the fastest rout he knew of. The only thing that would have been faster was to fly and he couldn't do that. Still it was something to be looked at some time in the future. As he moved he failed to see two things that he should have. The first was that there was a shadow following him about two houses behind him, keeping an eye on his every movement. The other was a brown haired cat with a golden wotans cross on it's forehead.
Sometime later Ranma vaults over a high fence and lands in the grass about fifteen feet below and finds himself standing on the curve of a street. He starts walking, trying to figure out where he is and pulls out a map. As he rounds the curve he traces his path down, then stops, does an about face and heads back the other direction. Ranma was just glad he knew how to read a map of the area or he would have been in trouble. His father couldn't read a map to save his life, instead Ranma remembered that he'd been the map reader since he was about eight or so. About half an hour or so later he noticed that he was leaving the city finally and spotted the road he needed follow in order to make his way to the shrine. This was his second trip out here and he was amazed that Akane had even been able to hit him this far in the first place. Then wondered if something else might have sent him here instead. The girl was insanely strong, but even Ryoga would have problems hitting this distance even when he was in one of his berserker rages
Not that he cared all that much, he was finally away from Nerima and longer he was away the better. The only people that knew that he was there were Nabiki, who was currently being evil and Ryoga, who was missing like usual. So he figured he didn't have that much to worry about unless either of them showed up while he was fighting today. More than likely that would be Ryoga if it happened at all. The chances of Nabiki leaving Nerima herself were kind of remote so he could rule her out as extremely unlikely. So all he really had to worry about was the fight itself. To say Ranma was looking forward to his battle with Ryoko was a little silly, he hated to hit girls and it showed in how he treated them. He was a trained martial artist and knew that meant that he had to accept her challenge no matter what.
It was one of the few rules he still followed. Or else he would dishonor his family school completely, but he still hated to hit a girl no matter what he was starting to think of her. What had happened between them had been a misunderstanding and yet another example of his life where a girl just assumed something and decided to kill him because of it. He wondered how often something like that would happen to him as the years went on. First had been Akane when she found out about his curse, then later on with Shampoo when she gave him the kiss of death and chased him across all of China. Then Ukyo when she had dedicated her life to killing him by any means available just because he had listened to his old man when he was six years old.
At one point in time he had been forced to fight each of them in one form or another and all of them had ended in some strange way or had been the cause of yet another problem for him to solve. It all came down to his father though, he didn't blame anyone else, it would have been unfair. His father had never taught him to think things through to solve his problems, just to hit it as hard as he could until it went down and stayed down. That odd attitude had allowed Akane's temper to edge itself right to the brink and beyond because he refused to admit his faults. Not that he had very many anyway. His life had always been chaotic, but there was something about Jusenkyo that had made it even worse than it had ever been before he arrived at that forsaken place.
He had been forced into not one, but two abusive relationships with both Akane and Shampoo, had his best friend turn on him and swear to ruin his whole life just because he his old man tended to show his back side to everyone he met eventually. Then he had ran into the Sailor Scouts, he liked some of them, but the rest seemed to dislike him for something that one of them had caused in the first place and still blamed him for some reason. Then there was his new powers, he was the Knight of Vulcan, a god of smithing and War (temporarily anyway). Even after all that he was still on everyone's bad side for things he hadn't done or they were convinced he'd done on purpose.
Ami for example thought he'd felt her up that time he saved her and ended up on the receiving end of her temper until that Youma at the school had been defeated. He still wasn't sure what the thing had been, but it had affected everyone's emotions in one form or another. Ami's actions had been because of that thing just like Minako and Makoto's feelings had been influenced as well. After the thing had been defeated everyone had come to their senses, to a certain degree, but they still treated him quite badly at times and he didn't know why. Though recently Ami had cooled down enough to drag his full story out after the battle with Nabiki and Ryoga at the mall. Then Usagi had said that Makoto wanted to apologize, but she hadn't shown up to do that yet so he wasn't holding his breath.
Ranma looked around and found himself near a very familiar road and realized that he was about a mile from the Masaki Shrine. This was the very road he had ran down that day he left in such a hurry, running from that cat like things with the floppy ears, and wondered if anything had changed in the last few weeks. That cat thing had chased him almost all the way to the main road a couple miles back. He remembered his fight with the old man the last time he had been here. He had come down from the Shrine to see who was causing so much noise at the house so early in the morning, that was when they first met. The fight had been a lot of fun and they even ended up leveling most of the Shrine as their attacks got a little out of hand.
That alone had made the fight one of the best he'd had in a very long time and well worth the pain it had caused as far as he was concerned. It made him smirk though, they had no idea that he was a guy and here he was heading back there to fight the one person that did know. Other than his unforeseen dip in the hot pool that changed him back to man, he had spent most of his time there as a girl, a shape he barely tolerated as it was. That reminded him of that Ryoko girl he was going to fight, she looked like a cat in some respects, that tail of hers was a dead give a away, the small fangs that made him wonder if she was a relative of Ryoga in anyway. Oh and those strange ears of hers as well, if they didn't scream out 'weirdo' every time her. Now that he was so close to the place he was able to see that he would arrive on time for the fight. He wandered up the dirt road and over the small hill that led down to the main house where everyone lived. He stopped there and to looked down at the house and the lake beside it and took a second to calm his mind for what was about to happen.
As he stood there he let his senses expand out a bit and glanced to the side as he detected the old man's presence descending through some trees that dominated a nearby portion of the land around the lake. If he recalled right the shrine itself, the one he had helped to level, was in that direction. That must have meant that it was or was in the process of being rebuilt or was fixed up already, hopefully it would survive this battle. With a smirk he kept his senses fixed on the old man and waited for him to get a little closer before he started to slowly walk down the hill towards the house. He wasn't that surprised when the old goat made his appearance and headed right for him a few seconds later.
Ranma also noticed that they guy was carrying a boken just like the last time they met and that he couldn't hear the guy moving as he walked. Just the feel of his the energy in his body. They stared at each other as they met up and took a second to evaluate each other as a threat or a friend. Ranma was surprised to see from the look in the guys eyes that he hadn't been recognized, then remembered once more that no one here had ever seen him as a man. Just a big breasted red head that had caused a lot of problems. He just hoped that they didn't find out about the curse, so long as that was kept quiet every thing would be fine. So Ranma sat his large back pack down and gave him a bow.
"Hello young man, why are you here?" Katsuhito asked.
Ranma slowly rose from is bow and replied. "I got challenged to a fight by a girl named Ryoko, we are supposed to meet here to 'finish things once and for all' as she said."
"A fight you say?"
"Yeah, she jumped to some weird conclusion about me and decided that I had to die for it or something. We agreed to meet here for a match to get things over with." Ranma said, it wasn't quite the truth, but it would work.
"No one informed me of this, when is it to happen?"
"Some time today, we didn't set an exact time for it. She was a little busy cussing at me for insulting her." Ranma said with a smirk.
"What did you do to her?"
"She kept calling me a pervert and insulting me, I have no clue what I did, but my martial arts school won't allow me to refuse a challenge like this. So here I am."
Katsuhito nodded. "What is your name?"
"Ranma Saotome."
The old man's eyes narrow as if looking Ranma over a little deeper. "You don't say?"
"Any relation to the female Ranma Saotome?"
Ranma smirked again, he had not intention of just telling the old man about his curse. "Yep, we train together all the time."
Katsuhito nodded as if confirming something and motioned for Ranma to come to the house with him. "Come on in, most everyone should be up by now. I can have Sasami make you up a bit to eat before you and Ryoko fight."
"Who is Sasami?"
"She does most of the cooking for the house and is the little sister to one of our other guests."
Ranma's eyes lit up, he would never turn down free food. "Food, huh? I could do with a little of that, I forgot to make anything up this morning and haven't had a chance to eat yet."
"You came all the way out here without eating anything first?"
"I was worried about this match because I didn't want to fight a girl in the first place.
"Is there something wrong with Ryoko?"
"Nope, I was raised to think that women were weak and useless by my father. I don't believe that, but I still don't like to fight them, it always causes more problems than it solves."
The old man nodded, he wasn't used to rather blunt answers to his questions, then shrugged it off. "Well, lets head inside and see if there is anything ready for breakfast."
"Sure."
Katsuhito opened the front door and let Ranma head in first and followed after him so that he could shut the door. They could immediately tell that something good was being cooked for dinner and Ranma started to drool.
"That smells great!"
"Yes it does, take a seat at the table and lets see if she has anything ready." The old man said.
A little blue haired girl with her hair in long pig tails stepped out of the door that led to the kitchen and sat a bowl on the table, it had several pieces of fruit in it. She instantly reminded Ranma of Usagi because of the odd hairdo, though this girl had a more normal version going for her. Sasami noticed them both and smiled. "I thought I heard something out here." She said happily.
"Good morning Sasami, this is Ranma, he will be joining us for lunch at least."
"Hi." Ranma said with a nervous wave.
"Hi Ranma, sit down anywhere, everyone will be wandering down here in a few minutes now that I've started to set the table." Sasami said as she went back into the kitchen.
Ranma nodded and quickly moved over to a nearby chair and sat down. "I'm not taking anyone's place am I?"
"Nope! Normally Washuu would sit there, buy she's been kind of busy lately and hasn't been eating with us like she usually does." Sasami said as she came back out of the kitchen and sat some rolls on the table along with several bowls.
Ranma had to repress a shudder as he heard the name. Washuu was a name he wasn't going to forget any time soon either. She had been the one that caused the whole mess the last time he was here, stripping him of his clothes and running experiments on him like he was some kind of test subject or something. He had woken up in her lab female and quite naked, so he hoped she didn't know about the curse. If she showed he'd know almost right away just from the way she acted the last time they met. He turned back to Katsuhito. "Are you sure eating here before the fight won't cause problems?"
"Why would it?"
"Me and Ryoko will be trying to pound each other after while, some people would be quite happy to make me sit outside and wait until they finished dinner before the fight even started." Ranma explained with a shrug.
Katsuhito nodded. "I have met a few like that back in my youth. On the other hand I never liked people like that and insist that you get a good meal in before you start."
"Sounds good to me." Ranma said with a grin.
**********
Washuu was a bit startled as she sat in her floating chair typing on her holographic computer when one of her alarms went off. She stopped typing for a second before she waved her hand started working on a second holographic computer and brought up a file that was flashing in time with the alarm. Surprisingly it wasn't one of her Mihoshi alerts either, which was quite a shock really. That woman could break into any room in the lab completely by accident, it was uncanny how many experiments the woman had ruined. The alarm was a recent addition as far as she could tell, one she had forgotten about in all the excitement that happened that day now that she recalled the incident. The file was for one Ranma Saotome, a red headed girl that had been her test subject for a few hours. Then Ryoko and Ayeka had received an unwanted, and still unidentified, male visitor in the girls bath area and all hell had broken loose. In the confusion the girl had gotten out of her restraints and vanished into thin air.
The alarm was a general alert alarm that told her that the escapee was being picked up on the sensors again. This time she was outside the house out on the grounds. With a tap of a key she turned off the alarm and activated some of the other sensors she had set up throughout the property and watched as a large screen rose up from the floor off to the side and she was given a panoramic view of the property and had them zoom in on the energy readings. What came up was not what she was expecting at all and scowled at the well proportioned boy walking down the dirt road that led to the shrine. He was about sixteen, maybe seventeen and dressed in loose fitting black pants and a tight red silk shirt with the sleeves missing. His long black hair looked as if it was tied back in a pig tail as he glanced around the area.
"Now why would you register on my sensors as that girl?" She muttered to herself as she moved her holographic computer around and started to run some deeper scans on him.
Her eyebrows started to rise higher and higher as the readings started to match up almost exactly with the readings she had for Ranma Saotome. No two beings had energy readings exactly the same and could easily be used to identify someone if they had a copy of it on record. It took years for a person to change that reading and if a new scan was taken once a decade it could be used as the perfect security device. Even twins had different energy readings. This boy and Ranma seemed to be exactly alike except for one area and that was a gauge she rarely had to bother with. The boy seemed to have a high amount of an energy commonly known as Magic among those cultures who didn't understand science. She had encountered entire cultures set up around the stuff. As a scientist she didn't really believe in 'magic' and figured there had to be a better explanation for it that she had yet to come across. Even stranger, Ranma seemed to have a slight magic level as well now that the was recalling the incident, though nothing on this guy.
She focused the sensors some more and she detected Katsuhito as he made his way down the from the recently rebuilt Shrine and over to the boy. According to the readings the 'magic' level of the boy rose up a bit as Katsuhito approached, as if the boy was getting ready for a fight. A quick run with another program rated him with an higher than normal power level. One high enough to add to her curiosity. A normal human had a power level of about 10 or so if they were in good shape. The boy seemed to have a power level of seventy easily and that rose to seventy five when Katsuhito approached. Then she noticed something else that surprised her even more than his power level. The boy looked like a male version of the picture she had saved of Ranma Saotome.
Washuu cackled as she activated yet a third set of sensors. By the time the boy reached the front steps of the house she would know everything about him. These sensors were illegal throughout the known universe because of what they were capable of doing when used by the wrong sort of people, but she was the greatest scientist in the universe. Therefore her hands were the right hands in which to use them as far as she was concerned. She had no intention of using the sensors to dissect the boy into his component atoms, that would have been such a waste. Within seconds thousands of bits of data were pouring into her main computer core and flashing across the screen of her holographic computers as she worked on two at once.
"BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!! I AM SUCH A GENIUS!!!"
**********
"You!" Ryoko yelled as she entered the front room to eat dinner.
"Hey, hows it going?" Ranma said as he leaned back in his chair. "I got invited to lunch."
Ryoko growled and formed her energy sword, a long blue bar of crackling energy that she planned to shove down the boy's throat.
"Now calm down girl, we'll fight after lunch is over." Ranma explained as he sat forward and carefully placed his foot on the floor. He figured she just might attack him anyway and if she did he wouldn't be there to as she sliced the chair in half.
"I told you I would kill you the next time we met." Ryoko snarled as she floated off the ground and started to fly forward.
Katsuhito glared at her and she came to as stop half a second later with her energy blade hanging above Ranma's head. "You two may fight after lunch is over. I invited him. No need to fight on an empty stomach anyway."
"But he..." Ryoko muttered.
Then Ayeka came down the stairs with Tenchi behind her and stopped and noticed that Ryoko was about to attack some guy. She smiled evilly. "What's this, Monster woman finally found a boyfriend other than my Tenchi?"
Tenchi sighed and rolled his eyes as Ryoko slowly turned and glared at Ayeka.
"Why Princess, did you finally get done dying every strand of your hair that rather ugly color?" Ryoko said mildly. "I know of a number of monkeys that might find grape flavored hair fun to eat."
"Die!
"Bitch!!"
The two girls dove at each other and Tenchi carefully stepped over then and made his way over to the table and sat down across from Ranma. "Um..."
"I take it she just likes to fight?" Ranma asked mildly, watching the girls roll around on the floor trying to pull each others hair out.
Tenchi nodded, a bit surprised that the guy wasn't running for the hills yet. "They do this every so often, I'm not sure why though."
Katsuhito gave Tenchi a look and the boy shrugged a tiny bit to admit the lie.
"I'm surprised Ryoko didn't use the energy blade or that energy blast she tried to use on me the last time we met." Ranma said and winced as the Ayeka girl kicked Ryoko right in the stomach.
"Ah, well, we sorta..." Tenchi tried to explain without really explaining.
"They aren't allowed to anymore." Katsuhito said. "They have leveled the house more than once since they started fighting and the last time it happened we made them fix the damage by themselves. Ever since then they try to cause as little damage as possible."
"Makes sense." Ranma said. "I tend to break things when I fight and I had to learn that lesson quite early. That and how to fix a hole in the wall with one short board and bit of paint.
"Slut!" Ayeka screamed.
"The Great Grape Ape! Hair and all!" Ryoko yelled with a laugh.
"AGHAAAAA! Die!" Ayeka yelled at the top of her lungs and used her fingers to go for Ryoko's eyes.
"Gotta do better than that you purple haired Cormellian Slug Puddle!"
They dove on each other again, snarling in an eerie harmony that reminded Ranma far to much of a pair of cats. Then he saw Ayeka pulling on Ryoko's tail.
Ranma turned back to the table and saw that the little girl Sasami was setting a large plate full of food down on the table. The old man and Tenchi seemed to have forgotten about the two girls even as they made more noise than a heard of elephants moving through a forest full of trees. Hey, all he wanted was the food anyway, who was he to miss a free meal. He gave Tenchi a look and boy just shrugged and motioned for him to dig in. Ranma grabbed a bowl along with the other two guys and quickly filled it with a little of everything. He wasn't sure what he was eating, but it had to be better than anything that Akane had ever made. Akane's last meal ate through the table and nearly took his foot off when it exploded. His legs had only been numb for four hours or so, nothing compared to some of her other concoctions.
Sasami came back out of the kitchen and sat a pie down on the table. "For later when everyone is done. Ryoko! Ayeka! Either take the fight outside or sit down to eat!"
The two girls stopped fighting suddenly. Ranma noticed that Ayeka looked like she was about to punch Ryoko, while Ryoko appeared to be half way phased through the floor. They looked up at Sasami. "Huh?" They asked.
"Eat lunch or go outside to fight. You know the rules! We all agreed to follow them you know and we do have a guest." Sasami said as she pointed at Ranma.
"You!" Ryoko yelled, suddenly remembering what she had been about to do when Ayeka showed up.
"We've established this already." Ranma said around a mouthful of rice.
She suddenly lifted off the floor and with one hand twisted Ayeka around and tossed her on the couch as if she weighed nothing. The purple haired girl looked a bit shocked and looked up just as Ryoko reformed her energy sword about three inches from the tip of her nose. Ayeka scrambled off the couch and half way across the room in the blink of an eye, little electrified logs forming around her in an instant. "Enough of this crap! You, PERVERT, outside now or I will blow you outside by way of the nearest wall."
Ranma raised and eyebrow and shrugged. His hands went to put his bowl down and in an instant he had finished off a good portion of the food on the table. He glanced at the shocked looked on Katsuhito and Tenchi's face and smirked. "Hey, if she isn't going to eat her share I might as well do it since I'm hungry."
Using a napkin to wipe the side of his mouth Ranma stood up and moved away from the table and saw that Ryoko was giving him one of those weird looks that he'd never been able to understand. So he shrugged, smirked at Ryoko, and with two bounces was across the room and out the door before she could even swing her sword at him. She screamed and chased him outside a few seconds later and was shocked to see that he had made his way away from the nearby lake and towards the forest on the other side of the house. "I'M GOING TO KILL YOU, PERVERT!"
Bouncing up and down Ranma stuck his tongue out at her and smacked his bit a couple of times. He just loved to piss off his opponents sometimes. "Bring it on girly!"
Ryoko vanished between one step and the next, only to reappear right in front of Ranma as he was in mid bounce. He contorted in mid air, using two fingers planted in her hair to flip over her and send her off balance with a shove as he flipped higher into the air and landed several yards away. By the time she regained her balance he was already at the tree line and moving into the forest at a full sprint. Then with a single bound he jumped into the trees and seemed to go even faster. Ryoko, to angry to think straight doesn't notice a shadow moving across the ground as it follows her across the property.
**********
"I'm quite amazed really." Ami said as she handed the report card back to Usagi.
"You're surprised?" Usagi said as she looked it over in wonder. The last time she had gotten a B in anything had been back in second grade. "I'm not sure I can even show this to my mom."
"Why is that?" Rei snapped from the other side of the table.
"You know how bad my grades are, if she sees this she's either going to faint or she's going to ask how managed to cheat enough to get my grades up this high."
Minako sighed as she looked at her own report card and wondered if she should hide it from her own parents. Then she turned to look up as Makoto came into the room with a plate of cookies and sat them on the table. "So what did your report card look like?"
"About the same as usual, though a little higher thanks to Ami's help with some of the subjects." Makoto said.
Usagi snatched five cookies off the plate. "Ami, how did you do? Still first?"
"Yes." Ami said simply, blushing slightly.
"So what did we have planned for today besides complaining about our grades." Rei asked as she glared at Usagi eating three cookies at once.
"I was thinking of going to mall after while since we have the day off from school." Usagi said.
"Naw, as much fun as that would be I don't have any money to spend." Minako said. "How about something else?"
"Like what?" Usagi said. She'd been eyeing this stuffed bunny at one of the shops for some time now.
"We could help Ranma find a new place to live." Ami said and blushed a little.
"Move?" Minako asked.
Usagi nodded. "He's been at that park living in that tent for a few weeks now. So he's looking for some place else to stay."
"Did he say if he had any place in mind?" Rei asked.
"No, he just packed everything up this morning and left the area. By the time I got to the park he was already gone. I didn't get a chance to see him off."
"Oh really?" Minako said with a grin as he eyes sparkled. "You two have been getting quite close lately."
"He's been teaching me some martial arts."
"I still need to get over there and practice with you two." Makoto said.
"Where have you been anyway? He asked about your the other day." Usagi asked.
Makoto sighed. "I've been busy. The one day I stopped by you two were busy."
"What? I don't remember you stopping by."
"I never got close enough for you two to see me. The two of you looked like you were having fun and I didn't want to interrupt." Makoto explained. She had caught Ranma sitting on top of Usagi tickling her. That didn't look like any kind of practice she'd ever seen.
"Well you should have said something. Training with Ranma can be so much fun!"
Rei rolled her eyes.
"What does he do?" Ami asked, leaning forward a little. Minako and Makoto quickly followed suit.
Usagi giggled. "He shows me a form, then has me repeat it several times then makes me use the technique while he attacks."
"He hits you?!" Rei yelled.
"No! He breaks through my defenses and tickles me." Usagi said with a giggle.
"He...tickles you?" Makoto muttered. "Are you sure he's not making advances at you?"
"Nope! When he really wants to prove a point he tossed me in the water."
Ami and Minako's arms slipped and they crashed into the table as they both thought of Usagi in her normal workout uniform, soaked, with certain bits showing through and Ranma off to the side ogling her. Ami started to blush a deep red and looked away as Minako yelled and grabbed her head. "He's trying to get into your pants!"
"That pervert!" Makoto said a few seconds later.
"I have to agree for once." Rei said with a nod as she scowled.
"Humph!" Usagi said as she folded her arms. "I didn't want him to hit me, so I asked him to train me a different way and he came up with the tickling. That is bad enough that it forces me to improve. He said so himself."
"How can you learn to fight if you don't learn how to take a hit once in a while?" Makoto asked. "It's part of the training."
"I know, that's why he's been teaching me only defensive stuff that will increase my speed and balance. Any way the one time he did get a look at me he was in his girl form and had her eyes squeezed shut so tight that I wondered if she would ever be able to open them again." Usagi explained.
"HE DID SEE YOU?!" Rei yelled. "I'LL KILL HIM!"
Minako, Ami, and Makoto all nodded angrily, though the blue haired Scout looked a bit confused.
"Now calm down, nothing happened and it was a misunderstanding!" Usagi said hastily. Why was everyone acting so strangely about this all of a sudden.
Standing, Minako pulled out her Pen. "I say we find him and beat some sense into him. I have to kick his ass anyway, this will just speed things up and teach him a lesson."
"I was going to forgive him too." Makoto said as she pulled hers out.
"There's not need to go quite that far!" Ami said as quickly as she could. "We just need to talk to him, that's all."
"Yes, we need to 'talk' to him alright." Rei said a she too stood up.
Scowling, a look that Usagi didn't wear very often, she slammed her hand down on the table startling the others. "SIT! DOWN! NOW!"
They all sat down as if their strings had been cut and tried not to look into Usagi's angry eyes. "Now all of you listen. Ranma had never taken advantage of me and he has had plenty of chances to try. He is frightened of doing or saying anything that might hurt a girl. All of you should know him a bit better than this by now. Minako you have been treating him horribly since you accidentally fired off that weird Love Beam of yours the other day and affected all of us with it!"
Seething, Usagi glared at them. "This ends now or I will take steps! I don't know what I'll do, but I'll do something to make all of you stop treating him so badly! He is not Mamoru, he isn't even looking for a girlfriend right now. He is just trying to your friend and you three are making that impossible!" She yelled pointing at Minako, Makoto, and Rei.
"Yes Princess." They all muttered, refusing to look her in the eye.
"Makoto?"
"Yes Princess?" The tall Scout asked, a little worried.
"I would like more cookies." Usagi said, looking sadly at the empty plate in front of her.
With the tension suddenly broken Makoto giggled and nodded a few times as she jumped up to get more cookies. Usagi turned back to Ami. "Ami, you have given Ranma more of a chance, but even you haven't treated all that well."
"I know, I kept comparing him to Mamoru."
"So did I at first, but he's been nothing but a friend to all of us and look how he's been treated since he arrived. He had no permanent place to stay, sleeping in that tent night after night as if it was enough. Then what the Youma did at the school to make everyone turn against him, that was horrible." Usagi said.
Minako winced, though a part of her still rebelled against giving him a chance.
"I offered him a chance to stay here." Rei pointed out. "He refused."
Usagi nodded. "I know. Still there had to be something we can do."
The door opened and Makoto stepped into the room again and sat a new plate of cookies right in front of Usagi. "Here you go."
"Thanks Mako-chan!"
She blushed a little. "You're welcome."
"So any ideas?" Usagi said as she started nibbling at a cookie.
"Well we need to fine him first." Rei pointed out and Usagi agreed.
"What do we do when we do find him though?" Minako asked.
"Usagi, don't you have that bond with him? The one you were telling us about the other day?"
The blond nodded. "Yeah, but I have to really focus on it to feeling anything from him."
"Well why don't you use that to track him down? Like Tuxedo Mask used to do when you were in trouble." Rei said.
"I hadn't thought of that!" Usagi said happily. She had gotten used to having a bond sitting in the back of her mind and over time learned to ignore it. Closing her eyes she reached out through the bond to try and find Ranma. She didn't notice as her crescent moon formed on her forehead or as the others all gasped and Ami quickly pulled out her computer and started scanning her.
Nothing happened at first, but then Usagi got a flash of a tree moving by at a high rate of speed and a sense of danger. "He's in danger I think! Running through the trees really, really fast!"
"Are you sure?" Ami asked. "I'm not detecting anything dangerous with the Mercury computer."
Usagi slowly nodded, as if she was in a trance like state. "I'm getting flashes of something, images, through the link. It's normally just emotions."
"Like what?" Ami asked quickly, typing so fast that her fingers couldn't be seen.
"Trees, running, fire, a flying woman!" Usagi gasped and jumped to her feet. "We have to help him!"
"I'm not detecting anything within the city." Ami said half a second later.
"If you are seeing trees I'd bet he's outside the city." Makoto said.
"One second, let me increase the range a bit." Ami said. "Found him!"
"WHERE?!" Usagi yelled.
"Here." Ami said as she pulled up a map of the area and pointed out the Masaki Shrine.
"What's he doing at that run down Shrine for?" Rei asked.
"You know it?" Makoto said as they all stood up.
"Yeah, I've been there a couple of times with my Grandfather. The old priest is a master swordsman that tends the lands with his family and some friends."
"Lets all transform and teleport there at once. Ranma is in trouble, I can feel his fear and excitement right now."
"Excitement?" Ami wondered out loud.
Usagi shrugged. "He likes to fight and gets excited when things turn dangerous."
"Typical man." Minako said with a grin. "Lets get transformed and go help him out."
They all nodded and called out their transformation phrases.
**********
As he runs Ranma he's reminded of what happened between them the last time they met and of course all the energy blasts she was firing at him. He dodged to the side, flipped in mid air, and bounced off a tree as the one he had been on exploded into a large fire ball full of tooth pick sized shrapnel. At the same time he caught glimpse of the girl high in the air above him firing into the forest all around him. He was pretty sure she didn't know his exact location, but that last blast had been to close for comfort. He could see the smoke wafting off his shirt from where his back had been singed by the outer edge of the blast. This situation kind of reminded him of the fight with Saffron and grinned in excitement, that had been the best fight of his life and this girl was pulling off similar attacks. This time he was more prepared for someone that could toss around fire balls strong enough to blow large holes in the ground without being forced to protect someone at the same time.
"I got you now." He whispered as he cupped his hands and formed a ball of energy. High above Ryoko's glowing eyes turned and looked right at Ranma and he cursed as she sent a dozen beams of energy flying right at his
hiding place. Even before he could fire off a Möko Takabisha. He dodged to the left and managed to make it around the first few blasts and was forced to wade through the rest as the area around him was blasted out of existance. He took what little cover he could behind a large tree and waited several seconds before he stood up and ran into the smoke and fire that had filled the area all around him. Saffron hadn't been that accurate and his arrogance had left holes in his defenses, this girl's level seemed to be a bit higher than his had been during the fight. She was turning out to be more than he expected. He kept to the smokey areas as he moved through the trees to find a better place to attack her.
"Come out pervert! You can't run like a coward forever, I'll find you eventually and when I do, you are going to die!" Ryoko yelled out as she tried to see through the smokey cloud that had formed below her.
Let's see what she can really do, Ranma thought to himself as he moved into the open and waved his hands in the air to catch her attention. "Lets get the show on the road! Or are you going to flutter around up there like a retarded butterfly?!"
Growling, Ryoko's head snaps around to give him the 'glare of death' and she instantly fires a beam of energy at him. She watches as Ranma simply flips out of the way and the ground where he was vanishes as her energy beam blows it to hell. She holds out her hand as she glares down on the pervert below her and several dozen balls of glowing energy form around her. Then it streams into her open hand to form a ball of energy that she grabs hold of to form her energy sword. He seems to just be standing there waiting for her to do something else and it irritates her more than a little. Dropping to the ground she lands and with a scream of rage flies at him with her sword raised to strike.
"Oh come on! You can do better than that!" Ranma mocks as she comes flying at him. Then at the last second he simply hops up into the air and flips over her with little trouble. Tapping her back a few times to show her that she was wide open to his attack.
Ryoko rises into the air and comes to a halt hovering about ten feet in the air above Ranma. She'd expected a frontal attack or a dodge to either side at the last second. Even the possibility that he might try to roll underneath her just to catch her off guard. Jumping above her like that had been at the very bottom of the list. She glared at him again and felt her irritation rise just a little higher. "I'll get you, smart ass."
"Hah! You don't stand a chance!" Ranma yelled. "Bring it on!"
She vanished from sight and reappeared right behind him and swung her energy blade at his head. He dodged it with ease and in the blink of an eye she took a kick to the head as he counter attacked with an arrogant grin plastered to his face. This sent her stumbling a couple of paces back before she could recover enough to growl at him. "Why you!"
"That sword just makes you weak and over confident." Ranma sneered. "If this all you got to offer you can just give up so I can go home and get some sleep."
Now she was seeing red and her sword vanished as she formed the energy into a ball and fired it at him. "Aghaaa!"
"Pathetic!" He called as he formed a ball of energy in hands and fired it at her half a second later. "Möko Takabisha!!"
Her hand slashed out and the ball of Ki slammed into her force field, flared for a second and vanished with a puff of smoke. "I think I should be calling that the most pathetic move I've ever seen. Hmm? Even Ayeka fires off hits stronger than that." She said with an evil grin, while a part of her mind tried to remember if she had ever seen him use that kind of blast before. The energy had felt familiar though, as if she had encountered it before. It was a good thing she was used to dealing with people that could throw blast like that around or she would have been taken by surprise.
Ranma blinked in shock as he saw her throw a shield to block his blast. If he remembered right she hadn't used that the last time they fought. Over the last few weeks his Ki had become quite a bit stronger and she was able to fend it off without doing anything? "..." Was all he said as he circled around to her left.
"All out of insults now, pervert?" Ryoko taunted as she formed another ball of energy. "Your hand to hand skills are pretty good if what I saw the a couple weeks back was any indication. Yet here you are completely at my mercy and even your best shot won't work. OHOHOHOHOH What should I do with you?"
Growling, Ranma realized that he would have to take her down with the Hiryü Shöten Ha again. He figured it was about the only technique he had that might be able to stop her without killing her, though she had experianced it before. He would have to hope that she didn't remember it much from the last time he was here. It was also one of the few moves he hadn't had a chance to work with much because of the situation in Nerima. As if he could just walk across the street and start practicing the move and improve on it. Unlike the Möko Takabisha, which he practiced every few days during the constant battles with his rivals. With a twitch of his foot Ranma started running at her as he embraced the soul of ice. Pulling her into the spiral once again would be quite hard, but her over confidence just might allow him to pull it off.
Ryoko just laughed at the blank look on his face as he ran at her and decided to see just how good he was at hand to hand since he depended on it so much. It had been a long time since she took on a trained fighter and even Yosho had been more of a swordsman than a hand to hand fighter. Laughing at the futility of a human taking her on like this she met his attack with a block and kick that he barely dodged. "Even in hand to hand you can't beat me, pervert."
"We'll see about that. Ranma Saotome doesn't lose!" He yelled.
"BWHAHAHAHA! Then you lose today!" Ryoko said as she doubled the speed of her attack and just grinned as he was barely able to keep up. Dodging frantically and taking a glancing hit ever now and then as they fought.
Ranma could feel the techniques taking effect even as he moved past the halfway point of the spiral dodging and blocking for all he was worth and maintaining the Soul of Ice technique. He concentrated on the move and carefully watched as Ryoko followed him through the spiral. Just another few steps and he would have her and the battle would be over. With a final stomp of his foot he threw the spinning upper cut that set off the techniques and screamed the name. "Hiryü Shöten Ha!!"
Pulling her head back in alarm Ryoko barely dodged the totally unexpected attack after he spent so much time dodging all over the place. Hell they'd been moving in circles. Then she felt something odd as a wave of air swirled around them and she was pulled into the air. "WHAT THE F&#$!! Not this time!"
Lowering his arm, Ranma looked up at the rising form of Ryoko and knew something was wrong almost instantly. "Damn!" He muttered as the tornado of air swirled around him. "She wasn't putting out enough hot Ki to create the full thing!"
Using her flight abilities Ryoko flew through the inside of the tornado and shot out the top, formed a ball of energy, and shot it down the center. There was no way she would fall for this attack twice. Her eyes connected with Ranma's the instant she fired the energy blast and she saw something she had been looking for since the fight started. Fear. She was a bit shocked to see her energy blast rip itself apart about half way through the tornado a few seconds later though. Then things really changed for the worse as the tornado suddenly grew in size and power.
Down below Ranma turned to run as she fired the blast, but he knew it was already to late as the color of the tornado turned an angry red and pulled him off the ground along with everything in it's path. Trees, rocks, and hundreds of other things were suddenly flying at him from every directions and for an instant he was reminded of that time Cologne used this on him and how he was been unconscious by the time he landed. If that happened this time he would lose this fight and there was distinct possibility that Ryoko would probably just kill him. He concentrated on a technique he didn't use very often, it was to easy to become dependent on this particular ability. Just like it was to easy to depend on weapons, but this was a situation that might just prove beneficial enough to save his life. As it took effect the world around him seemed to slow down to a crawl as he expanded all his senses to be aware of everything around him.
His mind traced the patterns of all the objects flying at him in an instant and he was ready for them as they got close enough for him to react. A foot lashed out and pushed him off an uprooted tree and sent him higher into the tornado. He had to take a few precious seconds to bat a number of items out of his way as he used the Saotome Anything Goes areial moves to gain a bit of height to stay out of the way of the rest of the junk around him. At the same time he used to soul of ice to make sure he wasn't adding his own energy to the tornado and could feel that it's sudden power surge was about to run out. All he had to do was ride it out for another few seconds. Even though he was spinning around like a top within the tornado he had a pretty good idea where Ryoko was too and the sent a large chunk of a shattered tree flying out of the tornado with a quick kick to a passing debrie. He frowned as it bounced off her shield, but it was enough to distract her as the tornado finally disapated.
For a second he found himself about a hundred feet in the air but he wasn't able to get a good look at the area around him before he started to fall. A wave of dizzyness hit him a few seconds later as his body tried to compensate for all the spinning he'd just experianced. Somewhere in his mind he knew that Ryoko was about fifty feet away watching as he fell. After that he had just a few seconds to fall before he landed and instinctivly used a lot of his Ki to absorb most of the impact in his legs and back. Then ended up tumbling several yards before sliding to a stop and another wave of dizzyness hit him. Every inch of his body hurt like hell as he lay there, his eyes spinning, as he tried to shake off the effect of the tornado. He was conscious at least, that was a good thing, now he just had to find a way to move before she continued the attack. Then he blinked as she appeared right on top of him with a teleport, hovering several inches above his chest as she smiled down at him.
"I win. BWHAHAHAHA!"
"I haven't lost yet." Ranma growled as he struggled, but the world was still spinning around to much for him to think straight.
"You can't even stand up." Ryoko pointed out as she flicked his nose and laughed some more.
Ranma blinked.
"Pervert, your punishment has just begun and you are at my mercy now." She pointed out as she traced a finger down his chest and grabbed a hand full of his shirt and lifted him up off the ground. "I think I'll give you to Washuu, she's been talking about you quite a bit since you left last time."
He paled. "Um...heheh, can we talk about this?"
"Nope." Ryoko snapped with a grin and a glint in her eye.
"I think I'll do something else." Ranma said and brought his legs up and kicked her in the face, again. He managed to catch her by surprise and she let go and stumbled back a few feet and glared at him again as he kneeled on the ground and smirked at her.
"You couldn't move." She snarled.
"True, but you picked me up and that forced my body to move around and it gave me just enough time to recover from all that spinning." Ranma said as he stood up and stretched at little.
"You little cockroach! I'm going to stomp on you so hard that your head comes out your @$$Hole!" Ryoko screamed as she rose into the air crackling with power.
"Was it something I said." Ranma said as he watched her rise. That was a trick he had to learn, the advantages to unassisted flight were always shocking him. Herb had been able to float in the air and fly to a certain extent, but this was so far beyond that. Her hands lashed out and she sent a half dozen energy blasts flying at him. He forced his body to run and dodge as he tried to think of a way to stop her. The Hiryü Shöten Ha hadn't worked at all and placed him in more danger than it did her. Then an idea came to him and he had to wonder if he could pull it off without transforming. He knew his abilities, but this one was pushing things a little as far at the moment, as if he actually had a choice in the matter. There was a slight possibility that it might actually work in this situation and wondered if it Ryoko would fall for something so simple. Glancing up in the sky behind him as she fired blast after blast of energy he figured she would have to get a bit lower before he pulled it off. As she was just a bit out of reach at the moment. He figured that she was just as vulnerable as Herb would have been to this particular attack, but it was untested; as if that had ever stopped him before.
All he needed to do was adapt the attack a little and it would be perfect. She wouldn't know what hit her when he pulled it off. Smiling to himself he runs into the trees where she can't see him anymore and glance behind him just as he crouches down and uses the Umisenken to vanish from sight. He takes a second to notice that she seems to be a bit confused and wonderes if she can sense the Umi as she can when he charges up a Ki attack. Then he shrugs it off and decides that has to take a chance. He was starting to have fun anyway. So he starts to run as fast as he can towards a tree right below where Ryoko is hovering in the air looking in the wrong direction. He bounds forward and races invisibly up the side of the tree, dodging around various branches, and launches himself off one of the upper branches. Straight into the air below her.
Holding the Umisenken in that position is nearly impossible so he lets it go and grins as her head snaps down to see him rise into the air. By the time she thinks to fire a blast at him the attack is already in process. He spins in the air just as he reaches chest level and kicks her in the back of the head with the heel of his foot. The blow causes her to lose her consentration and she instantly starts to plumet at the ground. Then just as he is about to fall he reaches out and grabs the loose clothing on the back of her outfit and with a yank spins them around in mid air so that they are face to face. "I'm the greatest fighter that has ever lived!"
Ryoko just groans and opens her eyes a tiny bit. "You think this will allow you to win?"
Ranma smirked down at her. "You are all power and no skill. Like a bull in a china shop, I can beat anyone that fights that way."
His arm snapped out and caught the top part of a nearby tree as he gave Ryoko a little push to throw her fall off balance a little. Just enough to make sure she can't gain control of her fall for a few seconds. Unfortunately he wasn't expecting her to do what she did, to teleport when she was just a few feet from the ground. Then catch him completely by surprise as she appeared right above him, back first and still in free fall. Only to spin around and slam him across the face with both hands clamped together. He yells out as he is knocked from the tree and falls to the ground below with a loud grunt as he lands on his back and all the air explodes from his lungs. For a brief second all he can see are stars as he gasps for air. As they clear and he starts to see again a frightening vision fills his eyes and he wonders if he might have underestimated the girl just a little. Ryoko is floating about twenty feet above him gathering a large amount of energy between her hands.
"Oh shit." Ranma mutters as he starts to slowly sit up and get out of the way, but Ryoko fires an instant later.
The beam is one of the strongest she has ever fired here at the shrine and she instantly realizes that she might have just made a mistake. Then shrugs it off as something inside her ceases to care, so long as she takes him out once and for all. Even then she stops feeding the beam energy it hits the ground and Ranma has only a second to roll out of the way and use the last of his strength to jump. Only to be caught up in the explosive sphere of energy that expands out wards from the center of the blast around where he had been laying. He curses as he feels his clothing incinerated off his body. Then suddenly enveloped within the outer section of the growing energy ball even as it explodes. Also caught up in the explosion is a lone forgotten cat with a golden wotans cross on it's forehead. His thoughts as the explosion go off are along different lines.
"FUCKING ALIENS!"
**********
Half a mile away there is a multi colored glow appeared in the air in front of the house and the Sailor Scouts appear in a burst of light. They are just in time to be caught up in the shock wave of Ryoko's blast as it shatters all the windows in the house and sets off a mini-earthquake that throw Sailor Moon and Mercury off their feet the instant they all stop holding hands from the teleport jump. Mars, Jupiter, and Venus all manage to stay on their feet by holding onto each other for the ten seconds the quake lasts. Moon and Mercury help each other up a few seconds later and look at the rising cloud of smoke above the forest behind the house in shock. They had expected trouble but nothing that could have pulled something like this off without them knowing about it.
"What the heck caused something like that?" Jupiter asked in shock.
"A very big explosion I would think." Mars said sarcastically. "What the hell are we going to do about it."
Mercury is about to pull out her computer to get a better idea of what's going on when an old man carrying a boken steps out of the house and glances at them. Then he glances at the explosion and frowns a little, his grip tightens on the boken hard enough to make the wood creak in his grip. A boy and three girls all exit the house a few seconds later to see the aftermath of the explosion and several strangers standing in front of their home. The red head seems to make a gesture in the air in front of her and Mercury gets her first look at Washuu's holographic computer as it flares to life.
The old man looks at Venus and seems to calm down. "Sailor Venus? It's good to see the Sailor Scouts are in action again."
Mina gives him a surprised look and glances over at Sailor Moon. "Um..."
"Sailor Venus has traditionally been in command of the Sailor Scouts when ever they have been sent into combat. Has this changed?" Katsuhito asked as he recalled some of the history he'd been taught when he was younger. The Moon Kingdom had always been a very interesting area of study at the college he attended on Jurai.
"It's a different world now." Washuu said as she typed away on her computer, compiling information. She ignored Sailor Mercury who was standing right behind her watching and recording the process in fascination. "Things have changed. Moon is the leader for this current team."
"What's going on?" Sailor Moon asked even as she acknowledged what Washuu was saying.
"We're not sure actually." Katsuhito said as he turned to address Moon. "Ryoko was supposed to have a simple fight with our latest guest. I have no idea why it has escalated to this. I hope the young man isn't dead though, he still owes us a bit of an explanation."
"That is a hell of an explosion." Jupiter said from her place beside Venus.
"Where's Ranma?" Mars growled. "That is why we came here in the first place."
"Ranma was the one fighting with Ryoko, the girl that did that." Katsuhito said and gestured to the cloud of destruction.
"We still need to figure out why he even came out here in the first place." Mars said, then she turned as the alarm on Mercury's computer went off. "What's going on Mercury?"
Ami taped a few keys on her computer and ignored the intense look that Washuu gave her when she noticed the mini-computer. "The Mercury Computer is picking up that same energy type that was used on Nabiki Tendo and Ryoga Hibiki at the mall."
"Energy?" Washuu asked herself and turned back to the holographic computer, typing quickly.
"Where is it?" Moon asked, though she was pretty sure she already knew the answer.
"Inside that dust cloud. Whatever it is I'm detecting three different forms of energy out there. Ranma's energy, though it's very low, what might be Silver Millennium energy, and that dark energy in huge amounts."
"We need to get out there and stop it before anything happens!" Sailor Moon said with a hint of panic. "Ranma is in there with that stuff."
"I'd advise against that." Washuu said as she read the readings on her own computer. "What ever is in there seems to have set something in motion and if it's stopped before it's finished it just might kill whatever it's trying to affect."
"Agreed." Said Mercury. "Whatever that dark energy is doing, it's in a highly dangerous state right now and if we block it bad things could happen. I'd almost say it was conscious of it's own actions if these readings weren't so random."
"So we just have to stand here and let it finish attacking one of our friends?" Moon asked.
"No you don't. It's attacking my daughter Ryoko." Washuu said.
The Scouts turned and gave the twelve year old looking Washuu unbelieving looks.
"It's true." Washuu said, looking as cute as she could.
"Who are you anyway?" Venus asked as she moved over beside Moon and glared down at Washuu.
"Oh? I thought you knew. I'm Washuu! The Greatest Scientific Genius in the Universe!" Washuu said with her arms in the air.
Sailor Moon shrugged and turned to the other Scouts. Washuu looked like she was about to start pouting, then shrugged it off as Moon started to talk. "What do we do?"
Katsuhito, as well as the others decided that he'd let this go on long enough and stepped forward. "Washuu, I'd like to know how Ryoko managed to create this blast. She does not have the energy available to do this kind of thing anymore. I made sure of that when I programmed the Master Key to only give her one of her Gems back."
"Programmed? I thought Tenchi made that decision?"
"He thinks he did." He said back in a flat tone that made Tenchi look at him. "Well?"
"I'm not sure actually. Her readings during battle were pretty much normal. With no readings that would suggest this level of power. It was only while she was fighting the boy, the one they are calling Ranma, that her energy readings started to skyrocket."
"There is no way her anger could have affected the one gem she does have?"
"No." Washuu said. "Do you think I would design something like her gems with such a shoddy design flaw?"
"Then what could it be?"
Mercury raised her hand and caught their attention. "The last time we saw this kind of energy it had taken a perfectly normal girl and given her a lot of power. Enough to empower two other girls with powers as well and the three of them blew up a good portion of a mall. The other one was a guy and he nearly killed all of us in a hand to hand fight in the middle of that same mall."
"So this energy is possessing people?" Washuu asked as she turned back to her holographic computer.
Mercury nodded. "Yes, we just don't know how it does so."
"Let's just go kick her butt then, if this Ryoko really is possessed by this energy then we can kick her ass too. We have fought much tougher enemies than this after all." Jupiter said.
Sailor Moon sighed and glared at her friend. 'Why did they always want to resort to violence first?' She wondered to herself.
"Washuu said that the energy was staying away from Ranma, Jupiter. So he is probably safe enough, but that other one, if she can fire off blasts like this we need to stop her quickly." Said Sailor Mars.
The red headed scientist laughed, startling all of them as she looked over at Jupiter. "All of us, including Katsuhito, Tenchi, and Ayeka here are going to be needed to stop Ryoko. If this energy is doing what I think it's doing, then we may have to fight the Space Pirate Ryoko, a persona of Ryoko that has lain dormant for a very long time."
"She can't be that strong?!" Jupiter said. "Is she?"
Katsuhito's eyes flashed in anger as he turned to gaze at the destruction around him and he realized that it was beginning to really reminded him of the first time the two of them fought over seven hundred years before. Back when he was known as Lord Yosho and had been hunting Ryoko across the galaxy to make her pay for her crimes. "I hope you are wrong Washuu, for if she turns back into that monster we may have no alternative but to kill her."
"NO!" Sailor Moon snapped, startling them all. "No killing while I'm around. She was stopped once if I understand what all of you are saying, so it can be done again. Love will win out above cruelty every time."
"What about that other energy source? The Silver Millennium one that you mentioned Mercury." Sailor Venus asked.
"It was a small amount of Silver Millennium energy. At first I thought it was Ranma, but it's a couple hundred feet from him at the moment. Right on top of another source of that dark energy."
"Two possessions?!" Mars snapped. "Wherever these things are coming from we have to stop them or else this will just continue."
"Agreed." Katsuhito said. "Washuu, we need a plan of attack, any ideas how to deal with this before things get to out of hand? Ryoko is your daughter after all."
"Alright, I'm pretty sure that our main problem is going to be Ryoko, my computer is reading things from her that I've never seen before and if they don't stop she could end up leveling most of this mountain and taking us with her. She has to be contained, so I think it would be best if we tricked her. We can worry about that other possession later, whoever it is can't be as strong as Ryoko in a berserk 'kill everything in sight' mode."
"I agree, but we can't just ignore the other threat either. Plus we have to get to Ranma as well." Sailor Moon said with a glance at Mercury.
Washuu sensed an opening and asked a quick question. "What is Ranma? Male or Female?
"Ranma is a guy, unless he gets splashed with cold water. When that happens his curse activates and he turns female. Hot water turns her back into a guy. He prefers his male form though and goes to some pretty extravagant lengths to make sure people don't find out about it." Mercury explained.
Ayeka suddenly recalled the bath incident and started to growl as she realized what must have set Ryoko off. "Why that little..."
"Not now Ayeka!" Katsuhito snapped, his voice taking a tone of command that it rarely achieved. "We can deal with Ranma's little accident when this rather larger problem is dealt with. Understand?"
"Of course." Ayeka said politely. "There will be a reckoning though."
Sailor Moon sighed again and tried to figure out what Ranma had done now. "Let's get to work then. We need to send someone out to get Ranma."
"I'll go get him." Tenchi said as he moved to go look for Ranma, but Ayeka stopped him..
"No Tenchi, you need to stay here and help fight Monster Woman." Ayeka said. "You are stronger than me any way. I'll go get him and bring him back here."
"I can help." Sasami said.
"Sasami, we need you to prepare some bandages, that way we can be ready for any injuries that might happen during the battle." Katsuhito said.
"Sure!" Sasami nodded and rushed into the house to find the first aid kit and get everything set up.
"At least this time we have a little while to prepare before all hell breaks loose." Tenchi muttered to himself as he watched Ayeka get directions from Washuu and head off towards the forest.
**********
Creeping through the bushes had seemed like such a good idea, Sol thought as she struggled against a mud like substance that had burst from her own shadow a few minutes before. As far as she was concerned, a small cat body, some thick underbrush, trees in every direction one could see, and it would mean the perfect cover to follow someone. The boy had set off her magic senses the instant she spotted him in the park the night before and she had been watching him ever since. She hadn't expected to have to follow him all the way out of the city, but he was interesting so it hadn't been that big of a deal. From the point when he entered the house until after he came back out she had been dosing to get some of her energy back from the long chase. During the trip she had quickly learned how to read his energy signature and it had helped her keep him sight whenever he would suddenly put on a burst of speed. Even when he seemed to get lost and doubled back on himself.
After he left the house though she had watched from the cover of the bushes as he covered over fifty yards in a matter of seconds with some insane Youma chasing after him. She had witnessed the whole fight, her jaw hanging open in shock as he performed things that only the Scouts were supposed to be able to do. Move at super speed, enhanced reflexes, even manipulate energy with his own body and use it as a weapon. The Youma was a given, they always attacked their targets with a tenacity that was quite unusual. Then the boy, she still hadn't learned his name, performed his last attack. Literally running up the side of a tree and launching himself high into the air to attack the Youma head on. At first it had seemed to work too and she had cheered the boy on silently as they plummeted towards the ground.
Then the tables had been turned when the Youma simply teleported back into the air just a few feet from the ground and caught the boy off guard. Even she hadn't expected that to happen. Then the Youma sent the boy plowing into the ground with a physical blow and charged up that mega powered blast of energy. So much that she had felt her fur stand on end just from being to close to it as she fired it. The explosion had spread out across the ground for about fifty feet in every direction before it even exploded, setting trees on fire and picking her up like a doll. It was only because of her magical protections that she wasn't killed, yet the blast had been enough to toss her around from tree to tree until it knocked her out a few seconds later. After that she figured she would be in pain for a few days as she healed from her injuries, but that didn't look like it was going to happen. Instead she had opened her eyes when she felt something odd happening and found herself laying in small pool of brownish black goo that was bubbling all around her, from within her own shadow.
Smoke and fire filled the air around her as she struggled against the gooey substance that wouldn't let her go. The more she struggled the worse her situation seemed. At first it had only grabbed onto a bit of her, but as she moved around it crept up her body and left a feeling of numbness in it's wake as it slowly absorbed her. Frightened out of her mind she screamed for help, uncaring if a human happened to here her, she needed help as soon as possible. She reached deep within her and tried to use her magic and an instant later she realized that was a major mistake as the substance seemed to quiver just as it rose up and engulfed her completely. Her screams went unheard above the fire around her, but a few seconds later the mass of goo started to bubble again and a large cat like shape rose from its depths and started to grow in size and a set of blood red eyes opened up and glared around the area.
It was time to hunt for it's prey and nothing on the planet would stop it now that it had the power. Opening it's maw to reveal gleaming white teeth it roared it's intentions to the world as loud as it could. Just a little ways away a second entity rose up from where it too had been submerged in a thick goo and calmly stepped out onto the dry ground to reveal it's female body glistening in the fire that raged all around her and she grinned. A grin that Ryoko hadn't used in centuries as she felt power flowing through her body at a level she could barely ever recall ever feeling before. She rose up into the air as more of the goo dripped off her body and revealed that she was wearing her black and red battle armor, three glowing dots about her body.
The first was at her neck while the other two were set into the insides of her wrists. Just looking at them made her feel like blowing something up just for old times sake. She hadn't been free to do as she pleased in a very long time and there was no way that the old fossil would have the ability to stop her this time. No way in hell, she was at the peak of her power again while he had allowed himself to wither away into an old shell. She had the power and she was going to put it to a good use. Anything she wanted would be hers, all she had to do was take it. There was only one thing she had to take care of before she did anything else and that was to annihilate the Pervert.
**********
To Be Continued...
End Notes -
**********
The Replacement
Chapter 07
Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(c) 2002
**********
Two weeks ago it had been a tower, a tower that was once the center piece to a large city that had dominated everything within sight. Then over the course of just seven days a force of ungodly power had swept the city and thousands of others like it off the face of the earth and left nothing but shattered rubble in it's wake. The only thing to survive had been the tower and even it's purpose had been lost to the sands of time and fragile human memory. Over ten thousand years had passed since that time so long ago and the tower had stood undefeated through it all, surviving everything from tornados, to fire, to the most powerful of elements the planet had to throw at it. But as with all things it's strength had lessened with time and no one was there to make sure it stayed strong. Instead it just grew older and older, lost deep within the woods where no human being had ever seen it, or even recognized it for what it truly was. No, this tower of crystal that had once shone like a beacon in the night was itself now a pile of scorched and darkened rubble. Finally reduced to insignificance by a storm unlike anyone had ever seen.
It's purpose was unknown, but it's destruction had taken a mix of age, fire, wind, and the grand daddy of all lightning bolts to finally break the tower's hold and crack it open like an egg. Whatever was inside had been all but destroyed by the fire or blown away on the winds, but even then three floors of the tower still stood and most of the contents intact even after ten thousand years of neglect. Even now portions of the forest that had grown around the tower continued to burn and send a pillar of smoke high into the sky to tell of the fall of something nature had been trying to reclaim for thousands of years. This tower, you see, was a construction of Magic. By design and purpose and it was still strong enough to last another ten thousand years even in its current state. It had the potential to be dangerous if it's remaining store of knowledge and magic fell into the wrong hands. The wards that had been there to keep people from reaching the tower were no longer in place. Weakened by the fire and destroyed by the lightning. The contents of the top most floor had gone up in the explosion, sending things high into the air an landing as much as half a mile away. A couple hundred yards away, at the base of a smoldering tree, was a small cylinder.
It was about two feet long and several inches wide and nearly opaque with age. So it was impossible to see through the glass portion that made up it's center. A vague shape could be seen within its depths, but it wasn't moving and there didn't appear to be any way to even get into the device without breaking it. As the day slowly passed and the sun finally went down on the shattered tower, the world seemed to change in the blink of an eye. Several shadows moving from tree to tree converged on the tower and took up positions around it. They glided across the ground with ease that defied explanation. They rose up on the surviving trees and appeared to be look the area over for several minutes. Silently surveying everything around them. They didn't appear to have eyes, but as they moved around it was possible to tell that they were looking for something.
Here and there were the left over remains of a scroll or a book that the constant rain had kept from being destroyed in the fire that still raged around them. These were collected by the shadows by pulling them into their shadow like bodies when they touched that item with any part of their shadow. After several minutes they seemed to converge on the small pod and looked agitated as they waved their arms at each other in a silent argument for several seconds. In the end the pod was collected as well and they moved on to what remained of the tower and appeared to walk right through the walls. Using the shadows that the raging fire created all over the tower's surface they by passed the wards and entered the tower. From the outside nothing seemed to happen for close to an hour, but then the tower started to glow with a golden light shining from inside the structure. The light pushed itself out from every crack and hole and lit up the area for several minutes as it steadily increased in brightness and power.
With a rumble the land around the tower started to shimmer with energy as the light seemed to permeate this as well. Then in a sudden violent wave the fire around the tower was nearly blown out as a blast of energy exploded from the tower and it started to glow. In the blink of an eye it vanished, leaving a hole in the ground nearly a quarter of a mile deep and no signs at all that anything had ever been there in the first place. The golden energy washed over the devastated landscape and extinguished all the fires and blew the leaves off the closest trees for half a mile in ever direction.
At the same time, all across the world, items of power that had started to glow when the tower was brought down stopped glowing and lost whatever magic had caused them to react in the first place. One item had a different reaction, it was a small brown cat sleeping behind a dumpster in one of the seeder parts of Tokyo. Its brown fur was matted and grimy from years of living on the street. At the same time it was giving off a smell that could have dropped a dog at ten yards and had a set of claws peaking out from the ends of it's paws that could slice through nearly anything.
Between one second and the next it's eyes snapped open and started to glow with an eerie golden light. It opened its mouth to yowl in pain as the glow intensified and it brain started to heat up as if it was on fire. The pain was intense enough that the thing started to roll around in a panic, but the glow kept intensifying until it it's eyes rolled back up into it's head and it fell over gasping for air. The golden energy suddenly formed around it's head and started to shrink in on itself as it grew brighter and brighter. It centered in on it's forehead and took the shape of a wotans cross and burned the fur to a fine golden color and stabilized into cross shaped bit of fur. Its eyes snapped open and the cat looked up into the sky and truly saw the stars for first time in it's life and understood what she was seeing.
"Well $#%#, this is just what I need." The cat said to itself as it rolled to it's feet and looked down at it's body. "F&%$# Moon Magic strikes again." Then it's voice took on a higher pitched mocking tone. "Hey I got an idea, lets ruin the advisers lives by making them not only intelligent, but immortal as well. That way we never have to replace them and they can be subservient slaves forever and ever..."
"Damn those B&%#$!"
The cat sighed as it shook itself and tried to get a better idea of what had happened and ignored all the information cascading through its head. "I have to find the Princess and figure out what happened the others." It muttered to itself. "How the hell should I know where she might be? Probably bedding some outlander prince like they always did in the old days."
"Well Sol isn't going to take this body snatching $%&# sitting down!" It yelled out and swatted a trash can with it's hind legs and sent it flying out of the alley, arching over the street, and bouncing off some guys head. Instantly nearly knocking him out in the middle of the sidewalk, causing him to stagger several feet out into the road just as a bus was coming along. The screech of tires and screams of shock filled the background. Though Sol didn't seem to notice as she continued to grumble to herself. "I will figure out what the hell has happened and make that $%&# pay if the princess has been injured!"
"But first I need to take care of this little hair problem of mine." Sol muttered under her breath as she noticed that she was in major need of a good grooming. She licked her paw and started getting to work on the mess, then made a face and started spitting all over the sidewalk. "Someone is going to pay for doing this to me and when I get my paws on them they are going to be in a world of hurt!"
"The kitty is talking."
Sol turned and glared that the homeless bum sitting nearby, almost completely covered in garbage and papers. She wasn't even going to think about what he was wearing, looked like, or for the sake of her tortured nose, what he smelled like. The wotans cross on her forehead started to glow. "I do not need this crap right now human."
"You're cute."
Seconds later the alley lights up with a golden flash of energy that bursts from the mouth of the alley, startling several people who notice it, this is followed by a high pitched scream. As several people run from the scene or go to investigate a the small brown cat walks out of the alley looking as innocent as a smelly cat can without drawing to much notice. Then glares at all the people around her as they all start to smell something do by their feet and quickly leave the area as fast as they can. Then she hops up on the nearest fence and quickly begins to make her way down the street with her tail up in the air. Back in the alley there is a stunned homeless man laid out completely naked in the middle of the alley way in a pile of old boxes and rotting trash.
"I am not 'cute'." Sol mutters under her breath when she gets far enough away, then goes about looking for anything that might be familiar in any way. There had to be some reason why she had awoken, it wasn't often that the Earth Adviser was needed or even called to duty. Though there was one thing that she had to take care of above all others and that was making some improvements to her current body. How her Star Crystal had ended up in this mangy flee bag was beyond her, but there was no way she would allow things get any worse and that meant a bath. She shuddered, then after that would be a bit of grooming.
**********
Groaning in pain, Ranma crawled out of his sleeping bag and gasped for air as he held his ribs. Ryoga had worked him over pretty good, enough to have put him in the hospital for a few weeks if he hadn't had a magical healing ability to pull him back together in such a short time. Even now two days after the fight he felt like he had been kicked by a mule and was thanking the Kami that he didn't have to be back in school for another three weeks. By then, according to Ami, he should be back to normal. The only problem was that in about four days he had a fight with that girl and he knew that he wouldn't be ready for it. As he thought this he grabbed one of his silk shirts and grit his teeth as he slowly pulled it on over his bandages. He hadn't felt like this in a very long time, not since his old man had 'toughened' him up by subjecting his to an hour of being hit with a 2X4 on his legs, chest, back, and arms that one time a few years back. Oh that had been such a lovely and well meaning thing to experience.
The old fart hadn't held back either, hitting him as hard as he could and calling him a wimp when he fell down or he started bleeding. Enduring that once a week for three years had been mind numbingly painful, but it had worked, not matter how cruel the training itself was on the body. It normally took him about a week to recover from the training, though he was still forced, while injured, to go through the morning work out no matter how injured he was. The life of a martial artist is fraught with peril and all that crap, he had heard it enough times. So he had no plans to back out of his fight with that girl on the grounds that he was injured, she could throw those blasts of energy, but didn't seem to have any real training at all. Crawling to his knees he pulled his pants, socks, and a pair of shoes and backed his way out of the tent. Each step felt like someone was driving a red hot poker through his chest and side where Ryoga had bruised his internal organs.
The sun was just coming up as he stood up completely and looked into the sky. He had about an hour or so before Usagi showed up for their daily sparing. He hadn't been able to really do much the last few days, but she understood why he insisted she continue to show up. Surprisingly she had already started to unconsciously use a bit of that weird magical aura of hers in her sparing with him. Increasing her speed and sense of awareness ten fold. The only thing he couldn't get her to see was that he was teaching her how to fight, not a new sport. She did not have the drive that drove most fighters to do better and better, instead she learned simply because he said so. He didn't like that, but had been hesitant about pushing her on the subject because he really couldn't see any really good reason to change her. Her heart guided her in all her decisions and it made her fight defensively.
Anything Goes was a 'hard' art, designed for maximum damage and destruction. While Usagi would make an expert in judo and tai chi envious of her control and speed. Ranma didn't know those styles as well as once did, the old man had only covered the basics and let him adapt the moves into Anything Goes however he wished. To correct that he would have to practice them again, but with his current injuries he couldn't even call up his new gravity technique to work his muscles. Moving away from the tent he took up a soft stance and started to move through a couple of the kata he remembered that tai chi master showing him several years ago, running the lesson through his mind as he went from position to position. At the same time another part of his mind was filling his body with Ki and trying to speed up his healing abilities a bit. It would work to a certain extent if he kept it up for a few hours, but after that he would need to rest for a few hours.
He didn't pay any attention to the time as he ran through his morning work out and was quite surprised when he suddenly got a flash of something through his mind. Stopping, he looked around to see if something had distracted him, but the park was till quiet this early in the morning. Closing his eyes again he started over and focused his mind to speeding up his healing again, but there was another flash of something and he was just able to get a direction as he turned and looked out of the park entrance. There was something there, something he couldn't quite identify with all his experience as a fighter. Whatever it was it was growing stronger and heading this way at a high rate of speed.
Frowning, he stepped into a crouching stance beside a nearby tree and watched the area around him. The feeling was stronger now and he could feel apprehension and happiness within his mind along with something he had never experienced before. Figuring out emotions had never been a skill he could pick up with any accuracy. Then there was a flash of relief in the back of his mind and he watched as Usagi ran into the park at a full run, her long blond hair trailing out behind her. She ran over to his camp site and looked around and he felt a bit of worry and annoyance run through his mind. Shaking his head he stepped out from beside the tree and walked over to the campsite where Usagi had just ducked into his tent. Her legs were sticking out of the tent flap as he got close enough to get a good look at her pink shoes.
He smirked as she crawled the rest of the way in, turned around and stuck her head out the flap and glared at him. "Hi." He declared with a small wave.
"Where were you?"
"Over in those trees." He indicated with a flip of his thumb in the right direction.
"What in the world were you doing over there?" She asked.
"I felt something heading in this direction and thought it might be another enemy so I ducked back there to keep it from seeing me, then you come along..."
"You thought I was a monster?!" Usagi yells.
"I think it was the link we share, I could feel your emotions somewhat and I didn't know why until you came into the park."
Usagi crawled out of the tent and Ranma got a good look at her normal half shirt that showed off her belly and tight shorts. Just seeing it made him feel weird, kind of perverted, but he tried to not to show it as she gave him an odd look and smiled at him. "So what kind of training will we be doing today?"
"I had a few things in mind earlier, but I wasn't sure if you would want to learn them or not."
"Like what?"
"I was considering teaching you some of the soft martial arts styles, the ones where you can use your opponents strength against them instead of overpowering them in savage hand to hand combat. I was thinking of a few Tai Chi moves and perhaps some basic Judo."
"What about this Anything Goes you've been showing me?"
"These are going to be the Anything Goes versions of Tai Chi and Judo. The moves are very adaptable in a fight and can give your enemy quite a nasty surprise if you use them right."
"Sure!" Usagi gushed and blinked as she suddenly remembered something. "Oh yeah, Makoto wanted to know if she could come by and practice with you in the mornings."
Ranma froze for a second, on the verge of telling her no, when her eyes went huge and she was suddenly right before him begging him to accept. "PLEASE?!"
"Why?"
"She feels bad about what she did to you and wants to make up for it by making breakfast and sparing with you."
He frowned a little. "She tried to have me branded a pervert in front of the whole school and has been going out of her way to ignore me for over a week. Why now?"
Usagi sighed. "She and Minako both feel bad about the way they were treating you, that thing on the roof of the school you fought filled them with a kind of dark energy that made them act that way and after it was taken out instead of the energy going away like it normally does it just sat there and festered."
"Even Ami was treating me pretty badly Usagi, though no where near as bad as those two."
She nodded. "Yes, but that Youma was affecting you too, remember how you used your looks to steal Umino's books? That was the creature as well, it made Ami and everybody else distrust you to make things even worse."
Nodding to himself he figured that could have been it. "So Makoto doesn't want to kill me anymore?"
"No!" Usagi yelled and glared at him for being so stubborn.
"Then she can come by in the morning and spar, but right now we need to get to your training so less talk and more work!" Ranma yelled and moved into his tickle attack.
Usagi screamed and giggled as he chased her back and forth across the area for their morning run.
**********
Two days, eight hours, thirty four minutes, and twelve seconds. Minako looked over the edge of the bed as Artemis glared at her from his position on her pillow and whimpered a bit. The cat had been lecturing her about her conduct and total lack of common sense for her attacks on Ranma at school a few days before. For blaming him for her attack when it accidentally hit her and sent her and everybody else into that lustful frenzy. So she had made a tiny little mistake, chased after a boy with a tight buns in an attempt to see what he was like in bed, on the floor, in the grass, and the kitchen. It wasn't her fault! The cat had to shut up eventually and she would be able to finally get this mess put behind her and move on. All she had to do was apologies to Ranma for her actions, treating him like dirt, and trying to seduce or embarrass him in public. She had tried to do both now.
Minako whimpered a little more.
"When are you going to apologize to Ranma for your actions Minako?!" Artemis snapped.
"The next time I see him."
"You know where he is, go and do it now, other wise it's going to be weeks before you see him again and you need to put this whole thing behind you."
"The longer the wait the better it will be!" Minako muttered.
"Yeah right! For you! Now go over there and apologize to him before he holds your actions against you for the next few years."
"I don't wanna!" Minako pouted and folded her arms.
Artemis sighed. He had no idea why, but Minako had these rather odd mood swings that made her totally irresponsible and flighty. She could swing from serious during a battle to mischievous at the drop of a hat, from extremely flighty to a stalker even quicker than that if the right guy came along. It was perfectly normal for a person from Venus to be like this, it was the way their brains were wired after all. Still there were times that the whole race just drove him up the wall with the ways they did things. As Sailor Venus Minako was even worse than most of her people, she was the Scout of Love and could actually feel people emotions with a bit of low level empathy that would grow over the years. Now if only he get her to grow up and take a bit of responsibility for her actions. That course of action seemed to be completely impossible though.
For a second the irritated white moon cat considered trying to talk Ranma into making a pass at her to quicken things up, but had to slam his head against the wall to get the picture of Minako being more than willing to play around with him out of his head. He got thrown out the window enough already, whenever she wanted some privacy, he didn't need to add bedroom fun to the list of reasons to lose a night of sleep as well. "Minako! You are going to have to take care of this eventually, do it now and save yourself a bunch of aggravation and time."
"I'll do it later." Minako muttered stubbornly.
Now he was starting to lose his temper, again. Narrowing his eyes, he hissed at her and bound out of the room before he tried to claw up her ankle to relieve a bit of stress. Minako sighed as he left and slowly peaked around the edge of the bed to see if the white cat was playing a trick on her. When his head didn't appear around the edge of the door she slowly stood up and shook her hair out. Finally she had a bit of time to think for herself without the cat nagging at her to fix all her problems. Like an apology was going to cut it, she had plans to do just that, but she had to take care of the girls at school as well. It was still three weeks away and she was going to try and explain to everyone that she had made a mistake about him. There were already rumors going around about how the guy hadn't been seen since that day at school when she and Makoto had attacked him.
She felt bad about that now, though at the time she had been way to angry with him to even think straight. There had to be a way to make up with him that wouldn't require a night in the sack. He was cute, so the thought had come to her almost instantly and she had nearly went off and done just that. Then Artemis the Nag had appeared and spent the last two days lecturing her about what she should do and she had shelved the plan as nearly impossible. He didn't like her anymore and seducing him was next to impossible if that little scene at the shrine was any indication. She wanted to rage at the heavens for giving all the good looking guys to Usagi, how the girl pulled it off she had no clue. Theories yes, but no clue how she did it except that she had drawn in Mamoru, Seiya, and now Ranma like a magnet draws in metal. All cute, all built, all of them with enough sex appeal to satisfy three women at once.
She sighed again, her love life was in the toilet and she was standing here wondering how many more hunks her best friend and Queen was going to pull into their little circle. Would it be to much to ask for her to have on boyfriend that could be the perfect man for her? Cute, rich, and willing to let her fight monsters in her spare time? No, the only guy she had ever found like that was Alan and he had fallen in love with her old best friend and did it all right behind her back while she was fighting crime. She wanted to kick him one right in the balls for doing that to her, but she loved them both too much for that to happen. Then she would just slap the across the head a few times to show them what she thought to their relationship. Now she had to put up with Ranma, someone she wanted for herself and at the same time made her want to smack him a few times just for good measure.
Clenching her fist she glared at the unseen Ranma and growled, she would find a way to make up with him. Then she would belt him one right in the nose for leading her on! Out in the hallway Artemis hung his head and sweatdropped as his charge shifted through another completely unpredictable series of thoughts and emotions that would, in the end, lead to her either making things right again or putting Ranma in the hospital. As quitely as he could, he walked down the stairs and into the living room to let her get over whatever her flighty mind had come up with now. As he lay down he was happy for one thing though, at least she wasn't hiding behind her bed now.
"RANMA SAOTOME I WILL APOLOGISE TO YOU AND BELT YOU ONE RIGHT IN THE NOSE!!" Minako screamed suddenly.
'Oh yeah, she's getting back to normal.' Artemis thought to himself and then wondered what exactly this would lead to.
**********
Several days later just as the sun was beginning to come up over the horizon Ranma was packing up the last of his camp site and making sure that he left little or no trace that he'd ever been there in the first place. His body was once again working perfectly as he moved around picking things up and making sure he had everything in order. He didn't have to train with Usagi today and had given her the weekend off to go and be with her friends. Not like she didn't do that anyway, but this was and official break from the training. Along the same lines he still hadn't trained with Makoto either. Even after Usagi had agreed, so he wasn't to sure what she was up to. Still, he figured she would be hanging around Usagi today so he didn't have anything to worry about.
He hadn't told her about the fight he would have with that Ryoko chick today and if all went well she would never know about it. If she even disapproved of the challenge he had a feeling that he might not put his all into it and he had to make sure that didn't happen. Usagi had made it quite clear she didn't like people fighting unless it was for a good reason, like a life or death situation. His fight with Ryoko was a grudge match pure and simple and didn't even come close to what she would find acceptable. So he would have to make things quick if the fight went in a direction he didn't expect.
A couple days earlier he had come up with the idea of moving his camp and had told her that he would spend the day hiking around the city looking some place else to live. Usagi hadn't liked the idea very much, but he wasn't going to just set up in some back alley somewhere. If he did that he would never get a decent nights sleep. Those places had some strange things happen in the middle of the night. He could remember more than once waking up in the middle of the night with some thief trying to steal him and the old man's backpacks and finding out the hard way just how heavy the things were, even when empty. Now that he had the option he didn't want to put up with the hassle. Then he started thinking of the Shrine where the fight was going to be held and what Usagi would think if she found out.
The last time he had been at the shrine where that girl lived had been quite an adventure and ended up with him leaving in a set of stolen clothes and out witting two girls in their own bathroom, sorta. He picked up the clothes he had borrowed from that guy with the pony tail and sat them inside the pack, right on top so that he could return them when he arrived. On the sly of course. Usagi had allowed him to borrow her parents washer and dryer the day before to clean all his clothes, so most of his stuff was in good shape again and didn't smell. With a flip of the canvas top he closed the pack, secured the ties to make sure nothing would fall off, and lifted it to his shoulder as he stood there and glanced at the sun. He had a few hours to get back to that shrine.
For just a second he considered telling one of the Scouts where he would be after all, then decided against it. Just because a part of him wanted one of them there to see him win didn't mean he would admit to it, he was a man after all. That would be weak and he would never be weak in anyones eyes if he could avoid it. Hell if things got bad he could always transform into Vulcan, though he had no intention of that unless the girl was insanely strong. She was quite strong if he remembered her right, but he'd seen her in action twice now and knew that he could beat her with ease. In the last few weeks he'd learned a few things and he was looking forward to testing them out in a real fight against an opponent that could hit back. That made him sigh a little. He was getting rust with all his training and it bothered him just a little. Sure he could do the forms better and faster, but he had no one around to test them on and it wasn't like he could just haul off and start hitting Usagi in their morning training sessions.
The girl had told him more than once that if she was going to learn how to fight it would be simply as a way to get faster and stronger and she would depend on her abilities as Sailor Moon to fight. He didn't like it, but he just couldn't tell the girl that it was for her own good. She would look up at him with those large blue eyes of hers and turn his spine to jelly. If that wasn't the worst bit, he still couldn't figure out what the hell his emotions were trying to tell him every time she did it and that irritated the hell out of him. He just figured he would just never understand girls and left it at that. So he trained, and trained, and trained until he couldn't stand anymore and then he would sit down and start to work on his Ki control. There was an area where he was making leaps and bounds with control and power.
The power that he got as Vulcan seemed to be bleeding over into his untransformed state and it was giving him a minor power up. At first it had been incredibly hard to control and he'd had to limit himself to doing just the most basic attacks, but that had changed in the last few weeks. He was even faster than he had ever been and if that wasn't enough he had learned how to focus his strength as well. That one made him smirk a bit, because when Ryoga showed up again things were going to be on a whole different level than they had before. The last time he practiced with his strength alone he found he could lift a car over his head, toss it a few feet in the air and catch it with only a little difficulty. He'd seen Ryoga lift weights that had to be close to a thousand pounds with one arm, ripping a telephone pole out of the ground and swing it around like a large club, and even shift large ice blocks with his bare hands. The guy was strong, insanely strong, but Ranma had a feeling that he'd finally surpassed him in that one area. Though with two weeks training, even at this advanced level, he might just be imagining things.
With a shrug he adjusted the weight of the pack again and headed out of the park. It would take him nearly two hours of running on fences and over roofs to get out of the city and to the temple where that girl lived. He wanted to be early to make sure he was there first and they couldn't say he was a coward for showing up late. That was another thing about Ryoga that needed to be pounded on a bit. Ranma spotted the direction he wanted to go and jumped to a nearby fence, then to a roof, and started making his way out of the city in the fastest rout he knew of. The only thing that would have been faster was to fly and he couldn't do that. Still it was something to be looked at some time in the future. As he moved he failed to see two things that he should have. The first was that there was a shadow following him about two houses behind him, keeping an eye on his every movement. The other was a brown haired cat with a golden wotans cross on it's forehead.
Sometime later Ranma vaults over a high fence and lands in the grass about fifteen feet below and finds himself standing on the curve of a street. He starts walking, trying to figure out where he is and pulls out a map. As he rounds the curve he traces his path down, then stops, does an about face and heads back the other direction. Ranma was just glad he knew how to read a map of the area or he would have been in trouble. His father couldn't read a map to save his life, instead Ranma remembered that he'd been the map reader since he was about eight or so. About half an hour or so later he noticed that he was leaving the city finally and spotted the road he needed follow in order to make his way to the shrine. This was his second trip out here and he was amazed that Akane had even been able to hit him this far in the first place. Then wondered if something else might have sent him here instead. The girl was insanely strong, but even Ryoga would have problems hitting this distance even when he was in one of his berserker rages
Not that he cared all that much, he was finally away from Nerima and longer he was away the better. The only people that knew that he was there were Nabiki, who was currently being evil and Ryoga, who was missing like usual. So he figured he didn't have that much to worry about unless either of them showed up while he was fighting today. More than likely that would be Ryoga if it happened at all. The chances of Nabiki leaving Nerima herself were kind of remote so he could rule her out as extremely unlikely. So all he really had to worry about was the fight itself. To say Ranma was looking forward to his battle with Ryoko was a little silly, he hated to hit girls and it showed in how he treated them. He was a trained martial artist and knew that meant that he had to accept her challenge no matter what.
It was one of the few rules he still followed. Or else he would dishonor his family school completely, but he still hated to hit a girl no matter what he was starting to think of her. What had happened between them had been a misunderstanding and yet another example of his life where a girl just assumed something and decided to kill him because of it. He wondered how often something like that would happen to him as the years went on. First had been Akane when she found out about his curse, then later on with Shampoo when she gave him the kiss of death and chased him across all of China. Then Ukyo when she had dedicated her life to killing him by any means available just because he had listened to his old man when he was six years old.
At one point in time he had been forced to fight each of them in one form or another and all of them had ended in some strange way or had been the cause of yet another problem for him to solve. It all came down to his father though, he didn't blame anyone else, it would have been unfair. His father had never taught him to think things through to solve his problems, just to hit it as hard as he could until it went down and stayed down. That odd attitude had allowed Akane's temper to edge itself right to the brink and beyond because he refused to admit his faults. Not that he had very many anyway. His life had always been chaotic, but there was something about Jusenkyo that had made it even worse than it had ever been before he arrived at that forsaken place.
He had been forced into not one, but two abusive relationships with both Akane and Shampoo, had his best friend turn on him and swear to ruin his whole life just because he his old man tended to show his back side to everyone he met eventually. Then he had ran into the Sailor Scouts, he liked some of them, but the rest seemed to dislike him for something that one of them had caused in the first place and still blamed him for some reason. Then there was his new powers, he was the Knight of Vulcan, a god of smithing and War (temporarily anyway). Even after all that he was still on everyone's bad side for things he hadn't done or they were convinced he'd done on purpose.
Ami for example thought he'd felt her up that time he saved her and ended up on the receiving end of her temper until that Youma at the school had been defeated. He still wasn't sure what the thing had been, but it had affected everyone's emotions in one form or another. Ami's actions had been because of that thing just like Minako and Makoto's feelings had been influenced as well. After the thing had been defeated everyone had come to their senses, to a certain degree, but they still treated him quite badly at times and he didn't know why. Though recently Ami had cooled down enough to drag his full story out after the battle with Nabiki and Ryoga at the mall. Then Usagi had said that Makoto wanted to apologize, but she hadn't shown up to do that yet so he wasn't holding his breath.
Ranma looked around and found himself near a very familiar road and realized that he was about a mile from the Masaki Shrine. This was the very road he had ran down that day he left in such a hurry, running from that cat like things with the floppy ears, and wondered if anything had changed in the last few weeks. That cat thing had chased him almost all the way to the main road a couple miles back. He remembered his fight with the old man the last time he had been here. He had come down from the Shrine to see who was causing so much noise at the house so early in the morning, that was when they first met. The fight had been a lot of fun and they even ended up leveling most of the Shrine as their attacks got a little out of hand.
That alone had made the fight one of the best he'd had in a very long time and well worth the pain it had caused as far as he was concerned. It made him smirk though, they had no idea that he was a guy and here he was heading back there to fight the one person that did know. Other than his unforeseen dip in the hot pool that changed him back to man, he had spent most of his time there as a girl, a shape he barely tolerated as it was. That reminded him of that Ryoko girl he was going to fight, she looked like a cat in some respects, that tail of hers was a dead give a away, the small fangs that made him wonder if she was a relative of Ryoga in anyway. Oh and those strange ears of hers as well, if they didn't scream out 'weirdo' every time her. Now that he was so close to the place he was able to see that he would arrive on time for the fight. He wandered up the dirt road and over the small hill that led down to the main house where everyone lived. He stopped there and to looked down at the house and the lake beside it and took a second to calm his mind for what was about to happen.
As he stood there he let his senses expand out a bit and glanced to the side as he detected the old man's presence descending through some trees that dominated a nearby portion of the land around the lake. If he recalled right the shrine itself, the one he had helped to level, was in that direction. That must have meant that it was or was in the process of being rebuilt or was fixed up already, hopefully it would survive this battle. With a smirk he kept his senses fixed on the old man and waited for him to get a little closer before he started to slowly walk down the hill towards the house. He wasn't that surprised when the old goat made his appearance and headed right for him a few seconds later.
Ranma also noticed that they guy was carrying a boken just like the last time they met and that he couldn't hear the guy moving as he walked. Just the feel of his the energy in his body. They stared at each other as they met up and took a second to evaluate each other as a threat or a friend. Ranma was surprised to see from the look in the guys eyes that he hadn't been recognized, then remembered once more that no one here had ever seen him as a man. Just a big breasted red head that had caused a lot of problems. He just hoped that they didn't find out about the curse, so long as that was kept quiet every thing would be fine. So Ranma sat his large back pack down and gave him a bow.
"Hello young man, why are you here?" Katsuhito asked.
Ranma slowly rose from is bow and replied. "I got challenged to a fight by a girl named Ryoko, we are supposed to meet here to 'finish things once and for all' as she said."
"A fight you say?"
"Yeah, she jumped to some weird conclusion about me and decided that I had to die for it or something. We agreed to meet here for a match to get things over with." Ranma said, it wasn't quite the truth, but it would work.
"No one informed me of this, when is it to happen?"
"Some time today, we didn't set an exact time for it. She was a little busy cussing at me for insulting her." Ranma said with a smirk.
"What did you do to her?"
"She kept calling me a pervert and insulting me, I have no clue what I did, but my martial arts school won't allow me to refuse a challenge like this. So here I am."
Katsuhito nodded. "What is your name?"
"Ranma Saotome."
The old man's eyes narrow as if looking Ranma over a little deeper. "You don't say?"
"Any relation to the female Ranma Saotome?"
Ranma smirked again, he had not intention of just telling the old man about his curse. "Yep, we train together all the time."
Katsuhito nodded as if confirming something and motioned for Ranma to come to the house with him. "Come on in, most everyone should be up by now. I can have Sasami make you up a bit to eat before you and Ryoko fight."
"Who is Sasami?"
"She does most of the cooking for the house and is the little sister to one of our other guests."
Ranma's eyes lit up, he would never turn down free food. "Food, huh? I could do with a little of that, I forgot to make anything up this morning and haven't had a chance to eat yet."
"You came all the way out here without eating anything first?"
"I was worried about this match because I didn't want to fight a girl in the first place.
"Is there something wrong with Ryoko?"
"Nope, I was raised to think that women were weak and useless by my father. I don't believe that, but I still don't like to fight them, it always causes more problems than it solves."
The old man nodded, he wasn't used to rather blunt answers to his questions, then shrugged it off. "Well, lets head inside and see if there is anything ready for breakfast."
"Sure."
Katsuhito opened the front door and let Ranma head in first and followed after him so that he could shut the door. They could immediately tell that something good was being cooked for dinner and Ranma started to drool.
"That smells great!"
"Yes it does, take a seat at the table and lets see if she has anything ready." The old man said.
A little blue haired girl with her hair in long pig tails stepped out of the door that led to the kitchen and sat a bowl on the table, it had several pieces of fruit in it. She instantly reminded Ranma of Usagi because of the odd hairdo, though this girl had a more normal version going for her. Sasami noticed them both and smiled. "I thought I heard something out here." She said happily.
"Good morning Sasami, this is Ranma, he will be joining us for lunch at least."
"Hi." Ranma said with a nervous wave.
"Hi Ranma, sit down anywhere, everyone will be wandering down here in a few minutes now that I've started to set the table." Sasami said as she went back into the kitchen.
Ranma nodded and quickly moved over to a nearby chair and sat down. "I'm not taking anyone's place am I?"
"Nope! Normally Washuu would sit there, buy she's been kind of busy lately and hasn't been eating with us like she usually does." Sasami said as she came back out of the kitchen and sat some rolls on the table along with several bowls.
Ranma had to repress a shudder as he heard the name. Washuu was a name he wasn't going to forget any time soon either. She had been the one that caused the whole mess the last time he was here, stripping him of his clothes and running experiments on him like he was some kind of test subject or something. He had woken up in her lab female and quite naked, so he hoped she didn't know about the curse. If she showed he'd know almost right away just from the way she acted the last time they met. He turned back to Katsuhito. "Are you sure eating here before the fight won't cause problems?"
"Why would it?"
"Me and Ryoko will be trying to pound each other after while, some people would be quite happy to make me sit outside and wait until they finished dinner before the fight even started." Ranma explained with a shrug.
Katsuhito nodded. "I have met a few like that back in my youth. On the other hand I never liked people like that and insist that you get a good meal in before you start."
"Sounds good to me." Ranma said with a grin.
**********
Washuu was a bit startled as she sat in her floating chair typing on her holographic computer when one of her alarms went off. She stopped typing for a second before she waved her hand started working on a second holographic computer and brought up a file that was flashing in time with the alarm. Surprisingly it wasn't one of her Mihoshi alerts either, which was quite a shock really. That woman could break into any room in the lab completely by accident, it was uncanny how many experiments the woman had ruined. The alarm was a recent addition as far as she could tell, one she had forgotten about in all the excitement that happened that day now that she recalled the incident. The file was for one Ranma Saotome, a red headed girl that had been her test subject for a few hours. Then Ryoko and Ayeka had received an unwanted, and still unidentified, male visitor in the girls bath area and all hell had broken loose. In the confusion the girl had gotten out of her restraints and vanished into thin air.
The alarm was a general alert alarm that told her that the escapee was being picked up on the sensors again. This time she was outside the house out on the grounds. With a tap of a key she turned off the alarm and activated some of the other sensors she had set up throughout the property and watched as a large screen rose up from the floor off to the side and she was given a panoramic view of the property and had them zoom in on the energy readings. What came up was not what she was expecting at all and scowled at the well proportioned boy walking down the dirt road that led to the shrine. He was about sixteen, maybe seventeen and dressed in loose fitting black pants and a tight red silk shirt with the sleeves missing. His long black hair looked as if it was tied back in a pig tail as he glanced around the area.
"Now why would you register on my sensors as that girl?" She muttered to herself as she moved her holographic computer around and started to run some deeper scans on him.
Her eyebrows started to rise higher and higher as the readings started to match up almost exactly with the readings she had for Ranma Saotome. No two beings had energy readings exactly the same and could easily be used to identify someone if they had a copy of it on record. It took years for a person to change that reading and if a new scan was taken once a decade it could be used as the perfect security device. Even twins had different energy readings. This boy and Ranma seemed to be exactly alike except for one area and that was a gauge she rarely had to bother with. The boy seemed to have a high amount of an energy commonly known as Magic among those cultures who didn't understand science. She had encountered entire cultures set up around the stuff. As a scientist she didn't really believe in 'magic' and figured there had to be a better explanation for it that she had yet to come across. Even stranger, Ranma seemed to have a slight magic level as well now that the was recalling the incident, though nothing on this guy.
She focused the sensors some more and she detected Katsuhito as he made his way down the from the recently rebuilt Shrine and over to the boy. According to the readings the 'magic' level of the boy rose up a bit as Katsuhito approached, as if the boy was getting ready for a fight. A quick run with another program rated him with an higher than normal power level. One high enough to add to her curiosity. A normal human had a power level of about 10 or so if they were in good shape. The boy seemed to have a power level of seventy easily and that rose to seventy five when Katsuhito approached. Then she noticed something else that surprised her even more than his power level. The boy looked like a male version of the picture she had saved of Ranma Saotome.
Washuu cackled as she activated yet a third set of sensors. By the time the boy reached the front steps of the house she would know everything about him. These sensors were illegal throughout the known universe because of what they were capable of doing when used by the wrong sort of people, but she was the greatest scientist in the universe. Therefore her hands were the right hands in which to use them as far as she was concerned. She had no intention of using the sensors to dissect the boy into his component atoms, that would have been such a waste. Within seconds thousands of bits of data were pouring into her main computer core and flashing across the screen of her holographic computers as she worked on two at once.
"BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!! I AM SUCH A GENIUS!!!"
**********
"You!" Ryoko yelled as she entered the front room to eat dinner.
"Hey, hows it going?" Ranma said as he leaned back in his chair. "I got invited to lunch."
Ryoko growled and formed her energy sword, a long blue bar of crackling energy that she planned to shove down the boy's throat.
"Now calm down girl, we'll fight after lunch is over." Ranma explained as he sat forward and carefully placed his foot on the floor. He figured she just might attack him anyway and if she did he wouldn't be there to as she sliced the chair in half.
"I told you I would kill you the next time we met." Ryoko snarled as she floated off the ground and started to fly forward.
Katsuhito glared at her and she came to as stop half a second later with her energy blade hanging above Ranma's head. "You two may fight after lunch is over. I invited him. No need to fight on an empty stomach anyway."
"But he..." Ryoko muttered.
Then Ayeka came down the stairs with Tenchi behind her and stopped and noticed that Ryoko was about to attack some guy. She smiled evilly. "What's this, Monster woman finally found a boyfriend other than my Tenchi?"
Tenchi sighed and rolled his eyes as Ryoko slowly turned and glared at Ayeka.
"Why Princess, did you finally get done dying every strand of your hair that rather ugly color?" Ryoko said mildly. "I know of a number of monkeys that might find grape flavored hair fun to eat."
"Die!
"Bitch!!"
The two girls dove at each other and Tenchi carefully stepped over then and made his way over to the table and sat down across from Ranma. "Um..."
"I take it she just likes to fight?" Ranma asked mildly, watching the girls roll around on the floor trying to pull each others hair out.
Tenchi nodded, a bit surprised that the guy wasn't running for the hills yet. "They do this every so often, I'm not sure why though."
Katsuhito gave Tenchi a look and the boy shrugged a tiny bit to admit the lie.
"I'm surprised Ryoko didn't use the energy blade or that energy blast she tried to use on me the last time we met." Ranma said and winced as the Ayeka girl kicked Ryoko right in the stomach.
"Ah, well, we sorta..." Tenchi tried to explain without really explaining.
"They aren't allowed to anymore." Katsuhito said. "They have leveled the house more than once since they started fighting and the last time it happened we made them fix the damage by themselves. Ever since then they try to cause as little damage as possible."
"Makes sense." Ranma said. "I tend to break things when I fight and I had to learn that lesson quite early. That and how to fix a hole in the wall with one short board and bit of paint.
"Slut!" Ayeka screamed.
"The Great Grape Ape! Hair and all!" Ryoko yelled with a laugh.
"AGHAAAAA! Die!" Ayeka yelled at the top of her lungs and used her fingers to go for Ryoko's eyes.
"Gotta do better than that you purple haired Cormellian Slug Puddle!"
They dove on each other again, snarling in an eerie harmony that reminded Ranma far to much of a pair of cats. Then he saw Ayeka pulling on Ryoko's tail.
Ranma turned back to the table and saw that the little girl Sasami was setting a large plate full of food down on the table. The old man and Tenchi seemed to have forgotten about the two girls even as they made more noise than a heard of elephants moving through a forest full of trees. Hey, all he wanted was the food anyway, who was he to miss a free meal. He gave Tenchi a look and boy just shrugged and motioned for him to dig in. Ranma grabbed a bowl along with the other two guys and quickly filled it with a little of everything. He wasn't sure what he was eating, but it had to be better than anything that Akane had ever made. Akane's last meal ate through the table and nearly took his foot off when it exploded. His legs had only been numb for four hours or so, nothing compared to some of her other concoctions.
Sasami came back out of the kitchen and sat a pie down on the table. "For later when everyone is done. Ryoko! Ayeka! Either take the fight outside or sit down to eat!"
The two girls stopped fighting suddenly. Ranma noticed that Ayeka looked like she was about to punch Ryoko, while Ryoko appeared to be half way phased through the floor. They looked up at Sasami. "Huh?" They asked.
"Eat lunch or go outside to fight. You know the rules! We all agreed to follow them you know and we do have a guest." Sasami said as she pointed at Ranma.
"You!" Ryoko yelled, suddenly remembering what she had been about to do when Ayeka showed up.
"We've established this already." Ranma said around a mouthful of rice.
She suddenly lifted off the floor and with one hand twisted Ayeka around and tossed her on the couch as if she weighed nothing. The purple haired girl looked a bit shocked and looked up just as Ryoko reformed her energy sword about three inches from the tip of her nose. Ayeka scrambled off the couch and half way across the room in the blink of an eye, little electrified logs forming around her in an instant. "Enough of this crap! You, PERVERT, outside now or I will blow you outside by way of the nearest wall."
Ranma raised and eyebrow and shrugged. His hands went to put his bowl down and in an instant he had finished off a good portion of the food on the table. He glanced at the shocked looked on Katsuhito and Tenchi's face and smirked. "Hey, if she isn't going to eat her share I might as well do it since I'm hungry."
Using a napkin to wipe the side of his mouth Ranma stood up and moved away from the table and saw that Ryoko was giving him one of those weird looks that he'd never been able to understand. So he shrugged, smirked at Ryoko, and with two bounces was across the room and out the door before she could even swing her sword at him. She screamed and chased him outside a few seconds later and was shocked to see that he had made his way away from the nearby lake and towards the forest on the other side of the house. "I'M GOING TO KILL YOU, PERVERT!"
Bouncing up and down Ranma stuck his tongue out at her and smacked his bit a couple of times. He just loved to piss off his opponents sometimes. "Bring it on girly!"
Ryoko vanished between one step and the next, only to reappear right in front of Ranma as he was in mid bounce. He contorted in mid air, using two fingers planted in her hair to flip over her and send her off balance with a shove as he flipped higher into the air and landed several yards away. By the time she regained her balance he was already at the tree line and moving into the forest at a full sprint. Then with a single bound he jumped into the trees and seemed to go even faster. Ryoko, to angry to think straight doesn't notice a shadow moving across the ground as it follows her across the property.
**********
"I'm quite amazed really." Ami said as she handed the report card back to Usagi.
"You're surprised?" Usagi said as she looked it over in wonder. The last time she had gotten a B in anything had been back in second grade. "I'm not sure I can even show this to my mom."
"Why is that?" Rei snapped from the other side of the table.
"You know how bad my grades are, if she sees this she's either going to faint or she's going to ask how managed to cheat enough to get my grades up this high."
Minako sighed as she looked at her own report card and wondered if she should hide it from her own parents. Then she turned to look up as Makoto came into the room with a plate of cookies and sat them on the table. "So what did your report card look like?"
"About the same as usual, though a little higher thanks to Ami's help with some of the subjects." Makoto said.
Usagi snatched five cookies off the plate. "Ami, how did you do? Still first?"
"Yes." Ami said simply, blushing slightly.
"So what did we have planned for today besides complaining about our grades." Rei asked as she glared at Usagi eating three cookies at once.
"I was thinking of going to mall after while since we have the day off from school." Usagi said.
"Naw, as much fun as that would be I don't have any money to spend." Minako said. "How about something else?"
"Like what?" Usagi said. She'd been eyeing this stuffed bunny at one of the shops for some time now.
"We could help Ranma find a new place to live." Ami said and blushed a little.
"Move?" Minako asked.
Usagi nodded. "He's been at that park living in that tent for a few weeks now. So he's looking for some place else to stay."
"Did he say if he had any place in mind?" Rei asked.
"No, he just packed everything up this morning and left the area. By the time I got to the park he was already gone. I didn't get a chance to see him off."
"Oh really?" Minako said with a grin as he eyes sparkled. "You two have been getting quite close lately."
"He's been teaching me some martial arts."
"I still need to get over there and practice with you two." Makoto said.
"Where have you been anyway? He asked about your the other day." Usagi asked.
Makoto sighed. "I've been busy. The one day I stopped by you two were busy."
"What? I don't remember you stopping by."
"I never got close enough for you two to see me. The two of you looked like you were having fun and I didn't want to interrupt." Makoto explained. She had caught Ranma sitting on top of Usagi tickling her. That didn't look like any kind of practice she'd ever seen.
"Well you should have said something. Training with Ranma can be so much fun!"
Rei rolled her eyes.
"What does he do?" Ami asked, leaning forward a little. Minako and Makoto quickly followed suit.
Usagi giggled. "He shows me a form, then has me repeat it several times then makes me use the technique while he attacks."
"He hits you?!" Rei yelled.
"No! He breaks through my defenses and tickles me." Usagi said with a giggle.
"He...tickles you?" Makoto muttered. "Are you sure he's not making advances at you?"
"Nope! When he really wants to prove a point he tossed me in the water."
Ami and Minako's arms slipped and they crashed into the table as they both thought of Usagi in her normal workout uniform, soaked, with certain bits showing through and Ranma off to the side ogling her. Ami started to blush a deep red and looked away as Minako yelled and grabbed her head. "He's trying to get into your pants!"
"That pervert!" Makoto said a few seconds later.
"I have to agree for once." Rei said with a nod as she scowled.
"Humph!" Usagi said as she folded her arms. "I didn't want him to hit me, so I asked him to train me a different way and he came up with the tickling. That is bad enough that it forces me to improve. He said so himself."
"How can you learn to fight if you don't learn how to take a hit once in a while?" Makoto asked. "It's part of the training."
"I know, that's why he's been teaching me only defensive stuff that will increase my speed and balance. Any way the one time he did get a look at me he was in his girl form and had her eyes squeezed shut so tight that I wondered if she would ever be able to open them again." Usagi explained.
"HE DID SEE YOU?!" Rei yelled. "I'LL KILL HIM!"
Minako, Ami, and Makoto all nodded angrily, though the blue haired Scout looked a bit confused.
"Now calm down, nothing happened and it was a misunderstanding!" Usagi said hastily. Why was everyone acting so strangely about this all of a sudden.
Standing, Minako pulled out her Pen. "I say we find him and beat some sense into him. I have to kick his ass anyway, this will just speed things up and teach him a lesson."
"I was going to forgive him too." Makoto said as she pulled hers out.
"There's not need to go quite that far!" Ami said as quickly as she could. "We just need to talk to him, that's all."
"Yes, we need to 'talk' to him alright." Rei said a she too stood up.
Scowling, a look that Usagi didn't wear very often, she slammed her hand down on the table startling the others. "SIT! DOWN! NOW!"
They all sat down as if their strings had been cut and tried not to look into Usagi's angry eyes. "Now all of you listen. Ranma had never taken advantage of me and he has had plenty of chances to try. He is frightened of doing or saying anything that might hurt a girl. All of you should know him a bit better than this by now. Minako you have been treating him horribly since you accidentally fired off that weird Love Beam of yours the other day and affected all of us with it!"
Seething, Usagi glared at them. "This ends now or I will take steps! I don't know what I'll do, but I'll do something to make all of you stop treating him so badly! He is not Mamoru, he isn't even looking for a girlfriend right now. He is just trying to your friend and you three are making that impossible!" She yelled pointing at Minako, Makoto, and Rei.
"Yes Princess." They all muttered, refusing to look her in the eye.
"Makoto?"
"Yes Princess?" The tall Scout asked, a little worried.
"I would like more cookies." Usagi said, looking sadly at the empty plate in front of her.
With the tension suddenly broken Makoto giggled and nodded a few times as she jumped up to get more cookies. Usagi turned back to Ami. "Ami, you have given Ranma more of a chance, but even you haven't treated all that well."
"I know, I kept comparing him to Mamoru."
"So did I at first, but he's been nothing but a friend to all of us and look how he's been treated since he arrived. He had no permanent place to stay, sleeping in that tent night after night as if it was enough. Then what the Youma did at the school to make everyone turn against him, that was horrible." Usagi said.
Minako winced, though a part of her still rebelled against giving him a chance.
"I offered him a chance to stay here." Rei pointed out. "He refused."
Usagi nodded. "I know. Still there had to be something we can do."
The door opened and Makoto stepped into the room again and sat a new plate of cookies right in front of Usagi. "Here you go."
"Thanks Mako-chan!"
She blushed a little. "You're welcome."
"So any ideas?" Usagi said as she started nibbling at a cookie.
"Well we need to fine him first." Rei pointed out and Usagi agreed.
"What do we do when we do find him though?" Minako asked.
"Usagi, don't you have that bond with him? The one you were telling us about the other day?"
The blond nodded. "Yeah, but I have to really focus on it to feeling anything from him."
"Well why don't you use that to track him down? Like Tuxedo Mask used to do when you were in trouble." Rei said.
"I hadn't thought of that!" Usagi said happily. She had gotten used to having a bond sitting in the back of her mind and over time learned to ignore it. Closing her eyes she reached out through the bond to try and find Ranma. She didn't notice as her crescent moon formed on her forehead or as the others all gasped and Ami quickly pulled out her computer and started scanning her.
Nothing happened at first, but then Usagi got a flash of a tree moving by at a high rate of speed and a sense of danger. "He's in danger I think! Running through the trees really, really fast!"
"Are you sure?" Ami asked. "I'm not detecting anything dangerous with the Mercury computer."
Usagi slowly nodded, as if she was in a trance like state. "I'm getting flashes of something, images, through the link. It's normally just emotions."
"Like what?" Ami asked quickly, typing so fast that her fingers couldn't be seen.
"Trees, running, fire, a flying woman!" Usagi gasped and jumped to her feet. "We have to help him!"
"I'm not detecting anything within the city." Ami said half a second later.
"If you are seeing trees I'd bet he's outside the city." Makoto said.
"One second, let me increase the range a bit." Ami said. "Found him!"
"WHERE?!" Usagi yelled.
"Here." Ami said as she pulled up a map of the area and pointed out the Masaki Shrine.
"What's he doing at that run down Shrine for?" Rei asked.
"You know it?" Makoto said as they all stood up.
"Yeah, I've been there a couple of times with my Grandfather. The old priest is a master swordsman that tends the lands with his family and some friends."
"Lets all transform and teleport there at once. Ranma is in trouble, I can feel his fear and excitement right now."
"Excitement?" Ami wondered out loud.
Usagi shrugged. "He likes to fight and gets excited when things turn dangerous."
"Typical man." Minako said with a grin. "Lets get transformed and go help him out."
They all nodded and called out their transformation phrases.
**********
As he runs Ranma he's reminded of what happened between them the last time they met and of course all the energy blasts she was firing at him. He dodged to the side, flipped in mid air, and bounced off a tree as the one he had been on exploded into a large fire ball full of tooth pick sized shrapnel. At the same time he caught glimpse of the girl high in the air above him firing into the forest all around him. He was pretty sure she didn't know his exact location, but that last blast had been to close for comfort. He could see the smoke wafting off his shirt from where his back had been singed by the outer edge of the blast. This situation kind of reminded him of the fight with Saffron and grinned in excitement, that had been the best fight of his life and this girl was pulling off similar attacks. This time he was more prepared for someone that could toss around fire balls strong enough to blow large holes in the ground without being forced to protect someone at the same time.
"I got you now." He whispered as he cupped his hands and formed a ball of energy. High above Ryoko's glowing eyes turned and looked right at Ranma and he cursed as she sent a dozen beams of energy flying right at his
hiding place. Even before he could fire off a Möko Takabisha. He dodged to the left and managed to make it around the first few blasts and was forced to wade through the rest as the area around him was blasted out of existance. He took what little cover he could behind a large tree and waited several seconds before he stood up and ran into the smoke and fire that had filled the area all around him. Saffron hadn't been that accurate and his arrogance had left holes in his defenses, this girl's level seemed to be a bit higher than his had been during the fight. She was turning out to be more than he expected. He kept to the smokey areas as he moved through the trees to find a better place to attack her.
"Come out pervert! You can't run like a coward forever, I'll find you eventually and when I do, you are going to die!" Ryoko yelled out as she tried to see through the smokey cloud that had formed below her.
Let's see what she can really do, Ranma thought to himself as he moved into the open and waved his hands in the air to catch her attention. "Lets get the show on the road! Or are you going to flutter around up there like a retarded butterfly?!"
Growling, Ryoko's head snaps around to give him the 'glare of death' and she instantly fires a beam of energy at him. She watches as Ranma simply flips out of the way and the ground where he was vanishes as her energy beam blows it to hell. She holds out her hand as she glares down on the pervert below her and several dozen balls of glowing energy form around her. Then it streams into her open hand to form a ball of energy that she grabs hold of to form her energy sword. He seems to just be standing there waiting for her to do something else and it irritates her more than a little. Dropping to the ground she lands and with a scream of rage flies at him with her sword raised to strike.
"Oh come on! You can do better than that!" Ranma mocks as she comes flying at him. Then at the last second he simply hops up into the air and flips over her with little trouble. Tapping her back a few times to show her that she was wide open to his attack.
Ryoko rises into the air and comes to a halt hovering about ten feet in the air above Ranma. She'd expected a frontal attack or a dodge to either side at the last second. Even the possibility that he might try to roll underneath her just to catch her off guard. Jumping above her like that had been at the very bottom of the list. She glared at him again and felt her irritation rise just a little higher. "I'll get you, smart ass."
"Hah! You don't stand a chance!" Ranma yelled. "Bring it on!"
She vanished from sight and reappeared right behind him and swung her energy blade at his head. He dodged it with ease and in the blink of an eye she took a kick to the head as he counter attacked with an arrogant grin plastered to his face. This sent her stumbling a couple of paces back before she could recover enough to growl at him. "Why you!"
"That sword just makes you weak and over confident." Ranma sneered. "If this all you got to offer you can just give up so I can go home and get some sleep."
Now she was seeing red and her sword vanished as she formed the energy into a ball and fired it at him. "Aghaaa!"
"Pathetic!" He called as he formed a ball of energy in hands and fired it at her half a second later. "Möko Takabisha!!"
Her hand slashed out and the ball of Ki slammed into her force field, flared for a second and vanished with a puff of smoke. "I think I should be calling that the most pathetic move I've ever seen. Hmm? Even Ayeka fires off hits stronger than that." She said with an evil grin, while a part of her mind tried to remember if she had ever seen him use that kind of blast before. The energy had felt familiar though, as if she had encountered it before. It was a good thing she was used to dealing with people that could throw blast like that around or she would have been taken by surprise.
Ranma blinked in shock as he saw her throw a shield to block his blast. If he remembered right she hadn't used that the last time they fought. Over the last few weeks his Ki had become quite a bit stronger and she was able to fend it off without doing anything? "..." Was all he said as he circled around to her left.
"All out of insults now, pervert?" Ryoko taunted as she formed another ball of energy. "Your hand to hand skills are pretty good if what I saw the a couple weeks back was any indication. Yet here you are completely at my mercy and even your best shot won't work. OHOHOHOHOH What should I do with you?"
Growling, Ranma realized that he would have to take her down with the Hiryü Shöten Ha again. He figured it was about the only technique he had that might be able to stop her without killing her, though she had experianced it before. He would have to hope that she didn't remember it much from the last time he was here. It was also one of the few moves he hadn't had a chance to work with much because of the situation in Nerima. As if he could just walk across the street and start practicing the move and improve on it. Unlike the Möko Takabisha, which he practiced every few days during the constant battles with his rivals. With a twitch of his foot Ranma started running at her as he embraced the soul of ice. Pulling her into the spiral once again would be quite hard, but her over confidence just might allow him to pull it off.
Ryoko just laughed at the blank look on his face as he ran at her and decided to see just how good he was at hand to hand since he depended on it so much. It had been a long time since she took on a trained fighter and even Yosho had been more of a swordsman than a hand to hand fighter. Laughing at the futility of a human taking her on like this she met his attack with a block and kick that he barely dodged. "Even in hand to hand you can't beat me, pervert."
"We'll see about that. Ranma Saotome doesn't lose!" He yelled.
"BWHAHAHAHA! Then you lose today!" Ryoko said as she doubled the speed of her attack and just grinned as he was barely able to keep up. Dodging frantically and taking a glancing hit ever now and then as they fought.
Ranma could feel the techniques taking effect even as he moved past the halfway point of the spiral dodging and blocking for all he was worth and maintaining the Soul of Ice technique. He concentrated on the move and carefully watched as Ryoko followed him through the spiral. Just another few steps and he would have her and the battle would be over. With a final stomp of his foot he threw the spinning upper cut that set off the techniques and screamed the name. "Hiryü Shöten Ha!!"
Pulling her head back in alarm Ryoko barely dodged the totally unexpected attack after he spent so much time dodging all over the place. Hell they'd been moving in circles. Then she felt something odd as a wave of air swirled around them and she was pulled into the air. "WHAT THE F&#$!! Not this time!"
Lowering his arm, Ranma looked up at the rising form of Ryoko and knew something was wrong almost instantly. "Damn!" He muttered as the tornado of air swirled around him. "She wasn't putting out enough hot Ki to create the full thing!"
Using her flight abilities Ryoko flew through the inside of the tornado and shot out the top, formed a ball of energy, and shot it down the center. There was no way she would fall for this attack twice. Her eyes connected with Ranma's the instant she fired the energy blast and she saw something she had been looking for since the fight started. Fear. She was a bit shocked to see her energy blast rip itself apart about half way through the tornado a few seconds later though. Then things really changed for the worse as the tornado suddenly grew in size and power.
Down below Ranma turned to run as she fired the blast, but he knew it was already to late as the color of the tornado turned an angry red and pulled him off the ground along with everything in it's path. Trees, rocks, and hundreds of other things were suddenly flying at him from every directions and for an instant he was reminded of that time Cologne used this on him and how he was been unconscious by the time he landed. If that happened this time he would lose this fight and there was distinct possibility that Ryoko would probably just kill him. He concentrated on a technique he didn't use very often, it was to easy to become dependent on this particular ability. Just like it was to easy to depend on weapons, but this was a situation that might just prove beneficial enough to save his life. As it took effect the world around him seemed to slow down to a crawl as he expanded all his senses to be aware of everything around him.
His mind traced the patterns of all the objects flying at him in an instant and he was ready for them as they got close enough for him to react. A foot lashed out and pushed him off an uprooted tree and sent him higher into the tornado. He had to take a few precious seconds to bat a number of items out of his way as he used the Saotome Anything Goes areial moves to gain a bit of height to stay out of the way of the rest of the junk around him. At the same time he used to soul of ice to make sure he wasn't adding his own energy to the tornado and could feel that it's sudden power surge was about to run out. All he had to do was ride it out for another few seconds. Even though he was spinning around like a top within the tornado he had a pretty good idea where Ryoko was too and the sent a large chunk of a shattered tree flying out of the tornado with a quick kick to a passing debrie. He frowned as it bounced off her shield, but it was enough to distract her as the tornado finally disapated.
For a second he found himself about a hundred feet in the air but he wasn't able to get a good look at the area around him before he started to fall. A wave of dizzyness hit him a few seconds later as his body tried to compensate for all the spinning he'd just experianced. Somewhere in his mind he knew that Ryoko was about fifty feet away watching as he fell. After that he had just a few seconds to fall before he landed and instinctivly used a lot of his Ki to absorb most of the impact in his legs and back. Then ended up tumbling several yards before sliding to a stop and another wave of dizzyness hit him. Every inch of his body hurt like hell as he lay there, his eyes spinning, as he tried to shake off the effect of the tornado. He was conscious at least, that was a good thing, now he just had to find a way to move before she continued the attack. Then he blinked as she appeared right on top of him with a teleport, hovering several inches above his chest as she smiled down at him.
"I win. BWHAHAHAHA!"
"I haven't lost yet." Ranma growled as he struggled, but the world was still spinning around to much for him to think straight.
"You can't even stand up." Ryoko pointed out as she flicked his nose and laughed some more.
Ranma blinked.
"Pervert, your punishment has just begun and you are at my mercy now." She pointed out as she traced a finger down his chest and grabbed a hand full of his shirt and lifted him up off the ground. "I think I'll give you to Washuu, she's been talking about you quite a bit since you left last time."
He paled. "Um...heheh, can we talk about this?"
"Nope." Ryoko snapped with a grin and a glint in her eye.
"I think I'll do something else." Ranma said and brought his legs up and kicked her in the face, again. He managed to catch her by surprise and she let go and stumbled back a few feet and glared at him again as he kneeled on the ground and smirked at her.
"You couldn't move." She snarled.
"True, but you picked me up and that forced my body to move around and it gave me just enough time to recover from all that spinning." Ranma said as he stood up and stretched at little.
"You little cockroach! I'm going to stomp on you so hard that your head comes out your @$$Hole!" Ryoko screamed as she rose into the air crackling with power.
"Was it something I said." Ranma said as he watched her rise. That was a trick he had to learn, the advantages to unassisted flight were always shocking him. Herb had been able to float in the air and fly to a certain extent, but this was so far beyond that. Her hands lashed out and she sent a half dozen energy blasts flying at him. He forced his body to run and dodge as he tried to think of a way to stop her. The Hiryü Shöten Ha hadn't worked at all and placed him in more danger than it did her. Then an idea came to him and he had to wonder if he could pull it off without transforming. He knew his abilities, but this one was pushing things a little as far at the moment, as if he actually had a choice in the matter. There was a slight possibility that it might actually work in this situation and wondered if it Ryoko would fall for something so simple. Glancing up in the sky behind him as she fired blast after blast of energy he figured she would have to get a bit lower before he pulled it off. As she was just a bit out of reach at the moment. He figured that she was just as vulnerable as Herb would have been to this particular attack, but it was untested; as if that had ever stopped him before.
All he needed to do was adapt the attack a little and it would be perfect. She wouldn't know what hit her when he pulled it off. Smiling to himself he runs into the trees where she can't see him anymore and glance behind him just as he crouches down and uses the Umisenken to vanish from sight. He takes a second to notice that she seems to be a bit confused and wonderes if she can sense the Umi as she can when he charges up a Ki attack. Then he shrugs it off and decides that has to take a chance. He was starting to have fun anyway. So he starts to run as fast as he can towards a tree right below where Ryoko is hovering in the air looking in the wrong direction. He bounds forward and races invisibly up the side of the tree, dodging around various branches, and launches himself off one of the upper branches. Straight into the air below her.
Holding the Umisenken in that position is nearly impossible so he lets it go and grins as her head snaps down to see him rise into the air. By the time she thinks to fire a blast at him the attack is already in process. He spins in the air just as he reaches chest level and kicks her in the back of the head with the heel of his foot. The blow causes her to lose her consentration and she instantly starts to plumet at the ground. Then just as he is about to fall he reaches out and grabs the loose clothing on the back of her outfit and with a yank spins them around in mid air so that they are face to face. "I'm the greatest fighter that has ever lived!"
Ryoko just groans and opens her eyes a tiny bit. "You think this will allow you to win?"
Ranma smirked down at her. "You are all power and no skill. Like a bull in a china shop, I can beat anyone that fights that way."
His arm snapped out and caught the top part of a nearby tree as he gave Ryoko a little push to throw her fall off balance a little. Just enough to make sure she can't gain control of her fall for a few seconds. Unfortunately he wasn't expecting her to do what she did, to teleport when she was just a few feet from the ground. Then catch him completely by surprise as she appeared right above him, back first and still in free fall. Only to spin around and slam him across the face with both hands clamped together. He yells out as he is knocked from the tree and falls to the ground below with a loud grunt as he lands on his back and all the air explodes from his lungs. For a brief second all he can see are stars as he gasps for air. As they clear and he starts to see again a frightening vision fills his eyes and he wonders if he might have underestimated the girl just a little. Ryoko is floating about twenty feet above him gathering a large amount of energy between her hands.
"Oh shit." Ranma mutters as he starts to slowly sit up and get out of the way, but Ryoko fires an instant later.
The beam is one of the strongest she has ever fired here at the shrine and she instantly realizes that she might have just made a mistake. Then shrugs it off as something inside her ceases to care, so long as she takes him out once and for all. Even then she stops feeding the beam energy it hits the ground and Ranma has only a second to roll out of the way and use the last of his strength to jump. Only to be caught up in the explosive sphere of energy that expands out wards from the center of the blast around where he had been laying. He curses as he feels his clothing incinerated off his body. Then suddenly enveloped within the outer section of the growing energy ball even as it explodes. Also caught up in the explosion is a lone forgotten cat with a golden wotans cross on it's forehead. His thoughts as the explosion go off are along different lines.
"FUCKING ALIENS!"
**********
Half a mile away there is a multi colored glow appeared in the air in front of the house and the Sailor Scouts appear in a burst of light. They are just in time to be caught up in the shock wave of Ryoko's blast as it shatters all the windows in the house and sets off a mini-earthquake that throw Sailor Moon and Mercury off their feet the instant they all stop holding hands from the teleport jump. Mars, Jupiter, and Venus all manage to stay on their feet by holding onto each other for the ten seconds the quake lasts. Moon and Mercury help each other up a few seconds later and look at the rising cloud of smoke above the forest behind the house in shock. They had expected trouble but nothing that could have pulled something like this off without them knowing about it.
"What the heck caused something like that?" Jupiter asked in shock.
"A very big explosion I would think." Mars said sarcastically. "What the hell are we going to do about it."
Mercury is about to pull out her computer to get a better idea of what's going on when an old man carrying a boken steps out of the house and glances at them. Then he glances at the explosion and frowns a little, his grip tightens on the boken hard enough to make the wood creak in his grip. A boy and three girls all exit the house a few seconds later to see the aftermath of the explosion and several strangers standing in front of their home. The red head seems to make a gesture in the air in front of her and Mercury gets her first look at Washuu's holographic computer as it flares to life.
The old man looks at Venus and seems to calm down. "Sailor Venus? It's good to see the Sailor Scouts are in action again."
Mina gives him a surprised look and glances over at Sailor Moon. "Um..."
"Sailor Venus has traditionally been in command of the Sailor Scouts when ever they have been sent into combat. Has this changed?" Katsuhito asked as he recalled some of the history he'd been taught when he was younger. The Moon Kingdom had always been a very interesting area of study at the college he attended on Jurai.
"It's a different world now." Washuu said as she typed away on her computer, compiling information. She ignored Sailor Mercury who was standing right behind her watching and recording the process in fascination. "Things have changed. Moon is the leader for this current team."
"What's going on?" Sailor Moon asked even as she acknowledged what Washuu was saying.
"We're not sure actually." Katsuhito said as he turned to address Moon. "Ryoko was supposed to have a simple fight with our latest guest. I have no idea why it has escalated to this. I hope the young man isn't dead though, he still owes us a bit of an explanation."
"That is a hell of an explosion." Jupiter said from her place beside Venus.
"Where's Ranma?" Mars growled. "That is why we came here in the first place."
"Ranma was the one fighting with Ryoko, the girl that did that." Katsuhito said and gestured to the cloud of destruction.
"We still need to figure out why he even came out here in the first place." Mars said, then she turned as the alarm on Mercury's computer went off. "What's going on Mercury?"
Ami taped a few keys on her computer and ignored the intense look that Washuu gave her when she noticed the mini-computer. "The Mercury Computer is picking up that same energy type that was used on Nabiki Tendo and Ryoga Hibiki at the mall."
"Energy?" Washuu asked herself and turned back to the holographic computer, typing quickly.
"Where is it?" Moon asked, though she was pretty sure she already knew the answer.
"Inside that dust cloud. Whatever it is I'm detecting three different forms of energy out there. Ranma's energy, though it's very low, what might be Silver Millennium energy, and that dark energy in huge amounts."
"We need to get out there and stop it before anything happens!" Sailor Moon said with a hint of panic. "Ranma is in there with that stuff."
"I'd advise against that." Washuu said as she read the readings on her own computer. "What ever is in there seems to have set something in motion and if it's stopped before it's finished it just might kill whatever it's trying to affect."
"Agreed." Said Mercury. "Whatever that dark energy is doing, it's in a highly dangerous state right now and if we block it bad things could happen. I'd almost say it was conscious of it's own actions if these readings weren't so random."
"So we just have to stand here and let it finish attacking one of our friends?" Moon asked.
"No you don't. It's attacking my daughter Ryoko." Washuu said.
The Scouts turned and gave the twelve year old looking Washuu unbelieving looks.
"It's true." Washuu said, looking as cute as she could.
"Who are you anyway?" Venus asked as she moved over beside Moon and glared down at Washuu.
"Oh? I thought you knew. I'm Washuu! The Greatest Scientific Genius in the Universe!" Washuu said with her arms in the air.
Sailor Moon shrugged and turned to the other Scouts. Washuu looked like she was about to start pouting, then shrugged it off as Moon started to talk. "What do we do?"
Katsuhito, as well as the others decided that he'd let this go on long enough and stepped forward. "Washuu, I'd like to know how Ryoko managed to create this blast. She does not have the energy available to do this kind of thing anymore. I made sure of that when I programmed the Master Key to only give her one of her Gems back."
"Programmed? I thought Tenchi made that decision?"
"He thinks he did." He said back in a flat tone that made Tenchi look at him. "Well?"
"I'm not sure actually. Her readings during battle were pretty much normal. With no readings that would suggest this level of power. It was only while she was fighting the boy, the one they are calling Ranma, that her energy readings started to skyrocket."
"There is no way her anger could have affected the one gem she does have?"
"No." Washuu said. "Do you think I would design something like her gems with such a shoddy design flaw?"
"Then what could it be?"
Mercury raised her hand and caught their attention. "The last time we saw this kind of energy it had taken a perfectly normal girl and given her a lot of power. Enough to empower two other girls with powers as well and the three of them blew up a good portion of a mall. The other one was a guy and he nearly killed all of us in a hand to hand fight in the middle of that same mall."
"So this energy is possessing people?" Washuu asked as she turned back to her holographic computer.
Mercury nodded. "Yes, we just don't know how it does so."
"Let's just go kick her butt then, if this Ryoko really is possessed by this energy then we can kick her ass too. We have fought much tougher enemies than this after all." Jupiter said.
Sailor Moon sighed and glared at her friend. 'Why did they always want to resort to violence first?' She wondered to herself.
"Washuu said that the energy was staying away from Ranma, Jupiter. So he is probably safe enough, but that other one, if she can fire off blasts like this we need to stop her quickly." Said Sailor Mars.
The red headed scientist laughed, startling all of them as she looked over at Jupiter. "All of us, including Katsuhito, Tenchi, and Ayeka here are going to be needed to stop Ryoko. If this energy is doing what I think it's doing, then we may have to fight the Space Pirate Ryoko, a persona of Ryoko that has lain dormant for a very long time."
"She can't be that strong?!" Jupiter said. "Is she?"
Katsuhito's eyes flashed in anger as he turned to gaze at the destruction around him and he realized that it was beginning to really reminded him of the first time the two of them fought over seven hundred years before. Back when he was known as Lord Yosho and had been hunting Ryoko across the galaxy to make her pay for her crimes. "I hope you are wrong Washuu, for if she turns back into that monster we may have no alternative but to kill her."
"NO!" Sailor Moon snapped, startling them all. "No killing while I'm around. She was stopped once if I understand what all of you are saying, so it can be done again. Love will win out above cruelty every time."
"What about that other energy source? The Silver Millennium one that you mentioned Mercury." Sailor Venus asked.
"It was a small amount of Silver Millennium energy. At first I thought it was Ranma, but it's a couple hundred feet from him at the moment. Right on top of another source of that dark energy."
"Two possessions?!" Mars snapped. "Wherever these things are coming from we have to stop them or else this will just continue."
"Agreed." Katsuhito said. "Washuu, we need a plan of attack, any ideas how to deal with this before things get to out of hand? Ryoko is your daughter after all."
"Alright, I'm pretty sure that our main problem is going to be Ryoko, my computer is reading things from her that I've never seen before and if they don't stop she could end up leveling most of this mountain and taking us with her. She has to be contained, so I think it would be best if we tricked her. We can worry about that other possession later, whoever it is can't be as strong as Ryoko in a berserk 'kill everything in sight' mode."
"I agree, but we can't just ignore the other threat either. Plus we have to get to Ranma as well." Sailor Moon said with a glance at Mercury.
Washuu sensed an opening and asked a quick question. "What is Ranma? Male or Female?
"Ranma is a guy, unless he gets splashed with cold water. When that happens his curse activates and he turns female. Hot water turns her back into a guy. He prefers his male form though and goes to some pretty extravagant lengths to make sure people don't find out about it." Mercury explained.
Ayeka suddenly recalled the bath incident and started to growl as she realized what must have set Ryoko off. "Why that little..."
"Not now Ayeka!" Katsuhito snapped, his voice taking a tone of command that it rarely achieved. "We can deal with Ranma's little accident when this rather larger problem is dealt with. Understand?"
"Of course." Ayeka said politely. "There will be a reckoning though."
Sailor Moon sighed again and tried to figure out what Ranma had done now. "Let's get to work then. We need to send someone out to get Ranma."
"I'll go get him." Tenchi said as he moved to go look for Ranma, but Ayeka stopped him..
"No Tenchi, you need to stay here and help fight Monster Woman." Ayeka said. "You are stronger than me any way. I'll go get him and bring him back here."
"I can help." Sasami said.
"Sasami, we need you to prepare some bandages, that way we can be ready for any injuries that might happen during the battle." Katsuhito said.
"Sure!" Sasami nodded and rushed into the house to find the first aid kit and get everything set up.
"At least this time we have a little while to prepare before all hell breaks loose." Tenchi muttered to himself as he watched Ayeka get directions from Washuu and head off towards the forest.
**********
Creeping through the bushes had seemed like such a good idea, Sol thought as she struggled against a mud like substance that had burst from her own shadow a few minutes before. As far as she was concerned, a small cat body, some thick underbrush, trees in every direction one could see, and it would mean the perfect cover to follow someone. The boy had set off her magic senses the instant she spotted him in the park the night before and she had been watching him ever since. She hadn't expected to have to follow him all the way out of the city, but he was interesting so it hadn't been that big of a deal. From the point when he entered the house until after he came back out she had been dosing to get some of her energy back from the long chase. During the trip she had quickly learned how to read his energy signature and it had helped her keep him sight whenever he would suddenly put on a burst of speed. Even when he seemed to get lost and doubled back on himself.
After he left the house though she had watched from the cover of the bushes as he covered over fifty yards in a matter of seconds with some insane Youma chasing after him. She had witnessed the whole fight, her jaw hanging open in shock as he performed things that only the Scouts were supposed to be able to do. Move at super speed, enhanced reflexes, even manipulate energy with his own body and use it as a weapon. The Youma was a given, they always attacked their targets with a tenacity that was quite unusual. Then the boy, she still hadn't learned his name, performed his last attack. Literally running up the side of a tree and launching himself high into the air to attack the Youma head on. At first it had seemed to work too and she had cheered the boy on silently as they plummeted towards the ground.
Then the tables had been turned when the Youma simply teleported back into the air just a few feet from the ground and caught the boy off guard. Even she hadn't expected that to happen. Then the Youma sent the boy plowing into the ground with a physical blow and charged up that mega powered blast of energy. So much that she had felt her fur stand on end just from being to close to it as she fired it. The explosion had spread out across the ground for about fifty feet in every direction before it even exploded, setting trees on fire and picking her up like a doll. It was only because of her magical protections that she wasn't killed, yet the blast had been enough to toss her around from tree to tree until it knocked her out a few seconds later. After that she figured she would be in pain for a few days as she healed from her injuries, but that didn't look like it was going to happen. Instead she had opened her eyes when she felt something odd happening and found herself laying in small pool of brownish black goo that was bubbling all around her, from within her own shadow.
Smoke and fire filled the air around her as she struggled against the gooey substance that wouldn't let her go. The more she struggled the worse her situation seemed. At first it had only grabbed onto a bit of her, but as she moved around it crept up her body and left a feeling of numbness in it's wake as it slowly absorbed her. Frightened out of her mind she screamed for help, uncaring if a human happened to here her, she needed help as soon as possible. She reached deep within her and tried to use her magic and an instant later she realized that was a major mistake as the substance seemed to quiver just as it rose up and engulfed her completely. Her screams went unheard above the fire around her, but a few seconds later the mass of goo started to bubble again and a large cat like shape rose from its depths and started to grow in size and a set of blood red eyes opened up and glared around the area.
It was time to hunt for it's prey and nothing on the planet would stop it now that it had the power. Opening it's maw to reveal gleaming white teeth it roared it's intentions to the world as loud as it could. Just a little ways away a second entity rose up from where it too had been submerged in a thick goo and calmly stepped out onto the dry ground to reveal it's female body glistening in the fire that raged all around her and she grinned. A grin that Ryoko hadn't used in centuries as she felt power flowing through her body at a level she could barely ever recall ever feeling before. She rose up into the air as more of the goo dripped off her body and revealed that she was wearing her black and red battle armor, three glowing dots about her body.
The first was at her neck while the other two were set into the insides of her wrists. Just looking at them made her feel like blowing something up just for old times sake. She hadn't been free to do as she pleased in a very long time and there was no way that the old fossil would have the ability to stop her this time. No way in hell, she was at the peak of her power again while he had allowed himself to wither away into an old shell. She had the power and she was going to put it to a good use. Anything she wanted would be hers, all she had to do was take it. There was only one thing she had to take care of before she did anything else and that was to annihilate the Pervert.
**********
To Be Continued...
End Notes -
