Shizuka Nekonome said the lines with her usual level of pep, but her body language was notably unenthused. Her arms were crossed under her chest and her smile seemed extremely forced.

"This apparently hasn't gotten tiresome yet, so we've dug up another useless minor character to amuse you for a minute before we move on to the plot!"

Behind Shizuka, the Headmaster coughed lightly into his fist. "I'm not sure I would qualify myself as a 'minor character', much less-"

"So Mister Headmaster, what do you think Ranma is?" the nekomata asked, not even facing the man as she started rummaging through her pockets.

The Headmaster looked briefly perturbed, but nonetheless steepled his fingers in front of his shadowed face as his eyes glowed. "As Headmaster, I of course have unrestricted access to ALL the students' medical records, and I alone can request that their true nature be revealed in spite of Youkai Academy's rules."

"Uh huh. You don't say?" Shizuka mumbled, still not facing the Headmaster as she started writing out a text message on her cell phone.

"Although I rarely have to do so, in the case of Saotome, I needed to make a... special..."

The Headmaster trailed off as he saw that Shizuka wasn't paying the least bit of attention, and seemed to be somewhat irritated as she wrote her text message, her tail popping out of her skirt and swaying dangerously.

"Ahem! Is something the matter, Miss Nekonome?" the Headmaster asked, letting his arms drop.

Shizuka's hair-tufts seem to perk at his concern. "Something the matter? No, no! Why would something be the matter? Just because my role in the story has been reduced to a glorified Wikipedia reader? How could something like that bother me?!"

The Headmaster couldn't help but notice that the nekomata was still smiling, despite the fact that the hair on her tail had spiked in irritation, and her nails had grown noticeably longer and pointed.

"But as if that wasn't bad enough, I don't even get to do THAT MUCH this chapter! This is ridiculous! I'm putting in a complaint with my union rep!" Shizuka shouted.

The Headmaster cocked his head to one side. "I don't think he'll be taking messages. Richard is off gallivanting around with one of the protagonists. Didn't you hear? I think he even got his own song montage."

"GYAH!" Shizuka threw her phone down and then kicked it across the floor, every hair on her head now standing on end, "this is an injustice! I don't even get to interview people who matter anymore!"

"Er, I'm the Head-"

"And what happened to the newspaper club's role? We get nothing? Not even a mention! We used to matter, damn it! Entire plot arcs revolved around our operations!"

As Miss Nekonome started sniffling and tearing up, a sweatdrop crawled down the side of the Headmaster's hood, and he turned away from the emotional wreck of an instructor.

"Yes, well... I suppose it can remain a secret a little longer, then. Enjoy the chapter."


Black Dragon Productions proudly presents
a Ranma and Rosario Plus Vampire crossover

Disclaimer: For those of you that wondered where I got the term "Double Hell" from, the correct answer is Penny Arcade.
Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul.

Key: Writing/Emphasis, Sounds, 'Thoughts', "Speech", (Comments that you can freely ignore)

Big Human on Campus
Chapter 15
Litterers Will be Persecuted

"So then the gnomes were complaining about the dead guard, and they're all 'you lit the head of our sentry aflame'. So then I shrug and tell them 'it's the way he would have wanted to go'. Ha ha ha!" Richard guffawed mightily, holding his stomach.

His laughter trailed off as Ranma and Jadeite, both of whom were walking ahead of him through the dimly lit streets, ignored the warlock, opting instead to glare at each other.

"Nothing? Really? No reprimands? No encouragement? Not even an acknowledgment?" Richard asked, looking somewhat depressed. "Saotome, don't you have an opinion about burning people to death just because they're short?"

Ranma frowned and opened his mouth, but Jadeite spoke first.

"Don't. You know he can't tell the difference between positive and negative attention," the dark general warned.

"Of course I do," Richard said indignantly, "negative attention is what you call being stabbed repeatedly by an enraged mob."

Ranma and Jadeite glanced at each other again.

"Well, he's not wrong," Ranma admitted.

Jadeite rolled his eyes. "Saotome, listen. I know we've had our disagreements-"

"I just want you to know, before you go any further, that I have a list of twenty of your bones to break the moment you fire up the magic," Ranma said grimly, "the list used to be shorter, but I've been building up a lot of frustration at the Headmaster for sending me here with you two."

Jadeite was silent for several more seconds, weighing whether or not to call Ranma's bluff. Certainly it wasn't like him to put up with someone like Ranma ordinarily, but he found the boy's utterly fearless bravado unnerving. Additionally, the fact that he didn't know Ranma's species - he had heard he was some sort of tornado-making monster, but had no specifics - ensured he wasn't about to actually attack his student without a decisive advantage.

"It is not just for my own petty revenge that I seek to eliminate the Sailor Senshi," Jadeite finally continued, clasping his hands behind his back.

"Do tell," Ranma drawled.

"Amongst devil hunters they are among the most dangerous and indiscriminate kind," Jadeite explained, his eyes darting over to a couple passing by them on the sidewalk as he spoke, "do you know that almost a quarter of Youkai Academy's graduates are eventually caught and eliminated by the Senshi?"

"So what?" Ranma asked, shrugging.

Jadeite halted briefly. "It does not concern you at all that your peers are being hunted down and killed for not being human?"

"Not really," Ranma said, but then he hesitated, thinking of some of his friends in the Protection Committee. Now that he stopped to think about it, he WOULD be pretty upset if Chopper or Kouma got caught in a scuffle and were obliterated by some trigger-happy magical girls. And the idea of one of the girls, especially Mizore or Kana, being killed for accidentally revealing their species made him feel slightly ill.

"Well, okay, so maybe I do care," Ranma admitted, scratching the back of his head as Jadeite smirked.

"So you can see that this isn't a matter so simple as villainous monsters slaying human heroes," Jadeite said, wagging a finger, "the denizens of the monster realm, while not possessing recognized rights or legal protections, must be able to-"

"Hey," Ranma suddenly interrupted, quirking an eyebrow, "where did that number come from, anyway?"

"Number come the what now?" Jadeite said, caught flat-footed.

"That thing about a quarter of the monster grads getting killed by these chicks," Ranma asked, frowning, "who keeps track of that sort of thing, anyway? How would anybody know that?"

Jadeite stopped in his tracks, and his eyes wandered off to the side as he answered. "Well, it's less a statistic and more an educated guess."

Whumph! "Since we're being honest now, that was less a rebuttal and more a knee to the stomach," Ranma deadpanned as he removed his leg from Jadeite's gut, causing the professor to slump onto the ground.

Jadeite coughed as he held his abdomen, but then smirked as he staggered to his feet. "You... Saotome, I'll never know why you're so quick to side with these human fools..."

"Because I AM a human fool!" Ranma shouted. "I mean, I'm not a fool, but I am a human! Humans aren't fools by default! Also, why are you smiling?"

"Because we passed by a hospital two blocks back, and you were so busy conversing with me that you didn't even notice that Professor Richard stopped following us," Jadeite explained smugly.

Ranma's eyes bugged out as he whirled around, and he could see that among the tall office buildings that dominated this section of the prefecture he could see a flickering light that highlighted a rising plume of black smoke.

"This... This is..." Ranma stammered, before glancing back at Jadeite, "this is surprisingly subtle and well-planned for you," he admitted.

"I do some of my best plotting while sulking hatefully in the background," Jadeite explained with a shrug, "I'm sure the Senshi are already on their way, so why don't you go rescue the ordinary humans you care so much about while your teachers rid the world of those miniskirted pests?"

Ranma grimaced as he bolted down the street toward the hospital, and Jadeite grinned despite the lingering pain in his abdomen.

"Tonight, at last, my revenge will be complete! Ha ha ha! Ha ha! MWA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAA!"

"Now this is a very tricky shot. We have an eastern crosswind of about eight kilometers per hour, plus a good deal of smoke obscuring the target," Richard said in a hushed voice from the largely empty hospital parking lot he was standing in.

He was currently stooped over slightly while holding his summoned vorpal golf club in preparation for his next swing.

"His choice of club won't make the shot any easier, sacrificing the parabola trajectory for the greater impact power of a straight-line casting effect. Only time will tell if that was the right call," Richard whispered in a different voice, adding a rather poor British accent.

At Richard's feet was a thrumming sphere of purple energy that seemed to contort violently every few seconds before snapping back to its original shape.

"This is his third stroke, and he'll have to hit the third story though the small window on the right side in order to sink this shot into the maternity ward," Richard said, switching back to the first voice. "A hush falls over the crowd."

This wasn't entirely accurate, as there was a fair bit of screaming coming from the top floor of the hospital, though it was hard to hear over the fire alarms and the rush of water from the fire suppression system.

"Here comes the swing!" Richard pulled his arms back, and a sharp crackle sparked from the head of the club as he swung at the trembling ball of destruction hovering beneath him.

Whump! As it so happened, Ranma landed feet-first on Richard's head a split second before he struck the projectile, and the shot went wide and low, veering wildly into the parking lot before Ranma vaulted off of him toward the burning building.

Richard stood up straight immediately, watching as his projectile vanished into the side of a parked ambulance.

"Tch! Slice."

Clang! The ambulance promptly collapsed in the middle, having been cut cleanly in two.

Richard turned back to the hospital, noting that Ranma had already entered one of the second-story windows where he had already landed two fireballs.

"Dang. I think this is a three-par structure," Richard mumbled, rubbing his chin as his summoned club fizzled out of existence.

"Stop right there!"


Richard turned on his heel, and his eyebrows rose as he beheld a group of five girls standing on a building across the street, all of them wearing color-coded sailor uniforms.

"Hospitals are a place of tenderness and healing, where the sick and the weak can find comfort and families find hope! To attack one like this is an unforgivable crime!" shouted a girl with long blonde ponytails. "I am the warrior of love and justice, Sailor Moon!"

"Sailor Mercury!"

"Sailor Mars!"

"Sailor Jupiter!"

"Sailor Venus!"

As the other four girls finished their role call, Sailor Moon pointed down at Richard. "And in the name of the moon, I will punish you!"

"You dare stand before me with your cries for justice and mercy?" Richard demanded suddenly, his voice booming with such volume that it staggered the Senshi despite the distance between them. "Do you not know who I am?"

Richard's hands glowed brightly with an ugly green tint, and behind him flickered a large, ghostly shape that resembled a cloaked figure with a scythe, a shadow that seemed to literally fight against the dim lights hanging over the parking lot as it became visible.

"I am Richard, fools! A hundred realms curse my name, a million souls weep at my visage, and as I unmake the enemies before me, entire realities shrivel to dust in the currents of my power!"

The massive shadow of the reaper seemed to stabilize, and a bright red light suddenly glared out from the hooded face of the apparition as skeletal hands lifted the ornate scythe that seemed to writhe in the moonlight.

"You dare speak to ME of justice? Very well; I will watch your fates unravel in the burning tides of the aether!"

The apparition swung its scythe down menacingly as Richard lifted one hand, beckoning to the Senshi.

"Come. Oblivion awaits."


Sailor Mars clenched her teeth as she snapped up several Shinto talisman. "Hmph! For someone lobbing fireballs at a hospital, he sure talks a big game."

Sailor Moon stood rigidly in her introductory pose, her eyes wide.

"He's probably less powerful at short range!" Sailor Mercury said, scanning the warlock with her visor.

Sailor Moon's arm finally dropped, and she bit her lip as her body started trembling.

"Let's get down there and surround him!" Jupiter declared, "we'll show that son of a-"

"WAIT!" Sailor Moon suddenly cried, startling her teammates into silence as she crossed her arms in front of her face in an X. "I want a do-over!"

For several seconds the sounds of the hospital's alarms utterly dominated the confrontation.

"What?" Sailor Mars asked, her arms falling fully limp at her sides.

"His speech was cooler than ours! It's not fair!" Sailor Moon cried, pointing at Richard as tears gathered on the corners of her eyes.

Sailor Mercury slid her visor up onto her forehead. "Moon, I don't think that's really feasible right-"

"All right, fine," Richard said, the cloaked apparition behind him fading away as he crossed his arms over his chest, "we'll make it best two out of three. But you go first."

"Oh God. Is this happening? This is actually happening, isn't it?" Sailor Mars grumbled as she started to massage her temples.

"Er, wait, do we have to go down to the street and come back up now?" Sailor Venus wondered aloud.

"Don't worry! I've got this!" Moon shouted, spreading her arms out in front of the others as her eyes blazed with determination.


"Hateful monster! Your end has arrived!" Sailor Moon shouted, stepping forward and sweeping one arm before her. In contrast to before, her voice was curiously amplified, and the windows of the building below trembled slightly from the powerful vibrations.

"Hospitals are a haven for the ill and the weak, a sanctuary and a sacred temple of healing and hope!" Sailor Moon boomed, motes of light starting to come off her back like sparks from a flame, "for violating this place you will NOT be forgiven!"

With a gesture, the magical light at her back exploded into form, and the other Senshi stared incredulously as a massive angel of white fire coalesced behind their leader, its wings folding inward to blanket the sides of the building as its featureless face stared down at Richard.

"The just, the pure, and the righteous will cleanse you from this place, and your blighted soul will drown in our light!"

The apparition behind Sailor Moon gently lifted one arm, and a huge lance of yellow light flickered into place in its hand, aimed firmly at the warlock.

"I am Sailor Moon, champion of love and justice! Speak your name, abomination, and then be purged!" Sailor Moon's eyes blazed with uncharacteristic rage as she pointed down at her foe, thin arcs of white lightning whipping about her hand and wrist.

"Did... Did any of you know she could do that?" Sailor Venus asked awkwardly, prompting the other Senshi to shake their heads mutely.


Richard scratched his masked chin briefly before he clasped his hands behind him back.

"You ask my name? Really? I, radical reaver of rogues and ranger riff raff, who racks the rambuctious rabble and ravages ramparts? I am rapacious, raucous, rowdy and rancid! To reflect rote rationale and rant ritual righteousness randomly is to ratify the rapid rending of rectums rather than rash retribution rank with ramshackle rancor! I remonstrate rightly to refuse the ransom of rapscallions in regrettable, racy raiment, and reject relevant reciprocation, renumeration, and renunciation as repulsive remarks to release remiss repentance!"

Richard stopped to cough into his fist, and then he pointed at Sailor Moon. "Repartee remitted, recall Richard, reviled rivals."


Sailor Moon continued to hold her pose for several more seconds, still illuminated by the massive angel of light towering immediately behind her.

Then it blinked out of existence, and the warrior of love and justice turned around and broke into a full sprint.

"RUN! He's too much for us!" Sailor Moon cried, her ponytails whipping wildly behind her in the cool night air.

"Hey! You get back here!" Sailor Mars shouted, taking off after the blonde with a vein popping up on her head.

The other Senshi soon joined them with varying degrees of hesitation and confusion, and soon Richard was alone with nothing but the sounds of distant shouting and fire engine alarms to disturb him.

The warlock silently raised his hands and made a complex gesture with them, accompanied by a small flash of light.

After a brief delay, a line of massive digital text appeared in the air in front of him, accompanied by a loud shout from nowhere.

You win!

Then, after another delay, another line appeared below the first in even bigger characters.

PERFECT!

"All too easy," Richard said maliciously as he adopted his win pose, his hands bursting into flame as he glowered at nothing.

Clong! Suddenly the warlock's head pitched forward as a depleted fire extinguisher smashed into the back of his skull.

Taking a moment to regain his balance, Richard glanced behind him to see Ranma standing behind him, in her girl form and holding a pair of large exinguishers that looked like they had seen heavy recent use. In addition to being the wrong gender, the redhead's damp clothes had been badly singed in places, and one sleeve had been torn off.

"Hey," Ranma greeted, dropping the empty canisters, "you done? If so, let's get the other jackass and go."

"That didn't take you as long as I expected," Richard admitted, turning on his heel and walking toward the street.

"I've gotten pretty good at putting out fires recently," Ranma grumbled, "I suppose I should thank you for all the extra practice, but I wouldn't mean it."

"That's okay," Richard said with a shrug, "save anyone interesting?"

"A few doctors were trapped behind a collapsed wall, but mostly I got patients who couldn't get out of their beds, then put out the rest of the fire," Ranma said as she crossed the street, noticing that among the background noise of emergency vehicles arriving at the hospital there was a strange and persistent thumping sound.

"Hey! Other jackass! We're done!" Richard called.

Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Jadeite did not respond to Richard's call, being occupied as he was with slamming his forehead into the wall of an adjacent building over and over again.

"What's his problem? We won, didn't we?" Richard asked.

"Who knows. Mind helping me knock him out? It's getting really late, and I don't want him attacking me in my sleep," Ranma asked.

"Okay!"

Tsukune groaned softly as his mind slowly surfaced to consciousness, informing him that dawn had passed and a brand new day awaited his attention.

His back felt fairly stiff from sleeping on a thin bed of straw laid over the ground, but besides that he felt almost shockingly comfortable. His sleeping bag cradled him in soft, pillowy warmth, and an enchanting scent seemed to surround him.

"Mmm... Tsukune..."

His sleeping bag also seemed to be erotically moaning his name, which his rapidly clearing mind was pretty sure wasn't a real feature.

Slowly cracking his eyes open, he was extremely perturbed - though hardly surprised - to see Kurumu's face mere inches from his, still sleeping peacefully. She was hugging him loosely with her cheek cradled on his shoulder, and through the fabric of her heart-print cotton pajamas he could easily feel the heavy softness of her chest resting on his.

Tsukune's face flushed deeply as his heart started racing, and his head started to feel dizzy as he started panicking first thing after waking up.

Unsure of what to do or say, but determining that any sort of rational response was harder the longer he spent staring at Kurumu's beautiful smile, Tsukune twisted his neck around to face the other direction.

His face promptly drained of its excess color as he stared into the face of Ranma's pet spider, which was waiting barely an inch away. Its gleaming, milky eyes stared patiently into Tsukune's, and he was acutely aware of the two viciously curved fangs that hung under the creature's head, close enough to brush the tip of his nose if it was so inclined.

Tsukune's thundering heart stopped at the horrifying sight, and his earlier panicked arousal died instantly, leaving him in a curious sense of calm.

He turned his head to stare straight up, and then slowly pushed himself into the sitting position, incidentally moving Kurumu enough to wake her.

"Huhn? Oh, 'Kune," Kurumu said groggily, smiling softly as she woke up herself, "g'morning."

The succubus then sat up so that she was partially straddling her bed-mate and then stretched her arms over her head, groaning as Tsukune could only sit and stare at a truly heroic display of cleavage.

It would have been quite nice were the previous image of a giant spider's face not been burned into his brain, the undiluted creepiness perfectly negating Kurumu's sex appeal in some bizarre, fragile emotional balance.

Kurumu finished her very unsubtle attempt to goad Tsukune into feeling her up, and then noticed the gigantic black horror waiting next to the sleeping bag. "And good morning to you too, Guile! Come here, you!"

"Wait. Wait! Gah!" Tsukune grit his teeth as Guile took enthusiastically to Kurumu's suggestion, scuttling over his lap and forcing the human to concentrate on remaining absolutely still.

"Good boy! Good boy!" Kurumu cooed as she picked up the giant spider, lifting it up onto her shoulder and wiggling a finger against its pedipalps.


Tsukune took the opportunity to extract himself from his sleeping bag, not needing to know the particulars of why Kurumu had been sleeping with him. He could guess her motivations easily enough, and so long as they both woke up clothed, he was willing to let the incident slide.

As he passed the shed and spied Moka seated against the wall, however, it occurred to him that not everyone might be so forgiving.

"M-Moka! Good morning!" he shouted, his voice rather wooden as he straightened involuntarily. "Hi! How are you?"

The normally cheerful girl seemed to be in low spirits, and as she gave him a suspicious stare, it wasn't hard to guess why.

"So Kurumu really did spend all night with you," the vampiress mumbled as droplets of sweat beaded on Tsukune's forehead.

"Now, wait, it wasn't what you-" Tsukune was cut off as an annoyed snort came from behind him.

"Nothing happened. We just slept," Kurumu affirmed as she walked past Tsukune, cradling Guile against her chest, "really Moka, do you think I'd go assault someone in their sleep? Give me a little credit, here."

'Told you she didn't have the guts,' Evil Moka said, 'I mean, if she did, she would have allured him into love slavery by now. And now not only do you not have any winning bets to collect, but you also got to look like a jealous little-'

"Would you SHUT UP!" Moka shouted, startling Tsukune and Kurumu.

"What? Are you THAT upset that I got to sleep next to him? First come, first serve!" Kurumu retorted.

"No, I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to me!" Moka explained, rubbing her forehead as a great deal of snickering erupted within her head.

"Well, you're still being noisy, so I don't think you're listening to yourself," noted Mizore as she walked by behind Moka, looking slightly more lethargic than usual.

"Mizore! Wait!" Kurumu said, instantly switching topics and earning a great deal of silent gratitude from Tsukune, "do you know where Keito is?"

"She and Tobaki are out hunting. Why?"

"Hunting? But we brought food with us," Tsukune pointed out.

"Meh. Predators. Go figure," Kurumu muttered, "anyway, after we get washed up, I want to talk to you about keeping tabs on Keito for the rest of this trip."

Mizore gave the succubus a sleepy, probably sarcastic salute and then trudged along her way as Kurumu left as well.

Moka, feeling a pang in her stomach when she heard her friends talking about food, shyly approached Tsukune. "Well, I guess it's time for breakfast, so..."

The human boy wasn't exactly happy about the immediate prospect of being snacked on, but Tsukune was at least glad that the previous topic had lapsed. "All right, fine. Let's find somewhere more private..." He frowned as he looked over the sunflower field behind them.

"Is something wrong?"

"No, not really," Tsukune reassured her, turning back around, "I was just wondering what Keito would be hunting. Yukari said there were almost no animals around because of the garigari plants, right? So what's there left to hunt?"

"What do you mean all the crows are gone?" Oyakata asked, scowling.

Ruby grimaced as she stared down at the floor helplessly. "Well, not all of them, but a great many vanished overnight, and some of them have gone silent this morning while I was in contact with them. I have no explanation, my lady."

The old witch grit her teeth as she turned and walked into the foyer, her dirty and tattered robe leaving dirty trails over the floor.

"There may be more to our intruders than we had anticipated," Oyakata spat irritably, "but our plan remains the same. Now that the human is dead, we may find out what the monsters' objective is and-"

"Yeah, about that," echoed a ghostly, high-pitched voice nervously, "that... didn't work out as planned."

Oyakata and Ruby halted in surprise, and the former snapped her head toward the large bookcase dominating the wall.

The book of imprisonment and summoning that the crone had used the previous day was on the shelf in its proper place, but a dark mist seeped gradually from its bindings, indicating that not all was well.

"What are YOU doing back?" Oyakata asked before she processed what the magic beast had just said. "Wait, you failed? The human still lives?"

"Yeah, sorry about that," the spirit's voice intoned bitterly, "there was a little intelligence gap that compromised my mission. Specifically, the gap between the front of your skull and the rear of it. "

Oyakata bristled, infuriated that a mere magic beast would speak to its master in such a way after suffering failure. "The fault is mine? How? You could not even kill a single human!"

"Well, seeing how you called me in to do that job, you can't seem to manage it either!" the feline snapped back, "besides, I never even got to the target! He's being guarded by giant spiders laying tripwires and net traps, and the monsters you warned me about are willing to kill apparently harmless animals on sight out of sheer paranoia! How am I supposed to work like this?" The book trembled slightly on the shelf, shaking with the feline's rage, "I was killed before I even saw the guy!"

"Wait, if you were killed, how are you still alive?" Ruby asked.

"I have nine lives. Well, I'm down to five now, actually. The other three being HER fault," the feline explained.

"Be silent before I burn your tome, you useless cat," Oyakata sneered, "so you can't kill the human after all. Fine. You may have wasted our time, but I have many other methods at my disposal."

She walked up to the bookshelf and then selected a different book, this one much thinner than the summoning tome and unbound.

"I wanted to use you so that the creatures that foolishly truck with the human would have something else to blame for the boy's murder. But if you are not up to the task then we can't afford so much subtlety."

The crone flipped through the book for a few minutes while Ruby watched nervously, wondering what measures they would have to take now that a direct assassination had failed.

"Ah, this one will do," Oyakata said suddenly, placing her finger on a yellowed page, "a wasting curse. And it can be used from a scrying, without any materials from the human himself."

Oyakata scuffled toward the back shelves, which were stocked with numerous vials, boxes, and jars which stored components for the witches' alchemy. "It will take time to work, which is unfortunate, so he may seek us out for a cure. It is, however, extraordinarily painful. So, you know, you have to take the good with the bad."

Ruby shuddered. Such deadly magics were certainly not to be used lightly, since the obviously unnatural affliction would probably be traced back to them. To say nothing of inflicting the agony of having one's flesh and organs slowly melt away over an entire day.

"Ruby," Oyakata said sharply as she unscrewed a lid from a jar of milky fluid, "rally a few crows and set them upon the human. I'll need the worthless cur's image in my crystal ball for at least a full minute for the spell to cast."

"At once, my lady," Ruby said obediently, closing her eyes and holding up her crescent wand as she sought out the tiny souls of her avian familiars.


Before long, she found some of them picking at a dead animal at the very northern edge of the sunflower field, staying well out of reach of both the garigari plants that infested the field and the monsters' camp.

With a mere thought, all three birds lifted their heads, and Ruby's mind connected with theirs. Three similar but subtly different images floated within her thoughts as she saw through their eyes, and as Ruby approached the crystal ball in the center of the room she gave the crows their instructions.

The crows hesitated.

Ruby could feel their dread gnawing at her stomach, a ghostly echo of the crows' own emotions. They knew very well that a great many of their flock had fallen. Their animal instincts warned them of predators near their target, and for the first time that Ruby could recall, the crows tried to resist her will.

Ruby didn't like the idea of forcing her familiars onto a suicide mission, but it was sadly necessary for Lady Oyakata's strategy to work. Besides that, if Ruby didn't do it, then Oyakata would just force them to do the job herself.

With a sigh, Ruby enforced her will upon the distant crows, and the birds immediately rushed into the air in a burst of shadowy feathers.

"I have all we need," Oyakata said as she dropped a collection of vials and small pouches onto the table, "give me a moment to fetch the cauldron."

As the crone walked to the corner of the room and started dragging a hefty wrought iron cauldron toward the table, Ruby spoke up again.

"My lady, are you sure this is wise?" the teenage witch asked nervously, "resorting to curses just seems so... personal," she admitted.

"Yes. Because this IS personal," Oyakata answered, "his kind have defiled countless acres with their cities, farms, and dumps, and then, when we are finally on the verge of DOING something about it, he leads a pack of hostile monsters right into our midst, letting them wreak havoc amongst our precious flowers. Just like all humans, where he treads he leads naught but destruction in his wake!"

Ruby instantly felt her anger rise to a boiling point, and she nodded with renewed determination. "You're right, my lady. This is the least the human deserves for his defiling presence."

"Oh, for Bast's sake," said the disembodied voice of the cat, "do you seriously believe that nonsense?"

Oyakata's eyebrow twitched as she glanced back at the bookshelf. "Do you want to lose another life, kitten? You know nothing of the suffering we've endured because of humans!"

"True, I really don't. Though that could be because I've spent the last SIXTY YEARS imprisoned in a BOOK!" the feline snapped, "what I'm trying to say is, you can't really claim moral superiority here."

"After I'm through with this, I will re-bind your prison," the hag said with a sneer, "we have no need of advice from a useless beast such as yourself."

Oyakata opened one of the pouches, dumping a great deal of gray powder into the cauldron.

"It begins. Ruby, have the crows sighted our prey?"

Ruby nodded, and her hands hovered over the crystal ball. "They have, my lady. The human's end is near." The fog in the glass sphere seemed to part, revealing an image of Tsukune massaging his neck while talking to Kouma.

"Focus on the human, Ruby," Oyakata said, opening a jar of cloudy fluid and draining it into the cauldron.

The image slowly crept closer to Tsukune's face as the crone started adding ingredients to her mix, and Ruby waved her hands slowly over the crystal ball as Oyakata cackled.

"Yes, this is it! The human will suffer and die for his trespass!" Oyakata started unscrewing another jar full of wiggling tendrils when all of a sudden the image shook violently, like a camera being jarred while it was recording.

Ruby yelped, recoiling from the crystal ball. "My lady! One of the crows was knocked out!" Gritting her teeth, she leaned closer to the sphere. "Hold on! I'll find out what's happening!"

"No!" Oyakata snapped, causing Ruby to flinch back, "we must focus! I just need a little longer!" She quickly dumped the contents of the jar into the cauldron and then started crushing some exotic leaves using a mortar and pestle.

Ruby staggered as the image in the crystal ball shook again, and her hands slammed onto the small table to steady herself. "My lady! There's only one left, and he's frightened! He's trying to flee!" the younger witch cried, squeezing her eyes shut against the pain. The second crow had not been knocked out and was in fact being punctured by something while still telepathically connected to Ruby. Although the focus of the crystal ball mercifully remained on Tsukune, the crow's death cries echoed painfully in her head, giving an ugly clue of the awful fate it had suffered.

"Hold him there, damn it! We almost have the human!" Oyakata commanded as she stabbed a thick wooden rod into the cauldron, stirring the arcane brew.

"Good enough!" Oyakata growled, tossing away the rod and grabbing hold of the crystal ball. "Spirits nesting in Earth below! Infest hearts that beat and blood that flows! As dust gives way to bone and skin, leave flesh to rot and body to thin!"

The cauldron shook as the incantation finished, and the solution inside quickly turned from an ugly gray sludge to a sickly green slime.

Oyakata grinned in triumph as she let go of the crystal ball, letting it fall into the mixture... just as the image in the sphere suddenly jolted and shifted from that of the young human to the leering face of a dark-skinned girl with pointed ears.

The crone's smile died slowly as she stared down into the face's image, which almost seemed to be mocking her as the crystal ball slowly sank into the cursed brew, eventually sliding underneath the bubbling green surface as a dark, foul-smelling mist rose into the air.


Ruby gasped as she pushed herself upright, using the scrying table for support. Being telepathically linked with an animal familiar when it died was always painful, and there was a certain amount of emotional damage to consider when one was forcing the utterly terrified beast to remain still while it was picked off.

"My lady, is it done?" Ruby asked through heavy gasps, "is the human's fate sealed?"

Oyakata hesitated, but eventually hung her head. "No. The scrying's focus changed at the last moment, afflicting some other girl." Ruby's face paled - as much as it was possible, anyway, given her complexion - and her expression twisted into one of horror.

"You MISSED with a CURSE?" asked the magic cat's disembodied voice, snickering.

"I swear, I will skin you and make you into a hat," Oyakata snarled at the book.

Crunch! Crunch! Tobaki made a face as she chewed on the crow, having stuck it in her mouth whole.

Tsukune finished with Kouma, and turned away as the hellhound shifted forms and ran out into the sunflower fields.

"So you've been eating the birds around here, huh? Are they tasty?" Tsukune asked Tobaki somewhat awkwardly.

"Not really," Tobaki answered around a mouthful of feathers, "these ones are rather well-fed, but it's still just a scrawny bird."

Behind her, Keito discarded a dried, feathered husk wrapped in webbing while she wiped her mouth with her wrist. "Is there a problem, Captain? Any moral objections to killing dumb animals for food?"

"None," Tsukune said bluntly, locking glares with Keito, "as long as you restrict it to wild animals, there's no problem. Did you run into any trouble while you were out and about? We are in witch territory, after all."

"Just a few garigaris," Tobaki said as she swallowed the chewed-up remains of the crow, "I took care of them."

"Well, if you've already had breakfast and scouted..." Tsukune trailed off as he glanced at Tobaki. "Tobaki, are you all right? You're sweating an awful lot."

The demon blinked. "Sweating? What's sweating?" There were tiny beads of moisture gathering over her skin, though it wasn't obvious given her dark complexion.

Keito frowned. "It's when mammals secrete moisture to better absorb heat. Tobaki doesn't do that, though," she said, walking up to Tobaki and grabbing hold of her arm and the top of her head.

"Well, since you took on human form, wouldn't you sweat like a human?" Tsukune reasoned.

"Some of us, maybe, but not all," Keito said, annoyed that she had to explain this, "our imitations of humanity... vary in how complete they are. Some of us would take on a human's specific biology, like me, but for some others they concentrate on the shape and appearance and little else. Especially in Tobaki's case, since her natural form has very little in the way of organs or complex anatomy."

Keito pulled away her hands, and was quite alarmed when the one atop Tobaki's head came away with clumps of damp hair sticking to it. "Something's definitely wrong!"

"Yukari!" Tsukune called out toward the shed, "come here, please! It's an emergency!"

Tobaki looked nervous as she stared at her hands, which now had a sheen of moisture over them. "I th-think you're right, big sis! I feel strange!"

Yukari emerged from the shed, looking curious while Kana and Moka followed.

"What's wrong? What's all the yelling about?"

"Tobaki's sick!" Keito shouted, for the first time displaying what the others could recognize as naked fear and real concern.

Yukari was not so sympathetic. "That's impossible," she mumbled as she approached the trio, "Tobaki's a demon, her cells would be complete anathema to every virus and bacteria on Earth."

Shlorp! Tobaki's left arm suddenly came off at the elbow, tumbling to the ground as the flesh around the joint started to melt and run like wax.

"I stand corrected," Yukari deadpanned as the others gaped in horror, "what, did you come down with magic leprosy or something?"

"I don't know what happened!" Tobaki cried, flailing her left stump and flinging small globs of yellowing sludge everywhere, "do you think that last crow I ate was bad?" The rest of her skin was starting to break out in rashes, the deep chocolate brown skin turning yellow.

"Like I said, there's no way something so mundane could affect a demon," the young witch assured her, approaching the fallen limb and observing it closely as it seemed to melt into a yellow sludge.

"Well, do something about it!" Keito yelled desperately.

"Is there anything we can do to help?" Moka asked, wringing her hands. "Do you need some water, or a cold press, or-"

Shlump! Tobaki's other arm came off at the shoulder, trailing thick strings of melting flesh from the sleeve of the T-shirt she was wearing.

"Maybe a bucket?" Yukari guessed.

"Waaaah..." Tobaki looked at her fallen limbs fearfully, feeling her legs start to wobble. "I think... This is it, everyone..."

"No! Hang in there!" Keito exclaimed, her eyes wide.

"Tobaki!" Moka cried, rushing forward and seizing the demon girl by the shoulders. Her fingers instantly sunk into the cloth of her shirt, as if the flesh beneath it were little more than jelly.

"Sendo, hurry up and do something!" Keito snapped.

"Like what?" Yukari shouted back angrily from where she was crouched over the remains of the first limb, "do I look like a cleric to you? When did I become the team medic?"

"Oh, no..." Tsukune turned his gaze aside as Tobaki's legs buckled, and Moka gaped as the demon's body stretched down to the ground, slowly melting into the rapidly expanding yellow puddle like a molasses waterfall. Tobaki's head and shoulders were held aloft thanks to Moka holding on to the girl's shirt, though it was clear that they too were dissolving fast.

"It's... It's okay," Tobaki gasped, her lips barely able to move as her facial features started slowly vanished under rivulets of yellow goop, "it doesn't... feel that bad... anymore."

"Tobaki!" Keito cried, real tears crawling down her face as she suddenly hugged the melting demon from behind. This didn't do much except squeeze some of the horrific sludge onto her chest and arms, though the others were quite surprised by the gesture.

"My... Only... Regret..." Tobaki gasped out, her face reduced to a rapidly draining balloon of slimy filth, "is that... I didn't get to see... Ranma's penis..."

Kana pursed her lips as she saluted firmly, a single tear leaking from her exposed eye.

Moka found those last words far more awkward than the siren, but still forced herself to speak during the demon's terrifying final moments, trying to do anything she could think of to ease the girl's suffering. "Don't worry! It isn't even that amazing!"

In retrospect, she certainly shouldn't have bothered.

"YOU'VE SEEN IT?!" Though the cry of surprise, shock, and in one case, eager anticipation definitely came from more than one person, Kana's voice immediately dominated the outcry, almost knocking Moka off her feet with a wave of sonic force.

As a result, Tobaki's damp, empty shirt was torn from her hands, and it fell into a slimy heap off on the side as the last remnants of Tobaki's body finished dissolving into a yellow, foul-smelling goo.


"To... Tobaki... Why?" Keito sobbed openly as she knelt on the ground, not caring who saw her moment of honest, crushing emotion or how it would reflect on her reputation. "How did this happen? Who could-"

"Yeah, yeah, it's terrible. What a loss, she was the best of us, yadda yadda," Kana rattled off quickly, her eye locked on a very confused Moka, "seriously though, what did you mean when you said 'it isn't even that amazing'?"

Yukari likewise didn't seem too distraught over the Committee's loss, hopping up to her feet. "Do you mean it's KIND of amazing, but you've seen better? Or you've imagined better, maybe?"

"On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the best-"

Tsukune promptly cut off the last question, his face pale but determined. "Stop it. That's enough," he said, massaging his forehead as he stared grimly at the puddle that remained of his treasurer, "you can gossip later, but for now, we've been attacked. Yukari, figure out what..."

He trailed off. "Wait. Where did that last voice come from?" he asked uncertainly, "who was asking about a scale?"

"That was me. Sorry," apologized a rough, disembodied voice that seemed to echo in everyone's ears, prompting a small but sharp pain in their heads with every syllable. "What were you saying about the attack?"

Tsukune didn't know who was speaking, but Keito immediately lit up, leaping to her feet. "TOBAKI! You're alive!"

Everyone's eyes immediately locked onto the slime puddle that the demon had left behind, and all but Keito and Yukari recoiled in disgust as a giant red eye slowly broke the surface of the puddle and started glancing around.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry I broke human form outside of combat, Captain. I'll change back right away."

Tsukune watched in morbid fascination as the puddle started to rise, the eye being carried upward on a tide of yellow filth that quivered and surged in ways that made his stomach turn. Although he was aware that the sight of Tobaki's true form wasn't THAT awful objectively, he could feel himself physically repulsed by the creature, as if his body and soul objected to its existence even if his mind was more tolerant.

Tobaki stretched upward to a height of about five feet, and then her eye trembled slightly, as if straining from some herculean effort. It looked bizarre enough on its own, and wasn't helped at all when Yukari walked up to the yochlol and started poking it with a stick she found on the ground.

"I... I can't change back!" Tobaki complained. "Something's wrong! It's really hard to form limbs, for some reason!" Short tentacles of yellow ooze wormed their way out from the greater mass, but they moved ponderously, like earthworms struggling out of the dirt.

"Don't strain yourself, Tobaki," Keito said encouragingly, gently stroking the demon down what Tsukune guessed might have been her back, "it's enough that you're okay."

Yukari clicked her tongue as she stepped back. "Okay, so I was right from the outset. This is no disease."

As everyone's attention focused on her, Yukari tilted the rim of her hat up and locked eyes with Tsukune. "Tobaki's been cursed. A nasty one, meant to kill the victim slowly and painfully. Whoever the witches on this knoll are, they're serious about trying to get rid of us."

Keito frowned. "Your analysis technique consists of poking the victim with a stick?"

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Yukari said in an unusually bright and cheerful voice as she smiled, "I didn't realize that YOU were the expert on this sort of thing! That would explain why you were screaming for my help a minute ago!"

Keito winced, and a stray tentacle patted her head comfortingly (and incidentally leaving a knot of gunk in her hair).

"You said the curse is lethal?" Tsukune asked, trying not to look directly at the writhing pile of hateful ooze.

"Well, it's supposed to be, but it depends on the target's physiology. Tobaki's is rather unique, so her body had an unusual reaction to the curse. While it is keeping her from maintaining a stable form, she's not in any real danger," Yukari pointed out, "had any of us been affected, we would have probably died over the course of an entire day. Or several days in the case of Moka, Chopper, and maybe Mizore, since their bodies would be resistant to rotting away."

"So she'll be fine. Great. Next is why," Tsukune asked grimly, "I mean, I know why the witches might have attacked us, but why Tobaki specifically? What has she done?"

Yukari, Moka, and Kana all adopted anxious expressions as they glanced at the giant red eyeball floating in a pile of vomitous sludge.

"I mean what has she done specific to these circumstances?" Tsukune clarified, looking annoyed, "I doubt the witches are just trying to take revenge for her victims at school."

"Well, I got in a political argument with that dumb liberal bus driver. Then I helped set up the shed for us to sleep in. I guess I made fun of Kurono a lot last night, but I don't see how they would care..." Tobaki rattled off anything she could think of, a tendril of slime reaching up and scratching at the top of her eyeball thoughtfully. "And this morning I was eating all those crows for breakfast-"

"Ah. There you go," Yukari interrupted, "that might have done it."

"What? Why?" Keito demanded, "you all hacked up dozens of those plant beasts yesterday, and you're all fine! Why should Tobaki get cursed for eating some filthy birds?"

"Birds are common familiar animals," Yukari pointed out, shrugging, "our hosts may have gotten especially upset over you eating a favorite animal, or maybe one of the crows was cursed itself as a trap and passed it on to anything that ate it. Hard to say, but chances are it was the birds."

"All right. Then that just leaves what we're going to do about it," Tsukune mumbled, "Yukari, can the curse be cured?"

"Sure, but I don't have the materials on hand. I'll bet our mystery friends do, though," she said.

"Good. Then we'll wait for the others to get back, then we'll eat and see about finding these witches," Tsukune said, crossing his arms over his chest, "I had Kurumu and Kouma scouting the sunflower field, so hopefully they'll find a dwelling."

"What should I do in the meantime, Captain?" Tobaki asked, whipping a yellow tentacle about in the air in imitation of raising her hand.

Tsukune really wanted to instruct her to stop talking, since every word she spoke sent needles of pain into his skull, but opted for a more polite solution. "You should stay in the shed, Tobaki, and keep the door closed. We don't know if the curse can be passed on, nor do we know what the witches will do to you next if they find out you survived."

"I'm staying with her," Keito insisted.

Tsukune gave her a thumbs-up. "Sure! You go ahead." Having Keito volunteer to quarantine herself was probably the nicest thing she had ever done for him.

"Stupid witches and their lame hexes," Tobaki mumbled as she wriggled toward the shack behind the group, "I'll bet this like, HALVES most of my stats. And I can't wear glasses like this! What if someone needs me to do treasurer work?"

"Then they'll just have to manage basic math all by themselves," Keito reassured her, following the corrosive trail of slime that the yochlol left behind her, "from this point onward, you're on sick leave!"


Tsukune held his stomach as the demon left, finally appreciating some of Ranma's fear for the Committee's treasurer. Even without having to fight her, merely being around her true form was an ordeal that someone of his constitution found exhausting.

"So, now that that's over, can we get back to where, when, and how Moka saw Ranma's thing?" Kana asked, obviously irritated that they had gotten sidetracked from the topic.

"Kana! Tobaki was just CURSED by a witch who was growing an army of plant monsters and probably wants us all killed! Don't you think we have more important things to worry about right now?" Moka demanded, red in the face from embarrassment and indignation.

"Not really, no," Kana said bluntly.

"We wouldn't want to just drop all the sexual tension just because we have legitimate duties here," Yukari said eagerly.

There was a brief rustling noise before Mizore's face emerged from a nearby cluster of sunflowers, looking annoyed. "Hurry up. I'm supposed to be spying on Keito right now."

Moka looked desperately to Tsukune for help, but the young human just seemed to stare off into the sunflower field, seemingly oblivious to the argument.

She couldn't help but notice, though, that he was close enough to easily overhear it, and didn't seem to be leaving. No doubt he was rather curious himself - if not slightly worried - about Moka having seen Ranma naked.

"Look, it was all Kurumu's idea, all right?" Moka said awkwardly.

"Kurumu was in on this too?" Yukari asked, her eyes gleaming, "that is HOT."

"We were just testing his curse! That's all! There wasn't anything... you know, weird about it!" Moka protested.

"There's nothing weird about asking a friend to show you his junk?" Kana asked, her voice carrying as much scorn as her words.

"Er... well, technically we didn't ask..." Moka admitted against the advice of Evil Moka, who was repeating the words 'Stop talking stop talking stop talking' over and over again.

"Didn't we just learn not to do stuff like that yesterday?" Mizore asked Tsukune, who continued to wait patiently for Kouma while pretending like he couldn't hear a thing.

Kana grit her teeth as she turned around. "I would expect this from a succubus, virgin or no, but I didn't realize vampires were such PERVERTS."

The word struck her like an arrow to the chest, right before it more literally struck her like an arrow to the chest via a sonic burst that nearly staggered her.

Tsukune rolled his eyes and turned around, finally deciding that the topic had gone on long enough. "All right, just calm down. None of us had seen a curse like that before Ranma revealed it to us, right? Obviously Kurumu went too far in examining it, but they didn't have any strange intentions. Let it go."

Moka sighed in relief as Kana's expression wilted slightly.

"Besides, there's no real reason why you can't use the same excuse," Yukari pointed out, grinning.

Kana straightened noticeably, although she tried to keep her expression stoic. Mizore raised an eyebrow and slowly slipped back into the sunflowers.

"Sure. Whatever. In any case, we have to be on our guard for more activity from the witches. Kana, can you stun birds with your voice?" Tsukune asked.

The siren nodded wordlessly.

"Then make sure to keep a watch out for birds and other small animals. If you see one knock it out immediately, but don't get close to it," Tsukune instructed, "I don't like the idea of sonic-blasting the local wildlife on sight, but we can't risk our own lives to spare the birds."

Kana nodded again while Yukari shrugged.

"Well, if Moka doesn't have any more sexy stories, I might as well do a tarot reading," the young witch said, turning around, "also, I want to get my things out of the shack so that Tobaki doesn't get her bodily gunk all over them."

"It wasn't a sexy story!" Moka claimed, her cheeks reddening again, "he was really mad about it, too!"

Tsukune went back to staring at the sunflower field. "Well, there goes my teaching agenda for the day. What's taking Kouma so long?"

"So, what now, ladies?" asked the disembodied voice of the magic cat, "do you want to give up and just talk to the human, or maybe launch another ill-fated attack that will further tip your hand and precipitate your savage beating and removal from your precious knoll?"

"As you were responsible for one of those 'ill-fated attacks', you should not be so cocky, feline," Oyakata snapped.

"Hey, whatever hag. Doesn't make any difference to me. Well, maybe a little bit, since there's an outside chance that the invaders might free me from the book. But other than that, I already blew my shot at freedom, so who cares?"

Ruby gulped. "My lady, should we not consider negotiating now? We've already attacked them, and they must know we're here..."

"NO!" Oyakata snapped, her eyes narrowing at her protege. "We still have options. We yet have many cards to play, Ruby. I will NOT approach a human in weakness!"

The older witch stomped over to the bookcase, and then seized the summoning book. "If we run short on crows, we will use others as our eyes and ears!" she snarled, grabbing ahold of each cover and shaking it as she held it open.

"Whoa! Hey, watch it!" the magical beast complained as it tumbled out of the book, its body trailing a cloud of inky darkness, "don't do that without all the ritualistic mumbo-jumbo! You're breaking my mystique!"

Oyakata slammed the book shut. "Ruby! Bind the cat. It will serve as your familiar and bodyguard, and if it dies in service to you, we are no worse off."

"Okay, fine, but this is the last time I'm dying for you morons," the black feline grumbled as it walked up to Ruby.

Ruby knelt before the cat awkwardly, circling the head of her wand over it. "And what is my task, my lady?"

"The witch must be approached before the group either attacks us or decide to leave to avoid further harm," Oyakata explained, "if we can learn of her situation, it may provide an effective method of attacking the human or his allies."

"Well, you already assaulted her campground with carnivorous plants, tried to kill her friend and then accidentally hit a different one with a horrible, deadly curse. Yeah, this'll go real well," said the feline, its ears flattening irritably against its head as Ruby slowly formed a telepathic bond.

The younger witch cringed as she connected with the creature's mind and soul. In the past she had only formed bonds with crows, and before that mice and pigeons as practice. Crows were relatively intelligent birds, but the most she ever felt from them when forming a proper bond was an excited curiosity or a nervous trepidation.

The magical beast was quite intelligent in absolute terms, and it understood its role relative to the witches very well. As Ruby reached out to touch its mind she felt only contempt, disgust, and a brooding hatred that was being suppressed by a bitter resignation.

As she finished the bonding ritual, Ruby shuddered at the feelings polluting her mind. It made her feel... dirty. Corrupted. As if she should feel the same things toward herself.

"Hurry, Ruby. We don't know how the group will respond, but every moment the human boy pollutes our knoll is another indignity heaped upon the natural world by those scum. Find the witch and bring her back here with all haste. Persuade her if you can, but remember that the human may have swayed her. You may need to use force."

"Of course, my lady. I will return with our sister witch in tow," Ruby promised.

"And I'll probably return in a shadowstream to be injected right back into your damn book, you filthy hag," the feline added, "so, you know, look forward to that."

"I shall," the crone said curtly, "now begone!"

As Ruby stepped out of the earthen dwelling that served as the witch's lair, she glanced back at the dark feline following in her footsteps. It was obviously trying to stay in her shadow, although Ruby didn't know if this was because of some sensitivity to light or if it afforded the creature some convenient ability. For all she knew, it might just not like the temperature in the sun; all she really knew about the beast was that Oyakata had trapped it in one of her ancient tomes and bound it with the book's magic, and that it seemed to have a distinct hatred of witches and an obvious yearning to be free.

Not really qualities you wanted in a familiar, she had to admit.

"So, do you have a name?" Ruby asked suddenly as she started walking through the sunflower fields.

"What do you care?" the cat asked back, "don't get attached, twerp; there isn't much chance of EITHER of us getting out of this alive, me much less than you. And even if I DID, as soon as the crone decides I've done enough, I'm out."

Ruby winced from the tirade, trying to think of some topic for conversation that might lighten the cat's mood and maybe stem the non-stop flow of bitter fury seeping into her thoughts.

She could only really think of one topic, though. "Hey, do you... really think witches are just as bad as humans?" Ruby asked the question nervously, as if afraid of the answer.

"I don't know; I've never been attacked or imprisoned by a human," the feline said evenly, "but on an educated guess, I'd say witches are much, much worse."

Ruby's expression firmed. "That's just your personal experience. Humans spread across the globe, devastating the Earth for their own benefit and leaving ruin in their wake."

"Wow, yeah, who ever heard of someone exploiting the environment for themselves?" the magic beast said with distinct sarcasm, its tail swatting a sunflower stem for emphasis. "You know what these things are. You planted them, didn't you? Don't act like you're a hapless victim, here."

Ruby bit her lip, caught flat-footed by having the cat acknowledge the sunflowers. "This is... a necessary measure for dealing with the humans. We needed weapons-"

"To defend your property from them. Same excuse they use to justify their own fighting," the feline said, its eye locking onto a dead garigari that lay in a smoking heap next to a small circle of scorched sunflowers, "what's the difference?"

Ruby"s eyes narrowed. "Humans were responsible for the death of my parents."

"That's just your personal experience," the shadow cat said mockingly, imitating Ruby's voice, "I'd say I was sorry for your loss, but I wouldn't mean it. The world is better off without two more witches, and it'll be better still when the hag gets you both killed."

Ruby felt her blood turn to ice at the sentiment, and she stopped short as her heart seemed to seize up for a moment. Nobody had ever expressed... SATISFACTION at her misfortune before. The cold smugness in the feline's words were amplified tenfold in Ruby's mind from the telepathic link, assuring her of his blunt honesty in assuming that her entire race was a useless waste of flesh. She didn't like the feeling one bit.

"That's enough ch-chatting," Ruby said coldly, her voice cracking only slightly, "we have to find my sister witch q-quickly." It wasn't that she was in any way afraid of the magic beast, who literally could not harm her on account of their bond, but sharing a mental link with a creature that was literally willing you to drop dead telepathically was rather emotionally trying for the teenage witch.

"Sure thing. If I'm lucky she'll get trampled somehow and we'll be rid of THREE witches," the feline said humorlessly as it bounded ahead through the sunflowers.

Ruby followed stiffly, her faith in her mission dented ever so slightly.

"Well, THAT'S weird..."

Yukari was by herself in a small clearing, seated in front of an old stump of a tree that provided the closest thing she could find to a good table.

She realized that she shouldn't have been so far from the camp and the other students of Youkai Academy, most of whom were better suited fending off hostile sentries, but Yukari always much preferred silence and isolation when doing her tarot readings. In most situations she was all too happy to heap scientific knowledge and stray trivia on her companions, but tarot readings were intricate rituals of pure arcana. They defied any attempt at formula in a perverse bias toward crude intuition and poorly-understood rites, and Yukari hated having to answer questions about her readings to others. Her friends were used to receiving complex and specific explanations from her, and it would have felt awkward and embarrassing to try to explain the exceptionally anti-intuitive and ritualistic practice when they inevitably asked questions.

"The tower... and justice?" Yukari had two cards set aside, with another pair below it, one of them face down.

She flipped over the card that was face-down.

"The emperor and death," the young witch murmured, placing the deck of remaining cards to her side.

A battle. And a trap. That much she could figure out easily enough. And the tower definitely represented the mysterious witches of the knoll.

The curious thing was that the trap was not associated with the witches.

Her best guess was that she was reading an eventual showdown with the witches, which required all the foresight of an earthworm to predict. That the cards hinted at a battle was good, or at least the best outcome that could be expected. The Protection Committee had weathered the clumsy defenses of the witches so far, and a direct confrontation was almost certainly to their advantage. Moreso since her cards revealed nothing amiss with the tower.

But then who or what was the emperor?

"Maybe if I try a different context," Yukari mumbled as she picked up the cards one by one, "maybe I should do a reading on Senpai. Or Tsukune specifically."

The rustle of shifting flowers reached her ear without being accompanied by a breeze.

Yukari, already feeling on edge and acutely aware of her vulnerability, whirled around with her wand in one hand and a card in the other, ready to fight or flee depending on the circumstances.

She was fairly relieved when a black cat slipped through the thick sunflower stems, padding slowly toward her.

"Oh. Just a cat," she mumbled, letting her arms drop. Given how many garigari plants the Committee had destroyed, it wasn't surprising that some of the local wildlife were starting to wander back in already.

"Seriously? NOW you guys decide to drop your guard? Feh," the cat said in disgust as it sat down.

Yukari promptly raised her weapons again. "Okay. Talking cat. Didn't see that coming," the young witch admitted, her brain kicking into high gear as she tried to quickly piece together the link between the cat, it's annoyed statement, and the witches.

She needn't have bothered. Most of the rustling from the sunflowers continued, and Yukari's eyes widened as she saw a humanoid figure emerge from the giant flowers.

"Humanoid" being a rather crude descriptor. To most people besides Yukari, the girl would have come off as an oddly dressed teenage human, one who had obviously dove head-first into her school's local Goth clique and taken it to an extreme that bordered on cosplaying. To Yukari, though, the girl wearing dark makeup, tattered clothes, and holding a crescent-headed scepter was obviously a witch. Her raven black hair was tied into two ponytails that stuck out on either side of her head, and her complexion was a smooth ivory.

It was her eyes, though, that made Yukari lower her weapons, despite every scrap of logic helpfully pointing out the tremendous odds that this girl was an enemy and currently meant to attack her. Hopeful, soulful eyes completely devoid of deceit and malevolence and stared at Yukari with joy and relief.

As the two witches stared at each other, the magic beast coughed. "I don't want to interrupt this touching moment of non-violence, but don't we have a job to do here?"

The sarcasm broke Yukari out of her reverie, and she took a step back with her card hand drawn to the side, ready to attack. "Who are you? Are you one of the witches that attacked Tobaki?"

"I am Ruby, one of the witches living here on Witch's Knoll," the teenager confirmed, "as for the attack on... Tobaki, was it? There is much to discuss. What is your name, Sister?"

"I'm Sendo Yukari. I am the intelligence officer of the Youkai Academy Protection Committee," Yukari said, standing up straight to her underwhelming height, "Miss Ruby, are you or one of your associates responsible for the attacks on the Committee?"

"Yes, we are," Ruby said bluntly, "your... Committee entered our territory disguised as humans, and set about destroying our garigari plants. My lady felt it would best to drive off or destroy intruders rather than hold the garigaris back... but then they accomplished neither."

Yukari felt a pang of annoyance at the explanation, although it was exactly as she had predicted at the time. "You were going to kill us for trespassing? That's ridiculous! And what's with all those garigaris? You have a small army of them here! Well, HAD a small army, anyway."

"We were not going to kill YOU, Yukari," Ruby said, shaking her head, "I was to whisk you away during the battle, but it turned against us so quickly that it wasn't possible. The witches of the knoll protect their own. And that is why we want you to join us."

Yukari looked alarmed at the offer. "Me? Join you? Why would I do that?"

"You are a witch, same as me and my lady," Ruby explained, "and our mission is to save Witch's Knoll from the hateful humans that threaten it!"

Yukari furrowed her brow. "I can't really join you just because we're the same species. Don't get me wrong, I understand wanting to defend your territory against invaders and all, but I don't really..." she trailed off. "Wait. Humans threaten Witch's Knoll? What are you talking about?" The only human she was aware of with any plans involving the knoll was Tsukune, and those plans were almost entirely benign.

"Even now, the humans plot to destroy our home and push us further into the wilderness, their cities spreading like plague!" Ruby said, clutching her wand tightly as she grimaced. "You travel with one. We have seen this. He uses your talents for his own plots, and when he is done with you he will throw you away. That is the nature of humans, and we seek to save you from him."

"Uh-huh..." Yukari was skeptical, to say the least, "well, that's... nice of you? I guess? But I'm a little less concerned with Tsukune and more concerned with the plant army thing. Have we covered that yet?"

"You SHOULD be concerned," Ruby insisted, "humans and witches are too different to ever co-exist! I want to help you realize that before you come to harm!"

"Too... different, you say. Really," Yukari mumbled, unconvinced. Compared to most of the monsters she had met at Youkai Academy, the differences between her and Tsukune seemed completely trivial.

Really, it wasn't that Yukari didn't feel any kinship with the girl or sympathy for someone who might be forced out of their home, but it was difficult to dismiss their actions toward the Committee as being justified by some vague threat of relocation. She wanted to trust Ruby, who clearly believed in the things she was saying, but it seemed fairly obvious that she was regurgitating someone else's complaints rather than giving her own.

"I will introduce you to Lady Oyakata," Ruby said, as if the matter had been decided, "she will teach you and take care of you from now on. She'll show you what the humans have done to us!"

"All right, let's back up just a smidge, here," Yukari said flatly, raising her palms in front of her, "this 'Oyakata' sounds a little too much like some wacky death cult leader, so rather than me joining your little Kool-aid party, why don't we discuss things HERE, NOW, between you and me?"

Ruby frowned, "My lady is concerned that you might have been swayed by the human-"

"And you've obviously been swayed by this other witch, so let's leave both of them out of this," Yukari said firmly, sitting down on the tree stump, "starting at the beginning: what, exactly, are the humans planning to do with Witch's Knoll?"

Ruby felt nervous about going against Oyakata's plans, but felt that so long as Yukari was willing to listen to her, it was not yet necessary to use force. "There is a human organization that seeks to destroy the knoll and turn it into a garbage dump."

"Ah. And you don't like that, I gather?" Yukari asked, crossing her legs as she leaned back onto her hands.

"For years we've tolerated living near humans; the pollution, the frequent intruders, people who drive down the road with their music playing full blast and their windows down..."

"Ugh, yeah, that IS the worst," Yukari agreed.

Ruby nodded. "But then, last spring, we learned that some... company had purchased our land! And that they intend to replace this refuge of ours with a dump to store the trash from their city!"

Yukari nodded slowly. "Ah, okay. I can see why you'd be upset over that," she reasoned, "quick question, though: do the humans know you're HERE?"

Ruby was silent for a few seconds. "No. Why?" she finally said, as if she couldn't imagine why it would matter.

"Well, it seems to me that you're angry at the humans for not taking your feelings into account, but so long as they don't know you exist, that's literally impossible for them," Yukari pointed out, "I'm not saying that they'd stop if they realized you existed, but they DO have laws and stuff to handle things like indigenous land and squatter's rights and so forth. If you do your best to deceive them, you can't really hate them for falling for it."

"But... But they're going to demolish the knoll!" Ruby cried, clutching her wand in both hands, "think of the environment!"

"Well, okay, sure, there's that, but destroying a bunch of plants and dumb animals is a lot different than pushing a sentient being out of their home," Yukari explained as she leaned forward, gesturing with her wand at the surrounding sunflowers.

"So you think it's okay to just wipe out huge swathes of land and hundreds of native beasts for your own purposes?" Ruby asked coldly.

"Didn't you?" the shadow cat asked suddenly, "you planted the garigaris and the... 'sunflowers'. Those aren't exactly easy on the native ecosystem."

Ruby's eyes widened, and a few droplets of sweat started to bead on her forehead.

"Ah. Nevermind, just ignore me," the cat said, shaking it's head, "sorry, I didn't mean to contribute to a diplomatic solution. I'm still hoping everyone dies."

Yukari sweatdropped as she pointed at the magic beast. "Backup familiar?"

"The spider girl and her friend ate all my crows," Ruby said bitterly.

"Yeah, sorry about that. Though it still doesn't justify curses," Yukari said, "so, let's step away from what the humans are doing to you. What were you planning to do to THEM?"

Ruby's expression turned to one of grim satisfaction. "I cannot reveal all the details before you have agreed to help. However, I can say that we have created an army to remove the humans from the source. Where they had sought to destroy the knoll and replace it with their filth, we will instead wipe clean their city, and return it to its verdant natural state!"

Yukari's wand almost slipped from her fingers as they threatened to go numb. "Wha... Yo... Uhn?"

"That's right! The greedy, egoistic scum that threatens the knoll will be wiped out to the last! The massacre will be on such a scale that they will never think to return! This place will become a haven for witches! A new paradise for us and all those that would live in peace alongside us!"

"Yup. So that's the plan," the shadow cat said blithely, "exterminate all the humans in a ten kilometer radius and desperately hope that the dominant species has absolutely no means of reprisal. What say you, newbie?"

Yukari gulped loudly. "I think... GENOCIDE is a bit extreme a retaliation for a property dispute," she said nervously, for the first time realizing just how unhinged this girl was, "we're not talking about wiping out a termite colony, here. Have you considered starting smaller? Maybe fending off the actual humans that threaten the knoll? It wouldn't take many man-eating plants to put a serious dent in a construction schedule!"

Ruby snorted. "It IS the same as wiping out pests. But Yukari, we must hurry." The older witch stepped forward and held out her hand for Yukari to take. "Come with me. Meet my lady, and decide for yourself if you still have questions. We have to move, before the other minions of that human find us."

"Oh, it's too late for that," the magical beast said.

Ruby nodded to Yukari. "Yes, as he said, it's... wait, what?"

A rustling of sunflowers was the only other warning Ruby got before she was tackled to the ground and pinned by three hundred pounds of irate hellhound.


"AAAAAAH!" Ruby screamed and tried to aim her wand arm, but Kouma simply slammed a paw down on her forearm while placing the other one none-too-tenderly on the teenage witch's collarbone. "Why didn't you warn me?"

"You didn't ask," the feline said as it sat on its haunches next to the potential mauling, "he was stalking us for a while, but couldn't get too close because of his size. He's not really built for stealth, so I noticed right away."

"Most of my familiars would feel a SLIGHT sense of urgency and distress at being stalked by a warhound!" Ruby cried.

"Yeah, it took a lot of effort not to tip you off."

Kouma quickly tired of the shouting and put more weight on his front legs, instantly causing Ruby to seize up. "All right, emo freak, stop with the yelling," he growled, his oven-hot breath forcing Ruby to squeeze her eyes shut, "and by the way, I'm a hellhound. Just FYI. Because if you get it wrong again I'll flambe your face."

"Oh no, my master," the cat deadpanned, making a clawing motion at Kouma's leg, "don't worry, I'll save you."

"Kouma, be careful," Yukari demanded, frowning at the hellhound, "and keep your temper in check. We're NOT going to hurt her, got it?"

"Sure, whatever," the hellhound grumbled as he raised his head to the sky, a bright glow building within his maw.

Fwoomph! A moment later he shot a small, bright ball of flame into the air, and Kouma watched it arc upward and then fizzle out in the sky like a firework.

"What was that?" Yukari asked.

"Signal flare. Aono's idea," Kouma said conversationally, "he's really been stepping up into the whole 'Captain' thing, you know? I hardly even resent being forced into this anymore."

"You foul beast! You're just a tool of the humans!" Ruby suddenly shouted, beating her free hand against Kouma's neck, "let me go!"

"Settle down before you lose that arm," Kouma threatened, baring his unnaturally sharp teeth, "you should be thankful to the humans. If it weren't for them inventing a system for judging criminals and one of them imposing it on me specifically, I would have torn out your throat by now for all the trouble you've caused."

"Kouma, stop! I'm sure she's scared enough!" Yukari complained, "anyway, how much did you overhear?"

"I got close enough just in time to hear the mass murder plans. Though how they think they're going to do THAT with a bunch of garigaris is beyond me," Kouma scoffed.

"Hah! You know nothing of our plans! We have much worse tools at our disposal than the garigaris!" Ruby shouted defiantly.

Yukari and Kouma stared down at her, raising their eyebrows. Ruby promptly slapped a hand over her mouth.


On the sidelines, mostly forgotten by the others, the shadow cat patiently awaited the outcome of this latest debacle. Though it was pleased that it seemed to be going more or less as it predicted, and doubly pleased that it hadn't been killed yet, it was disappointed that the whole showdown had ended so anticlimactically, without any fighting at all. Given that its fate was still tied to Oyakata's cursed tome, regardless of what happened, it had hoped to at least see a good battle. Ideally one that ended with its "master" dying.

The magic beast yawned, and happened to glance up at a nearby willow tree just as a crow landed on it.

'Well, looks like someone found some more crows,' the shadow cat thought, smirking, 'maybe I'll get to see a fight after all.'


"So, do want to spill to us, or do you really want to wait for the interrogation?" Kouma asked, sitting down on top of Ruby's legs while still holding her chest and arm down, "it might save you a lot of dignity to tell me rather than some human kid, right?" he reasoned.

"No! Never! I'll never betray my lady!" Ruby shouted.

"You won't have to," Yukari said firmly, "we'll return and confront her, and then settle this..."

She trailed off as she heard the sound of shifting dirt, along with a curious creaking sound. Kouma heard it too, and his ears perked up as he glanced around.

Thoom! A vine thicker than Yukari's leg burst from the ground nearby, shooting toward Kouma and spearing the hellhound in the side.

"URAAAAUGH!" Jumping to his feet, the hellhound retaliated with a jet of flame that nearly disintegrated the vine on the spot, all the way to the dirt it had emerged from.

This did, however, relieve the pressure from Ruby's body, and the teenage witch immediately swiped her wand at Kouma's flank.

"Ow! Hey!" The wound was minor, barely breaking skin, but a dark, cloying mist seemed to cling to the wound, generating a painful burning sensation that was quite unfamiliar to a creature used to living among lava flows.

As Kouma started instinctively gnawing at the wound, Ruby rolled out from under him and scrambled to her feet, coming face-to-face with Yukari.

"Look, Ruby, don't do this. I don't want to have to fight you," Yukari said grimly, holding up her wand, "and I REALLY don't want the mutt or Chopper to have to fight you. So just back down, all right?"

"You think all the suffering I've been through at the hand of the human race can be pushed aside so easily, Yukari?" Ruby asked, raising her wand in front of her. Three pairs of wings immediately sprouted from her back, stretching blade-tipped, black feathers over her shoulders and around her waist.

"No, I think that your suffering doesn't justify the destruction of an entire CITY," Yukari pointed out, "I also think that you don't really stand a chance alone against me and Gamaroshi."

"Oh, but she isn't alone," taunted a rough, unpleasant voice that boomed over the field. "Ruby was taking too long, and I saw the fireball in the sky, so I came to ensure the safety of my protege."

Kouma snorted as he licked his fur over his flank clean, the irritation having finally subsided. "I knew that vine didn't come from the goth. We've got another bogey."

Both he and Yukari turned as a figure stepped into view from behind the nearby tree. She was very old, with pointed teeth and skin that looked like it was stretched taut over her face like a rubber mask. Her back was slightly stooped, and she wore a robe and hood of tattered linens filthy with dirt, stains, and crow feathers.

Yukari was taking the measure of this new arrival when Ruby suddenly flapped her wings, releasing a cloud of feathers that blew over her face like a cloud of dust and briefly obscured her vision.

Yukari concentrated with her wand and then swept the heart-topped implement in front of her, forcing the feathers away with a telekinetic bubble that pushed at the offending debris.

Alas, when her vision was clear again, Yukari found that Ruby was not in front of her and that she had a fan of razor-edged feathers held over her shoulder, right next to her neck.

"I'm sorry it had to go like this, Yukari," Ruby said sadly, seizing the younger witch from behind by the shoulder, "I really do want to be friends, but we can't let you interfere with our plans."

Oyakata chuckled as Kouma growled. "Well done, Ruby. It seems you couldn't convince her to come with us of her own volition, but there will be time to teach her the virtues of our cause," the crone said, her hand caressing a large book that was held at her side in a leather holder.

Then she gazed at Kouma, her mouth breaking into a crooked smile. "And what about you, hound? Do you truly mean to side with humans, our enemies? You are not a witch, but neither are you one of those worthless sacks of meat and ignorance. You do not have to follow the orders of that fool any longer."

"Come again?" Kouma asked, his eyes narrowing as he spread his legs, as if preparing to pounce.

"The humans have lied to you. Tricked you into subservience. It is wrong for a monster to serve one of their kind. It is... unnatural. Join us, and we will unmake their despicable, filthy civilization, and return this land to how it was meant to be."

Kouma was silent for several tense seconds, and cast a glance back at Yukari, who was still being held at wing-point. Then the hellhound pushed himself up onto his hind legs as a brief wall of flame swept over him.

When it subsided a split second later, Kouma was in his human form, and he directed a sneer at the elderly witch as he crossed his arms over his chest.

"Well, that's quite presumptuous of you, isn't it? Who says humans are MY enemy?"

Oyakata raised an eyebrow. "Humans and monsters are enemies. It is-"

"It is a load of crap that dolts like you spout off to make the world fit into your stupid, shallow worldview," Kouma interrupted, clenching his teeth. He found it much easier to speak with a human throat and tongue, which was why he made the switch. "You think all monsters are the same? Some of us have more in common with the humans than we do our fellow monsters. Don't put me in the same category as you, hag."

"You know, I'm not usually a fan of dogs, but I LIKE this guy," said the shadow cat as it padded up next to Ruby.

Kouma shrugged with a smirk on his face, seeing the witch's displeased expression. "It just so happens that humans are my livelihood. And even if they weren't, I'd still prefer their company to a couple of embittered gardeners quietly plotting a massacre in some backwater pit of weeds. So you can take your offer straight to Hell when I send you there in a few minutes."

Oyakata sighed, clearly unmoved by Kouma's refusal. "So you are too corrupt to stand with us. Very unfortunate. But don't be so quick to threaten me, dog," She pointed at Ruby and Yukari, "we'll be taking your companion with us. She deserves better than exploitation at the hand of some human fool."

"I'm not going anywhere!" Yukari snapped angrily, "I don't want anything to do with your crazy plot!"

"You will come to see for yourself that we are correct," Ruby insisted, "I'm afraid you don't have a choice, Yukari. If the human learns of our plans, he might alert the other humans. I'm sorry it has to be like this," the teenage witch seemed genuine in her remorse, which Yukari somehow managed to find comforting despite the fan of spikes being held at her throat.

"I'm sorry it has to be like this, too," said a new voice as Ruby felt her hair seized from behind, "I was really hoping I could get an hour or two to myself!"

Ruby was about to use her wings to attack whoever was behind her, but hesitated when she noticed a delicate, feminine hand at her neck... and the three-inch nails that extended from its fingers.

Kouma glanced behind him and Oyakata scowled as Kurumu seized Ruby from behind. The succubus had her light blue hair down for a change, and it was also clearly damp judging by how it was clinging to her shoulders.

"Took you long enough," Kouma grumbled as he took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

"I was washing my hair!" Kurumu complained, causing Ruby to wince, "do you know how long it took me to find a decent public restroom? Plus I had to land where no one could see me and walk there! You're lucky I happened to hear people talking about some kind of fireworks test!"

"There's a pond, like, THIRTY meters from the camp," Kouma pointed out as he put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it up.

"I'm not washing up in that filthy bog! I may be a monster, but I'm not a pig!"

"ENOUGH!" Oyakata suddenly roared, raising her arms as vine tendrils started creeping up from the Earth all around her. "Your prattling wears thin, monsters! If you imbeciles would side with the humans against us, then so be it! I'll destroy you along with them!"

All at once, vines burst from the ground like missiles, twisting and curling through the air with alarming speed.

Kouma took an idle drag off of his cigarette as he spread his arms apart, and then clapped them together.

BWOOM! A fireball exploded between his palms, instantly scorching the grass underneath and around him. Those vines on course for the hellhound slowed rapidly in their growth as they withered and hardened from the heat, and when they reached Kouma's skin a few seconds later, the tips instantly caught flame rather than piercing flesh.

Several vines arced around to attack Kurumu, but they fared no better. Yukari shouldered her way free from Ruby's grasp and tossed a handful of her cards, the enchanted projectiles severing the tendrils near their emergence point and causing the entire lengths to go slack.

"You won't get away from us!" Yukari declared, pointing her wand at Oyakata, "we have you outgunned, and your only ally isn't going to help you!"

"Ruby will not be defeated so easily," Oyakata sneered.

"Actually, I was talking about the cat," Yukari explained, pointing to the magical beast as it watched lazily from the shade, "Ruby's more of a minion, really."

"Don't underestimate me!" said minion shouted, suddenly standing up straight and smirking behind her at Kurumu. "You think I'm not willing to die for our cause? If you want to stop me, you'll have to kill me!"

Thwack! Kurumu smashed a fist into the back of Ruby's head and the witch crumpled instantly, her eyes swirling.

"Kouma, I'm taking Yukari and this one back to camp," Kurumu said, hoisting the unconscious girl over her shoulder, "the hag looks more lively, so could you beat some sense into her and bring her along when you're done?"

"Sure, whatever," Kouma said dismissively, puffing on his cigarette, "the geriatric's mine."

"You won't get away!" Oyakata shouted, thrusting her palms forward as more vine started emerging from the ground all around her.

Many of the tendrils again snaked toward Kouma, but Kurumu saw some more poking up through the ground behind him, and she took a mighty leap into the air and spread her wings. As she expected, the vines burst from the dirt and started climbing up toward her feet, but she had soon lifted high enough that the vines sagged back to the Earth helplessly. Yukari dashed along underneath her, keeping her cards at the ready in case she needed a quick escape or distraction, but it seemed that all attention had been focused on securing Ruby, and she disappeared into the clustered sunflowers without difficulty.


"You know, I didn't want to harm any of you," Oyakata said wearily as Kouma swatted and tore at the vines that surrounded him, "no one but the human. It's sad that it's come to this."

"Hraugh!" Kouma tore a vine apart that sought to bind his arms, the heat building around him and rapidly sapping the moisture from the offending plants. "And just what did Aono do to you? He's not responsible for your problems!"

"All humans must bear responsibility for their race's sins!" the crone insisted, pulling up a book from her hip. It sprung open, and a verdant glow accompanied by a dark mist flowed upward from the pages.

"That's not how it works, hag! I would know!" Kouma took a heavy puff of his cigarette, then dashed forward, rapidly closing the distance between him and the elder witch.

Oyakata seemed to disintegrate before his eyes, turning into leaves while her cloak unwove itself and dissolved into the wind. By the time he landed in a crouch where the hag had stood, there was nothing there but a whirlwind of dried leaves.

"I do not want to waste much of my power on you, hound, so I will refrain from summoning my sleeping soldiers just yet. I have a more... fitting punishment for you, since you so enjoy servitude," cackled Oyakata's voice, and despite his good hearing Kouma couldn't make out the source.

Spitting out his cig, Kouma reverted to his hellhound form as a wave of fire briefly washed over him. He immediately set his nose to the ground, hoping that the witch's smell would lead him to her.

Crack! Snap! His sense of hearing, however, was alerted to a much more pressing concern as the trees immediately surrounding the clearing started to move, tearing their roots from the ground as the branches twisted and wrenched themselves into gangly claws.

"Seriously? Tree-men? Against a fire-breather? And you say humans are bad for the environment?" Kouma growled, huffing sparks as he walked up to the nearest summoned creature.

It immediately stretched its gnarled talon toward the hellhound as its roots snaked free of the ragged hole in the Earth that it had escaped from.

Chomp! Fwoosh! Kouma bit into the proffered limb, and it promptly burst into flames around his teeth, running over the length of the branch as lethally hot saliva spattered onto the roots below.

Creeeeeak... Another tree behind him crawled busily across the dry leaves on roots that scuttled like an insect's legs.

Crack! Kouma ripped the branch free of his current opponent, and then spat it out in front of the other one, the flames catching on the tree's roots.

Then Kouma jumped up and dug his claws into the trunk, pulling his large black body up into the boughs.

The tree responded by wrapping its branches around the hellhound as its partner slowly lumbered closer.

"This is hardly even fair. Even the crows would have been a greater challenge," Kouma taunted, his eyes flaring red as his fur stood up all over his body and flickering embers started flaring all around him.

"Wood is for BURNING!" BWOOM!

A ring of flame exploded from Kouma's body like a nova, blasting the branches to scorched splinters and cracking open the trunk of the tree. The summoned creature released a low moan as it shuddered, and Kouma fell from its charred branches as the arboreal beast lost hold of its recently granted consciousness.


As the first tree crashed to the ground, Kouma jumped away and started circling the second one, which kept staggering since its roots were already halfway burned down to stumps.

Kouma was hardly one to wait for a foe to fall over when he could hasten the process, and the hellhound leapt toward the stumbling tree, his footsteps leaving small bursts of fire behind him.

As he picked up speed, fire swirled around his body, and when he jumped his form resembled a burning comet as it rocketed over the ground toward the shambling foliage.

KWABOOOM!! The tree was lifted clear off its roots, and Kouma clung to the trunk as it fell backward, trailing smoke before slamming hard into the ground. Seared leaves fell like winter snow, and fiery branches flew through the air in all directions.

"Ha! Done already!" Kouma cheered as he stood up atop the dying tree-beast. "I hope that was just some diversion, crone, because if it wasn't..."

He trailed off. "Actually, if it was then I might be in trouble. This was a pretty good diversion."

Crack! The trunk beneath him split open, and though he was about to jump off, Kouma hesitated when he saw something pushing its way through the burning wood.

At first Kouma thought it might be the witch herself, but as the scorched bark broke away, he saw that it was just a rather large book.

Before he could really reflect on that fact, the book snapped open, and Kouma's eyes widened as several rings of spiralling runes and arcane symbols instantly appeared in front of him.

The hellhound backed away immediately, or at least he tried to. Even as he pulled his head back, however, a powerful suction started drawing him in, dragging him toward the yellowed pages of the tome.

"Hey... Hey! Quit it! What is this?" Kouma snarled as his nose was forced closer and closer to the book, against the mighty exertions of his body. He tried to summon fire, but the heat too seemed to get drawn into the vortex, with no ill effect for the strange tome.

"GAH!" The moment his nose touched the paper, Kouma's body lurched forward, being sucked completely into the rotating magic circle that flickered above the pages. His scream was lost in moments, and in two seconds, the end of his tail vanished between the pages of the magical tome.

Thump! The book slammed shut, blowing out a wave of ashes from the tree it rested on.


"Poor, deluded creature," Oyakata cackled, her bent, hooded figure fading into view amongst the flaming debris, "your life is mine, now."

"What the hell is this?" demanded Kouma's voice, muffled by the book but still managing to express an appropriate level of fury.

"This is a special tome of the witches, the book of fur and talon. We use it to deal with the more troublesome beasts that roam our lands," Oyakata explained, hobbling up to the book and picking it up, "I suppose you youngsters might think of it as an old-timey Poke'ball."

"... I'm going to kill you," Kouma said, as if he had just discovered some kind of surprising revelation, "I'm going to chew your legs off, and then light your torso on fire. Then I'm just going to watch your useless stump of a torso burn, Vader-style. Maybe I'll laugh at that point. Haven't decided yet."

Oyakata grinned, actually feeling the book warm up from the hellhound's rage. "Oh, don't be like that. I'll put you to better use than the human did."

"Is that the same book you used on me?" asked the shadow cat, ending its long and silent spectatorship, "as in, the same EXACT one?"

Oyakata cast an irritated glance in the feline's direction, but answered his question. "It is. Unfortunately the tome can only bind a single ani-"

"FREEDOM!!" the magic beast shouted, bolting for the sunflowers as fast as its legs could carry it. "So long, assholes! Wa ha ha ha haaa!"

Oyakata frowned as the shadow cat vanished from sight, feeling the book in her hand tremble. "Oh well. It was a good trade."

"The hell it was!" Kouma snarled, the book warming again as he tried to exert his will upon it, "you may have noticed that the cat didn't leap on you and rip your face off as soon as it was free. That is NOT how it's going to go down with us, hag."

"Such hateful spirit!" Oyakata laughed as she turned around heading back to her dwelling, "were you not allied with my enemies, I would have liked to get to know you, hound! But for now, there is preparation to be done. You must be... LEASHED if the coming confrontation is to work out in my favor."

Tsukune, who was eating lunch with Chopper and Kana around the camp site, turned around as he heard Kurumu's voice.

He started choking on his sandwich as he saw that the succubus was carrying a limp teenage girl over her shoulder, ass-end forward, and looking extremely proud of it. Yukari followed behind her, and as he started coughing he managed to notice that she was carrying a wand in each hand now.

As his coughing intensified, Chopper reached over and slapped the human boy in the back, knocking him clean off the log they were sitting on and sending him rolling across the ground for a ways. It got the food out of his windpipe, though.

"What Cough! Who?" Tsukune gasped out as he staggered to his feet.

"This is Ruby, one of the witches that live around here," Yukari said, waving the crescent wand at the unconscious girl, "and our new prisoner." She held out the wand for Tsukune to take.

Chopper and Kana found this far more interesting than lunch, and wordlessly moved to flank their captain.

"Wait, a prisoner? What happened?" Tsukune asked, dusting himself off.

"She tracked me down and tried to convince me to join the witches," Yukari explained, "and then Kouma tracked HER down. And then the OTHER witch saw the signal he used to notify Kurumu, so SHE showed up before Kurumu did..." the younger witch trailed off, "long story short, we kidnapped this girl and left Kouma to kidnap the other one. He should be coming by with the older witch in a few minutes."

"Assuming there's enough left of her to bring," Kurumu said with a snort, placing Ruby down at her feet.

Tsukune frowned. "I don't like that he's fighting her alone. If that witch can melt someone's body from a kilometer away, there's no telling what she's capable of. Kurumu, Kana, can you two fly over to him and back him up, please?"

Kurumu nodded enthusiastically, while Kana silently stretched her arms out while her wings unfolded. Within moments they had both taken to the skies, Kana following Kurumu's lead.


"Tsukune! I got the water, but it..." Moka trailed off as she approached the camp site with a pair of filled buckets, noticing the commotion. "What's wrong? Is that girl hurt?"

"Not too badly, but Kurumu is stronger than she looks," Yukari said as she waved the vampiress over, "should we wake her up now?"

Tsukune scratched his chin. "Is she helpless without that wand?"

Yukari shrugged. "Probably. Or weaker, at least... There are other magic items witches can use, but as a rule, our personal magic implements are the strongest."

"All right, Yukari, back up. Moka, could you hand me that bucket? And Chopper, you stand right behind her," Tsukune ordered as he put down the bucket.

The others were probably expecting him to dump the entire bucket on the witch, but instead he cupped his hands and ladled some water out onto the girl's face.

Ruby squirmed immediately, her eyes slowly fluttering open as she groaned.

When she was cognizant enough to consider anything besides the throbbing pain in the back of her skull, she noticed that she was surrounded. Yukari she recognized immediately, and despite the unpleasant hostage situation they had just experienced together she felt some comfort at the presence of a fellow witch. The other girl was one of Yukari's friends, and for all she knew another human. She scowled and turned her head away.

That just happened to place Tsukune in her line of sight.

"YOU!" Ruby snapped, surging to her feet despite a persisting dizziness, "this is all YOUR fault!"

"Which part?" Tsukune asked, quirking an eyebrow, "capturing you? Intruding on your territory?"

"Selling the land to a municipal company that wants to turn it into landfill," Yukari explained.

"That... isn't my fault at all," he said, looking puzzled.

"Yeah, I know. Nor is it the fault of most of the hundreds of thousands of people she and her teacher are planning to kill," Yukari said grimly, "apparently they have some kind of army that they're going to march onto the city, killing all the humans in the name of nature or something."

Tsukune and Moka looked appropriately horrified at the thought, and Ruby clenched her teeth.

"Your fate is already sealed, human! We cannot be stopped!"

Tsukune felt a surge of anger at the thought of such a thing taking place, but quashed it immediately. Getting mad wouldn't accomplish anything here; they already had Ruby as a prisoner, and the other witch would be defeated soon as well.

"Is it just you two here on the knoll?" Tsukune asked Ruby.

She turned her head away. "I will tell you nothing, human!"

"What kind of army could you have out here?" Tsukune asked, pushing on despite the girl's refusal, "the garigaris could never take an entire city, even if we hadn't devastated their numbers."

Ruby said nothing, refusing to look at the boy.

"Yukari, what do you think?" Tsukune asked, keeping an eye on the older witch as he turned toward the younger one.

"Well, I'm pretty sure we're not looking at any apocalyptic stuff, like opening portals to other planes or anything," Yukari reasoned, "their pacts seem entirely nature-based, so I'd expect that it's some kind of insect plague, plant army, or series of beast packs. Something like that."

Yukari crossed her arms over her chest. "But the question is, where do you hide it? They've obviously been planning this for a while, meaning it's not some kind of one-off mass summoning, you can't feed that many creatures without exposing then normally. Even the garigaris depopulated the knoll and were discovered immediately, and like you said, they could barely take down a police kiosk all together."

Tsukune could see that Ruby was glancing around nervously, looking at everything except for him. He wasn't particularly good at reading people, though, so he couldn't really divulge much from her behavior besides the fact that she was scared. And who wouldn't be, in her position?

"Okay, well, so long as you're here with us, we're not going to harm you. Once your partner is captured, then we'll figure out what to do," Tsukune explained, "until then, though, I'm going to have you stay in the shed. Tobaki and Keito can guard you."

Yukari winced. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"No, I'm not, but Tobaki should be willing to listen to me. And I guess Mizore's following them now, so she's also a guard by proxy, I guess," Tsukune reasoned, gesturing to Chopper.

The troll took hold of Ruby's shoulder and hauled the girl to her feet, his strength and size making him look like a giant handling a doll.

"You too, troll? You also obey this human worm?" Ruby asked as she glared up at the bodybuilder.

"He's not a human worm, I think he's the regular kind," Chopper pointed out as he followed Tsukune toward the shed, "what would a human worm even look like?"

Ruby's furious resentment had to give way to make room for some exasperation. "No, that's not... I'm just asking why you would take orders from him. Could you not crush him easily?"

"Yeah, sure. But I lost a bet," Chopper said simply, watching as Tsukune entered the shed ahead of them, "besides, Aono 'aint a bad guy. This Protection Committee thing has actually been kinda fun."

"You have no idea what you're doing! The evil you're abetting!" Ruby protested.

"Hey, you're the one who melted some stranger's body," Chopper mumbled.

As if on cue, the door to the shack burst open again, and Ruby's eyes widened as a gelatinous mass of writhing yellow goo collapsed out of it, a single red eye floating in the morass of filth while tendrils of goo spread out in all directions.

The eye rotated toward her, and the teenage witch felt her heart stop.

"YOU! You did this to meeeeeeee!" Tobaki cried out, her voice searing Ruby's very thoughts as several tentacles wiggled in the air malevolently.

Ruby's eyes rolled back into her head, and she fainted on the spot. Chopper didn't notice.


"Tobaki, leave her alone!" Tsukune chided from behind the yochlol, "and back up, you're clogging up the doorway."

"Oh, yeah, sorry," Tobaki immediately dropped her appendages and pulled herself back into the shed.

Keito growled from where she was seated on a large cobweb in one corner. "I don't see why we have to babysit this fool. Let us be rid of her at once!"

"That's the worst possible thing we could do," Tsukune said, annoyed that Keito wasn't keeping up her usual facade of listening to him without question, "putting aside that the other witch hasn't been captured yet, we can't be sure there are only two. We also know that there's some kind of army out here, and it might go on a rampage if the witches just vanish. We need to capture all of them and force them to dismantle their plans, or at least learn enough about them that we can take care of it ourselves."

The spider woman snorted, clearly unimpressed by the logic. Certainly she didn't see what was wrong with killing the witch and letting the other one go about its plot, but she wasn't about to voice such an opinion in front of Tsukune.

"The big problem is the level of hatred she has toward humans. It's kind of strange, really," Tsukune offered as Chopper carried Ruby into the shack, "I just wish I knew what happened to her. What did we do to her that's so terrible?" His voice was curious, but also worried. "I know that humans are selfish and can be thoughtless, but that can't be a reason to kill so many people!"

Keito sighed. "Please. This ISN'T a moral quandary. The witches here don't want to kill humans because humans deserve it. That's just a desperate justification."

Tsukune looked surprised by her statement, and Tobaki started wiggling a tentacle above her head.

"But humans are always spreading their settlements and displacing the local environments, right?" Tobaki said, "Captain Tsukune said that's what the humans were planning on doing to the knoll."

"Oh, so what?" Keito scoffed, "don't the rest of us do the same thing? Do you think the witches were the first ones to lay claim to the knoll? Of course not. They came to this place, changed it for their purposes, and killed anything that threatened their interests. Their goal can't be moralized, because they're not angry at humans for being immoral: the witches are angry at humans for taking all the good real estate first and being successful enough that they can just march into the knoll and take it whenever they want."

Keito leaned back into her web-hammock, lacing her fingers together behind her head. "I believe you humans call that 'survival of the fittest'. It's no wonder the witches resent it, but it's not like they would do any different in your place."

Tsukune seemed shocked by the argument, though less by its logic and more from the fact that a defense of his race was coming from Keito. "Well... then what can we do? If they just hate humans for existing and taking up space, how do we co-exist?"

"You DON'T," Keito said, smirking as she slid one index finger across her neck, "you do the same thing that EVERY stronger species does when a weaker one threatens it. Extermination."

Tsukune's expression hardened. "That isn't an option."

"It's the same strategy the witches are using, correct?" Keito asked, rolling her eyes, "they're not giving you a choice. Kill or be killed. There's no other way."

Tsukune clenched his hands into fists and glanced at Ruby, who was laid out on another patch of webbing and seemed to be sleeping peacefully during her horror-induced nap.

"There IS another way," Tsukune said finally, glaring up at Keito, "Youkai Academy. Adaptation, and assimilation. We CAN co-exist. Humans, trolls, vampires, witches, even you spider monsters. It's not a perfect solution, but it's better than butchering each other for territory like animals."

"Do you really believe that?" Keito asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"I have to believe that," he replied as he stepped out of the shack, "that's also part of being human."

"Tsukune! I see Kurumu coming back!"

Tsukune turned around and glanced up at the sky, glad that his subordinates were finally returning.

"Good. Where's Kouma? Chopper, do you see him?"

The wrestler squinted as he placed a hand to his brow, searching for any movement among the sunflowers. "Nah, I don't see nuthin'. Maybe they couldn't find him?"

Tsukune frowned deeply. "Well, let's find out."

Kurumu landed heavily at the edge of the camp site, with Kana, as usual, making a more graceful descent while holding her skirt down modestly. The girls had been gone for hours, and it didn't escape Tsukune's notice that Kurumu had found time to put her hair back up.

"Tsukune!" the succubus said, flailing her arms about, "no good! We couldn't find him!"

Tsukune blinked. "Couldn't find him? What do you mean?"

Even putting aside his tendency to shoot fire, Kouma had been using his hellhound form, which should have been very easy to spot, or at least track from the sky. The sunflowers just weren't large enough to conceal a big black shape of Kouma's size, and he should have left a trail of crushed flowers everywhere he went.

"We found the clearing, and there were these two really weird trees which were all burnt, and we even found a cigarette on the ground, but no Kouma," Kurumu explained with a shrug, "Kana tried searching the trail he made on his way to the clearing in the first place, but she didn't find anything there, either."

Kana nodded mutely, though she looked rather bored by the entire affair.

Tsukune scratched his forehead in puzzlement. "Okay, so he was there, and he was fighting, and then... he vanished? No sign of him, the witch, or where they may have gone?"

"Yeah, that's pretty much it," said Kurumu nervously, running a hand through her hair.

"Though we did spend a good half-hour washing our hair at that restroom Kurono found," Kana said suddenly, surprising Tsukune by speaking audibly while not under stress and surprising Kurumu by telling Tsukune what she had assumed was a mutual secret.

"Hey! We only did that AFTER we decided that we couldn't find the mutt!" Kurumu protested, her brow dotted with sweat, "besides, you took longer than I did!"

"All right, that's enough. It doesn't matter," Tsukune said, "do we have any ideas as to where the witches are hiding out?"

"If I knew that Oyakata lady better I could do a divination, but as it is now..." Yukari trailed off helplessly, "I barely got a glimpse of her before we left."

"We didn't find anything that was obviously a house," Kurumu mumbled apologetically, "sorry."

Tsukune dragged his fingers through his hair in frustration. "So our only way to find the other witch is to comb the entire knoll, which will take forever if we stay together and probably get us killed if we don't. Or..." he glanced at the shed.

"You know, if let Keito cut loose on her, I'll bet she could get any information she wanted," Kurumu pointed out, "that girl knows creepy, and she could probably use Tobaki to-"

"I'm not going to torture or scare the information out of Ruby," Tsukune said, waving off the idea, "the witches hate humans for being cruel and destructive, and I'm not going to prove them right."

Moka frowned. "Maybe if one of us talked to her instead?"

Yukari sighed. "I doubt it would help. She's convinced we've all been brainwashed by Tsukune's Rhetoric ability. Which might be true, for all I know, but it doesn't make mass murder okay!"

Tsukune sweatdropped. "It's... It's not really an 'ability' persay, it's just-"

"Anyway, it would be best if Tsukune appealed to her directly, because then at least Ruby knows that if he's sincere, he's not being sincere about someone else's lies. She'd be dealing with the source directly and have to see how her prejudices of humans measure up."

Tsukune nodded grimly. "I agree. I'll just have to give it my best."

Kurumu looked unconvinced, but then her eyes lit up. "Wait! I have an idea! I know how you can disarm her mistrust of humans!"

Tsukune quirked an eyebrow. "How?"

Inside the maintenance shed, Ruby had finally awoken on the dusty floor, and was thoroughly regretting her return to consciousness.

She was huddled in a corner atop several blankets, while Keito lounged in her webbing hammock on the side of the shack. Tobaki laid beneath her in an oozing pile, her one eye aimed at the teenage witch.

Ruby felt resentful from being imprisoned, and angry at the human that dared to step onto Witch's Knoll and start capturing its inhabitants like he owned the place. She was also bitter about being rejected so easily by Yukari, who would have certainly made a valuable ally and hopefully a friend.

But through the swirl of anger and disappointment, she could only think of one thing to say to her guards.

"I'm sorry," Ruby mumbled, her head down.

"Pardon?" Keito asked, quirking an eyebrow. Tobaki would have done the same, if she'd had any.

"The curse... it hit you, right? You're... Tobaki?" Ruby asked the red eyeball hesitantly. Every sense she had was screaming in disgust at her proximity to the thing, but her guilt proved stronger. "That wasn't intentional. The curse was meant for Tsukune, but it accidentally hit you, instead. And I'm sorry."

"You missed with a CURSE?" Tobaki asked, her eyeball rolling slightly as her gelatinous mass shifted.

Keito couldn't help but smile at the thought. "Well, it's nice that you tried. And that you're apologizing now. But I need you to understand that if it wasn't against my orders, I would be drinking up your liver right about now."

"Humanoid liver is a delicacy on some planes," Tobaki explained needlessly, still causing pain to all those that heard her, "though most recipes call for it to be baked, not liquefied."

Ruby wasn't listening to the demon, as she had latched onto Keito's obvious amusement with her assassination attempt. "Then you too hate humans?" she asked eagerly.

Keito hesitated for a long time, very aware that Tobaki was in the room and that the clueless yochlol believed Keito to be a trustworthy and loyal Committee member.

"I have no qualm with the human race in general," Keito said honestly, "though having to obey one of them can certainly chafe. And whatever I may think about Aono, my OLD captain would have killed you and burned down your field in an instant for daring to attack us. So in a twisted sort of way, you should be thankful."

Ruby snorted as she got up to sit cross-legged. "The human is just keeping me around because he needs my knowledge. As soon as he's done with me, he'll kill me in an instant."

"Sadly, that's doubtful," Keito said, sighing, "if you were to give us the cure for Tobaki's curse, he's more liable to forgive you completely and let you free, even though I'm CERTAIN human justice usually demands harsher penalties for attempted murder."

"Human justice," Ruby spat distastefully, "that's exactly the sort of perversion that me and my lady work to unravel. They impose their foolish laws upon this world without a care, taking what they wish and destroying anything in their way! And then, when they're threatened, they rant about the evil nature of their enemies and wipe them out mercilessly!"

"I know, right? I can't wait until I get to live with them!" Tobaki said, her mind-voice managing to sound giddy as it sent spikes of pain through Ruby's thoughts.

"Yes, well, since you seem to be immune to irony, perhaps a deal might be reached," Keito said, sitting up in her web and narrowing her eyes, "your curse is inconveniencing Tobaki here, you see, and we want it removed. If you do this, I can offer you freedom."

Ruby tilted her head slightly, intrigued. "Really? You would let me go? Even though the human hasn't agreed to it?"

Tobaki would have frowned if she possessed a face of some sort. "But Big Sis, wouldn't that run contrary to what we learned about right and wrong and responsibility? She would be able to go right back to plotting mass murder, right?"

"Oh Tobaki," Keito chuckled as she ran her hand over the red, bowling-ball sized eye sitting atop the mound of sludge, "that isn't as important as getting you cured. Besides, Aono will do something about the attack on his own. He doesn't need another witch's help."

Ruby looked tempted, but only for a moment. "And why would I trust you? You told me yourself that you would eat me if given the chance."

"All right, all right, fine," Keito sighed, "I'll set you free, AND I won't kill you after you give us the cure to the curse. Is that better?"

Ruby sighed. "Forget it. I have no reason to believe in you. You're not even a witch."

Keito looked annoyed as she laid back into her webbing. "Hmph! Fine then, you go ahead and negotiate with the human instead! See how that goes!"

At that moment there was a knock on the shed door, and Tsukune's voice called out a moment later.

"It's me! Can I come in? Nobody's changing or anything, right?"

"Well, technically I'm naked, but I really don't see that changing any time soon," Tobaki admitted, "come on in, Captain!"


Ruby's heart started beating faster as she turned away from the door, refusing to meet the human's eyes as he entered.

This was it. She had been questioned when she'd arrived at the camp, but now it was time for a real interrogation. She didn't know what, in particular, the human would ask, but there were plenty of possibilities. And here, in this barely-lit shack with a pair of terrifying monstrosities as guards, he would doubtless use every means available to him to stress her mind to the breaking point. Her life meant nothing to him compared to those of his fellow humans. Her life probably meant nothing to him regardless.

But she would not break. She would not even bend. Ruby would never betray her home or her lady, and if given even a glimmer of a chance, she would kill the human here and now, even if it meant her execution!

"Ruby? Can I talk to you?" Tsukune asked, entering the shed.

Ruby steeled herself, bracing her mind and body for the cruel violations to come. Slowly, with contemptuous disregard for the human boy, she turned her head around to look at him, a disgusted sneer on her face.

Tsukune stepped gingerly as he approached, on account of him having Ranma's giant spider, Guile, sitting on his head. The arachnid's legs clung to his temples, and its onyx-like black eyes stared into Ruby's; a soulless gaze that arrested her attention far better than Tsukune's. Its fangs wiggled curiously, as if restless, and its dark carapace gleamed from the slivers of sunlight that peeked in through the edges of the door and the shack's one high window.

"D'awwwwwwwww!" Ruby cooed, her hardened expression melting instantly before the giant spider.

"Nice hat," Keito said with a smirk.

Ruby held a goofy smile for a few seconds before remembering where she was, and she forced her expression into a frown again. "Y-You! What do YOU want?"

"Well, I wanted to ask you a few questions, Tsukune said honestly, "I was hoping we could get to the bottom of your prejudice against humans."

This surprised Ruby, since she didn't know why Tsukune would care about her feelings, but decided that any information given over to the human would definitely harm her cause. "Forget it! You're wasting your time!"

Tsukune shivered as he felt Guile shift on his head. "Well, fine, but do you think you hold this guy for me?" he asked, pointing to the giant arachnid, "then we can talk."

Ruby's eyes gleamed even as she rushed to refuse. "What? Do you think you can bribe me! Ha! I won't be taken in with your cheap offer of cuddling a... uh..." As she trailed off, Ruby's brain caught up with her body and she realized that she was already holding the spider in her arms, having lifted it from Tsukune's head the moment he gave her permission.

Tsukune let out a sigh of relief as he sat down across from the witch. "His name is Guile. He belongs to my roommate at Youkai Academy."

"He's adorable!" Ruby gushed, having given up the last pretenses of hateful resistance as she stroked the spider's quivering abdomen.

"Yes, well... I was hoping I could tell you a little about Youkai Academy before I asked you anything," Tsukune said cautiously, "Youkai Academy is a school for monsters, where they learn to act like humans so that they can live and work in human civilizations."

This seemed to startle Ruby out of tickling Guile's pedipalps long enough to respond. "What? Why would they want to do that?"

"There are a variety of reasons, and honestly some of the monsters obviously DON'T want to live with humans," Tsukune explained, "but the idea behind the school is that peaceful coexistence is always preferable to fighting it out until the weaker species is wiped out."

"Especially when you're on the losing side!" Tobaki interjected, wiggling a tentacle in the air as if to remind everyone she was there.

Ruby's teeth clenched. "We are not weaker! Witches WILL overcome the humans and save the knoll!"

"Okay, fine. Let's say you do. And then what?" Tsukune asked, "when the humans' introduction to witches is being driven out of their cities and killed by the thousands, do you think they're not going to try to fight back? Can your army beat a human army, with guns and planes and tanks?"

Tsukune gestured to Keito. "Maybe it could. I don't know. But Youkai Academy offers a better way. It proves that monsters, humans, and even witches can live peacefully together if we really try."

"You're using ME as an example of this?" Keito deadpanned, crossing her arms over her chest.

"I'd use Tobaki if she wasn't stuck in her monster form," Tsukune admitted before turning back to Ruby, "I'll admit that the arrangement is far from perfect, too; the only thing keeping Keito from killing me is the stronger monsters that like me and would punish her for it."

"You can prove nothing!" the spider woman protested.

"But it's still better than just killing each other until the best species wins," Tsukune finished, locking eyes with a doubtful-looking Ruby, "so what I want to know is: why do you want to turn this into a war so badly?"

Ruby barely hesitated before speaking, still stroking the arachnid in her lap. "Even if co-existence IS possible, it will be better our way!" she claimed, her expression grim. "With the humans cleansed from their city, this knoll will be a refuge for those who do not WISH to submit to human civilization!"

"And that's worth tens of thousands of lives?" Tsukune asked, leaning forward. "It really seems to me like you WANT the humans dead, rather than just wanting them off your land. Did we... do something to you?"

Ruby pursed her lips briefly, giving only the scarcest thought to her earlier conviction to remain silent. The truth was, she really WANTED to let the human know about why she hated him. She'd wanted to shout it out to him and every other human she had the misfortune of coming across. And now she might be getting her last chance to do so.

"Yes, you did. A human killed my parents," Ruby said bitterly.

Tsukune's expression darkened. "Ah. Yeah. That would definitely explain it."

"My parents believed in co-existence. They decided to try to raise me in the human world, so that I wouldn't have to deal with conflicts like this. And for their tolerance they were killed, wiped out in an instant, right in front of me!"

Tsukune winced. "I can't believe... I'm so sorry," he mumbled, though the words felt entirely inadequate for such a tragedy.

"You're sorry? SORRY? A fat lot of good that does anyone!" Ruby shouted, causing Guile to scuttle off her lap as the spider sensed her irritation. "You humans put so much stock in your corrupt order and vaunted laws, but for me there was no justice! The killer left immediately, escaping before the blood even dried on the grill of his vehicle!" Ruby cried, tears starting to well up in her eyes.

"I don't know what to say," Tsukune mumbled, feeling numb as he bowed his head, "I can't possibly defend... Uh... Did you say 'vehicle'?" He raised his head again, an eyebrow quirked. "Wait, your parents died in a car accident? Not as part of a witch hunt or a mugging or something?"

"You can't be serious," Keito drawled.

"So what? They were still killed by a human!" Ruby protested, clenching her hands into fists.

"Well, sure, probably," Tsukune said, holding up his hands, "but it wasn't an act of aggression, right? The driver didn't intend to hurt anybody, even though it was horrible of him to leave without taking responsibility for what he did."

As Ruby frowned, Tsukune pressed forward. "For that matter, if it wasn't for the fact that he managed to escape, he WOULD have been punished for that. We have laws against hitting pedestrians, even by accident, and laws against leaving after a collision. This sort of thing happens to humans all the time. It's tragic, but we do the best we can to guard against it."

Ruby's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What do you mean they were 'probably' killed by a human? I was there!"

Tsukune winced again. "Well, yeah, you're right! There's like, a ninety-nine percent chance it was a human! But, you didn't meet the person who did it, right?"

"But... No, of course it was a human! I could see him through the window!" Ruby protested.

"AHEM," Keito coughed into a fist, and then calmly gestured to herself. "Monster in human form. And we know that some monsters learn to drive human vehicles, since our bus driver clearly wasn't human."

"And we know that monsters would run down witches just for giggles, because we hate you guys!" Tobaki said, waving at Ruby with a tentacle.

"NO!" Ruby shouted, shooting to her feet with her hands and teeth clenched. "It was the humans! I know it! They killed Mother and Father! My parents didn't deserve to die!"

"You're right," Tsukune said firmly, standing up, "it was almost definitely a human, and it was a human technology that killed them. They would probably be alive right now if it weren't for the humans that they tried to live with peacefully, and I have no excuse for that," Tsukune said, bowing his head, "but what you're doing won't improve anything. If you carry out your plan, you'll be inflicting the same pain upon thousands upon thousands of people, and they won't even know why. Will that make you feel better? To see human children orphaned like you were, by the hundreds? For a crime committed by one lowlife who would be in prison if we could find him?"

Keito opened her mouth, but Tsukune held up his hand, forestalling her inevitably nasty interjection. Keito turned her head away, grumbling under her breath.

Ruby, for her part, looked uncomfortable as her eyes wandered away from Tsukune's.

"Well... n-no, I suppose it wouldn't. But, what are we supposed to do, then?" Ruby said uncertainly. She had not been expecting an apology from the human, much less a sincere one. She had imagined that a human would brush off her past, or that they would cling to some excuse, as it seemed he was going to do by implying the perpetrator might not be human at all. It left her feeling... hollow, somehow, as if the crusade she had embarked on with Oyakata had lost it's meaning. With the edge taken off her emotions, the immediate goal of their plans, to exterminate a city to protect the knoll, hardly seemed like a simple or reasonable solution.

Tsukune saw Ruby's disturbed expression and calmly took hold of her shoulders. "Take me to Oyakata. Let me speak to her," He felt her tense at his touch, but as she locked gazes with him her resistance weakened rapidly, "let me prove to her that it doesn't have to be this way. That we can save Witch's Knoll without bloodshed!"


"Awww, yeaaaah. Milk that diplomacy bonus," Tobaki said to Keito via telepathy as they watched.

"It's actually rather fascinating to watch in action," Keito whispered, leaning forward in her web. "Ooh! I think she's about to break!"


Ruby pursed her lips, and then turned her head away. "I... I can't," she mumbled softly.

Tsukune fought off a sigh. "Why not? I don't want to harm either of you! I just want to put an end to this!"

"That may be true, but..." Ruby spoke hesitantly, obviously aware that her decision may be the wrong one, "Lady Oyakata raised me when I had nothing left, and taught me about the evils of humanity."

Tsukune's eye twitched at that, but he said nothing as Ruby took a deep breath.

"I want to believe you. About everything. But I can't risk leading you to my lady. If you're lying, and just want to find her so that you can try to subdue or kill her, I could never forgive myself for betraying her."

Ruby raised her head again, tears leaking from her eyes. "I'm sorry. I really do want to end this, to stop this mistake. But I can't take that risk. I owe Lady Oyakata too much."

Tsukune was honestly quite touched that she was now shedding tears at the prospect of the deaths she had helped to bring about, although his results seemed wholly inadequate given the impending assault he was failing to stop.

"That's... That's fine," Tsukune said wearily, sighing as he backed away from the witch, "for now, it's enough that you don't want to help kill us all. Thank you, Ruby."

"For what?" sneered Keito, "she whined about her dead folks and then proclaimed that she was completely useless even though you're right."

Tsukune gave the spider woman an annoyed glance, but ignored her. "I hope you'll understand that I can't let you go until I have the opportunity to meet with your guardian," he said, "hopefully she'll come for you, and we can negotiate then."

Ruby nodded sadly, sitting back down. "Can... Can you leave the spider here?" she asked timidly, pointing at Guile, who was resting in one of the cobwebs stretched over the wall.

"Yeah, okay. Sure," Tsukune said, a sweatdrop rolling down his head, "I'll bring you your dinner later. If you want anything else, just ask Tobaki to get me."

As he exited the shed, Tsukune ran a hand through his hair, recalling the uncomfortable feeling of pointed leg clinging to it.

"What IS IT with monster girls and spiders?" he asked no one in particular.

"How did it go?" Moka asked as she turned toward him.

"Rather well, actually, but not great," Tsukune shrugged as he walked up to the camp fire where the others were waiting, "I convinced her that humans aren't all out to get her and destroy everything, but she still won't tell me where the other witch lives."

Yukari's eyebrow rose. "I'd say that overcoming a lifetime of hateful prejudice in fifteen minutes is pretty great on its own, actually."

"Maybe," Tsukune said glumly as he sat down, "I just can't help but feel like this would be easy if Ranma were here, though."

Kurumu snorted as she nodded her head. "Yeah, that's true. I'm sure HE would've beat up that old hag without a problem."

"I wonder what he's doing right now?" Tsukune mused.

"I'm on the HIIIIGHWAY TO HELL!" Bum! Bum! "HIIIIGHWAY TO HELL!"

Ranma lounged back in a booth in the rather high-end bar, still in her girl form as she snacked on nuts while looking only marginally entertained.

The booth was next to the bar's stage, where Richard was singing with surprising proficiency.

That all the instruments were played by skeletons bleeding green fire from their eye sockets didn't seem to bother anyone, although Ranma did wonder if they were from fresh victims or just exhumed.

"Oh I'm on the highway to Hellllll..." Richard finished smoothly, leaning forward while holding the microphone stand against his side. The clientele of the bar started clapping politely, and the skeletons all stepped away from their positions and bowed.

"You don't know any bands other than AC/DC, do you?" Ranma asked, propping up her cheek with her elbow.

"Why would I need to know any other bands?" Richard asked, standing up straight again.

"Actually, I usssed to head a Poissson cover group," slurred one of the skeletons, raising its bleached arm, "ssso we could-"

BWOOM! The hapless bassist exploded into bits of flaming bone and hateful shrieks as Richard pointed at it, causing the magics to come undone explosively.

The clapping got louder.


"It washn't shupposhed ta be like dish," Jadeite mumbled, his head resting listlessly on the counter of the bar, surrounded by a dozen empty shot glasses. "I wash shupposhed ta be vitorioush. The Shenshi were... Dey were..."

The bartender put down another glass, and she put down a half-empty bottle of scotch next to it.

"Buddy, I'm tempted to cut you off right now, but since you're not driving I'll just make you pay for the ones you've already had before you get another," she explained, holding down the scotch.

One of Jadeite's listless, bloodshot eyes glared up at the woman. "I could ssshlay ya eashily Hic! ignorant mortal."

"And then where would you go?" the bartender asked, quirking her eyebrow, "this is the only bar in this district that actually allows evil wizards inside. Don't make me regret that policy!"

Jadeite made a pitiful groaning noise, and started digging through his pockets.

Back at the knoll, night had long since fallen and after eating, the Protection Committee had settled down to rest, no closer to figuring out the whereabouts of Kouma or the witch who had presumably defeated him.

Given that they were expecting an attack, Tsukune had decided that shifts should be taken three at a time, and he was currently taking his own along with Chopper and Kana.

He found it curiously rewarding.

"What I don't get is why it's such a big deal to break someone's legs. They get better, right?" the troll asked to an increasingly perturbed Tsukune, "I know it hurts, but whatever, that's just a temporary thing. It toughens you up!"

Kana yawned, and then rubbed the tears from her eyes that resulted.

"Well... It's like this," Tsukune said gingerly, steepling his fingers, "you have to think about this from the perspective of someone who doesn't heal almost instantly. It takes most people a long time to recover from having major limbs broken."

"What, like a whole day?" Chopper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No, not like..." Tsukune trailed off as he considered the topic further. "Okay, let's look at it this way. Remember when Ranma dislocated your arms so that you couldn't use them?"

Chopper nodded. "Yeah, that sucked, but whatever. It was a fight. You don't challenge a guy like him if you're not willing to lose an arm or two."

"Right! That's absolutely true!" Tsukune agreed, leaning forward on the fallen tree he was using as a seat. "If you accept that you're fighting someone seriously, then you have to expect you might be injured! Likewise, if someone is actually going to resist arrest even though they know they're in the wrong, in the same way they're accepting the risk that they might be injured for the chance of getting away. Right?"

"Yeah, okay. So?"

"So imagine that you weren't fighting, but someone was just annoyed by something you did, like using all the weights in the gym for yourself or eating their pet. So they dislocate your arms for it."

Chopper blinked. "But I do those things all the time!"

"Right. And now, unexpectedly, your arms are useless. You didn't consent to any fight, but they injured you anyway for something that you think is really petty. That isn't fair, right?"

Tsukune was quite gratified to see the wrestler mulling it over, his brow creasing as he rubbed his giant chin.

"I'm not saying that it's never okay to use that kind of power, but it shouldn't be used lightly. Breaking people's arms and legs like it's nothing isn't as bad as killing them, true, but it's still dangerous, so you should only resort to that kind of force when necessary."

Chopper looked slightly depressed as he nodded, clearly reluctant to concede that snapping people's limbs like chopsticks could be bad thing.

"Yeah, I guess you're right. It does seem a little bothersome for them to have to go to the nurse's office just because they were in front of me in a line that wasn't moving fast enough." Chopper looked somewhat guilty as he said this, which Tsukune quickly rationalized as a success on his part while trying not to think about fellow students being mangled just for being in front of Chopper in line.

"I like how you got your point across without any real comprehension on his part," Kana said suddenly, startling the two boys out of their discussion, "maybe next you can explain to Shirayuki why it's wrong to stalk other people's boyfriends."

The way she said it, hunched over and looking perfectly bored, made it clear she was being sarcastic, but Tsukune was quite surprised to hear her speak at all without something to agitate her.

"I thought you and Ranma weren't a thing, though," Chopper pointed out, "if he 'aint attached, then it's okay to stalk 'im."

"Well, no, actually, it's not," Tsukune said awkwardly, staring at Kana, "but I thought you two were getting along better?"

The siren let out an annoyed breath, although even that sounded curiously melodic to his ears. "It doesn't matter whether we're getting along! There's no reason for her to be skulking around all the time! It's annoying and creepy!"

Tsukune thought about asking about why she was so talkative all of a sudden, but ultimately let it go. Kana was apparently psychologically unstable for reasons that no one had ever explained to him, and he didn't want to offend or embarrass her.

On the other hand, listening to her talk was proving to be a bit difficult; her voice itself was so entrancing and intoxicating that it took a few moments for his brain to finish absorbing the wonderful sounds and actually work out what the siren said.

"Sharing sleeping space with her is the worst!" Kana continued, running a hand through her hair, "it's cold enough in there without her, and I swear that-"

The siren stopped ranting suddenly, her single visible eye widening.

"Wait! I think I heard something!" she said nervously.

As before, it took Tsukune a few moments to process her warning, and he and Chopper froze while they listened intently.

"...... I don't hear anything," Tsukune admitted after several seconds.

"My hearing is probably more sensitive than yours," Kana said with a shrug, "it allows me to better hear changes in pitch and trace echoes." She narrowed her eyes before slowly pointing off into the sunflower patch. "Out there. It doesn't sound very big, though. Maybe a small animal?"

Tsukune grimaced. "I think we've had enough problems with small animals so far. Can you drive it off from here?"

Kana cleared her throat noisily, then cupped a hand next to her mouth.

"WOOF! WOOF!" Kana let loose a few alarmingly realistic doberman barks, followed by an angry growl that Tsukune would have sworn was coming from somewhere in the sunflower field if he hadn't known any better.

"WHOA! All right! I surrender! No attack dogs, please!"

None of the three were expecting to hear a spoken response, and they all shot to their feet, prepared for the worst.

"All right, who or whatever you are, come out where we can see you!" Tsukune demanded as Chopper started cracking his knuckles.

"Fine, I'm coming! Chill out, already!" the voice asked irritably. It had a strange, otherworldly quality to it, similar to how Tobaki sounded in her demon form but without the painful resonance behind it.

"Gah! Blech! Damn spiders!" shouted the voice as a small, dark shape emerged from the sunflowers, "now even the normal ones are bugging me!"

Tsukune stared critically at the small black cat as it wiped spider webbing and small, curiously aggressive arachnids off of its face with its paw, its tail swishing back and forth behind it. It was fairly hard to see anything surrounding the camp site with only the dim light from the cooking fire, but the feline's body seemed to suck light into it, giving it the appearance of a pair of glowing eyes set in a vaguely cat-shaped dark mist.

"So... I SHOULDN'T break its legs, right?" Chopper asked, causing the intruder to stiffen.

"No, I don't think that will be necessary," Tsukune agreed dryly, "so, would you care to introduce yourself?" he asked the feline.

"Actually, no, I would not," the cat answered curtly before shaking its body from head to tail, flinging away the last of the attacking spiders.

Then it sat down on its haunches and locked eyes with Tsukune. "You're the human, right? I'll keep this short and to the point: I'm only here right now because I know you guys are in a jam and you're unwittingly responsible for my getting freed from six decades of imprisonment. So I'd appreciate it if you just listened to what I have to say and then let me leave. Hopefully without any more spider attacks."

"Yeah. Sorry, I'm not totally in control of the spider thing," Tsukune apologized, "what did you want to tell us?"

"Well, first off, your hellhound buddy got his sorry tail captured by the elder witch around here. I thought you might be wondering why he hasn't shown up yet."

Tsukune grimaced. "Damn! I knew it! We have to save him!"

"She must be pretty good to take down Gamaroshi," Chopper mused.

"She's a tricky one," the feline agreed casually, "also, the witches' dwelling is in the hill near the edge of the sunflower field. It's in the middle of three big trees, and the entrance is hidden from view from far away with an illusion spell."

Tsukune's eyes lit up. "Really? That's fantastic!"

Kana's visible eyebrow quirked. "And how do we know you're not leading us into some kind of trap?"

"You don't. Hell, for all I know I might have been let go specifically to lure you there without suspicion. But I wanted you to know in order to maximize the chances of you brutalizing that ugly crone Oyakata."

Tsukune didn't really know how to respond to that. He really preferred that he be thought of as an advocate of justice and order, not a tool of vengeance for others.

Nonetheless, he could hardly ignore the information he was being given when Kouma's life might be hanging in the balance. "Thank you... er, cat. I appreciate what you've done."

"No prob. I'm glad I didn't successfully kill you earlier, like I was supposed to," the cat said, waving a paw at the group. Upon seeing their surprised expressions, he shrugged. "Don't dwell on it. Water under the bridge, you know?"

"Er, right," Tsukune mumbled as the cat turned around and started to plod off, "I'm also glad you didn't kill me."

Just as the feline was about to duck back into the sunflower field, it stopped and turned its head around again. "Oh, right, just a heads up: these sunflowers are totally monsters. Thought you should know. Bye."

Then the cat slipped into the field, leaving the trio bewildered by its statement.

"All right, time to blow this joint. No more verdant hills and pristine flower patches for me!" the shadow cat said, looking proud of itself as it crept leisurely through the densely packed flowers, "maybe I should live in the city. Dirty, but apparently witches hate it there, so it can't be all bad!"

Thump!

The magic beast yelped as something came down on its tail, pinning it in place painfully. Swinging its head around, the shadow cat found itself staring into the merciless, dark-ringed eyes of Keito, who had her arms crossed under her breasts.

"Oh. Hey. It's... you..." the shadow cat mumbled with no enthusiasm, "man, you've got a lot of points in stealth, don't you?"

"I need it to give that dimwitted snow woman the slip," Keito said simply, staring down at the cat.

Keito said nothing else, so after a few seconds, the feline continued. "So, did you hear that bit about me telling you guys where the witches live and not being involved with any of this anymore?"

"I did," the spider woman said with a nod, "and I thank you for allowing us to get revenge on the scumbags that almost hurt Tobaki with their clumsy attempts at witchcraft."

"Awesome. Mind getting off of me now?"

Instead of getting off of it immediately, Keito waited until after she had picked the shadow cat up by the scruff of its neck, holding it at head level.

"No, wait! Stop!" the feline begged as Keito's fangs started poking out of her mouth. "Damn it, not another life! HELP!"

"Did anybody else hear a scream?" Kana mumbled, turning her head nervously as she scooted closer to the camp fire.

"I'm... sure it was your imagination," Tsukune said weakly.

Currently the human boy was standing behind Chopper, shining a flashlight on a sunflower while Chopper poked at it. Every once in a while he would shine the flashlight around at the surrounding sunflower patch, perhaps expecting to catch some hint of movement or other monstrous activity.

"Well, I don't see how this thing is anything but a plant," Chopper mumbled, giving the head of the flower a jab and watching it wobble back and forth from the impact.

"Maybe we should wake Sendo up?" Kana said, almost pleading.

"Well, she already spent her time on watch, so I'd really like to confirm this first, somehow," Tsukune said uncertainly, once again focusing on the sunflower as Chopper went ahead and snapped the stem in two, "I mean, it doesn't really make sense, right? There were lots of sunflowers trampled or burnt when you guys fought the garigaris. If they didn't respond to that, can they really be monsters?"

Tsukune nodded his head, finding faith in his logic as he spoke. "Maybe some of the sunflowers are monsters, but some of them aren't. Or maybe the cat meant that the witches were turning the sunflowers INTO monsters. Or it might have even been completely wrong about it. No reason to overreact."

"Yeah, I guess I could see that," Chopper mumbled as he scratched his head, staring down at the severed stem.

Then, on a whim, he grabbed the stem and yanked hard on it.

Tsukune's eyes went wide as the ground broke open all around the sunflower, disgorging a green, fleshy bulb almost as big as he was from the dry, crusty soil.

Chopper's brow creased as he stared down at the bulb, holding the entire uprooted plant just above ground level as Tsukune illuminated it with his flashlight. "Hey, is this what a sunflower's roots usually look like?"

"No, Chopper, I think-" Tsukune's explanation was cut off as the bulb suddenly quivered and unfolded, breaking up much of the remaining encrusted dirt as it shifted out of what was apparently a tight fetal position. Arms and legs with long, sharp talons grasped and flexed in their newfound freedom from the Earth, while an elongated, smooth-surfaced head stretched from its torso, lacking any apparent eyes but making up for it almost entirely in jaws and teeth.

"Okay, no, that's definitely not normal," Tsukune confirmed, the beam from his flashlight trembling noticeably as the creature sucked in air.

"SSSHREEEEEH!!"

End Chapter 15

Big Human on Campus: Extra!

Br-rum-rum-rum-rum-rum...

In the wee hours of the morning, still hours from daybreak, a lone car wandered the back streets of the city, its unusually powerful engine reverberating through the otherwise quiet neighborhood.

Well, "neighborhood" was a poor descriptor of the region; the area was poorly lit and full of dirty alleys and grafitti. Japan was not known for slums or urban decay, but this particular area hosted plenty of both. It was a nest of criminals and vagrants, and few citizens who valued either law or peace would willingly enter during broad daylight, much less in the dead of night.

Thus it was one of the few places in the city that a noisy sport utility vehicle dripping blood from its front bumper could travel through without attracting exceptional attention.

As it rolled up into an unlit driveway, the porch light blinked on, revealing that the entire front grill of the automobile was covered by a dark cape that seemed to be stuck on by a layer of damp gore.

After a few seconds, the garage door at the end of the driveway rumbled open, and the SUV rolled into the garage.


"Yeesh, another one? At this rate I'll never get a good night's sleep again!" shouted a man sitting in a corner of the mechanic's garage, hitting the switch to close the garage door. He appeared to be the mechanic that presumably operated the garage, as he was wearing a set of grease-stained overalls and had a belt full of tools around his waist.

The SUV's engine was finally shut off, and the mechanic got up to greet his customer as the garage door closed shut.

The driver's side door opened up, and the mechanic was actually quite surprised to see a black cat hop out onto the floor of his garage.

"That was AWESOME," the shadow cat said, surprising the man even further as his mouth stretched into a fanged grin, "seriously, you're my hero, man. She didn't even see it coming!"

"Hmph. They never do. Bloody witches always think of themselves as hunters, executioners, and sometimes victims, but never as prey. The idea that they might be stalked, that a being possessing clairvoyance, flight, and a nearly flawless disguise might be killed by something as mundane as a car impact... it never hits them before I do."

The man that followed the shadow cat out of the car was a very heavy-set man wearing a tattered leather jacket and a flat cap while holding a liquor bottle in one hand. He spoke with a slight slur and plenty of contempt, but also with a level of weariness that suggested long experience with the topic at hand.

Even among those that took such professions seriously, no one would have suspected that George Byron could be a witch hunter without a very long and careful study of the man. A British immigrant from the country, he came off as physically inept, simple-minded, and more than a little paranoid.

A study of his jacket, however, would have revealed scores of knives hidden in the interior, and a golden amulet engraved with mystic scrawl sewn onto the back. If the one studying the item also happened to be well-versed in magic, they might have figured out that the amulet was a ward against psychic enchantment and scrying, so as to escape a witch's visions and illusions. And the ring he wore on his finger, an ugly iron affair with an an eye made out of simple quartz mounted on it, may have been recognized as an item of magesight, to better detect the bonds of magic and those who manipulate them.

For the layman, there was also the heavy crossbow and flamethrower he kept in his SUV. But in all fairness, those could be used to kill anyone.


"So, wait, what's with the cat?" asked the mechanic hesitantly, "I mean, aren't black cats that talk stereotypical witch familiars?"

"Not by choice, we're not!" the shadow cat snapped as George took a swig of brandy, "my species has been constantly enslaved for generations by those bastards!"

"It is fine. The creature was in the midst of being coaxed out of an alley with the dark magics of my target when I... intervened. I have studied the cat for deceitful magic and found none," George said as he trudged over to a stool and sat down, "also, its hatred of the witch is quite genuine. Those of us who have suffered at the hands of the bloody whores of Satan have an... affinity for one another."

The mechanic held up his hands. "All right, all right, if you say so. You want the usual cleanup job?"

"Make sure you get the magic item," George said, pointing to the front of his vehicle, "it became wedged in the front grill between a few vertebrae."

"What do you do with the items?" the cat asked excitedly as the mechanic searched for a crowbar.

"I have a collection of them that decorate my wall," George said solemnly between drinks, "they are my trophies, and the record of my long struggle. Every one of those accursed wands, books, rings and daggers is a blow against evil and another spark of hope for all peace-loving creatures, human or otherwise."

The shadow cat beamed as George nodded to it. "So you never told me what the witches did to you in the first place. As for me, that old crone Oyakata caught me eating plague toads in a pond near her home one day, and I guess she was using those or something. Without so much as a warning, she imprisoned me in one of her books and then let me sit on her shelf for six decades. Although she admits that it was only because she didn't want to search for her scroll of greater spaying/neutering."

"So which one would have happened to you?" the mechanic asked as he laid a tarp under the SUV bumper and started scraping off bits of corpse.

"Don't really have a gender. Magical shadow beast," the feline explained with a shrug, "though the scroll would still work on me. It is magic, after all."

George finished the brandy and placed it on the workshelf behind him. "For me, the witches came to a village I was visiting on holiday in the early spring, without warning or reason. It was a small fishing village, far from most other centers of civilization but not truly isolated. I was fishing at the time with my brother, who lived there with his wife."

He picked up the liquor bottle again, belatedly realized it was still empty, and then growled at it as if the bottle was itself responsible.

"They were carried to our village on the winds, some on wings, some on brooms, and some riding horrific monsters. From what I could tell, they made no demands or proclamations, but set upon their black magic while we were still gaping in shock."

He tossed the empty liquor bottle in the trash bin with a grunt. "Instantly the village was caught in a deluge. The formerly clear skies darkened and opened like floodgates, summoning a flash flood the likes we've never seen before. The ground turned to mud even before the water touched it, trapping those that tried to flee. The witches smashed those homes that might have survived the waters, breaking them open with wrecking balls of fell magics and subjecting their occupants to the flood or crushing them under debris. The boats, mine among them, were tossed over callously as the oceans grew violent, but in the open ocean, with my life vest, I managed to survive. My brother was not so lucky. He died with the rest of his family and friends."

"Intense," the shadow cat said, looking quite interested, if not exactly sad, to hear the tale.

"Naturally, no one believed me when I brought news of this atrocity back to civilization, completely waterlogged and nearly dead from exhaustion," George grumbled as he fingered his ring, "I was treated well, but dismissed as someone who had hallucinated something bizarre in the midst of an unbelievable tragedy. The village was written off as the victim of a flood or tsunami, although there were a great many strange things about the disaster. In time it was forgotten, and the village rebuilt."

Then his eyes narrowed. "Not me, though. I'll never forget that horror. The contempt with which we were wiped out, like invading termites. On that day I swore that I would pursue the witch and drive her from this land! To this day I've seen a full seventy-three of the fell sorcerers to Hell, but my task is not yet completed! I'll wipe them out! I'll bloody see them all die for what they've done!"

"Burn the witch! Kill them all!" the cat cheered, practically bouncing from paw to paw.

As George shouted up into the ceiling, the mechanic stood up from his work. "Aren't you afraid of feeding the cycle of hatred that contributes to humans and witches massacring each other, though?"

"No, I'm afraid I'll be pulled over for having a dead body pasted to the front of my bloody car!" George snapped, "plus, you know, the drinking."

"You shouldn't drink and drive, man," the mechanic chided before tossing something to the hunter.

George caught the item deftly, and then held it up: a crude-looking brass amulet with a jade mounted in the center.

"See how it reeks with evil, cat? Almost singes my fingers just to hold the damned thing," George said as he held it up, "another piece of tainted scrap for the collection."

The shadow cat grinned. "Cool! Can I be your sidekick?"

"A comrade on this hateful and bloody quest would be much appreciated, feline," George said, smiling slightly for the first time since either the cat or mechanic had known him as he knelt down and extended a hand to the magical animal, "since you have no name, I shall call you James, after my fallen brother."

The shadow cat raised its paw, sniffling with pride and joy as the man shook his hand. "I've never been so happy in my lives!"

The mechanic smirked as he watched the scene, watching the two individuals forming a touching bond of friendship based on their mutual hatred and desire for vengeance. Then he tapped his wrench against the hood of the SUV.

"Okay, but seriously though, lay off the booze while you're driving."

"Yes, yes, fine."