Whew Chapter 8 completed.
This one was delayed due to internet trouble and a fact of sheer laziness as I've begun to play Grandia 3 meaning my time was monopolized. As such, not sure if this chapter is up to snuff but it's the best I can do right now with work, and the fact that im trying to watch all the buffy the vampire slayer seasons one after another, and grandia 3 all taking time. But I wont slow to much as my computer is working fine and my internet connection is back so I should begin to write quick again.
Thanks for the reviews, hopefully this will get better as it goes along, as while I write this story keeps getting larger and larger in my head. Hehe when I started this it was merely to write a background for the Ranma of my other story so I could continue with that story, which I now know I'm going to have to rewrite the first chapters of that when I get to it again. When I started this I believed it would most probably be six chapters max now I'm not sure when it's going to reach an end but it isn't soon. There are some interesting things for Ranma to see yet, the source of Jusendo and Jusenkyo's power being only one of them. Hope you continue to enjoy it. hopefully my next chapter will be back up to what I consider normal.
As always I own nothing of Ranma ½
Sweat dripped falling to the stone floor with a light splatter as Ranma crouched behind the fallen stone pillar trying to stay out of sight of the giant mantis that was currently standing in the center of the room. The mantis had moved away from the wall and was currently standing completely still with its eyes closed and the massive hole through its head slowly healing closed. The redhead was more tolerant to extremes in temperatures than the others but even she was starting to feel the heat that permeated the entire stronghold and it was most probably even worse for Shampoo and Mousse than it was for her.
A flash of violet hair and white clothes and the amazon warrior was kneeling next to Ranma and peeking out at the massive black behemoth that still wasn't moving. Shampoo's baggy white pants and shirt had both been snow white when they had first entered the stronghold but now bore a layer of red dust covering them and the gold edged steel breastplate and shoulder guards. The two watched the creature for a moment until they saw Mousse across the room rushing past several downed columns towards where the sword had landed, most probably looking for Spice, Ranma let her ki senses flow out over the room.
Red eyes snapped open and the mantis turned Ranma and Shampoo's direction swinging one lower arm around to point at the rubble. The demoness tackled Shampoo not a moment to soon as a black beam of energy slashed through several columns and tore into the wall behind them leaving a deep gouge in the red stone. Ranma waited until the twin crashes of falling columns died down before moving to look out at the mantis again and finding it standing as before with its eyes closed and healing itself.
"It must have some way of sensing even minor ki use; we'll slip around the rubble and behind the throne to get to Mousse and Spice." Shampoo waited for Ranma to agree before moving off with the redhead following.
The two figures flitted from shadow to shadow and hid behind both rubble and skeletons to keep out of the view of the creature, by doing it that way it took them nearly ten minutes to get across the room to Mousse's position. Ranma darted forward and knelt beside Mousse who was trying to pull Spice's unconscious form from under the sword. It didn't take a rocket scientist to see that Spice's legs had gotten crushed by the sword blade and continued to be pinned there.
"How do we get her out, the sword is way too heavy for us to move even if we all tried at once." Shampoo knelt to look under the blade "And a Bakusai Tenketsu would lodge shrapnel into her back or sides if we tried that."
"Give me a lever long enough." Ranma muttered, then noticed the looks on her friends' faces "It's something some I heard someone say once." The martial artist got a strange look on her face as she looked to the mantis "Or a monster big enough."
White robes rustled as Mousse grabbed Ranma's arm to stop her moving out onto the sword blade "Are you insane! That thing is fast and will most likely blast you instead of trying to grab the sword!"
Searching the shadows behind them the demoness saw a single door hidden in the shadows of several columns "Listen, I'll draw its attention and get the sword moved; you two get Spice and go through that door. Don't worry about me I'll be fine all I have to do is dodge it and get out of the room through the door we came in by, hopefully it will be to interested in whatever it came here for and leave me alone." Before the others could protest she jumped up onto the blade and rushed to be closer to the hilt before getting the things attention.
Since it could sense a ki scan or even a small amount of ki Ranma had to get its undivided attention and get it to fire at the blade without getting blasted herself. That meant going all out in speed, something she had never pushed her boots to do. Setting herself she concentrated on going the maximum speed her boots were capable of moving, when she felt the buildup reach maximum she kicked off.
The world around her turned into a smeared blur with the only thing standing out being one of the things six legs. Nearing the last moment she pulled every ounce of ki she could and concentrated it into her right arm focusing on the leg exclusively she swept her fist back then punched as hard as she could, all the while still going full speed. The Mantis hadn't been able to respond in time since by the time it sensed the ki buildup the target it would have attacked was nearly underneath it and even its reaction speeds weren't fast enough to compensate for that kind of speed. Even so the creature was a swift thinker and by the time Ranma's fist connected with its leg it had concocted several plans to handle the diminutive threat.
A sound akin to shredding metal coupled with a loud sonic boom would have been enough to shatter Ranma's eardrums if she hadn't been ahead of the sounds. Even so she skidded to a stop barely a foot from the far wall and immediately cradled her right arm as it felt like she had broken every bone in it. A quick look back showed Mantis's shift in her direction was hampered slightly by the fact that he now only had two legs on one side; this didn't stop him from pointing in her direction. A quick dash was what saved her head as Mantis let loose an energy beam that it began to track her around the room with.
Dashing through rubble and corpses she managed to get into position and lead the beam that was tearing up rock and the armor of the corpses directly into the sword blade causing it to flip into the air and slam into a wall. As she dashed away from the area she had to admit that she was impressed that the sword hadn't even gotten scarred by the beam. She caught sight of the other two slipping out with Mousse carrying Spice. The redhead just hoped that she could get out in one piece, at which point the large creature snagged her with its left lower arm and proceeded to bury her into the stone wall in the expedient way of punching her into it.
Small stones clattered as they fell from their place when Ranma pushed herself up with a groan hoping that the spike of pain in her back didn't mean anything. The screech of metal on rock gave her just enough of a warning to throw herself forward and up as a sword was shoved into the hole in the wall she had recently occupied. A hand planted on the blade flipped her airborne and she twisted around firing a blast into the things face only to have it snap the blade up like bat and bury her into the ceiling.
"This really isn't my day." Ranma muttered as she tried to pull her arms free of the rock so she could drop and get away. It wasn't until she saw the thing lift the massive sword the largest of the giants had been wielding and turn to look at were she was stuck in the ceiling that she started to get worried about her chances of escape. With a crash that nearly deafened her, the blade slammed into the ceiling and she slid down the metal towards the Mantis's head gathering ki as she went. She gathered all the heavy ki she could to increase her weight then leapt from the blade plummeting towards the demons head raising both hands above her head she created a ki sphere almost four foot across and just as she reached the head she brought it down striking with the combination of massive weight, great strength and as much ki as she could together.
"METEOR!"
The thunderous crash of the creature being imbedded into the stone of the floor caused skeletons and rubble around the room to bounce several feet into the air and left the Mantis with large cracks in its armor plating that immediately began to heal. Ranma didn't even get to savor her attack as the demon twisted up and slammed a blow into her body that sent her rocketing across the room to slam into the double doors the four had entered the room through. The crack that had come when she had hit the doors was felt more than heard and Ranma was sure several ribs had gotten cracked if not broken in the impact, still it didn't stop her from running out onto the crystal bridge to try and get away.
She had managed to get some distance before hearing a strange thumping sound from behind her which caused her to look back and up. A large blade coated in black energy came spinning downwards and sheared through the bridge not ten feet from Ranma causing the crystal to shatter and drop the cursed martial artist into empty air. The distance between bridges, and the fact that not all the bridges where directly under one another was the reason that Ranma gave a terrified scream as she plummeted through open air falling for hundreds of feet before slamming into the edge of another bridge. The sickening crack that had come from her ribcage told Ranma that she should be worried but she was spending too much time scrabbling at the smooth crystal trying to get a handhold and failing to care and she soon slipped and fell again.
TEN MINUTES LATER
The demoness jerked awake to find herself staring at red crystal and realizing she was on a bridge. With a pained moan she pushed herself to her hands and knees and then slowly managed to get to her feet only to feel an explosion of pain in her ribs and a weird gurgling coming from her left lung that made her a little worried. It wasn't until a shadow flickered over her that she looked up and became truly worried.
With a loud bang the Mantis slammed down on the bridge Ranma was standing on and she noticed that its head wound and leg had completely regenerated meaning it was probably at full power. The redhead turned and managed a stumbling run away from the creature giving thanks for demon endurance as she was fairly certain that her natural form would have been dead several times over by now. The double doors at the end of the current bridge were still sealed and hadn't been hacked open meaning that she might be able to find a place to hide inside though she was still some distance away. The loud hum was what made her look back and see the red sphere of energy glowing in the demons right hand, a second later the sphere shattered into hundreds of smaller blasts that rocketed downwards towards her and the bridge; the redhead managed a curse just before the blast hit.
The blasts cracked the crystal of the bridge and several were direct strikes to Ranma herself melting and charring the flesh in several parts of her back and blasting her forward. The only plus was that it knocked her so far forwards that she slid through the crack at the base of the doors and into the room she had been heading for, a room that had something of definite interest that Ranma was sure to notice after she had stopped whimpering in pain.
The crashes of the Mantis's scythe blade arms against the doors roused the injured martial artist to look up and try to find a place to hide, which was when she noticed what was in the room. Like all the other rooms she had seen in the stronghold this one was full of dead giants, unlike the others these giants hadn't been killed by the giant Mantis but by being swarmed by thousands of its smaller brethren. It was what was in the center of the room though that pushed the girl to struggle to her feet and begin a stumbling shamble towards it.
Laying the middle of the room were two massive suits of armor that were nothing like anything Ranma had seen yet. They were at least as tall as the large giant they had seen earlier but instead being armored giants these were simply massive suits of empty full plate armor, helms and all with no openings except the slots for eyes. The obsidian black metal suits were all sharp edges with spiked shoulder guards and gauntlets and jagged edges as if they had never been refined to be worn; even so they seemed to fit together perfectly. The suits looked completely unscarred and scratched; the only thing about them both was a large strip of paper over the eye slots of each helm with a strange set of Runes written on each paper. The crash of a scythe arm breaking through the doorway, and an absence of other doors made Ranma do what she did next.
Grabbing the paper stuck to one of the helms she pulled struggling to get it out of the way so she could hide in the armor to escape the Mantis. Her greatly diminished strength managed a small tear in the paper that ripped one of the runes. The first sign was a squeak of metal on metal followed by a loud clang of a gauntlet striking rock as the massive suit of armor pushed itself to its hands and knees and then reached up and tore away the rest of the paper. Ranma saw two large glowing red lights in the place of eyes and the armor turned to its companion and tore away the paper on its helm as well, it wasn't until then that Ranma realized that the paper was some sort of binding meant to keep the armor from moving. That realization was followed by the door shattering open and the angry shriek of the Mantis, a shriek that turned into something equating a surprised squawk as the two armors charged forward and slammed into it struggling to bring the demon down.
Ranma watched the titanic struggle as the Mantis found itself set upon by things it thought its followers had destroyed and was slowly being overwhelmed and pushed backwards onto the stone balcony that the bridge attached to. The demoness leaned heavily against the wall and watched with satisfaction as the Mantis's armor began to crack under the blows thrown at it by the two armors as they moved it closer to the edge of the rock as if they were going to throw it into the lava far below. Crashes echoed from walls as the feet shifted and armors shoved only to have Mantis dig into the stone of the balcony and stop moving. Managing work her way past the struggle Ranma moved as close to the Mantis and the edge of the balcony as she could get and struck the balcony.
"Bakusai Tenketsu!"
A boom of shattering rock and the balcony gave way right in front of her and broke out from under Mantis's feet sending it and its two attackers plummeting down into the lava far below. The martial artist collapsed at the edge of the rock, one arm dangled out over the jagged edge of the stone and as close as she was she could see the bubbling lava far below where the three had fallen into the molten rock. A second later a blade arm burst forth from the lava and buried into stone and Mantis began to pull itself from the rock only to have the two armors break the surface as well and grab it dragging it down into the molten rock once more.
Golden eyes slipped shut and the cursed martial artist slipped into unconsciousness as her body began to heal.
Descriptions:
METEOR: The person gathers as much heavy ki as possible to increase their weight massively and creates a ki blast also made of that heavy ki making them even heavier and strikes their opponent from above. This attack hits an enemy with enough weight that, combined with the downwards force of the blast, it is almost impossible for anything to remain standing when struck with this attack and if used solely on stone will allow the user to hammer through at least one hundred feet of solid stone. This attack is lethal against most foes and therefore will only be used upon evil creatures.
Heavy ki: to illustrate the weight issue I'll use actual cannon here. Ryoga, by the Herb arc of the manga, is already extremely powerful. Capable of lifting, most probably by manga feats, at least 10 ton with no real problems, he fights against Lime and gets his ass kicked easily as Lime has strength far in excess of his. When Ryoga believes he is going to die and that he'll never get to see Akane again he fills himself with his typical heavy ki, he becomes so heavy that even Lime can not lift him from the ground. This means that Ryoga, at that time must have weighed easily in excess of 20 tons, most probably around 40 to 50 tons as Lime could not move Ryoga at all.
ARMORS: These suits of armor were created by the giants in scant numbers to aid in defense of there strongholds and cities. Unfortunately as these suits of armor are powered by a, very unstable, seed of magic that is melded with the soul of a dead warrior who will then spend eternity serving the rest of their kin as guards not many giants volunteered to become one with the Armors. The Armors can be forged either with the normal forges of the giants or, in much rarer instances, with the gods forge to create powerful warriors that can handle nearly any foe less than a superior demon for giant forges and only a mid level god or equal can handle the gods forge created Armors. The Armors have been known to act strangely at times and lately the giants have stopped creating them entirely leaving the last of them to either shut down when their power seed failed or just never activating the armor itself and storing it away.