The Origins of the Blood Angel Tribe:
[The blood angel is a very unique species, unlike every other creature I've ever come across.]
[Technically though, it is not even a species unto itself. The origins of the blood angels, and in many cases even their existence, is shamefully guarded by the angel tribes on Talbeern. However, I didn't find it particularly difficult to thwart them, and besides which, it would seem that the legend has already somehow leaked out into the many libraries telling of old legends. It's also, of course, heavily and accurately archived in every library devoted to the Third Brotherhood, which is the warrior cult, among the Eight Dark Brotherhoods, that worships the ancient of destruction, Kharak. Perhaps the angels deemed it safe to remain there because few outside the Eight Brotherhoods lend any credence to their legends and prophecies. Or, more likely, they had no means with which to remove it. It's not considered wise, diplomatically (or medically) speaking, to enter into conflict with the Brotherhoods.]
[After confirming the story within the angels' archives, I am now more eager than ever to begin my experimentation upon the blood angels. I had heard several rumors that the tribe was pure angel in origin, but the manner in which they were cursed may prove invaluable to my studies.]
[Kairis was the birth realm of the tribe, as well as a plane that was well known for being tormented by Kharak himself, who is recorded as the last living ancient to survive whatever great purge wiped them out. Kharak, despite being an ancient born to ravage and kill, was a being of nature; to destroy on such scale that it would upset the critical balance between life and death (in short, to kill EVERYTHING) was foolish, for without life to create life, death ceases to exist, and its reverence is lost among the ashes of those already within its cold embrace. Thus, even though he survived for eons on Kairis, the land wasn't the desolate, battle-scarred wasteland it was imagined to be. Several civilizations thrived around the dark mountain range that Kharak inhabited, and frequently weathered the ancient's murderous excursions, fleeing until the great destroyer had fed, and then rebuilding what had been destroyed.]
[The name of the angel tribe that eventually assaulted Kharak is, unfortunately, lost to the sands of time; I was totally unable to come upon even a guess as to which it was (though if I know the angels, they were merely being extra-careful to hide that secret). Their means to DEFEAT a being that was, in all practicality, a dark god, is similarly lost, but this is heavily speculated on, and far more openly than anything else having to do with this particular legend.]
[The important thing is, that angel tribe descended upon Kharak's lair, and slew the last of the ancients with surprising efficiency; only a few hundred died, it is speculated.]
[Of course, killing that which is greater than one's capacity to understand can have... unexpected consequences.]
[Ancients do not truly die. They merely take on different forms of consciousness, or are banished from certain planes of existence. Thus, even as his heart solidified with power, Kharak reached out with the shadows, and consumed the angels that had defeated him in that shadow.]
[They were tainted. Corrupted. Their bodies grew large and powerful, and were charged with dark magics; magics that tainted their souls, ravaged their auras, and burned their wings to the bone, turning the feathered wings of their heritage into sharp, blackened bone, incapable of flight. Their eyes glowed a deathly crimson, they became incapable of wielding light magic, and their bodies pulsed with the shadows, like demons.]
[This alone was enough for the angel race, as a whole, to turn their backs on the tainted tribe. But it did not end there.]
[Some tried to help them. To cure the affliction. Priests spent months at prayer, spell, and research in their attempts to purge the formerly pure souls of Kharak's venomous curse. They were, after all, heroes and saviors, burdened with a horrible disease. However, it soon became apparent that the transformation went deeper than any had imagined.]
[The term "blood angel" gained use when it was discovered that the tainted ones could gain power, not by devotion to a patron god or meditation, but through the absorption of life. This absorption was very specific in nature, and mimicked that of the ancient Kharak perfectly: the blood angels absorbed the blood of the slain. Once dead, a soulless husk could be drained of the blood it had possessed before expiring, collecting upon the wings of the blood angel, and the blood angel would gain some fraction of that power. This ability was very specifically related to the creature's aura and magic; as far as physical replenishment goes, the blood angel eats food like any other living creature. Food, however, was incapable of fueling their magical energies.]
[This presented a very grave problem, because without using such a "horrid" method of gaining power, the shadow magic that the blood angels now possessed would wane, burning away with every passing day, and they would become weaker.]
[This wasn't a notable difficulty at first; many of the blood angels swore to relinquish combat forever, disgusted with what they had become, not wanting to use the dark power they now possessed, and unable to even fathom absorbing a slain creature's blood to replenish such energies. That changed with the discovery of the Rioting.]
[Rioting is a simple and effectively expressive term given to the berserk state of a power-drained blood angel. After a length of time in which they have not consumed blood, their bodies become unable to sustain the dark energy that they are, whether they like it or not, dependant upon in order to live. At that point, certain portions of their brain shut down, and they become instinct-driven, bloodthirsty butchers, killing anything and everything that will yield fresh blood.]
[I have determined through my own studies that, unfortunately for those assigned to watch over and help the blood angels, a Rioter is not, as one may theorize, relatively weak. The blood angel's body expends all energy it has left such that it may spill enough blood to maintain itself, and were, under the influence of the Riot, the most fiercely ruthless, hideously brutal creatures that existed on Kairis until their exile. Thus, those that had promised to assist the tainted angels quickly realized that they would likely be slaughtered for their kindness, and most chose to abandon the project, or at least continue study far away from the actual subjects.]
[As for the blood angels themselves, they realized what was happening to them; that they would either embrace what they had become, or they would destroy all others around them. Being angels still, they possessed much pride and inner strength, and could not accept either outcome. So, as a community, they decided to return to the lands that cursed them, and attempt to puzzle out a cure amongst the barren mountain range, where no innocents could be hurt. It was not to be.]
[I see now that I used the word "exile" to describe what happened to the blood angels such that there are no more present in the realm of Kairis. A more accurate term would be "retreat". As soon as the remaining angel tribes heard about the Rioting, all argument for the heroic sacrifice of the blood angels ceased, and the angels moved for genocide of the corrupted, "for the sake of their fallen souls". Thousands upon thousands of winged soldiers rained missiles down upon the grounded blood angels, who fled in panic. A great many were horrified and furious about being attacked by those they had sacrificed for when they had done nothing wrong; but still, angel pride and nobility won out, and the tainted angels refused to fight their former brethren, instead retreating to a nexus and flooding into another realm. The angel tribes were hard-pressed to find reason to follow, as inter-realm invasions were notoriously difficult, and as the blood angels were hardly a threat any longer.]
[Eventually that concept of angelic pride and nobility faded from the shadow-clouded minds of the blood angel tribe, and they became a society based on warfare, moving from realm to realm, kingdom to kingdom, fighting, feeding, and breeding. It mattered not whether they won or lost a war, so long as there was death to feed the survivors' power. They fed, and moved on. Over time they forgot who they were, and thought of themselves as the demons they are constantly mistaken for.]
[They have names, too, that describe their race. And to their great disturbance, some point far too directly to their origins, even if the common minstrel has no idea what they mean; Fallen Ones. Blackwing. The Flightless. The Exiled. Kharak's Children...]
[The last one, in particular, intrigues me. In part, because I can't figure out what ever became of Kharak. When ancients die, they do not just lose consciousness permanently and then rot away; the spirits of ancients always remain, and their bodies have a habit of becoming objects of legendary power. I would very much enjoy having Kharak's heartstone for my studies. Very much indeed...]
- Entry #3572 of Doppler Thaeramon's personal scientific journal

Nexus II
by Black Dragon
https://www.angelfire.com/anime5/fanficlair

Pie!

" " human languages, {" "} demonic languages or languages different than the one in common use in a given scene, [ ] writing, ( ) smart-ass author comments, * * sounds.
If I don't happen to mention which language in particular is being spoken, then it's not important anyway.

Chapter 5
How to be a Ninja in 38 Easy Steps
***********************************************************************************

"Goddamn it. After all that mess, not only did I lose the stupid rock, but I got flung way out here. Where the hell am I, anyway?" Ranma grimaced as he continued pushing his way through the thick jungle, desperately struggling through seemingly solid walls of vines and trees.
Luckily, he had evaluated that he was relatively safe. Wherever he had been teleported to, the jungle was SO thick that no monster of respectable danger could have possibly made their home within it. Of course, Ranma still had to fend off the swarms of native-Earth insects, but at least he didn't have to worry about being fried by lightning bolts.
K was having a better time, as he was much smaller, and as the numerous bugs weren't capable of even irritating his steel-hard armor scales. "I didn't see any foliage like this when I was in China. I'd have to guess we're pretty far away from Phoenix Mountain, though."
Ranma rolled his eyes, then blinked as he realized that there was a path ahead. With the jungle canopy closing so tightly that even breathing was a chore, there wasn't much light, and Ranma didn't notice that several trees had been broken until he had almost fallen over forward, not having another tightly interweaving wall of jungle growth to hack through after the last one.
"Hey... most of these trees have all been plowed over..." Blinking, Ranma stepped forward onto the makeshift path, and followed along as the foliage became more sparse, eventually letting in enough light so that he could make out his surroundings in good detail.
"Huh... these trees were mostly ripped apart... not run over, like by tanks." Ranma frowned, then moved forward some more, looking to either side of him. Sure enough, he could see that the paths of shredded growth seemed to stretch alongside him for quite some ways. He wasn't able to tell much more, because despite the apparently high level of destruction that befell this section of jungle, it had happened long ago; new shrubs of respectable height had already grown in place of the fallen rubbish.
"Hey, what's that?" K asked suddenly, flying up into one of the taller, unharmed trees. "Whoa! What happened here?!"
Ranma frowned, and then rushed forward, quickly clearing the last obscuring walls of greenery.
What K was referring to was VERY apparent. The landscape Ranma saw before him was, to put it euphemistically, a desolate wasteland of blackened craters, jagged shrapnel, and charred bone, with the smell of death hanging in the air like a permanent fog bank.
"What happened here?" K asked nervously, flying up to land on Ranma's shoulder. From a dragon's-eye view, the entire area before them, stretching for miles and miles, was just an ocean of craters. Everywhere. Craters on top of craters. Large craters filled with little craters. Not a single square inch seemed to have been spared a high-impact explosive.
That wasn't the most disturbing part about it, though. Huge, partially broken wyrm skeletons stretched along the pockmarked wasteland, chunks of their armor plates scattered around the jagged, splintered bone formations. The wyrms, of course, didn't present any kind of danger in their present form, but the deceased juggernauts made foreboding guardians, especially as it seemed that a much larger force had battled here.
After K had finished staring uneasily at the landscape, he looked up, and realized with surprise that Ranma was shaking his head sadly. "Hey, what's up?"
Ranma sighed. "This... this is Korea."
K blinked. "You can tell?"
Ranma nodded. "Uh huh. This is the demilitarized zone, a barrier between North and South Korea. You know, when they still had governments."
K frowned. "So... what happened?"
The pigtailed wanderer walked forward and then sat down heavily on the lip of a crater, looking somber.
"Well... when most of the demons left Japan and headed for the mainland, North Korea was the first to be attacked. They responded by using their only effective weapon: atomic warheads. On their OWN SOIL. Close enough that their own settlements were caught in the impact blast. But it worked, kind of."
"Kind of?"
He nodded. "A vast majority of one of the demon armies was annihilated. They just never saw it coming. One minute there was a big hunk of metal in the sky, the next minute, BOOM, almost everyone was dead. Almost everyone."
Ranma snorted. "Besides unleashing huge radioactive clouds that spread all over Korea, it turns out that there were some creatures that happen to be immune, or resistant enough, to the effects of heat and radiation released by an atomic bomb. I only know four of 'em: jugas, dragonkin, psilors, and most devils. There weren't many of those, but there were enough to wreak havoc and disable North Korea's nuclear capabilities before the second army, I think it was the Three Legions, broke through, and crushed everyone who was left."
The he gestured out into the broken landscape. "Nobody in the rest of the world really cared much about North Korea, because the guy running the show was a maniac himself, and North Korea was obviously a really poor place to hold a defensive line. So troops from all over the world lined up on South Korea's border."
K held silent for a moment, then tentatively asked, "What happened?"
Ranma pursed his lips. "I talked to a guy that had made it from there when I was in Israel. He told me all about it. First across the border came the remnants of that first army that had survived the nuke."
K winced.
Ranma, to the metadragon's surprise, smirked. "They were totally annihilated. The demons, I mean. Many of the wyrms traveled underground, and disturbed the minefields enough so that the entire ground began to blow apart above them. They surfaced, and were brought down. It didn't even matter that we hadn't invented mithril yet; there were so many guns, rockets, and artillery all pounding this one stretch of land that everything that moved was ripped apart. The guy told me that the first few small waves of demons inflicted only eight casualties, total. After that, it was silent for about two weeks."
K stared critically at the blasted landscape, and gave a sideways glance to a nearby wyrm skeleton.
"Then came the zombies. The general leading the army of the Three Legions was supposedly a pretty slick guy; he finished killing off everyone in North Korea who hadn't managed to escape already, and then raised them as zombies. ALL of them. They say that it took days of non-stop enchanting and casting with every necromancer in the whole army, and probably from a few others, but they raised every North Korean they could find, including those already in graves that hadn't been dead for too long. And then they moved here." Ranma grimaced. "I've even heard mages that say the sheer amount of necromancy used to raise so many people permanently damaged the mana flows around here. Whatever that means. But for some reason, necromancers can't stay in North Korea for long without just dropping dead, and when people die around here, their corpses usually raise themselves. There's probably other things too, but people that're strong with magic can't stand to be around here."
K trembled mightily, horrific images bouncing into his mind. "That... that's incredible... a whole nation..."
Ranma nodded. "The army stationed here was pretty freaked at first. An ocean of lumbering, animate corpses just came at them." Then he smirked again. "They wiped the zombies out, too."
K raised an eyebrow. "There were that many soldiers here?"
Ranma nodded. "Plus helicopters, tanks, and artillery. And planes would bomb the north end of the demilitarized zone with napalm, and roast hundreds of the zombies at a time." He pointed out at the charred wasteland ahead. "Most of this was thick jungle before the battle started. The actual former demilitarized zone doesn't start until about half a kilometer over there," he gestured into the wasteland that stretched out before them. "They would have actually done more extensive bombing over North Korea, but planes had a habit of disappearing during missions, if you know what I mean. We were still unfamiliar with magic."
"So the human army killed all the zombies?" K asked skeptically.
Ranma nodded. "Pretty much, yeah. They just lumbered forward slowly, and were cut apart by bullets, blasted with artillery, or they stepped on mines. Hell, even when they came forward in such waves that a few managed to reach the front lines when they were busy reloading, there wasn't a soldier there that wasn't good enough in hand-to-hand to put down an unarmed zombie grunt. The undead were wiped out as fast as they arrived, bodies being buried under ash and shrapnel, and ash and shrapnel being buried under bodies. This lasted for four straight days."
The wanderer took off his backpack, and dug around for his canteen. "The guy I spoke to said that it stopped feeling like a war. After a full twenty-four hours, commanders were setting up schedules for meal and sleep shifts. You'd spend every waking moment spitting bullets at zombies, and when somebody tapped you on the shoulder, you handed him your gun and reload bucket - they had actually started to just hand out buckets of spare clips - and found a comfortable spot behind the lines to eat and then sleep. By the second day, people were taking regular breaks for coffee and to rest their arms, because they were sore from the constant gun recoil. Nobody on our side was dying; it was just like a big, nightmarish shooting gallery." He took a long drink for his canteen.
K, perceptive as he was, obviously saw where this was going. After all, he knew that South Korea wasn't one of the countries that had survived the Death March. "But...?"
Ranma sighed and put down the canteen. "BUT, we lost anyway, and not because of some magic spell that nobody could have seen coming. By the second day, the artillery units had run out of ammunition for their guns, which had pounded the thickest waves of zombies. So the men manning the guns helped out the front infantry by taking shifts with the rifles. They were the first ones to really notice, on the third day, that the supply convoy was late. Nobody else really noticed, or thought about it, because they had been left with a HUGE cache of ammo and supplies at their disposal. After four solid days of constant shooting, though, that cache ran dry, and the retreat was ordered. Of course, THAT'S when the Three Legions appeared."
Ranma took a quick swig from the canteen again, then shook his head as he swallowed. "The rest is history. Only an eighth of the defense forces made it to the evacuation aircraft alive, and, unfortunately, most of the rest made it to the aircraft dead, if you catch my drift. They did find the supply convoy, though; or at least, the black spot where it had been. I can't imagine how the demons thought of something like that, but I'm sure slipping by the front lines to take out the trucks and escorts was easy as hell." He again raised the canteen to his lips, and an uneasy silence settled over the man and his draconian companion.
Finally, K broke that silence. "It sounds like him."
Ranma blinked as he screwed the cap onto his canteen. "What?"
"Demetrius. Demetrius Yaermon. He was the general of the Three Legions. Specially sanctioned by the Council, his campaign in Earth Realm was supposed to be legendary victory. As you humans whittled away at the other demon armies, Yaermon kept positioning his army, used sabotage and greater magics, and won battle after battle completely. He was convinced that he was destined to cleanse the realm of its current rulers, and wipe out the humans that were holed up in the western continents."
Ranma snorted. "Yeah. And he failed. Rule #1 of Earth Realm: You screw with the U.S.A., and the only plan you'll need is a will." Then he frowned. "How come you know so much about this?"
K yawned, stretching his metal wings out before scraping them together at the edges, like knives being sharpened against each other. "I've spent a couple years locked up in various rooms and cages. Usually I have nothing better to do than read, so I'll ask a guard for a book that's lying around in whatever treasure stash I'm sitting on top of, and he won't find any reason to refuse." Then the metadragon smirked. "Also, I was mostly imprisoned in the company of demons, and demons capable of speech talk a lot about war rumors. It was big news when America killed Yaermon."
Ranma grunted and started rummaging in his backpack for food. "I'll bet. Stupid demons." He pulled out a few apples for K, and grabbed a chunk of bread for himself.
"Eat up quickly," he said, tossing the fruit to his companion, "even years later, the Korean North/South border is famous for random zombie attacks. If we go to sleep here, we'll probably be waking up at all hours of the night to fight off the undead."
K would have gulped, but didn't want his apple to land on the dirty, ashen ground, so instead he concentrated his energy on snatching the bright red fruit out of the air with his beak.
Ranma himself took out a loaf of bread and took a big bite out of it at he stood up. *Gulp* "We'll go south into the urban ruins. They're the easiest places to set up protected settlements, so I'm sure we'll find a base or village there."
K didn't answer as he gnawed away at his apple, and lifted up into the air to land on Ranma's shoulder as the young man began to wander into the wasteland of craters.
The journey proved to be uneventful, but Ranma was on his guard. The air was so heavy with the dusty smell of constant, aged decay, and the ground so powerfully radiated the unnatural energies of necromancy that his extra-sensory perceptions were totally off-center. He could FEEL danger around him, but it didn't seem to have any perceptible source; it was like feeling the humidity from a lake without even being sure that there was a lake nearby.

By the time the sun had fallen K and Ranma had crossed over much of the ashen wastes of the demilitarized zone, and they could see the beginnings of former civilization in the distance (recognizable by the presence of actual rocks that might have once been buildings, rather than big holes and fossilizing juga limbs).
Ranma also noted that as night fell, a sort of fog seemed to fall over the area, quickly reducing the already falling visibility heavily.
Despite this, he still noticed immediately when he saw a small book lying on the ground. "Hey, what's that?"
K didn't notice the book, because he was more interested in the full-grown black wyrm that was lying on the ground nearby. From a distance, with the fog rolling in, it didn't seem much different from the other corpses littering the area that were too large or resilient to decompose quickly, but from up close he could see that this body seemed better preserved than the others; understandable, since black wyrms were a good deal tougher than other types.
Ranma leaned down and picked up the paperback book. He had noticed the wyrm too, but as it was obviously dead, like everything else around here, he hadn't bothered to observe it further. An item of literature, however, sitting out in the open was worth a good look. He wasn't able to make out the title, as it was covered in blood and dirt, but the inside was still mostly clean and readable.
K swallowed the last of his apple, and then shivered as he continued observing the dead wyrm. Huge, jagged chunks of the beast's armor was missing, no doubt blown off by some manner of human weapon. Most humans were notoriously frail, but they were surprising adept at destroying things despite.
"Let's see here... it looks like a travel guide. 'Wyoming, United States: Primary industries: Importing gas and cars so people can leave, toxic waste disposal, and complex computer systems that result in geeks with weird super powers.' Odd. 'Official state motto: Coming soon - Plumbing! Official state bird: Left before it died of radiation poisoning. Official State food: Sucks.'"
K wasn't really listening to Ranma. He was staring more intently at the wyrm corpse.
"'Wyoming used to be the home of a hardy population of almost 100 people, and used to include many nature-themed attractions, by which we mean Yellowstone Park. Unfortunately, due to a mix-up at the White House, the President ended up ordering Wyoming to be evacuated so that it could act as the test site for the magitek nova bomb prototype, apparently unaware that the sparsely populated state was actually part of the nation. His staff immediately approved the site, and Yellowstone Park and it's nearby towns were evacuated just hours before the new nova bomb converted the whole Yellowstone area and its surrounding areas into a boiling lake of plasma. A giant sign was erected next to the test site after it cooled, which enjoys roughly four times the tourism of the entire state of Wyoming previous to the test.'"
"Uh... Ranma?"
"Hmm?" Ranma closed the book, and then noticed something else in a nearby crater. "Hey! It's a backpack!"
"R-Ranma..."
Jogging over to the crater, the pigtailed adventurer reached down and pulled it up. "Whoa! This is pretty heavy! Wonder who was lugging this around?" Dropping the pack on the lip of the crater, Ranma noted that most of the weight was concentrated in the large red umbrella that was mounted atop the pack and held in place by several straps.
"R-R-Ra-"
"Hey! There's good food in here!" Ranma shouted, removing several wrapped packages. "Wow. Wrapped fish and fresh fruit! Score!" Then he frowned, looking up.
"Ra... RAAAA-"
"Huh," Ranma mumbled, still ignoring K's incoherent mumbling, "nobody would leave stuff like this and just forget it. I wonder what happened to its owner."
"Grrrrrrrr... gyaaarrrr..." a low, unearthly moan floated to his ears, and Ranma shook his head sadly.
"Well, I guess that answers that question." Ranma then turned around, to try and see if he could find the body. "Maybe I can at least give the owner a... proper...... burial........."
Ranma swallowed. Facing him was the exact same deceased wyrm that he had noticed before, still quite deceased, but moving despite that. Flaps of skin and bits of gore hung from the hole-ridden, bony armor frame as the undead beast stared down at its prey, despite both eyes having rotted right out of its head. Ranma supposed that he must have been pretty out of it not to notice something so big and clumsy as a zombie wyrm moving behind him; he had been trying to use his ki senses more than normal, and had forgotten to adjust once those senses had been rendered useless by the general area.
"GrrrrrRRRRRAAAAAUGH!!" The zombie wyrm let out a guttural roar from its rotting, disjointed jaw, and Ranma squeezed his eyes shut as little chunks of flesh and gore, accompanied by a light spray of blood, peppered his body.
*Shlop!* He winced as a large, wet object plastered itself to his face. On the plus side, it didn't feel like a major organ or body part, but on the minus side, everything about this situation indicated that it was still bad.
Feeling K evacuate his shoulder and fly away, Ranma stiffly raised a hand and pulled the object off his face before opening his eyes.
"Huh. Why do I feel like I should recognize this?" The object turned out to be a bandanna, soaked through with blood and peppered with skull fragments. It was difficult to tell with the low light and the heavy stain, but Ranma guessed that originally the bandanna had been some sort of light color, with black spots on it.
"RANMA!!! LOOK OUT!!!" K screamed, flying backward across the uneven landscape as he watched the deceased pseudo-dragon's maw descend.
*Crr-UNCH!* It was too late. The zombie wyrm's broken, but ultimately functional jaw made a sickening grinding noise as it closed around Ranma's form, digging into the ashen ground.
"R... Ranma..."
The undead beast threw its head up, and then began snapping its jaws repeatedly in the air.
K stared at the scene, horrified, and allowed himself to drop down onto the edge of a crater. "Ranma... no... RANMAAAAA!!" The tiny dragon cried, squeezing its eyes shut as he felt a cold, unforgiving pain settle inside him.
"Oh, will you cut it out?!"
K's head snapped up, and his eyes widened in shock as he saw Ranma's head poke out of one of the holes in the zombie wyrm's skull. "Wha?"
"Calm down, wouldya?" Ranma reprimanded, apparently not bothered by the zombie's thrashing (though he was holding his nose shut). "I'm fine. The secret is to keep your arms and legs in so that they don't get bitten off, and then crawl deeper into the mouth. Zombies don't eat, they just kill, so as long as you stay out of the teeth you're fine."
K blinked. Then he scowled. "You bastard!! I thought you were dead!!"
"What? And now you're angry that I'm not?" Smirking, Ranma ducked back into the wyrm's skull.
"NO, I'm angry because you just stood there and let yourself get snapped up without saying anything!" K protested, flapping his wings anxiously.
"Whine, whine, whine..."
By now the zombie wyrm itself was quite agitated, as all the muscles and organs that were used to deal with food BEYOND biting it hadn't been working for quite some time. Thus, it had no way of either getting the human back into its jaws, or getting the human farther down into its body.
Being a zombie in the first place, never mind one that hadn't been directly created (this particular corpse had been reanimated by the imbalance of necromantic energy), the wyrm didn't possess much in the way of problem-solving skills. It's difficult to tell if a live wyrm would have handled the situation better, but needless to say, the undead beast simply continued to snap its jaws violently, perhaps hoping that human would slide back down into them.
"Aha! Here we are!" *Crack!*
*Thud!* The wyrm's skull fell heavily onto the ground, having had its neck severed, and possessing no other tissue capable of holding the 200 pound dead weight to the rest of the body.
Of course, the rest of the body didn't exactly have anything keeping it up either, and had been separated from its primary control center. *Crash!*

K frowned deeply as Ranma pulled himself out of a hole in the wyrm's carapace, and turned away sharply as the wanderer approached. "You are SUCH a jerk."
Ranma smiled brightly, and then kneeled down to pat the metadragon on the head. "Awwwww... were you THAT worried about me?"
"Yes, I was!" K said in a huff, drawing his wings and head down.
"All right, fine, I'm sorry I worried you." Still smiling, Ranma snatched the tiny dragon up and perched him on top of the backpack. "Now how about we eat all this guy's stuff and move on, huh? He 'aint gonna use it."
K sighed and nodded, not really feeling up to remaining angry at his escort in the middle of a dangerous, zombie-infested wasteland. "Okay... so what's in there?" Then he winced as his tiny stomach growled (which made a noise that was really more like the sound of a golf ball inside a dryer than a growl). Odd. Apples weren't that filling, but he had eaten relatively recently and was still REALLY hungry.
Ranma began digging around in the backpack. "Man, how did this guy get a hold of all this stuff? Do they sell this kind of stuff anywhere NEAR Korea? And it's not old, either!" Marveling at the food items, Ranma started taking out the plastic bags with various fruits inside, from lush red grapes to ripe tropical mangos. After that came a box with several sandwiches in it, and some butcher paper with well-cut fish filets that didn't look to be more than a day old.
"Huh... that's weird... this is isn't in any Asian language... looks European..." Ranma was staring intently at the print on the box containing the sandwiches. It was written using the roman alphabet, and didn't spell out any words that he could recognize, in any language. Also, there were no translations. "Looks like it's French or Italian or something. Hmmm... musta gotten it at a U.S. base somewhere." American military outposts were well known for being the best and most reliable sources of supplies and aid, and they had inevitably become the centerpieces for many of the more prosperous wasteland settlements. They were also the only place Ranma could think of that would sell sandwiches and fresh fruit like this, since most of the supplies were imported.
*Groan*
Ranma raised an eyebrow and looked down, having heard a dismayed noise from his small metallic companion. Nothing really seemed to be wrong, however; K had ripped open the bag of fruit and was eagerly devouring a mango, so Ranma couldn't imagine what his problem was.
After checking around to make sure there were no zombies in the vicinity (it had occurred to him that perhaps he had simply been mistaken in where the noise came from), he went back to digging through the backpack in search of useful items.
"Not much other than clothes and camping gear." He already had enough of his own, and such things didn't sell for enough that it was worth carrying around along with his normal load.
*Groan!*
Ranma looked back down to see K panting with his head resting on the ground, surrounded by the ravaged rinds of three mangos and several bananas. "K? You all right?"
The metadragon squeezed his eyes shut. "I... my stomach... hurts... oh... I think I'm gonna be sick..."
Ranma blinked repeatedly, then moved back, an embarrassed expression on his face. "Oh! Oh! Sorry! Heh, can't be helped, really. I'll wash as soon as I find somewhere to do it." He had been carefully preventing himself from using his nose to breathe, so for the most part he had forgotten that he totally reeked of rotting flesh. Having chunks of chewed human spat out at you and then digging around inside a massive zombie had that effect.
"N-No..." K mumbled weakly, shuddering.
Ranma adopted a look of sincere concern, and kneeled over the metadragon while scanning for any physical signs of harm. "K? C'mon, snap out of it! What's wrong?"
In moments K's health seemed to deteriorate, and he began to thrash wildly on the ground. "I... my... AUGH!! AAAaaassssSCRREEEEEEEE!!" A high-pitched screech, like the sound of a rotary saw slowly digging into a plate of steel, cut through the night air as K's normal telepathy-modified speech was suddenly stripped of the necessary mental augmentation needed to make it intelligible.
Ranma winced, but leaned down and tried to hold the metadragon down in a prone position as best he could. Unfortunately, he had no idea if he was even supposed to do that much. Ranma was, despite being a seasoned traveler, ignorant to most diseases that could affect humans, never mind dragonkin. Then again, how could he even be sure that K was sick? Perhaps it was all the necromancy and stuff? Of course, he could fully explain just about one complex law of magic for every ten diseases he could describe (totaling one complex magic law and eleven common diseases), so he wasn't much better off in that case.
"K... Hold on! I'm gonna get you outta here!" He gently picked up the struggling metadragon, ignoring K's agonizing screams, and quickly located his pack.
*Chomp*
Ranma froze as he felt his belt go taut, and then go slack again after something was ripped off of it.
Looking down, his eyes widened as he beheld K gripping one of his spare .50 caliber ammunition clips in his front claws and chewing furiously on it.
"Uh... K? Why are you eating my ammo?" Ranma asked curiously, watching as the tiny dragon gnawed like his life depended on it.
*Chomp* *Krink* *Scrank* *Krrrunch*
Ranma sweatdropped as K ate the casing of the clip and then snapped up the bullets one by one, only chewing a few times before swallowing the mangled projectiles mostly whole.
Ranma frowned at this. On the plus side, K didn't look like he was suffering any more, but on the minus side, Ranma didn't really know what to do about having his companion eating items that were, in all likelihood, something of a health risk when ingested.
*Chomp*
Ranma blinked as he felt another tug on his belt, and then shouted in surprise as K ripped the other two spare clips free of his belt before jumping down to join them on the ground.
"Hey! That's my spare ammo! Don't eat that! Stop! K....... aw, man..." Ranma massaged his forehead as the metadragon continued to eat, hoarding one clip close with his tail, while biting the top off the other and then holding it up in the air with his beak, such that all the bullets rolled straight down his throat.
Ranma's eye twitched, but then turned around while rubbing his chin. "So... K eats metal now... okay, fair enough. I mean, he's MADE of metal, more or less, so it's not that strange." After a moment of thought, Ranma suddenly smiled and turned back toward his companion. "Hey K, I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere, all right?"
*Gnash* *Crunch* *Chomp* *Gulp* K ignored him, totally engrossed in the process of devouring the large red umbrella's metal parts.
Ranma sweatdropped, then turned away again and began to search the ground inside the craters, picking up all the little shards of metal that were spread haphazardly throughout. A great deal of shrapnel had been tossed around in the battle that had taken place here, so Ranma had no doubt that there'd be plenty of metal for K to feast on without having to feed the metadragon useful items.
It wasn't long before he had collected many pieces of varying shapes and sizes (there had been enough choice that he was able to turn down any pieces that looked particularly sharp; he didn't know if K's throat was metal on the inside too, but he did know that he had absolutely no idea how to perform the Heimlich maneuver on a winged serpent).
When he caught sight of his draconian friend, Ranma was surprised to see that he was finishing off a metal pole. Probably the pole of the umbrella. What made it surprising was the sheer speed with which K had eaten the other objects; Ranma was sure that he'd be finished with the umbrella by now.
Then Ranma's eyes widened as he noticed that his backpack was lying on its side, ripped open. The metal rings and zippers had been torn off, and at a glance, it was clear that everything of metallic construction was missing. Including the last of his .50 caliber clips that Ranma didn't keep on him, his canteens, cooking ware, utensils, compass, and other miscellaneous traveling necessities.
Ranma grit his teeth and was about to scream at the little dragon when something struck him; if K had gone into his backpack, then obviously he had finished up the umbrella soon after Ranma turned his back. If he had finished eating the umbrella, what was that he was munching on now? He didn't have any poles on him, and the final inch or so of unscathed metal was too well-preserved to have been found lying out in the wastes of the demilitarized zone. Well, he did have ONE pole on him, but that was...
Eyes wide as dinner plates, Ranma very slowly looked down toward his belt.
Then, trembling violently, he looked up again, just in time to see the last of his mithril-plated weapon get snapped up in the metadragon's beak.
Time seemed to slow down to a crawl as K's tiny, pointed tongue darted out of his mouth and wrapped up against the outside of his lower beak, slowly sliding across the edge in a draconian imitation of someone licking his lips.
"Oh, YEAH! Mithril is tough, but it is sooooooo good!"
"K, YOU LITTLE BASTARD!!!"
The metadragon jerked forward in surprise, then turned to see what he assumed to be a towering fire elemental stomping toward him.
If it weren't for the figure raising its right fist malevolently and displaying the black, gem-laden gauntlet, it might have been some time before K realized that the approaching being was in fact his human companion.
"You... you... you..." Ranma simply repeated that word over and over as he slowly stalked forward, raising both his hands in such a way that it looked like he was preparing to strangle something. "YOU ATE MY STAFF!!!"
K blink-blinked. "Yeah. Tasted awesome, by the way."
"DIE, YOU LITTLE WRETCH!!!" Ranma screamed, punching the ground hard and sending a wave of fiery ki toward the baby dragon.
"Meep!" K jumped into the air and took flight as the fiery blast rolled under him and detonated in the middle of the crater he was sitting in front of. A fire attack wouldn't have really hurt him so much (he was all but fireproof, though the impact blast would have been painful), but he was somewhat shaken that Ranma was so angry.
After a moment of hovering, his stomach grumbled some more (or screeched, whatever), and that nervousness gave way to annoyance.
"Hey, chill! So what if I ate some metal pole? Get a new one! What's wrong with you?!"
Ranma's entire body twitched. "Get a NEW one? A NEW one? A brand new, ENCHANTED-head, MITHRIL-plated, REINFORCED auto-pneumatic EXTENDABLE combat staff?! Are you out of your tiny mind, or is that just a big hunk of metal, too?! Do you have ANY idea what I went through to GET that thing?!"
Considering what the answer obviously was, K took way too long to provide it. "............ Well, no, not really."
"AAAAAARGH!!" Ranma clutched his face with both hands and fell forward onto his knees. "When I bought that, mithril was at the height of its demand! It took weeks for the smith to forge it right onto the compressor in the perfect size for it to work! He screwed up THREE TIMES and made ME pay for the mistakes since it made him waste materials!! I PAID A GODDAMN DRAGON'S HOARD FOR THAT STAFF!!! YOU UNDERSTAND THAT, YOU ALLOY ADDICT?!?! A FREAKING REAL DRAGON'S HOARD!!!"
K continued to hover in silence, digesting that information. "Dude. You got ripped off."
"AAAAAAAAUGH!!" Ranma fell to his knees and began honestly sobbing as he realized that the single biggest monetary investment of his life was truly lost forever within his companion's digestive tract (it didn't occur to him that he would be able to retrieve at least the metal again through the course of that digestion. Not that he would have cried any less if it had).
In his state of distress, he almost didn't catch K's hungry look as the metadragon stared at him. Or, not exactly at him, but at something on him.
"WHAT?!" Ranma yelled. "What more do you want from me, huh? The little steel loops on my boots? The BUTTONS ON MY VEST?? What else?! The coins I have in my pocket?! My gu-" Ranma's mouth jerked to a halt as he realized with startling clarity the only metal object of significant size he had on him.
K lunged for the holster on Ranma's belt, beak snapping as he darted through the air at full speed.
Fortunately for Ranma, he was WAY faster than K was. By the time the metadragon had even realized his target had moved, Ranma was already a good ten meters away, and holding his Nighthawk .50 caliber pistol behind his back protectively.
"You get your filthy beak away from my gun, or I swear on every Goddamn temple in Taer'Kul that I'm gonna gut you and use you as a new canteen!!" Ranma grit his teeth and breathed heavily, feeling the strain as his anger fought his determination to NOT kill his friend.
K hovered in the air, grinning. "Oh, come now... it's just a gun... not even made of precious metals, like that staff..."
Ranma's eye twitched. "The only way you're getting this gun is if I feed it to you the hard way, you got that?!" Then again, Ranma wasn't even sure if a bullet could hurt K. He did have all that metal armor.
"What's your problem?" K complained irritably. "It's just a gun! You can buy a new one!"
Gritting his teeth, Ranma forced himself to calm down, though he still made sure to keep a good distance away from the metal munching dragon.
"FIRST of all, this was a gift, all right? From someone who was very close to me. So it's not just whether or not I can get a new one. SECOND of all, since you haven't noticed, this is the only weapon I have left! I broke my sword stabbing trench coat guy, and now you ate my staff and extra ammo! I only have twelve shots before I'm forced to use hand-to-hand!"
K considered that for a moment. "So? You seem really good at hand-to-hand."
"THAT'S NOT THE POINT METAL HEAD!!!" Ranma yelled angrily. "And THIRD of all, I don't have the money to go buying up guns of this quality! Thanks to you I have to buy supplies to replace everything that had any metal in it, plus ammunition! I've only got $20 American, some spare change, and a little sack of gold coins!"
K blinked. "Huh... $20 you say? American?"
Calming slightly, Ranma crossed his arms over his chest. "Yeah. 'Cause the US outposts act as supply centers and accept US cash, a lot of settlements ended up using it too. And it's more stable in value than gold, too, but still, nobody turns down gold anywhere."
K continued to stare at Ranma semi-thoughtfully as he hovered in the air. "So... $20 American... how much does that buy?"
Ranma frowned. "Why are you so fixated on the $20?"
"Because it's paper," K answered honestly, "and gold is not."
A long moment of silence passed between the two traveling companions, the air dead. Every flap of K's wings, as sharp and efficient as the motions were, seemed to pulse through the stillness of the night like the sound of a drum, beating to the rhythm of isolated life.
"Uh... I think I'd better fly away now!"
____________________________________________________________________________________

"Graaaaaa..." "Hraaugh..." "Muuuuuh..."
In the small field next to the South Korean border (where it used to be, anyway), a small group of zombies milled around brainlessly, groaning into the fog that obscured the night. Nobody was sure why the zombies congregated in certain areas, but then, the only people adept enough with magic to understand in the first place why the undead spontaneously sprung from the North Korean wasteland avoided the area like the plague it probably was.
The zombies, raised of pure unstable necromancy, had no master, no command, or direction. For days upon years, until finally too much of their brains rotted away to remain active, they shambled along the craters of the demilitarized zone, drawn by some unfathomable energy flowing through the Earth, as well as the zombie's single driven purpose as a destroyer of life.
*Thack!* A knife, thrown from the shadows, embedded itself in one zombie's head, causing the animated corpse to stagger as its brain was pierced by sharpened steel.
*Tack!* *Thunk!* *Thwack!* Several more sharpened throwing blades struck the undead's head, all of them deliberately thrown as to avoid smashing the zombie's skull like an overripe watermelon.
"Very good. Finish now," said a voice from the foliage beyond the undead gathering.
*Whsh* A light chakra, designed for maximum accuracy and initiative, zipped through the air into the rotted gathering, slicing right through the afflicted zombie's neck with such ease that the circular blade didn't make a sound as it ripped through its target.
*Thud* The re-deceased man stumbled to the ground, his knife-infested skull rolling along behind him.

Behind the shadowed protection of the foliage, a tall man in a black bodysuit retracted his arm and began to take stock of his remaining weapons.
Beside him, an elderly man in gray robes nodded. He had large, heavy wrinkles, was fairly short but not absurdly so, and also had a long, gray beard, though the top of his head was bare. "Good. You improve much, David. It not long now before you get rank of full Ninja."
"Thank you, Master," the tall trainee said in Japanese before stepping back.
The elderly man nodded. "Kim, you next. Use many knife, one throw."
Another man stepped up out of the line of trainees behind the lines of foliage, of which all of them were wearing the same type of black, skin-tight bodysuit.
As the trainee named Kim moved up toward the gathering spot to take his shot, a ghastly moan was heard from behind the line of trainees. Oddly enough, the Ninja ignored it.
The zombie lumbered along with surprising speed toward the row of crouching youths, and then raised its arm in a wasteful preparation for a clumsy attack.
*Shick!* One of the trainees, whose tight-fitting bodysuit identified her only as "female", stood up and made a lightning-fast motion with her arm, and in the next moment the zombie stood shock-still, as if frozen. Then a wash of blood spilled over the corpse's shoulders, and it toppled backward, its head rolling off into the bushes.
This encounter was ignored by the rest of the group; being able to behead a single zombie in melee combat was hardly an accomplishment even worth watching.
Kim had slipped four throwing knives out of his thigh pocket and had taken them into his hand. Taking a deep breath, he moved his hand forward in a sharp, jagged motion, designed to subtly manipulate the paths of all his weapons.
*Thack!* *Thack!* *Wssh* *Thwip* Two knives stuck solidly in the face and chest of the target zombie, with the third just grazing a shoulder and the fourth missing by centimeters.
Kim merely stood rigidly, awaiting the response to his failure.
"You improve. Take other zombie on right and practice. Natalie, you-" the old Ninja master stopped suddenly.
"Master Matsute? Is something wrong?" The female Ninja asked, readying her arm blade once again.
The old man narrowed his eyes. "Possibly. Something come. We be ready to go. Ancient proverb say: 'He who know not when to flee often get spleen ripped out and eaten.'"
The trainees all sweatdropped.
"I take it you weren't exactly quoting from Sun Tzu's Art of War, huh?" David remarked dryly. Nonetheless, the Ninja all moved into more mobile positions, awaiting whatever was coming. If Matsute had noticed it, it had to be something more dangerous than a human zombie; such creatures never approached with enough energy to startle anyone. More likely it was one of the other zombified creatures that had risen in the shattered wasteland, like a wyrm or juga.
They all had their own expectations. However, none of them had anything to do with a tiny, panicking dragon made out of metal.

"YOW!!" K yelled, blasting through one of the thin walls of foliage that had formed near the south end of the demilitarized zone.
Immediately he realized that he had run into a pack of zombies, but even as small as he was, the creatures really didn't present any real danger without any weapons or control.
"Get outta the way, you stiffs!!" Spreading his wings out fully, K did a barrel roll while flying foward, his blade-edged wings slicing haphazardly into the surrounding deceased.
Blood spattered onto the ground in a mess as the metadragon shoved through, and then took to the air to try and reach the relative safety of the trees.
The Ninja continued hiding, even as they all stared critically at the metal-plated dragon, wondering what such a creature was doing out here, and why it looked to be in such a hurry (since it obviously had little to fear from the common zombies).
"N-Now Ranma! Just c-cool it! Violence is NEVER the answer!" K shouted hopefully toward the wall of trees he had come from, not completely cognizant of what exactly he was saying.
*Snap!* *Rustle* The sounds of heavy boots moving carelessly through the brush was heard from beyond the foggy clearing, and a shadowy, human shape emerged, stalking forward at a brisk, perfectly steady pace.
"Come on, man! I'm sorry! I told you I was sorry! We'll find more gold!" K babbled thoughtlessly.
Ranma's eyes narrowed even further as he looked up at the tree branch. "We?" He asked, ignoring the zombies that took notice of him and began lumbering forward.
"Ah heh heh heh..." K chuckled nervously. "Well... I can help! I can talk to people you don't understand, and, uh..."
*Thrak!* One zombie ventured close enough to touch Ranma, and for its trouble, the pigtailed wanderer punched straight through its head, snapping his arm back to his side before the inanimate corpse even started to fall to the ground.
"Er... I suppose that I could share all the information I have! I know a lotta stuff about demons and all!" K said semi-cheerfully.
*Shrak!* Ranma grabbed and ripped off the arm of one zombie attempting to punch him, and then flipped the arm up in the air before catching it again at the wrist. *Thock!* He then deposited the rotting limb into its owner's mouth, knuckles first.
K gulped. Ranma didn't seem to be getting any angrier at him, but the displays of brutal violence were quite intimidating. Being a metadragon, K was notoriously tough despite his size and youth, but Ranma, as a human, quite exceeded any conceivable concept of "tough".
Ranma growled as he launched a lightning side-kick that took a zombie's torso clean off. He was trying to stare down his draconian companion, but to be honest, venting on the pack of undead was proving more therapeutic than he would have guessed, and he felt his urge to try and build a toaster from K's hollowed-out armor quickly fading.
"Grrrrrrrr..." "Muuuuuuh..."
Ranma snorted and raised his left fist into the air, streams of fire coalescing up his arm from nowhere. "Flash fyre!" He yelled, sending thin waves of flame cutting into the small group to his left. The zombies, being of cheap and unstable make (even for zombies), had huge, flaming gouges cut into them from the attack, and quickly lit ablaze.
Ranma cast a bored, apathetic gaze toward the few remaining zombies on the other side of him, and casually swiped his left hand in that direction. The undead beasts were quickly engulfed in flames, and began struggling mindlessly as they collapsed onto the ground, fire consuming their broken, fragile bodies.
Up in his tree, K gulped and held his head down with his wings covering it, hoping that it made him look especially cute and harmless. Which it did, but Ranma was concerned with other things at the moment.
Frowning deeply, Ranma stuck his hands in his pockets and glared openly at the shrubbery below K's perch. "All right, I know you're there, and I know you're alive, so you might as well show yourself!"
There was hushed command issued from behind the foliage, and after a few moments, Ranma was faced with the ominous sight of a row of black-clothed figures stalking toward him through the trees.
"Oh, great," he mumbled irritably, "Ninja..."
One of the shorter figures stood forward and crossed his arms over his chest.
"Begone, sorcerer. This territory belongs to us, and you're encroaching upon it. Withdraw at once, or suffer the consequences."
Ranma and K (who had just realized that there were people under him), raised an eyebrow each.
Then a low chuckle came from behind one of the taller Ninja trainees, and the old master stepped forward through the haze of fog into the clearing.
"Ah, Kim, you do well to note that this one not sorcerer. Ancient proverb say: 'Do not judge a pimp by his duds.'"
Everybody present sweatdropped, though the trainees all nodded respectfully.
Ranma scratched his head. "What the hell are a bunch of Ninja doing out on the edge of the Korean demilitarized zone? And why do you all speak Japanese?"
"We don't owe you any explanations, vagrant," the Ninja who had spoken before, Kim, said snidely. "Leave. Now."
Ranma's eye twitched, and he felt some of his recently faded frustration return. "You know, I'm getting real sick of your attitude, jerk."
The aforementioned jerk smirked. "Oh? And what are you going to do about it?"
*Th-wack!* The Ninja trainees all flinched back as their companion was sent hurtling into the foliage, launched by a snap kick that very few of them saw coming.
Ranma snorted, and was about to turn back toward the old man, when he sensed movement behind him. A quick glance down confirmed that a kodachi had been positioned before his neck, ready to slice open his throat at the barest twitch from the person behind him.
"On your knees, now," David commanded, "Natalie, go check if Kim is alright."
Ranma, predictably, didn't do as he was told. "You an American?"
David blinked. "Wh-What?"
"You sound like it," Ranma said conversationally, "and you're pretty tall for a Korean. It's just that I thought, you know, that an American would know better than to attack, with a knife, someone who's armed with a gun."
*K-click* The taller man gaped as he realized that he now had a pistol barrel pressed to the side of his head, and froze in disbelief.
'How the hell did he draw and aim without me noticing?'
Ranma smirked slightly as he stared straight ahead. "Your blade or my bullet. Which do you think'll kill first?"
"David!" The female Ninja of the group shouted in distress. All around, the other trainees trained their weapons on Ranma, but didn't dare to throw them.
Beads of sweat collected on the American's brow. "N-Now just d-drop the gun... nobody has to die... just-"
"Oh, will you knock it off?!" Everybody present blinked in surprise as the pretty much forgotten metadragon shouted in irritation. "Ranma, you KNOW you're not gonna plug the guy. Stop messing with him!"
The pigtailed fighter snorted. "Man, you're no fun, you know that?" With a slight twisting motion he shoved himself back into the Ninja while angling his elbow up to knock the kodachi away from his neck. A moment later David frantically ducked under a roundhouse kick, only to get punched away a moment later.
"Too slow, loser!" Ranma laughed, jumping away from a number of projectiles that were launched toward his back.
Backflipping and landing in a crouch, Ranma slowly rose and raised one hand in front of him, beckoning for the others to attack.
Only, the others were quite absorbed with staring in horror at their American peer, who apparently hadn't possessed the dexterity, after being struck in the jaw with a corkscrew punch, to dodge the projectiles that had missed Ranma.
The pigtailed wanderer blinked, then winced. "Ouch. I hope those weren't poisoned or nothing."
Then he sweatdropped as he was exposed to the hostile glares of seven other armed Ninja, who began to ready their weapons and advance.
"Stop!"
Luckily, the trainees all winced and froze at their master's shout.
Ranma raised an eyebrow as the aging Ninjitsu master stepped toward him, shaking his head at his students.
"I very disappointed in you. Foe appear and attack one of our own, and you all rush right ahead like brawler? I training Ninja, not professional hockey team!"
The students all winced and hung their heads sadly. Matsute slowly approached David and evaluated his condition briefly.
"David, you do good. Approach well. Still get ass beat good, but technique good too." He turned. "Natalie! You pull knives and shuriken out of David, yes?"
"R-Right away, Master," the young woman said, rushing to the American's side.
The old man frowned at the other trainees. "The rest of you take good look at what happen! Learn lesson! Lesson one!" He pointed at Kim, who was standing again, if dizzily, and holding his head. "To provoke stranger on ground, to face, and when stranger have gun is very, very stupid! Ancient proverb say: 'Talk trash to armed man when cops no looking, and you asking for cap in ass!'"
"Yes, Master," the trainees mumbled while bowing (though the gesture might have been caused by the weight of the sweatdrops on their heads).
By this time K had decided that Ranma's anger had passed, and so had his own sudden lust to ingest processed ore, so he floated down onto his companion's shoulder. "Man, what is up with the old man?"
"You got me," Ranma muttered, "though you can't really argue with the whole 'wisdom' thing."
"Lesson two!" Matsute pointed to the other trainees. "Never assume that your weapon will hit! Always must plan for worst case! Would add proverb, but you all see what happen."
"Yes, Master..."
"Lesson three!" The master continued, not changing the particular people he was addressing. "Never assume you faster or more skilled than target! You all see stranger beat Kim, then David, and you all attack! You no straight attack superior enemy, not even if you have many ally! Ancient proverb say: 'What wrong with you?! Have you no seen Jackie Chan movies?!'"
"Yes, Master," the trainees echoed once more, feeling rather silly about the whole situation.
Matsute nodded sharply. "Good. I hope you also note technique and skill that stranger use, and learn from it. Is level of skill that expected from true master of Shisou style Ninjitsu."
Finally, the old man turned toward Ranma, a serious expression on his face. "Finally, lesson four for you. It not wise attack many Ninja in front of Ninja master, even if you very strong. Ancient proverb say: 'Is stupid to attack group of Ninja, especially before Ninja master.'"
"Uh, that's almost exactly what you just said," Ranma informed him dryly.
Matsute smirked dangerously. "That because I make proverb."
"Riiiiiight..." Ranma mumbled. "Look, you're a real fossil man, but I wouldn't exactly call you aaaAAAAYAAAAAAAAH!!"

*WHAM!!* Ranma's totally unexpected flight ended with him sailing into and through one of the larger, heavier trees surrounding the area, causing an explosion of splinters to rain over the thin foliage.
K was likewise caught totally off-guard, though since he wasn't the target, he merely experienced the shock of having his perch violently ripped out from under him. "HOLY MOTHER!!"
Matsute stood calmly on the edge of the clearing; to the common observer, it merely appeared as if he had simply moved much closer to where Ranma had been standing.
"Note now, I attack while stranger busy being wiseass. This give advantage, as stranger not notice me build up energy for attack." The Ninja trainees all nodded seriously, giving their full attention.
"Hey now old geezer, you'd better watch it," K protested, "this guy isn't to be taken lightly!"
"What the lizard said," Ranma muttered irritably, slowly rising. Glaring at the Ninja master, the wanderer turned his neck fully to either side, dull popping noises coming from his aching body. "You won't get away with that."
Matsute nodded as the young man began to stalk toward him. "You note now that stranger get right back up and press attack. In other martial art, this considered good thing; show great will and inner strength. In Ninjitsu, is commonly known as 'stupid'."
"Why don't you shut your mouth old man, before your dentures fall out," Ranma growled, preparing to launch forward. Then, he suddenly realized that he could see the slightest tensing of the Ninja master; obviously the old man was prepared to move, and would do so well before Ranma was going to reach him.
A mere twitch of motion and the aging master became a blur. Ranma was already moving into a defensive stance and preparing to recover from a lightning-fast hit, but to his surprise the blur merely split into two separate blurs and dashed off into the surrounding fog, where they became indistinguishable from any other vague, shapeless image that he could see.
With his senses still a little off-kilter, Ranma was grimacing as he watched several flashes of light appear from seemingly random point all around him. "This... is going to hurt."
*Wham!* *Pow!* *Smash!* *Crack!* Waves of Matsute-shaped ki images burst out of the fog and slammed into Ranma one by one, knocking the adventurer straight into the path of the next image, such that Ranma soon found himself being batted around in the air by pulse after punishing pulse of unreasonably solid kinetic energy.
*Thud!* As Ranma landed heavily on the ground, the master Matsute landed in front of him, facing the trainees.
"You note now that I use environment to advantage; what enemy cannot see, he have considerable difficulty hitting. Strategy essential to combat! This what happen to person that not use strategy!" Matsute pointed at Ranma. Ranma twitched violently, and began to push himself off the ground.

Off on the sidelines, the female Ninja Natalie chuckled. "What a fool. He keeps getting up only to be put back down."
"Fool? Ha!" K hovered over to that general area, glad to be close enough to see the fight through the fog, but far enough away so that he didn't risk getting clobbered. "Taking on a wyvern or a black wyrm by yourself is foolish! If your master is half as wise as he makes himself out to be, he'll back down before Ranma gets serious!"
Kim snorted arrogantly as he rubbed his tender bruises. "Oh, I'm sure. You back him up now, but the guy's obviously out of his league!"
K fumed as several of the other Ninjas nodded in agreement.
A moment of silence passed as Ranma stood up fully and cracked his back into alignment.
Sitting on the ground cross-legged, David frowned. "So, uh... who was it that took on a black wyrm?"

"I've had about enough of YOU!!" Not waiting for the old man to gather strength a third time, Ranma immediately launched attack after attack, throwing waves of punches at his opponent.
It didn't really surprise him that none of them seemed to connected. Every image that he struck at seemed to fade away as his fist pounded through, forcing him to readjust his next attack at the slightly more stable image that suddenly formed several inches back. To his credit, Ranma was gaining ground and punching at such a rate that Matsute couldn't find a good opening to either attack or gain good distance.
Matsute CERTAINLY wasn't going to allow this young punk fresh off the sand dunes to actually touch him; it would be a hideous tarnish upon his reputation among his students. But at the same time, the young man was actually holding out far better than he could have possibly expected, especially considering the wounds he had already taken. Was it possible that this boy wasn't human?
After a moment that he spent dodging two knife-hand strikes and jumping over a quick sweep, Matsute decided that it was not. The teenager appeared completely human to his mind's eye, and not even as spiritually powerful as the Ninja master had guessed. Really, Matsute had to assume that he was faking this seemingly invincible constitution.
Ranma, meanwhile, was desperately trying to work out a strategy while throwing out as many low-energy punches as possible to buy himself time.
Unfortunately, not being able to let up your attacks while also trying to decide upon a long-term course of action is a difficult thing to do, and a slightly more powerful kick, with a split-second longer recovery time, was all that the Ninja master needed.
*Thwack!* Ranma jerked backward as an open-palm strike slammed into his solar plexus, and was distracted enough that he couldn't even make out the next attack, which sent him hurtling a good two meters away before he slammed face-down into the ashen ground that spread across the general area.
Matsute landed lightly an arm's length away, shaking his head sadly. "You get hurt bad, and still you get up and fight. Why you do this? Why you get hurt over nothing?"
Ranma twitched, and slowly rose up so that he was sitting on his legs, facing away from the aging master. "Why? Why?! I don't lose to wrinkled old humans, you geezer! I've killed things that hit way harder than you!"
Matsute snorted. "I not doubt it, though you have lot of arrogance and bravado for someone in this day and age. You think wandering in wastes for as long as you obviously have teach some humility." He shook his head sadly, and clicked his tongue. "Well, no can be helped. But out of respect for you strength stranger, and because there really no good reason for us be fighting, I willing to call this off on draw. How that sound, boy?" The aging master grinned. He knew that the wanderer would never accept; for someone who obviously had so much pride, accepting a "draw" that was really a surrender would have been far more humiliating than simply losing honestly.
These were exactly Ranma's thoughts, though he didn't phrase them very well as he mumbled unintelligibly.
"What was that?" Matsute asked, raising an eyebrow.
Ranma slowly turned his head, and the Ninja master realized with alarm that the young man's left hand was glowing with a dark red aura.
"I said: DRAGON FIST!!" Ranma stood as he twisted around and thrust his punch forward.
Matsute quickly pulled himself out of punching range, leaping back more than double Ranma's arm length.
And was thus blasted dead-on from the ki burst, which extended well beyond Ranma's knuckles to ravage the surrounding Earth with angry flames.

The Ninja trainees watched with wide, disbelieving eyes as their master was thrown violently backwards, trailing wisps of smoke and gusts of flame.
*Thump!* They all winced as the elderly man hit the ground and skidded to a stop, leaving a short trail of ash on the ground behind him.
Ranma got up, dusted off his left arm, then smiled at the group of Ninja with his hands on his hips. "Lesson five: Never assume that you know your enemy's limitations! Ancient proverb says: 'Press your attack, before they strike back!'" He grinned as he held up his index finger, as if making a point.
*Whack!* *Thud!* Then the pigtailed warrior fell to the ground unconscious, having been bludgeoned from behind by Natalie.
"Hey! You cheap punk!" K shouted angrily.
"Ninja don't really entertain such concepts as 'cheapness'," David said reasonably. Then he got unsteadily to his feet. "Hun, Chang, you two pick up Master Matsute and bring him back to the village. We're leaving."
K blinked. "What? What about us?!" He asked, jabbing a wing at his insensate companion. "If you just leave him like that, he's completely vulnerable to zombies!"
Kim stared down at the metadragon disdainfully. "And how is that our problem?"
K glared harshly at the Korean Ninja. "If something happens to my friend because you left him out here, I'm going to do some terrible things to you..."
The trainee made a snorking sound as he choked back a laugh. Then he dropped down into a sitting position, balancing on the balls of his feet, and drew a dagger, which he held right in front of the tiny dragon. "Oh? And what are you going to do to me, lizard?"
*Chongk!* Kim blinked in surprise as K bit the blade of his dagger right off, and then turned it in his mouth, so that the dagger point was pointing wherever his beak was.
"Ptoo!" *Thack!*
"EEEEYOOOOOOW!!"
The rest of the Ninja trainees, preparing to leave, watched in great interest and some disgust as K spat the dagger blade right into Kim's ankle, causing the Korean to jump around on one foot while he tried to extract the weapon.
It wasn't long before he managed to do so, and he glared hatefully at the metal-plated dragon as he gingerly put his foot back on the ground. "You little son of a-"
"Kim!" David shouted irritably. "Stop digging yourself into another hole and carry the stranger back to the village!"
"What?!" The Korean protested. "Why?! Ow!! Stop biting my foot, you little-"
Fighting the urge not to laugh at watching Kim being harrassed by a creature a tenth his size, Natalie helped David to stand up, and pulled one of his arms over her shoulder. "Are you sure it's wise to bring him with us?" She asked.
The American shrugged his shoulders as best he could, trying to look nonchalant with his body pressed against the shapely Natalie. "I have to agree with the dragon; we can't just leave him out for the zombies. And Master may wish to have words with the one who defeated him." Then he smirked. "And perhaps this will finally get Kim to think twice before he opens his big mouth."
Natalie snorted, watching the Korean start to drag Ranma along the ground by the legs, only to have K bite his leg. "Not bloody likely." Then her gaze softened, and she shuddered slightly as she stared at the insensate wanderer. "Still... I have a bad feeling about this..."
____________________________________________________________________________________

{"All of them? Dead? It's not possible!"} The ogre growled, slamming his fist on the steel table.
The vicoid clicked its mandibles rapidly in distress, then dropped the large, bloody load it was carrying on its shoulder.
*Whump* The body of a large, muscular man in the shredded remains of a trench coat was dropped unceremoniously onto the floor, whereupon he immediately began generating a puddle of blood atop the concrete floor.
{"Yes. All of them except Ta'arn and me. He came out of nowhere! Destroyed everyone!"} The vicoid insisted angrily, kicking the humanoid on the floor.
A second ogre, who was noticeably missing an arm, raised his remaining hand, which gripped a large broadsword around the sheath.
{"We no lie, boss! Human thing move too fast, cut too strong! And have big sword, too!"} He dropped the blade onto the massive steel table and then gestured to the stump of his right arm, as if trying to convince his leader that the sword he had carried like a human would grip a pencil was a great deal larger than it appeared.
The lead ogre stared critically at the sword.
{"Don't touch the handle,"} the vicoid hissed, {"if you touch the grip, and not the sheath, it releases some sort of lightning shock. This thing had no trouble wielding it, so he must be immune to the effect or something."}
The ogre at the table frowned at the sword, then leaned over to stare at the blood-soaked body that was lying on the floor of his raider group's base settlement.
His group of raiders, like many other groups of organized demonic bandits, were escaped creatures that had managed to flee near the tail end of the Death March without being vaporized by the strengthened human armies. Such creatures usually made much better raiders than free-born, wandering beasts, in the sense that they usually possessed the rationale and discipline not to kill and eat each other until they actually got hungry.
The group had settled in what used to be a bunker in the jungle wasteland of North Korea, and had remained there during the final years of the war as the humans struggled to try and gain some sort of foothold on the land they had lost during the conflict. They had been successful, and had grown strong and reliable over time, which was a rare thing for demons of their caliber.
So having the his two remaining men carry in a bloody corpse and declare the rest of the lot dead was the sort of thing that seemed beyond possibility, like having one's entire world crumble right in front of him. {"What... What happened?"}
The ogre underling shrugged helplessly. {"Not know what say. Human-looking thing come, shout at us about 'Carrot'-"}
{"Kharak,"} the vicoid corrected immediately, {"apparently this... thing was associated with the Third Brotherhood somehow."}
The boss, however, was staring at his subordinate ogre. {"How did you understand him?"}
{"He spoke perfect Gaerieth, oddly enough,"} the vicoid mused.
{"So then he just start cut up people! Throw black lightning! Explode Granor! Everything he touch explode in blood or black fire!"} The ogre was shuddering mightily by the end of his report.
The vicoid picked up where his companion left off. {"Eventually though, the fool fought deeper into the quarry where we were feeding and hit a bad wall; tons of boulders and old equipment fell right on top of him. He actually managed to dig himself part-way out, but me and Ta'arn were waiting and beat him to death with boulders before he could get his bearings."}
The boss ogre narrowed his eyes. {"Beat him to death."}
The vicoid cocked its head to one side, as its bug-like eyes themselves weren't capable of expressing confusion. {"Yes... is that a problem?"}
*Pap*
All three creatures jerked back as a wet glove slapped onto the edge of the table and took hold.
{"Don't any of you nitwits know how to take a pulse?"} Rayden mumbled dangerously, slowly pulling himself to his feet, thin streams of blood still leaking down his trench coat.
The vicoid screeched incoherently, and immediately drew a shortsword and stabbed down into the back of the demon hunter's neck, where it sunk nearly an inch before it could pierce no further.
Rayden merely growled and threw an arm back, grasping the insecticoid warrior by the front of its head.
*Sk-Krack!*
Rising to his feet, the lead ogre swallowed nervously as he watched one of his two remaining men get his skull snapped clean off of his neck. {"Wh-Why are you here?! What do you want?!"} He shouted.
Behind him, Ta'arn back fearfully into a corner, cradling the still-bleeding stump of his right arm. {"Please! No kill! NO KILL!!"}
Rayden stood up fully and wobbled slightly, as if in a daze. Then he reached a hand behind him and yanked the short sword out of his neck.
{"No mercy... No mercy for your kind..."} He whispered. Every pore in his body screeched in agony; every muscle screamed for submission. His coat was in shreds, and his shoulders and parts of his arms had abrasions that dug down to his bare muscle. His head was a mess of large, ragged cuts, and hideous globs of mixed bodily fluids oozed from deep puncture wounds in his chest and stomach.
Very slowly, he smiled. {"I am here to fight. To kill. To feed my blade with the life of you and your pathetic little band."}
{"I can pay you,"} the boss offered, backing up toward one of the war hammers on the sparsely decorated wall. {"Just leave, and I can give you whatever riches you want!"}
Rayden coughed, and then he spat a mess of blood onto the steel table. {"You disgust me. Begging for your life in front of a wounded foe. I despise nothing more than a WEAKLING, MARAUDING AS A TITAN!"} To emphasize his anger he slammed a fist onto the steel table, causing the legs to instantly buckle, and the table body to fall down on one side.
Consequently, Rayden's enchanted broadsword slid down the length of the table and landed at the demon hunter's feet.
With a practiced motion, he struck the handle of the weapon with his foot, and then snatched the sheathed body as it bounced up.
{"Come on, you worthless dogs. Spend your last moments fighting. Die like warriors, and not like cattle! Oblivion awaits!"}
*K-SHNG!*
____________________________________________________________________________________

Ranma had learned, through the experience of being captured several times, that it wasn't a good idea to simply snap open your eyes and gape when the first thing you felt upon regaining consciousness was a type of dull agony usually associated with people who had been run down in traffic. It could lead to all sorts of bad things happening, since most of the time when you felt that way, it was because the people that held you in custody had done something terrible to you to make you feel that way in the first place. As soon as you were conscious again, you were once again a threat, as well as a possible candidate for torture. Really bad stuff.
Thus, he immediately began to fight the pain-filled haze that clouded his mind, while at the same time resisting any urge to make various pain-related noises, or moving in a suspicious manner.
'Okay... first thing to do... organize thoughts... last thing I remember... fighting a Ninja... I was standing victorious over that little old guy... then the next moment...'
"Son of a goblin snuck up on me!!" He shouted, jerking upright in his cot.
It hadn't worked any of the other times he had been taken prisoner, either.
Natalie, who was about to apply a wet compress to his head, blinked rapidly in surprise. "I-I'm s-s-sorry!"
Ranma stood still for a moment, not looking at the young woman next to him. Then he frowned.
"Ancient proverb... something about pimps?"
Natalie sweatdropped heavily.
Shaking his head in an attempt to get his bizarre post-knockout memories in order, he turned toward the girl tending to him. "You're one of the Ninja people. So why are you fixing me up instead of cutting me up?"
The Ninja girl smiled softly. "Please, don't be like that. We had a misunderstanding back there in the dead zone, but then, that area tends to make people a little tense. You obviously had no harmful intentions when you met us." Her smile grew bigger. "Also, we all agree that if Kim hadn't opened his fat mouth, then there wouldn't have been any fight. This isn't the first time that the idiot has gotten himself into trouble, and ended up dragging several others into it as a result."
"Ah," Ranma muttered. "So you didn't leave me out there to be zombie food. How long was I out?"
Natalie frowned. "Two and a half hours. You should really lie down. Your injuries... are..."
Ranma stood up straight and then leaned backward, stretching out the kinks in his body in preparation to leave. Wincing, he immediately straightened up again, and noted two important things: 1) The girl had a point; his body was in pretty bad shape, and 2) he was buck naked.
"Meep!" He immediately fell back into the cot and yanked a sheet over his lap, blushing.
The young woman giggled. "Oh, calm down. I was the one who undressed you, so it's nothing I haven't seen before."
Ranma twitched, and was about to say something rather scathing about that, when he realized that his right hand was still covered by his mysterious gauntlet when everything else had been stripped off of him. "Why didn't you take the glove off?"
Natalie frowned. "We couldn't. I even got David and Hung in here to help, but it wouldn't come off no matter what we tried. We eventually decided that we couldn't possibly remove the gauntlet without removing your arm with it, so we just left it on."
Ranma raised an eyebrow, then stared hard at the artifact.
Then, grabbing it around the wrist armlet, he pulled it off of his right hand. It provided slightly more resistance than a normal heavy glove would, but it came off easily enough, and Ranma tossed it on a medical table before examining his right hand.
Natalie blinked. "Oh! Is there some sort of hidden latch on the wrist?"
Ranma shrugged. "It's just weird, is all." Lowering his hand, he turned toward the Ninja girl. "So, can I get my clothes and what's left of my gear? I was sort of heading down into South Korea..."
"Oh, but you are in South Korea!" Natalie explained. "The Shisou Ninja clan is based in the urban ruins of Seoul. Many of the survivors built towns in the ruins, and they were joined by many refugees from Japan."
He blinked. "Ah. That would explain what a Ninja clan is doing here."
Natalie nodded. "Yes. Our master, Matsute, is one of the last remaining true Ninja, trained in the ancient arts for use as an assassin for the prime minister of Japan, before the war. When Tokyo renovated and Japan rose once again as an empire, Master Matsute fled to Korea to avoid being forced into service with the new government, which is embroiled in superficial power struggles with internal factions all the time."
Ranma scratched his head thoughtfully. Last he heard the New Japanese Empire was consumed with taking back the land that had been ravaged in the war and lost to wild demons. But then, it had been quite a while since he'd visited his homeland, and he'd never had much of an understanding of politics.
"When Master Matsute arrived here, he set up this school in the hopes of teaching humans skills that could help them defend themselves and others in this day and age where a gun can't always do the job."
Ranma nodded his head. He could certainly appreciate that. "Okay then. Sorry about beating up the guy then. And your friends."
"Oh, it no trouble at all," said an old, jovial voice in broken Japanese, "it long while since been hit like that, you know. Was good fight."
Ranma turned his head, and watched as Matsute entered the room, with K nestled in his arms. The old man had gauze bandages wrapped around his head and arms, but overall seemed to be in less pain than he was.
"How you feeling, Ranma?" K asked, looking quite content resting on the aging master's arm.
"Good enough, I guess." Ranma glanced at Natalie, then pulled his sheets a little closer to himself. "Though I could really use my clothes right about now."
"That come later," Matsute insisted, obviously unconcerned with Natalie's presence. "You friend K explain many thing to me. I very impressed." He smiled. "It been very long time since I lose fight. You show good strategy, inner strength, determination and great will. I want teach you, and take you on as student here."
K snorted. "I tried explaining that you're a fighter, not an assassin, but he wouldn't-"
"So when do we start?!" Ranma shouted enthusiastically, jumping up (while making sure to hang onto his sheet).
*Thud!*
Ignoring the facefaulting metadragon, Matsute nodded. "We begin tomorrow. You do special exercise, and learn technique to bolster fighting ability, not just sneak around, yes?"
Ranma nodded, grinning. "Right. I wanna learn that multi-form trick, too! Gimme something I can do some damage with!"
"Very good, very good. It night now, and you still injured, so you have question before you go to bed?"
The newly inducted Ninja trainee nodded seriously. "Yes Master, just one."
Natalie and K leaned forward slightly in curiosity.
"If you were born and raised in Japan, how come you talk like that?"
*Thud!* *Crash!* The female Ninja and the male dragon both fell to the floor face-first.
Matsute, oddly enough, answered the question seriously. "It for effect. Make seem much wiser and more experienced. Nobody know why."
"Ah," Ranma mumbled contemplatively. "Whatever. What do I do now?"
Matsute snapped his fingers. "Tad!"
Ranma blinked, and Natalie groaned.
After a few moments, a young man only a few years younger than Ranma came crawling into the room silently, like the way a Ninja would crawl across a ceiling, carrying Ranma's clothes. Except that in this case, he was crawling on the floor.
"Tad! Get up!" The Ninja master ordered, snapping his fingers again.
Nodding sharply, the trainee leapt up and flipped his body around, similar to the way a Ninja would leap from the ceiling onto the floor.
*Crash!* And fell onto his head, due to a little restrictive hitch known as "gravity", with Ranma's clothing falling in a heap all around him.
"This is Tad," Matsute informed Ranma, pointing to the heap on the floor. "We train him wrong, as a joke."
The mentally unfit Ninja stood up, and then stared critically at Ranma. "You're one of them, aren't you?!"
Ranma blinked. "Who?"
Tad jumped back, looking shocked. "What?!"
"Huh?" Ranma responded.
"GYAAAA!!" *Wham!* Tad, apparently horrified by the exchange, turned and attempted to flee to safety, an effort that was significantly impeded by the wall.
"Well, he's got lotsa character, doesn't he?" K muttered, sitting down at Ranma's feet.
"Yes, all of it bad," Natalie muttered.
"That not matter now," Matsute explained to Ranma. "Shisou clan base is stationed in abandoned office building, and only have two level available for housing students. Each room set up for two people." The aging master raised two fingers. "At present, only two people no have roommate, and have rooms to self. Natalie, because she only female trainee, and Tad, because he idiot loon and everyone hate him. You have choice of roommate."
Ranma blinked in surprise. "Wait, so I can either room with her," he pointed to Natalie, who flushed slightly, "or him?" he pointed to Tad, who was busy pulling splinters out of his forehead.
Matsute nodded, pointing to the female Ninja. "Natalie senior pupil, very dedicated to perfection of martial arts, practices full-body massage technique as hobby, and prone to spontaneous episode of nymphomania."
The busty young woman blushed harder, but didn't attempt to deny the description.
Matsute then pointed at Tad, who had finished plucking all the splinters and was now poking the wall, as if looking for weaknesses that would allow him to bypass the entirely visible doorway standing two feet to his right. "Tad hobby is speaking with invisible leprechauns. He also keep dead spider as pet. Would list Tad's medicinally recognized mental illnesses, but only have hour and half before have to teach class."
Ranma frowned. Then he stared at Natalie, who smiled and shrugged. Then he turned to stare at Tad, who was looking at K and licking his lips.
Then the pigtailed warrior smirked. "Oh... I get it... okay..." then he walked up to Tad and threw an arm over his shoulder. "Well, I guess we're roomies then!"
Matsute stared at Ranma like he was as insane as his new roommate. So did K and Natalie, for that matter. "You is serious?"
Ranma chuckled. "Sure. I know what this is. You give me a seemingly obvious choice as a test to measure my devotion to the art and my ability to resist temptation, right?"
Matsute raised an eyebrow. "Ah... sure. What you say. Whatever."
K looked up at Natalie. "Guess it's you and me, babe."
Ranma blinked. "What? You're not staying with me?"
"Hell no!" K insisted, jabbing a wing at Tad. "I think that screwball wants to eat me!"
Looking down at his new roommate, and taking careful note of the manner in which Tad scraped a fork and knife together while staring intently at the metadragon, Ranma had to admit that K had a point.
Natalie sighed and scooped the dragon up. "Come on, little guy. I don't think I can massage something without actual skin, but it couldn't hurt to try."
As the young woman left the makeshift infirmary, Ranma began to wonder if he had made a mistake.
"Well then," Matsute said, clapping his knees, "you should get to bed now, I must teach class soon. I see you tomorrow, after you get sleep. Or after Tad trick you into empty elevator shaft. Good night."
The Ninjitsu master opened the door to the hall, and then turned back toward Ranma. "Ancient proverb say: 'A good companion make good company.'"
Ranma took some time to consider this, purely by the virtue that it was the first "ancient proverb" Matsute had mentioned that didn't sound entirely idiotic. "So... are you saying I'm in good company?"
"I saying you stupid!" The Ninja master shouted, before rushing out and slamming the door behind him.
Now alone with Tad, Ranma frowned and scratched his head. "You ever have one of those ideas that you think is really clever and noble, that righteously resists lust and greed, but completely backfires on you?"
Tad nodded seriously. "Yeah, just once. Turns out I wasn't really pregnant, though."
Ranma's left eye twitched. 'This doesn't bode well for the rest of my stay here...'
____________________________________________________________________________________

Doppler stretched his upper pair of arms as he stood upon the ledge overlooking the demonic horde below.
{"Now remember, you'll only have a short time to complete your task. Haste is key,"} Doppler chided, using one of his lower arms to shake a finger at the juga commander before him.
Jugas were large, powerful demons that resembled armored robots more than biological creatures. Mounted on two thick, taloned legs that tapered into a much wider torso, most jugas stood at least ten feet high without their wings spread. Their heads were crested helmets with small eye holes and a small, unobtrusive jaw with sharp teeth, and their arms were massive, ending in large, scythe-like claws. Their entire bodies were covered with thick, spiky overlaying scales that were notorious for being impervious to heat, electricity, radiation, and most forms of magic, but were somewhat vulnerable to piercing weapons (such as vehicle-based machine guns). They also possessed large, plated wings that were usually retracted into the juga's back, but could be spread for limited flight. They were savage and proud demons, with no affinity for magic and a level of strength that exceeded expectations for something of their size.
This particular juga held the unusual position of being leader of a rescue operation. Demons and their bestial underlings were not famous for their loyalty or devotion; they'd follow and listen to just about anyone, so long as they had gold and food, but for such creatures to actually attempt to liberate another spoke of a kind of bond one rarely saw outside of the Dark Brotherhoods.
The juga commander nodded toward Doppler. {"Your assistance is greatly appreciated, Lord Thaeramon! Though your... friendship... with these vile humans is somewhat marring of your reputation, I'm certain our Lord Yaermon will see to it that you are properly rewarded for your help. Though I must criticize how long it took you to lend your aid."}
Doppler shrugged helplessly as he finished stretching, adopting a more casual pose. {"There's not much I can say about that; attacking a critical, heavily defended facility deep in the heart of the most powerful nation in the realm isn't the sort of proposition that just begs to be taken up."}
The juga snorted, but said nothing as he approached the edge of the cliff.

Once he was out of earshot, Doppler turned toward Tio, who was standing patiently nearby. "I really do hate this whole plan... it's far too direct for my liking."
Tio raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Then why do you support it still?"
Doppler bit his lip and scratched his head. "Amazingly enough, I really couldn't think of anything better than this. It's why I hate fighting Americans."
"Too clever?" The hybrid devil offered.
"Too greedy and violent," Doppler explained, "it compensates almost entirely for any lack of intelligence. Did I ever tell you about the dig in New Zealand?"
Tio, now VERY interested, shook his head.
The veirheelu mage sighed and massaged his forehead. "A complete disaster. A crevax mage was using golems to dig up an artifact of unusual power deep in the mountains, so I got Junnral to contact the United States and ask for assistance with an extermination raid, since it was trying to control that area to prevent incursions into the South Pacific. Junnral sent in a squad of vicoids and a few dragoons, and an American base promised some 'fire support'. I myself was planning to have him place some teleportation runestones and transport anything of value to a safe location once the mage was destroyed."
Tio smirked. "And?"
"They sent a squadron of bombers and blasted the entire area to rubble, destroying Junnral and the crevax." Then Doppler turned away bitterly. "What's worse, when I arrived there a day later to look for what the mage was excavating, some corporation named 'Halliburton' had already stripped the area of everything of value and was shipping it away under heavy guard."
Tio snorted, trying to restrain outright laughter. "What is the world coming to, when men partake of the wisdom of demons? It's almost enough to make you want to admire the little wretches."
Doppler smiled despite himself. "Oh, I admire them very much! You have to think highly of any race that's so devoted to warfare, despite being so ill-suited for it."

A ways past the two chatting demons, the juga commander was wrapping up his inspirational speech to his small army below. It was a diverse group, consisting of most every race that had settled on Earth that held blatantly evil tendencies, and even a few of those races that didn't, such as evon and lycanthropes.
{"You all remember,"} The juga bellowed down over the cliff, {"how those pathetic rats in the European union cowered before the onslaught of the Three Legions!! You all remember who laid waste to the resistance in the East, and thwarted the American war machines again and again!!"}
The demonic commander gripped his claws into a fist before him. {"Even now, with our great Lord Demetrius in their grasp, STILL they cannot destroy him!! For five cycles of the moon, they've held him, and locked him in their cell, attempting his execution, and STILL he lives on, invincible, immortal, indestructible!! He has defied the humans and succeeded, even as the remains of his army slowly rots upon the fields of the eastern continent!!"}
Great cheers, mostly in the forms of unintelligible grunts and growls, came from the crowd below, and the demon commander lowered his claw.
{"We go now, into the HEART of the human slime, to retrieve our master!! And, by our strength, we will see him given his proper throne, as RULER OF THIS MISERABLE SPHERE!!"}

Doppler watched impassively as the army below erupted into chaotic cheering, working itself into a furious mob.
"It's like watching a bull give a speech to the cows before he charges headfirst into an electric fence. As much as I belittle the humans, it's no wonder we lost the war."
Tio grinned at his master's evaluation. "He is a fool, but at least he will serve some purpose before he dies. Not all of his kind are so lucky."
The pair sobered up and remained silent as the juga commander approached.
{"Lord Thaeramon, are you ready?"}
Doppler nodded. {"You have placed the talismans as instructed?"}
The juga nodded, so Doppler began making several complex gestures with all four hands.
*Ssssssssh* Pure blackness somehow possessing the consistency of liquid seeped up from the ground and grasped Doppler and Tio, engulfing both their forms in thick, murky darkness. After a moment, archaic runes etched themselves into the shadowy substance, and it solidified into full-body armor.
The juga stared oddly at them. {"What is this?"}
{"Simply a protective spell, friend,"} Doppler explained while he began casting the teleportation spell. {"Not all of us possess such remarkable natural protections as you, and this particular spell has the dual advantage of making us indistinguishable. I must maintain my 'marred reputation' for getting along with the humans, after all."}
The juga again snorted disdainfully, then stalked over to the radius of the teleportation circle.
Doppler smirked at the commander's back. 'So it begins, little pawn. And for you... so it ends, as well...'
____________________________________________________________________________________

Area 64, American military base, facility codename: Gallows. Location: Arizona, near the city of Phoenix. Primary function: the official destruction and disposal of high-energy units.
"Right this way, Colonel," instructed the captain of the guards to a military official, leading him toward the heavy reinforced doors.
Stopping at the control panel next to the entry vault, the captain entered a passcode and then put his eye up to an optical scanner. Within moments heavy gears on each side of the vault doors began to slowly open the heavy barriers, allowing entry to the first level of the facility.
The Colonel noted the shiny, rust-colored sheen on the vault doors, and nodded at it. "Adamantite?"
The captain bit his lip. "Adamantite plating. Just added a few weeks ago. They're tossing out mithril alloys these days as fast as they can come up with them."
The doors finished opening, and the captain led the military officer inside the facility.
"As you were probably told prior to coming here, Gallows used to be a magic technology research facility designed for high-energy experimentation and containment. It was here that the nova bomb was developed." The captain gestured around at the first floor's equipment, which was mostly security devices and meters measuring activity below.
The Colonel nodded. "And now it's being used as a big execution facility for that Yaermon freak." The officer shook his head. "Mind telling me how and why that thing is still alive?"
The captain shrugged. "There is no 'why' really, just the 'how'. This fellow's a psilor, see, and they have this trick where they assume a state of pure energy." He stopped at another panel in front of the elevator, typed in a different code, and once again put his face up to the optical scanner. "In this state, these things can do all sorts of things: electrocute people, fire energy, go through walls and such. And supposedly, they can't be killed like that, either."
The elevator doors opened, and the Colonel and his escort stepped inside.
"Thing is, at least according to the evon we have helping us in our Military Research divisions, they can't hold that state for very long, because they bleed energy like crazy, and in that state, energy is all they are. This has been confirmed by our own forces, who've taken down a number of the freaks on the field. Try and stay away for forty seconds or so, and they'll turn solid again, and from there you just put enough holes in 'em."
The captain sighed. "The trick is, this thing's been holding his form for months, since a while before we even captured him! We've figured out ways to contain him, to sedate him, to move him, and restrain him, but we can't bloody KILL the freak! So we converted the third floor of Area 64 into a big electric pod, and trapped him inside. Basically we're just waiting for him to get tired and drop his energy form; the second he goes fleshy, he's fried."
The Colonel shook his head. "I remember a time when radiation was the strangest thing that war could unleash. Now we have these damn monsters coming out of magic gateways and crap..." He sighed. "What happened to the good old days, when men all fought and killed each other over who's religion was the best?"
The captain smirked and shrugged. "Seems a bit petty nowadays, sir."
"You're right... so why, exactly, am I here?"
The captain sobered immediately. "At the President's direct request, we are to have a strong and fully capable military presence at the base and in the facility at all times until the prisoner is finally silenced, sir! Up until yesterday, Colonel Tarlock was in command, but he has been recalled to a more active role in assisting a new expeditionary force!"
The Colonel pursed his lips. "Was he a human from some backwards third-world country, or are you talking about THAT Colonel Tarlock?"
The captain looked hesitant for a moment. "... THAT Colonel Tarlock, sir. The dragon."
The officer nodded slightly. "I see... well, whatever. So long as he's on our side, I suppose."
*Ch-Chung!* The elevator reached the third floor below ground, and the doors slowly opened.
"Well... here he is, Colonel..." The captain mumbled.
The officer nodded slowly as he stepped forward, his eyes locked on the imposing enclosure ahead.
Covering a vast majority of the room was a massive, transparent enclosure that had huge ribbons of electricity pulsing through it at seemingly random intervals. Sitting in the middle of the electric storm was a single cylindrical energy-based enclosure that glowed a soft yellow, turning red when the bolts of deadly energy pierced through it.
In the middle of the tube, floated Demetrius.
He wasn't a particularly large or frightening creature; certainly not as intimidating as half the monsters one could find in the expeditionary logs nowadays, but even floating there, trapped, possibly moments away from being destroyed, he managed to exude a sense of power and subtle might.
Demetrius was about seven feet tall, and in his energy state, his body glowed a pulsing, flowing mix of blue and white ambient energy. The energy formed a large, humanoid-shaped body that lacked any defining characteristics other than size; it lacked any muscle definition or genitals, had no mouth or nose, had feet and hands that were simply solid pads rather than segmented manipulators, and its eyes were simply empty black slits, slots of void in the midst of a body of roiling power. Oddly enough, his energy form did have hair, or at least, a strangely formed mass of energy that resembled hair; a spiky cascade that started above the forehead and swept back down beyond the shoulders, tapering off to several points ending mid-back.
"Well, damn... what's his killable form look like?" The Colonel asked, turning back to the captain.
The captain scratched his head. "I haven't the slightest. Hell, the day I see it will be the day this fellow gets fried by enough amperage to power Vegas for a week. I heard he's supposed to look pretty human-like, though."
The officer shook his head. "Right... what's the security like? Chances of this freak getting loose?"
The captain snorted. "Slim to none. See those things that keep shooting lightning bolts in there, and the generator that keeps that force field up? Can't be turned off."
The Colonel raised an eyebrow. "They can't?"
The captain smiled. "Nope. They said there were a bunch of concerns about parasites or mind-control spells getting into guards and people and releasing this fellow. President didn't want that, so he ordered everything to be built without an off switch. There's no way to turn off the juice without taking down the main plants down in the city or the underground power lines, plus the back-up generator underground. And there's no way to turn off these big, armored machines without destroying or dismantling them, and we don't have the equipment on hand in the facility to do either. The only way we figure somebody could get this bastard out is direct assault, and we've got enough guns in the military base nearby to ensure that it won't happen."
The military officer took a long look around the complex, and at the various armed guards and scientific personnel. "Gotta hand it to Bush. When he decides to execute somebody, he doesn't screw around."
The captain chuckled. "No, he doesn't. Welcome to the Gallows, sir!"
____________________________________________________________________________________

*SHOOOOOOoooooooo...* Huge waves of energy flowed in seemingly random flows, washing over each other in a maelstrom of chaotic light. All around the waves, runes that had been etched into the surrounding stones glowed brightly as the energy they stored was suddenly called into use, teleporting a teeming mass of life (and in a few specific cases, unlife) within its boundaries.
One by one, clouds of blue energy coalesced into tangible forms, and the creatures gathered in the northern regions of China appeared at once, ready for battle, in the desert regions of Arizona.
Once the effect faded completely, the juga commander grinned and jabbed a claw forward. {"Just as Thaeramon said! Less than half an hour's march to the facility, and our lord's freedom! MARCH!!"}
A series of howls and screeches followed the juga's command, and the small demonic horde stomped forward along the sands, readying their various weapons.
They were a well-armed group, possessing not only traditional inter-realms weapons that carried enchantments to allow them to compete, on some levels, with common guns, but also a fair number of actual guns, which were more often than not dug up from the charred battlefields of the East, or purchased from those who made it their business to do such digging. Demons were not the most machine-friendly creatures out there, so several of the weapons were in poor repair, but on the whole, this was an army that could hold its own...
Were it anywhere but in the United States of America itself.

An arachida warrior spotted a glimmer out of one of the many eyes that decorated its skull, and immediately jerked its head to the side.
{"Something's over there! Something in the air!"}
Several heads (and various equivalent body parts) turned, and low chanting could be heard from within the horde.
*Voosh!* *Woosh!* *Shrak!* Several energy bolts flew out in the general direction that the spider-descended demon was pointing, and one lightning bolt lashed out blindly, striking something that was invisible to the naked eye.
Electricity curled around a large, airborne object, and there was a short but sharp explosion as a magitek cloaking device overloaded. Within moments the field that was hiding the American Wraith V-77 gunship dissipated, leaving the rotorless chopper exposed to the demon's weapons.
Desperately the pilot attempted to bring the craft around and out of the danger zone, but to no avail as bullets, enchanted bolts, and magical blasts of varying composition all rained down upon his craft.
*Thwoom!* One firebolt in particular struck the back end of the Wraith, and the helicopter chassis went into a tailspin right before a particularly large spike of magically-propelled ice streaked toward the aircraft.

The demon commander chuckled deeply as the aircraft was torn apart by the hailstorm of icicles, and looked around at the flow of demons that continued marching past him.
{"THIS is the best that 'technology' has to offer?! THIS is what has Thaeramon hiding under a mask of shadows?! Come! Raze this pathetic dump! Consume this filth! CRUSH EVERYTHING!!"} With a feral roar, the juga thrust his hands into the air in triumph.
He kept his hands in the air for a few moments longer than necessary, because he was distracted by the sight of dozens of other Wraith gunships uncloaking.
Unlike the others, these craft dropped their cloaks as functions of arming their weapons, which consisted of two .50 caliber heavy machine guns, two 30 mm. explosive-round Gatling cannons, and one of the more recent conventional weapon innovations of the American army: the light autocannon, which fired a kind of mithril-head ammunition that was commonly described as "the kind that sends dragons back to their holes, whimpering like wounded puppies".
Taking a glance around, the juga noted that the gunships formed a loose ring around his entire army, with a slightly denser knot taking up the rear, where they had slipped in under the cloak. Strange... Doppler hadn't mentioned that the Americans would have this much firepower available on such short notice.
Taking another look around, the juga commander slowly lowered his arms. "Gsh, yall Doppler krsh?" Or, translated, "Hey, where is Doppler?"
The rest of his words were mostly drowned out by heavy gunfire. Which is fine, since most of them were simple curse words anyhow.
____________________________________________________________________________________

Doppler and Tio DID arrive, but they simply arrived at a far more convenient location, defined best as "right outside the facility". Buried talismans glowed with power, and a small teleportation ring opened up right in front of the adamantite gates.
"What the hell?!"
"Open fire!!"
The guards immediately opened up on the two figures in black armor, only to be overcome by a sense of dread as they watched the shadowy mail simply absorb the bullets, and then close back up over the holes that the weapons left.
Tio snapped his hand down and retrieved a chakra, and concentrated briefly before he threw it at the nearest human. The magic runes etched into the side of the bladed ring glowed vibrantly, and as the weapon sliced easily through the closest guard, it immediately changed direction and zipped toward the next one, moving at a speed that the hapless men couldn't hope to track, and immediately reorienting itself on the next living target.
While his bodyguard was removing the human threat, Doppler concentrated on one of the few spells he had managed to develop especially for the task of dealing with humans' technology.
Drawing a circle in the air with one hand and quickly inscribing a rune within it with another, he aimed his remaining two hands at the ground. "Ion purge!" A blue beam of no immediately apparent composition blasted into the ground, striking and spreading across the Earth with no immediate effect.
*Brrrzack!* All at once, a dozen hidden automated turrets, no doubt moments from becoming active, popped out of the ground of their own accord, ribbons of electricity curling around their sensory components.
"Chain lightning!" Doppler shouted, summoning a quick sphere of energy and tossing it.
*Zack!* *Blam!* *Crashk!* *Blam!* *Boom!* One after another, each of the robotic defenses were torn apart by the high-powered lance of energy, which jumped from one turret to another until it finally jumped into the control panel next to the vault doors, where it detonated violently, spreading glass and melted metal onto the hardened desert ground.
*Shnk!* Tio carefully snatched up his chakra in his armored hand as it flew back to him, and gave the weapon a good shake to rid it of the humans' blood before reattaching it to his weapon belt.
Doppler nodded, and began his next series of spells. "Quickly now. We must make haste. After they finish destroying the demons up north, it will only be a matter of minutes until they get here, and they may have actually dispatched something to this facility anyway as a matter of caution. We can't afford to-"
Tio blinked as the spell Doppler was casting petered out right at the moment that it would normally be deployed. "My lord, what's wrong?"
Doppler frowned. "Those... Those WORMS actually shielded the lower levels! I don't believe it! They must literally have wards hanging on the walls down there just to keep impossibly powerful sorcerers from teleporting inside!"
Gitting his teeth, the demon lord began to form two separate spells, aiming toward the vault doors. "No matter... if they wish to take ridiculous precautions against foes they couldn't hope to stand against anyway... Acid lance! Krystallis dominae!!"
A thick green bolt slammed hard into the reddish doors of the vault, and as steam began to pour off of it, a glowing circle appeared under the vault doors.
*K-SHRAAAK!* A huge blade of crystal erupted from the ground and dug hard into the door, utterly tearing the human bodies and unresponsive turrets to shreds in the process.
Smirking, Doppler snapped his fingers.
*KA-BLAAAM!!* The crystal exploded violently, throwing shards of razor-sharp exploding glass in all directions, such that Doppler had to erect a hasty barrier to keep him and his servant safe from the effects (such a spell was of a high enough level that even the shrapnel could cause some damage through the shadow armor).
That smirk died when the dust cleared. The door, though obviously damaged, appeared to be completely intact, with neither the acid nor the crystal having pierced the outer plate.
"How..." Doppler's eye twitched as he stared hard at the disfigured barrier. "That can't be mitrhil! What in Vharrun's name is that?!"
Tio shook his head as he stared at it. It wasn't any metal he'd ever seen. "My lord, perhaps we should-"
*Thack!!* "GYAH!!" The perplexed veirheelu suddenly staggered forward as a high-velocity projectile struck him in the back of the head, and then stood back up straight, gritting his teeth.
Blinking in surprise, Tio watched as a large hole in the shadow armor covering the entry wound writhed in an unusual fashion before it sealed itself up.
Holding out a hand, Doppler growled as a hole in the shadow armor covering his forehead opened up and spat the bullet out, whereupon he grabbed it and held it up for observation. "Mithril tip, with mana disruption charge. A 'mage killer' bullet." He threw the bullet on the ground.
Then he raised his upper arms above his head, and his lower ones pressed together over his chest. Doppler's eyes glowed a bright gold, and a powerful aura began to swirl around him.
"Tio... I grow irritated..." He frowned, and his eyes narrowed. "No... I grow ANGRY."
Then, slowly, a third eye in the middle of his forehead slowly opened, its iris a furious swirl of red and black, like lava. His hybrid companion, who knew vaguely what was coming next, opted to back off, behind a rock outcropping, and erect as powerful a barrier around himself as he could.
"Shakrin ta gahrea mon tharamos... place thyself before the judgment of the cosmic balance... feel the darkness fall, the moon, the sun, the endless night upon the barren dawn... let all fall to the might of eternity... and may the souls of the living burn within the flames of oblivion. OMEGA FLARE."
____________________________________________________________________________________

"Heh... never fails... first day on the job..." the Colonel slumped down against the metal wall of the containment level, blood from the wounds on his back leaving a thick streak upon the cold steel.
*Thump* The upper torso of the last of the guards fell heavily upon the floor, blood flowing freely from where his waist used to be.
Doppler stared hard at the officer, and his third eye twitched.
"Gurk!" The Colonel began to choke as some unseen force lifted him off the floor by his neck and held him in the air.
"Please! Stop this! We beg of you!" Several scientists, not having posed any kind of resistance, still remained huddled in the far corner of the facility, staring fearfully at the shadow-cloaked figure of Tio standing over them.
Doppler turned toward them, taking his attention off the last of the military personnel. "Know that you have done nothing wrong, humans. You die today as victims of fate, being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in a struggle that you have no real place in. If you pray to any gods, offer your prayers now."
He turned back toward the Colonel. "My servant, kill them. But don't enjoy it."
Tio nodded seriously, and drew his angled scimitar. A particularly sharp edge, good for quick kills. "As you wish, Master."
Doppler once again focused on the military officer, striding forward. "Now let's be fair about this. You've caused me some deal of trouble already, and I've expended more energy than I should have. No matter what you do, I'm leaving with Yaermon. Just deactivate whatever's holding him, and I'll make your death completely painless."
"I... c-can't..." the Colonel mumbled, gasping for breath, "no one... can... turn it off..."
Doppler's third eye pulsed.
The demon lord frowned. "Well I'll be damned. You're telling the truth. I honestly thought that was just a rumor to enhance security." Sighing, the demon lord summoned a ball of shadow into his hand and then swiped it miserably at the last of the military personnel.
*SHRAK!* Blood sprayed in a thick fan over the wall, and the Colonel's corpse fell over into three pieces.
"NO!! NOOOO-" *CHNGK!!* Tio's blade cut deep into the wall after it finished passing through the final scientist's neck, and he took a moment to wrench it out of the reinforced metal before he turned once again toward his master.
Slowly, Doppler's third eye closed itself and then sealed itself, such that it was impossible to tell it ever existed. "Tio. Hack the machines apart. One by one, if you need to. And hurry; I can sense them moving troops into the facility." The demon lord knew he could destroy any number of human soldiers that could possibly squeeze into the corridors of the facility, but once they took enough losses, the Americans would undoubtedly began attempting less discriminatory attacks which would be much more difficult to defend against.
"I should not have used so much power all at once," he decided, chiding himself, "anger is the enemy of reason, and reason is the foundation of intellect. Always remember! Intellect turns battles and wins wars!"
Then he looked up at the figure suspended within the containment fields. "And intellect will bring you back from the brink of destruction. Sorry I took so long, Demetrius."
And then, for the first time in weeks, the flickering figure within the cell looked up and spoke. "Thank you for coming at all... Master."

***********************************************************************************

End Chapter 5

And now, here you have it!
38 Easy Steps to Being a Ninja (presented for your entertainment, courtesy of my tireless devotion to Dave Barry)

1) Decide to study martial arts
2) Choose which school of martial arts to train in
3) Choose Ninjitsu, because frankly, it has a longer and more intimidating name than Karate and Judo
4) Find out from some vaguely knowledgable friend that Ninjitsu is practiced by Ninjas
5) Decide that this is absolutely awesome
6) Find a school that teaches Ninjitsu. This is not easy. So we will provide the invaluable information that tells you whether it's easy or not, and then move on to the next step
7) Locate an old man that looks as intimidating as a doorstop
8) Speak to the old man, and inform him that you'd like to learn Ninjitsu. The old man will inform you that he is the Ninjitsu master
9) Forget that you are a novice in the middle of a bloody Ninjitsu school. Laugh at the old man and tell him that he looks weak and brittle
10) Get your ass kicked, hard. You may think it's acceptable to keep getting up despite losing, to prove that you don't give up no matter what, but quite frankly, this is stupid, so just stay down and let your ribs knit
11) Give up, leave the school, and decide to take up a skill more useful and relevant, like mowing lawns
12) Find a dark cave and enter, using one of two methods:
A) Listen to voices that speak in your head, if for no other reason just to get them to shut up (It will not work)
B) Follow some kind of odd or ugly creature into the cave, displaying the type of common sense that retarded lemmings commonly find amusing
13) Move through the cave until you come to some sort of guardian. This will be a huge, ugly creature
14) Soil yourself
15) If you entered the cave through method B, this is either going to be the creature you followed, or a friend of that creature, and you will be unable to move before being swatted away. If you entered the cave through method A, then escape while following the instructions of the voice in your head, which will provide insightful, critical strategic information like "Run!", but fail to warn you to watch your step before you trip over a rock and knock yourself out
16) Wake up. Note that everything is pitch black
17) Open your eyes, you moron
18) Get up and notice that you are now in a room with some sort of artifact, such as a sword or mask, sitting on a glowing pedestal in the middle of the cave
19) Attempt to leave immediately, ignoring the protest of the voice in your head or curiosity, and forgetting about the guardian outside the room
20) Repeat steps 13-19 as needed for you to realize that you're doomed
21) Bang your head on a stalactite
22) Wonder if you're banging your head on the rock spikes that point up, or the ones that point down, forgetting which was the stalactite and which was the stalagmite
23) Ponder this point for far longer than would seem necessary. If the guardian appears and began to point impatiently to his watch, it may be wise to hurry this process with a dictionary, or an internet search
24) Resign yourself to the inevitable, and pick up the Goddamn artifact, you wuss
25) Become overwhelmed with power, and feel a shuddering energy rush through your body
26) Finish passing gas, and then realize that the artifact hasn't done anything
27) Just when you decide that it's shiny enough to trade for a Snicker's bar, notice that there's an incription on it
28) DON'T READ IT OUT LOUD!
29) Seriously
30) Don't!
31) I told you not to-! Oh, hell...
32) Feel a different kind of energy rush through you, and undergo a transformation which, if you're male, will NOT result in a miniskirt, much to Josh Temple's disappointment
33) You're now a Ninja, based on the fact that you vaguely look like one after being transformed
34) Attempt to leave the cave
35) Bang your foot on whichever one of those spikes stick upward, and yell "Goddamn... spike!"
36) Once again become consumed with the exact word for that particular geological formation
37) Notice that the cave guardian is back. You forgot about him, didn't you?
38) Repeat steps 13-17