[Episode 10741] [Episode 10741]"K-Kodachi?" Ranma asked, hoping not to wake her up. He winced as an abrupt montage of memories that didn't feel like his own flashed through his head—memories of another raven-haired girl. "S-Selene?"
"Motoko," the raven-haired beauty snuggled up to him muttered sleepily. "Who...? Michael?"
"Ranma," Ranma corrected without thinking, still confused about the foreign memories in his head.
The girl stiffened against him and her eyes flew open. For a moment their eyes met. Ranma noticed hers were a rich sienna color flecked with gold before she was suddenly standing on the other side of the room. Her eyes were now an ice blue color and her lips were curled back in a feral snarl to reveal an impressive set of fangs. In spite of the hostility of her stance, Ranma idly noted that her fangs and eye color did nothing to detract from her naked beauty as she watched him warily.
The girl blinked, her eyes returning to their natural sienna and her fangs retracting until they were just slightly longer and sharper than a normal person's canines. She clutched the sides of her head as her knees buckled beneath her.
"Are you okay?" Ranma asked, slipping off the cold, metal table they had been laying on.
He reached down and absently pulled the IV needle out of his arm and dropped it to dangle from the empty IV bag hanging from a stand by the table. The girl had also had one which had been ripped out of her arm when she leapt across the room.
"What's happened to me?" the girl moaned. "Where am I?"
Ranma looked around the room. The walls and floor were bare stone and there were no furnishings beyond the metal table. There was one heavy metal door that appeared to be quite sturdy. Overall, the room resembled a dungeon but gave no other indication as to where they were.
"I don't know," Ranma answered. "The last thing I remember was trying to save Akane from the latest group of kidnappers..."
Ranma trailed off as horrific memories began to wash over him. These kidnappers were unlike any he had faced before. They were fast, almost faster than him, and incredibly tough. It seemed no matter how hard he hit them they would just get back up and attack again. They also used guns. Ranma remembered the horror as one by one his friends had fallen under a hail of bullets until only he remained. He remembered the pain both physical and emotional as he was suddenly faced by a sneering Akane who looked at him with eyes filled with disdain before she shot him.
He was haunted by her last words to him. "You're too late, Ranma," she had laughed, her brown eyes turning ice blue and her canines extending wickedly. "I've become more powerful than even you could imagine!"
Ranma froze in his tracks where he was approaching the girl to comfort her.
"You're one of them!" Ranma snarled, his body tensing as anger coursed through him.
Motoko looked up and gasped as she heard the boy's angry accusation. His storm-cloud gray eyes had turned ice blue and his lips were curled back to reveal a vicious set of fangs. She scrambled backward, casting about for anything to use as a weapon as she pressed herself into the corner of the room.
Memories of the last time she had seen features like that came to the forefront of her mind. She had received a message from her sister asking her to investigate reports of evil spirits inhabiting an old mansion near the Hinata Springs. Things had seemed quiet when she arrived at the location. She slipped into the deteriorated building and began searching for signs of spiritual activity.
It wasn't until she reached the basement that she encountered the first creature. At first it had seemed a normal human, but then she saw the ice blue eyes and the fangs as it snarled at her. She had killed it readily as it charged her as she did with the next two. Unfortunately, she seemed to have stumbled on a whole colony of the creatures and they were armed to the teeth.
Motoko was soon dodging bullets frantically as she strove to dispatch the monsters, but there were too many and they had automatic weapons. She remembered the searing pain as the first bullet tore into her thigh followed by two more in her gut. One of them must have hit her spine because her legs instantly collapsed under her.
As she lay on the ground whimpering with pain, one of the beasts approached her, kicking the sword from her hand and picking her up by the hair to look cruelly into her eyes.
"Now what shall we do with you?" he asked with a nasty smirk. "You're quite impressive to have killed so many of us all on your own." He sniffed her theatrically. "You smell like a tasty little morsel. Perhaps I shall make a meal of you..."
Then everything went black as Motoko had passed out from pain and blood loss.
Motoko's hand unconsciously went to her belly, feeling for a wound that wasn't there. She looked down in surprise when her hand only encountered unblemished skin.
"What's happening?" Motoko whimpered before looking up at the creature glaring at her from several feet away. "What did you monsters do to me?" she demanded, her eyes narrowing.
"Who are you callin' a monster?" the creature snapped. "You're the one with the freaky, color-changing eyes and the fangs! Just like the freaks that killed all my friends and took Akane!"
"You better look in a mirror," Motoko snorted. "I'm not the one with the fangs and weird eyes!"
The creature blinked in surprise, his eyes returning to their previous storm-cloud gray and his fangs retracting. Motoko watched as he ran his tongue over his teeth, probing the shortened fangs.
"Oh shit..." he commented. "I've been turned into one of you freaks."
"What do you mean 'one of you freaks'?" Motoko demanded. "I'm not a monster."
"When you jumped off the table, your eyes turned blue and you grew a nasty set of fangs," the creature pointed out. "That ain't normal."
It was Motoko's turn to blink in confusion. She mimicked his actions of a moment ago and discovered her own shortened, but still longer and sharper than normal canines.
"It can't be!" she gasped. "I can't have been turned into one of those demons!"
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(Posted Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:01)
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