As Ranma picked up the battered and still-complaining Harun and lifted her up over his head in preparation to throw her back at Knight Quill, he saw something stalking up behind Knight Quill. His eyebrow started to twitch.
'It's not fair,' he thought to himself as Harun dizzily flailed about, smacking his shoulder with his heel, 'even when I get sent to a freakin' other dimension or something, I still can't get away from this guy!'
As Knight Quill was rearing back his hand to throw Michi at the pigtailed interloper, he noticed that his enemy's attention was directed at something behind him, and turned to see what it was.
It was a red man. A large, muscular red man wearing a hakama and wielding a katana.
For an ogre, Tawakun was considered the cream of the crop. He had some demon blood in him that gave him his red-tinted skin, a formidible constitution, and a supernatural regeneration that a troll would envy (given that it wasn't negated by fire or acid). His body, which would normally be a grotesquely muscular form, was instead lithe and cut. His abilities with the blade were unheard of among ogres, who tended to rely on their muscles above all else. His mind... well, his mind actually DID exceed the relatively low standards of ogre-kind, though nobody expected him to take a level of mage anytime this eon.
You see, Tawakun had a very well-developed vocabulary.
"Hark! Who dare trespass upon the grounds that I, the great and powerful Tawakun, the Blue Thunder of Faerun, am bound to protect? Look upon me and know fear, feeble opponents! Surrender now or face me and perish before my steel!"
Ranma just groaned. Harun and Michi ignored the speech in favor of enjoying the sudden cessation of involuntary movement.
Knight Quill decided that there was an issue that needed to be addressed before battle could be resumed. "You're red."
The ogre smirked, leaning back and running a hand through it's thick, oily brown hair. "You refer to my demon blood, of course. Tis a gift granted upon my line fr-"
The sort-of demi-god decided to make his point before the guardian could launch into another monologue. "You called yourself the 'Blue Thunder,' but you're red, not blue."
Tawakun blinked at this observation, and then his eyes narrowed. "Does this inane banter have some MEANING you wish to impart, or do you converse merely to delay your inevitable demise by my hand?"
Knight Quill, guessing that dealing with the ogre through combat was probably more trouble than it was worth, threw Michi at him. Ranma did the same with Harun a moment later, although there was no "guessing" involved. The two promptly turned toward each other and charged.
Tawakun frowned as he found two lovely female intruders flying toward him, launched by their companions (he was operating under the assumption that the intruders were unified). What an injustice! In their bottomless cowardice, the men of the party sought to barter with him for their passage using their women as payment! As if a noble and righteous soul such as his would allow such a thing!
No, he'd punish the cowards. And then, freed from the base villains that dared to call such visions of loveliness "comrades", he would accept his due reward from the girls as their savior.
That was the plan, at least. Spreading his arms so that he could welcome the two women into his arms and assure them that they would be safe soon. To his surprise, they twisted to land on his chest feet-first, and then kicked off of him to crash onto the floor awkwardly.
Harun and Michi were not in good shape. They needed to retreat, get their bearings, and probably down a potion of healing or two. Michi was particularly out of it, having been used to block an energy bolt thrown by the pigtailed monk. Still, they were experienced and tough, and they each scrambled to their feet now that they were finally free of being tossed around like rag dolls. Focused on escape, they ignored the ogre's sudden rambling about "running into his arms for refuge against their traitorous fellows," and started to run past him.
That was when they, along with Tawakun, were engulfed in magical energy and fell to the ground, asleep.
Ranma hadn't been quite right when he'd assumed that the girls were useless without their gear. There was ONE among their number whose skills weren't diminished in any way by having no access to equipment.
Though honestly, Mercurial felt that she would have had a hard time casting a spell while naked. Spellcasting needed concentration, and she found it incredibly hard to think straight when she was the center of attention (given that EVERYBODY seemed to pay attention when the mage started shouting out arcane language) with her "goods" on display. Luckily, Ranma had bought her and the others enough time to actually put on the clothes they had taken from the other room.
As her only spell activated, she felt surprised and a little proud that the demonic ogre fell asleep along with the two women (strange... they seemed familiar...). She wouldn't have expected even a low-level demonic being to succumb to such a spell.
She had no way of knowing that Tawakun had the will save of a mushroom.
Clang! Knight Quill's sword smashed into the wall, breaking through the wood and clay easily. Ranma waved away the dust and lashed out with another kick that dented Quill's sword arm... uh... armor. The attached hand din't let go of the blade as Ranma had hoped, and the pigtailed boy ducked under another horizontal sweep that tore open the OTHER wall.
Ranma was losing. At least, as he figured it, he was. He had hit his enemy several times while he hadn't been tagged, but Ranma couldn't see any appreciable damage done to the enchanted armor. In a space this narrow, and given Quill's speed, he wasn't able to get enough space for the mouko takabisha to be used effectively.
Really, he wasn't sure if this thing COULD be defeated normally. He had figured out by now that there was nobody in the armor that was swinging at him, and also that the armor itself was far stronger than any normal metal shell. It emitted no ki, and even the strange other kind of power he was feeling from it wasn't hot enough to power a hiryu shoten ha. Maybe the bakusai tenketsu? Ranma scowled. Leave it to Ryoga to learn useless techniques only good for fighting metal or rock opponents while trying to defeat HIM.
Seeing the green armor advance on Ranma, Mercurial quailed about trying to think of some way to help. A good, solid evocation would have been appropriate, but she only had the sleep spell. Maybe if she had her equipment; she had managed to get a hold of a few cheap and nearly-useless scrolls before she had been looted and-
Mercurial quickly turned around and darted back into the room, hoping that Ranma could hold out a little longer.
"Mercurial! Are you all right?" Sereni asked as she finished putting on a brassiere. "You just put that robe on and took off! Look! We found underwear!"
Mercurial stopped and stared at her teammates all in varying stages of dress, and then looked at the wall. Numerous pairs of carefully placed bras and pairs of panties hung from hooks in the wall, and she briefly considered it. Why would Saiyo, a male gnome, have human-sized female lingerie hanging around? Still, it was rather convenient. The clothes they had found hadn't included any undergarments, and it WAS kind of drafty in these robes without-
She shook her head. "No time! Scrolls! I need scrolls!" Darting to the table she had seen before, she grabbed one of the few rolled-up pieces of parchment and then immediately darted out again.
Rii frowned, having the feeling that the situation outside needed to be attended to... and they still didn't have any weapons. "I think Ranma might need help. Oh, Myna, are you going to be okay with those?"
The elven thief looked down at the orange bra and panties set she was wearing and sighed. For some reason lingerie didn't agitate her new (and hopefully temporary) clothing allergy. She had hoped the entire spell had worn off, but an itchy and sneezy encounter with a shirt had dispelled that illusion. So now she was stuck wearing only a set of admittedly sexy underwear, though it was still better than nothing.
Oh yes. Saiyo was good at what he did.
Ranma growled as he jumped backward, only to have Knight Quill close the distance and nearly impale him on his greatsword. He had come up with a strategy for getting rid of the suit of armor at least temporarily, but he was running out of energy and needed to get his foe into a more vulnerable position, such as next to the window. They were on the second story, so Ranma figured a solid kick out the window would give him the respite he needed to come up with something more brilliant and permanent.
That was when Mercurial burst out of the "safe room" again, already reading something from a scroll in her hands.
The words didn't make any sense to Ranma, and even as he tried to commit them to memory to ask about them later, they seemed to slip right out of his mental grasp. Strangely enough, when he listened to the invocation, unassociated words seemed to come to mind that he KNEW Mercurial hadn't uttered directly, such as "nude", "move", and "undress".
Whatever she did, he couldn't argue with the results, as Knight Quill suddenly vanished in mid-stroke.
Knight Quill brought his sword down hard, hoping to slice the annoying monk's arm off, and expecting the human to dance back out of range, as he had been doing the entire battle.
Suddnly appearing in a field outside wasn't part of that equation. Knight Quill stared for a moment, then scratched his helmet, idly making an annoyed grunt as he traced one of the dents the human had caused.
Turning around, he saw that the inn he had infiltrated was right behind him; he hadn't been teleported far. He was about to stalk back in and finish the battle when he stopped short.
That monk was awfully strong. And even moreso, nearly untouchable. Knight Quill was no slouch in the art of swordplay, but had been unable to cause anything more than tiny flesh wounds. If the fight had continued, Quill wasn't completely confident that he would have come out the victor.
Strange. This party he was chasing down was supposed to be a bunch of weakling newbies. First level kids. Kobold meat. And really, that's the impression that most of them gave, running down the hallways clutching their clothes (he had to wonder what kind of adventurers took the time out to have an orgy in the middle of a quest in a trap-infested stronghold). Still, the monk was NOT a pushover. Did that mean that perhaps the others were equally or nearly as strong?
Perhaps some further recon work was warranted. If they did turn out to be weaklings, it would at least be best to attack with the element of surprise next time, so that he could bring down the monk quickly. If they all turned out to be that strong, then Knight Quill would need help.
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(Posted Sat, 04 Nov 2006 01:36)
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