Disclaimer: As much as I would like to, I do not own Ranma ½ or Shadow Hearts. They are the respective properties of their creators and owners.

"Ranma" - Spoken words

Ranma' - Thoughts

Demonic Fusion

by Shadow of the Dark

Ranma's eyelids twitched as he began to wake. He sat up, bringing his hands to his head.

"W-What happened?"

Suddenly, memories of what had happened flashed through his mind.

"CATS!"

He screamed as he covered his head, trying to guard from the tearing claws of the cats. He sat there, curled up, as he trembled. However, all was silent. His mind began to calm down as the seconds ticked by, and he began to notice his surroundings.

Feels like I'm sittin' on...rock? Where's Father? What's going on?'

He rose to his feet, and froze, his eyes wide and mind numb with shock, as he took in his surroundings.

When did I get here? I-I was never here! Where am I?'

These thoughts raced through his mind, quite understandably, when you think about where he now was.

He was standing in a graveyard.

A narrow path stretched ahead of him, leading past two small hills, before disappearing around them. On top of these hills were what seemed to be graves. He looked above him, and saw that the sky was dark. But there were no stars in sight. One would think that clouds were covering the sky, but there were no clouds either. The sky was simply dark. The only reason he could see was because there appeared to be light to see by, although there were no apparent light sources. The air smelled musty, similar to how mold smells. Any of these would be enough to mark this graveyard as strange, but the graveyard's aura would prove beyond all doubts that this was no ordinary place. There was an overpowering malice and hatred, that even a person without any sensing abilities at all could feel it. These feelings could make a person feel almost like their very life would be crushed beneath the roiling waves of hatred.

Luckily, Ranma did not seem to be affected by the aura, although an interesting question would be why it doesn't affect him.

Ranma turned and looked behind him, and saw a closed bar gate set in a wall, a wall that stretched around to encircle the entire visible graveyard. Looking through the bars of the gate, there was nothing but mist on the other side, and there was not a single sign of anything else Ranma tried the gate, but it was shut tightly. And showed no sign of opening. Seeing as there was nothing to do there, Ranma began walking down the path.

As he walked past the first hill, he saw a set of stone stairs leading to the top. Ranma decided to continue down the path, and see what was at the end before coming back to see what was up the stairs. With this in mind he continued down the path, until he reached a place where the path split.

In front of him, going straight forward, the path will take him to a large stone building. Going left will take him to another one of the hills with stairs. If he goes right, he will come to another gate, and it appeared to be as tightly shut as the last one. Not interested yet in the hills, Ranma chose to take the straight path.

Maybe there's someone who can help me!'

Ranma walked along the path as the building grew as he drew nearer.

Now, let us take a moment to consider this. Ranma is in a graveyard, and is currently waling towards a large, stone building. Ranma is a little too young to know about what the building actually was, but an older, more experienced person would recognize the building as a mausoleum. This would be ominous by itself, but the mausoleum also seems to be emanating quite a bit of the graveyard's aura of hatred and malice. How ominous...

-Returning to Ranma-

Ranma had reached the building, and was left gaping once again at what awaited him. There were doors. A massive pair of stone doors with stairs leading up to them. But who cares about the doors? The interesting things were the floating masks to the sides of the door!

Looking at them from the front, there were two pillars on each side of the door, one behind the other. The closer pillar was shorter then the one behind it. A mask was floating over the top of eact pillar.On the shorter right pillar, the mask looked to be in the shape of a fish. The shorter left pillar's mask was in the shape of a bull and was made of gold. The higher left and right masks were in the shape of a staff and a sword respectively.

As Ranma stood there, the fish mask suddenly turned once in the air, and a voice emanated from no apparent source.

"So, boy, you're finally here."

The words were spoken in a scornful tone. However, Ranma being somewhat dense, completely missed the tone. Even if he was more preceptive, he would have missed it anyway due to the fact that he was getting over the idea of a talking mask.

The golden mask suddenly spun and said,

"THIS is what we've been waiting for? This little child? Pathetic!"

This one was as scornful as the first, and was filled with contempt.

Ranma, having recovered from his shock, missed the tone and insult yet again, (A: Amazing how dense he can be sometimes.), and asked his most burning question,

"Where am I?"

This only seemed to amuse the masks, if the scornful laughter of the sword-like mask was any indication. The sword mask spun and said,

"You will know in due time boy. We simply wanted to see what we have been waiting for."

Ranma, to no one's surprise, was clueless as to what the mask was talking about.

"What are you talking about?"

"You will find out in due time boy. Now, its time for you to return."

"What-"

Even as he began to ask, he felt himself being pulled by something, and he fell into unconsciousness once again.

A/N: Sorry about the chapter lengths, they will be getting longer soon. I know there wasn't much happening in this chapter, but this place will be VERY important later, and it was necessary to describe it.

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