Had the party remained undisturbed until they had awoken, there would have been an awkward moment of sexual tension, followed by a very calm and mature discussion of what had just happened, THEN followed by a sacred promise to never speak of it again. Everybody would have discovered a deep, powerful bond with their teammates, and feel a little better inside, as well as unconsciously becoming far more comfortable with intimacy. At that point Ranma would have mentioned that since they had rescued Sereni, maybe their equipment wasn't worth the rest of the trip through the magic hentai horror house, and they all would have gotten the hell out of dodge.
Instead, Ranma groaned as he and the girls suddenly sprinted, aware that the three newcomers knew they were awake. There was a moment of hesitation; after running into nothing but completely absurd guardians and mostly-harmless-but-extremely-annoying traps, he was actually looking forward to being able to finally get to have a normal fight with normal (by his standards anyway) villains.
But there were the others to consider. He had to protect the girls, who were all naked, weaponless, and apparently useless. In what had to be one of the less biting examples of irony they had experienced that day, the only one of the group to actually keep his clothes and equipment (which amounted to forty-five yen, a bottlecap, and an emergency pair of panties A.K.A. anti-Happousai decoy) happened to also be the only one of the group who didn't any of it to fight (he'd had plenty of experience fighting while naked or nearly naked that it wouldn't have slowed him down). All these girls, however, seemed to need their gear in order to do battle, and as Myna had proven with her attempts at trap-checking, weren't much more useful outside of combat.
As he slapped a dart out of the air that was thrown by the green-haired attacker, Ranma couldn't help but wonder what other things his father might have actually been right about.
"Gottahidegottahidegottahidegottahide!" Myna chanted as she frantically looked around for a dark hallway or some manner of obscuring shadow. A successful hide check sounded REALLY good right now.
Ranma noticed a doorway up ahead. "You girls head inside that room! I'll take care of these guys!" Sure, there was a good chance it had been trapped like most of the other convenient areas in this place, but none of the traps had been very dangerous so far.
"But you can't fight them all by yourself!" Sereni protested, ever the helpful and noble paladin.
Thus, she was the first to get picked up and literally thrown through the door and into the room. And the last, as the other girls got the message and quickly evacuated to let the guy with the hero complex do his thing or die trying.
Slam! The door wobbled slightly as Ranma closed it, but it held.
Ranma then ducked as a scimitar sliced at his neck, and lashed out with a kick that sent the blonde woman stumbling backward into her green-haired partner. "All right, then," he mumbled, cracking his knuckles, "about time I got a real fight in. Let's go!"
Michi immediately recovered and drew a short sword. Against a single unarmored and unarmed opponent she figured another blade would be more prudent than a bard song. Harun fell into step beside her, and they stepped forward more cautiously, covering each other's flanks.
Knight Quill wasn't so keen on the whole "teamwork" idea. He was used to fighting alone or with a swarm of fully expendable minions. Besides, if anyone had asked, he would have pointed out that Harun and Michi were more "allies of opportunity," if even that, rather than teammates.
Ranma blinked as what looked like a huge green suit of armor crashed into the two girls from behind, launching them forward into him. His first instinct was to jump, but that would have let the two get past him into the room with the girls. So instead he kicked away Harun and snagged Michi out of the air, being careful of the wildly flailing short sword. Then he threw the screaming woman back at the living armor.
Knight Quill was just readying his sword for a charge when a screaming Michi slammed into him and instinctively wrapped her arms around his helmet to stave off anymore sudden and involuntary flight.
Grumbling about the unfairness of having a woman's chest pressed into his face when he wasn't in the proper form to enjoy it, Knight Quill grabbed onto Michi's arm and pried her off.
"AAAAAAAAAH!" A disarmed and extremely displeased Harun replaced Michi as she slammed into the emerald green armor, causing Quill to stagger back for a moment. Growling, Knight Quill dropped his sword so that he could use his other hand to pry off the swordswoman.
"MOUKO TAKABISHA!"
After managing to clear his faceplate of female bodies, and ignoring the girls' angry requests to be put down and no longer used as projectiles, Knight Quill noticed a ball of blue energy erupt from the palms of the pigtailed human and sail down the hallway at him. There was nowhere to dodge.
Luckily, he had a shield handy. Two, actually!
Ranma had assumed by now that the either the door he had sent the girls into hadn't been trapped, or that the trap was on the other side and thankfully quiet enough that it didn't interrupt his fight and force him to go and rescue them before finishing his current opponents.
He was wrong on both counts. The alarm trap was outside the door, the guardian it summoned just hadn't arrived yet.
Happ was, as mentioned previous, not stupid. He was well aware that his traps and guardians thusfar were not lethal, or even overly discouraging. Any reasonably determined individual with a decent tolerance for personal humiliation could have gotten to his inner sanctum, and Happousai was no more keen on disposing of intruders personally than most wizards were. So he had leashed ONE guardian that had more bite than bark, although that wasn't to say it didn't have it's... quirks... or that it was particularly vicious. It was just strong enough to slap around novice adventurers and eject them or give experienced adventurers a long enough fight to let Saiyo escape.
And now it was lumbering toward where Ranma and Knight Quill were playing dodgegirl. It was...
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(Posted Thu, 02 Nov 2006 07:30)
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