Azusa appeared seemingly from nowhere, and glomped onto Ranma, recognizing him as one of the only people she'd ever seen beat Mikado in a fight. Her torn figure-skating costume was pulling loose under her somewhat ripped and shredded sweater, giving something of a peep show to everybody there.
"Save little Azusa!!" the scared girl pleaded piteously.
Ranma's and Nabiki's eyes weren't on the scantily clad figure-skater though. Instead, they were staring up at the bulging mass of bloated and corrupted negative chi held within the quick-rotting bodies of a small army of ghouls.
"Nabiki," Ranma said, turning toward the other vampire with a questioning look.
"I...I can't heal these, Master," she said helplessly.
Unseen to them, Integra cocked an eyebrow and leaned back in her seat. As the two Japanese vampires had their back's turned, she made a hand sign to Seras instructing her to keep the feed running. Seras, meanwhile, half-wished she hadn't dismissed her men to get knew weapons.
She had REALLY bad memories about being outnumbered by ghouls.
"Right," Ranma said wearily. "Hey, brat, you're gonna need to let go"
"Little Azusa not leaving you!" Azusa said shaking her head firmly.
"Well, unless you want to go with me when I fight them..." Ranma started gruffly. He didn't have to continue.
Almost the instant he said that, she let go of Ranma and was hiding behind Nabiki.
Seras meanwhile was breaking out the Harkonnen and Ranma immediately discounted her as a meleer.
"Okay, Nabiki, stay safe," Ranma said.
"Yes, Master, I'll keep guard over Azusa," she said.
Ranma nodded and immediately leaped forward with incredible grace before he landed into the first rank of ghouls. His arm swung out wide as the sword he'd hidden with his moderate knowledge of Hidden Weapons style came out and slashed through the rotting corpses.
The silvery weapon was ancient, from a time before the traditional straight sword had been given the traditional katana bend, but Ranma was not a true kenjutsuka so didn't miss the familiar look and shape of the more modern katana. All he cared about was that the weapon killed his enemies.
The weapon, marked in ancient proto-Japanese symbols, itself seemed to naturally soak up yang chi whenever it was so exposed, and Ranma found that channelling his own chi into and over it did nothing to disrupt the effect.
The coating Ranma gave acted as a trojan horse of some kind, letting the blade and its chi slip past the shielding energies of his enemies. Then, once inside the sword's chi tore apart the undead without the sort of flash and attention getting show the blade alone was likely to cause.
With FREAKs the mildest cut brought the artificial vampires to screaming in angered pain, but with ghouls a touch was destruction. Seras, looking around her gun, whistled in surprise as the young man proceeded to plow through the front ranks, not bothering to do much in the way of advanced techniques as the ghouls had no technique to resist him effectively.
The first of the FREAKs didn't move to meet him, though, but leaped through the air by main force, looking to descend on Seras and Nabiki.
It was a dark-haired girl, a bit older than either he or Nabiki, and splattered in the characteristic blood they had grown used to seeing on FREAKs.
"Nabs!" Ranma shouted in shock as he saw the vampire move into the air, but the action almost immediately had him burdened by a mob of clutching zombie arms.
The Lady in White was not helpless though.
As the FREAK sailed through the air propelled purely by momentum, Nabiki leaped up into the chi of the air in imitation of Ranma. Where Ranma appeared to gracefully slide to where he wanted to be, Nabiki looked more like she was hopping between steps made from quicksand.
Nabiki hadn't learned the way Ranma had, before chi flows were so visible to him and he'd developed the instinct for it. Instead she'd watched as Ranma traversed areas of denser and lighter chi in his leaps and sought to emulate it.
The FREAK vampire saw Nabiki's hesitant ascension and snickered in humor, not realizing the implications it held. Not until Nabiki seemed to make a turn in air, stepping to a new invisible stair and then another to come around to the back of the gravity bound FREAK.
Nabiki had her own weapon against FREAKS, but she hadn't carried it with her, a fact that she was bound to get lectures about from Ranma later. However, she had a suspicion about something else she could do to fight at the moment, and reached out with her palm to touch the back of the transformed girl.
Nabiki had managed to stop ghoul transformations at early stages before, without transforming people into what she was. What she did now was the same thing, but the result was very different. When the cleansing chi flooded into the leaping FREAK, it screamed and a white light seemed to eat away at it until to whithered to a brilliant burst of light and grey dust.
Giving a quick breath of relief, Nabiki let herself hop from chi-step to chi step down to the ground again, just as Ranma cleared himself of his problems.
As Nabiki was dusting herself off, she froze as she felt the encroaching chi of ghouls, then three shots reverberated through the scene and spiraling rainbow trails cut through the air around her, striking into the ghouls she had landed near.
Seras was already looking for a new target as Nabiki, embarassed and a bit shamed into caution, returned to where the brit and the little slu...figure skater were.
"New at this game, love?" Seras asked innocently.
Nabiki blushed at the question and looked away, watching for other incoming foes.
As the sound of gunshots, almost missiles really, tore through the battlefield, Ranma had to acknowledge that Seras knew her weapon. She was unerringly precise with her shots, and had a good eye for where the weak spots where.
The fact that she could weild that massive gun like a regular rifle was also worthy of note.
The ghouls were almost done with, and Ranma still hadn't seen the one he suspected to be behind this.
If Azusa was here, then Mikado couldn't be far behind, and he wasn't far off the normal behavior of a FREAK to begin with. With the ghouls starting to hit a loll, he let his sword arm go to cruise mode as he searched about for Mikado.
Then a mottled, corrupted blot of chi moved faster than it should have, and a blonde FREAK girl burst from out of a ghoul's body, the ghoul dissipating to dust as she did.
Ranma cursed himself for his lack of caution as the untrained freak pushed him to the ground and sent his sword scattering across the ground for a moment.
"Master!" Nabiki gasped as she started to move to rip the undead hussy...save her master and lover. A side part of Nabiki made a note to remind her to watch that jealous streak.
"Wait, stop!" Seras shouted, before being shoved aside as the last FREAK moved in from behind her.
The younger vampire was sent sprawling to the ground, momentarily stunned and Azusa shrieked as tall, leering FREAK advanced on Nabiki, licking his lips.
"Not again!" Ranma muttered as he pulled his feet up to his chest and pushed out, sending himself into a twisting flip as the blonde-dyed vampire was thrown into an uncoordinated pile through the air in an arc that would have made Kodachi wince in recognition.
There was no pole at the end of Neyoko's flight, but she wasn't about to land either. Ranma's flip ceased as he gathered his hands back and approached the girl from above.
"Moko Takabisha!" he shouted as a bluish white sphere grew out of his extended hands and then blasted in a column that overwhelmed the FREAK and drilled into the few remaining ghouls about Ranma, leaving a cracked ring of asphalt where it had connected with the earth.
Nabiki meanwhile, turned to see what had happened to Seras and just barely avoided shrieking like a baby as Mikado descended on her with speed that made her every motion seem to be in molasses. She reacted in total instinct and lashed out as well as she could.
Then a shriek did move through the night as Mikado stumbled away from her and leaped away clutching at where a formerly vital piece of anatomy had once been attached.
"Ewww," Nabiki said shaking her hand as said anatomy turned to dust, leaving her with a bloodstained hand.
"I hope that bloke wasn't that small in life," Seras muttered.
"Azusa not so sure wasn't," the little figure skater said.
"You damn bitch!" Mikado shrieked. "I'll...oh shit!"
Then Mikado was running as looked back to see Ranma picking up his sword. He didn't get far as the sound of gunshot cracked through the night and the emporer of the ice rink shattered into dust before he could get far.
"We gotta go," Ranma said to Seras before giving Nabiki a scathing look that translated into bruises and torn muscles come next training session.
Nabiki was pretty certain her recklessness this battle had just gotten her firmly dumped into the "you want to be a badass? I'll train you like a badass" category.
Though Ranma was likely to say "martial artist" instead.
"Keep in touch," Seras said, handing the pair a cell phone meaningfully.
"Yeah," Ranma said as he leaped away, carrying Nabiki.
"Wait for Azusa!!" Azusa shouted skating after the vampire couple and following them as best she could.
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(Posted Wed, 14 Feb 2007 06:59)
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