Blood Red Moon Part 1: No Need for Experiments
This is a crossover fanfic including the characters from Tenchi Muyo, and
CastleVania, more specifically, the newest version out for the N64. All
characters belong to their respective copyrights, and I take no credit for
them beyond their usage in this story. Comments, quips, insults, flames,
and death threats can be sent to Platinum_Dragon@usinternet.com
This is based on the OVA characters in the Tenchiverse - but don't be
surprised if you hear one or two TV references. The original concept came
when I noticed that Carrie Fernandez sort of resembles Ryoko in powers and
looks, save that Carrie is only twelve. This is my first crossover, so give
me a little slack.
*****
Ryoko crept quietly into Washu's lab, a slight trickle of fear rippling
through her as she remembered one of her last visits here. Washu had left
her hanging, half-naked, all through the night. She had screamed the entire
time, calling out for her mommy. It wasn't until later that she found out
that Washu had been recording the entire thing from out of view. Ryoko was
torn between that betrayal, and the fact that Washu was her mother, and the
feeling that she wanted to feel and return.
Snapping herself out of it, Ryoko remembered why she had come here in the
first place. Washu didn't reserve experiments to her daughter alone.
Tenchi had been missing since the night before, and now that mid-day had
come and gone without him appearing, Ryoko was getting worried. It was no
secret that Washu wanted to have Tenchi too. Washu and Ayeka, and Mihoshi,
and, Ryoko had a sneaking suspicion, Sasami and Tsunami. Ryoko frowned for
a moment. A year before, she would have just killed them all without a
second thought, but she knew that now she would never do that, for what it
would do to Tenchi. For now, she was content to share. More or less.
Ryoko floated quietly through the lab, noting that Washu was apparently
nowhere to be found. It was big, with no apparent ceiling, and dark. Ryoko
forced down a slight wave of fear as the darkness seemed to close in on her,
repeating a mental mantra - "I'm not trapped, I'm not trapped, I'm not
trapped." Her eyes picked out a burst of light, and Ryoko headed for it.
Poking her head around the corner, she saw Washu standing near a console,
her back to Ryoko. Tenchi was, as usual, strapped in to a chair from which
bristled various instruments and sample vials. Washu had on what appeared
to be a Selianian Cat Dancer costume - a pair of cat ears, a thin strip of
fur across her chest, and a V-shaped strip of fur which ran around her waist
and between her legs, and nothing else, and she was in her all-too shapely
adult form. Tenchi appeared to be unconscious, and stripped to his undies.
A sizable ribbon of blood flowed from his nose, possibly why a bag of blood
with an accompanying tube running down to his arm hung from one of the arms
on the chair.
Ryoko bit back a growl of irritation, and looked around. Off to the side,
she saw a pile of clothes - Tenchi's, it seemed, since his favorite coat was
on top of the mess. Washu bent over the console, muttering something to
herself. Ryoko looked around a little more, and found a small object.
Picking it up - she had no idea what it was - she lobbed it lightly at
Washu. It bonked her on the head, and Washu dropped like a rock. Ryoko
left her hiding place, and checked Washu quickly. She was out cold. She'd
have one heck of a bump though, the least that she deserved. Ryoko went
over to Tenchi, and got him out of the chair. His eyes fluttered open -
Ryoko felt her heart jump a little - and he shook his head. She put a
finger over his mouth, and he nodded. He grabbed his clothes, and he pulled
them on as they started moving to the exit.
Suddenly, a klaxon began to sound, and red lights started to flash.
~WARNING, WARNING! GINNEA PIG ESCAPING! ACTIVATING SECURITY MEASURES!~
"Come on!" shouted Ryoko over the noise, grabbing Tenchi by the arm, and
pulling him along. Tenchi yelped in surprise. They were almost to the
door, when a thick metal plate slammed down before them. Ryoko turned
ninety degrees, and dove with Tenchi through an open door.
"Where are we now?" asked Tenchi. Ryoko shrugged. The room was filled
with electronics, and an electrical hum filled the room. Tenchi walked
over, and leaned on a panel for a moment, to catch his breath. As he did
this, he accidentally pushed down on a keypanel. Several buttons lit up,
and the door they had come through slammed shut. Tenchi jumped up from the
panel, but even as he did, four machines powered up. They rolled forward,
and Tenchi and Ryoko backed up. They barely noticed it when they stepped
onto a platform.
"The Dimensional Transporter! Oh no!" cried Washu as the door banged open.
Ryo-Ohki bounded in behind her. Three things happened at once. Washu raced
over to the control panel, Ryo-Ohki leapt toward Tenchi and Ryoko, and the
four machines fired some sort of beams. Washu gasped as the beams hit
Tenchi, Ryoko, and Ryo-Ohki as she crossed the line of the platform.
"Ahhhhhh!" shouted Tenchi and Ryoko at the same time. Washu typed madly at
the controls, but to them, the world suddenly seemed to twist, and fade
away. Darkness, and the sense of falling replaced all.
"Tenchi! Ryoko! Ryo-Ohki! No! Come back!"
*****
"Tenchi..." Tenchi opened his eyes and nearly shouted in fright at the
sight of Ryoko's face inches from his own.
"GAH! Don't do that Ryoko!" Ryoko grinned a little evilly, but he could
see relief in her eyes. Tenchi began to sit up... and then lay down again
when he felt a wave of nausea wash over him. He reached up to his head and
winced when he felt a lump the size of his fist on the back of his head. He
tried again, and this time made it. Looking around brought another
surprise. They weren't in Washu's lab anymore. In fact, Tenchi didn't even
think that they were in Japan anymore. They were in the middle of a path,
which ran though a thickly wooded forest, and the night was on them.
"Where are we?" he asked Ryoko. She shook her head.
"I don't know. When I woke up, we were just here. Ryo-Ohki is having a
look around now. Tenchi... I can't fly, or teleport, and I'm having
trouble with my sword and fireballs. Ryo-Ohki can't turn into her spaceship
form either." Tenchi reflexively reached down to his waist - good,
Tenchi-ken was still there. He wondered if it would work, since Ryoko's
powers didn't seem to.
"Miya! Miya! Miya!" Ryo-Ohki came running from the trees toward them.
Ryoko turned, looking surprised, and Tenchi asked her what it was.
"She says that there is a girl fighting skeletons a little ways away!"
Tenchi blinked - skeletons? - but pushed himself up, groaning as his muscles
protested slightly.
"Come on, we have to help her!" Ryoko nodded, and they followed Ryo-Ohki.
They crested a hill, and pulled up short. A single girl, wearing a light
blue dress with pink ribbons attached to a pair of gold-inlaid metal rings,
and a neatly done shock of cyan hair, was fighting off at least a dozen
skeletons wielding bones. There was a sudden flash, and one of the
attackers was blown apart. Tenchi and Ryoko looked at each other, and then
stared in amazement as a ball of bluish energy appeared around the girl's
hand. She pointed it at another skeleton, and the ball blasted forward,
blowing it and another directly behind it apart. But even as they watched,
another dozen skeletons pulled themselves out of the ground. Tenchi grabbed
his sword, breathing a short sigh of relief as the blade hissed to life, and
ran in the direction of the battle.
Swinging Tenchi-ken, he took the first skeleton at the neck. The head
flew off, and landed looking at him, an evil glow burning in its eyes.
Tenchi turned to the next, parrying a blow from its bone sword, and slicing
at it and taking it down. He turned at a sound behind him, and stared as
the headless skeleton he had thought dead, swung at him. He leaned back to
avoid its swing, but tripped over a stone. The skeleton raised its sword,
and was about to chop down when it suddenly just exploded. Tenchi looked as
Ryoko came streaming down the hill, blasting enemies left and right.
Pushing himself back up, Tenchi rejoined the fight. They cut a path through
the skeletons to the girl.
"Who are you?" she called, firing another blast. Tenchi sliced his sword
down through yet another skeleton, and answered.
"My name is Tenchi, and she's Ryoko. I know that this isn't the best of
times, but where are we?" He ducked as Ryoko fired a blast over his head,
taking out a skeleton that was about to attack the girl from behind. It was
suddenly quiet. Looking around, he realized that all of the skeletons were
now just piles of bones. Ryoko came to stand beside them. The girl looked
around once more warily, and then turned to them.
"I thank you. My name is Carrie Fernandez, and this dread place lies on
the outskirts of the evil Castlevania." Tenchi shivered. In school, one of
the subjects that he had been required to take was legends of the world. He
was about to open his mouth to speak, but Ryoko beat him to it.
"Where exactly is this Castlevania? I've never heard of it before." The
girl's eyes widened, and then narrowed in suspicion.
"Not where, mistress Ryoko, what." Carrie turned, sweeping her arm
upward. Tenchi and Ryoko's gaze followed. Their gaze went up... and up...
and up. A huge castle, ancient and decrepit looking, rose from the forest,
surrounded by a haze that made Tenchi shiver in fear. Behind the castle
floated a huge, nearly full blood red moon in a sea of the blackest night.
Tenchi noticed that the field of stars in the sky seemed to stop well short
of the castle. A wolf howled in the night. At least, he hoped that it was
a wolf.
"Ryoko... In the myths that I learned in school, Castlevania is the home of
Vlad Tepes... Or should I say, Dracula," said Tenchi. It was Ryoko's turn
to stare in surprise. Tenchi knew that she had read a translated version of
Bram Stoker's Dracula, and that the next few nights she'd had nightmares,
something that he had thought couldn't happen. Carrie nodded.
"And now he has risen again from his 100 year sleep. Myself and another go
there to kill him, or at the least return him to his slumber," she said.
Ryoko laughed aloud.
"How could a little girl like you kill Dracula?" she asked, and Tenchi
groaned. Carrie looked at her simply.
"Because I must. My family has faced Dracula before. My ancestor, Sypha
Belnades, helped Trevor Belmont to put him asleep, nearly three hundred and
fifty years ago." Before Ryoko could say more, Tenchi asked her who the
other person was.
"Reinhart Schnieder, descendant of the Belmont family." She said the word
Belmont as though it was something sacred. Come to think of it, it might
be. "As with myself, the power in his blood demands that he face Dracula,
for the fate of the world." Ryoko looked at Tenchi, and made a little 'It's
up to you' motion.
"I wonder if you wouldn't mind us coming along with you. We don't know the
area, and it must be safer as a group than apart." Carrie looked at him for
a moment, and then turned a thoughtful gaze to Ryoko. She looked like she
was about to say no, when a tall man came around the corner. A short sword
was strapped against one side of his waist, and against the other was a long
whip. He wore a light shirt, under a fur-lined blue jacket, and black
pants. Suddenly Tenchi realized that the clothing style was more
reminiscent of the eighteen hundreds, than the nineteen hundreds, and that
his and Ryoko's clothing must be as odd to them.
"What have we here, Carrie?" asked the man. She smiled slightly, but her
eyes never quite left Ryoko. "A pair of villagers still alive?" Carrie
shook her head.
"These are Tenchi and Ryoko. They saved me from a group of skeletons,
Reinhart" A thought kept trying to turn over in Tenchi's head. Why did
Carrie not trust Ryoko? Tenchi took a closer look at her. Ryoko was
wearing her favorite striped dress, as usual, and the black tail that seemed
to posses a life of it's own. With her spiky hair, and fangs, he suddenly
realized, she must look like the demoness that she is. Demoness...?
Demoness! Tenchi groaned inwardly. How stupid could he be?
In the meantime, Reinhart had joined them, and Carrie was whispering
something in his ear. His expression hardened, and his hand began to move
toward the whip. Understanding, Tenchi reached over and pulled the tail off
the dress. Ryoko spun, and looked like she was about to give him a good
tongue lashing, but he ignored it. Carrie and Reinhart stared at the tail,
as it lashed back and forth, picking up on Ryoko's mood even away from her,
but Reinhart let go of the whip.
"I'm sorry... If I had of been paying attention, I would have told you
sooner." Ryoko stared at him in confusion. "This is just a sort of... Er,
accessory to her dress," Tenchi told the two of them. "She's as human as
the rest of us!" Well, that wasn't quite true, he realized, on either her
part or his, but best not to tell them that she was a demoness. They might
get the wrong idea.
"Tenchi..." said Ryoko, leaning over a little, and then suddenly grabbing
him and shaking him a little roughly. "JUST WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!!!
YOU KNOW VERY WELL THAT I'M-" Tenchi covered her mouth quickly, not an easy
task considering that she was still shaking him around like a rag doll.
"Think about it Ryoko... Where ever we are, there are vampires. And that
means that there are demons... Evil demons," he told her quietly, his voice
pitched so that only she would hear. Ryoko stopped shaking him,
understanding.
"That I can't stand it when you grab my tail like that," she finished.
Tenchi breathed a sigh of relief. Carrie and Reinhart were staring at them
in confusion. Tenchi gave the tail back, and she reattached it. It whipped
around furiously for another moment, seemingly angry at being grabbed and
then settled down. Reinhart shook his head, and then cleared his throat.
"Carrie tells me that you've offered your help to us in our quest against
Dracula. I must admit that I wouldn't mind a few extra hands. You seem to
have your own magic, for no mere mortal could battle the Skull Warriors and
survive," he said. Tenchi looked at Ryoko.
"We've got a few tricks up our sleeves," said Ryoko. She looked around
suddenly. "Hey? Where's Ryo-Ohki?" Tenchi gave a start, as he realized that
the cabbit was nowhere to be found.
"Who is Ryo-Ohki?" asked Carrie. Tenchi smiled a little, wondering how he
was going to explain the furball. "Well, she's..." A rustle in the bushes
caught his attention, and then Ryo-Ohki walked out, in human form. But
instead of being covered in fur, she looked much like Mayuka had when she
had first appeared. Brown hair, instead of purple, and a dress suited to
moving around, but in the end much like her. Tenchi felt a little pang of
worry. What were the others doing at home? He was sure that Washu would be
looking for them, to bring them back, but who knew how long that would take.
"She's our other traveling companion. She can't speak, though..." he
finished, holding in another sigh of relief. Ryo-Ohki smiled at them, and
bowed - remarkably smoothly. One trip, though, and the show would be over.
Carrie nodded slowly, and Reinhart just shrugged. Another wolf howled,
this time sounding closer to them. The two looked at each other.
"Werewolves. And they're getting closer," said Reinhart. He turned to
look at Castlevania. "We must hurry. They cannot follow inside the walls
of the castle." Ryoko looked up at him.
"Why not?" she asked, and Carrie answered.
"Because most of them are afraid of what lives inside Castlevania. Ryoko
and Tenchi looked at each other, and then nodded.
*****
Reinhart and Carrie lead the way through the forest, while Tenchi, Ryoko,
and Ryo-Ohki hung back a little, talking quietly amongst themselves.
"So how do you think that we got here?" asked Tenchi.
"Don't ask me," she said, shrugging, "Yet another of Washu's experiments
gone wrong." Tenchi nodded. Washu would likely be sitting at the machine
that very moment, trying to get them back. Ryo-Ohki miyaed quietly, and
they looked at her. Ryoko voiced the question. "What about Ryo-Ohki. One
topple, and there will be more explaining than we want."
"That's just a chance that we'll have to take. I don't think that we have
a choice. And while we're on the subject, I want you to behave yourself,
Ryoko. If they find out that you really are a demoness..." He trailed off,
but she nodded, understanding. With a sly grin, she slid her arm around his
shoulder.
"Tenchi, would I misbehave?" Tenchi sweatdropped, and nervously began to
say that wasn't what he meant, but Reinhart, ahead of them, called a stop.
"Hold. We have arrived at the castle gate." Before them, the evil castle
rose into the night, the drawbridge raised. The place was huge, larger than
any structure Tenchi had ever seen. A couple of dark shapes fluttered
around the lower spire, and Tenchi swallowed, realizing that they were much
too big to be just bats. In the high spire, almost so far into the sky it
couldn't be seen, a huge clock ticked quietly away. As Tenchi looked at it,
the midnight hour came to hand. A deep, loud tolling rang from the clock,
rolling down and across the land like a wave. Carrie pointed to the tower.
"There. That is were Dracula awaits his full awakening." Tenchi looked
over at her, confused.
"But I thought you said he was awake." She shook her head.
"Dracula only stirs. He shall not become fully awake, and thus, gain his
full power, until the moon rises to it's fullest, in three night's time. If
we do not make it to the tower by then, the world is as good as done for."
"If he was fully awake, then we would already be dead," explained
Reinhart. "Outside of Castlevania, he would have killed us in a moment.
But even Hell has its laws. If we can breech the castle, we have a fighting
chance, for though the castle itself will try to fight us, Dracula must wait
for us to come to him." He then turned to Carrie, and whispered quietly to
her. She nodded, and then he came back toward them.
"We must stand back. Carrie is going to try to open the gate with her
magic." The small group allowed him to lead them back. Carrie was left
alone, before the castle surrounded by its moat. Raising her hands, she
closed her eyes.
"Mighty powers of the light, I call you before this house of evil. Open
the way to the prince of the night, that your champions may do battle."
Above her hands, a sphere of bluish-white light formed.
"Go now, mighty powers of the light. Cast down the gate of darkness, thus
revealing the unholy home!" The ball of light floated up, and out of her
hands, and flew to the bridge, going up and over it. There was a bright
flash, and then, slowly, the drawbridge began lowering. It's shadow crept
over them, cast off by the nearly full moon. With an earth-shaking crash,
it reached the ground. The gate open, they joined Carrie. She was
sweating, and panting lightly. Reinhart placed his hand on her shoulder,
and she beamed a bright smile at him, and then they turned to Tenchi, Ryoko,
and Ryo-Ohki.
"This is your last chance, friends," said Reinhart.
"I thank you for helping me, but if you wish to stay here, you may. This
is our battle, not yours," said Carrie. Reinhart's face was grim.
"If you follow us in, than you commit yourselves to the battle." Tenchi
and Ryoko looked at each other for only a moment, but the look spoke
volumes. Ryoko smirked, and Tenchi grinned as he put out his hand to
Reinhart. He smiled as well, and clasped Tenchi's firmly.
"If the world is at stake, and we can help, than we will, right, Ryoko?"
She nodded, and the small group crossed the bridge, their footsteps echoing
loudly in the night. Reaching the other side, they found that the second
gate was down. Through it, they could see the castle villa. Try as they
might, though, they couldn't budge it. Suddenly, there was a loud cranking
sound, and they turned to see the drawbridge rising, much faster than it had
come down. As they watched, helpless, it closed, another gate closing in
front of it. They were trapped, inside the castle wall.
*****
Here is a preview of the next chapter.
Just then, the ramp came to a sudden end. About four feet of space lay
between them, and a door way. They skidded to a halt, the bats not far
behind. Tenchi looked at Ryoko, and she turned and tried to fire another
blast. This time, not even a spark appeared.
"What do we do Tenchi?" she asked, and Tenchi was surprised to hear a
note of true panic in her voice. Tenchi looked at the space between them
and the doorway. They looked back at the bats, then at each other, and took
a running leap. Tenchi made it across to the other side, but Ryoko came
just short, grabbing onto the ledge.
---
The Platinum Dragon
"The rising sun will eventually set,
a newborn's life will fade.
From sun to moon, moon to sun,
Give peaceful rest to the living dead." - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of
Time
http://dragonsanime.dreamhost.com - Dragon's Masaki Shrine of Tenchi Muyo
Proud Member of the Ryoko Forever Fan Club