CHAPTER ONE
By a river shore, in Tokyo, there's a group of miscellaneous people that set up camp. It's set up of several tents, even a camper, and broken furniture pieces arranged disorderly and far apart, as if the occupants kept their distance from each other. At a glance you would say there are a dozen people living here; That is, if you don't count the cats napping and hunting for food in and around the area, and of course the ghosts. It would be hard to say how many really.
The afternoon sun is coming down in the chill air of February 1998.
A pot is simmering above a fire, tended by a tall man with a gun on his hip. Gentle strums are coming from a guitar played by a green haired poncho wearing guy.
A tattooed blue haired girl who looks to be in her teens is changing a child underneath a tent.
Everything looks out of place, but perfectly in place and soothing at the same time. In another timeline everything should have stayed peaceful that day, but now She has arrived.
Another teen girl, with auburn hair this one, walks confidently towards the camp.
The group of misassorted shamans look in her direction. They notice her short sleeved shirt, with pointy suns printed on it, wide open in the middle, you could easily see her breast.
"I found you !" she announces.
Luchist, who was tending the pot, looks befuddled by the sudden arrival. She looks about sixteen years old, a friendly face that looks a tiny bit familiar to him, but the priest can't pinpoint why. The girl has almond eyes and thin eyebrows, with tan skin, and she's slim, her cheeks are sunken in a little bit. He was about to ask who she was but he's cut off by Zangching, a very large man with a mustache growing in long strands:
"You haven't found anyone, get lost !" he shouts.
The newcomer stops in her tracks, surprised.
"But you are Hao's teammates aren't you ? I recognize Luchist but I don't know you…"
" How would you know about Hao-sama ?" The Chinese man cuts off again angrily " Bug off before we make you run!"
There's tension in the air now, anxious thoughts are directed towards the girl from all the campers. Eight shamans are now staring at her: Luchist in the middle of the camp, he is troubled; two young girls sitting at a camping table, Matilda and Marion, look wary and ready to jump. Further away a Moroccan man who was sleeping in the shade of the unique tree on the shore, Mohammed Tabarsi , calls onto his genie, and his stare is unwavering. Peyote stops playing his guitar, and two men with spiky hair styles also halt their passtime, that would be Boris and Kouji . There's also a very large blond man, with scars on his face, he doesn't need to glare to look threatening .
"I didn't expect them to be so angsty.." The newcomer girl thinks, a slight anger rising in her now. She tries to explain herself: "I've come to help Hao become a great King, I don't mean.."
"How's a skinny girl like you going to help Hao-sama at all !" A young looking Japanese man with messy hair yells into an unplugged microphone.
"Yeah piss off, only powerful shamans are brought here by Hao-sama himself. If he didn't spot you it means you don't stand a chance !" adds another, who looks similar to the microphone user. They are called Ryo and Zen, the BoZ brothers.
"So that's how it is" the auburn haired sighs.
The Italian priest looks worried, droplets of sweat even form on his forhead.
"Lord Hao isn't here, why don't you eat with us and…"
"The fuck do you mean Luchist ! there's barely enough food for all of us already !" Yells Zangching. A giant Panda spirit roars behind him.
"If you doubt me I'll show you how strong I am" The young woman says in a silky yet menacing voice, and Luchist notices small auspicious spirits gathering around her.
Not missing a beat, ZangChing integrated the panda's spirit in claws around his fist, he jumped on the now glaring teenager, he screams: "Don't come empty handed at dinner time ! You teenage runaway freeloader !"
The spirits that gathered around the mysterious teen materialized and jumped on Zangching, stopping him in his tracks.
"How cute" she says
But now the Boz brothers play electric guitars, gathering their own small spirits and storming their newfound enemy.
"Thank you for bringing our public to us, we are the pros of chimimoryos !"
Their foe simply evades the attack, appearing four feet north-west of where she was. The small spirits had knocked ZangChing to the ground, leaving him with bite marks and a bewildered face. They turn around to strike back at the BoZ's launch, munching on the moryo's eagerly.
"This isn't your usual crowd, those are demons, they like to eat small fry spirits" She says calmly.
Situations in the camp tended to escalate quickly, Luchist already knew that, but it doesn't help that most shamans here are still unable to properly assess one's power.
"Now, we don't need to…" the priest tries again
but Zen and Ryo, pig-headed as always, already started their new song, gathering more nature spirits in floods.
ZangChing is looking at the auburn haired silhouette with fear now, starting to grasp what kind of person he just attacked.
The demons summoned by the unknown woman became bigger as they chomped down on the chimimoryos, they now looked like plush sized goblin.
"Disgusting" comments the young girl in a gothic dress, her orange haired friend scowls at the monsters storming their camp. " You walk in half naked and now you summon ridiculous onis to prove what ? That you're really a pervert ?" Matilda says brazenly. She takes her pumpkin puppet out and commands " Jack, destroy those disgusting creatures !".
The pumpkin head throws itself on the demons with his scythe, he manages to slice one in half and cut a few others without "killing" them.
The redhead is surprised, she thought her ally would've taken most of them down.
"It's just the same," Their enemy says with a cruel smile " I can summon a field of onis your blade will never finish harvesting".
Marion is shaking . The newcomer feels bad for her as she can sense true fear in her soul, but there's also a murderous rage coming from the eleven year old. And she raises her own puppet and commands " Chuck, don't let them touch me… kill them… kill them,kill them kill them !"
At the same moment the blue haired teenager lunches out of the tent she was in and shouts "Girls ! get out of the way" An ectoplasm leaks out behind her, taking the form of an armored soldier. The knight flies onto the stranger.
The other shaman are also summoning their guardian spirit, forming oversouls for those who can.
Luchist jumps to the tent and tells Kana in a lower voice, " grab the child and run.."
Zangching in a panic forms his oversoul a second time and aims for the demon summoning teen. Mohammed also aimed his beam at her; Blocken and Bill who were passive until now creates a canon of legos and pyramid of muscular rugby players; Chuck's bullets, Jack's blade, blood bats from Boris and yet more useless chimimoryos from Zen and Ryo all aim directly at their enemy.
"Good strategy" thinks the targets. Hao's followers see her lips move discreetly. All the oversoul dissipates. The puppets fall to the ground, the beam seems to have evaporated near the mysterious girl. And so did all the demons. Their foe sports a small triumphant smile.
"It's not very nice to attack without a motive, it seems like you are the ones who are too weak to serve the next shaman king…"
The demons have already started to rise again from the earth, in a wider range then before.
Luchist doesn't hesitate, he creates his oversoul "Lucifer" a giant robot and has him point his canon to the stranger's head.
She stares at him with anger, bigger onis are rising in piles.
"That will never be enough, Luchist" she growls.
"For a few seconds at least.." the priest answers, "Run!" he shouts to his group.
A few do, Turbin, Blocken and the Hana-gumi girls are frozen in place. Lucifer shoots.
" I said grab her and go!" the only man who can fight yells at Kana.
Their enemy is hit, she has blood running down her skull, into her long hair. Some of the demons that were on the trajectory of the canon disappeared.
"This isn't right" Luchist thinks.
"Quite deceitful" she says this time in a piercing hateful tone. The demons are running in the priest's direction now.
Luchist thinks he's seeing death coming onto him. He should be able to pary , but the overwhelming feeling of bloodlust coming from the demons terrify him. They are going to eat him alive, tear him apart. But again they disappear in the same fashion as before, only this time it's the ones surrounding him and his group.
"I don't want to hurt you, you're going to be at my wedding." The stranger suddenly says with sorrow.
The man is confused.
Thankfully a smooth silky voice he knows well is heard on the camp: "I don't want you to hurt him either."
He has arrived. A young teenager with long black hair , big star earrings and feathers in his hair. Hao Asakura, the next Shaman King.