The forest was filled with action; birds flew from branch to branch, squirrels harvested nuts, rabbits ran from brush to brush. All in all, a normal day.
Silently, a shadow creeped up one of the trees, moving from thick branch to thick branch. After several moments of climbing, the shadow halted long enough for any onlookers to realize that this shadow was a woman, only to grab a bow from her back and string it in one deft motion. Then, she continued to inch along an admittedly thin branch, carefully keeping her balance. When she reached close to the end of the cover of the branches and leaves, she halted, and waited.
She didn't have to wait long. Below, several trees away, existed a winding path. On this path was walking a great furred, bipedal creature. At this distance, all that could really been told about it was that it had black fur. However, the shadow in the tree knew that this was the one that she had been looking for. Swiftly, she removed an arrow from a quiver that rested on her hip. Knocking the arrow, the began whispering, calling eldericht energies into the arrow, to make it glow a soft blue. Seconds later, the arrow was released.
The arrow made little sound in its passage through the air; a blue streak marked its path. As it neared the creature, the creature vanished, leaving the arrow to impact the ground and releases a blue wave of magical energy.
At least, to normal eyes the creature vanished. The shadow could see it's movement somewhat, and swore as she withdrew another arrow, knocked it, and fired, in the space of a second. The beast dodged at the last second, leaving it to embed itself in a tree.
Unfortunately for the sniper, this was enough to mark her position. The beast roared, causing all wildlife activity to halt, and charged towards her tree. The shadow drew three arrows, and leapt to another tree while firing all of them simultaneously, one of them nicking the beast in the face. The leap would allow one to see her figure: small and lithe stature, with blond hair and pointed ears, as well as other features. If it wasn't for the other features, one would mistake her for an elf.
She landed and drew another arrow, only to vacate her new perch when a ball of blue... something was flung out of the beast's palm, blasting away the limb she was on. Fortunately, the woman grabbed another branch on the same tree, while managing to hold onto her bow and arrow. She looked and saw the beast, close enough to see that it was some sort of cat-beast, with fangs that rivaled a vampires, jump into the branches of another tree. Her eyes narrowed, and she dropped to a branch hanging a few feet below her. She still was around thirty feet off of the ground, while her opponent, she figured, was only fifteen.
She readied her arrow, and retreated closer to the trunk of her tree. She kept her eye on the cat-beast's tree, ready to release the arrow, while concentrating to bring the same blue glow to this arrow.
The elf-like girl did not have to wait long; the creature leapt towards her, and she smirked at its stupidity. Very few things could manuever themselves in midair without wings. With that thought, she released the arrow, confident in its success.
As the arrow approached the cat, he twisted around the projectile, allowing the arrow to pass by and stike an innocent tree. With her eyes wide in shock, the sniper barely managed to dodge the creature as he crashed into the tree, ready to attack. She scrambled around on the branches, dodging punches and ducking kicks from the cat-creature, and finally got breathing room by catching it by surpise, by hurridly embuing another arrow, this time with a red hue, and firing down at the branches they were standing on.
She was barely able to leap from her narrow platform in time to avoid the fireball that leapt from the arrow.
Landing unsteadly in another tree, the girl attempted to catch her breath, while cursing herself. Several feet to the side, the tree burned, with flames spreading to it's other branches.
However, she did not have much time to recover, as evidenced by the roar of the creature, saying something in a strange language, followed by the blue blur of the same strange attack as before. Quickly, she leapt from the tree, in time for the ball to crash into her perch.
Looking down, she could only gape as the cat-creature sprang straight up at her. The impact was rough on her, due to the fact that she only had a split second to prepare for it. She flew off in an uncontrolled descent, spinning and tumbling. Fortunately, she was able to protect herself when she crashed into another tree, and bounced from branch to branch like a drunken and dazed pinball, before landing heavily on the ground. Stars erupted in front of her eyeballs, and she cried out from the sudden pain.
She was able to lift her face upwards from its meeting with the ground, in time to see the giant black cat-creature approach, with a look of resignation on his face.
* * *
Ranma grunted as he finished tieing the bindings on the girl's wrist. "Well, that should do it," he muttered, before looking over at the still flaming tree. The werecat looked back at the pointy-eared girl, and glared, expecting her to cringe in fear, like everybody else. "Damn, didja hafta do that?" he asked, wiping off blood from where she had got him from before, and licked the blood off of his hand.
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Sat, 10 Jul 2004 05:20)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.