Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma ½™ or Sacrifice™ or any related characters, terms or concepts.
Author's Notes: nice, very prompt responses and I've managed to glean quite a bit from your various reviews. Hopefully this won't be the chapter where my talent finally runs out. By the way, just so people can follow who's who, here's a list:
Elementalist Ranma (the original Ranma, as far as this story is concerned)- Storm
Mystic Ranma- Sooth
Sorcerer Ranma- Cinder
Necromancer Ranma- Blight
Geomancer Ranma- Grit
Part 24: Ranma Battle Royal
The five Ranmas simultaneously shook the glare of trans-dimensional travel from their eyes, and then their eyes widened in horror at the sight of Storm's Tendo Dojo, utterly torn apart.
"Whoa, this place got wrecked!"
Whistled Cinder.
"More so than usual you mean."
Said Grit. Sooth's eyes opened enough for him to throw a disapproving glare at the two of them as Storm dazedly picked his way through the debris of the first thing he had called home for a long time. The others trailed slightly behind him as he made his way into what was left of the living room, where he discovered someone who might be able to give him a clue slumped in the shadows.
"Nabiki! What happened here? Nabiki?"
Storm had barely enough time to register that "Nabiki" was covered in grotesque cancerous and tumorous growths before her eyes, glowing with feral rage and madness, shot open as she voiced an inhuman scream and lunged for him, actually managing to surprise him sufficiently that she could wind her arms around his neck. She hissed, baring unnaturally large fangs, before Storm hurled her through the wall with a kick to the gut. At roughly the same time, a similarly mutated Kasumi slipped from out of the kitchen behind Sooth, preparing to lodge a cleaver in his head. Sooth spun around and gestured, at which massive vines erupted from the floor and entangled the shrieking mutant.
The mutant Nabiki leapt back through the hole in the wall, only for Blight to launch a coruscating bolt of darkness that arced across her body, prompting an agonized screaming right before she exploded in a massive eruption of blood and liquidized flesh. Before the startled Ranmas could intervene, Blight lashed out at Kasumi, an orb of utter darkness hurtling through the air to engulf her before dissipating into nothingness, leaving nothing behind but Sooth's gently swaying vines, which retracted back into the shattered floor. Storm walked up to Blight and cautiously tapped the psychopathic Martial Mage on the shoulder.
"Okay, I'll admit I'm new to this group and all, but… what the hell was all that about! Why did you kill Kasumi? Oh, and Nabiki too, I guess."
"Relax, I didn't kill anyone."
"Um…"
"Those weren't humans, they were homunculi, created by the same creature that destroyed this place."
"And what was that?"
"A creature I never thought I'd actually see, a creature whispered of in the darkest corners of Stygia, a legacy of our ancient past that even we are too ashamed to admit to, a demonic beast known as an N'Kari; a Sineater."
Okay, firstly, what is a Sineater? Secondly, how the hell can you tell it was responsible?"
"To answer your last question first, all Necromancers have the innate ability to sense demonic energy; even though the Sineaters are now extinct, I can still recognise its taint from my studies of ancient Stygian lore; this place is practically drowning in the stuff. As to your first question…"
Blight sighed and settled himself into a seated position, the others joining him, as he told his tale.
"The Sineaters are, or rather were, a race of powerful demons, with which we Necromancers forged a pact of allegiance countless eons ago. Sineaters are abominations whose form consists of an immense shapeless mass of wet, bleeding flesh. They are conventionally mindless, the very embodiment of idiotic, malignant hunger, existing solely to consume all other lifeforms around them. A single Sineater could devour an entire army, and with their allegiance our powers grew great."
"Sounds like a very happy relationship. So what happened that made you break up?"
Blight threw a Dark Bolt, a blast of hate-charged ki and mana, at Sooth, but his heart clearly wasn't in it, given the way Sooth didn't even need to dodge it before it dissipated into thin air. Blight sat there, clearly deep in reminiscence, for several long minutes before finally speaking again.
"True, for a long time we were very pleased with our allegiance with the Sineaters, but after a time we began to worry. You see, Sineaters had an insatiable appetite for the flesh of others, and it was evident that, under the banners of our allegiance, they would soon devour all life in Otherworld. And that was when things broke down. After all, it life ceased to exist, who would there be left to torment? Whose suffering would we be able to feed upon? Not to mention the fact that, with only us remaining after the genocide was complete, how long would it take before the Sineaters decided to devour us? We had to get them before they got us."
Storm was about to ask if Blight really believed that to have been necessary, than remembered that, firstly, Blight was simply retelling the story and, secondly, he really did believe it to be necessary. Backstabbing treachery was a way of life amongst Necromancers; there was no such thing as paranoia in a civilisation where everyone really was out to get you. Ritually sacrificing lovers, murdering parents, devouring dead siblings, if committing such dark actions would serve their purpose, there was no depth to which a Necromancer wouldn't stoop. The question really wasn't why they'd turned on the Sineaters, but more why did it take so long for them to do so.
"The resultant battle was long and bloody, but in the end we wiped out the entire species. It was our first, and to date last, genocide."
"Just one question; if you Necromancers wiped them all out, what the hell happened to this place?"
"Legend has it that one Sineater survived, entrapped within a Soul Jar that was given to Charnel's most powerful servitor in case it ever became necessary to unleash such an abomination upon our enemies. Before you ask, in those far-off days it was none other than the Ragman who sat at Charnel's right hand, but the Soul Jar was supposedly lost when he was displaced by Acheron."
At this Storm's mind began working, clicking pieces into place, and he did not like the shape that was beginning to emerge. The discovery of a fragment of something that looked very much like that bizarre vase-thing he'd stolen from the Ragman's Citadel of Night and Bones practically clinched things. He quickly gathered up every fragment he could find before turning to show off his findings to Blight.
"This Soul Jar… it wouldn't happen to look anything like this, would it?"
Blight gently reached out and grasped the largest fragment between his index and middle fingers, carefully examining it before slowly nodding.
"This is indeed a Soul Jar- or rather, what's left of one. But how did this occur? Where did it come from?"
"I can answer that. You remember how me, my world's version of Ryoga and the Slayers went after an enemy who turned out to be the Ragman himself? Well, when you defeated him, I was currently looting the treasury; I saw the Soul Jar, thought it looked valuable, and swiped it. I didn't know what it was or else I would have left it where I found it."
"But how did it get here?"
"I'm not too sure, but I'm willing to bet it was Ryoga. I would have sworn he was following behind us when we returned to this world this morning, but he failed to rematerialize with us. I had my appointment to come meet all of you, so I didn't think too much about it; I presumed he'd gotten lost in Dalara Peaks and that I could find him easily enough when I went back there. But it looks like he not only managed to steal the Soul Jar from where I hid it and get here on his own, it looks like he also let the Sineater out!"
Storm's face twisted in fury and hate, as did those of the others, all except for Sooth and Blight. Sooth remained as calm and emotionless as always, while Blight simply looked distracted.
"It doesn't matter if he did; he wouldn't have profited from his actions, unless you count being the first absorbed profitable. But, regardless of how much he may have deserved it, we will have to find the Sineater. If we don't, it will devour all life on this world, and then it will spore. We don't want that to happen, trust me on that."
"Just one question; how the heck did we feel it when that monster got released anyway?"
"Well, we can thank Storm for that."
"Come again?"
"Have you noticed his Altar? Clearly it was damaged when the Sineater broke loose, and you know how closely a Mage and his Altar are tied together. With all of us in the same room as him, it is hardly unusual that the virtually identical resonation of our souls caused us to share his agony. Now come on! We don't have time to stand around chattering! If we can slay the Sineater quickly enough, then we'll be able to save the unfortunate fools that it devoured. I suggest we save our mana; with no Manaliths or Manahoars in this world we can quickly drain ourselves. Stick to martial arts and the occasional Hybrid Technique."
The Ranmas nodded as one and split up, mutually agreeing to contact each other via the Mage's Call. Before they lost sight of each other, Blight called out a final warning.
"By the way, Sineaters can create homunculi using creatures they have absorbed but haven't yet completely digested, so watch out! They retain all of their original capabilities but are mindless killing machines."
Cinder stalked eagerly through the streets. Which streets he wasn't too sure; all of the street signs had been ripped out of the ground –it went surprisingly well with the "smashed windows and gutted buildings" look-, but it didn't matter to him. Very little did actually matter to him; even this Sineater creature he was chasing wasn't that important, as far as he was concerned. All that mattered to him was that he would have the chance to burn something, and soon. As he practically bounced along his eyes darted ceaseless from one dark spot to another, hoping, praying that some sort of abomination would be foolish enough to poke its head out so he could blow it off. A sudden low growl from behind him was enough to spin him around with a vicious grin engraved upon his face, but there was no one there.
And that was when the wrecked car he had been facing just moments ago suddenly began to writhe and shift into a warped creation of metal, flesh and bone, the exact composition of its frame constantly shifting. Great, pus-oozing tentacles of tumorous flesh erupted from its sides as its hood gaped to reveal a pustulant void lined with fangs of bone and steel. Venting a sound somewhere between a honk and a scream it lunged forward in an attempt to snatch Cinder in its deformed jaws. Cinder heaved a sigh of boredom and casually lobbed a Firebomb, a small globe of fire mana and hot ki, into the beast's throat, whereupon it detonated with sufficient fury to blast the creature into writhing scraps. Feeling cheated, Cinder continued onwards.
Elsewhere, Sooth was facing down a horde of mutants that had evidentially been based upon the "normal" denizens of Nerima. His demeanour still inscrutable, he lashed out with his hands, sending a barrage of small but powerful ki bolts scything into the ranks of his foes. Though they killed several and maimed many, still his opponents came on.
"Back to the pits that spawned you, foul abominations!"
Manifesting his Soul Blade, a glaive ornately engraven with an ever-shifting pattern of vines and flowers, Sooth launched himself into the ranks of his foes. Despite their numbers they couldn't even lay so much as a hand upon him as he swung and twirled his blade in a strangely dance-like rhythm, lopping limbs, slicing heads from shoulders and cleaving torsos in twain with such strength and precision that his foes actually looked uninjured- well, until they twitched and the severed member slid from its original joint to land on the floor with a soft, wet 'splat'. Soon Sooth stood alone amidst a pile of carved corpses, eyes darting back and forth in search of new victims.
"Justice is swift and final, for I am Its right hand!"
Though a cursory examination by anyone else would have revealed Sooth to still be firmly encased in his enigmatic and emotionless demeanour, another Ranma would have easily been able to see the cracks in his facade through which his inner fury was leaking to the surface. Behind Sooth, a mutant that had managed to survive the maelstrom of mincing blows stood up and tried to sneak away. A futile effort as Sooth, without even looking, stabbed backwards over his shoulder to impale it dead in the back of its skull with a sickening crunch. He jerked his glaive free with a moist 'schlurp' and the corpse collapsed bonelessly to the floor. Without so much as a cursory glance behind himself, Sooth walked onwards.
Grit himself was also wielding his Soul Blade; a greataxe crafted entirely from rock, with shifting veins of magical metals running through it. Though martial artists traditionally considered axes very crude and ineffective weapons, as far as Grit was concerned there was a strange elegance to their simplistically brutal method of use. It took virtually none of his strength to propel it through the air, and anything in its path was rent asunder by not only the cut of its edge but also by the sheer weight of the weapon. Absorbed in rhythm of its swings, Grit had actually forgotten the fact mutant monsters surrounded him.
Or at least they had surrounded him. When the Soul Blade began to produce a high-pitched whistling instead of the familiar deep sounds of bones crunching and flesh tearing, Grit finally snapped out of his trance to realize he had slaughtered every last enemy that had been standing before. Grateful that no one had been around to witness him lose track of himself, Grit quickly headed away from the scene of the carnage. After all, this might not be his world, but he still had to help Storm track down this Sineater beast and kill it. If only to keep the abhorrent freak from spawning and then bringing its deviant offspring to make a meal out of his world.
Of all the Ranmas, Blight felt that he was getting the closest to the Sineater. Precisely how he knew he was getting close was anyone's guess. It could have been mage's intuition; it could have been that strange tracking instinct all Nerima's martial artists seemed to develop. Then again, it might have been due to the fact that the mutated versions of the Slayers and the Nerima Wrecking Crew were currently trying to block him off. Blight brandished his Soul Blade in a menacing manner and waited to see who would make the first move.
The copy-Ryoga, his looks –in Blight's opinion- neither improved nor harmed by the pus-oozing scab-like growth that had swallowed about two-thirds of his face, sneered and made a "come on" gesture at Blight.
"Come on Ranma, you've never hesitated to fight us before, so why the delay now? We promise you, it'll be quick and painless, especially if you just surrender."
Surrender. The very word made Blight's ichor curdle in his black veins, but to attack these fools in the melee would simply slow him down, and he couldn't afford the delay at this point in time. Though he had told the others to avoid spending their mana unnecessarily, this was just such a situation where the expenditure was worth it. Calmly he recited the incantation to perhaps the most powerful spell of all in Necromancy; the Death spell. His opponents, unaware of their forthcoming doom, snickered amongst themselves at his actions.
"Praying? It is too late for that foul sorcerer, now I, the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High, shall smite you once and for all!"
"You'll have to smite him first."
The copy-Kuno blinked in confusion at Blight's retort, his question dying unspoken upon his lips as the Reaver of Souls summoned by Blight's spell drew back its great, scythe blade-like upper limbs and slashed downwards, severing the moronic mutant cleanly in half. Instant pandemonium erupted amongst the pseudo-warriors as the towering, shadowy behemoth casually threshed its way through their ranks. Every blow and spell they used to try and wound the beast passed futilely through its insubstantial form, whilst each of its own casual swings resulted in another dead mutant. When the last of them fell Blight and the Reaver politely bowed to each other before the Reaver faded back through a void in reality.
As he darted past the wrecked buildings and the moaning hordes of mutants, Storm's frustration began to grow, both with Ryoga and with the Sineater. His anger at Ryoga was due to the simple reason this was all Ryoga's fault; after all, Storm never gave the Soul Jar to him, now did he? He was the one who was responsible for unleashing this horror, not Storm! As Storm jumped lightly from shattered rooftop to shattered rooftop, taking care to avoid the twisted homunculi stalking the streets, his anger at the Sineater for what it had done intensified. He was really getting sick of all this pointless wandering.
"Oh come on! Where is the blasted thing?"
And that was when Blight's telepathic call reverberated inside Storm's head. Storm grinned -finally, a chance to take revenge on the monstrosity responsible for all of this- and headed towards the source of the call at his top speed, undoubting that the other Ranmas were also converging on that point. In less than a minute he had reached his destination. And that was when he saw it. The Sineater. Blight had failed to even begin to describe the beast, but Storm truly doubted that it was possible to describe the nightmarish monstrosity that squirmed and slithered and writhed in the crater-like "nest" it had wrought for itself below his position with mere words.
It was an aberrant, inhuman horror, an amorphous antediluvian torn from some unknown and clearly forsaken pit outside of time and space. It heaved its gross, glutinous bulk in insane ways, somehow emitting insane gibbering and hellish gnashing despite its lack of anything even remotely resembling a mouth. For a moment that seemed to stretch for an eternity, Storm could not bring himself to do anything but stare in appalled fascination at the cancerous, obscene beast, his inhuman senses revealing to him that his fellow Ranmas had arrived and were also paralyzed with repugnance. All but for the exception of one- Blight. He was actually down in the street and facing the abomination!
As Storm continued to watch, protrusions erupted from the Sineater's putrid mass, a mixture of distorted fingers the size of human torsos and malformed limbs, all seeking to encircle and grapple Blight, who retaliated with a flourish of his Soul Blade that cleaved effortlessly through the pustulant pseudopods. Unfortunately he was unable to hack the leprous protrusions clear of the central mass faster than the Sineater could spawn them, and before the others horrified eyes he was first surrounded and then engulfed by the hellish beast.
That was the action that finally shook the other Ranmas from their stupor, and as one they hurtled into the arena just as the pulsating globe of misbegotten flesh that marked where one of their own had been standing mere moments before suddenly erupted with black arc-shaped blurs. Less than a heartbeat later, the unclean mass came apart in a gory shower of putrid fluids and jelly-like chunks of flesh, revealing Blight standing there, unbowed and unharmed, drenched in unspeakable substances but still glaring hatred and defiance at the Sineater, kamas clutched in hands. As the severed pieces liquefied on the ground the Sineater voiced an enraged scream.
Storm was more than eager to fight the Sineater for the destruction it had inflicted upon Nerima, and he coupled this with a fervent desire to make this "thing that should not be" cease to "be". He smashed and pounded upon the thing's flesh with all his strength and skill, blows that would have crushed an ordinary human to pulp and that would have torn the life even from one of his old rivals. Despite this, all the efforts of both himself and his companions succeeded in achieving was to prompt maddening screams from the beast, the bruised, mangled flesh they left behind simply swallowed by its absurd physiology.
It retaliated with its own "fists", grotesque lumps that erupted from its seething form in a blind, idiotic attempt to strike at its antagonists. The Ranmas dodged this pitiful attack but then leapt backwards as the Sineater reared upwards and slammed down in an attempt to crush them under its fetid bulk. They converged at a relatively "safe" distance from the abomination, watching as it blindly groped for them.
"How the heck do you stop this thing? It shrugs off every attack we make!"
"Sineaters are virtually indestructible; gorged as this one is on the innocent people of this city, I doubt that even we could defeat it in mortal combat."
"So what, you're saying that it's hopeless? That we should just give up?"
"I never said that. There is a spell that we Necromancers know of, a spell specifically designed to kill these monstrosities. Most have forgotten it, but I have made a habit of acquiring and learning every single obscure, ancient or just plain dismissed piece of magical lore I can get my claws on, just in case they ever turn out useful."
"So what are you waiting for maggot-brains? Make with the mojo already!"
"It's not quite that simple. The spell takes some time to cast and requires a vast amount of mana to be cast, more than I had even when I was full."
"What do you mean by 'when you were full'?"
"I… uh, kinda ran into a problem and, well, I used a spell to fix things. But don't give up! If Storm, Sooth and Cinder all give me their mana, and the four of you work to hold off that thing while I work the spell, I can give it the once-and-for-all!"
"Why us three? Why not Grit as well?"
"Because just the three of you, in conjunction with what's left of my reserves, will be sufficient to get the job done. Plus, Grit has a special technique that just might keep that thing back long enough for this to work, but he needs his mana to pull it off. So are you with me?"
Throughout the conversation the quintet had been leaping from position to position to avoid the clumsy flailing of the Sineater. As one they leapt with all their might from their latest position, leaving the Sineater to crush the building where they had been standing as they landed several blocks away. Storm, Cinder, Grit and Sooth nodded their agreement, at which Blight reached out to them in turn and touched them on the forehead, gently but rapidly draining them of their mana. Storm, Sooth and Cinder shook their heads to clear the disorientation the draining produced, then turned and hurtled towards the Sineater as it slithered towards them, attacking with all of their strength and savagery. Of course, Grit's non-participation did not go unnoticed.
"What the hell is he doing?"
"His technique; watch!"
As Storm did his best to both pound on the Sineater's groping tentacles ("HEY! Watch where you're putting those things buddy!") and watch Grit do whatever it was he was going to do, Grit's face shifted in an expression of intense concentration. Before Storm's distracted eyes, Grit glowed with intense power, ki and mana merging into a single energy… and then the glow faded, cracks ran up his body and Grit literally crumbled into dust. Storm blinked, dodging an attack from the Sineater, and partially turned to Cinder.
"Some technique."
And that was when the ground began to shake and heave, massive fissures opening as the earth began to surge upwards as though something was forcing its way to the surface from deep beneath. Storm was distracted by the need to keep the Sineater from engulfing him, but he was able to see that an incredibly massive form was literally emerging from the earth. Up, up and up it towered, human only by the broadest definition of the term, until its chin easily cleared the top of the tallest nearby buildings.
The nearby rubble was being drawn to the thing, absorbed into its mass to facilitate its growing bulk. The creature continued to grow, until finally it stood there, a vaguely humanoid figure composed entirely of rock and soil and rubble, towering above the tallest buildings. It glared at the Sineater and voiced a thunderous screaming roar before lowering its head and charging. The three Ranmas currently beating on it quickly got out of the way as the massive rock-monster slammed into the Sineater with unmeasurable force.
The Sineater retaliated by lashing out with its tentacles and grappling the rock-creature, writhing in a vaguely serpentine manner as it tried to drag the rock-creature to the ground and crush it. Fortunately, the creature was too strong for the Sineater to triumph, but on the other hand it didn't seem to be able to inflict much damage on the Sineater's amorphous form. Storm wasn't stupid enough to even think about interfering with this "battle of the titans", so he settled for standing back and watching as they wrestled, destroying everything around them as the did so.
And now was when he became away of the unearthly glowing emanating from behind him, He half-turned to see its source; Blight. Now, Storm was rather familiar with Necromancy; he had spent quite a lot of time at Bleak Marsh after all, but he'd always known, deep in the pits of his heart, that he could never truly understand Necromancers, or their methods of magic. Blight was chanting an incantation in a language that Storm couldn't recognize; it wasn't Low Stygian, or even High Stygian, widely reviled by non-Stygians as a tongue of evil and torment.
Now, that was technically true, as High Stygian was a mish-mash of the various Infernal, Abyssal, Demonic and Diabolic tongues that Necromancers knew, but it paled in comparison to this language. Even though he couldn't understand, the language sent shivers of fear and repulsion down Storm's spine, and he knew, instinctively, that if he had been able to comprehend what Blight was saying he would have been driven utterly insane. Blight continued the incantation, sounds that no human should have been able to produce tearing from his tortured throat, his body beginning to warp and distort from the sheer quantity of tainted mana coursing through it.
Storm looked back and forth between Blight and the wrestling monsters as Blight's voice grew louder and louder until he was practically screaming at the top of his lungs; the rock-creature, evidentially Grit, seemed to be tiring, and he wouldn't be too surprised if the spell Blight was casting would turn out to be too much for him to handle, resulting in Blight's tortured –and extremely messy- death. Blight's body began to twist into unnatural contortions, the flesh drawing so tightly across his bones that it could tear apart. As the thought occurred to him, it happened, great gashes and rents opened up in Blight's flesh, the white gleam of bone plainly visible through sluggishly oozing black blood.
Blight suddenly threw back his head in a wordless scream; twin blazes of mystical energy erupting from his eyes. His head fell forward as though his neck had been broken, then he slowly raised it to glare at the Sineater, eyes still glowing as he spoke in an inhuman voice.
"Thine time is come and gone oh foul one, thou art the last of thy fell breed. The stars are no longer right and never shall be again. The death that thou hast avoided for so long at last has come to claim thee. Now perish abomination! From hell's heart I stab at thee, for hate's sake I spit at thee, thou shalt defile this land no longer!"
As Storm blinked at that absurd speech, Blight's jaw suddenly dropped, distending to an extent the human jaw was simply not meant to. Storm winced at the sound of bones audibly snapping, but was distracted by the blast of actinic light, a hellish crimson in colour, that suddenly surged up Blight's throat and roared through the air to impact directly upon the Sineater's coiling, twisting form. The Sineater screamed, hurling Grit away as the energy greedily began to devour its twisted form. The Sineater writhed and seethed uncontrollably, the energy surrounding it growing brighter and brighter in intensity until none of the Ranmas could bear to look at it.
The air was filled with crimson light and the maddening sounds of the Sineater screaming, the cacophony continued for several minutes until the Ranmas thought they were going to go insane- well, except Blight. He was already insane. But just when they were about to begin screaming themselves, the light and the noise dissipated. Storm blinked at the glaring absence where the Sineater had been and then turned to the other Ranmas, who each shrugged in turn. They then became aware of a soft 'thump' as Blight fainted, falling to the ground unconscious as ichor poured from his wounds.
Grit wrapped his rock-body's arms around itself and began to glow; he then threw them out and exploded in a massive flash of brilliant light. When it faded Grit was human once again, whilst all the damage that both he and the Sineater had caused had been repaired. He quickly hurried over to the unconscious Blight and used the last of his mana to restore Blight to full health and consciousness. Storm looked at their surroundings.
"Were we… too late?"
"No. With the Sineater destroyed, all the souls it absorbed will have been released and rematerialized at the spot where they were taken. We have only one problem now."
"What's that?"
"We're all completely drained of mana, and without our Manahoars I'm afraid we'll need to impose on your hospitality for a while. Once we've absorbed sufficient mana from you, we'll be able to return to our own dimensions. I trust you don't mind?"
"Well… I'll let you stay, but only on one condition."
"What's that?"
"You come with me to the Tendo Dojo and give me a… 'hand', with Ryoga."
"Is that all? It'd be a pleasure."
Blight smirked, slowly and deliberately running his mutilated tongue over his fangs as the other Ranmas nodded in agreement. Rising to their feet, the group casually headed 'home', uncaring of the disbelieving looks being thrown their way by the recently restored residents of Nerima.
You don't need to point it out, I know, I stink at writing battle scenes. Ah well. If you think I should stop now, that's alright; 25 chapters is a pretty good run, and way better than I ever thought I'd do. But if you want me to continue, then please make suggestions; the more suggestion I get, the more inspiration I have. I'm not guaranteeing that your ideas will be used, nor am I asking you to tell me what to write, I'm just saying that your input helps me to keep this story going. Anyway, who thinks Ryoga's in for a nasty surprise?