The two vampires followed their host as he led them through his house, which looked rather run-down on the inside.
It was dark inside, the grime coating the windows not permitting any light from outside to stream inside. The plaster was peeling off the walls, a thick layer of dust coated every piece of furniture they saw along their journey through Bagshaw's home, and thick spider webs hung in every corner and angle of the house. The air was stale and thick with dust, aggravating the vampires' gag-reflex.
Finally, after countless turns and after climbing two sets of stairs, they arrived in front of a big door made of dark wood. A demonic visage twisted into an evil sneer was carved into the upper half of the door, its eyes seemingly always looking at you, independent of the angle you were looking at it from.
“Well, here we are,” Bagshaw said as he opened the door. “Get in, I don't have all evening.”
Ranma and Nabiki exchanged a dubious look and cautiously walked through the door.
“Wow, that's one big room”, said Ranma as he saw what lay behind the door.
“Yes, and it's surprisingly clean,” Nabiki remarked dryly.
The room easily took in more than half of the entire floor and was in surprisingly good shape compared to the rest of the house. A big chandelier hung from the ceiling, bathing the room in a bright warm glow. The floor was made of linoleum polished almost to the point where you could see your reflection in it, and had a big pentagram drawn on it in one corner. Bookshelves reaching from floor to ceiling stretched along two whole walls of the enormous room and, to Ranma's amazement, they were completely filled with books. Smaller shelves and tables were lined along the remaining walls and filled with various occult trinkets, such as skulls and jars that contained the cadavers of animals swimming in some murky liquid as well as different human organs. Various pictures hung at every empty spot on the wall, some of them depicting gruesome scenes similar to the mosaic Ranma had spotted outside, while some were rather tame and harmless. One of the harmless pictures Ranma had seen before, it showed a dozen men dressed in robes and sandals seated around a table and sharing a simple meal.
“If you're done gawking at my study,” Bagshaw said, once again demonstrating that he was not a man blessed with patience or politeness. “Would you be so kind as to get on with things and tell me about your problem in detail?”
Nabiki cleared her throat. “As I already said earlier, our problem is rather delicate and personal.”
“Yes, yes,” Bagshaw interrupted. “I know, I know. It's really embarrassing and you'd rather not talk about it, but if you really want me to help you and you're not just here to waste my valuable time, you'll have to tell me everything in as much detail as you can. So I suggest you get on with it, every minute of my time is valuable and you're just going to end up paying more the longer this drags on.”
“Of course,” Nabiki smiled politely at their host, nothing in her posture or facial expression indicating how much she wanted to throttle the self-proclaimed 'Sorcerer Supreme' at the moment, and went on to tell him about the circumstances leading to her current dilemma, taking great care to keep it as matter-of-fact as possible: “I was walking home late at night when three thugs showed up, trying to talk me into coming with them. I refused, of course. They took exception to that, attacked me and quickly managed to overwhelm me. As he had me pressed against a wall, the apparent leader of them smiled at me and said something along the lines of me soon being his forever. After he had said that, I could see his canines becoming longer, then he bit into my throat. I started feeling extremely sick and weak and thought I was going to die, but then Ranma showed up. He beat off the thugs, took one look at me, mumbled something about this being bad, then he also bit me, cut open his shoulder and told me to drink his blood. I immediately felt better, but ever since then I've had the overpowering urge to have sex with him. If we don't have sex on a regular basis, I start going insane.”
Bagshaw's face went through several expressions during Nabiki's description. He started out looking extremely bored, even made as to suppress a yawn, but that quickly changed as the girl's narrative continued. When she got to the part about being bitten, his eyes widened and he paled considerably. Once Nabiki had finished her tale, he was shaking so much that Ranma wondered how he managed so stay upright. “Y- yo- you mean to tell me you- you're va- vampires!?” Bagshaw squeaked.
“Hm?” Nabiki looked at their host with an innocent expression. “Why, yes we are. Ever since that night. Why do you ask?” She smiled widely, making sure Bagshaw could see her lengthened canines. “Did we forget to mention that?”
Bagshaw nodded his head rapidly, having lost his voice by that point.
“Really? Sorry about that then.” Nabiki shrugged her shoulders in apology. “But now you know. Anyway, that's not why we're here.”
“It's not?” The self-proclaimed 'Sorcerer Supreme' croaked.
Ranma idly noted that their host looked a lot paler than he or Nabiki did, which was quite an impressive feat, considering he was human and they were vampires, and for a moment he contemplated whether the Tendo girl might be taking this a little too far. Nah, he decided quickly. The old man deserved to sweat it out a little for how he had treated them earlier.
“No, it's not,” Nabiki said. “We know there's no cure for vampirism. We're here because of my inexplicable urges to have sex with my Master, which is not a common side effect of being turned, as far as we know. We've found out that it's most likely the effect of a potion Happosai slipped my Master before he rescued me, and we came here to see if you might be able to make some kind of antidote, or at least tell us what it was the old pervert tricked my Master into drinking.”
Bagshaw forced a strained smile. “Why, certainly. I'd be very glad to help you, but first I need to know a little more about this potion your Master drank. Maybe you could tell me what you were doing on that day and how you most likely came to ingest it?”
Ranma frowned, scratching his head as he thought back to that day. “Well, I was in the dojo, doing some kata. When I had finished with that, I took a drink from a water bottle I had brought with me. After that Happosai showed up and drenched me with a bucket of cold water, turning me into a girl, babbling about how from now on I would have to allow him to rest his head in my bosom every time he wanted to. When he jumped at me and tried to squeeze my tits, I grabbed him and asked him what he was talking about. Happosai got angry, then, and ranted how I should be obeying his every command, or some such nonsense. I attacked him, demanding to know what he had done to me, but Happosai just used that stupid pipe trick of his and threw me into the dojo wall and left, swearing vengeance on some gypsy. I went after him to beat the answers out of him, but the old letch got away in the end and I couldn't find him anywhere. I searched everywhere for him, but after a few hours I gave up and decided to head home since it was already late at night. Then I heard a girl screaming and you know the rest.”
“He changed you into a girl?” Bagshaw asked, his curiosity about that bit of information momentarily overriding his fear.
Ranma just waved a hand dismissively. “Yeah, I've got a Jusenkyo curse. Cold water turns me into a girl and hot water changes me back. A real pain in the ass.”
“And you were a man again when you stumbled upon your companion?”
“Huh? Oh yeah, I chased Happosai through a public bath where I was splashed with hot water. It was a real pain, too, since I was in the woman's section at the time. Stupid girls didn't have to attack me, I was just trying to get the old perv,” Ranma muttered irritably.
“Did anything else happen to you during that chase?”
Ranma thought about this for a moment, then shook his head. “Nah, I was just running after the old pervert until he managed to get away.”
“Are you sure about that, Master?” Nabiki chimed in, wanting to make sure that the pigtailed vampire didn't leave anything out that might at first seem trivial, only to find out later that it was just this insignificant little thing that had caused her current dilemma.
“Yeah, I'm pretty sure about that, Nabiki,” Ranma said. “The only other time I wasn't running around town was when I chased the old pervert through that new restaurant that had just opened at that time. You know the one based on that 'Iron Chef' TV Show? Where you can challenge their chef to a martial arts cooking contest and if you win you get as much food as you can eat for free?”
Nabiki nodded. “Yes, I know which restaurant you're talking about. What happened?”
Ranma's features darkened into a scowl. “Those idiots attacked me! When I got inside, their contest arena had been blown up and Happosai was just jumping through a window on the other side of their restaurant. They saw me and one of them screamed that he knew me and that I was Happosai's heir, then they all got angry at me and yelled how they wouldn't let me steal any more of their food and that I would pay for what my master did. I had to beat them all up before I could continue my chase after the old pervert. When I was finally done beating up those jerks and got outside again, Happosai was long gone.”
“And I always wondered why you never went there to challenge their chef and get a free meal. Guess that explains it,” Nabiki mumbled, then shook her head, dismissing this topic, before fixing Ranma with an earnest look. “Master, are you sure that after those incidents in the bath house and that restaurant you were simply looking for Happosai and that you didn't come into contact with anybody or anything else?” Seeing her Master nod, Nabiki turned towards Mr Bagshaw. “So, what do you think? Can you help us?”
“I think it is pretty safe to assume that this potion your Master ingested was contained in the water he drank after his workout. Did it look, taste or smell any different than normal water?” The English sorceror asked Ranma.
Ranma shook his head. “No, it was just like normal water and I didn't feel any different after drinking it.”
Bagshaw nodded decisively. “It must have been Achnazophur's elixir, then. That's the only potion I can think of with those attributes that would have the effects you described on you and your companion.”
“Can you cure it?” Nabiki asked, hope glimmering in her eyes.
“Of course I can! I even have all the ingredients I need to brew it here. It will just take me a while to brew the antidote.”
“How long?” asked Ranma.
Bagshaw scratched his chin as he estimated the amount of time needed. “About two hours? Three maybe, depends on the quality of my bull testicles.”
“Anything we can do to help?”
The English sorcerer shook his head. “No, just let me work and don't interrupt my concentration.”
“Got'cha.”
Heinkel Wolfe looked at the home of their latest assignment and asked herself why all these heathens with an occult fetish had to live either in Gothic mansions, big towers or old castles. And they always had to live in areas with perpetually bad weather, too. Why couldn't they live in a friendly bungalow on the Italian Riviera? That would make these kind of missions a lot more tolerable. But she had to admit that Bagshaw's home coupled with the gloomy weather did manage to make one's skin crawl and send cold shiver up one's spine.
“Heinkel, this place is scary. Do we really have to do this?” Yumiko Takagi whimpered.
The gun-toting assassin nodded and pushed her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose. “Yes, Yumiko. Everybody who calls himself better than Jesus deserves to die. Once the Vatican got wind of this little English magician calling himself 'Sorcerer Supreme, even greater than Jesus' it was clear that he had to die. You know that, right? This is an unforgivable sin!”
The assassin clad in the robes of a catholic nun just nodded, clutching her sheathed katana a little tighter. “I know. I'm just not comfortable with killing. We may be fanatics and all, but it's just hard for me, you know?”
Heinkel let out a sigh. “Yeah, I know. But there's nothing you can do about that. Anyway, you better change now, Yumiko. I don't think he'll give us a lot of trouble, but apparently he really is a sorcerer and I don't want to take any risks.”
Yumiko nodded shakily and closed her eyes, then took off her glasses with a deep breath. When she opened her eyes again, her gaze was no longer compassionate and timid, but contained a fanatic blood lust that promised great pain for everyone who dared oppose her. “Come on, Heinkel! Let's kick that fucker's ass!”
The smaller assassin unsheathed her katana and rushed at the door with a flying kick, breaking it open with a loud crash.
The blonde woman drew her pistols and followed her companion inside. “All right, Yumie! We'll send that bastard to hell for committing the unforgivable sin!”
Ranma and Nabiki sat at a small table in Bagshaw's study, drinking tea while they waited for the English sorcerer to brew the antidote that would free Nabiki from the magical compulsion forcing her to have sex with Ranma or go insane.
“Do you really think he'll be able to help us, Nabiki?” Ranma asked his companion.
Nabiki observed their host as he went about preparing the potion for a few moments before she answered: “Yes, I think so. My sources all said that he is really the most knowledgeable person in England when it comes to anything related to magic. I have no doubt he'll be able to brew the antidote for the potion Happosai slipped you.”
“I hope you're right.”
They fell silent again, both sipping their tea and silently urging their host to finish his work, when they suddenly heard a loud crash.
Bagshaw startled, dropping the beaker he had been holding. “What the hell was that?!”
Ranma stood up, his face grim. “We have visitors. I'll go and try to fight them off. You two stay here.”
Before they were able to voice a protest, Ranma had already left, leaving Nabiki and Bagshaw alone in his study.
Nabiki turned to the English sorcerer. “Don't worry, my Master will take care of this. You just finish your work.”
Bagshaw shot the Tendo girl a dubious look, but nodded after a few moments. “All right.”
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(Posted Fri, 22 Feb 2008 05:01)
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