[Episode 206564] [Episode 206564]The group scattered quickly as the gigantic bird spat lighting down at the area, though they kept groups. Ranma and Sheila ducked under the blasts and tore straight up the middle, while the three Senshi dove to one side and the three older men and Brianna ran to the other.
Tuxedo Kamen wasn't happy about being split up from Sailor Moon, but he realized that if this was going to work, he'd need to be with the quieter group. He was the only one who knew the actual target, after all.
Ranma and Sheila had the same thought as they moved forward: of the group, they were the best at close-range combat, with the possible exception of the American agent. Ranma let Sheila take point, still in her amazonian human form, and waited until she got into mêlée range. As the armoured figure swung his sword up in an easy block of Sheila's swing with Ice Fang, Ranma put on a burst of speed, leapt up over Sheila's larger form, then struck down with one foot onto the armoured figure's head.
Ranma was somewhat surprised when the figure swung his other arm up and backhanded his leg out of position, all without missing a beat in the swordplay against Sheila. He recovered quickly, though, twisting in mid-air to land on his feet again behind the figure, and thrust out a palm strike at the back of the armour. He was again surprised as the figure spun about, forcing him to duck under the sword as it swung right through where his head had been, before continuing the spin to block Ice Fang once more.
Ranma used the momentum of his duck to pivot around his centre, kicking upward with one leg right between the legs of the armoured figure. There was no dodge or swing this time, but Ranma got the impression that the impact hurt him far more than the armoured guy. The armour was heavy enough he didn't even lift off the floor, while Ranma found himself lying prone with a very pained foot.
Then the thing that looked like an explosion in a slime factory started squelching toward him, and he had other things to worry about.
Sailor Jupiter dove for cover when the blast came down on top of them, pulling Mars and Moon off to the side in the process. She managed to roll with the worst of the impact, thrusting her hand up and firing a Jupiter Oak Evolution up at the gigantic bird above them. Fortunately, it was big enough that it was hard to miss. Unfortunately, the attack didn't seem to do much to it.
Sailor Mars nodded to Jupiter, standing up quickly and taking a position between the demons and Moon. Their best bet at this point was to slow down the opponents and give Sailor Moon enough time to charge up her big attacks. Ranma and Sheila seemed to be adequately distracting the leader, and they were too close together to risk firing in their direction anyway, so Mars took aim at the spider-like thing, firing off a Burning Mandala in its direction.
Not only did the attack not seem to do anything, the stone spider just got brighter, and spat some sort of fireball back at her, forcing her to dodge. Just as she was readying another attack, Jupiter yelled out, “Mars! Switch targets!” and then threw an Oak Evolution into the spider's face.
Mars looked up and fired her next Burning Mandala up at the giant bird. Made sense, swapping elements like that. She just hoped this didn't take too long; the sheer stench of evil in this place made it difficult to concentrate.
Brianna looked over the situation, and grinned. The expression on her face would have worried anybody who knew her, and most people who didn't. It was fortunate for the peace of mind of the rest of the group that none of them were looking at her just now.
Her thought processes were fairly simple as she looked up at the huge bird with the 100-foot wingspan: major demon means no need to hold back. Big major demon means she can fire over the heads of everybody else and not worry about hitting anybody on her side. She could even use… the special ammo she hadn't been able to use since practicing in that old magical prison. (Which had later relocated so she couldn't practice there anymore.)
It took a moment as she reached around behind her and flicked a switch on her backpack, which started to whine as it powered up. Then she hooked up her gun to the backpack.
It had been an idea she'd come up with while Gina was working on that anti-magic field just after her sister had dispelled the ‘phantom’ effect on Mom. Small pellets of lithium, ionized, spun through a high-power magnetic field and compressed into a Bose-Einstein condensate before being flung out at hypersonic velocities. Magic didn't work reliably on individual quantum states, and the condensate acted as a single macroscopic state…
The whine from her backpack got a lot louder as Brianna thumbed the gun on, and she let out a huge whoop of unrestrained glee that was heard even above the thunderous noise of her weapon. The bird was having less of a fun time: those things hurt, and this cavern wasn't large enough to get to full speed to dodge.
Sheila was being pressed harder by the armoured figure; she'd already decided that he was obviously playing with her, trying to gauge just how good she actually was before finally dealing with her.
Ranma was split between dodging like mad from the pseudopods of the weird slime creature and attempting to launch occasional attacks on the big guy in armour. He'd tried to get the two to attack each other, taunting the thing to attack him then dodging out of the way, but it hadn't worked so far. The two seemed to know where each other were, and this thing seemed immune to insults.
He could still feel the blood dripping down the side of his face from when he discovered that the person in the armour was not immune to insults. He'd dodged, but obviously not well enough. This guy was fast enough, when he wanted to be, that Ranma considered his speed impressive.
Suddenly, a rising whine from back near the door turned into a rapid stuttering of thunder and a loud squawk from overhead. This was followed by rapid-fire pinging by shrapnel as Brianna's weapon chipped off rock whenever it missed the giant bird overhead, and bits of stone and metal flew everywhere.
The distraction was costly. Sheila turned to throw up a wall with Ice Fang to prevent the shrapnel from peppering her anymore. The figure in armour promptly backhanded her, knocking her straight towards the slime mold. And in front of Ranma's startled eyes, the slime seemed to wrap around her and swallow her in.
Ranma slammed his fist hard into the back of the armour, right at the base of the spine, denting the hell-forged metal and eliciting a cry of pain from the figure that had been silent up to that point. With a cry of “She-chan!” Ranma ignored the stumbling figure and threw a fast ‘Mōko Takabisha’ at the slime before diving at it himself…
…and disappearing from view as well.
Sailor Mars had to physically grab Sailor Jupiter to keep her from following after Ranma. “Not now!”
Jupiter spun on her friend, “What do you mean, not…” She stopped as she could see the stone spider take advantage of her distraction and leap toward them, soaring through the air. “Kuso!” She stepped slightly off to the side before trying to launch another Jupiter Oak Evolution at it.
Mars stood there, bracing herself, glaring at the spider in flight… then grinned and stepped aside.
Behind her, Sailor Moon had been spinning on one foot, winding up for her own attack. “Moon Spiral Heart… AttACKK!!” The sight of the spider flying almost directly at her startled her as the gigantic pink heart generated by the attack flew out, slamming into it and throwing it back against the far wall of the cave, embedding it far enough into the wall that cracks were visible running up and down. Moon herself ended up nearly flat on her back as she stared back at the thing that had almost hit her. “Ick!”
Sailor Mars rolled her eyes, then returned to the battle, throwing a fireball back up at the dodging bird while Jupiter threw a lightning bolt at the weird glob that had swallowed Sheila and Ranma.
Meanwhile, staying at the back of the group, the three older males of the party were having a quick conference.
“I've located it,” said Tuxedo Kamen. “The orb is sitting on a small pedestal leaning against the right wall. They must have had to move it to draw the summoning circle.” The tuxedo-clad werewolf nodded over in the appropriate direction.
Sam Fisher rubbed down his own arm, still getting used to the idea of being a werecreature himself. “You're sure about this.” It wasn't really a question.
Tuxedo Kamen nodded. “The orb already ‘knows’ me. I'm not sure how it will react to others touching it. We need Dr. Diggers for the portal, and I may need covering fire; most of my own attacks are close range or best from surprise. I'm sure, and I'm as ready as I'm going to be.”
Sam grinned; he could get to like this kid. He would have made a decent agent, though he supposed that the Senshi were agents in their own way. “All right. Got your back.”
Dr. Diggers nodded, feeling some strain from maintaining a shield spell over them at the back while he started setting up a portal for a fast exit. “Good luck.”
Pulling a small packet of a small putty like material out of a padded pocket, Sam Fisher said, “One distraction coming up.” As Tuxedo Kamen started to move along the wall toward the Orb, Sam ripped the packet open, slid the material out, and rolled it into a ball. If he did this right, he figured, he wouldn't even need a detonator.
Sam yelled out, “Jupiter!” As the rather distracted girl in question started to turn toward him, he pulled back with his arm, and added, “Zap it after it hits!” Then he threw the ball of plastic explosive at the rock spider that was pulling itself out of the wall. The ball flattened on impact just under the spider's head, then began to run down over his neck as the heat began to melt it.
Sailor Jupiter followed the track of the ball, and threw a ‘Jupiter Thunder Dragon’ that looked rather more wolf-like than usual as it sped toward the spider. The electrical charge set off the explosive; the blast knocked the creature back into the wall and blew open a large crack in his neck. Lava dripped from the wound until it solidified into rock again, this time leaving the spider with a definitely canted view as it the rocky ‘scar’ kept it from moving its head back down.
As Sailor Jupiter grinned back at him, Sam cast a quick eye over to where Tuxedo Kamen was sneaking along, then pulled out his pistol again. “Just wish I had more of that stuff on me.”
Sheila shook herself as she looked around. The place she was in looked much like the room she had been in before, although it looked barren and lifeless. It looked like nobody had been here in years.
“Hello?” After a pause she tried again. “Hello?! Ranma?”
This time she was answered by a familiar-sounding groan from the direction of the entrance. “Ranma! I was so worried…” The next words stuck in her throat as she saw what was over there.
Leaning against the side of the door was Ranma. Or, at least, a shambling form dressed in Ranma's half-rotten clothes. The form lifted its head, revealing rotten flesh underneath the black hair, and spoke to her. “You failed us… we all died because of you…”
Sheila choked. “All?” she said in a quiet voice.
Shambling in behind Ranma were the others. First Makoto, her Sailor Jupiter outfit hanging off what seemed to be only bones, then the other Sailor Senshi behind her, then the Diggers and the rest of the party.
Sheila shuddered as all of them shambled toward her, chanting “You failed us…” She created a wall with Ice Fang, which got casually smashed apart by the oncoming tide of the dead. By the time they were through, they had been joined by the rest of the Northern Edge Guard as well, all shambling toward her, accusing her with their blank stares.
Sheila's screams echoed in the chamber as she fell back against the wall.
It's amazing the sorts of things that wander through your mind under stress, thought Chiba Mamoru. Life had just kept getting weirder and weirder for him ever since the first evening when bits of his past life came back and he first became Tuxedo Kamen. Within a few months, he'd been kidnapped by someone with a crush on his past life, brainwashed, and held here until he had been rescued. Then Usagi had somehow erased the previous few months, and he'd forgotten all about it for several months afterward.
He'd certainly never intended coming back here if he could at all avoid it. Or expected to end up sneaking past demons. The good thing about being one of the lower-powered members of this group was that he probably had the best shot of being unnoticed. Cold comfort as that was.
However, his target was in sight. The Chromatic Orb lay on its pedestal before him. Claudius obviously hadn't understood what it was capable of; Jadite might have, but Beryl probably hadn't told him anything specific. He reached forward and gripped the orb in one hand, bracing himself for any possible traps on it.
The blade that was abruptly thrust through his gut from behind was something he hadn't been braced for. Neither was the deep chuckle that sounded from behind him, or the long armoured arm that reached out and grasped his hand, then took the Chromatic Orb out of it.
Tuxedo Kamen turned his head to look at the helmet of Nelo Angelo. He may not have been able to see the face, but he had the distinct impression that the person behind the helmet was grinning at him. He then felt himself moving as Nelo Angelo started to swing the sword sideways, dragging his body along with it and picking up speed.
A loud crack of a shot rang out, and Nelo Angelo's head shook from the impact. Tuxedo Kamen took the brief distraction to grab the Chromatic Orb back from now-loose fingers, just before the sweep of the sword reached its full extension and threw him back toward the others.
There was a brief silence as the others saw a figure in a Tuxedo with spreading blood stains land on the floor in a position that almost certainly snapped his spine. His head hit the ground hard, and the orb he had been holding rolled out of his fingers and stopped at the feet of a figure in a blue skirt and red boots.
The silence, needless to say, was broken by an agonized scream of “Mamo-chan!!”
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(Posted Tue, 05 Aug 2008 02:40)
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