“But enough of this,” the elder vampire said suddenly, “I grow tired of your insolence.” He flicked his right wrist and a rapier appeared in his hand. “I see you fancy yourself a swordsman. What do you say we settle this like gentlemen?”
“You mean fighting with our swords only? No other stuff?” Ranma asked.
Wilson nodded. “Indeed.”
The pigtailed vampire took a moment to consider this. If he agreed, he wouldn't be able to use his special techniques. But then again, he still had some trouble controlling this strange ki and most of his special techniques were still as great a danger to himself as they were to his opponents.
“That's fine with me,” Ranma finally shrugged, subtly tensing his muscles in preparation for the upcoming conflict.
“Master,” Nabiki interrupted, clasping the pigtailed youth's left arm tightly. “Be careful,” she mumbled quietly with a slight tremor in her voice.
Ranma patted her hands reassuringly and shot her his trademark cocky smirk. “Don't worry, Nabiki. I ain't gonna get beaten by this loser. I'm the best!”
The Tendo girl nodded shakily, not really reassured by her Master's word, but also not really willing to distract him with her worried feelings.
What am I doing? I'm acting like a frightened little girl. Get a grip on yourself, Tendo! She berated herself.
She was Nabiki Tendo, an independent, strong-willed woman. There was a reason people had dubbed her the 'Ice Queen' in Furinkan and no matter the circumstances, her current behaviour was completely unacceptable for her.
And still, seeing Ranma, her Master whom she was now dependant upon, about to engage in mortal combat with a real, honest-to-god vampire made getting control of her tumultuous emotions almost impossible.
What if he was injured and no longer able to take care of her and her urges? Or what if he died? There was no telling what others who learned of her condition might do. While she didn't like being bound to Ranma in such an intimate manner as she was, it was still better than being turned into a ghoul or being bound to anybody else. And the fact that their current adversary had been able to sense the strange bond between her and her Master made it pretty safe to assume that others might be able to do the same. Others with a lot more magical knowledge, who could just as easily change the nature of the bond and turn her into their obedient little sex-slave. Nabiki shuddered at that possibility.
Shaking her head, the middle Tendo girl banished those pessimistic thoughts from her mind. She had never been one to focus on the negative and thinking like that certainly wasn't helping. And besides, this was Ranma, after all. He always won when it counted.
“My, how touching,” the older vampire mockingly interrupted them. “If you're quite finished acting like love-birds, allow me to introduce myself. I am Oliver Wilson.” He took a deep bow, then continued speaking, “Now, may I ask for your names as well? Not that it matters, since you'll be dead soon, but we did agree to settle this like gentlemen.”
Ah, hell. What can it hurt? Ranma thought. “I'm Ranma Saotome and this,” he said, nodding towards Nabiki, “is Nabiki Tendo. Now, are we going to fight or what?”
“But of course,” the older vampire said, raising his rapier and taking on a fencing stance.
Rather than wait for his opponent to strike, Ranma decided he'd be the one to initiate the first attack. This way, he'd be able to grant his companion a little distance from the fighting going on, which would give his companion a small lead over his adversary in case she was forced to run away.
Rushing towards his opponent, the pigtailed vampire opened his attack with a flurry of quick slashes that only registered as a blur to the untrained eye. But despite the considerable speed of his attacks, not a single strike managed to penetrate Wilson's defence, who parried every attack with a bored look on his face.
Backing off again, Ranma re-evaluated his opponent's threat potential after their first clash. He hadn't expected the older man to be quite as skilled with a sword as he was and had seriously underestimated his speed.
Oliver Wilson sought the pigtailed vampire's eye and smirked. “Surprised at my skill? Don't be. I won quite a few fencing competitions when I was younger, and I've only gotten better since.”
Ranma had to suppress the urge to roll his eyes at his opponent's boasting, such an action would leave him vulnerable. “Feh, that's not going to help you now. I'm still going to kick your ass.”
Swiftly closing the distance between himself and the other vampire, Ranma once again engaged his adversary in a lethal game of strikes and parries, and quickly came to realize that he had not only seriously underestimated his opponent, but that both he and the English man were equal in speed and that the older man had a slight advantage in sword skill.
The older vampire gradually gained ground and managed to go on the offensive himself, forcing Ranma to block his lightning fast slashes and thrusts.
Damn, this ain't good, Ranma thought, If I hadn't been an idiot and refused his offer to fight with swords only, I'd easily be able to take him down. But as it is, he's got much more experience, both in fighting with swords and in manipulating this strange ki, which makes him so fast. I need an ace and I need it now!
The pigtailed vampire cast his eye about as he defended against his opponent's furious onslaught and spotted an opened can sitting on the ground beside a dumpster.
That's it!
Blocking his opponent's next slash, Ranma changed the angle of his spatha slightly, causing both weapons to be locked at the wrist guards, and brought his right foot forward in a snap kick that hit the older man square in the chest and sent him flying backwards deeper into the alley.
Ranma quickly made his way towards the can, picked it up and peered inside.
“Yes!” He shouted as he saw that some rainwater had gathered inside the container.
He quickly upended the can over his head, splashing himself with the water inside and triggering his Jusenkyo curse, which caused the young man to turn into a young woman with red hair.
Like his male form and Nabiki, Ranma's cursed form had also been changed by the vampire transformation. She had grown taller and slimmer and no longer looked like a cute little school girl. Instead, she now exuded an aura of confident seductiveness. On top of that, her already large breasts had also increased in size.
“Eww, this stinks,” the red-headed girl exclaimed. “What the heck was inside that thing? This stuff smells worse than pop's socks. Yuck! I just hope I'll be able to wash the smell out of this shirt.” She started shaking her hand to get rid of the few drops of smelly water that were stubbornly clinging to it and grumbled about England's fetid rain-water.
“Master! Watch out!” Nabiki shouted, interrupting her sire's grumbling and giving the Saotome vampire enough of a warning to avoid having her backside sliced open.
“Hey! That's not fair!” Ranma complained as she continued dodging the older vampire's attempts at disembowelling, “Attacking me from behind like that, what kind of gentleman are you?”
“You're one to talk, girl,” Wilson sneered, stressing the last word mockingly, “Weren't you the one who kicked me in such a barbaric fashion, after we had agreed to do battle like gentlemen?” He pointedly he looked her over. “But I shouldn't be surprised, should I? Seeing as you're not much of a gentleman right now.”
“Ah, shut up,” Ranma replied irritably.
Without waiting for another mocking reply, the red-headed vampire girl jumped at her opponent, her sword flashing in renewed attack.
At first, it seemed as if the older vampire was able to keep up with the improved speed of Ranma's girl form. That impression quickly changed, however, as the first nicks and cuts started appearing along his arms and torso.
“Not so witty anymore, are you?” Ranma taunted without slowing down in her attacks.
With a sudden burst of speed, the pigtailed girl became a blur even to Wilson's trained eyes and in the next moment all the English vampire knew was excruciating pain.
Wilson screamed and fell to his knees, cradling the blood spurting stump that had once been his right hand.
“You wench! You cut off my arm!”
“You bet I did!” Ranma replied easily, “And I'm going to cut off a lot more.”
Her silver spathy resting lazily on her shoulder, she slowly approached her downed opponent.
“So, how do you want to do this?” Ranma asked conversationally. “Do you want me to simply cut off your head, or do you want me to give you a clean death by impaling your heart? Or I could simply rip out your remaining limbs and beat you to death with them, if that's what you prefer.”
When the one-handed man failed to give an answer to her question and instead continued cradling his arms close to his chest while he sobbed quietly, Ranma grew impatient and prodded him with her foot. “Hurry it up! I don't have all day, or night. Whatever.”
The English vampire abruptly stopped his rocking motion and his sobs turned into chuckles. Before Ranma could ask him what he found so funny about his situation, he jumped up and back, landing in a crouch a few metres away from the pigtailed girl.
He straightened up and his hate-filled gaze centred on Ranma. His face was twisted in a scowl of utter hatred and his mouth pulled back in a malicious sneer, exposing elongated fangs.
At that moment, he looked nothing like an English gentleman and everything like the vampires from horror movies.
Suddenly his features smoothed over and he once again looked like a sophisticated English gentleman.
“You're going to die for doing this to me,” Wilson said. His voice was velvet over steel, controlled and smooth, but carrying an underlying threat.
“Yeah, right,” Ranma scoffed. “And just how exactly are you going to accomplish that? You're missing an arm and I'm a so much faster than you in this form I wouldn't have any trouble slicing you into pieces, if you haven't noticed.”
“Like this,” the older vampire shouted in reply and whipped his left hand forward, which was now holding the biggest revolver Ranma had ever seen.
“Die, wench!”
The sound of a gunshot filled the air and the pigtailed girl was barely able to lift her spatha to deflect the .454 caliber Casull bullet flying towards her at high velocity.
Her silver sword might have been blessed and enchanted to make killing demons and vampires easier, it was not, however, made to repel high caliber bullets, and the impact therefore caused hair-thin crack lines to appear along the whole length of the blade.
Seeing that his hated opponent had managed to defend against his first shot, Wilson squeezed the trigger of his Taurus Raging Bull a second time, sending another bullet speeding towards his red-haired adversary.
Ranma brought her battered sword up and used it to repel the bullet once more, only this time the strain was too great and the sword shattered into dozens of fragments of varying sizes, several burying themselves into Ranma's right arm and upper torso.
“Gaah!” The pigtailed girl screamed in agony and was almost forced to her knees by the excruciating pain.
She was a vampire, even if a different kind of vampire, and therefore the magical properties of her weapon worked on her, causing the flesh surrounding the shards embedded in her arms and chest to blister and sending a burning pain through her body on top of the already discomforting sensation of getting stabbed multiple times. It felt like somebody had pierced her with dozens of needles which were all injecting molten steel into her body.
Ranma bit her teeth, fighting through the pain to keep her concentration up. She couldn't afford to let the pain distract her.
The English man laughed in glee at seeing his opponent in such agony. To add insult to injury, he fired a third time, aiming for Ranma's right forearm.
Ranma was unable to avoid the bullet and it entered her arm on one side, ate its way through muscles, tendons and bones, and exited through the other, trailing a fountain of blood and bones and causing the pigtailed girl to scream in renewed pain.
“How does it feel, little girl?” The older man asked, savouring the feeling of having the upper hand for once. “It hurts, doesn't it? But this is only the beginning. I'm not going to grant you a fast death, oh no. I'll enjoy putting a bullet through each of your limbs before I finally allow you die,” he gloated, “Or maybe I should have some fun with your female companion first and force you to watch while I make her scream. What do you say to that?”
Ranma fought through the pain and crossed her good arm in front of her chest while she frowned in concentration. She was going to take a huge gamble and could only pray that it would pay off. Channelling her ki, she screamed.
“I say GO TO HELL! Demon God Assault Bomb!”
She whipped her left arm forward at incredible speed, sending a crescent shaped blade of vacuum speeding towards the older man, which cut straight through him from his right hip to his left shoulder.
Wilson's eyes opened wide in astonishment before his upper right torso started sliding downwards with an obscene smacking sound and landed on the tarred floor of the ally. His other half simply keeled over to the left.
The two halves of his body were leaking huge amounts of blood, rapidly forming a puddle of the crimson liquid.
Ranma slowly shuffled towards the remains of her opponent and stopped in front of the half still connected to Wilson's head. His eyes were glazed over, blood was dribbling out of his mouth and to all appearances he was dead, but the pigtailed girl wanted to play it safe.
She rammed her left arm through his ribcage, grabbed his heart and ripped it out before she crushed it in her hands. This seemed to finally put an end to the English vampire's existence and his maimed remains crumbled into dust.
Ranma spat on the puddle of blood that was the only thing remaining of her adversary. “See you in hell, loser.” Too tired to celebrate the successful execution of her special technique, she turned around and slowly walked towards the exit of the alley. “You can come out now, Nabiki,” the red-headed girl called out in an exhausted voice.
Nabiki came out from behind the garbage container she had hid behind as soon as the English vampire had pulled out a gun and walked towards her master.
“Master! What happened to you!?” she gasped as she saw the state Ranma was in. “Are you okay? Do you need any help?”
Ranma waved off her companion's concern. “Nah, I'm fine,” she shot Nabiki a lopsided grin, “You know me, I've had worse.”
“You should still drink some blood to help with your healing,” the Tendo vampire insisted.
“Wouldn't do any good. I've still got pieces of my sword stuck in my arm and chest. Let's just go home. There we can take care of everything. And then I want a nice hot bath.”
“If you say so, Master,” Nabiki conceded reluctantly.
The two teenage vampires started walking towards their home before Ranma suddenly stopped.
“Oh, wait! I almost forgot something.”
She walked back towards the bigger puddle of blood where she knelt down and picked something up.
When the pigtailed girl arrived back at her side, Nabiki asked, “What did you forget, Master?”
Ranma showed her the revolver Wilson had used. “This. You never know when you might need a gun big enough to kill an elephant.” She started walking towards the exit again. “Come on, Nabiki. Hurry it up! I wanna get home before sunrise.”
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(Posted Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:22)
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