Hi!
Well, it's taken a while, but I've finally finished it...
Any C&C muchly appreciated, on or off list.
Enjoy!
Ja ne,
-Alex Timiney
-- Attached file included as plaintext by Ecartis --
No Need for a Dragon/Slayer Half
(Ryu/Satsujinha'nin Nibunoichi Muyo)
By Alex Timiney, 12/08/2002 to 11/10/2002
curator@discordia.connectfree.co.uk
Revision 1.0
(Wordwrapped MS-DOS version)
Critically reviewed by Ranko <Omega_X@gmx.net>
A Ranma 1/2 (Manga) / Dragon Half (sort of) / Tenchi Muyo (OAV) /
Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossover
Insert standard disclaimer here.
Additional Disclaimer -
Warning: May contain spoilers for sporty hatchbacks.
Caution: Not actually a cannon at all.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
No Need for a Dragon/Slayer Half
Act One, Part Three;
"The Road to Never-Never Land"
"All that I have,
All that I hold,
All that is wrong.
All that I feel for or trust in or love,
All that is gone.
It used to be so easy,
I never even tried.
Yeah, It used to be so easy...
But the last day of summer never felt so cold,
The last day of summer never felt so old,
The last day of summer never felt so cold,
Never felt so..."
Somewhere in a Brazilian brothel (one of a particularly
successful chain) an apparently young woman sat back in her office
chair. On her desk was a mess of documents, stationary and executive
toys. One of the items, a small block of lacquered wood that was
hanging half off the edge of the desktop, bore the inscription 'Eris,
CEO'. The office itself was in as much disarray as the desk, though
it was relatively tidy, it was clear that none of the reams of files
and folders were in any particular order.
Eris was tossing a small round object into the air, which upon
closer inspection appeared to be a golden apple. The word 'Kallisti'
engraved into the metallic fruit with Greek letters. A sizable grin
was spread across her face as she stared off into the middle
distance, concentrating on an image unseen to the rest of the world.
An image of a pigtailed Japanese boy, who was some times a girl, and
who was quite confused about what he or she was.
It was going to be a good century, she thought as she watched
her champion board an aircraft and sit down next to another boy in
the economy section. When she realised whom the other boy was she had
to stifle a burst of gleeful laughter. It would be the one human she
had no influence over, wouldn't it? Now /that's/ what she called
'synchronicity'. This was /definitely/ going to be a good century!
Now she just needed to keep those silly Bavarian seers on their
toes, make the Zionists self destruct, and give Hiroshi and Diasuke a
ring to let them know where Saotome was going.
* * *
Tenchi had a little trouble when checking in at Osaka
international airport. The obsidian ball he carried with him,
carefully wrapped up in a towel and placed in a carrier bag, aroused
some attention. It didn't take long for him to allay the suspicions
of the customs officers and security staff, and prove it was nothing
more than a black glass crystal ball. Of course it was most certainly
/not/ a simple sphere of amorphous silicon oxide and lead, but they
didn't need to know that...
After a metal detector revealed nothing and an x-ray showed its
contents to be homogenous, he was finally allowed to board his
flight... complete with 'lucky crystal ball'. Because of the hold up,
he was the last to board. He was quickly directed to his seat, and he
sat down after stowing his hand luggage.
As it turned out, he was actually the second to last to embark.
Curiously the two late boarders were in adjacent seats. Tenchi
watched the newcomer - a boy about his age, who was wearing a simple
red and black Chinese shirt and trousers outfit, and had his hair in
a moderately long pigtail - quickly and gracefully trot down the
aisle, toss his small schoolbag into the overhead compartments and
drop into his seat. Tenchi found that to be quite impressive, because
he was in the aisle seat, but the new passenger managed to hop over
him and land in the window seat without appearing to put any effort
into what was a perfectly executed gymnastic feat. All the while he
was scowling and muttering something about 'stupid fiancees', or
'stupid summer school', or 'stupid' something or other. He barely
paid any attention to the cabin crew's safety instructions, more in
the way of someone who wasn't bothered, rather than someone who had
heard it before. Tenchi, being a bit nervous, made a much more
apparent effort to listen to the flight attendants.
"Hi," Tenchi said tentatively to his neighbour for the lengthy
flight, once the safety speech was over.
"Uh... hi," was the uncertain reply. The other boy was glancing
about, as if looking for someone, or perhaps nervous about what the
aircraft and it's passengers were about to achieve.
"Is this your first flight?" he asked, trying to make light
conversation, and perhaps calm the tense boy.
"On an airplane, yeah." Tenchi blinked at that, not quite
understanding what was meant. How else do you fly, if not on an
airplane... or a living space ship, or piggy backing on a super-
powered alien demoness/space pirate. He cringed slightly as he
answered his own question. He was heading for a new life. The black
ball nestled in his lap, and the wooden hilt in his pack, would be
the only reminders of his old life.
"Mine too." The Masaki boy regarded the other boy while he
considered what to say next. Who ever he was, he clearly worked out
on a regular basis - even under the folds of his shirt, his excellent
muscle tone was obvious. 'Maybe he's a martial artist, or
something?' Tenchi thought. He noticed that his neighbour's eyes were
the most unusual shade of blue-grey, which contrasted his brownish
red hair. He assumed that, as the hair was clearly dyed (the black
roots were visible), the eyes must have been contacts lenses. It
seemed a bit odd, though, since it didn't seem as if the pigtailed
boy was otherwise all that concerned about his appearance.
"Uh... I'm Tenchi Masaki," he said finally, lacking anything
else polite to say before introductions were made, and not wanting to
continue to stare.
"Ranma Saotome..." was the distracted response, although he now
seemed to be concentrating on the whine of the engines, as they span
up to speed, sending the aluminium aircraft hurtling down the multi
mile long runway. No more words were spoken for several minutes
between the two young men as they experienced their first takeoff...
by earthly technological means, at least. It could be considered
lucky that Tenchi had been distracted by the thunderous process of
becoming airborne, or else he may have paid enough attention to
recognise the name as being associated with the infamous 'Nerima
Wrecking Crew'.
* * *
Ryoko clutched her head, trying to will away the throbbing pain
and dehydration. It wasn't really working all that well. She'd have
to try something else... but moving just seemed to make things worse.
Tentatively she opened an amber eye, wincing at the burning pain of
light, dancing on her over sensitive corneas.
Oh no! The world had turned upside down! No, wait, /she/ was
upside down, hanging by her ankle from the rafters, her foot caught
up in... something - she didn't dare look down... no, up, in case her
stomach rebelled, which considering her orientation seemed quite
likely.
The living room looked the way she felt - it was complete tip.
The dirtiest of pigs would have scoffed at the mess! What had
happened last night? And what had she been drinking? Meths?!
A soft groan drew the pirate's aching eye to a pile of...
stuff... or perhaps debris would be a better description. The was the
slightest hint of purple before a bedraggled Ayeka crawled out from
the mound of rubbish. The movement stopped by an ear piercing
screech, which slowly resolved into overly loud (but thankfully in
tune) whistling. The painfully penetrating sound grew louder as it
approached the lounge doorway before being replaced by something far
worse - speech.
"Are you two awake yet?" Sasami asked innocently, "Dinner is
almost ready, and I really don't want to have to eat in Washu-chan's
lab again. She really doesn't seem to like it, and she really wasn't
happy when Mihoshi spilt soup all over one of her machines and made
it go berserk and start destroying the rest of the lab..." she
continued to amble on about the morning's (and afternoon's)
happenings, much to the distress of Ryoko and Ayeka. The effect
seemed comparable to listening to Garthog poetry.
"Sasami," Ayeka managed to cut in, though rather weakly, "I
assure you that we will be up shortly..."
"Just as soon as I stop seeing double," Ryoko interjected.
"If you could just leave us for a few more minutes, please?"
the other continued, not complaining about her adversary's comment,
partly because she wholly agreed with it.
"Well, ok, sister, but if this room isn't tidy by the time I've
finished the meal, I'll ask Mihoshi to come in and help you wake
up." With that threat lingering on the two hung-over aliens' minds,
Sasami left for the kitchen.
"We have /got/ to get up," Ryoko observed.
"Oh, absolutely," Ayeka agreed as enthusiastically as she
could.
"Just one thing..."
"What would that be?"
"Have you /any/ idea about what happened last night?"
"None whatsoever."
Finally Ryoko managed to get down from the ceiling, by virtue
of a face fault.
* * *
Once the airliner had reached its cruising altitude, and the
seatbelt sign had gone out, Ranma calmed down. Thirty or forty
thousand feet in the air should be enough to keep most of the jerks
away... most of them, anyway. Rouge and Taro could fly, but he had no
idea how high. Besides which, if Pantyhose attacked him here, he'd
have to rip the plane to pieces to get him, but that would surely
kill everyone on board. He didn't think that even a violent freak
like him would want to have so much blood on his hands. If anyone was
going to turn up in flight, it would probably either be Shampoo,
concealed in the luggage compartment, or Ryoga, who probably got lost
and ended up trapped in one of the toilets. Neither occurrence was
likely though - he hadn't secretly travelled to Osaka to catch a
flight there for nothing.
Of greater concern to him was what to do for the next 16 or so
hours. This would probably be the longest stint in which he'd be
unable to do anything physical, beyond walking up and down an aisle,
he'd had to go through before. He'd had the foresight to buy some
manga at the airport to read, but it seemed unlikely that he'd be
able to stomach reading the same stories several times over, not to
mention that he wasn't following most of the series.
There were meditation techniques he could try, but meditation
had never really been one of his strong points, unless it had a
direct bearing on combat training. Besides, concentrating on one
thing to the exclusion of all else was not something he'd be able to
keep up for long. He'd probably fall asleep... that was fine, really,
though, because it would use up some of the time.
Overall, on reflection, he figured that he had plenty to do, if
he kept at one thing for as long as he could before switching over to
something else. He'd have to stay alert, though, just in case Ryoga
did show up, or somehow Kuno had ended up on the same flight.
Having determined that he would not die of boredom before the
flight was through, he was presented with a dilemma - which amazingly
interesting activity to try first? He glanced around, absorbing the
sights and sounds of a pressurised can, packed full of people,
looking in part to see what others were doing. Most of the passengers
seemed to be trying to get to sleep. That made sense, and appealed to
Ranma's state of mind - the flight had been the one of the first of
the day and had left rather early, and that added to the initial 300
mile train journey meant that Ranma had had very little rest.
With a suitable course of action decided upon, he was about to
gather a blanket and pillow - he saw little need of being
unnecessarily uncomfortable - when his attention was grabbed by the
strange object in his neighbour's lap, half out of its protective
wrapping. Curious as to what it was for (he'd never seen a black
crystal ball before), and also faintly aware of something he wasn't
entirely sure about, the martial artist decided to ask about it.
"Uh.. so, what's with the black ball thing?"
"Eh heh," Tenchi chuckled nervously, "Its my lucky crystal
ball." He didn't like to lie... but it /was/ a ball, and it /was/
made out of crystal (of a sort)... but 'lucky'? That was pushing it.
It was almost certainly going to get him into all sorts of trouble,
and that's hardly what you would expect of a good luck charm.
Ranma quirked an eyebrow, rather than knock of a quick, and
probably insulting, remark. "Can I have a look at it?" he asked after
dispelling tactless thoughts from his mind. There was something about
it that was playing on his nerves, and besides, it wouldn't do to get
on the wrong side of the person he'd be sitting next to for the next
three quarters of a day.
"I guess," was Tenchi's tentative response. He gingerly removed
the obsidian object from its cloth nest and cradled it in his cupped
hands. "Don't drop it, ok?"
"Feh. I wouldn't drop it even if the plane fell out the sky,"
the Chinese clothed boy boasted, waving his hand off to one side as
if to physically dismiss the notion. However, 'drop it' he very
nearly did. When he reached out and picked the sphere from the
other's hands, shock spread through his features. If not for his
excellent physical self control, he would almost certainly have let
the ball slip through limp fingers.
Tenchi Masaki's 'Lucky Crystal Ball' was alive! Through the
tactile contact between his fingers and the smooth black surface of
the round object, he could feel a distinct aura. It was weak and
faint, like that of an unborn child, but it was there non the less.
It was also... very strange. It was not like anything he'd come
across before. It was neither human, nor animal, nor plant, nor
mineral (not that rocks tended to have auras, but they did have
'ki'). It was either something completely new, or a combination of
all types of aura. It was... it was... it was freaking him out!
"Are you alright?" Tenchi asked, trying to bend to see Ranma's
face and expression more clearly.
"...yeah" Ranma murmured weakly without taking his eyes from
the artefact in his hands.
Taking a closer look at the thing he could see that it was
uniformly gloss black, as it had first appeared. There were slight
variations in the tone, ranging from deep purple to deeper green,
underneath the dark outer shell. There was also a dense network of
beige flaws, or more likely veins, crisscrossing the surface. Those
gave it the appearance of the compacted and tangled root ball of a
bonsai tree.
Well, whatever this thing was, Ranma decided, it wasn't really
any of his business. He handed the living ball back to Tenchi without
a word, and then turned to stare out the window. Concentrating on the
endless miles of ocean now below and ahead of them would hopefully
calm the sense of unease that the thing had given him.
It's strange, really, he thought. He'd come across so many
strange things in his life - curses, potions, monsters, demons, eight
headed serpents - but never before had any of those things
/disturbed/ him like that ball had. Well, except for cats, perhaps.
Maybe it was because it was rather enigmatic? He didn't know what it
was, but it didn't seem to be a threat, so his usual tactic of
fighting it until it was out of his life would be ineffective.
Tenchi was also disturbed. Why had this Ranma guy reacted like
that? To the outside world, the sphere, now safely tucked into his
lap again, should appear to be nothing more than an inanimate, but
rather pretty, crystal ball. But Ranma seemed shocked when he had
touched it, as if he'd been electrocuted or stung. It was clear that
he knew that the ball was not what it appeared... but how much did he
know? And how had he found out?
* * *
Hiroshi, Daisuke, Hikaru, Sayuri, Yuka and Misato. Together
they were the Furinkan POEE cabal. Well, sort of. None of them,
except Misato, had ever actually heard of POEE, or the Discordian
Society - they had been recruited somewhat more... directly.
The six of them were gathered in the living area of Hiroshi's
western styled home. They were supposed to be having a group meeting,
but Sayuri and Yuka were gossiping about who passed which collage
entrance exams and such, while Hikaru was consistently defeating
Misato on every beat-'em-up game Hiroshi had for his Play Station.
"So... should we go on without them?" Daisuke asked, slightly
louder than necessary, and with a little sarcasm in his voice.
"Nah. We already know. May as well just kick 'em out, if
they're not here for the meeting." Hiroshi responded, hoping that the
dialogue and the threat would help gather the other member's
attentions.
"He didn't!?"
"He did!"
"Damn you, Gosunkugi! If this was real, you'd be so much
sashimi by now!"
"Heh heh. I'm better than you and that seems pretty real to
me."
The two group leaders sweated. They weren't supposed to just
keep doing their own thing after that!
"Guess we'll go on without them then."
"Un... Shall I start?" Hiroshi nodded his agreement. "Last
night we were personally visited by Goddess."
They say that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
Now, while this has not been conclusively tested in a literal sense,
it was certainly true in terms of human interaction. At Daisuke's
announcement the room went deathly quiet.
"Kay Oh!" Well, except for the Play Station declaring the end
of a round.
"Yes! Suck on that, Goss!" And Misato, who had finally won,
though it was a hollow victory. "Hey... you weren't playing properly
- that's no fair!" She quieted down when she noticed the gazes of her
friends upon her. "What?"
* * *
Feeling distinctly uneasy, Ranma had been unable to sleep.
Instead he kept his concentration on the fluffy white clouds that
were drifting across the expansive blue-green ocean. Meditating on
that immense field of complex blue had taken the edge of his nerves,
but staring out the window constantly was giving him a crick in his
neck.
"So what are you going to Los Angeles for?" a nearby voice
intruded upon his thoughts like a tanto slicing into a watermelon.
"If you don't mind me asking?"
Only years of training and unexpected encounters prevented the
martial artist from jumping. Still, when he turned his head to see
who had caught his attention, his body language suggested that he
felt he was about to be attacked... or caught with his hand in the
cookie jar.
"Gotta go to some stupid English summer school before I can go
to university," he said, relaxing a little. It wasn't very often that
he had a 'normal' conversation with a near stranger, so he wasn't
entirely sure how to conduct himself. He decided on being himself,
which seemed to work out in other situations... eventually.
"Well, how about that for a coincidence: I'm doing the same
thing." Tenchi responded cheerfully. "I'm going to Sunnydale 'Iuu
Sii'. How about you?"
Ranma blinked. "So am I... D'you think the airline knew, so
they put us together?" he whispered conspiratorially.
Tenchi had to laugh at his seatmate's apparent naivety, which
earned him an insulted glare from the other boy. "Don't be silly.
Airlines can't get that sort of information without you giving it to
them, and they wouldn't do anything like that if you did." He kept a
smile on his face to try and keep in good spirits with Ranma.
"Well, gee, how was I supposed to know that?" Ranma pouted.
"So what subject will you be studying?" Tenchi asked after a
moment, changing the subject onto one which would last for quite some
time. It didn't take long for them to discover that they had much in
common when it came to girls, though the conversation slowed a little
on this topic, for they both had to carefully edit their lives to
make selves appear normal to the other. Well, relatively normal.
"...so if I even so much as breath on her, every lunatic for
miles around beats up on me."
"Sounds kinda like the things that happen to that 'Nerima
Wrecking Crew' group." Ranma suddenly quieted down, but Tenchi
remained oblivious and continued, "They're the reason why I'm not
going to a university in Tokyo. I just know that with my luck, if I'd
gone there I would've gotten involved somehow." Through his
explanation, Ranma started to sweat, and a sweet-and-innocent grin
spread out across his face. Unfortunately, Ranma being who he was,
the expression screamed out "Ah din't do it, guv'ner" in a cheesy
cockney accent.
"Are you alright, Ranma? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Ranma was saved by the bell, so to speak. "Would you like
anything from the trolley?" Or rather, an attractive flight
attendant, pushing a service trolley up the aisle.
"Is it free?" Ranma asked, having learnt over the past few
years to check these things before tucking in.
"I'm sorry sir, only the meals are complimentary," the hostess
replied with a smile.
Ranma looked dejected for a moment. "I'll not have anythin'
then."
"I'd just like some water please." Ranma gulped audibly when
the attendant opened a bottle of mineral and started to pour some
into a plastic cup. "Are you sure you're okay? You look a little
pale."
"I have some Aspirin or Alka-Seltzer, if you like," the
stewardess added.
"I'm fine!" Ranma squeaked.
"You sure you don't want some water, or something?" Tenchi
asked, offering the cup full of chilled water he now held.
Whether or not any higher force had been behind the occurrence
of the situation, certainly fate and the hydro-magnetic quality of
the Jusenkyo curse could not resist taking the opportunity for
mischief it represented. Completely to the surprise of the flight
crew (and the weather radar), the aircraft ran into a patch of
turbulence. The buffeting on the plane's fuselage and its passengers
caused Tenchi to momentarily loose his grip on the fragile plastic
cup and, of course, it tumbled against Ranma's chest and spilled its
contents into his lap. Naturally, this was more than enough to
trigger the curse and transform the boy into a girl.
Such a transformation is not the sort of thing you want the
world to know about, and especially not the friend you've just
made... and would have to sit next to for the next twelve hours or
so, and who be able to tell everyone at the university you were
headed for. Ranma had had more than enough ridicule from the boys at
Furinkan High to know that that was the last thing he wanted. He had
to cover this up.
While Tenchi was busy apologising and collecting tissues from
the trolley to help clean up the spill, the neo-girl leaped skilfully
out of his seat and into the aisle, somehow avoiding both the luggage
rack, the chair head rests and the service trolley.
" 'Scuse me," she muttered in as close to her male voice as she could manage, before darting off to the toilets.
"Sir! The seatbelt light is on!" the flight attendant called
out, moments before the indicator did actually turn on. "You have to
return to your seat... Honestly, some people never listen."
"That's funny... I'm sure he looked a little smaller than
before, then," Tenchi noted. He shrugged it off and put on his
seatbelt.
Ranma-chan slammed the cubicle door shut before anyone could
stop her. She breathed a sigh of relief - she didn't think anyone had
noticed her change, to judge by that last call. Dying her male side's
hair red to match her female side's had apparently paid off.
Bringing a thermos flask of hot water had been a good idea,
too, in principal... but in her rush to avoid being revealed, she had
left it behind in his book-bag. Her lack of foresight on that front,
and a good idea gone to waste, rankled on her nerves. She started to
loose her grip on the temper that had been growing wilder lately, at
least in her female form (had Akane been having a bad influence on
him, she wondered?), but she managed to stop herself short of
manifesting an aura, or striking out in frustration.
Discovering that the cubicle's hot water supply was non
existent retested Ranma's resolve against acts of violence against
the cruel, cruel world. Eventually calming down (though not before
making sure the next visitor to the facility would have a hard time
getting any water from the faucet), she dried herself off and waited
out the turbulent air before going in search of hot water in the
nearby galley.
* * *
"HYAA!!!" The scream was shortly accompanied by the sound of
cinder blocks being smashed back into dust. Akane stood from where
she had been crouched over the bricks and wiped a little sweat from
her brow.
Pulverising concrete usually made the girl feel much better...
but somehow, lately, it hadn't been helping. The scowl that marred
her face during her exercises didn't leave as it normally did now
that she had finished.
"The jerk!" she muttered as she headed inside to clean up and
have a bath. "He didn't even say goodbye!" She slipped out of her gi
and entered the furo, slamming the door behind her. She knew that she
wasn't really annoyed about him going quietly; it wasn't as if she
didn't know he was going. What bothered her was that, though he'd
been gone for barely half a day, she was already missing him. That
she missed the insensitive, egotistical, dishonest jerk at all was
infuriating! She hated him!
"Ranma, you idiot!" The yell reverberated throughout the entire
house.
In the living room, drinking tea with Kasumi, Nodoka sighed.
Over the past year she had watched Akane and her son grow apart,
despite all her attempts to the contrary. So many things had gone
wrong for the two of them, from their own stubborn shyness to the
unsubtle interference of Genma and Soun. But the one recent event
that seemed to have done the most damage and poison the (ever so
slowly) budding relationship was down to one person... Ryoga Hibiki.
"What's the matter, aunty?" Kasumi asked.
"Hmm?" the younger woman's question interrupted Nodoka's
thoughts and she realised that the memories had made her frown. "Oh,
nothing, dear. Just thinking about the past." Kasumi looked like she
was about to reply, but kept quiet instead.
The Saotome matriarch's thoughts drifted now to what she had
overheard Akane said - 'He didn't even say goodbye'. If only she
knew, she thought and recalled the scene she saw late the previous
night, shortly before Ranma's clandestine departure.
It was very late, so much as to be better described as very
early. Despite this, a few members of the extended Saotome-Tendo
family had not yet been to sleep, or if they had, it had been little
more than a short nap.
Nodoka was one of these people. She had stayed up to help her
son pack his bags, and make sure he set off on time. It was almost
time for him to leave, so she was going to the Saotome room to make
sure he wasn't asleep, or wake him up if he was.
Their room was empty, however (Genma and Soun had been carted
off with Happosai for a training trip at her persuasion).
Backtracking in search of Ranma, she stopped outside Akane's room,
noticing that it had been left ajar. Opening the door a little
further so that she could peek in to the room's gloom, she could just
make out the form of her son in the darkness, crouched at the
bedside.
Oblivious to his mother's presence, Ranma quietly spoke.
"Sayonara, Akane-chan". He leaned over the sleeping form of his
iinazuke and gently kissed the girl on the forehead. Torn between the
desire to watch the touching scene, and the need to give Ranma a
little privacy, Nodoka only moved away when Ranma stood and turned to
leave, wiping an errant tear from his eye.
It was a sad smile, but a smile non the less. Kasumi was just
happy that Aunty Nodoka wasn't thinking about totally unhappy things
anymore.
* * *
Ranma performed his usual acrobatics to get back into his seat.
After seeing the act a few times before, the other passengers in
nearby seats were almost getting used to it now... almost.
"Feeling better now?" Tenchi asked
"Huh?" What was he talking about? Ranma's somewhat suppressed
intelligence clicked and whirred as it came to realise that the other
student-to-be thought he had run to the toilet because the turbulence
had made him sick. Well, he /hoped/ that was it. "Yeah... I guess you
could say I'm back to myself, heh heh," he laughed. Tenchi chuckled
too, though he didn't quite get what was so funny - he just didn't
want to look silly.
"Could you do me a favour though?" Ranma asked, and continued
when the other gave his reluctant consent, "I'm kind 'f a water
magnet, and I really don't like having cold soggy clothes, so,
y'know... if you could..."
"Uh, sure..." Tenchi agreed, having gotten the gist of the
request. He found it a little difficult to believe, though. Ranma was
probably just a little neurotic, but then in this day and age, who
wasn't? Besides, aliens, livings spaceships and super-science was one
thing, but bad luck, magic and water magnetism was another. "But if
you've got a problem with water, what's with the thermos flask?"
"Uh... this... well... that is..." Whoops! How was he going to
explain that one? "Well, if I'm going to be soggy, I may as well be
warm and soggy, right?" Tenchi rolled his eyes in an 'of course'
expression, while Ranma grimaced at the stupidity of his
explanation's logic. But still, he got away with it, without people
thinking he was weird... relatively speaking, of course.
The remainder of the flight passed without incident (though at
one point the seatbelt light came on for no apparent reason, while
the cabin attendants scurried around, as if looking for a missing
person, or perhaps a stowaway). Neither Ranma nor Tenchi spoke much
to each other for the remaining journey, except for occasional idle
chatter, each lost in their own activities and thoughts.
As both young men were going to the same place, Sunnydale, and
were otherwise alone in a foreign land, they agreed to accompany each
other for the remainder of the journey from the airport to the
campus. Again they kept quiet for the most part on the coach, but
that was most because Tenchi, having taken a window seat, was busy
staring at the scenery as it passed by, occasionally pointing out
something of interest. He may have been off the planet several times
(not that he was about to mention that in passing, or else Ranma
might think he was still up there!), but never before had he actually
been to a different part of the globe. He was surprised at how
different it /felt/ compared to Japan. The basic landscape was more
or less the same as what you might find in some areas of his
homeland, but the knowledge that this was a far away land, half a
world away, made it seem... well... different. Maybe it was just that
everyone was driving on the wrong side of the road, which was itself
marked and signposted differently... or that he was having difficulty
in understanding the ambient chatter of the other passengers.
"Konichiwa," Ranma greeted, but got an elbow in the gut from
Tenchi for his trouble. "Uh, gomen... Heerrou..." Tenchi groaned -
and he thought his English was bad!
"Hello. We coming here to collect keys." Tenchi managed to get
out in comprehendible, but heavily accented English.
"Oh, well then, you want to go to the accommodation office,
just down the corridor," the lady behind the desk replied with a
smile, gesturing along the correct path.
With a bow and a 'Tank you verii much', the two boys made their
way in indicated direction.
Various documents were needed, such as proof of identity, were
required when they reached the accommodation office, and sorting it
all out took quite some time, as neither boy could easily understand
what was being asked of them. It didn't help the receptionist at the
office seemed very happy about something when they both got their
keys. Something about the same room?
"The same room? We're in the same room!" Ranma protested. "How
can they put two strangers in the same room together!?"
"Gees, calm down, Ranma. I'm mean it's not as if we're complete
strangers, now, is it?" Tenchi argued, slightly peeved that Ranma
seem to think of him as a stranger.
He looked about the small room. One side was a near mirror
image of the other, with a bed, bedside table, desk and wardrobe.
There was also a small fridge and an en suite bathroom. Still, even
with two people, it was larger than an equivalently priced apartment
in Tokyo, so he couldn't complain. "They probably just put us
together because we're the only two male Japanese students here for
the summer."
"Yeah... well, whatever," Ranma responded, noncommittally, and
tried to calm down a little. Being angry at this unfortunate turn of
events wouldn't help him, and it was likely that he wouldn't be able
to get a room to himself, so it may as well be that he shared with a
friendly person who seemed to have a fair bit in common with him...
at least on the women front.
The pigtailed boy moved over to the bed on the right from the
door - the one nearest the en suite, as it happened - and dumped his
heavy back pack onto it, making it squeak and groan from the hideous
weight of the thing. How long had it been since he last slept on a
western style bed, he wondered? Training in the La Belle France
school of martial arts dining? Well, whatever, he had more important
things to think about.
"Man, what did you pack in that bag of yours, Ranma?" Tenchi
asked, looking at how much more dipped the bed became with Ranma's
luggage on it, compared to his own.
"Huh? Oh, just anythin' 'n' everythin' I'd need on the road,"
the other replied nonchalantly. His calmed aura and indifferent
attitude was a ruse - in the privacy of his own mind he was seething.
How on earth was he going to keep his thrice accursed curse secret
from someone who was /living in the same room/? And how was he going
to explain having /girls/ swimwear in the meantime? Oh well, he'd
think of something when it came up. Thinking ahead had never been his
forte, so why start now?
* * *
The Magic Box's door chime jingled as Willow entered the
esoteric shop, which had become Slayer HQ since it was acquired by
the Watcher, Giles. The other 'Slayerettes' were already assembled
inside.
"Hey," Tara greeted her from where she sat with Xander and Anya
at the table. "You're late."
"Oh," Willow's casual response seemed forced and unnatural. "I,
uh, had to get that thing." She walked over to the shop counter and
placed a leather bag on to it's surface.
"Giles isn't around," Xander commented, "so you can loose the
cryptic."
Willow tried to restrain her nervous fidgeting as she expander
her explanation. "The last spell ingredient."
"Right, of course," Xander tried to make it out as if he knew.
"Just what is 'vino de madre' anyway?"
The redheaded witch walked over to the others and joined them
at the table.
"It means 'Wine of the Mother'. It's... kinda black market
stuff."
"Black market? You... you didn't tell me that," Tara
complained, concerned for the welfare of her friend. "It could have
been dangerous... you shouldn't have gone alone."
"Sorry. It wasn't... I made sure I was safe."
"Well, it must be something pretty intense," Anya observed.
"The black market's all baby teeth and..." she was interrupted by the
ringing of the telephone. "I'll get it!" she volunteered, and hopped
up, moving to the counter to pick up the receiver.
"Magic Box. How can I help you?"
The muffled speech on the other end was unheard by the others,
but they paused in their conversation anyway.
"I'm sorry, he's not here." Anya put a hand over the speaker
for a moment and whispered "It's for Giles" to the others.
Apparently whoever it was had an important message to pass on,
because Anya picked up a piece of paper from the counter and,
flipping it over to the unused side, started making a few notes.
Meanwhile, the three Slayerettes still at the table attempted to pick
up the conversation again, in somewhat hushed tones and on a slightly
more palatable topic.
When the phone was finally put down, all eyes turned to the ex-
demon.
"What was all that about?" Xander asked.
"Some guy name after a vegetarian food stuff from Japan wanted
to let Giles know that his 'student' is available now, and that he
should contact him as soon as possible, if convenient." As she spoke
she flipped the piece of paper over and started to read what was
originally written on it. A frown crossed her face as she absorbed
the writing. "This student he supposed to be teaching is going to
have a problem, though."
Anya moved back to the table and offered the note to Xander,
who took it and read it out aloud.
"Not one for long goodbyes, so I've gone." Tara and willow
shared a dismayed look. "Thought slipping out quietly was the way to
go. Love to you all, Giles."
*
The book, though interesting, was not holding Giles' attention.
There were other thoughts on his mind, distracting thoughts. He
looked up from the novel and stared off into the space of the airport
terminal, thinking about what he was leaving behind. He also couldn't
shake the feeling that he was forgetting about something terribly
important.
"Do you really think we'd let you get away with that?" Willow
asked.
The words intruded upon Giles' thoughts, but didn't startle
him. Not much. He turned to face his young friend, and saw Tara,
Anya, Xander and Dawn all there too, to see him off. Before he could
say anything, Anya stepped forward and held out a piece of paper.
"And you forgot to cancel your private tutoring job that you
conveniently also forgot to tell us about," the ex-demon told him as
she handed over the note, in her typical no-nonsense-and-tactless
fashion.
Giles gave the message a quick once over and exclaimed, "Oh,
good lord, I completely forgot about that." A frown crossed his
features as he continued, "This... this I will have to deal with
immediately. It seems that I won't be going just yet, after all..."
"You won't? That's great! I'm mean, it's... uh," she turned to
the others for support, realising her gaffe.
"Well, that's just terrific," Anya huffed. "All this time
you've been making with the go-ey away-ey-ness, and when you finally
go and leave me my shop, you change you mind!"
"Anya..." Xander cautioned. "This is happy, joyous time, so
make with the moaning later."
Anya just scowled at her boyfriend, but her response died on
her lips as she yielded to his superior social expertise.
"Uh, plan 'B', guys," Willow spoke up, to broke the impasse.
The small group produced various 'going away' gifts, including
a hastily crafted sign bearing the slogan 'Welcome Back Giles'.
"We weren't sure if you'd go or not..." Xander started to
explain.
"So we got two lots of presents and cards," Tara finished off.
The small group quickly went through the 'England' themed
souvenirs, meant as a compensation for the Watcher being unable to
return to his homeland. A brief mention was given to the 'America'
themed souvenirs, which would have served to remind Giles of the
place where he had spent so many years.
Once the mini party was over, there was an uncomfortable
silence.
"So... um, what happens now?" Xander asked. "I don't think I've
ever been this far into an almost going away party before."
"Well, I should think we all go home," Giles suggested. "I for
one have a great deal of work to do in preparation..." he trailed off
as the group started to make it's way out of the airport.
"Just how did you get a job as a tutor?" Anya asked. "And what
is that you tutor in, anyway?"
"I believe you can thank Willow for this, as it was her that
recommended me..."
"I did?"
"Yes. It's not actually a tutoring job," he clarified. "Some
poor child in Japan was cursed to become half dragon, or something of
the sort, and his... uh, her doctor wanted me to try and do something
for her."
"Oh, I remember now!" Willow piped up. "The doctor was called
Tofu, right?"
"Tofu Ono. Apparently the girl had her curse partially sealed,
but I believe she may be destined to be a slayer, and the seal has
interfered with that, which is why I agreed to help. As we were a
little, ah, busy at the time, I suggested that it should wait until
the end of the summer." The Watcher looked pensive for a moment. "Of
course, I foolishly neglected to make a note of it in my diary. And
now she is here."
"Hey, if it were me, I wouldn't complain," Xander spoke up.
"Being half dragon sounds pretty cool to me... flying around,
breathing fire, 'n' stuff." He accompanied his words with appropriate
gestures.
The Slayerettes discussed the pros and cons of being hybridised
with mythical creatures all the way to the Magic shop before
splitting up and going their separate ways.
* * *
As each day went by, Ranma couldn't believe his ever continuing
good luck. Not once had he been splashed, soaked or rained on
unexpectedly for the past few weeks. Keeping well clear of the
canteen had helped, but the weather, or lack of it, was a complete
surprise. In Japan, such hot weather would have produced summer
showers every hour, but here it just got dryer and dryer. It was
great! Why hadn't he moved here before?
Tenchi, he had found, was a really nice guy, too. He seemed so
concerned about the welfare of others all the time, it was hard not
to like him. It was a shame, really, that he didn't have the same
passion for the Art. On the few occasions that they'd fought each
other, Ranma had beaten Tenchi easily. Though the swordsman
demonstrated at least as much skill as Kuno in those bouts, he was
insistent that he found it difficult to fight at his best unless the
circumstances were dire. Ranma found himself believing him, and
decided that his new friend's below par performance was caused by him
being so nice that he couldn't help but hesitate when attacking
someone he held in good regard.
Having a good friend and a curse free life had come at a price,
though. He was in a strange land where people behaved strangely, and
spoke a strange language... a language that he was /supposed/ to have
a good understanding of as part of his education. But of course,
Ranma had never been much of an academic, even in the year or so
after defeating Saffron, when he had finally decided to try and do
well in school. Now to compensate for his linguistic clumsiness he
had to attend English lectures, tutorials and workshops every day of
the week. It was dull! Ranma paid attention anyway, with a grim
determination to do well, and was making good progress, especially
with Tenchi's help - not understanding what people were saying was
quite disturbing, and he found himself unwilling to go out and
explore the town that would be his home away from home for the next
few years.
There was also the matter of Tenchi's pet, Min-Ohki... it was,
well, see for your self. Cue wibbly flashback effect...
With the last session of the day out of the way, Ranma and
Tenchi were heading back to their room through the park like
university campus. There was something irritating Ranma, though, and
he was having a hard time to ignore it. Finally, about half way back
to the dormitory, his resistance crumbled and he got his annoyance
off of his chest.
"D'you have to lug that thing around with you?" Ranma asked, a
little irritation in his voice. "You know it gives me the creeps."
"Well, actually, I do..." Tenchi replied hesitantly,
intuitively knowing what the subject was, scratching the back of his
head with his free hand. In the other was his book bag, it's sides
bulging slightly with the bulk of his crystal ball. "At least until
it hatches."
"It /what/?" Ranma stopped dead in his tracks
"Um... it breaks, eh heh. And then I'll get rid of it for
you." Tenchi's nervous fiddling and sweating brow weren't fooling
anyone, especially not Ranma, but he decided to play along for now.
Besides he wanted to get far, far away from the lecture theatre, do
some exercise, and have a shower.
The two roommates had entered their building, when Tenchi had
suddenly darted off, saying something about forgetting an errand
before disappearing into the campus. Ranma just shrugged and
continued to their room to drop off his own book bag. Grabbing a bit
to eat from the room's fridge, he left and made his way to a grassy
open space for his evening work out.
When he returned, about an hour later, he found Tenchi sitting
at his desk, facing the door and holding something behind his back.
"Um, Ranma... I know were not supposed to have pets, but...
well, you wouldn't mind if I had one, right?" he asked. "I mean, you
don't have any allergies, or anything, do you?"
Ranma sighed. Tenchi was being as transparent as glass.
Obviously his roommate had somehow acquired a pet that he couldn't
get rid of, and was hiding it behind his back. The question was just
to soften the blow.
"So long as it's not a cat," he said, heading for the shower
room, but pausing at the door to allow the other to reveal his poorly
hidden secret.
"Well... he's... um, she's sort of a cabbit." That got Ranma's
attention - what the heck was a cabbit? It sounded like a cross
between a cat and a rabbit... Before his imagination could conjure up
some horrific hybrids, Tenchi finally brought out what he'd been
hiding behind his back. Ranma's eyes bugged out.
What ever it was, it was clearly a baby. Its rabbit like body
was beige and furry, its cat like head was marked with some sort of
leaf-like emerald gem on its forehead, and it sported cat style ears
that had been hugely deformed and elongated, like those of a floppy
eared rabbit. It was actually very cute, Ranma decided, despite its
obviously feline facial features, which were sufficiently strong to
make him shiver, but not for him to suffer an all out ailurophobia
attack.
"This is Min-Ohki."
The little cabbit meowed a 'hello'. Before the odd looking
creature could close it's mouth again, Ranma was clinging the to
plain plaster ceiling, his fingers punching holes in the chalky
material for grip.
"Uh... I see this is going to cause some problems..." Tenchi
observed, watching his terrified friend perform levitation.
"I'm... I'm sure we can work something out..." Ranma squeaked.
As it happened, Ranma was able to tolerate Min-Ohki's presence
for the most part, especially as the little cabbit (who's gender
seemed to remain an enigma, much to Ranma's amusement) spent most of
its time hidden away in Tenchi's book bag during lectures. Still,
whenever he, or she... or whatever... miyahed, meowed or miyewed,
Ranma jumped into the nearest available hidey-hole.
It was quite some time before Ranma realised that Min-Ohki's
appearance had coincided with the 'lucky crystal ball's
disappearance. When he did, he checked the cabbit's aura and found it
to be the same as the one he'd felt from the egg-like ball when he'd
first touched it. If the existence of such a bizarre creature wasn't
enough to convince Ranma that something strange was going on, this
connection was. A half cat, half rabbit that hatched out of a crystal
ball? This was going beyond the realm of weirdness that he normally
had to deal with. He didn't press for more information, though - he
had his own secrets, so he was content to let Tenchi have his.
*
The last day of summer English classes came and went. To
celebrate (and make as much use of their improved skills as they
could), Tenchi, Ranma and a couple of other students they'd gotten to
know, a Korean man named Hong, and Tanya, a young Croatian woman,
visited one of the more popular nightclubs in Sunnydale - the Bronze.
The establishment's atmosphere was loud, noisy and smelly. The
pungent odours of tobacco and alcohol mixed unpleasantly to the sound
of a hundred people speaking amongst them selves. On a stage a retro-
thrash rock band lashed out its overdriven melodies.
Down on the dance floor, amongst the droves of party goers,
Hong and Tanya mingled amongst the crowds, while Tenchi and Ranma
perched them selves high in the gantry, watching the masses below
them. Both Japanese men sported disinterested expressions as they
cradled their non alcoholic drinks.
"Maybe this wasn't the best place to come," Tenchi suggested.
'Besides, I don't like leaving Min-Ohki on his own...' he added to
his thoughts.
"Yeah... 's not really my type 'f place," Ranma agreed. 'Don't
wanna get splashed, either...' he thought to himself.
"Ryoko would love this place..."
"If only Akane was here..."
They both murmured their thoughts simultaneously. They glanced
at each other and laughed nervously.
"You thinking of your friends at home, too, huh?" Tenchi asked.
"Yeah, I guess... 'S funny how you never 'preciate what you've
got till it's gone." That sentiment prompted a morbid moment of noise
filled silence between the two.
"Come on. Let's 'blow this joint'," Tenchi said, awkwardly
inserting an English phrase into the otherwise Japanese sentence.
They hurriedly finished their drinks and left, letting the
other two students know they were going on their way out. They were
surprised to find how late it had gotten when they briefly met with
their friends, who were planning to leave at midnight - only about
half an hour away.
*
"You're nothing but a toy! A pretty toy!" the head biker demon,
Razor stated, wicked mischief glinting in his evil eyes. "Wanna
play?" He moved closer, leering at the captive android.
Buffybot took stock of her situation. Surrounded by demons and
held fast in the vandalised street, her programming clearly defined
what to do - return to Willow for repairs. To do that she'd need to
fight some more, so when the leader of the under-worldly gang
approached she put her poorly thought out plan in to action, filling
out the details as she came to them.
A knee blow to Razor's groin forced him to double over while
she used her captor's arms to help power a scissor kick into the
demon's face. Transforming the motion into a back-flip, she wrenched
free of her captor's grips and stepped out of reach.
"I would, but you've damaged me. I must return to Willow," she
stated simply before slamming a roundhouse kick into a couple of
demons who got a little two close.
She burst into action again as she was pressed to defend
herself while she retreated. Another four or five biker demons were
down and out for the count. A few more goons moved to intercept her,
but a shout from the other end of the street caught their attention.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Buffybot powered through them,
knocking them to the floor and making good her escape.
"Damn, I think we caught up with the main gang," Ranma
observed, taking in the sight of so many demons, some of whom seemed
to have already been severely beaten. "Y' better keep back, Tenchi.
Without a sword, even that shinai, you might get hurt."
"Well, actually..." Tenchi stepped forward, gripping the
Tenchi-ken in his hands.
"Huh, what's that gonna do?" Ranma asked, staring at the
apparently harmless wooden hilt.
"This." Tenchi activated the blade, using his lessons from
Funaho and Washu to feel it draw Juraian power from the nearest
available source - himself and, to a lesser extent, Min-Ohki. The
shimmering blue blade of energy elicited a 'Whoa!' from Ranma and
further attracted the attention of the demon hoard.
"I'll explain later," he said, giving Ranma a conspiratorial
wink.
Ranma couldn't help but grin at the wink, but he also felt a
strange tightening in his chest that he couldn't quite explain. An
equally unexplainable sudden chill followed. He ignored both, simply
nodding his agreement and turning to the demons, ready to attack.
"We gotta help that girl," he said simply, having seen some of
the fallen demons get back up and on their bikes, ready to chase the
fleeing fighter. Without further warning or discussion, he charged
forward to greet the nearest demons with his fists.
A few moments of combat later found Ranma and Tenchi,
completely unhurt, standing amongst the bodies of half a dozen
demons. Some of them were missing limbs, or had been cut clean in
two.
Tenchi started off in the direction the girl and the bikers had
gone, but stopped when he realised that his pigtailed companion
wasn't following him. Turning around, he saw Ranma glancing at the
dead bodies. The other then looked up at him with a disdainful
expression.
"You killed them, Tenchi." Though his voice betrayed no
emotion, the look on his face gave away that he was upset by the
deaths.
"They're demons, Ranma," the swordsman reasoned, though his
voice gave hint that he wasn't entirely sure of himself. "They're
evil... They would have killed us... and if we don't get going,
they're going to kill that girl."
Ranma was about to argue, but saw the logic and the futility of
pressing his point. Still, he glanced away, hiding his face while he
schooled his expression to something more neutral, before joining
Tenchi and chasing after the bikers that got away.
*
Giles sat at his desk in his apartment, pouring over a
selection of dusty and archaic looking books. The tome he was
currently browsing, 'Chronicles of the Illuminated Seers' - a
relatively new text by comparison to the others, only two or three
hundred years old - was not revealing the information he required,
but he skimmed through the musty pages anyway. It was going to be a
long night, and he was going to get tired, so if he didn't maintain a
professional attitude and avoid cutting corners, he would likely miss
what he was after when he came across it. That was the price one had
to pay when cramming a month's research into a single night.
The Watcher was disrupted from his studies - somewhere in a
passage about the creation of Fnord - by the sound of motorcycle
engines and smashing glass. He tried in vain to ignore the noises,
but the increasingly disturbing sounds of unrest moved closer and
louder. Finally, the nature of the racket dawned upon him so, turning
off the small reading lamp that was the room's sole light source, he
moved to the side of the window and peered through the curtain.
"Oh dear..." he said, quietly understating his thoughts.
The town was being pillaged by demons!
A brick smashed through the window, hitting the curtain with a
soft thud and making it billow out. With a threat to his household
(and more importantly, the books therein) established, Giles quickly
dug out a small book from a shelf and flicked through the pages,
finally settling on one passage near the beginning. As he did that,
he dashed to a locked cupboard, from which he gathered a few obscure
items, such as gemstones and pouches of herbs. And a crossbow.
Setting down on the floor of the kitchen area he began a
ritual, the clashing sounds of anarchy outside acting as a surreal
counterpoint to his monastic chanting. Once the casting was complete,
various items produced the typical magical effects one could expect
from such an affair - flashes of light, puffs of iridescent smoke,
and the light.
The spell was only very basic, designed to make something, in
this case, his abode, appear less... prominent. Hopefully the demon
hoard that was ransacking the street would simply not notice his
home, and so leave it alone.
With some semblance of safety insured, Giles picked up the
phone and dialled the summers house hold. He wasn't expecting to find
Spike on the other end.
"Spike... Where are the others?" he asked. "We seemed to
have..."
"A little demon problem," the neutered vampire interrupted,
"yeah. I know.
"The Scoobies all went out on a little trip to the graveyard,
and left me behind to keep an eye on the little shrimp."
"They went out on patrol, without you or me?" The watcher
sounded concerned.
"Yeah, something like that. Listen, I've got the young 'un
under my wing to keep safe, and safe isn't exactly what I'd call this
place right now, so if you don't mind I'm gonna skedaddle. You
prolly ought to do the same, if you want to keep yer hide on."
"Well... thank you for your concern, Spike, but if I were you
I'd be more concerned about Dawn's safety..."
"I am," Spike interrupted again. "If you're thinking of helping
out the others... they've gone to the graveyard where Buffy was
buried. Now I really have gotta go. Ta ra."
The phone line disconnected before Giles could reply, or absorb
any possible implications of that last snippet of information.
*
In one of the innumerable graveyards in Sunnydale, the small
group of young adults, known colloquially (though only really to
themselves) as the Slayerettes, were gathered about the grave of one
Buffy Summers. They were in the act of raising the dead.
The spell was almost complete. Willow had passed the tests, and
was now encased in an ethereal orange glow, as she chanted the final
words. The other three in the group looked on, afraid from what they
had seen thus far, and for what might happen next, but they did not
interfere, knowing that it break the spell, rendering their efforts
null.
The Buffybot, not understanding what was going on, nor having
been privy to the events that had preceded her arrival, had no such
compunctions.
"Willow! I need servicing!" she said cheerfully. The sounds of
roaring motorcycle engines from behind her alerted her to the threat
she had tried to escape. Unfortunately for the robot, returning to
Willow for repairs was a higher priority than avoiding further
damage, to her self... or the very people who were to service her.
The biker demons rode up and around the bot, trapping her. They
also cycled around the Slayerettes, herding them together, making the
three not directly involved in the ritual seek comfort and safety in
each other's arms. They rode around and around for some time, as if
deciding what to do. Whatever they may have been meditating on, their
thoughts were interrupted by a battle cry from the direction they had
come from.
"Get away from them!" Ranma yelled. He stood several meters
from the circling bikers, with fists raised, ready for action. Beside
him, his friend Tenchi stood, looking just a little out of breath,
but holding out his sword of light before him, in an equally
threatening manner. The demons ignored the Japanese boy - not the
effect he was after.
"Perhaps you should try it again in English?" Tenchi quietly
suggested to the other, between deep breaths. A bead of sweat ran
down the side of his head, though whether it was from the vigorous
exercise of running after bike, or from the embarrassment of his
companion's blunder, wasn't clear.
"Uh... right..." Ranma tried in vain to keep his manner from
becoming embarrassed. Recovering his composure, he tried again. "You
be going from them away!" he yelled in halting English.
Tenchi smacked a palm to his face, barely resisting the urge to
proclaim 'I'm not with him'. The demons, on the other hand, let out a
barrage of cackling laughter, and a couple of the bikers broke
formation to greet the newcomers. Seeing this as an invitation to
fight, Ranma and Tenchi charged forward. Chaos ensued.
*
Giles had arrived far too late, he could see. The desecrated
graves, churned up ground and dead demons were mute testament to that
fact. Some of the slain creatures had been sliced up, he noticed, and
their wounds cauterised. Obviously more had gone on here than met the
eye - he couldn't think of what type of weapon would cause such
damage, beyond some creation of science fantasy, like a light sabre,
or a magical sword imbued with the properties of fire.
The shattered fragments of an urn caught his attention.
Kneeling down to examine the broken container, laying the axe and
crossbow to one side. His features became shocked as he recognised
what the pieces of ceramic were a part of. An urn of Osiris, as used
in resurrection spells. A spell that, by the looks of things, had
failed, thanks most likely to the intervention of the 'Hellion' demon
bikers.
A scrabbling, grinding noise interrupted his thoughts. It was a
sound he was well familiar with, having been on site when many a
vampire had awoken and dug it's way out of it's grave. He began to
prepare himself for combat, standing with weapons in hand.
Identifying the source of the digging noises, however, made him
think twice. With pain clearly evident in his eyes, he put down his
weapons and started digging into Buffy's grave.
*
"They lost us," Tenchi observed, despondently.
"Damn it!" Ranma paced forward a little way, with his fists
clenched at his side. "We've gotta keep going! We've gotta save that
girl!"
"I know, Ranma, I know..." he came up behind the other and put
a comforting hand on his shoulder. "But we've done all we can.
They've... they've probably killed her already." It pained Tenchi to
make this admission.
"No! They can't!" Ranma denied, shrugging off the hand and
pacing a little more before turning to face his friend. "I'm not
gonna give up. I've never been beaten before an' I aint gonna start
now!"
Tenchi sighed. How could Ranma be so confident... so stubborn.
Normally these were the qualities he admired in his roommate, since
he lacked them himself so often. But now, with the hint of
desperation replacing the pigtailed martial artist's usual joyful,
happy-go-lucky demeanour, he couldn't help but feel sorry for him.
"I've never lost like this before, either, Ranma... but you
have to let it go," he consoled. "We just can't keep up with them...
At least we managed to help those other four people we found in the
graveyard." He didn't really want to think about that too much - just
what had they been doing there? Why was that one girl glowing red?
"Tenchi... I don't like to say this, but... you're slowing me
down," Ranma told the other, looking away, down at the ground. "I can
catch up with them if I go on ahead." He looked up again into his
friend's eyes, visually pleading forgiveness for pointing out this
fact (something he'd never felt hesitant to do before, or guilty
about afterward), and also for what he was about to do - abandon
Tenchi.
"Alright. Go on," Tenchi told him and reasoned, "It's probably
better if we split up anyway." He watched in awe as Ranma, after
giving him a parting smile, ran off at high speed, then suddenly
leapt up into the rooftops and bounced away.
It was a couple of minutes of hard running (and the odd fight
with isolated demons) before Tenchi finally caught up with Ranma and
the demon gang. He slowed to a stop after rounding the last corner,
taking a moment to catch his breath and examine the battlefield -
there was little else one could call the scene twenty meters or so
ahead of him.
Dead or unconscious demons and fallen bikes were scattered
everywhere, along with their weapons and such. There was also a blast
crater in the centre of the street, which looked to have been
responsible for some of the slain, to judge from the way they had
fallen. In amongst the carnage there appeared to be the remains of
the girl that they had been trying to save... but there was something
distinctly not right about the body that had been literally torn limb
from limb: there was no blood or guts. In fact when he squinted to
help clarify what he was seeing, the body looked more like a smashed
up TV, with sparking wires and motors and such, protruding from the
gaping wounds.
Only one demon was left standing. The one they had managed to
identify as 'Razor' - the leader of the gang. He was facing off
against Ranma, who was looking a little worse for wear - the red silk
shirt that he so often favoured had been shredded and was missing and
arm. There were welts and trickles of blood on Ranma's body,
corresponding the damage to his clothing.
It looked like Ranma would need some help, so Tenchi started
forward again, just as the two antagonists ahead began fighting
again. He watched the injured and apparently exhausted Ranma pummel
into the demon boss with a series of punches so fast that Tenchi was
unable to make out the hits individually. The attack sent Razor
staggering back, but he swung at the opening Ranma had left as he
back-pedalled.
Ranma managed to duck out of the way of the attack, and swung a
leg forward, connecting with the demon's feet, knocking the already
off balance creature to it's posterior. The human back-flipped to get
out of the fallen boss's reach, consolidating his position.
Were it not for Ranma's glowing blue aura that was gathering
around him, Tenchi would have assumed that his friend was too tired
to press an attack. What ever he was doing, he felt that he was close
enough now to lend his support. Yelling out "Ranma!" he reached for a
reserve of strength to turn his jog into a charge, glowing sword held
ready to deliver a killing blow.
Ranma seemed not to notice. Instead of acknowledging the
arrival of support, he brought his fists together in front of him
with writs adjacent palms facing out. He cried out "MOKO TAKABISHA!"
as the blue aura moved into his hands and shot forth in a piercingly
blue, concentrated blast.
Razor had kippuped back onto his feet just in time to see the
attack, but not to dodge it. The watermelon sized ball of confident
life energy ripped into the demon, tearing a hole clean through the
creature's abdomen. A temporary look of shock appeared on his ugly
face, to be replaced by a snarl.
"You... you think that... even hurt, ya... ya little punk?" he
choked and wheezed. He started to take a step forward to the panting
Ranma, but fell flat to the floor, dead. His head rolled to Ranma's
feet.
"That's what you get for ignoring me," Tenchi calmly stated,
standing still in the position his charge's follow through had put
him in.
"Remind me not to ignore you..." Ranma joked, still recovering
his breath.
"I think we got them all," Tenchi said, putting his sword away
and walking over to Ranma. "We out to get you to a hospital. You look
hurt pretty bad."
"Feh, it's nothing," he waved it off. "I've gotten worse cuts
shaving."
Tenchi prodded one of the slashes on Ranma's shoulder.
"ITE!!" he yowled, gripping the aggravated wound. He hopped
around, tearfully for a few moments. "What'd ya do that for?"
"'Feh', he says. 'It's nothing' he says," Tenchi mocked. "Have
you considered that there claws and things might have been poisoned?"
Ranma stopped his wild gyrations and look pensive. "Hmm... I
guess. Alright," he yielded, "we go to the stupid hospital. I've had
enough with poisons for one lifetime."
Tenchi quirked an eyebrow at that comment, but didn't pursue.
Instead he took up a different topic. "What happened to the girl?
>From what I saw, she looked like..."
"A robot, yeah," Ranma broke in. "I don't think she... it was
ever alive. All that running around for nothin'."
"It wasn't for nothing," the other contradicted as they began
to walk through the carnage in the direction they thought the
hospital was in. "Think about how many lives we've probably saved by
defeating this bunch of monsters."
"Yeah, I guess so." He didn't sound very sure, but his
expression brightened.
The two came across the torso of the Buffybot, its lifeless
looking eyes staring up into the sky. They looked down on it, a
mixture of emotions crossing their faces - curiosity, disgust,
sorrow... It's eyes suddenly twitched, and it looked at them both.
"Hi, I'm Buffy," it said, ever cheerful. "I need servicing."
"I'm very sorry, Roboto-san," Tenchi told the destroyed
android, "but we can not help you."
"Come on, Tenchi," Ranma said, in Japanese. "This thing's
really creeping me out."
Buffybot watched, or at least as much as she could in her state
of disrepair, as the two young Japanese men walked away. They must
have been very nice people to want to help her so much, even though
they couldn't, the bot thought, in its obtuse way.
"So what was that 'Moko Takabisha' thing all about?" one of
them asked the other, Buffybot couldn't see them, now, so she had
only voices to go on. "It sounded familiar somehow."
"I'll tell you after ya tell me all about that weird energy
sword," the other responded. Of course, Buffybot had no idea what
they were talking about, because she hadn't been programmed with a
Japanese language matrix. "I guess we aint exactly been honest with
each other about our lives..."
"Yeah, I guess so. I just didn't want to seem like a weirdo. I
just wanted to have a normal friend, for a change..." the dialogue
faded away as the distance between the speakers and the bot reduced
the signal level to below that of the incessant buzzing of a fault in
her audio processing circuits.
Time passed. Buffybot didn't know how much, because her
internal chronometer was malfunctioning, and seemed to be
incrementing randomly. It didn't help that her senses were going
strange, either. All she could see was the black of the sky. All she
could feel was a numbness in her upper body, caused by a negative
feedback loop that had reduce sensation gain to zero. All she could
hear was snap, crackle and pop of her circuits shorting out, and the
phantom buzz of motorcycle engines, caught in some sort of low gain
delay loop.
Oh, wait. That's not a phantom sound, but a real motorbike, and
some other type of vehicle coming from the other direction.
Though unable to truly feel anything, the bot had been program
to display various quirks of human behaviour, such as curiosity. With
no one around to here her, she simply passed the thought to her
outgoing audio buffer, without activating her vocalisation
subsystems. 'I wonder who's coming?'
* * *
TBC
C&C to curator@discordia.connectfree.co.uk
Any and all flavours are welcome. But remember, you can comment on
the good bits, as well as the bad (no, really!).
Lyrics are from 'The last day of summer' by The Cure.
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