"So what's happening right now?"
"The MIBs are running their people through lie detectors to find the ones that did that to Ataru," Mary Jane Watson — the Diva — replied from her apartment in Manhattan. "But if the jerks who did this to us through him know the gig's up…"
The Arbitrator nodded. "The neuralisers. Could their memories still be recovered?"
"Possibly, but it'd be painful for them," Spider-Man's long-time girlfriend replied. "Fortunately, Zed's got a setup with the Specialised Warfare unit here in the Big Apple. I'm sure some telepaths and other psychics will get called into it."
"Alright. Keep us posted."
"You got it, Nabs!"
The link with New York was cut, and then the Arbitrator sighed before she tensed on feeling warm hands gently squeeze her shoulders. "Ooooh, Dudley-kun…"
"You look a little tense," the Sentinel stated as he moved to gently knead the muscles and tendons of her shoulders. "You need to relax a little bit."
"A pillow-scene?" she coyly proposed.
The man born Dudley Dursley jerked before his cheeks flushed. "I…"
"It'd be your first time?" the woman born Tendō Nabiki asked as she gazed on him.
"Um…y-y-yeah!" he sputtered.
She winked. "Mine, too."
He blinked, and then he gracefully bowed to her. "Lady Nabiki, it would be my pleasure and honour if you so find a humble warrior such as I worthy of such a gift."
A delighted laugh escaped her…before faint screams echoed through the open doorway into the main lounge of the Redet Glory. Recognising the screams as coming from members of the ship's crew, the Arbitrator sighed. "Wonder who's here."
The Warlock — who had stayed close to Lum; by then, Oyuki had recovered and was now engaged in a quiet conversation with Konoe Konoemon — turned to cast his mage-sight aft. "It's Kanami and Kasumi!" he reported. "They seem happy about…" He then blinked. "Oh! Looks like Ranma finally got his Gift! About bloody time!"
"More of them…"
That was a still grey-faced Redet Invader. "DADDY!" Lum then snapped, which made the rather tall and obese warlord — who now looked much older than he really was — jolt. "These are Darling's friends! Be nice to them!"
Invader gaped. "Lum! They're some of They Who…!"
"YIZIBA!" the Warlock, the Arbitrator and the Sentinel chanted together.
The captain croaked out before he passed out onto the floor. Lum ignored him as she turned to gaze on Oyuki. The crown princess of Neptune had flinched on hearing that name, but hadn't gone into hysterics because of it. A glance over to Benten, who was on the deck near the main doors. The Fukunokami biker-babe had tucked her legs in close to her and was hugging them with her arms, her face buried in the valley between her knees. Lum was quick to note she was badly shaking, though she hadn't screamed out or done anything else. "Darling's right. It IS a stupid fear," she muttered.
The Warlock gazed on her, and then his eyes narrowed as his mage sight quickly locked in on something. "What the hell…?!" he gasped before reaching over and tracing his finger on Lum's forehead. "Good God, why didn't I see that before…?"
"See what, Harry?" Albus Dumbledore — who had been communicating with his fellow mugwumps of the International Confederation of Wizards via a special long distance portable floo spell created by Hermione Granger; as a Terran-born Yizibajohei, she was now known as the Thaumaturge and was seen as Harry Potter's number two in the Cosmic Mage Guild — asked as he walked over to join his favourite student.
A grin. "Lum's been Gifted."
Silence.
More silence.
Still more silence.
And then…
"Wh-wh-what…?"
That was a wide-eyed Lum.
"It's true," the Warlock stated. "If Carcajou was here, I'm sure she would be able to smell a very faint tint of meson in your body, Lum. It's the natural mark of a Yizibajohei. But I have my own means to detect this. With your permission?"
Lum blinked, and then she nodded. Immediately, the Warlock began chanting in a very odd language — Lum was quick to recognise it from the memories she had been forced to share with Ataru as a very classical dialect of one of the ancient Yizibajohei tongues — as he created a scrying nexus around her. As Invader croaked out before passing out on the deck — Oyuki was wide-eyed with both shock and disbelief, though there was great curiosity in her eyes; Benten was now staring in horror at her best friend — the leader of the Cosmic Mage Guild finished his enchantments, and then he waited for the results to appear in a ghostly parchment before his face. Scanning the results there — he had fine-tuned the spell over the last couple of years to allow it to produce results in multiple languages so that others could read it — he then gaped. "Damn…" he breathed out before he dispelled the scrying nexus. "You're the First."
Lum blinked. "The first what, Harry-san?"
Dumbledore — he had seen the results himself — chuckled. "You're the first of the many 'pretty girls' that Ataru chanced upon to take to Yiziba to receive a Gift, my dear. You inherited the powers of Tempest." He then gazed on the Warlock. "What can you tell me about that particular line, Harry? Face or heel?"
"One of the ones that varies between the two, Professor," the man born Harry Potter answered as Lum quickly sensed the look of delight cross the transformed Tendō Nabiki's face and the calm acceptance on the face of the man born Dudley Dursley. "As you can probably guess, her primary gift is energy control, centred on lightning. Natural given her bio-electricity powers she inherited from her mother. But Tempest can easily create lightning storms that could blanket a continent if she went all-out. She can fly as well. Much faster than she could as a normal Oni-Urusian, I believe."
"Why are her memories blanked?" Konoe then asked. "Was she affected by what hurt us?"
"No. It's a ki block on that part of her memories, Headmaster. And I recognise the ki signature. It was Negako that sealed off those memories," the Warlock replied.
"That would make sense."
Eyes locked on Oyuki. "What do you mean, Your Highness?" the Sentinel asked.
Slightly blushing — though she was quick to give the Arbitrator a look of envy — at the attention the metahuman guardian was giving her, Oyuki breathed out. "As you all know, those of our races that live within easy travelling distance of your adopted home planet have always looked upon your kind with great fear. As great of a fear as we would feel were we to face the threat of Galactus or Darkseid. Because of that, I suspect that when Lum received this 'gift' you all talk about, I believe that she might have become so frightened of the idea of being one of They Who Must Never Be Named on a planet of 'sames.' And she would be about six years old at the time, I believe."
"She was."
People perked, and then they looked…
"Kanami! Onē-chan!" the Arbitrator called out.
"Konban wa, minna-san. My, it's so nice to be able to remember what Ataru-kun did for us now," the transformed Tendō Kasumi — the Hearth Witch — stated as she drew her enchanted shawl around her after stopping past the doorway. Taking a deep breath, she then moved to kneel before the Warlock. "I swear my magic unto you, Harry-kun."
He raised his hand and whispered a spell. "I accept your oath, Kasumi-san."
"So mote it be."
"So mote it be."
A quick flash of light encompassed both for a quick second, and then it faded. "Kasumi-san is part of the Cosmic Mage Guild?" Lum then asked.
The Hearth Witch stood. "Well, my powers tend to cross lines between true magic and meta-psionics, but there's enough of it to acknowledge me as part of the Guild, Lum-chan," she stated as she stood back up, and then she waved to the girl who had accompanied her. "Because I don't understand the type of intensive ki use Negako-san can employ on people, we need Kanami-chan here to unlock your memories."
The Oni warlord's daughter nodded. Approaching her now was Saotome Kanami, known commonly on Yiziba as Wildflower. One of the top FISS-type Yizibajohei, she was basically a country girl at heart; whenever past incarnations of her had appeared on Yiziba, she always tended to shy away from the urban habitations. Because of that, she was often seen more as a neutral than a face or heel. Now in the body of Saotome Ranma's female-self forced on him by the magic of the ponds of Jusenkyō — though she was properly attired in Wildflower's dark green jumpsuit with golden flowers decorating her arms and legs — the reborn Wild Warrior of the Wilderness moved to kneel in front of Lum. "Yeah, it's one of Negako-san's memory locks," the transformed Kanami stated as she peered into the Oni's mind with her ki sight. "But it's not permanent."
"Will unlocking it cause her powers to lash out?" the Arbitrator asked.
A shake of the head. "No, Nabiki-chan. She'll be fine."
And with that, Wildflower reached over to gently touch Lum's forehead…
Now over the North Pacific…
"Wha…?!"
People perked on hearing that voice from the lone geo-kinetic amongst them, and then they gazed over to see a stunned look on Terra's face. "Sister, what is it?" Geo-Force asked as he moved to kneel beside her, taking her hand in his own.
She blinked for a second before she grinned. "Ataru, you fuckin' genius…"
The others blinked in confusion…
The Redet Glory…
"Oh, my…!"
"No…why…?"
"My baby! My baby is lost! My baby is lost…!"
As a wide-eyed Oyuki, a pace-faced Benten and a sobbing Invader watched in growing fascination (for the former) and horror (for the latter two) at the transformation now happening before them, massive waves of bio-electricity began surging around Lum's body. Burning away her tiger-striped bikini — on seeing the lovely woman's assets, all the men in the room immediately turned away; they WERE gentlemen, after all! — the energy then began reforming into a dark grey bodysuit decked with silver spinning lightning ball symbols over her arms and legs, not to mention positioned over her left breasts…and her heart. At the same time, Lum's horn-buds seemed to quiver for a moment before they fell off her forehead…and then burned up as they were consumed by the energy now bursting free from the woman known on Yiziba as Tempest.
Finally, the energy faded out as it was withdrawn back into the transformed Redet Lum's body, and then she breathed out. "Oh, that felt so GOOD…!" she then purred out as her blue-grey eyes seemed to smoke with a level of sensuality that made Wildflower's mouth water, the Hearth Witch madly blush in embarrassment and the Arbitrator smirk as she began to wonder what dealing with THIS version of Lum would mean for all the other girls who wanted the chance to do the horizontal Macarena with Moroboshi Ataru.
ESPECIALLY one Tara Markova!
Noting that the transformation was complete and that Tempest was once more decent, Albus Dumbledore turned to gaze warmly at her. "How do you feel, my dear?"
She blinked before she breathed out. "Well, other than I want to get to Yiziba and pillow Darling's brains out — preferably with really nice girls like Ayumu-san, Tara-san, Kanami-san here and Jessica-san joining us — I'm alright, Kōchō-sensei," Tempest answered. "I'm not mad at Negako-san if that's what you're worried about."
"But there must be some frustration," Konoe Konoemon stated.
"Oh, there is! Believe me, there is!" the transformed Lum snarled. "Given the fact that I'm a supposed 'goddess' to that race of idiot sames over on Phentax Two, it's rather ironic that the man who literally STOLE the powers that I inherited from Mommy was a Niphentaxian!" As Oyuki and Benten gasped and Invader gaped, Tempest added, "It was Ganzo dai-Louc. He's the guy people on Ōgi's planet called the 'Arch-Heretic.' Just after Darling and Negako-san were separated thanks to Wyszynski-hakase — this was the early spring flower season on Uru — he found me in the west range of the Terrible Swamps. Slapped a POWER DAMPENER on me, too!" As Oyuki's hand flew to her mouth to cover her horrified gape and Benten began shuddering in outrage on hearing that, Tempest then added, "Long enough to totally WIPE out ALL my powers!"
"Including your flying powers…which makes you a 'same' in the eyes of normal Yizibajohei," Wildflower calmly stated. "You would be a cripple amongst your people."
A nod. "Tcha!" the transformed Lum spat out. "But that old geezer never bet on one thing: Darling and I being empathically bonded with each other since we were four." As everyone gaped at her, Tempest chuckled. "It was that accident with the Central Warp Chamber, Oyuki-chan," she said as she gazed on Oyuki. As the crown princess nodded in understanding, she said, "When I came to Earth, I arrived at the home of Darling's uncle Komeru in Sendai. Darling was visiting at the time. He found me — alone, scared and wondering what in the Maidens' Names happened to me — and took me inside so I could be warm. About an hour later, Nassur-chan's wife Cinba found me and took me back to Triton. But during that time, well…"
"Ataru's natural empathy locked in on you," Dumbledore stated. "No doubt — given how his name would be interpreted in your language — you started calling him 'Darling' like you do now. And even if you didn't sense something like it in return…"
"When you broke down and cried after that man took your powers away, he felt it. All the way from Yiziba," the Warlock finished for the elderly headmaster of Hogwarts. "And he got a teleport chip from the Academician — this was just before he died and slipped into the Crystal — to go to Uru and find you. Probably within minutes of you realising you were now crippled and couldn't fly." A chuckle. "I'll bet the Preacher and the Extreme Archaist must have FREAKED on hearing about this!"
"They never found out, Harry-kun," Wildflower stated. "Ataru took Lum right to the small dôjô Negako was building outside Habitation One so she could look her over. Once she realised that Lum couldn't be helped — hence, the reason no one EVER puts a power dampener on a child THAT young as certain elements of the DNA are still in flux since it was still many years before puberty would set in — Ataru realised she needed special help and called for the Conservator." She then smirked. "And since — outside Infinity and Destructo — he's the most non-prejudiced Yizibajohei of all…"
The transformed Lum smirked in return. "I became Tempest."
Silence fell as people considered that as we…
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(Posted Sun, 18 Mar 2012 16:00)
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