CHAPTER EIGHT

"DRAGON SMOKER"

Reiji walked into a narrow alleyway with a little toy dragon, a backpack and a wooden sign. The alleyway was dark and damp, rats scurried everywhere. Muck seeped out of the ground, the paint had chipped off the building walls. He approached an ebony door that was decaying before his eyes. He turned the bronze doorknob and stepped inside.

He entered a room that was bare, wallpaper had begun to peel. The linoleum floors had yellowed with age. Cobwebs hung at the four corners of the room. At the very far corner was a pile of dojo signs and a dusty old bed. Reiji dumped the newly attained sign at the pile. Then jumped on the spring bed. Dust was everywhere.

Rakgi flapped his little cloth wings and joined Reiji in the dusty bed. "Tired?" the plush dragon asked.

"No…" Reiji answered he turned to his side to look away from the dragon.

Rakgi sighed, it was the seventh dojo Reiji had challenged and defeated since he started a week ago with the Celestial dojo.

The boy sat up and pulled a box of cigarettes from his bag, he took a cigarette. "Light it." He said to Rakgi.

Rakgi looked at the cigarette with his blue plastic eyes, "I did not accompany you to become your personal lighter." The toy dragon blew a flame at the box. Soon it was engulfed in flames and Reiji tried frantically to put it out.

"What did you do that for!" he cried at the spirit. "That was my last box!"

"You promised me that you wouldn't smoke." Rakgi spat flames at the cigarette Reiji was holding. The last cigarette went up in flames.

"Hey!" the boy yelled as he dropped the flaming cigarette. Rakgi hopped around the room, blowing smoke rings from his mouth. "Stop that! You want me to quit smoking and you do it right in front of me!"

Rakgi stopped and looked at Reiji, "It isn't smoking if a dragon does it. We need to exhale the smoke that's trapped in us when we breathe fire."

Reiji growled, "I'd so love to stuff you up with tobacco and smoke YOU!" he threatened.

"Go ahead… I'm dead anyway, I'll just look for another object to go into. Too bad for the plush toy though… your mother toiled for days to make you this toy." Rakgi answered, he continued to puff smoke rings.

Reiji hurled a pillow at the stuff toy. Rakgi simply dodged. He left the toy and returned to his original form, Rakgi is a huge dragon with bone-like plates all over his body. The plates looked like they were made of silver, and so did his broad wings. Wisps of smoke continually came out of his nostrils. Only his eyes weren't a shade of gray… they were turquoise. His claws were like diamonds, they could pierce through anything… too bad he was a spirit. Rakgi stuck his serpent-like tongue out at Reiji.

"Stick your tongue back out at me again and your dead."

"Oh, that would be news… 'Spirit of Dead Dragon Dies'." Rakgi mused.

"Get back in the toy!" Reiji ordered.

"Why?"

"You take up all the room."

"I'm a spirit, just go through me."

"I hate it when I go through you. It's like walking into a freezer."

Rakgi rolled his eyes, and entered the toy again.

Minutes had passed, Reiji lay down on the dusty old bed. He took a small blood-stained notebook from his backpack and opened it, it was his father's log book.

Rakgi (in the stuffed toy) hopped next to Reiji, "Reading again? How many times have you read THAT?"

"I lost count after the tenth time." Reiji answered, he turned a page.

"Hmph… I get tired of reading… there are always notes or articles that give us dragons a bad name. Like 'sow dragon's teeth'… we don't spread mishaps you know. What's even worse is the vulgar terms they use about us." Rakgi snorted, "chase the dragon… hah! It is much harder than taking an illegal drug. My cousin Argoth used to run from this man called Don Quixote… I think that what he was called… well that man was crazy… crazy enough to chase after Argoth. Argoth was cunning, fast and as sly as a fox… no one could catch him… until he was poisoned by a farmer. Told him not to eat dead cows…. "

"Yes, that's nice." Reiji mumbled.

"You're not listening to me are you!"

Reiji pulled out a piece of paper that looked like it was folded and refolded hundred of times. He picked up a stick from the floor, "Hey." He mumbled as he shoved the stick in front of Rakgi's face.

"What? Now you want to smoke sticks?"

"I'm not that desperate." The boy answered. Rakgi pulled back, then he blew a flame at the tip of the stick. Reiji put it out and used the ashes to streak a line in the piece of paper.

Rakgi looked at the pile of signs next to the bed, "We have enough wood here to renovate the room."

"That's not what it's for."

"Then what is it for?"

"Something else…"

XXX

"Master Yoh," Amidamaru approached Yoh who was still lazing around on the green grass.

Yoh opened one eye, "Yes, Amidamaru."

"I was just going to say that Bason and I are going to visit the nearby cemetery."

"Knock yourselves out."

Amidamaru nodded then disappeared.

Ranma and Akane walked in the living room, Ranma was still half-asleep. Soun looked at them, "Why don't you take the guests at the local bath house?"

"Why?" Akane asked.

"Well, something has clogged up the pipes here. Kasumi already called for a plumber but it will take a while. Take them to the bath house." Soun gave Akane enough Yen to pay for them all.

Just then Happosai came darting past them carrying a new haul of underwear.

Len walked out of his room with his crutches, he noticed the same old man run up to him. Happosai tried to stop before he could collide onto Len… again. But he was too fast. After that bras and panties were everywhere. Happosai jumped up, Len yanked a bra off his head, "YOU AGAIN!" the cried at the same time as they made eye contact.

"You ruined my new haul!" Happosai shouted.

Soun noticed the commotion and ran to Happosai, "Master, please. He is just a child."

"No! He has to learn!" Happosai clenched his fist, "It will be the last time someone ruined my sweet haul!"

"You perverted old elf." Len mumbled, he dropped his crutches and grabbed his kwan-dao.

"HAPPO FIRE BLAST!" Happosai threw a bomb at Len, Len quickly cut through the bomb, it exploded behind him.

"Is that all?" Len scoffed.

The old man growled, this time he threw the biggest he had ever made.

Len looked at the monstrous bomb, "Where did you get such a hideous thing!" he stepped back. Akane ran to the room and gasped.

XXX

Gosunkugi ran to the nearest cemetery, he passed gravestone after gravestone looking for a spirit that would do his bidding.

"What are you looking for, sonny?" a spirit of an elderly man asked Gosunkugi.

Gosunkugi jumped in surprise, "J-just looking for a spirit that could help me with something…"

"Oh… you won't find anyone here. They all left for heaven."

"How about you?"

"Me?"

"Yes."

"Well… I am waiting for my wife. I promised we would go to heaven together."

"Oh." Gosunkugi could hear whispers behind a tombstone, "Could you tell me who is there?" he pointed to the tombstone.

"I don't know. Last time I checked I was the only spirit 'ere." The old man disappeared and reappeared, "Well… they're new. But it's funny… I don't recall a burial for a samurai or a Mongolian." The spirit scratched his head. "Maybe I'm forgetting things…"

"S-samurai!" Quickly, Gosunkugi peered behind the tombstone.

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(A/n) Hello people! Honestly I didn't think I'd get this far. I didn't even think that I would get past chapter one… Thanks to Showstopper who reviewed the first chapter and with that one review I made it to chapter two. Thank you every one for all your reviews without them… well you know what will happen.

Lady-water-dragon: I thought that this story was based more on Ranma… because they are on Nerima… it's all balanced out when you think about it.

I know that the bomb wouldn't fit in the hallway… but it did! So there!

If you have any questions about this just ask. Don't worry if it's stupid…. There ain't no such thing as stupid questions only stupid people who don't ask the questions.

Just a reminder… no reviews no chapter nine.

With love,

Pazaway-tiger