"Let them go!" Keiichi yelled, with Belldandy at his side and her sisters flanking them.
"Boy," Mars said. "You don't know what you're facing. I have millenia of experience in battle, and now I am the commander, not some weak-minded, blind fool. Mercury, Freeze the angel! Saturn, destroy the witch!"
Saturn, now in adult battle form, appeared and stepped forward with Mercury. Both genies, now in full battle regalia and one sporting feline additions, turned apologetic faces toward their would be rescuers. And then the fight was on.
Mercury lashed outward with her ice powers to immobilize the angel in a block of ice. But Belldandy quickly blocked, her Elemental Immunity shielding her. She countered with a weak lightning strike, trying not to hurt the marid seriously.
Saturn's attacks slashed forward at Urd, who teleported around it before returning fire with her own attacks. Toned down.
Mars smiled, they were trying not to hurt the genies, that was good. Then he saw the little tomboy trying to focus an attack.
"Mercury! The mechanic!" Mars commanded. "Take her now!" Belldandy gasped as her opponent turned her attention moderately away to target the youngest of the three sisters. A flash of icy cold struck Skuld before she could focus her mana ball to strike Mars.
"Imouto-chan!" Belldandy gasped, and relaxed as she saw the druid approaching the injured mechanic to heal her. Then a snow leopard girl slashed downward at her and she backed away, five bleeding lines on the arm she had raised to stave off the blow.
The eyes of her opponent showed no willingness to this fight, but at the moment that didn't change the situation, and Belldandy relucantly fired back another course of lightning, which was countered and blocked by a cascade of mist which dissipated the attack.
Their powers countered each other, and Belldandy reluctantly readied herself to face the genie in melee. Keiichi saw that and almost moved to help her, until a brief glance from Urd suggested otherwise.
Urd and Saturn seemed evenly matched, but the power behind the Genie of death was frightening. And the genie wasn't reluctant in her fighting. She obviously didn't want to fight, but there was nothing she could do about it.
"Peorth, help Urd!" Keiichi called out. "Skuld help Belldandy."
Mars, casually finishing getting dressed during the battle, smirked as the forces were arrayed again, and she counted. All of the cards she remembered Keiichi mentioning before were arrayed. And it was only a stalemate because he hadn't yet orderd Mercury and Saturn to go all out. The spirits of the cards were powerful, but their Master was young and his potential undeveloped.
"Well, well," Mars said. "It looks like it's down to you and me." he said, indicating his somewhat older, and significantly larger, body. "You're all out of cards little-" Mars eyes widened in shock as something smacked into her from behind.
Mars staggered as he looked back to see an apparently scared little girl with a baseball bat who swung again into Mars face. Mars had been skilled in magic, but fighting physically was something he had learned. Megumi, on the other hand, was quite practiced for her age at the art of putting bat to target with the amount of force she wanted directed where she wanted.
As Mars stumbled across the room his concentration scattered. He rolled to sitting and felt his head. He glanced to his genies preparing to order them to attack when the sound of something metal ticking to the floor caught his ears.
He watched, aghast, as the Ring of Mars rolled across the floor after falling off of his finger. His first reaction was to dive for the ring, and this resulted in the other two rings flying off in a random direction across the room.
In horror, Mars froze and watched as "his" genies faded away, falling back into their rings. Urd's vicious grin caught his eye as the spirits of the cards started to gather, before the hole they had blown in the wall to get in.
"If there's anybody left for you to pray to," Urd said grimly. "I'd start now."
Mars, for once in his existence, felt a chill, and then noticed the open door of the room. Obviously that little girl with the bat had come through there while the others distracted him. Very clever.
In thinking of that. Mars lunged and snapped up the startled little girl and held her before him.
"Stay back," he said grimly. The spirits hesitated, but their faces turned darker.
"Keiichi?" the girl asked nervously.
"Don't worry, Sis," Keiichi said, handling a card.
"Don't try it, little summoner," Mars warned. "I'm not a martial artist, but I can kill her before any of you can do anything." Which was when the girl in her arms faded into nothing.
"You were saying?" Skuld asked. Mars stared forward for a moment and then sprinted out of the open door, pursuit close behind. He turned back to look and saw them running after her.
He turned a corner wildly and failed to notice the railing until he slammed into it and flipped over the bars, falling into the shrubbery below, getting showered by the automatic sprinklers in the bargain.
Mars stood up and blinked to find herself female again, and then remembered Ranma's curse. The one that had only been partially removed. She smiled painfully and stalked under the walkway in the shadows before melding into the small crowd that was gathering to watch the fight.
The genies weren't the only powers in the world, and she could remember a number of spirits that would be willing to serve her in the goal of enslaving her old comrades. Spirits whose prisons she knew the whereabouts of and the keys to. Of course, she'd need a new name or else those same spirits would perhaps destroy her.
Mars smirked. She'd be back for her old friends
****
Urd and Peorth returned quickly, not in a good mood.
"He slipped away," Urd said. "And we should too, before that crowd has a few cops added to it."
"Do you have all the rings?" Peorth asked.
"All four, yes," Belldandy said.
"I thought it was only three," Peorth said, surprised.
"Then I guess its time to go," Urd said, utilizing her seven league step to leave the area. Appearing a little outside of the city in a good camping spot.
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(Posted Fri, 11 Oct 2002 17:07)
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