Nexus II
by Black Dragon
https://www.angelfire.com/anime5/fanficlair
I'm not infringing on any copyright laws! Uh uh! Nope! La la la la la! I can't heeeeeeeeeear you!
As usual, words in " " are in the language primarily being spoken, or are presented phonetically, {" "} are languages other than the one primarily being spoken, ' ' are thoughts, * * are sounds, and [ ] are writing.
Chapter 3
Conflicts
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She was the guardian of this forest, and her mission was a simple one: keep demons out of the sacred forests.
True, she had only watched over these trees for but a few years, given the relative recency of demon-kind's return, but she was as dedicated to her cause as any of her brethren who had been at work for millennia.
She was a high dryad, a mystic of the trees, and for four years she had been guarding this forest in China, killing any dark creature that dared to encroach upon its fertile grounds. The intelligent creatures she warned first, but very few of them (being demons) listened.
Today, that very scene was being played out once more in front of the lake on the forest's edge. The dryad stared down imperiously from where the massive collection of tree branches twisted together before melding into her torso, staring down at the pathetic wretch that dared to approach these holy grounds.
"I am warning you: leave this place at once, or your life is forfeit! Go!"
The man she was staring down at sighed and began to massage his forehead. "Of all the stupid, worthless..." he trailed off mumbling, then took a deep breath before looking back up at the tree mystic.
"All right, look here wood-for-brains, I'm gonna tell you ONE LAST TIME: I'm not here to hurt your precious little garden, okay?! This is just a huge waste of both our time!"
The dryad stared down at him, unimpressed. "You seek to fool me with your human appearance, but I will not be fooled. I have sensed the dark power within you. Leave now. You will not pass by me!"
The man twitched. "I'm goin' forward. If you wanna try and stop me, go ahead, but it's your funeral." He began to walked into the forest at such an angle as to bypass the dryad.
"Foolish creature!" The mystic shouted, and her body was suddenly thrust up into the air by the multitude of tree branches. "Die!"
The dryad swept her arms forward, and huge bundles of roots burst from the Earth, shooting upward before descending downward toward their target like a series of missiles.
The man skipped back as the roots dove toward him, and slipped a hand behind him, where a sword was strapped onto his back. Then he grabbed the sword by the sheath and jabbed it toward the drill-like tendrils in what seemed like a moronic and hopeless effort to block.
*Ka-CHOOM!!* The bundles of roots ripped apart as they slammed into the man's blade, shooting off in all directions, upward and around, before arcing back down and digging hard into the ground.
"Wh-What?!" The dryad gasped as her opponent was suddenly hidden under several arches of twisted oak, the root tendrils becoming firm, inflexible wood after reaching the Earth once more.
'Where did he go?' The dryad thought, rising up further to look over the battlefield. Frowning, she took a moment to concentrate on casting a defensive spell.
"Neemee lekka cho ka!" A green wave of energy swept up from the trees that she was attached to, taking a number of leaves along with it. Within moments that green wind was swirling around the dryad in a magical sphere, and the leaves had spread out evenly along the surface of the sphere, glowing with green energy.
*CHOOM!!* A section of the root cover burst upward, and the dryad began to prepare another spell as she watched the attacker land atop one of the arches of wood.
"Defiler! Perish! Akalai's thorn missile!" A green bolt exploded from the mystic's hands, and shot toward the man like a guided rocket.
The man grinned and launched himself forward, finally drawing his blade from its sheath as he ran along the arched root.
*Shyak!* As the attack spell reached him, he struck the missile with his sword almost casually, causing the deadly bolt to dissipate instantly.
"What? No!!" The dryad shouted in disbelief. Like most of her spells, Akalia's thorn missile was actually a rather high grade of magic, and it didn't seem possible that any weapon could so easily deflect the spell.
She grit her teeth, and both her hands glowed with mana. She had been wise to cast her shield, and at this point it would likely mean the difference between victory and defeat.
The attacker leapt up toward the mystic as he reached the apex of the arch, and his sword began to glow with a black aura.
"You want evil power? You got it!"
*Kshing!* *Shang!*
*Toom* The man's feet impacted heavily against the trunk of a nearby tree, and he backflipped off of it to land calmly on the ground.
"Urg... ugh..." The dryad trembled as the shield around her dissipated completely, and then she gasped as one of her arms separated from her shoulder and fell to the ground.
She turned toward the man, a look of indescribable loathing on her face.
"Feh. Didja really think a shield of leaves could stop the sword of the destroyer?" The man brought the blade up once again, a somewhat bitter smile on his face. "You're done for."
__________________________________________________________________________________
Ranma jumped up as the blade cut for his neck, landing on his opponent's shoulders.
"So then I said to her, 'look demon lady, I'm flattered and all, but you just had two of my friends tortured to death. I'm not gonna sleep with you.'"
He kicked off his foe's back, slamming the creature into a nearby tree, and hit the ground running.
"Look out!! That one has a machine gun!!" K screamed as he tried to keep himself above Ranma's head.
Ranma glanced over his shoulder to watch as a large cloaked figure brought a Squad Automatic Weapon up from beneath the folds of the cloak he was wearing. "Yeah yeah, I see 'im. Anyway, then she's all like, 'what do your friends have to do with anything?'"
*Rattattattattattattattattattattatta!!*
Ranma somersaulted forward as a spray of bullets cut across his position, somehow managing to avoid being hit. The moment his feet touched the ground again, Ranma dashed forward and slid to a stop behind a large rock formation, the noise of bullets grinding against stone hot on his heels.
"Can you believe that? She actually asked why I cared that she killed my friends! So then I say-"
"LOOK!!" K shouted, diving down to land next to Ranma behind the boulder, "it's not that your story isn't interesting, but could you PLEASE tell it to me when we're not busy escaping certain death?!"
Ranma frowned at him. "If death is certain, which it 'aint, why would we even bother to try and escape it?"
"JUST SHUT UP AND FIGHT!!!" K shouted, frustrated.
"Okay, okay, you don't need to yell..." Ranma muttered, jumping out from behind his cover.
As Ranma touched the ground in front of the rock, he frowned. The current battlefield that he had jumped into was a large dirt pit in the ground with numerous rocks jutting out the sides and scattered across the bottom. Perfect for agile close-quarters fighting, while inconvenient if someone were to toss a powerful spell or explosive into the mix. Of course, given his enemies, that wasn't very likely.
Grends were a tough, warrior-class species that Ranma had only fought on very few other occasions. The creatures could be likened to toughened-up lizardmen; the only differences apparent upon seeing the two types of creatures side-by-side would be that Grends tended to be larger and more muscular, their hides seemed to be darker, and their claws were long and sharp rather than hooked and stubby.
When one fought a grend, however, the more subtle differences became apparent. Grends possessed a hide strong enough to shrug off bullets, and on average were strong enough to smash a rock apart with a single blow. Ranma wasn't really sure about their magical abilities, but he had never seen or heard of a grend sorcerer, so he really didn't worry about it.
*Rattattattattattattattattattattatta!!*
Ranma drew his katana slowly as he sped along right in front of the path of bullets, and then spotted the other grend from before jumping down into the pit to intercept him.
He killed his momentum, and then drew his sword fully just as the machine gun spray reached him.
*K-Tang!* *Ting!* Ranma deflected the projectiles with his katana, and then jumped over to the grend flanking him. The creature was clearly surprised he had survived the machine gun, and Ranma used that surprise to land and single powerful stroke across the demon's neck.
The grend gasped and lurched backward, and then shoved its battleaxe forward head-first.
Ranma jumped over the axe and spin-kicked the grend's head in mid-air, sending the creature stumbling back again. 'Damn it! Even when I use my ki to enhance the edge of the sword, that thing's barely bleeding!' Were it not for the techniques he'd learned studying Hyoken, many of the creatures of the wastes would have found themselves effectively invulnerable to the young wanderer. Ranma had learned early on that while speed and agility kept you alive, strength and technique put down enemies. Ranma was hardly lacking in those areas, but certain creatures were born with a constitution far superior to Ranma's strength.
A quick glance to the rim of the pit revealed that the grend with the SAW had finished reloading, and was lining up a shot at Ranma's back. Ranma knew that it would shoot even with its ally fighting in the line of fire, and formed a plan in his mind.
The grend wielding the axe shook its head mightily, confused as to how the puny human before it could have landed such a heavy blow. By the time it had recovered fully, its target was nowhere to be seen, and for some odd reason, its companion seemed to be aiming that strange human weapon right at it.
*Rattattattattattattattattattattatta!!*
Ranma grunted as he held the grend up to the hail of bullet's, pushing on the creature's back. He wasn't entirely sure if the machine gun fire would kill the demon, as grends were known to be fairly bullet-proof, but at least the overgrown lizard made a good shield for him.
"Greaay!! GREYAAAH!!" The demon tried to jab an elbow back at Ranma (evidently it had not yet been killed), and Ranma kicked it squarely in the back, knocking it forward further into the stream of oncoming fire.
'Yeesh. All that thing has hit so far is his friend here, and he's still firing?' Clearly the gunman, if it had any strategy at all, was hoping to tag Ranma with a bullet or two if he ever tried to move out from behind his shield.
His shield itself wasn't exactly feeling very well at that point. Having taken nearly 200 rounds already from the SAW, the grend was just about willing to fall down and take an extended nap at that point. While the machine gun was a powerful weapon, to a grend's hide such a burst of fire could be ultimately likened to having hundreds of pins and needles pushed into its skin. Sure, it hurt like hell, and in certain places it could be lethal, but bottom line, it wasn't usually considered lethal, or particularly debilitating.
The grend staggered around to face his opponent, even though he had already dropped the battleaxe. Truth be told, as his mind began to numb to the pain, so was it also starting to numb to the world around it. Not a good thing when you were facing a rather proficient demon hunter.
"Dragon fist!" The name of the Hyoken school's signature technique was the last thing that the pitiful grunt ever heard, and it entered unconsciousness as it flew across the bottom of the rock pit to slam into the other side in a magnificent, fiery explosion.
The gunman adjusted his aim, now have a clear shot of the pigtailed warrior. Unfortunately, this "clear shot" only meant that he could clearly see the young man, and that there wasn't any obstacle between the agile human and the multitude of pointy lead projectiles hurtling toward him.
To the absolute confusion of the grend, the machine gun didn't seem to faze the human at all. Which was odd, because human technology had always been deemed almost as efficient as magic when it came to downing powerful creatures. More powerful machine guns were capable of piercing even a grend's rock-hard skin, and the most powerful guns, with the use of special ammunition, could pierce the armor of a wyvern or sand wyrm.
The reptilian demon really wasn't smart or perceptive enough to tell, but Ranma wasn't actually standing up to the barrage of bullets. In fact, not a single one had even touched him. It was nearly impossible for the gunman to tell from its vantage point, but for every bullet that was fired, a split second was spared to determine its trajectory, and if necessary, a minute movement occured to bring the pigtailed warrior out of the line of fire. Luckily for Ranma, the gunman was clearly inexperienced with his weapon, and he really didn't have to do much to keep himself from being swiss-cheesed other than move slightly once a path of bullets swept across his position. To the outward observer, it appeared that he wasn't moving at all.
*Rattattattattattatta-click-click-click-click-click*
The grend blinked as the last of his ammo belts were sucked into the machine gun, and then snarled. This thing was out of ammunition already?
"Awww, what's the matter gecko breath? Out of ammo?"
The grend blinked as the sounds were mentally reconstructed within its head to form words and meanings that it could understand. Looking up, it could see a small dragon with metal armor scales hovering overhead, leering down at it.
{"You there!"} It snarled, pointing its now useless weapon at K, {"You are to come with me, dragon! You are now Lord Greken's property!"}
K snorted, flapping his sharp, metallic wings to stay well out of the grend's reach. "Buzz off, scaleface! I'm nobody's property!"
The grend would have shouted back a response in its own guttural language, but was surprised as the SAW was suddenly wrenched from its hands. Turning around, the creature saw its target smirking while holding up its depleted weapon.
"Outta ammo, huh? That's a shame. You were doin' so well, too." Ranma grinned and flipped the gun over in his hand so that the barrel was aimed at the grend.
Of course, Ranma didn't possess the communications telepathy that K did, so his opponent hadn't understood him anyway. The grend swiped at the irritating human with one of its large claws, intent on ripping the insolent creature to shreds.
Ranma dashed backward a couple of inches as the claws cut at him, and then dashed back forward as the attack passed. Then, in the split second before the grend could realize that he had missed and launch another strike, Ranma jabbed at the grend's neck with a knife hand strike, hitting hard enough that the demon's mouth jerked open reflexively.
K stared, then winced as Ranma force-fed the grend its own depleted weapon, cramming the large metal gun down the creature's throat as it thrashed about in shock and agony.
Ranma gave the SAW one last smack to make sure it was stuck tightly in the grend's windpipe, then leapt backward as the demon tried a last-ditch effort to rend him apart before it died.
It missed, and Ranma shook his head sadly as the beast quickly choked, writhing about on the ground.
"Well, that was gruesome," K muttered, lowering himself from above to land on Ranma's shoulder.
Ranma sighed. "Yeah, well, it was the quickest way I could think of to end this. These damn lizards are too hard to put down normally."
"Grends," K corrected, idly rubbing his beak across his wing to clean it. "Comparing a lizard, or a lizardman, to a grend is like comparing a kitten to a griffin."
"Yeah, whatever," Ranma muttered, stretching. "I had enough trouble taking out those last three back there, and then these two ambushed me. I've got to find better ways to kill these things, or else they could wear me down too easily."
Ranma started walking away from the pit he had been fighting in, when he noticed K staring at him oddly. "What's with that look?"
"It's just..." K trailed off, then sighed. "It's just weird. One moment you're treating a threat to your life like it's just a hike through the woods, and then once you win without any problems, you start getting all serious about it and worrying about how you're going to win next time."
Ranma smirked as he found his pack and shouldered it. "But of course, my little dragon. It's simple. Battle is like a game, see? A game with high stakes."
K bristled. "Battle is NOT a game! These things could snap you in two! Your life is on the line, here!"
"Right. That's what I said. High stakes," Ranma clarified, as if the dragon was just repeating him, "and they could not. Anyway, when you're in the middle of a good game, you don't really think about it much. You just react, and do your best according to what you have to work with. Whether you enjoy the game or not, it only lasts for a few minutes, and when you're in the thick of things you don't usually have much time to be worryin' over your life. So I don't waste time worryin', I just try to enjoy it, or at least try to concentrate on fighting." He raised his index finger into the air, as if making a point. "It's after the fight that you do all the worrying and strategizing and stuff. You look over what happened, how things turned out, and how to do better next time. That make sense?"
"In a moronic, twisted sort of way," K admitted.
Ranma snorted. "Aw, what do you know about fighting anyway?"
"Eh. A little bit," K muttered, suddenly engrossed with a little spot on his wing, "I know you're the expert. But... well..." the little metadragon stopped looking at his wing and glanced at Ranma before lowering his head a little bit. "I just... I worry about you sometimes, Ranma."
Ranma blinked. "What? Seriously?"
K nodded, completely serious. "No kidding. I mean, I don't want to sound sappy, but you've really helped me out. Even though you were reluctant about it, you saved me from being sent to this dragon keeper guy, and then saved me from the wyvern. Since then you've fed me, helped clean me, carried me around with you and kept me safe. And, well... I appreciate it. I really do."
Ranma stared oddly at the little dragon. Usually the metal beast was friendly at best, and at worst he taunted Ranma as much as possible. To see such gratitude from the little creature startled Ranma, and in truth made him feel a little guilty about the way he treated K at times.
"And I'm just saying," K said, not looking at Ranma as he tried to articulate his thoughts, "I'm just afraid that you're gonna get into a fight some day, and some demon's going to cast a 'haste' spell or something and catch you in the neck when you aren't expecting it. And then, just like that, you're gone." K sighed sadly. "You can do a lot of cool stuff, but you're still a human. In a couple hundred years you'll die anyway, and I'll be alone again. I don't want that to happen any sooner than it has to, Ranma. You're my best friend. My only friend."
Ranma sweatdropped, a bit overwhelmed. "Uh... typically, humans don't live a 'couple hundred years'."
K blinked, and finally looked at him. "Oh. Sorry. Is it several hundred?"
Ranma sweatdropped again. "Try ninety."
"Ninety hundred?"
"Ninety years."
K blinked, then lowered his head sadly again. "Oh."
"And that's only if you die of old age," Ranma continued, "the way things are going in the East today, the average lifespan in total is somewhere around 21 years."
K lowered his head some more, looking even more miserable.
Ranma smirked slightly, and brought his hand up to stroke the dragon sitting on his shoulder. "Hey, hey... don't worry about it, eh? I'm not goin' anywhere. 'Sides, you're going to have to live on your own sometime, right?"
K shrugged his wings miserably. "I guess... but I don't want to..."
"Besides, you should consider yourself lucky," Ranma said, grinning, "how many pets get to outlive their masters?"
K blinked, then he glared at the pigtailed warrior. "I am NOT a 'pet', and you are NOT my 'master'!"
Ranma smirked. "I feed you, clean you, carry you around with me, and I named you. If you're not my pet, then what are you?"
"I'm your... I mean... I don't belong to... it's just... I..." K stuttered for a little bit as Ranma walked along, and soon he began to twitch.
"It's alright," Ranma said, patting the metadragon on the back, "if it's any consolation, you're a pretty lousy pet. You hardly ever listen to me, and you talk back all the time. I can tell ya, that's not something you have to put up with from most puppies."
A vein popped up on K's head, which was pretty funny to see on a creature with a metal hide. "I don't even know why I put up with you!"
"Sorry bronze breath," Ranma said, smiling widely, "but you just totally spilled your guts. I know exactly why you put up with me."
"Grrrrrr..."
Ranma couldn't help but chuckle as K turned his head away irritably, clearly miffed. He had to admit, he really liked the little dragon. Sure, all he ever did was talk and eat, but being on the move alone for such long periods of time had caused him to forget what it was really like to travel with a friend.
Truth be told, Ranma hadn't always wandered alone, but his relationships with traveling companions had always been somewhat... short-lived. The men he had traveled with usually felt rather insignificant traveling with a younger boy that could do what Ranma could, and that led to either confrontations with Ranma, or ill-advised acts of bravery that led to their bloody deaths. Meanwhile, while female comrades tended to be far more tolerant of Ranma's skill and ego, relations with them had a way of becoming... awkward. Ranma couldn't remember a single time that he had traveled with a girl that hadn't spiraled completely out of control, one way or another. Worse, parting with them always ended up being messy somehow. His departure from the Amazon village with a wyrm on his heels was actually one of the cleanest, most orderly goodbyes he had ever made.
"So, what're you thinking about?" K asked, apparently over Ranma's earlier offenses. Ranma smiled. K never took any of his jibes personally.
"Oh, just old times," Ranma replied. He stopped as he approached a craggy cliff wall, and looked up its face.
"Oh..." K thought about that for a little bit, then had to tighten his grip on Ranma's shoulder as the pigtailed warrior jumped onto the cliff, grabbing onto a rock spire.
K jumped off his perch, and flapped his wings slowly to hover upward as Ranma grabbed onto the flat sections of the cliff and began scaling it.
"Hey, you were in the Death March, weren't you?"
Ranma blinked, and stopped climbing. "What exactly do you mean 'in' the Death March?"
"You fought in it, right? Against the demon armies?" K clarified.
Ranma chewed his lip as he mulled it over. "Yeah. A little bit."
"A little bit?" K asked, darting a bit closer to Ranma as the man started climbing again. "You have to be the most powerful human I've ever met! You've got to be like a hardened veteran soldier or something!"
Ranma shrugged, then grabbed a spire sticking out of the cliff and pulled himself onto it. "I guess you could say that. I was in the Israeli army once."
"Once?"
Ranma nodded, then jumped up, grabbed another crag, and swung upward to land on top of it. "Just once. I wasn't really a soldier so much as a mercenary, but I did the same stuff."
K sped up to climb to Ranma's altitude, then once again hovered over his head. "Really? The way you fight, I would have thought you'd have been battling in the warzones all your life!"
Ranma smirked. "Give me a break, K. I was ten years old before the war even began. And I try to avoid the 'warzones' if I can."
K blinked, unsure of what to say to that.
Ranma sat down on the crag, and pulled out a canteen of water. "I have nothin' but respect for soldiers, but that's just not what I do, you know?" He unscrewed the cap of the canteen and then took a long gulp before speaking again. "War is numbers and tactics. You have enough people in the right place, and move them at the right time, and you win. That's just not me. Fighting my way is about spirit and skill and stuff like that. You face down your enemy, so that they KNOW who put them down. It's the whole adventuring thing, you know?" Ranma put away the canteen, then leapt upward to grab onto the top edge of the cliff.
K nodded slowly. "I see. You've been on a lot of small campaigns, haven't you? Stuff like raiding the slave caravan I was on?"
"Yup!" Ranma confirmed, flipping himself up onto the top of the cliff and onto stable ground again. "Well, well, well. What do we have here?"
K flew up quickly to get a look at the top of the cliff, and then blinked rapidly once he glimpsed what lied there.
More than a dozen grends lay dead around a small clearing, which itself was heavily torn and looked to have been wracked by a few small explosions.
"Whoa! What did this?" K said, gaping as he landed on Ranma's shoulder once more. "Are those missile scars?"
"Yeah, right," Ranma snorted, looking at one of the blackened gouges in the Earth. "Take notes, K. Missiles explode around the impact point, for the most part. Look at these things here." He pointed toward one of the ruts in the ground, which started at deep, clean indentations, and then fanned out into a series of scars and burns in one general direction. "The energy is too well-directed and the impact is too clean for it to be an explosive. Has to be magic, or maybe ki energy. Also, look at the corpses; most of them have been cut apart. Melee weapons don't mix well with rockets or artillery."
"Well, someone knows their battlezones," K mumbled to himself. "What about all the bullet casings on the ground?"
Ranma pointed to the side, and K sweatdropped as he caught sight of another SAW, this one cleaved in half.
"Oh... missed that."
Ranma bit his lip as he looked around. "Look, K. Do you notice anything else that's weird?"
K blinked, and his eyes widened as he came to a realization. "There's no blood. Most of these things are chopped apart like diced onions, but there's not a drop of blood anywhere!" K stared uneasily at the grends' bodies. While they looked rather dry and little bit withered, the grends had apparently been killed recently enough so that the area didn't even smell yet. "Creepy."
Ranma shrugged. "I don't know about that. Whatever did this certainly hasn't done me any harm, and I'd rather not see this whole field full of blood." He licked his lips. "Still, I guess we should keep a lookout. Demons that do stuff like this usually aren't friendly."
Then Ranma stopped, and turned toward K. "Hey, you know a lot of different types of freaks and monsters and stuff, right? Don't you know of any demons that drain blood?"
K frowned. "Well, sure, there are a few, but most of them either drain most of the internal body, not just the blood, and only a few of 'em would be able to stand up to a group of armed grends without losing one of their own for us to find." Then he shook his head, "And none of them would drink blood out of the dirt. Look at this; there's no way that all their blood was drained right out of their bodies."
"Good point," Ranma said, biting his lip. "Hmmmm..." Then his head jerked around, and he stared off into the distance. "Wait a minute..."
K stared as Ranma ran forward, and then stopped as he scanned the surroundings. The cliff they had found themselves on appeared to be at the edge of a forest, and Ranma was trying to look through the scattered trees at something along the forest's border. "Something wrong?"
"K, fly up and see if there's anything alive over there," Ranma commanded, pointing a finger in the direction he had been looking.
Confused, K pushed into the air, quickly clearing the few trees that surrounded them so that he could get a good view of the land surrounding the forest.
The first thing he spotted was a small lake that seemed to be, oddly enough, feeding the forest next to it. K found this odd because a freshwater lake of that size would have probably brought the forest in around it.
As he took a better look at the forest's edge, however, he realized that there was a series of huge root formations that led from deep into the forest into the water, like a huge organic irrigation pipe. While organic, it was easy to guess that it wasn't natural. Something had created it to fuel the growth of the forest more efficiently, while still keeping the lake open and accessible.
'What the?' "Ranma! I see something! A bunch of broken trees and stuff way over that way!" K jabbed his beak forward, then blinked as he realized that Ranma was already well on his way ahead, leaving the metadragon in his dust. "Hey! Wait up!"
Ranma grit his teeth as he sped along the edge of the forest, making minor adjustments as he ran to clear his path of the scattered trees ahead of him.
'Something up there! I can feel it! But... it feels different... dead, almost...' At least, that's the only way he could think of to describe it. Ranma had been fine-tuning his ki senses ever since he had fought the jakku outside the Amazon village, and though he obviously had far to go as far as comprehension, he had already made substantial progress in his perception.
This was becoming a great source of confusion as Ranma got closer to the battlezone. His senses allowed him to detect ki energy, which was the energy of all living things, animal and even plant. When something died, however, the ki left its body. So sensing something "dead" wasn't actually possible, unless it was reanimated. But undead just didn't feel like this.
Feeling somewhat frustrated, Ranma jumped up into the air, taking to the treetops. Immediately he was able to see a number of large, unnatural-looking wooden arches, many of them shattered or cut.
Landing on one such arch, Ranma took his first look at the battlefield, perplexed.
With the exception of the lack of corpses, it looked very much like the last battlefield, with several ruts cut into the ground, and a few burn scars along the shattered trees. In one part of the area, it looked as if something had simply charged through swinging wildly, as there was a stretch of ground littered with chopped and crushed wood, with all the trees and roots around it shredded and torn.
Ranma continued searching as K finally caught up with him. "I don't get it... I can sense SOMETHING alive around here, but-"
"Omigosh! That's a high dryad!" K shouted, darting past Ranma to land on the ground a ways in front of him.
Ranma blinked, trying to figure out what K saw that he didn't.
The metadragon landed next to an unusually-shaped chunk of bark, and looked it over. "Wow. She's badly hurt. All her life roots have been cut. And they're not healing, either! I wonder why..."
Ranma scratched his head. "What? What are you talking about? What are you lookin' at, anyway?"
It wasn't until the dryad stirred that Ranma realized that K was talking about the very "chunk of bark" that he had been staring at.
"Whoa! Hey! Hold on, let me help ya!"
Ranma immediately jumped down toward the body, and then gave it a careful medical assessment (as best he could, anyway, considering he was checking a creature of wood and bark).
It didn't look good, but that much he had pretty much expected. As far as he could tell, whatever this "high dryad" looked like before, all that was left was an upper torso with only one arm left, and that had been cut up enough that he couldn't tell the mystic from the rest of the wood scrap littering the ground.
Gently, he took hold of one of the shoulders, and then carefully turned the dryad over. A vaguely human-like face carved of wood stared up at him, holding two faded eyes of solid white. The dryad's front revealed a pair of blocky protrusions that seemed to be a tree carving's mockery of women's breasts, as well as a rather severe-looking burn. The body curved slightly as it reached the waist, which leaked a mess of sap rather than blood, having been cut off much like one of the creature's arms.
"So this is a dryad, huh?" Ranma mumbled, looking her over. "I thought they were more human-like."
"Those are lesser dryads," K explained, "this is a high dryad. They take a less formal body structure to improve their manipulation of trees and plants, as well as increasing their regeneration abilities." The tiny dragon frowned. "That's what worries me, though. To a high dryad, this isn't a mortal wound. But it's not regenerating. You see, these things are bonded to a certain tree in the forests that they protect, and it acts as a lifeline; they can only be killed if the tree is destroyed. I guess something killed her host tree."
"N-No..."
Ranma and K blinked as the woody-looking form mumbled out a denial, and realized that the mystic wasn't unconscious.
"Hey, are you going to be okay? What happened?" Ranma asked, looking back over the wound. 'That's what I was feeling! There's some kind of weird energy here! But what is it?'
"I... I was at... attacked," the dryad mumbled slowly, "by... by a demon in human... guise..." she coughed lightly, then groaned.
Ranma frowned. "Attacked by a demon, huh? What'd it look like?"
"He-" the dryad gasped suddenly, then seemed to regain her breath, "he was a tall man... with a... large broadsword that had a dark aura... he used a technique that... neu... neutralized my regeneration... I will not live much longer, and my ho-host t-tree will soon die."
"Why did he attack?" K asked, looking at the dryad somewhat skeptically.
"He must have been after... the Phoenix Stone... but he... has not found it..."
"Phoenix Stone?" Ranma muttered.
Suddenly the dryad moved its remaining arm to clutch Ranma's sleeve, and he gulped as the dim lights of her eyes stared into his.
"Please... good stranger... k-keep the stone from his reach at all costs! I... I can protect it no longer..."
"Eh?!" Ranma jerked back as the high dryad's body died right in front of him, her chest cracking and bursting out in a spray of wet, rotted wood. The rest of her body quickly hardened, becoming dry and white within seconds as the last vestiges of life poured out of her body.
Ranma kept his eyes squeezed shut as he shook the bits of wood off of his face, and then began spitting on the ground to get the rest of it out of his mouth.
K tilted his head to one side as he stared at the high dryad. "Huh. This guy must be something to take out a high dryad like this. Even though she does seem fairly young."
Ranma finished spitting on the ground, then turned to K. "You can TELL? She's made out of wood!"
K smirked and pointed to the stump of her arm. "Count the rings, dude."
"That's sick," Ranma muttered, walking up to the body. "What in the...? There's something in her chest!"
"Eh?" K jumped around the corpse to get a look at the front, then squinted as he noticed a faint red light in the dryad's chest cavity. "What is that?"
Getting ready for any unpleasant surprises, and making sure to use the hand with the gauntlet on, Ranma reached inside the dead body and dug around until he felt something harder than the soft rot that mostly filled the cavity. Withdrawing his hand, Ranma found that he had grabbed a spherical gemstone, maybe an inch and a half in diameter. It was a translucent red, and the inside swirled with a mix of crimson that looked like liquid fire.
"Cool."
K looked thoughtful as he stared at the gem. "Huh... some powerful mystics and demons leave behind magical gemstones and such when they die, but I don't think dryads do... so this must be the 'Phoenix Stone' she was talking about."
Ranma stared at the shiny orb, and his eye twitched. "Great. A quest."
K blinked. "A quest?"
Ranma nodded. "A quest. I meet a dying chick, she gives me a magic rock, and there's some powerful jackass out there trying to get the rock. That's a quest, all right. *Sigh* Oh well. It's not like I've got anything better to do." Ranma pocketed the gem, then lifted his pack higher onto his back.
"Ah, I see," K said. "So now what?"
"Well, now I'm going to find this jerk and take him out."
K blinked. "Huh? You're going to... but you can't! This guy took out a high dryad! By himself!"
Ranma shrugged. "She didn't look that tough. I probably could've taken her too."
"She was on the ground dying when you saw her!"
"That's beside the point," Ranma insisted, "I haven't seen anything so far to make me believe he's any stronger'n me."
K sighed. "Didn't the dryad tell you to keep the stone AWAY from this guy? Going after him kind of defeats that purpose."
Ranma rolled his eyes. "No, she told me to keep it out of his reach." He grinned. "So long as the demon can't touch me, it can't touch the stone, right?"
"Here we go again," K muttered, "seriously though, I don't know about this 'quest'. Something's not right here."
Ranma looked back at K. "What do you mean?"
"Well, it was the way she put it," K said, staring hard at the dryad's corpse, "'he must be after the stone'. This demon apparently didn't say what he wanted, and he was probably the same one that killed those grends back there." Then K looked up at Ranma. "Besides, you heard the description! Vague, yeah, but doesn't it sound a little like that guy who passed by the Amazon village ahead of us? He was supposed to be a demon hunter!"
Ranma shrugged. "Whatever, man. He killed the tree chick, and he was probably searching for her treasure. That 'aint cool. This is about justice. Bottom line, I'm just going to find him, whoop his ass, and get this whole quest over and done with as quickly and smoothly as possible!" Then Ranma frowned. "Barring, of course, a sudden attack by a third party that's also after this rock thingy."
K blinked. "Huh?"
*Swoosh!*
Ranma grabbed K off the ground, and then jumped away from the oncoming fireball, rolling into a crouch as he landed.
*Kabooom!!* The fireball detonated right over the dryad's corpse, blowing it and much of the surrounding wood to ash.
Ranma clicked his tongue, then looked up at the source. A young woman with short hair and wings flew above the lake, wearing a set of blue upper-torso armor and wielding a red scimitar that even now blazed with magical fire.
The woman glared down at Ranma. "My name is Kiima! Surrender the Phoenix Stone to me, or die!"
__________________________________________________________________________________
Phoenix Mountain had always been a place of legend. For many of those tribes surrounding it, the Phoenix used to be a mysterious and mythical people, a race existing formally in stories, yet frequently encountered in rumors and second-hand tales.
Of course, by the time the existence of the Phoenix tribe had been largely confirmed as fact, the surviving people of China had already seen such horrific and strange things that the Phoenix were all too easily accepted, although many people had theorized that they were just a savage tribe of angels that had settled in China. The Phoenix people, who were accustomed to being seen with fear of malice, were soon treated with respectful apathy and caution.
Things hadn't remained that way. The leader of the Phoenix tribe, Saffron, had fought on both sides during the Death March. Initially, the Phoenix people were sent to raid the camps of the demonic invaders, fearful that Phoenix Mountain may fall if they let those lands surrounding it be taken.
One day, however, a peddler came to Phoenix Mountain, and had offered a gift for the demigod Saffron. That gift had been a nameless red gemstone, its center filled with glowing, molten flame.
Treated with suspicion at first, it soon became Saffron's favorite possession, and for reasons unknown to his people, suddenly began to strike out at the lands around Phoenix Mountain, seizing territory for himself. The demons were sought out, not as vermin to be slain, but as allies to be negotiated with and assisted.
"Phoenix Stone" was the name given to the jewel by Saffron himself. Though his mages never quite found out what the gem's purpose and exact abilities were, and Saffron was too fearful of being stolen to send it to a foreign land for a better wizard to study it, it was well known that the stone gave the demigod even more power than his formidable natural complement. Since then, Saffron had happily taken on the lofty title of "Demon Lord" (despite arguable assertions that he wasn't a demon at all), and was treated as such.
"My lord, Lord Thaeramon has returned, as well as the warriors we have sent with him," the winged court attendant bowed low before Saffron, one hand over his heart.
Saffron grinned as he rested his head on his fist, his elbow planted on the golden armrest of his throne. "Excellent. How many have returned alive?"
"At my count, all but three, my lord. A few others have minor wounds, but nothing that should prevent them from serving in battle, should they need to soon."
Saffron nodded. "Hm. Convenient that Doppler possessed magic that easily slew the enemies that we ourselves were so helpless against, isn't it? Do you suppose his loyalties lie elsewhere?"
The attendant shifted nervously. This was dangerous ground, commenting on betrayal and treason, and Saffron had grown somewhat paranoid over the last few years. "I... would remind you, Lord Saffron, that Lord Thaeramon holds no actual 'loyalty' toward you. Merely the terms of a contract of exchange..."
Saffron snorted and looked away, apparently satisfied with the answer.
The attendant continued. "Also, although it is almost unthinkable at how ineffective our warriors and mages were against these 'jakku', it is my understanding that many magic-users of skill are capable of dispatching them."
Saffron glared slightly at his attendant, and the man quickly silenced himself. "Show Doppler in," Saffron snapped, leaning back in his throne.
The attacks by invisible assassins had come without warning, and had increased in frequency at an alarming rate. At first the problem had been answered with simple increases in the size of the guard, but that had only added more trained guards to the death toll. When attacks had started happening within Phoenix Mountain itself, Saffron had become desperate for an answer, even sending his few skilled magic-users to their deaths in a useless attempt to stop the marauders.
Surprisingly, an answer had arrived in the form of another demon lord, a reputedly powerful sorcerer that was known as being reasonably human-friendly. He had simply arrived, with a small group of specially trained warriors, and said that he could rid the area of the enemies, which he had termed "jakku". All he had requested was for a group of Saffron's warriors to guide him through the invaded territories.
Saffron had been skeptical at first, but all the reports he had received told him that Doppler had been doing exactly as he said he'd do. Through a few spells cast at the right time, the sorcerer and his lackeys had succeeded in ridding the Phoenix kingdom of a threat it had seemed helpless against.
The price, however, was not one that Saffron looked forward to paying.
"Ah! Lord Saffron! It's been too long!" Doppler said as he entered the chambers, spreading his four arms wide as if he was going to rush up to the throne and embrace the Phoenix king.
Saffron stared. "It's been three days."
Doppler grinned and clasped his hands behind his back. "Two days longer than it should have taken, my good friend. It appears it wasn't really so simple as I thought to purge the filth from your kingdom here."
Saffron rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, whatever. Before you collect your price, however, I must demand that the man responsible for creating all these... 'jakku' is captured or..." Saffron trailed off as Doppler's grin widened.
With the danger of interrupting past, Doppler raised one of his hands in the air. "Way ahead of you, my friend. I sensed something in the Eastern quarries, and so led your warriors there on our last excursion. We found the man who created the jakku, as well as those bigger and nastier ones."
Saffron blinked. "Bigger and nastier ones?"
"Yes. He calls them 'hamakku', or 'ghost mauler' in Gothraieen. Not really important. I presume you'd like to see him?" Doppler grinned and snapped the fingers he held in the air.
A magic circle drew itself on the ground in lines of blue light, and from the circle blasted a pillar of light that eventually faded into the form of a raggedy-looking man in a dirty robe. He had brown hair that stood up on his head, and had several brown circles on his cheeks and a red triangle on his forehead that marked him as an evon. He was suspended in mid-air, trapped in a sort of magical bubble, and looked understandably upset.
"How dare you do this to me?! Don't you know who I am?! I'll have you all butcher-"
"SILENCE!!!" Saffron bellowed, standing up and spreading his golden wings. "You. You, who dare attack MY kingdom. Tell me who you are, and why you have done this."
The evon peered up at Saffron, apparently more fascinated than intimidated. "Well, I'll be. So you're that big Phoenix that keeps all the little ones in line. Wondered about you. You look a lot different then the bodies I've already looked at."
*FWOOM!* Saffron's body lit up in a fiery aura, and guards lining the wall of the chamber all gulped and flinched away from the heat.
The evon grinned. "As for me, I'm Genex Karl! Master necromancer and alchemist! What's your name, sparky?"
Saffron slowly got up his throne, his talons awash with fire. "Answer the second question, pitiful creature."
"Testing. I've been testing my hamakku. They seem to work rather well, don't you agree?" Genex grinned.
*KA-SHRAK!!* Saffron raked his claws forward, and Doppler raised an eyebrow as a stream of flame gouged into the ground of the chambers and blasted forward, engulfing Genex and hitting the chamber doors hard.
*Clack* *Clack* Little bits of charred bone clattered across the chamber floor, and many of the guards began visibly sweating.
Doppler blinked, and glanced over his shoulder at the smoldering trench of burnt ash that began just a few inches from his foot. "Nice shot."
Saffron slowly let his aura die, turning a dark gaze on Doppler. "Well... you've kept your end of the bargain... I suppose I should keep mine."
Doppler smiled pleasantly, clapping his lower hands together and rubbing them. "Ah, yes. Don't worry, I'll have the Phoenix Stone back to you as soon as I'm done with my experiments. And as for the... other items I asked for-"
"Yes, I know," Saffron interrupted, waving his talons dismissively, "I've selected twenty of my finest warriors for you to take for yourself. They're yours."
Doppler blinked, then put his upper left hand on the back of his head. "Oh, no, that's not necessary at all. Truth be told, I've already selected the Phoenix I'll be taking."
Saffron stared at him oddly. "Then you must not have selected any of my elite force; they were all here."
Doppler nodded. "Correct. I took a few out of the party you sent me, and have chosen a few more from the civilian populace. They'll do just fine. I wouldn't want to deplete your power base." Doppler didn't want to tell the demigod that he needed an equal number of male and female Phoenix, and that they all had to be fertile. The elite guard was almost totally male, and a combination of almost endless exercise and very unfortunate training accidents had damaged some of their reproductive potential.
Saffron stared a moment longer at his fellow demon lord, then shrugged and began walking back toward his throne. "As you will have it. It's only twenty, right? And none of them are magic-users? I can't afford to give you any of my mages!"
Doppler smirked. "Do not fear. It is as you have said. And the stone?"
Saffron snorted as he took his seat once again. "A servant of mine is fetching it. Once the attacks began within the mountain, I didn't want to risk the stone being stolen. I had it sent to a powerful forest guardian nearby for safe-keeping. She's a minor acquaintance of mine, and she's kept many unpleasant types away from Phoenix Mountain by guarding the pass through the great forest to the west. Dryads despise the undead, so she was actually eager to help, and she's literally rooted to that forest, so I don't have to fear her running off with my property."
Doppler clasped his hands behind his back. "Ah, well then, I suppose it should be a short wait, correct?"
Saffron was about to agree, and tell Doppler about Kiima's competence and loyalty, when the other demon lord suddenly turned, as if startled.
A moment later, the double-doors of the royal chambers burst open, and a soldier quickly dashed forward, skidding to a stop on his knees.
"My lord! Something has happened! A thief has stolen the Phoenix Stone!"
"WHAT?!?!" Saffron jumped up, his aura ablaze with fury. "WHAT HAS HAPPENED?!?! WHERE IS KIIMA?!?!" He bellowed, talons twitching.
"I... I am here... my lord..."
Saffron's aura slowly guttered as Kiima entered the throne room, assisted by two soldiers that were holding her up. She had a few bruises on her face, and several bandages were wrapped around her arms and legs. By inspection, one can see that she had been hit hard several times in her stomach and right below her breasts, as her armor was in a most pitiful shape.
The soldier that had opened the door bowed his head even deeper. "We found her at the foot of the mountain, unconscious. She tried to make it back here, but collapsed before she could make it."
"Ki-Kiima..." Saffron stuttered out. Then his face twisted into a snarl. "Who has done this?! Who has taken my stone?!"
Kiima hung her head shamefully. "By the time I arrived at the forest, I was too late to keep the Phoenix Stone from him. The guardian lie dead at his feet, and the stone was in his hands. I immediately attacked him to try and get the stone back, but..." she squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip as tears began to flow. "He... He was far too powerful. I should have known, if he was able to dispatch the forest guardian, but... within moments after the engagement I was at his mercy. After enough strikes so that I was no longer able to attack him, he simply sheathed his weapons and left. I have failed, utterly and completely." Kiima bit back a sob as fear and shame overtook her, and was barely able to hear the sound of Saffron's feet crossing the length of the chambers.
*Whack!* The two soldiers holding Kiima flinched back as Saffron lashed out, striking their patient with a fierce backhand. Kiima was launched away from them, and spun limply in the air as she flew toward the chamber wall.
*Wham!*
Doppler raised an eyebrow. "Harsh."
Saffron glared hard at Kiima, flexing his claws menacingly. "You incompetent wench... you dare to show your face to me, after such a shameful loss?"
Kiima merely slumped to the ground, her tears mixing with her blood running down the chamber wall, bereft even of the strength required to prostrate herself before her lord and master.
"I expect PERFORMANCE, Kiima. Did I not train you? Did I not equip you? Where is your blade, which has made you the victor of countless duels?!"
The first soldier gulped, and Saffron quickly oriented on him. Very slowly, the Phoenix man pulled out a red, twisted, metal object from behind his back.
"Th-This w-would be what's l-left of the fire sword K-Kshyakno, my lord." The scimitar had been bent back and forth along the flat of the blade, so that it resembled a set of stairs when one observed the edge of the sword.
Saffron turned back to Kiima. "Tell me... Who. Did. This."
"As..." Kiima mumbled softly, her eyes glazed and unfocused as blood leaked from her head and arm. "As he... left... he told me his name... Ranma... Ranma Saotome..."
Saffron's talons glowed and flexed as he rolled the name over in his head, as if he imagined slashing the name itself into pieces.
"Well, this is all very interesting, but rather depressing if you ask me. If you don't have the stone, well, I'll be off." Doppler turned around and began to walk out of the chambers.
"Wait," Saffron commanded. Doppler stopped, and turned back to look at him, an eyebrow raised. "You're leaving? Without the stone?"
"Well, not immediately," Doppler reasoned, shrugging his shoulders. "I'll stay the night, if you'll have me. It's a ways back to the Empire, after all. But yes, I'll leave without the stone. You seem to have enough trouble with it as it is. I don't want to be a bother."
Saffron stared at Doppler strangely. No matter how much he talked to the eccentric veirheelu, Doppler Thaeramon continued to totally confound him. The demon seemed, for all intents and purposes, a flighty and happy-go-lucky fool, and yet talking to him always gave Saffron the sinking feeling that he had just been robbed, or was the butt of some exceedingly complex joke.
"Very well then. The maids have already prepared a room for you. Your devil companion has already stopped in there." Saffron turned to the soldiers who had entered his court so suddenly. "Get HER," he spat, waving his hand in Kiima's general direction, "out of my sight!"
Doppler shook his head as the soldiers rushed to obey, and quickly walked out of the royal chambers, entering the greater halls of Phoenix Mountain. It was a short walk from the royal hall to the guest suites, so he was immediately able to sense Tio's power and home in on it, rather than asking a Phoenix for directions.
Reaching his room, he pushed through the doors, and beheld an extravagantly decorated room with two large beds. Upon one sat Tio, wearing a white robe rather than his regular armor.
The devil grinned as his master entered. "How did it go?"
Doppler sighed. "Well, they don't have the stone. Most unfortunate." Then he made a few gestures with his hand, and lines of mana energy began to form in the air.
The lines quickly drew themselves into arcane symbols, and then faded away as a blue pulse blasted through the room along the walls and floor.
Several blue lights appeared in various places in the room; under both beds, next to the lamp, and embedded in the wood next to the pillows and dining table.
Doppler smirked and moved his hands once more, casting another spell. This time, a translucent bubble grew around Doppler, carefully removed from the blue illuminations. Tio immediately got up and entered the bubble.
"They planted their bugs, I see. Not very clever, though I admit that it would surprise many, what with all the rest of the technology you see around this cave." Doppler smirked.
"So they bought the story, but didn't have the stone?" Tio asked.
Doppler nodded. "Remind me to thank Genex for a job well done. He did a very good job on that golem copy of himself, too. The resources that his jakku have 'liberated' have been secured and are moving toward Japan, correct?"
Tio nodded. "Yes, my lord. And you will have some Phoenix as test subjects as well. It should be interesting to see just how closely their biology matches the angels'." Tio frowned. "Though it is a pity about the stone."
Doppler sighed, bobbing his head up and down. "Ah, yes. There's just something biting about watching a plan years in the making crumble apart because of some fool adventurer hunting for treasure." Doppler smirked. "I wonder if Saffron ever wonders anymore who gave him the Phoenix Stone in the first place? Or why?"
Tio grinned. "I suspect his people do. Even though most people stop talking when they see me, I still manage to hear whispered rumors of 'the great Phoenix god' going mad."
Doppler snorted. "As usual, the general public proves to be more perceptive than their leader." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Still... I wouldn't chalk the Phoenix Stone up as a total loss." He then stopped talking, and pressed his lips into a thin line.
*Knock* *Knock*
Sighing, Doppler dispelled the bubble silencing their conversation with a wave of his hand. "Yes? Who is it?"
The door opened slowly, and an usually tall and busty Phoenix entered, clad in a short white robe that maximized the exposure of leg and cleavage.
Doppler's eye twitched slightly. "Can I help you?"
The Phoenix woman bowed deeply. "I was sent to warm your bed tonight, Lord Thaeramon." Doppler noted that she held the position for far longer than was necessary, clearly to show off her breasts even more.
Doppler waved both his left hands at her in a dismissive gesture. "Then you may go. I have no need of you."
The woman blinked in surprise, clearly not used to being rejected. "M-My lord?"
'How amusing,' Doppler thought idly, 'the foolish thing actually looks hurt.' "I have no desire for the pleasures of the flesh, woman. And Tio here... well, he prefers women with more... meat on them." Doppler smiled amiably, and Tio flashed the Phoenix a toothy smile.
The woman flinched back, unsure of how to interpret the last statement. "I-I see. I'll go then." Bowing again quickly, she rushed from the room, leaving a few feathers behind in her haste.
Doppler shook his head as the door closed. "Ah, it'll be nice to return to my laboratory. Still..."
The demon lord sat down on his bed, using his top pair of arms to prop up his chin, while steepling his lower pair of hands together in thought. "Ranma Saotome... something about this piques my interest..."
__________________________________________________________________________________
His name was Rayden Shikodan. Throughout the years, from his birth to the Death March itself, it had been his lifelong mission to root out and destroy the malevolent creatures that threatened mankind. He had survived countless battles, slaughtered scores of horrendous monsters, and consumed more alcohol than most Irish families do in a lifetime.
A demon hunter of the highest caliber, most hellspawn who had survived an encounter with him quaked with fear at the sound of his name, fearful that some dark hand might descend and smite them.
For over a decade, he had fought and stalked the forces of darkness and death, though he was at best an agent of darkness and death himself.
Today, however, he had met his match.
"Stinky demon!" *Whap!*
"Take that, you evil, evil man!" *Whap!*
"Get out of here! Get!" *Whap!*
Rayden's left eye twitched as the rocks continued pelting him. They didn't do any damage, not even the bigger ones, but they were almost as annoying as the screeching young mystics throwing them.
Rayden had known that where there's a high dryad, there's usually several lesser dryads about, but after mortally wounding the high dryad, he had expected the others to stay out of his way. And they had. For about five minutes. As soon as the sprites, nymphs, and lesser dryads learned that Rayden didn't actually lash out and kill everything that approached him, they had apparently taken it upon themselves to find out exactly where that critical line was by annoying the hell out of him.
So here he was, walking miserably through a thick, vibrant forest, being stoned by a small crowd of generally small, naked, multicolored girls. It was times like these that he almost wished he was as bloodthirsty and evil as he was often made out to be.
"Go away!" *Whap!*
"Meanie!" *Whap!*
"Tree-killer!" *Whap!*
"Dummy head!" *Whap!*
"Evil smelly monster demon killer man!" *Whap!*
Rayden grit his teeth. 'They're just little baby mystics. They don't know what they're doing. The're like kids. Don't kill the kids, Rayden. Just calm down...'
"Hey! Look up!"
Rayden jerked his head up at the voice, to see a little pink sprite about the size of his head floating at him.
"Take this! Stinging dust!" The sprite flapped its wings forward, and a grainy red dust blew forward into Rayden's face.
The demon hunter squeezed his eyes shut as the stinging began, but that didn't do anything except obscure his vision. The burning in his eyes flared hotter, and the mystics around him continued throwing their rocks and taunts with equal vigor.
'Okay... One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.'
*Clap!*
"Erk!"
The mystics all stopped short suddenly as Rayden clapped his hands sharply over the sprite hovering above him. Then he let his arms spread apart again, and the sprite floated down to the ground awkwardly, dazed.
"That's. IT." *Choom!* Rayden's hand shot out to the side of him, and his fingers sunk deeply into the bark of a nearby tree of respectable size.
*K-k-k-krreeeek...* *Kshoom!* Positioning his feet slightly for extra leverage, Rayden then tore the tree out of the ground with one arm, lifting up a substantial quantity of dirt and rock along with it.
The mystics, thankfully, got the message quickly enough.
"AAAAAH!!!"
"Run!"
"Run away!"
"Evil man kill now!"
"Scary!"
*Whoosh!* *Whoosh!* Rayden swung the tree trunk around a few times experimentally, smashing a few smaller trees out of the way in a pointlessly destructive display of his strength.
"And don't come back!" He yelled. Then he looked down, and glared at the little sprite girl who was shaking her head to clear it.
The sprite looked up.
Rayden glared down.
"Shouldn't you be running in fear 'bout now?"
The sprite blinked, then nodded seriously. "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!"
Rayden snorted as the sprite flew away, resting the tree trunk on his shoulder. "Humph. Little brats."
He was just getting ready to move on when something jarred his senses in the back of his mind. While Rayden would never be mistaken for a clever or perceptive fighter, it simply wasn't possible to survive as he had on strength and constitution alone. Thus, he had developed a crude, but functional manner of detecting powerful beings nearby.
Rayden turned around. Whatever it was he had sensed, it was no nymph, and he was fairly sure even the more powerful lesser dryads would've gotten the hint by now. "Who's there?!"
*Wssh*
A darkish blur suddenly appeared along the lower web of branches making up the forest canopy, and Rayden gripped his makeshift club tightly. However, the blur moved too quickly for Rayden to track, at least as far as lateral motion was concerned, and the demon hunter soon found himself without even a hint of a target.
*Shing!* *Wssh*
A brief glint of sunlight reflecting off metal flashed above him, and Rayden looked up just in time to see the very same blur he had observed before jump off of the tree he was holding.
*Thud* The top half of the tree Rayden was holding fell to the ground, the trunk having been cut clean through.
Rayden raised an eyebrow, then let the bottom half of his tree fall to the ground. Wouldn't be any good against something that fast, anyway.
A brief glance at the treetops, and he found his opponent: an Asian teenage boy with a pigtail, wearing leather armor and carrying a few weapons at his hip. One of the weapons was a katana, so Rayden correctly guessed that that was what was used to cut the tree.
'Impressive, though at that speed, he could've gone for my neck. What's he want?'
Rayden leaned back a bit, cracking a smile. "Human, eh? At least you look like it. I don't sense any dark aura on ya."
Ranma stared down at the enemy demon hunter disdainfully. "Yeah. Human." 'He's slow. I can tell that much. But he doesn't seem worried at all, even though I was too fast for him.' "Are you the one that killed the tree lady?"
This guy certainly fit the bill. And it seemed that K had been right about connecting him to the Amazons' description. Rayden was a musclebound giant of a man, six foot three with the frame any football player would envy. He wore a heavy brown trench coat with matching leather gloves, and Ranma could see the toes of a pair of heavy boots poking out from under the coat. Sheathed on his back was a large broadsword with an ornate hilt; the pommel held an oblong purple gemstone, and the hilt forked out into spikes that jabbed back around the handle and forward along the base of the blade itself.
Rayden blinked. "The dryad? Yeah, that was me. Wouldn't let me pass, is all."
Ranma's eyes narrowed. "I don't like your attitude."
Rayden smirked. "Then come here and do something about it, kid." Rayden stepped back, and he removed the sword from his back, sheath and all, and held the middle of it in front of him.
"There you are! Are you trying to leave me behind?!"
Rayden glanced to the side at the source of the irate voice, only to see a little dragon with metal scales. "A robot dragon?"
"Metadragon," K corrected. "And you must be the demon."
Rayden twitched. "Somethin' like that, yeah. You guys here to make s'mores with me, or are you here about birch breath back there?"
*Ssshnk* Ranma drew his katana and held it in front of him, parallel to his shoulders.
Rayden grinned. "Well, I've got my answer. Let's do this, slick."
Ranma hopped down and dashed forward, intending on disarming his foe quickly. Aiming for the blade, Ranma moved his katana opposite the direction he was moving, hoping that the unexpected application of force would surprise Rayden.
Ranma ended up being surprised, and Rayden's arm didn't even budge from the blow. Not wanting to waste the charge, Ranma quickly reversed direction after he passed Rayden, kicking hard into the larger man's back.
Rayden took the hit with a mild grunt, and then stabbed the still-sheathed sword toward Ranma. Ranma pushed off of Rayden, avoiding the attack, and then whipped around to aim a roundhouse for the other man's head. Rayden leaned back and blocked the atack his sword, and then did the same for the two lightning-quick slashes that followed it.
*Kshsngk!* Ranma pushed forward with his katana a final time, and Rayden again blocked it, before pulling back and slamming the handle of his broadsword forward toward Ranma's head. Ranma swung his head to side to let it pass, then dashed backward easily.
'Huh. He's a bit faster than I thought. With his hands, at least. I think he knows he can't out manuever me.' Ranma shifted stances and brought his katana to his side, pointed toward Rayden.
Suddenly, Rayden pushed forward, his sheathed blade positioned like a cudgel.
Ranma ducked under a horizontal strike, and then launched as many punches as he could manage into Rayden's gut before having to dodge a haymaker, followed by another sword attack. Ranma zipped back within Rayden's defenses, then hit him with a lightning-quick kick across the face.
*Bok!* Rayden returned by slamming his forehead into Ranma's earning him his first hit in the battle. Rayden thrust his hand forward, aiming to grab his opponent's shirt, only to see Ranma recover with alarming speed and weave around the attack.
*Shyk!* Rayden stumbled a bit as Ranma stabbed hard into his calf, breaking his defense.
*Kshing!* *Kshing!* *Kshing!* *Kshing!* Ranma made a quickly series of cuts into his foe's back, then pulled back a bit to charge up his dragon fist technique.
"Shadow break!" *Ka-TOOM!!* Ranma was caught off-guard as Rayden turned around and pushed a fist forward, driving a huge dark fireball right into him.
"Ugh!" Ranma grunted as he took the full brunt of the attack, and rolled backward as he hit the ground.
Rayden winced slightly as the wounds in his back began to settle. "You're pretty decent with that thing. It's time to stop playing around."
Ranma nodded solemnly and stood up, his aura building around him. "You've kept that oversized butcher knife sheathed the whole time. I won't let you get away with taking me lightly." Ranma smirked slightly at that. That weird angel girl had taken him lightly, and Ranma had sent that one home with nothing but pain for her trouble.
*Sssshng* Rayden slowly took his broadsword from its sheath, and a black glow began to encompass his form. "Darkrune's edge isn't meant for friendly matches, kid. If you die, I don't want it on my conscience that you didn't know what you were getting yourself into."
"Shut up and fight. Blazing claw!" Ranma rushed forward into a series of sword slashes, each one being followed by streaks of searing flame. Surprisingly, Rayden managed to move his own blade fast enough to block each attack, and the flame strikes dissipated harmlessly as they passed near the broadsword.
Rayden broke away, then reached a fist back. Shadow break!"
*Ka-TOOM!!* Ranma jumped up into the air as the black energy punch blasted the ground he had just left. 'It's like my dragon fist, but a little more powerful and less focused...' Ranma reared back a fist as he started his descent.
"Dragon fist!" *SshK* Rayden blocked his sword again, and the energies of the dragon punch parted harmlessly, leaving the demon hunter unscathed. But this time, Ranma was expecting it.
Letting his katana drop to the ground, Ranma ducked low and brought out his staff, jabbing it up toward Rayden's stomach while activating it at the same time.
*Toomph!* "Ugh!" Rayden doubled over as Ranma forced more pressure on the attack, but still managed to bring his sword down to the attack.
Ranma easily stepped back from the vertical slash, and then moved in again, spinning his staff around in his right hand.
*Thwack!* *Whack!* *Crack!* Ranma began to smack Rayden's head back and forth with his mithril staff in his right hand, while charging up his left hand behind him.
"Dragon fist!" *Sh-KOOM!!* Rayden took the full brunt of the Hyoken school's signature strike, and flew back with enough force to shatter a few trees that were unlucky enough to be in his unexpected flight path.
Ranma grinned as he looked over the smoldering scorch marks that identified the impact point of his attack. Then he saw Rayden get up from the ground, dusting off his charred coat.
"Man, you can take it way better than you can dish it out," Ranma taunted, picking his katana back up and deactivating his staff.
Rayden smiled disturbingly. "You 'aint seen nothing yet, kid. Dark crash!" Rayden's blade blazed with a dark blue light, and Rayden swung it high in a vertical slash as he charged forward.
Ranma quickly saw the danger, and leapt back as a black aura manifested around the sword and swept forward with a dark energy.
*Kwa-THOOM!!*
"All right, try THIS!" Ranma darted in on Rayden's side, cutting him hard with a diagonal slash before executing a powerful roundhouse that sent Rayden flying across the small clearing that they were accidentally making in the forest.
Rayden touched down with his hand, and then flipped himself upright before the force of Ranma's kick had worn off. Crouching slightly, Rayden held up one hand before him. "Burial!" A black flame burst open within his palm, and Rayden slammed that hand into the ground, sending three large waves of black energy zig-zagging across the clearing in Ranma's general direction.
*BOOM!!* *BOOM!!* *BOOM!!*
K sweatdropped as the fight pushed on, with both fighters putting out tremendous amounts of energy without doing significant damage to one another.
"Shadow break!" *Ka-TOOM!!*
"Flash fyre!" *Shree-yak!*
"All they're doing is destroying the forest," K observed, wondering if there was some way he could assist in the battle. If only he were bigger! Then he'd show everyone why the metadragon race was singled out for extermination! This demon wouldn't stand a chance!
"Dark crash! Shadow split!" *Kwa-THOOM!!* *Shyang!* *Ch-choom!* *Ch-choom!* *Ch-choom!*
"Ha! You couldn't hit the side of a reaper! Blazing claw!" *Shying!* *K-Shnk!* *Thwoom!*
"And YOU couldn't put one down! Shadow break!" *Ka-TOOM!!*
"I wonder if Ranma can really beat him..." K wondered aloud, still perched on a tree (hopefully) out of the danger zone that the two combatants had created.
*Bwak!* *Slam!* *K-shrak!* Rayden jerked back painfully as Ranma drove into him with everything he had, every movement followed by a searing blade of hot ki.
'I... I don't know how much longer I can keep this up,' Ranma confessed to himself. While his opponent seemed to be a demon, and thus had significantly greater energy stores, Ranma had only his natural ki reservoir to draw from. Granted, that was still a relatively HUGE quantity of energy, but this fellow was testing its limits. On top of that, Ranma had long ago reasoned that keeping himself safe had a much higher priority than attacking. Ranma considered himself a pretty tough customer, but this guy could probably knock out a tank!
*K-Shyk!* Ranma cut firmly under Rayden's collarbone, hoping to keep the larger man off-balance and finally wear him down. Unfortunately his opponent still hadn't had enough.
Rayden shoved his body forward, slamming Ranma back and giving him more room to act. Both his hands gripped Darkrune firmly, and he closed his eyes as the dark magics flowed through his body and washed over his tainted soul. "Red blitzkriege!"
"Grk!" Ranma jerked backward as Rayden shot forward, acting on pure instinct.
*Kshing-Kshing-Kshing-Kshing-Kshing-Kshing* Rayden's blade sliced forward in a continual "X" pattern, blasting dirt up into the air as the slashes hit the much-abused dirt at his feet. Barely keeping in front of the attack, Ranma dodged furiously, trying to get enough distance to leap away out of range.
*Kshing-Kshing-Kshing*
Ranma flinched as strike finally tagged him on the leg, and time seemed to slow down as the next blow followed immediately after, moving even faster than Ranma's usually did.
*K-tyang!*
Smoke wafted off of Darkrune's edge as it grinded helplessly against the black material of Ranma's gauntlet, having been blocked completely.
Ranma blinked in surprise. He had reasoned that blocking with his armored wrist would be slightly better than blocking with his unarmored one, but he had fully expected to lose a hand there.
Rayden blinked. His red blitzkriege was blocked by some gaudy piece of armor?!
'Here goes!' Taking full opportunity of the moment of shock, Ranma turned around, drew his katana, and then stabbed it hard backward just under Rayden's ribcage.
*Kshwick!* "Gaugh!" Rayden blanched and pitched forward as the blade slowly but powerfully cut into him, eventually emerging out him back with a final push from Ranma.
'Yes! Impaled 'im! The battle is mine!' Were Ranma's thoughts, right before he went sailing across the battlefield. *Thwack!!*
*Wham!* Slamming hard into a tree, Ranma groaned and then looked back at his opponent. Rayden was glaring rather harshly at him, and was even now trying to pull the katana out of his gut.
"No way," Ranma mumbled, getting up. "Hey! You can't fight anymore! You've got a freakin' sword in your gut! Give up already!"
"Aw, shaddup!" Rayden yelled, struggling with the katana's hilt. How did that jerk get it all the way through, in the first place?
*Snap!*
Ranma blinked as Rayden stared dumbly at the handle in his palm, now separate from the blade still stuck in his abdomen.
The swordsman sighed. "Man... this is just not my day..."
"Hey! You jerk! That was my sword!"
Rayden winced, then threw the katana hilt down in a fit of anger. "Well, who's the ass that put it there in the first place?!"
Ranma grit his teeth. "If you woulda given up, then I woulda taken it outta ya!"
"Give up? Ha!" Rayden snorted and stepped into another swordsman's stance, not aware of how stupid he looked impaled with a full-length blade. "Bring it on, small fry!"
Ranma glared at the demon hunter, and began to slowly stalk forward.
"Whoa, whoa! Let's just calm down here!" K quickly flew up onto the ground between the two fighters. "Let's just cool it! This fight's over!"
"'Scuse me?" Rayden challenged, "do I look unconscious to you?"
"No," K responded irritably, "but you look like you will be soon."
"Ha!" Rayden barked, "bring it on! I've still gotta few rounds left in me!"
Unfortunately for the demon hunter, Ranma was a little more willing to humor him than he expected, and with his attention turned toward the metadragon at his feet, he was ill prepared to bring his magic sword to his defense.
"Dragon fist!" *Sh-KOOM!!*
"Gyaaah!" Rayden was launched back from the force of the attack, and hit the ground rolling, leaving a trail of small fires and ash in his wake.
Ranma grinned at his largely incapacitated opponent. At least, he was grinning until the man rolled out of the battlefield they had created, and then dropped out of sight. "What the?"
"Waaaa-!" *Kshyk!*
K blinked. "What happened? Did he fall?"
"Fall where?" Ranma muttered, walking forward, "it's all just flat forest ground around here."
Within a few feet of where the demon hunter had fallen, Ranma could see that there was actually a pit trap planted there, covered in branches and grass. A small hole on the edge indicated where Rayden had fallen through, and Ranma hurried and peered down into the hole.
"Oh, geezus!" Ranma immediately turned away, holding his hands over his mouth.
K blinked, then followed and looked into the hole. "Good mother of Elf and Evon! That's not right! That's just not right!!" K jerked his head away, and began to scrape his wings nervously against his outer armor scales, as if cleaning himself off.
Shuddering, Ranma sat down at the base of one of the trees while holding his stomach. "I cut the guy, lit him on fire, and impaled him, but... ugh! Who would make a spike pit like that?!"
"We did!"
Ranma jerked his head to the side, somehow expecting that the high-pitched, cutesy voice belonged to a monster of hideous reputation. His aching body was extremely satisfied when he noted that it was actually a young forest nymph.
The naked blue girl smiled at him, and Ranma sweatdropped.
"YOU made that nasty thorn trap?" Ranma asked, his eye twitching.
The little mystic nodded happily. "Hmm! Thank you for killing the evil demon man!"
Ranma sighed. "Uh... yeah, don't mention it." Blushing slightly, he tried to avoid looking at the forest creature. She was young, and looked like an elementary schoolgirl, but seeing girls parade around naked had always been something that made Ranma nervous.
"Was he really evil, though?" K questioned, walking up to Ranma and climbing onto his leg.
Suddenly the nymph looked angry. "Yes! That mean man killed the forest mother! I'm glad the mean man's dead! Glad!"
Ranma sighed again, and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, he's dead, and that's that. Even if he DID survive that fall, there's no way he'd get out of there without gutting himself." He turned to the nymph, annoyed. "Hey, look, I dealt with the demon guy, so I'm done here, okay? Just lemme rest for a while."
"Oh, but you can't rest here!"
Ranma blinked, and realized that the last outburst hadn't come from the nymph. It was much lower, and almost... sultry.
"There! See? That's a lesser dryad! Those are the ones that look human!" K smiled up at the shamelessly naked mystic. He had always like forest mystics. So free and easygoing.
Ranma turned around to look, and then jerked his head back to face forward, blushing furiously. The dryad, unlike the nymph, had reached a level of maturity, and with the exception of having leaves for hair, she looked just like a well-developed teenage girl with green skin.
"So... uh... why can't I rest here?" Ranma asked nervously, trying to look at his feet. 'What's with these mystics, anyway? You don't see evon or elves runnin' around naked!'
The dryad came up behind Ranma, and then swiftly embraced him around the neck, badly startling the terminally shy fighter.
"It's all rough and bumpy out here, silly!" The dryad breathed into Ranma's ear, and after a moment, Ranma noted that her breath had a fresh pine scent. Weird. "A big, strong, hero like you deserves a good bed! And someone to share it with!" K snickered.
Ranma's face turned solid red as the sexy tree creature destroyed any thoughts in his mind except escape or submission. "Y-You're ab-absolutely right! I think there w-was a village way over p-past the forest! Let's go, K!"
Grabbing his companion by the beak to keep him from saying anything to make the situation worse, Ranma began to walk away unsteadily. His progress was complicated when thin vines burst from the ground and held his feet, stalling his progress long enough for the dryad to embrace him from behind again.
"Oh, don't be like that! We have our very own village nearby!"
Ranma shivered as she pressed her body firmly against his back, and almost didn't notice that K was thrashing about, trying to get air. He quickly let go.
"S-Sorry."
K snorted. "Yeah, you certainly are."
The nymph from before ran up in front of Ranma, and then pointed into the forest. "Come on! We'll take you to the village!"
The dryad giggled and pushed Ranma forward.
Ranma sighed. "Oh well. This probably could have turned out worse." He stopped to think. "Hey K? Did we ever get that guy's name?"
K blinked as he settled on Ranma's head (facing backward, so as to have a good view of the dryad). "No, we didn't."
"That's a shame. He was a tough dude. I would've at least liked to know his name before he died."
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Meanwhile, back at the thorn pit...
"............................ H-Hey....... a little help? ............... Hello? ................"
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End Chapter 3