A Successful Sennon Seraph
By _
AN: To defeat her enemy Celcia summoned three strangers from another world. To defeat those who hunt elves, Annette performed the same spell. Shouldn't she have gotten the similar results?
"W, what going on? Who are these people?"
A nervous woman's voice was the first thing to reach his ears as Ranma pulled himself back to consciousness. The last thing he remembered was... was... The martial artists shoved the memory down and aside as soon as it returned to him. He slowly opened his eyes to find a woman with a red outfit and a cape, a thug in white, a heavily armed school girl, a tank and a mustached dog in front of him.
"This is what I tried to warn you about, Annette. By using the Sennon Seraph I didn't defeat Luthard. I just replaced one problem with another." The dog spoke in a surprisingly cultured and sophisticated young woman's voice. Still, not the oddest thing Ranma had ever seen, so...
"And just who is it you are referring to as a problem mongrel?" An even more cultured, but much younger voice asked from somewhere to Ranma's left. Glancing around he found he was standing between a blond haired guy in a red coat, a grayish cat/rabbit hybrid and two more blonds that might have been mother and daughter, though how the woman in pink could have raised the little brat in black at her comparatively young age was beyond him.
"Who're you calling a mongrel!" The dog demanded, once more drawing the martial artist's attention to it.
"You, you pathetic stray." The young girl replied haughtily.
"Now now, Celcia. I'm sure you don't want to go around picking fights with little girls. What would Junpei think?" The cape wearing woman commented, earning both expected and unexpected results.
The dog grumbled but fell silent. The little girl didn't. "Little girl? Who are you referring to as 'little girl'? I am Evangeline, the Dark-"
"So they're suppose to be able to beat us? I don't think I can see that happening." The red headed, heavily armed school girl muttered to the thug in white, not knowing every single one of them could hear her just fine despite how softly she spoke.
"Neither can I, they're all so scrawny." The oaf replied, not nearly as quietly.
"Don't ignore me!" Evangeline shrieked, a vibrant but invisible burst of power erupting around her.
"This is a little awkward, but I'm Honey Kisaragi nice to meet you." The blond woman suddenly introduced herself.
"Trees..." The man in the red coat murmured in awe, eyes locked on the forest that stretched as far as could be seen below the mountain top they stood upon. "A forest. A real forest..."
"Ranma Saotome. Sorry 'bout this." Ranma replied to Honey, feeling awkwardly aware of the fact that beautiful female plus him was usually a bad combination.
"They're just trees. Don't just stand there! We were called here to fight." The blond girl broke in, reminding them of just how they'd arrived.
"Heh, so this is what's it like for those demons the old freak used to summon, eh?" Ranma caught on quick, roundaboutly proud of being pitted with the very powerful girl, man and cabbit. Honey didn't have any energy he could really detect, though that in itself told him something was strange about her.
"Miyah!" The cabbit chose that moment to bring one particular trait into focus, one that froze Ranma in terror when combined with how immensely powerful it felt to his senses.
"Meorw." The tank, oddly enough, called back, turret flailing about.
C-ca-c-c-ca-ca... Not ca- It was a tank and a, a, squirrel! The thing on his head was definitely a squirrel! Wait, when did it get on his head?
"So are we gonna fight em or what?" The thug asked, flexing his hand lazily.
"Junpei! There really isn't any reason to do anything drastic, they're in the same boat we're in now." The red head with the gun replied, smacking the guy with a paper fan.
"And what boat is that, exactly?" Honey asked, playing the part of moderator between the two groups.
"In order to collect the spell fragments necessary to return you to your world, we need to... strip elven maidens." The mustached dog deadpanned.
"Return-" Honey started.
"To-" Ranma muttered.
"Our-" Evangeline considered.
"World-" Vash wondered.
"Miyah?" Ryo-Ohki cried.
"The spell isn't a temporary summoning means but an actually, total displacement? Well, that changes things..." The blond girl suddenly transformed into a tall, busty twenty-something year old version of herself, a green-haired puppet appearing on her shoulder with a larger version appearing just a step behind and to the left. "Chachamaru, Chachazero. It appears we have a new home."
"Yes, master. Where would master prefer her new residence to be located?" The human-sized puppet asked in a neutral tone, unphased.
"You actually want to stay here?" Ritsuko cried out in shock.
"Of course. The spell wouldn't be any good if it didn't bring in beings that wanted to fight whatever they were faced with, now would it?" Evangeline lectured with an air of superiority.
"Then it appears we really will have to fight you if you're going to get in our way." Arri noted in a quiet tone.
"Oh yeah, come on then. First come, first served at Junpei's Beating Impurium." Junpei blustered, flexing his arms.
"That's emporium, Junpei." Ritsuko corrected, slightly on guard.
"But why? Why don't you wish to return to your own world? I don't understand." Celcia muttered, completely confused.
"Sealed away forever at a middle school, of all places." Evangeline replied, gathering power to one hand.
"Kehehehehe!" Vash suddenly emitted a horribly obnoxious laugh. "To a new world made of-" Peace handsign. "Love and peace!"
"Miyah..." The cabbit whined mournfully, ears drooped on either side of it.
"Don't matter. All I care about is, I ain't going back there." Ranma adopted an offensive stance, something typically reserved for gods, oni and dragons.
Honey stared off into space listlessly.
Evangeline acted first, chanting something about lilacs and unleashing a wave of a hundred odd dark arrows across the no man's land between the two groups. The dog raised one paw and created a barrier that most of them bounced off of, leaving the others to scramble out of the way of the few strays that got past her. The vampire immediately charged in with both puppets at her side, intent on destroying the other mage, the most powerful threat in her opinion.
The thug in white was almost instantly between her and her prey, kicking aside Chachamaru, palm striking Chachazero and backhanding her across the face.
"Listen kid, just because you can mysteriously grow a giant rack, doesn't mean I'm gonna let you beat Celcia aro-" Junpei was cut off as the other martial arts jock leapt into him, striking pressure points faster than most eyes could track, leaving the larger man to fall into a crumpled heap.
"Junpei!" The redhead cried out, leveling her weapon at the silk-clad, pigtailed man standing over him.
Ranma ducked, weaved and charged the heavily armed schoolgirl, managing to keep away from the stream of bullets as he closed the distance between them. The girl dropped the machine gun in her hands as it ran out of ammo, reaching for the side-arm hidden under her skirt, eyes wide with the terror of knowing she'd be too slow.
"Merw!"
Ranma flinched, freezing mid-stride as the tank cried out and Ritsuko fired the first three shots straight at his forehead.
Then she paused.
Nothing had happened, he didn't dodge, they were just a few feet apart, the weapon fired... The schoolgirl's eyes drifted to the right, finding, to her stupefaction, three neat bullet holes.
She pulled the trigger again and another hole appeared in a small plume of dust. Before she could think any further on that, the martial artist was upon her again, poking her torso a half dozen times and leaving her paralyzed on the ground.
"Thanks!" The pigtailed guy shouted to the broom haired man behind him, turning his attention onto the next target.
Vash scratched the side of his head and laughed nervously at how he'd been found out, Honey looking at him oddly.
In the meantime Celcia found herself imprisoned in a bubble of magically resistant ice, the bubble part being all her own powers managed to buy her. It didn't make any sense, the others had all but confirmed that magic did not exist on their world, yet that young girl was throwing it around like she'd been doing it since she could walk. And assuming the mages there were simply hiding themselves the type of flashy, large scale attack spells being employed shouldn't be something taught to children or even most adults.
And this icy prison, the sheer amount of power it could resist implied that not only were large scale attack spells common, but there were enough people out there misusing them to make spells like this necessary. More than anything else, that scared the elf elder, Luthard hadn't used a fourth as much power in their entire battle, even after she'd had the Sennon Seraph used against her.
The purple haired woman glanced from the icy spire Celcia disappeared within, over the crumpled form of Junpei to the blond man with the large guns at both his hips and the woman standing beside him. She hadn't seen either actually do anything, nor had the strange creature sitting on the martial artist's head.
"I don't suppose I can simply surrender?" She asked wryly, knowing with absolute certainty that Mikae couldn't beat all of them and her own skills wouldn't help in the least.
The pigtailed one balked at that, fidgeting uncomfortably in indecision.
"Hmph. Well clearly we can't leave any of you alive to continue your little quest." Evangeline spoke up from the other direction.
"Oh! I bet she'll scream really good, master. Can I?" The little puppet said excitedly, having acquired two slightly oversized knives in the time since she'd last seen it.
"No. Nobody dies here." The blond man declared somberly, the woman beside him nodding a single time in agreement.
The pigtailed man snorted at that, but Arri could detect a bit of relief in him as he turned away.
"If we leave them alive they'll eventually send us back." The formerly little vampire declared, pointing a challenging finger at Vash.
"If more than one person knew the summoning spell, more probably know the returning spell as well, correct?" The last standing member of 'Those Who Hunt Elves' spoke. "So therefore killing us gains you nothing other than a little more time." It was a bluff, but it was also her element. Hopefully whichever one of them was meant to counter her would let it slip by.
"You may be right." Evangeline sniffed disdainfully. "Those seeking these 'spell fragments' can perhaps be replaced. But I doubt the fragments themselves can be... So we need only find one first and seal it away from your grasp... Strip elven maidens I believe your dog said."
All eyes turned to Annette, who had been sitting in a daze, tome gripped tightly to her chest this entire time. "W,what? Why are looking at me like that? If I had a spell fragment, don't you think I'd tell you?"
"Chachamaru." The vampire snapped her fingers primly.
"Yes, mistress." The larger puppet flew forward, lightning fast, the elf's clothes disintegrated as she swept past. "Having analyzed the subject's skin, I have identified no marks that may potentially act as magical symbols. However, I was not able to view the soles of the subject's feet." She reported clinically as Ranma frantically looked away and Vash gazed on in a lewd stupor.
"H,hey! Wait, what are you doing? Put me down!"
"Confirmed. No spell fragment present." Chachamaru dropped the elf none to gently and joined the party of mismatched individuals as they started wandering away together.
"Well, this is certainly a fine mess you've created." Arri softly told the horribly distraught and nude young elf as she sobbed and covered her breasts with the book in her arms.
"So, uh, anybody got an idea where we should start headin'?" Ranma tried to break the ice between them as they wandered down the mountain towards the nearest town.
"What makes you think any of us know where to look, you dolt. We don't even have an example of what we're looking for or where those others have already been yet." Evangeline countered immediately.
"Nobody said you had to stick with us, ya brat." The pigtailed one pointed out as rude as he ever was.
"I will have you know I am several times older than any of you." The girl haughtily declared, crossing her arms under her illusionary breasts.
"Phef, vampires don't age. Ya started as a brat and you're always gonna be a brat."
The vampiress gaped at him, both her dolls seeming slightly amused at her shock, though the larger one didn't show it.
"'Sides, the blond guy and this thing are way older than you." The martial artist continued, pointing at the cabbit happily resting on his head.
"I'll have you know I'm over seven hundred ye...ars?" Even as she finished she noticed the blond man pointedly looking away from her in embarrassment. "What? How old could you possible claim to be?"
The man in the red coat paused and counted off of his fingers for a moment or two. "Well..." The gunman shifted uncomfortably. "The last geo-plants died when I was about two thousand and I never had a way to keep track after that, time just kinda blurred without anyone else to..."
"Hm." Ranma grunted, the sorrow in the other man's words hardly phasing him after everything he'd been through. "And this thing's somewhere on the far side of about ten times that." He absently scratched behind one of the cabbit's ears, figuring it was the least he could do, given the strangely empathic sadness he felt radiating from it.
"Miyah." It mewed pitifully, barely appreciating the attention.
Evangeline's eyes narrowed. "I suspect we are in a somewhat more complex summoning spell than I had originally thought."
"So? That ain't such a big deal. ...Is it?" Ranma ended his sentence by turning to the quieter two humanoids, Chachamaru and Honey.
"Don't ask them, I'm the magic expert here!"
Vash shrugged, eyes once again fixated on the trees and underbrush off the side of the road.
"Every time I've encountered magic something bad's happened." Honey murmured painfully, casting her eyes down. Ranma nodded once emphatically..
"Hmph. Then as our magic expert, and most likely the only one here even slightly familiar with this time period and traveling without a vehicle, I declare myself leader."
"Swam across the Sea of Japan, hiked from that end of Asia to Europe without stopping in a town once." Ranma countered absently, leaving the girl gaping.
"Lived in an endless desert for over two thousand years." Vash one-upped him, grinning and throwing a victory 'V' at him.
Evangeline scowled, she didn't even have the endurance to do the the lesser of those two tasks. Allergies would get her before she even left the island. She glowered at the gynoid she didn't own.
"Oh, uh, nothing like that, really." The fellow blond said, waving her hands in a placating manner.
"Miyah!" Ryo-Ohki leapt off of Ranma's head and flew into the air, transforming into a floating ship of crystal spires that spun in place and launched itself high into the atmosphere before returning.
Ranma whistled. "Heh, that explains why it felt so powerful and old."
"It would appear we have access to a vehicle, master." Chachamaru noted in deadpan.
Evangeline muttered a few curses.
"So, how we gonna find out where the elf strippers 've been?" The martial artist asked, Ryo-Ohki detransforming and settling onto his head again.
"We ask, you brainless barbarian." The vampire replied haughtily, pride stung.
"Well, it seems we're really in a mess this time." Arri said, pseudo-cheerfully as the defeated elf hunters huddled around a small fire, the effort of thawing Celcia out having chilled them all.
"I just don't understand it. You said there wasn't any magic in your world, but some of the spells that girl threw around..." The mustached dog spoke softly in a thoughtful, confused tone.
"Yeah, well, what was that dumb rabbit thing? I've never seen anything that looked like that before." Junpei added in a grunt, pride also stung.
"As bad as it is, Junpei has a point. What was that? It's body was definitely feline, but everything else about it..." A redheaded schoolgirl checked her sights again, still finding her weapon perfect and unaltered.
"I suppose in a way it makes sense. When put up against Luthard it summoned things from another world to defeat her. When faced with Those Who Hunt Elves..." Arri paused for dramatic purposes, making sure all eyes were on her. "...Then it found something to defeat each target. Each one from yet another new world."
"But Arri, that's ridiculous. The level of power needed to... To..." Celcia trailed off, suddenly realizing neither she nor Annette were the least bit tired after completing the Senon Seraph either time.
"Oh! So that means that guy must have been from some kind of super beat 'em anime world!" Junpei brighten suddenly. "Oh man, that means if I can figure out those little tricks he did, I'll probably be the best in the world, ever!"
"Do, do you think that's what really happened, Arri?" Ritsuko grew nervous.
"While they are powerful, I doubt they're quite up to par with what you might be thinking. However, they are all better than us at our own specialties. In fact from this first fight I'd almost think any one of them were a match for all of us together. We don't even really know what they're capable of." The actress tried valiantly to keep the discussion on track.
"Well... Martial arts guy was good. He moved faster than anyone I've ever seen but he was still able to hit pressure points I've never even heard of just right to lock up everything without causing any breathing problems or freezing the heart so..." Junpei struggled with that thought.
"He also dodged an entire clip at full-auto while gaining ground." Ritsuko pointed out. "But then that thing with the handgun..."
"Oh yeah! I was laid out just right to see it, the red coat guy. Every time there was a gunshot, he'd flick his arm, really, really quick. Like he was throwing something." The white-clad thug threw in.
"That probably means he's the marksman." The award winning actress noted. "And that woman must be my counterpart... So what is the rabbit for?"
"Well, maybe, Mihke. Or..." The gun-enthusiast pointed out the only animal on the team. Well, animal minded at least.
"Pht. Ha ha hah! That's a good one, that little rabbit thing, taking down a tank." Junpei cried as he laughed, the choppy breathing aggravating some still partially locked muscle groups.
"It could be some kind of magical girl familiar, and therefore able to eject spirits from whatever they're possessing." Arri deadpanned, recalling certain embarrassing hobbies she'd once had in her youth.
"Wow, wait, time out." The dog made a 'T' shape with her arms. "Magical girl familiar? I thought you said you didn't have anything like that in your world."
"Not directly, but fiction writers have covered a pretty wide array of subjects. Tanks were actually based on a work of fiction from a long, long time ago." The red head helpfully spoke up, patting Mihke's armored flank for emphasis.
"But... you mean you don't write about things in your world? What kind of society-"
"Calm down Celcia. As our media became more direct, in order to keep up with demands people just started making things up." The purple haired woman rose and wrapped her dried cape around her shoulders.
"I, I don't understand..."
"Phef, don't worry about it. There's nothing like that here and you're just a dog anyway."
"What was that Junpei!"
"Now, it's been a long day and we'll probably need to catch up with those others tomorrow, so why don't we get some rest?" Arri defused the situation, the mustached dog and white-clad brute snubbing each other before stalking away from the fire to find places out of the others' sight.
"Arri..." The red head murmured pathetically. "We really can't beat them, can we?"
"Not like we've been doing. Don't worry about it Rits-chan. We'll think of something." The actress lied straight faced before turning away from the younger, vulnerable girl. Celcia and, surprisingly enough Junpei, had given her a lot to think about and very little of it was good.
#Author's Notes#
Without a computer I ended up writing most new stories instead of continuing existing ones. It's a bad habit, I suppose...