Chapter 10: The Torment of the Shadow~
Ranma had fought so many legions of warriors in his short life ,that he considered his whole life a fight, and was almost totally numb to how cruel his opponent could be.
That was until this fight.
Zelda came spinning into the battle, swords slashing wormholes into the very air around them by their superheated blades, and these vacuums in thin air began to inhale the fire from Din's aura, and make it go out.
Ranma may be immune to flame, but it didn't mean he couldn't feel the pain. Tired as he was of this intense heat, he decided just for the moment, he was going to split from his for once literally smoking hot girl form, and he cried through Zelda's lips, "MOKO TAKABISHA!" using his ki attack to split his forms into two halves. His boy form was thus breathed out of Zelda's flaming lips, like when one's dying breath gives up the ghost, and for a moment he was a pillar of smoke, before he solidified mid-air as his boy self.
He rolled over in mid-air, spinning like a falcon swooping for the kill, and did his "chestnuts roasting on an open fire" attack, straight downwards, aiming for Din's face.
His fists collided with nothing ,however, but walls of poisoned glass. He felt his whole face contort in an expression of confusion, as the more he beat downwards, the more Din's image refracted, so that she was everywhere, all at once, surrounding him, turning her fire rod to her lip like Happosai would his pipe. Ranma felt himself trying to "hit the brakes" digging his heels into mid-air.
But the poisoned glass had stung him deep, crawling into every inch of him like a needle does the body of a cloth doll. Suddenly his vision began to blur. Lights grew 70 thousand times brighter than the sun.
Din breathed against her rod, and began to spin a terrible fire tornado, that shattered the glass until it was confetti, rolling rapids of nothing but glass shards, turning purple with tiny droplets razor shaved into shards of drops of Ranma's blood.
Ranma began to grow dizzy. Maybe this was death instead, floating downwards into a white noise abyss.
And then out of the shrapnel that began to wail hollowly with the harmonics off the glass, burst none other than the stone thick-skinned Hibiki Ryoga.
For once, Ranma could honestly say he was glad to see him.
Ryoga held his body out like a shield, not really attacking, for some reason just waiting, taunting Din with his eyes. Now Ranma could see why.
Akane was there in the middle of the fight, posed and focused, ready to take down the demon that tried to sacrifice her fiancé on a skyscraper sized funeral pyre.
Ranma could kick himself for her being here, even if it wasn't his fault. Looked like Ryoga could cover her for now. But what was he supposed to do? He was bleeding to death, and was probably poisoned, how he didn't know exactly, it was subtle and different than anything he had ever felt before.
Suddenly, he felt Link's hand on his shoulder.
"Not to worry, Son of Genma...The poison Din uses on her walls of glass, is nothing more than the spirits of the Dead woven into her Eternal Damning Fire. They can't kill you, it will only drain your very soul, and so drain your ki force."
Ranma turned to look at Link, the boy never really having spoken to him directly before now. He was dizzy and confused, possibly dying , and for all he knew Link could be a figment of his imagination. But there was a paleness about Link that only an undeath can render, and his eyes were very clear with purpose. Link had already made up his mind that he was going to win this fight.
"I've got this." the Prince gasped, and Ranma watched, in disbelief, as Link drew an arrow from his sheath, and drove it deep into his own heart, gasping with a boy's voice in terrible dying pain, and then growling like a wolf.
"Son of Genma...do me a favor...And beat me up."
"What?"
"Wake my demons...Attack me."
Ranma didn't know if he was hearing the boy clearly. He thought he was hallucinating when the arrow came back from the journey to his sick heart, drenched black as night in blood.
Blindly, Ranma leaped into the air, and dove down on Link doing a series of kick attacks gracefully straight into the back ridges of his spine.
There began to be a shrieking like when a car slams its breaks ,coming right from Link's bones.
He wheeled about, and shouted Din's name, and she turned.
In one fluid motion Link shot Din straight between the eyes with the blood dipped arrow. The Goddess froze.
Akane took the advantage she was looking for, sprung out from behind Ryoga, and flung herself at Din, landing a series of blows directly in her belly.
But she bounced off like she was a doll. Din had turned to stone.
"SPIRIT OF ALL UNHOLY THINGS WOVEN INTO THE FABRIC OF MY SOUL, THE TAPESTRY OF MY DAMNATION!" Link called, voice taking on a scary depth.
"We'll have to work as one for this part." Zelda whispered into Ranma's mind, and with a soft , "Hup!" sound she fused him to herself as one, making Phoenix Sheik appear, the white blonde ninja, now with wings of fire.
"I COMMAND YOU FROM OUT OF THE DEPTHS OF MY BLOOD, ENTER NOW INTO DIN, AND FEAST ON HER SOUL!" Link shouted, voice suddenly great like thunder, shattering all the glass shards into nothing.
There was a gurgling like demons rising out of nothingness, and there was suddenly a wicked laughter, and blood began to bubble up from the ground, and crawl like worms off the thin ar, quivering with ecstasy as it made its way to Din's mouth, and crawled inside her.
"YES, MASTER!" said the terrible twisted voice of the Shadow that Ranma had fought in the forest.
Din began to quake, and an earthquake shook the very bones of Tokyo surrounding the little village area about the Dojo Tendo. Ranma's teeth were set on edge, and he felt his fingernails curl in on themselves, his blood had grown so cold.
"Please..." Din begged,"Please, Prince of Shadows...have mercy."
Suddenly an even deeper version of Link's voice, a growling, mechanical voice, the voice of the Wolf said,
"No...It's too late...To beg for mercy for what you have done. The shadow is out of my veins...Nothing can save you now."
There was a shrieking as the shadow rose up , in the shape of a huge vampire bat, but hollow as if only its shadow, nestled like an infant on Din's chest, and it began to drink the blood from her throat, like a baby nurses.
Din howled in her damnation, and suddenly Link gave a low growling groan, and hit his knees, making a more human gasping sound.
Then he threw back his head, and began to wail like a man who just watched his entire family die. He wailed, like a damned spirit begging the heavens for a mercy he knew full well he would not receive.
He stood to his feet, and lit on fire from the inside out, and turned to a pillar of charcoal, and ashes, before their eyes, shrieking inhumanly at the sky.
" YOU ARE A GODDESS?! YOU ARE A WITCH OF TERRIBLE POWER?! LOOK HOW I'VE RUINED YOU! NOW ALL OF YOUR DEEDS ARE LAID BARE IN MY GAUNT RUIN NOTHING! NOW YOU ARE MADE NAKED BEFORE THE FLAME OF MY EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT!"
He began to stagger towards the stone pillar Din.
"PRAY TO YOUR FIRE, DO YOU THINK IT WILL SAVE YOU?! BEG IT FOR MERCY! BEG ME FOR MERCY ,DOWN ON YOUR KNEES!"
The statue Din crumbled, quaking ,praying, crying like a little girl, leaving puddles of tears on the ground.
"FOOL! YOUR FIRE IS WROTH WITH YOU, FOR YOU HAVE NOT BEEN A KIND MISTRESS! FOOL, NOW I WILL GIVE FIRE VENDETTA! NOW I WILL PUNISH YOU FOR THE SINS I MUST SWALLOW. THIS MY RESENTMENT; BECAUSE OF YOU MY DAMNATION DEEPENS!"
And with that, Link changed. His spine exploded, and out of it, stood spikes of jagged stone, that folded in on themselves, and twisted, and wrung themselves free of his soul,which fell in torrents of rain to the ground, and lighting burst from them, and a cloud of thunderous hail, and clouds rose up in the shapes of white smoke horses that trampled Din's armies, and made them die and burn up in instant, total combustion. Then rose from the wake great wings like the wings of a raven, dyed purpled_red black and dripping his own blood. He was a whole head and shoulders taller, bleached white, and down his face streamed tears of blood, and war paint, and his armor was the very frost beaten into steel hard plates.
"The Fierce Deity, the White Demon!" shouted Cologne from somewhere across the battlefield.
" Impa?!" Zelda shouted into Ranma's mind.
"Who_or_wha?" Ranma asked, this situation spinning way too fast for his poison slurred mind.
" Mine and Link's nanny from when we were little. My father's second wife. You call her Cologne?...Her name is Impa."
"Old ghoul is your nanny?!" Ranma gasped, and tried to move, to fight, to do SOMETHING, but the poison had left him in an elysium haze, and he couldn't even walk, could only stand there dreamily, trying to process what he was seeing.
As the Fierce White Demon with the HUGE sword, dove on Din, and drove his blade repeatedly into her heart, slashing her to bits, and feasting on her insides.
Till Cologne leaped into the center of the fight with a golden chain.
"Link, son! Come back to the Light!" she cried, striking him down with the chain.
He fell to his knees, reaching into his center, and pulling out his ribs, beating them on the ground, as on his breastplate, the Eye of Truth was weeping blood.
Phoenix Sheik mastered the poison in Ranma's veins just then, and propelled himself into the air with an eagle's cry, striking both hands together in a V shape above his head, and suddenly a rainbow appeared over his head, and gathered an edge like a blade, that he spun, and using Ranma's "chestnuts roasting on an open fire" technique again, began to beat against the ground , like the front of a snow plow.
It mowed over the White Demon, and his victim, crunching what remained of Din into chalky thin dust.
The White Demon was on his knees, cracking up like a porcelain doll, a hand trying to shield his face from the light.
Cologne began to spin the chain like a lasso over her head, and then roped the White Demon with it, pulling it tighter and tigther, until with a bird like croak, the demon shattered.
There in the ashes, on his face, laid Link as just himself, distinctive green samurai tunic, and funny shaped hat, yew bow and all.
Saotome Ranma had never in all his life taken one look at someone, and wanted to save them as badly as he did right at that moment...