It had been luck that she'd caught sight of it in its hybrid form earlier, and she really had to admit that trailing a werewolf for a good twenty miles without being smelled was an accomplishment. Of course, she had let herself fall very far behind once they got out of the town. She hadn't even gotten a good luck at its human face, something she really should have done from the beginning.
Still, that would have required a deal of risk and she didn't want to take those risks. This was her first confirmed encounter with one of the beasts since the one that had killed her father. She wasn't about to take chances she didn't need to take.
In any case, it was time to act before the creature moved to strike at her. Ukyou's slow trudge vanished in an instant as she leaped upward, her silver lined spatula slicing outward.
****
Ranma looked down, recognizing Ukyou and remembering encountering the girl some several years back. She'd briefly stayed in the same area that she and her father were selling okonomiyaki at, and left about the same time they did. Unfortunately, she'd left in a different direction.
It had been years since she'd seen the other girl, but she didn't forget her few friendships easily. She was on the verge of calling out to the girl when Ukyou leapt upward at her. Ranma danced back in confusion, the cold spatula drawing a burning line across her arm as she tried to figure out what was going on.
"AHHH!" Ranma cried out, one hand going to the silver burn on her arm. "Wh...what are you doing?"
"What's it look like I'm doing, monster?" Ukyou demanded pressing the attack forward. "Why don't you show yourself again, and while you're changing I'll cut you to ribbons!"
"Why," Ranma demanded, dodging a strike. "Are you attacking me? I haven't done anything to you, Ukyou!"
Ranma's unwillingness to fight back and confusion over the situation cost her as Ukyou swiped her legs out from under her and slashed the spatula downward toward her throat. She brought it to a tight stop and held the silvered blade slightly against the creature's throat and planting a booted foot on her chest.
"How do you know my name," Ukyou demanded of the girl before her. The werewolf looked to be about her age, and familiar somehow.
"It's me, Ucchan," Ranma rasped painfully, starting to doubt her retience in fighting back against this girl. "Ranchan. Take the spatula off my throat, it hurts."
"Ranch..." Ukyou blinked. "You're a werewolf?"
"Yes," Ranma said, starting to squirm from the building pain. "Now, back off before I make you."
"Make me?" Ukyou said. "I'm the one with the silver at your...WHOAH!!"
Ukyou felt her body pushed upward and smashed into the spatula before she could do anything in response. She was toppled forward and barely caught sight of the werewolf, still in human form, rolling into a handstand and obviously about to take her feet.
She didn't have her full balance yet, but she had enough to launch a mini-spatula at the human-imposter. It slashed along the girl's side, drawing a wisp of smoke and a grunted cry of pain as the girl's momentum was disrupted and she fell ungracefully to the rocky ground, her blood pouring out on the rocks.
Ukyou was smirking at her apparent victory, but Ranma was up from her fall and into full stance before Ukyou had finished stablizing herself.
"I don't want to hurt you!" Ranma cried out defiantly as she held a firm stance with obvious effort. "Don't make me...fight you..."
Ukyou sneered and would have responded but something else took the attention of both girls.
The red-stained rocks upon which they were fighting were shaking and faint, alien runes were glowing crimsonly in the knight as the ledge began to tumble around them.
"What were you doing up here?" Ukyou demanded angrily as the ledge started to fail.
"Nothing," Ranma retorted, and then time for words was finished and both girls had to leap and move to move out of the collapsing area of rock.
Dust rose as Ukyou and Ranma leapt from crumbling surface to crumbling surface. Both girls imagined they heard a cry of triumph mixed with the screaming of the falling rocks, but neither turned to look back into the disaster, not with a certain enemy so close at hand and waiting for such an opportune distraction.
And so neither noticed the humanoid form take shape momentarily and then vanish, luckily for them.
Iceron had little concern for whatever minions would certainly be crushed in his release and had thoughts only of leaving the scene of the magical discharge before any mages came to find what it was. He would leave them a clueless hulk of his former resting place and, no doubt, the twisted remains of a few servants about a sacrificed lycanthrope.
By the time they realized that Iceron was back, he would be well hidden.
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(Posted Fri, 14 Nov 2003 18:42)
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