Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Gold Digger Fan Fiction ❯ Golden Oportunity ❯ Chapter 09b ( Chapter 10 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Notes -

New Web Site: http://shi_hanna.tripod.com/

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Golden Opportunity
Chapter 09b
Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(c) 2003
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The sun was well up by the time the Rest of the Edge Guard was crawling out of bed and coming down stairs to eat breakfast. They were taking their time and taking a little timeto relax since the day was going to be a busy one, they all had things they had to go and investigate on top of their normal duties. Onoli sat the head of the table listening to Thropan and Tirga talk to each other while Gar was sitting off to the side playing with his food and looking depressed. The werelion wasn't sure what was going on, but he had been friends with them all for a long time and he knew his friend wasn't acting like he normally did. Over the last few months Gar's actions had begun to worry him more and more, in normal circumstances he would act like he always did, but when his sister was involved he was changing from his normal protective older brother attitude into this over protective stalker that hid in the shadows and followed her around wherever she went unless he was absolutely sure she was safe. He didn't know how to bring the subject up with his friend without insulting the guy and pissing him off. Lately Gar's attitude had taken a nose dive as well, making him paranoid and dangerous at times, especially after that incident at Brod's Tower with Ranma and Sheila.

Moving down the table with his eyes, Onoli watched as Tirga just thumped the table a few times and nursed his beer while holding an ice pack in his lap. He didn't look that good at all and from the scattered mugs around him this wasn't his first beer either. He had been like this ever since Sheila had started to talk about Ranma and he had to wonder just how long the guy was going to mope, he took rejection pretty well normally and certainly didn't let it slow him down any. Sometimes it even encouraged him more than a little. It wasn't the first time the Sheila had brushed him off like this either and he had a feeling that it wouldn't be the last. He had watched from the sidelines as she tried and tried to get Tirga to change his ways over the last few years, but the weretiger was way to stubborn for that. That meant he was going to have to give them a little push here and there to see that they got over this little dilemma or it was going to cause way to much strife among the team and he would have to take steps.

Onoli opened his mouth to give out assignments for the day when Tirga thumped the table again and stood up with a growl. "I'm out of here!"

"We do have a job to do Tirga, today is a very busy day, remember I have to go to the Council meeting as well." Onoli said calmly, he had kind of expected this.

The weretiger turned back to him with a mean look in his eye. "Like what?"

"I was going to have you cover the road into the town today, those bandits have been way to quiet lately, they must be up to something."

Tirga's eyes narrowed for a second before he nodded. "I'll handle it, but I'll do it here in a few hours. I need to take care of something first."

"That's fine, just be sure to keep the bandits injuries down to a minimum today so that we don't provoke them to much."

"No problem." Tirga muttered as he stalked out with his tail lashing.

After watching Tirga leave the building and slam the door Onoli knew it was going to be one of those days and wondered if Tirga would even leave the city to guard the road. He would worry about that later as he turned back to the table and looked over at Thropan. "I would like you to take care of your normal duties if you can and keep an eye on Tirga if you can."

"Sure, no problem, I have a new device I want to test out and Tirga will make the perfect creature to test it out on in his current mood. He'll never know I'm watching him."

"Excellent as always, just remember to keep whatever it is to a minimum, you know how the Council complains about some of your devices."

"No problem, I've been adapting them with a little help from some friends down on Smiths street."

"Alright." Onoli said as he turned to Gar, or where Gar had been sitting a few seconds before. "Gar?"

Raphiel, one of the newest members of the Edge Guard, looked up from his breakfast and shook his head. "He got up and ran out of here a couple seconds after you started to talk to Thropan, moving at high speed for the kitchen."

Onoli cocked his head to the side and frowned. "This is most unlike him, we are normally working together very well even when he have difference to worry about. Sheila is out with that Ranma fellow, Tirga is throwing a fit over it, Gar is off on some kind of mission without telling any of us about it and I'm starting to get worried about them. There is something really strange going on here and I have no idea what it could be."

"I don't know them that well sir." Raphiel said with a shrug as he went back to his breakfast.

"I"m going to have to leave you here today Raphiel, you still need quite a bit of training before I will feel you are ready to help us out on our missions so I want you to stay here at the compound while I go out and take care of the mission that I wanted Gar to do after I'm finished talking with the Council." Onoli stated as he dug into his own breakfast and looked thoughtful.

"Alright, but if you need any help I can always run messages and such. My speed is actually up from the last time we clocked myself and tested my limits."

"I'll think about it, but for now this needs to be done and it seems I'm the only one left to do it."

"I can help out Onoli." Thropan said.

"No, you are busy enough with your normal duties and I can just do Gar's mission after I'm done with my own, though it will just make things take longer than they need to."

"Then might I suggest you have Miss Luan talk to him." Thropan said.

"Luan?" Onoli asked.

"She's his girlfriend, a human that Julia Diggers has been training lately. They have been getting kind of cozy with each other for the last couple of months, ever since that debacle at the Tournament of Arms when Tyrant tried to gain control over the 'weapons'. They try to deny it though and pretend they are just friends as anything other than a couple is kind of hard to do." Thropan said with a smirk.

"I don't think I've ever met her."

"Until recently she was on a training mission given to her by Julia Diggers, along with a friend named Carla. Some kind of punishment for nearly leveling Mrs. Diggers house while they were practicing over in the Earth Realm, I don't know all the details though, but the Armsmaster was pissed."

"Is Luan here in the hamlet?" Onoli figured it would be a good way to get Gar back to his normal self if this girl could talk some sense into him. He would rather not involve Mrs. Diggers in this if he didn't have to.

"No, but she can be found somewhere out in the jungles on the other side of the continent. She said she had to go there to get training from some old teacher of Julia's from a ways back."

"I thought you said this was a punishment?"

Thropan shuddered. "It is, this guy is worse than Leep in some ways, but his training and techniques are top rate. She wasn't looking forward to it, but she had to go or Julia would have given her something even worse. Gar was supposed to go as well, but he never had a chance, we've been dealing with all these bandits lately and he had to stay around and take care of his Edge Guard duties."

"What's this teachers name, I've never heard of anyone that was worse letch than Master Leep?"

"I don't know, Luan never said, and her friend Carla just shuddered a little and sighed as they set out to find the guy."

"How about if we contact Master Julia and ask her to talk to Gar. I heard a report the other day that said that she was visiting an old friend in the area along with her husband. That would be easier than traveling across the continent looking for some fighter we have never heard of." Onoli pointed out.

"She's in the area?" Thropan asked in surprise. "I didn't know that, her movements are usually public knowledge within certain circles, but those have been silent of late."

"They came through from the Earth Realm a few days back for a vacation of some kind and asked that their presence be kept secret unless it was an emergency. They are supposed to be attending the Council meeting today so I should see them then."

"But this..."

"This crap with Gar is getting to a crisis point Thropan, there is something seriously wrong with him and you know it. I think that same thing might be affecting Tirga on a smaller level, if Gaja was here he would have been able to help us out by looking at their auras and casting a few spells."

"He's dead Onoli, we still haven't recovered from that and the loss of his magical talents has lessoned the team, even I wasn't as knowledgeable as he was. How long have we been waiting for the Council to send us a new wizard to help us out anyway? Six months?"

"To long, to long."

"You'll think of something."

"We'll survive, in the mean time it's time to go to work." Onoli said. "Raphiel, will you be alright staying here by yourself, it's going to be a long day before any of us get back and I feel bad just leaving you here, but with everything else..."

"No problem sir, I have some things to do around here that will occupy me while you guys are gone and it is only for one day. I can always get in a little more practice on my skills and take care of a few other things."

"See you in about twelve hours then." Onoli said with a nod stood up and grabbed his equipment from a table near the door and headed out.

Thropan stood as well and cleaned up his mess before grabbing his equipment belt and heading out the door. "I'll swing by to check up on you every couple of hours Raphiel."

"That's alright, I should be just fine so you don't have to."

For a second Thropan looked undecided, but then he shrugged and nodded as he opened the door and headed out. Raphiel spent a few more minutes eating before he looked around to make sure no one was watching, then dashed upstairs and vanished from sight. Once in his room he delved into his trunk at the end of the bed and pulled out his practice weapons, an outfit, and his manuals. He had been wanting to practice by himself for the last several days now and this was the perfect chance. Slipping on his loose pants, a pair of elven made boots, and a white shirt he had taken a liking to while in school, Raphiel looked himself over in the mirror as he buttoned the cuffs on his shirt. One of his classmates had once told him that he looked like a pirate when he was wearing this thing and it still made him laugh a little. Raphiel didn't think so, but the puffed out sleeves on his shirt were kind of pirate like.

The clothing was all elven made and had taken quite a bit of his money, but it was well worth the price because they would allow him to use his werecheetah speed without having to worry about ripping it off while moving to fast. Britanny had once told him during a private conversation, that she wore the form fitting clothing to keep it from shredding as she ran as well as it's ability to make her look good. He didn't have the modern clothing of the Earth realm here on Jade so he had to improvise a little to get a similar kind of edge. Normally leather held up to a werecheetah's increased speed just fine, but the few times he had worn leather and run it had restricted him more than it helped. It had kept him from reaching his full speed the few times he had tried it out and eventually forced him to try something different. As a werecheetah he was a rarity, and didn't really have anyone around that could teach him how to use his speed properly. While at school one of the teachers had been an elf with some connections among the wizards and they had had suggested specially made clothing, perhaps a mage suit like Dr. Diggers wore, one that could withstand the increased wind and friction pressures of his speed.

There was only one problem with his current outfit, he had no where to hold his weapons while he was running. The rest of the Edge Guard could call theirs up magically, with a simple word or name, but he didn't have that option available to him just yet and had to use mundane weapons instead. He had asked Onoli about it while they were on patrol and he had suggested some kind of harness that would keep one his back while he ran and allow for easy access if he were to truly need it for anything. As far as he could tell it would work, but he would have to place them under his clothing to keep the wind from ripping them off his back as he ran and in such a way that it didn't restrict his movements. It would be a while before he saved up enough money to get that though, several months at least, and then a couple more as the special harness was made to fit him exactly, so until then he would have to just hold them in his hands or in a bag.

He pulled the wooden War Sticks out of his trunk and looked them over before moving them to one hand and standing up. They had seen a lot of use since they were presented to him a few weeks before, but he picked things up pretty quick and had advanced through some of the training pretty quickly because of his speed and an eye for patterns that always seemed to help him solve puzzles. The handle allowed him to spin them around and get them into almost any position he needed to fight and with his speed he did pretty good, though Onoli had still kicked his ass bare handed. As a werelion the guy could take blows that would have killed a normal human, so Onoli did have some advantages to exploit against him. Once he was sure he had all the equipment he would need for a few hours of practice Raphiel headed downstairs so that he could go over to the training hall connected to this main building and practice some snap thrusts.

Spinning the War Sticks, Raphiel felt that he might be able to hold his own against quite a few people now, but knew that in large groups of attackers his skills were lacking quite a bit. Back at the Edge Guard training center he had received an in-depth history of Jade and the Retreat. As a potential member of the Edge Guard he knew that the Retreat would a major part of his duties since they only allowed werecreatures with peaceful intentions to ever enter the place. Every now and then a group of humans or other kinds of unwanted visitors would somehow find a way into the Retreat and cause problems. There had been several historic battles fought within the Retreat itself against some pretty nasty creatures that wanted to use the place for various reasons. Raphiel stepped out of his room and shut the door and was just heading down the hall when he heard someone say something.

"There he is."

Stopping about half way down the stairs, Raphiel could only gape at the dozen undead knights standing below him on the main floor. Only now that he was so close could he feel their undead auras filling the room. Normally they would have stood out like a fire in the middle of the night, but for some unknown reason he hadn't sensed a thing. He noted that they were all clustered around the hall in order to better cover all the windows and exits. At the base of the stairs a girl with really short brown hair wearing green and black armor stood watching him with a smirk on her face. She had a large spear of some kind on her back, but it didn't match any of the kinds he was familiar with from his training. Surprisingly, for a second he wondered if she was here to report some kind of crime like a lot of the locals tended to do, then he shook his head and called himself a moron for even thinking of such a thing.

"Hello Raphiel Rey, this is going to be your lucky day werecheetah." Hanza said with a larger smirk.

"Why is that?"

"I'm in a hurry, so I'm going to kill you quickly and painlessly."

"I would rather you didn't do anything like that." Raphiel said and winced a little, he sounded like one of those guys from a story.

Hanza just blinked at him and motioned for the knights to get him, he stumbled backwards as they followed the command and started toward him. He wasn't a good fighter and the instructors at the school had told him that if he ever found himself in trouble he would need to find one of the Edge Guard or someone else to help him until he had mastered his weapons and achieved enough rank to be presented with a magical weapon. If this had been a living person he could have overpowered them with his speed, but in this case he figured they wouldn't even notice. Turning he sprinted up the stairs, stuffing the War Sticks down the back of his pants, and using his natural speed to out distance them as he tried to come up with a plan to get help. He could handle two or three easily, but there were over a dozen of the things so he would have to take them down one at time if he had to fight them. Now that he listened a little he couldn't hear any of the activity that had been going on down in the kitchen and wondered if everyone was alright.

"Better not run to far werecheetah! I have this whole building under my control at the moment, it's just you and us now and I want to play!" Hanza yelled.

"Oh shit, I don't need this."

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Leaning against a fence that hadn't seen a bit of paint in some years, Ashaton had his cloak off and was relaxing in the warmth of the daylight as it emerged from over the horizon. He had been trying to track down where those undead knights came from last night when they had attacked that girl and come up empty. Tracking them to where they had first appeared in the city had been easy, someone had teleported them in and let them loose to. They had wandered around for a bit before running into that Sheila girl, but once they did find her they had slowly snuck up on her until she had been in just the right position to attack. He figured that they would have pulled it off perfectly, but they weren't able to think for themselves all that well and that led to a couple of mistakes that gave their position away enough her to anticipate their attack. Enough of one to at least get her weapons prepared before they were close enough to attack anyway and that was more than enough.

If he hadn't been there to protect her he wasn't sure she would have survived for much longer, but considering her apparent youth she had defended herself quite well. Showing that she had been training in the use of her weapon long enough to know some decent tactics at least. She was also been a member of the Edge Guard, the local police if he understood the term right. Maybe a special force of some kind that used nothing but Werecat soldiers or something. He was new to the area so he didn't know how everything worked just yet and getting the information was next to impossible without asking questions and that would draw attention he didn't want right now. His luck was bad enough as it was without encouraging it to screw his life over, so after tracking those things for a while he had hopped up into a tree for a few hours sleep.

He wanted to go and check on the girl this morning, or at least see her before he left town just to make sure she hadn't had any more problems during the night. That compound he had left her at had been well protected, on three sides anyway. The forth, the one that lead directly into the forest would make an ideal place to sit and ambush anyone that went in that direction. Grabbing his cloak and wrapping it around himself, he headed down the street and checked his inner pocket to make sure that all the small hidden pockets still held his money and that he sword was still safely tucked away. There were a couple of things he wanted to buy before he headed back over to the compound and this would be the perfect time to do it, just as the shops were opening, it would also give him a chance to see what kind of technology was available in this city. He hadn't had a chance to really look around since he arrived, but they seemed to have no clue what modern technology was or they avoided it for some reason that he didn't understand.

Whatever the cause, they seemed to have embraced magic almost completely. He had spotted more than one magically glowing sign here and there among the city when he arrived the day before because of a set of circumstanced he would rather have forgotten about. Still this was a city set up and controlled by mages, so things like this were expected and if he got lucky he might even find a wizard that could send him home. He wasn't really in a hurry though and figured he could take his time, it wasn't like he had any pressing business back home and this was a great excuse to explore a new world. Something every few people have ever gotten the chance to do, yesterday and those undead knights had been just one example of the kinds of fun he might come across if he stuck around here for a while. Magic was a useful tool at times, but he had seen the good and bad things that magic could accomplish. His curse for example, something he had picked up in his travels was something that had gotten on his nerves at first as well, but over time he had gotten used to it over the years.

To much magic seemed to cause problems if it was over used or abused in some way, he has always thought that this was how the Springs of Jusenkyo had been created. That place was one of the few that he never wanted to visit again and happily avoided if he could, no one knew what that place has been before it became what it is now, but it had played a very big roll in his life when he was younger. At the time he had never heard of Jusenkyo and had no clue that the place picked it victims carefully. At the time, a very ripe five years old, he hadn't even been able to do anything except cling to his mother as held him close and ran though the underbrush near what he would late learn was Jusenkyo. Her rapid breathing filling his ears as they fled for their lives and he shivered in fear. They had taken out his father a ways back, but his mother had a gift for speed and had used it to get them away. Somehow the rats had caught up with them and had been about to cut them off.

His mother had gone down with a yell and sent him flying, being just a young child he wasn't able to land right and crashed into the bushes and onto the ground a few seconds later. After that things became a blur, but he had vague memories of his mother screaming in terror as they did something unpleasant to her. Then one of the rats standing over him and picking him up by his hair and dragging them to Jusenkyo and laughing about doing a good job. His last conscious thought was of the rat knocking him out and waking up a little later in the guides hut as the old man had tended to him and explaining about the curse he had been given. At first the curse, had caused him nothing but trouble, but after a couple of years he had gotten used to it and had eventually learned to like it at times.

He had spent quite a bit of time researching Jusenkyo over the years and had learned everything he could about it as he could, even going to the Amazon Village a few hours away. Jusenkyo was a place of chaos magic, one of several places across the planet that could manipulate chance to draw in it's victims like a spider going after a fly, snaring those it thought deserved curses and reeling them in with trickery and enough manipulation to make you think going there had been your idea in the first place. The hike to the pools up the long dirt path provided was and almost pleasant experience, allowing one to stroll thought the woods and wonder if one had found the most beautiful forest in existence. It was like a final goodbye to a your normal from Jusenkyo just before you learned what 'living in interesting times' truly meant, and a kind of hint that the world would never be the same once they arrived.

Once in those woods, there was only one direction the springs would allow a person to go. If you turned around or tried to leave it was unlikely that the springs would allow you to leave. There was no going back once you started down that path and it had it's claws into you. He shuddered a little at the thought and sighed, it had been several days since his curse was last activated and changed him, but luckily over the years he had become so used to it that he wasn't bothered by it anymore. Only experiencing a kind of resignation to his fate and a quick adjacent of his clothing when it did happen. It rarely went five hours without trying to turn him into his cursed form, but after several days he had a feeling that today would be see that happen as well.

Splash! Splaaaaash!

"Well that figures." *A now female Ashaton muttered as she flicked the dirty water off her hands and glared at the open doorway off to her left. There was no one there, but that wasn't a surprise, there rarely was anyone present to take the blame for her current transformation. No one to blame or get an apology from, the form didn't bother her as much as the wet clothing. Shaking her head to get the water out of her hair, she sighs as she wrings a bit of water out of her clothing making sure no one had witnessed the transformation. Explaining the curse could be a pain in the ass at times. Several minutes later, after taking a second to pull out a towel and dry off some she entered the main square where several booths were already being set up by the long time users. These were the stores themselves, the ones that tended to sell just about everything one could think of, then there were the booths around the area that anyone could acquire for the day if they wanted.

They were first come first serve and were always in high demand among the smaller businesses that couldn't afford to have their own store. At least that was how she saw it. She headed towards one of the stories and stepped inside to look around. It was one of those shops that sold other peoples work and from the look of the store this was one of the more interesting shops. There were several sets of chairs, tables, racks of clothes for men and women, and even a couple of couches here and there for people to relax on. Along the walls were smaller items like tools, some dolls here and there, and even some regular toys.

"Good morning." Said a heavy set woman that had looked up from her dusting as Ashaton entered. "Your up early this morning."

"Just wandering around to see what's available."

"Well everything is for sale, just ask me about anything you might want to buy."

Ashaton smiled and nodded as she stepped over to take a closer look. "No problem."

For a brief moment she considered buying some new clothes, but something else captures her eye as looks to the back of the room and spots the weapons rack. She was about to check out one of the more interesting looking broad swords when she decided that it would be a good idea to get to the Edge Guard's compound and check on that girl before coming back here. So a few seconds later she tells the old woman goodbye and heads in that direction, but not before telling here that she might be back to check out the swords. Stepping out side she instantly senses something wrong off in the distance and wonders why she hadn't noticed it before now, but shrugs it off and breaks into a run. The sooner she got there the better it would be.

**********

He sped down the upper hallway as quickly and safely as he could, running for the second set of stairs that led to the kitchen down below, but just as he was about to step on the first step he saw the undead knights silently ascending from below and nearly fell down the stairs. Looking around frantically he only had a few seconds to realize that he was being cornered from both directions and all of them were holding crossbows, the silver tipped bolts ready to be fire instantly. Gasping in shock he stumbled backwards and narrowly dodge one of the crossbow bolts as it was fired at him, only his werecheetah speed saved him from being hit. He raced back down the hall, dodging even more crossbow bolts, into his room, and slamming the door shut and locking it all in one motion. Even that would only give him a few seconds of freedom before the door was ripped off it's hinges, undead of any kind seemed to always be super strong and could withstand tons of punishment. He looked round for a way out as he counted the seconds and controlled his rising panic, he had to find a way out. One of the Edge Guard, preferably, so that they could help him fight these things before it was to late. Then he glanced at the window, ran over and looked out onto the lawn below the window. There was another knight down there standing in the shadow of the building keeping an eye on the road that led to front gate to the compound.

The window was too small for him to crawl through though, this was to keep thieves from sneaking in whenever they wanted to, it was for fresh air only. His options shrank to almost nothing as something pounded on his door and nearly blew it off it's hinges. Time was up, he had to make a decision right now or he was going to die. The only thing that kept the door from shattering right them was the dwarven construction skills that had toughened this place up a few years ago. Even then the place had never been designed to withstand undead monsters, cursing, he grabbing the window frame, and use something he normally didn't like to use. He concentrated on his strength and felt something within him change subtlety, energy surged through his body and for a split second and aura formed around his body. With a snarl he ripped the whole window frame, and a good portion of the wall itself from it's position and tossed it across the room just as the door shattered. The whole mess of wood and glass flew through the opening and plowed down two of the undead knights as they raised their crossbows. This gained him only enough time to launch himself through the hole and into the air, he brought his legs up just before he hit to ground.

Raphiel landed and rolled to lesson the impact, but he still had his strength amplifying his abilities as he pulled his War Sticks out of his pants. A quick glance behind him showed the knight that had been standing outside was raising his own crossbow the instant he landed, the silver gleamed evilly in the early morning sunlight. Right as it pulled the trigger Raphiel exploded into motion, going from a standing start to almost full speed sprint in an instant. Werecheetahs are not just fast, but incredibly fast. It was one of the main skills that had been given to the first ones so long ago. Compared to Britanny, who had all the food she wanted and depended on her strength more than her speed, Raphiel would have left her in the dust and lapped her a few seconds later. Unfortunately Hanza had come here expecting a werecheetah and taken precautions, their speed was a well known fact.

Two things happened as Raphiel ran, all that could be seen was a brown and white blur of motion moving just under the speed of sound as it headed right for the front gate to escape these things. The first was the silver tipped crossbow bolt as it clipped the side of his leg just as he started to move into full speed. Raphiel screamed as his leg seemed to touch molten lava and he fell, slamming into the ground and plowing a ten foot long gouge in the lawn, where he suddenly ran into the second thing. A magical barrier of some kind, being projected from a couple of small crystals that were attached to wooden beams of the gate. He bounced off this and rolled to a stop a few feet away and whimpered in pain as he tried to get to his feet. A couple of knights appeared at his side and picked him as they started to drag him back inside the building.

"No! I won't go!" Raphiel yelled, but the things grip was stronger than stone. He couldn't budge it at all and his leg hurt so much that he couldn't concentrate enough to use his magical strength.

Hanza opened the door to the main house as they approached and stepped out to greet them with an evil grin. "Nice try simpleton, but I have fought werecats before and have a pretty good idea what you are capable of. You won't be getting away, not today."

"You won't get away with this." He gasped out.

"Oh don't be melodramatic, of course I will, all I want to do is kill you and that will be done in a few minutes."

"Damn you, why?" Raphiel growled.

"You're a member of the Edge Guard and it's weakest member, you make an easy target." Hanza said with a laugh as she stepped out of the way to let the knight drag him inside.

CLANG!

Raphiel gasped as he suddenly fell into the grass, little bits of armor were littered all around him on the ground. A hand grabbed him by the back of his neck and yanked him to his feet, he had a quick glimpse of a red hair girl in a body concealing cloak. There was a hood covering most of her face even as he was pulled upright and she let go of his neck. This wasn't a good thing to do as he put a little weight on his injured leg and yelled out in pain and nearly fell over again, but the red headed girl caught him before he could collapse. Hanza wasn't really surprised, every time she was close to succeeding at something there was always glitch of some kind, so her face was just a little passive as she turned to look at the girl and growled in anger. She reached up and grabbed the shaft of the large spear on her back and crouched down a little, ready for battle. "Who the hell are you?"

The red head smirked as she looked at Raphiel and his wounded leg, ignoring Hanza completely. "Silver char, that stuff is nasty if left untreated."

"I'll be fine in a few hours." He said.

She nodded and turned back to Hanza and smirked. "True, but I doubt she will let you live that long, you know how these people tend to act. You may call me Ashaton Chaos."

Hanza snarled and finished pulling her spear off her back and stalked forward, motioning for the undead knights followed her outside. Now that Raphiel had a chance to take a closer look at them without running he could tell that they all had silver bolts for their crossbows and silver swords. Hanza just growled as she started to circle around them, letting the Undead Knights follow her lead. "Well you're going to be nothing but ash by the time I get done with you girly. You interfered, that means you will die along side him."

"Do you have any idea just how many times I've heard some pathetic criminal like you say that to me over the years?" Ashaton asked as she pulled a rather large ruby encrusted sword out from underneath her cloak and she took a fighting stance. "I've taken down more dangerous idiots than you, so bring it on."

"This will be your last fight, no one interrupts me when I'm working and gets away with it."

"So far you haven't done anything to scare me girl and I really doubt you have what it takes to beat me." Ashaton said with a sneer, she always had to goad them into attacking.

With a snarl Hanza leapt forward with her spear as Ashaton blocked her casually with a downward slash of her large sword, stepped to the side, and let Hanza stumble past with a slap to the girls rear end with the flat of her sword. She grinned within the confines of her hood and waited a few seconds for Hanza to get her balance back, snarl hatefully, and continued the fight. Ashaton hadn't been around this town all that long, but she had heard of certain criminal types that had developed quite a reputation over the they years and Hanza was one of them. She had used to be a man according to the bartender that she had talked to the night before, he had stolen this potion from a local healer and drank it before it could be delivered to one of her female patients. It had turned him into a girl a few seconds later and from the looks of things the girl was still struggling to accept the transformation, thought the hint of lipstick and perfume in the air suggested that the struggle was a losing battle. Ashaton had no such problem, having accepted her curse long ago and learned to live with it. She briefly wondered if a flash of certain body parts would be enough to distract Hanza at a crucial moment, then decided against it, there were to many to fight.

Hanza turned on Ashaton with a glare and gestured at the Undead Knights that were encircling them. "Knights, kill Raphiel while I take care of this little tramp."

"What?!" Ashaton yelled. "How dare you call me that you floozy!"

"Looks like I hit a nerve." Hanza snickered as she leapt forward for another attack, spinning her staff in a certain way. She was only human, but that potion that turned her into a girl had given her some permanently enhanced abilities that including greater speed, endurance, and flexibility. She normally outclassed most humans, but this Ashaton was faster and stronger than she should have been and she couldn't figure out why, something was slightly off about the way the girl moved.

Cloak flaring out around her, Ashaton stepped into Hanza's attack and met her charge with the flat of her blade to block a quick thrust of the spear. They were quickly spinning and waving around each other in a circle as their weapons blocked and they counter attacked each other in high speed whirlwind of death. She didn't even have time to watch Raphiel as the knights moved to kill him, this Hanza was proving to be more than she had bargained for when she started this. Out of the corner of her eyes, she watched as the Knights followed their orders and moved to kill Raphiel and realized that she had to get him out of here. The fight with this girl would have to wait until he was safe, but luckily she had bought him enough time to heal enough to stand up normally again. Turning to Hanza she suddenly doubled the speed of her attacks and pushed the girl backwards a few feet. Kicking her in the stomach distracted her long enough for Ashaton to bring her sword up and point the hilt at Hanza and use her hand closest to the bottom of the hilt to twist the very end.

"Gotcha!" Ashaton yelled. "RUBY FLARE!"

Light flared out of a ruby at the in a super bright flash that nearly blinded Hanza as she looked right into it and yelled out in surprise. Twisting, Ashaton turned, grabbed a half frozen Raphiel and took off running. Raphiel stumbled at first, but soon managed to get his feet under him and match her speed with only a slight limp in his stride and a bit of surprise at how fast this human could run. The Knights all turned their heads as the girl dragged their target out of range within a second or two, hesitated, then moved to walk after their prey. Hanza screamed shrilly as she flopped around on the ground in pain. Her skin felt like it had just been way to close to a lava flow and there were lights flashing around her head giving her a headache bigger than the planet. Crawling to her feet she tried to look around and nearly threw up from the wave of vertigo and throbbing that suddenly assaulted her.

"Go after them you fools, cut them off and slice them into pieces!" She yelled through the pain, unable to see that they had already started to do just that.

Undead Knights didn't run, they couldn't, but the ability to walk day and night without end, through anything and go anywhere made up for it. A group of Undead Knights had once been marched right across a lake to catch their target by surprise in the middle of the night, so chasing after two feeing targets was a cake walk for them. They kept their crossbows at the ready as they advanced on the training hall where Ashaton and Raphiel had just vanished from sight. Hanza still couldn't see as she pulled herself to her feet, but the pain had died down enough to let her move around a little. Everything around her was a colored blur of some kind covered in flashing spots that wouldn't go away. She could see just enough to make out nearby large objects and the Knights movement as they walked. She swore under breath that she was going to make that bitch pay for doing this to her. She spotted as green blur just a couple of feet away that stood out a bit and picked up her dropped spear and moved as best she could toward the building. There would be hell to pay for this, those two would burn before she finished with them, revenge was a feeling she knew all to well and there were several people in this city that would die at her hands today. She smiled evilly as a plan took shape within her mind, by the end of the day she would the most talked about woman in the city.

**********

"So did you bring along any warm clothing?" Sheila asked.

Ranma shook his head. "Just a couple changes of clothes, a tent, and a few other things."

"Were going to be out there for several days, will that be a problem?"

"Naw, I can make do with no problems and survived with far less. My old man kind of forced me to adapt to that way of living off the land when I was just a kid." Ranma said as he looked around the area realized that he'd been here before, the last time he had been when he had been running after Julia as they sprinted to Brod's lookout a few weeks back. He hadn't had a chance to see much of the area while moving at high speed, so he was happy to finally see it all now that he was here and not in as much of a hurry. He looked behind him and wondered why he felt like he was being watched though, he'd been feeling like that since he left the compound where Sheila lived. The girl had glanced up at him every now and then, but this felt different, more like when his old man had been hunting like a dog through the desert regions of Iraq that one time and forced him to dodge those gun totting maniacs. This was a dangerous feeling and it was locked on to him. That meant he'd have to be careful and on guard the whole way. He stopped for a second and tried to read the Ki in the area around him to see if it would reveal anything, but all of it looked normal as well. There were a few animals, but nothing else as far as he could see so whoever or whatever it was they seemed to have some skill at hiding their presence from detection.

"What's wrong Ranma?" Sheila asked as Ranma seemed to tense up.

"I feel like I'm being watched."

"You might be, there are lots of dangerous animals here and further on in the forest where we will be heading."

"All I can sense are normal animals as they hide in the trees and bushes, nothing that might want to hurt either of us."

Sheila sniffed the air. "It smells normal enough, I think you're imagining things or just a bit jumpy since this is your first hunt. Just relax and follow my lead, we'll have a lot of fun that way." Sheila said with a smirk.

Eyes half lidded, Ranma simply looked at her and shook his head, perhaps the one hunting him was closer than he thought they were. That and the sunlight was glinting off the black spandex out fit Sheila was wearing and her curves were distracting him a bit, but he figured that mentioning that would get him into more trouble. "Yeah right, well let's go and see what we can find."

"Sure, let's head this way. Why do you think we are being watched though? There's a possibility that there is someone out here after all, the hunt isn't being kept a secret after all."

They turned and walked down a small path that led deeper into the forest and across a small, almost hidden bridge over an over grown canal full of slow moving water. The bridge was one of those rope and board types, so they had to move across it in single file to make sure they didn't place to much weight on it. "Maybe, but my senses have been getting a lot sharper lately. Especially since I mastered the Neko-ken, everything is enhanced and more sensitive and what I'm sensing isn't another hunter unless they are out to hunt us." Ranma explained.

Strolling along behind Ranma Sheila noticed something about Ranma that made her want to purr a little, but suppressed that as quickly as she could as she gazed wantonly at his back side in those pants. Blushing at a dirty thought, Sheila tried to not do anything foolish. Having Ranma walking so close to her was making it a bit hard to concentrate on things around him. So she just enjoyed his presence as they crossed to the other side and hoped the whole hunt would be like this. She wanted to see him in action against some of the monsters out here. Then she saw something odd out of the corner of her eye, the side of Ranma's pack was moving, as if something alive had gotten inside. She gasped and jumped back as Ranma stopped to see what was wrong, the top flap of his pack opened up suddenly and a small Peebo peeked its' head out and stared at her for a second with glowing red eyes, it turned to look at her.

"It's a Peebo! What the heck are you doing with a Peebo?!" Sheila almost yelled.

"Oh, I forgot about him. This is B, Brianna gave him to me to help out with this hunt and supply information if I needed it." Ranma said as he took the little Peebo out and sat it down on the ground.

"It's about time you doofus! Do you have any idea how long it's been since you last washed those socks?! That whole bag reeks!" B shouted as it started to spin in circles and fired a laser shot from it's eyes at Ranma's foot.

"The socks are perfectly fine." Ranma said with a sigh as he moved his leg to avoid getting hit by the temperamental thing.

Sheila walked over and looked down at the thing. "I've never seen a Peebo act like this one, they usually seem to be really innocent and willing to blow up for the littlest reasons when Brianna is in danger."

"Me neither, they usually work in groups as they ambush some to make sure the guy won't be a threat anymore. Brianna said this one was a prototype that she would like me to test for her, it's a loud mouth though..."

"&$#% you!" B yelled and took another shot at Ranma's foot and spun in a circle.

"...and likes to cuss for some reason." Ranma finished.

Sheila giggled. "It's cute too, just like Brianna's other Peebos."

Scooting over to Sheila's foot, B begins to rub himself against her boot doing a passable imitation of a purr. "See bone head, even she knows how to talk to me properly."

"True, but I can drop kick you into the nearest lake with no trouble at all."

B huffed. "Like you can make it ten feet in this forest without my help, you don't know anything and it's not like a little water will be a problem for my great skills of survival."

Then Sheila picked him and held him against her chest. "He is just so cute! What are going to do with him?"

B tried to figure out what it was about this suddenly new position that made Ranma's face look like that, then smirked.

"I'm not sure just yet, he is pretty dangerous like most of Brianna's Peebos, but at the moment I don't really have any use for him."

"I'll show you a use." B yelled from Sheila's chest.

"Can I carry him?"

"Sure." Ranma said with a shrug.

Pressed against Sheila's chest, B looked confused, as if he was trying to figure something out and didn't have a clue where to begin. He had to come up with a plan to prod the boy a bit.

"Thanks!" Sheila yelled as she bounced forward and kissed Ranma on the cheek and caused him to freeze up in shock.

Giggling, Sheila skipped ahead with an evil smirk on her face that Ranma couldn't see. "This hunt is going to be a lot of fun, oh yes it is."

"Way to go girl!" B cheered.

**********

Staggering into the training hall, Ashaton chucked her cloak onto the floor so that she could have more freedom of movement. A quick glance around proved that there was no way she could get her hands on some hot water so she forgot about changing back into her male self and prepared for a fight. As she made sure she had all her equipment prepared she turned to look at Raphiel, but he was gazing at her with a weird look on his face. "Are you alright."

He nodded jerkily.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah..." He got out, then went back to staring.

"Um...stop that, your making me feel like a side of beef and we have other things to worry about you know." Ashaton snapped a few seconds later. What was it about the curse that made all it's victims prime examples of whatever they were cursed with? As a guy she looked about average, but as a girl she could pose as a model with ease, it was just weird and even after all this time she still didn't understand that bit. Guys just fell in lust with her body the instant their eyes took in her good looks, it was eerie in a way.

"What was your name again?" Raphiel asked, the little sparkles in his eyes were just a little freaky.

"Ashaton Chaos; you were pretty out of it when I showed up. Now snap out of it and grab a weapon, we have to take down these Undead Knights on our own!" She yelled.

Blinking, Raphiel nodded ran over to a small locker to pull out another set of War sticks, his others had been lost in the earlier confusion, these were metal and had seen a lot of use over the years. "I'm not very good with these things, but tell me where to hit and I can do that easily enough."

"Hit them in the back, right where the lower part of the armor meets with the bottom half. The only thing inside those suits is spiritual energy and that haunts the armor and controls its movements. If you hit them there the armor flies apart and it takes them hours to pull themselves back together again. By that time we should have had enough time to get away and bring back a priest to get rid of them permanently."

"Sound easy enough." Raphiel said, glancing at the pretty girl again and blushing a little under his fur.

"FOCUS! I don't have time to fight them while you stand around doing nothing!" Ashaton yelled in his ear.

"Right, right, sorry, sorry!" He said hastily and backed away, even when she was mad she looked good. Sigh.

"They were right behind us when we ran in here so where the heck did they go? It's not like there are all that many ways to get into this part of the house as far as I can see, there are only three doors after all." Ashaton muttered as she faced the door they had entered through and waited for them to come through.

"I don't know, they move so quietly I can barely hear them and right now I can't hear a thing."

"Pay attention to anything out of the ordinary, these Knights aren't acting right and that has me worried." She glanced around the room, it was about a hundred feet long, seventy five feet wide, and almost thirty with the second level walkway that circled the interior of the building. All of it was empty except for them, nothing was moving or making a sound and it bothered her. They had been right on her heels as they ran, less than thirty seconds away as they entered and now there was nothing to indicate that anyone was there.

"Where are they?"

"I don't know, this situation feels wrong."

There are only so many ways into the building, two doors on this bottom floor, a door for the top level, and four large windows for light. Those are the only ways in here as far as I can see." Raphiel muttered, trying to focus on the situation and keep from looking at the red haired girl standing off to the side and her heaving chest.

Drool!

"Focus!"

"Right, right! Sorry!"

This was getting really weird so Ashaton moved over to the window and peaked out and saw one of the knights standing there with a pile of wood in it's arms as it dumped it on top of a larger pile along side the building. There wasn't much there, but it looked like it had dropped off several other loads of wood already and was going back for more as it walked off without looking at her. Confused, she ran across the building to look out one of the other windows and saw the same thing. Except this time there were two Knights dumping wood on a smaller pile along the wall. A quick check of the other two windows showed much the same thing as well, the undead knights were piling wood up along the outside of the training hall.

"What the hell are they doing?" She muttered out loud.

Then they heard the sound of things being broken inside the house, doors shattered, walls removed, and chopping. "What do they need with all the wood?" Raphiel asked.

"I don't know, they should be coming in here after us. Instead their cutting winter wood and piling it up against the building for some reason." Ashaton said in confusion.

"Whatever they are doing, we should stop them before the get done." Raphiel said.

"I don't think so, as long as they are out there we're safe enough. Let them destroy the building, it can always be rebuilt. I figure they might set it on fire or something and try to smoke us out, though why and Undead Knight would even need to do such a thing is beyond me."

"A-as a member of the Edge Guard is my duty to protect the buildings as well as the people of this town, I have to do it." Raphiel said with a little more confidence than normal.

"Don't be stupid, if you were better trained I would risk a frontal assault, but you are still in need of months of training just to protect yourself correctly so that ideas out for the moment though if we get into a situation bad enough that we have to fight then we can give it a try. There is no way we can fight off all these Knights by ourselves though so we have to find a plan that will allow us to take them down one at a time, there has to be twenty to thirty of them at least."

"We h-have to try." Raphiel said as he gripped the War Sticks tightly and wished that Onoli was there, he would have felt a whole lot safer than he did.

"Just go over to that window and keep an eye on what they are doing and let me know if they change their actions in anyway." Ashaton said as she tried to think of a way out of this mess. She wondered if they were actually doing what she thought they were, if so, this Hanza was a lot more ruthless than she had thought.

"Oh HUSSY!? Come out and meet your fate like a good little corpse!" Hanza yelled through the front door.

"Come in and get me you bitch!"

"I thought I'd give you one last chance for a quick death before I finished you off by chopping you into tiny little pieces, what do you say? I'll be quick, so you won't feel a thing if you give up now." Hanza said in a pleasant tone of voice, like she was ordering a meal or something.

"We'll take our chances in here!"

"Yeah!" Raphiel yelled all of a sudden.

"Well I gave you chance, just sit tight and I'll be with you in a moment!" Hanza yelled out.

The sounds inside the house died out suddenly and left them in total silence, Ashaton had a real bad feeling about this. She glanced out the window again and saw that the wood pile was even higher, then a Knight walked along it and poured wine on the wood as he moved down the wall. Now she was alarmed and her fears were confirmed when another Knight came up behind the other one with a torch and set the wood on fire. With a loud whoosh sound it raced around the building, setting everything on fire and sending smoke high into the air. Outside Hanza started to laugh as her Knights walked up to the only door with no burning wood and used a couple of hammers to nail it shut. Four others moved up to the stairs and nailed the upper doors shut as well, finishing just as the building started to burn a lovely shade of orange.

"BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!" Hanza laughed, the flames would take the training hall with it, forcing them to enter the main house through the second door that led into the main house where ten of her knights stood with crossbows, swords, and even axes to finish them off. This was going to be good, to bad it doomed any kind of covert attack, but this was a chance she couldn't pass up and this was her chance to finally kill one of the Edge Dorks once and for all. She loved revenge, it made her feel all gooey inside and filled her with a feeling of accomplishment and purpose.

"She's trying to burn us alive!" Raphiel gasped as he backed away from the windows. They could hear the Undead Knights nailing the upper floor doors shut even as they stood there.

"We have to get out of here right now." Ashaton said.

"How?"

"There's only one door left and she seems to want us to go through it." She said as she pointed.

"Even I know that would be suicidal." Raphiel said.

All around them the smoke was beginning to build up as the fire ate up the building and worked it's way up one side of the training hall to the thatch roofing and spread across the roof like a wildfire. Coughing, Ashaton tried to think of a way out of this and could only come up with one way and it would place them in even more danger because Hanza had probably taken the time to cover all the possibilities and was expecting them to pull something like this or go through the house and right into her main trap. Ashaton looked at Raphiel for a second and decided they would have a better chance if they avoided the house all together. "Raphiel, are you strong enough to break a hole in the wall?"

"Sure, but its on fire at the moment so I'd suggest something else that wasn't quite as dangerous. How will we get through that?"

"Speed."

"You're only human, you aren't fast enough to get through the flames without being burned."

"I'm fast enough." Ashaton muttered. "Now I want you to rip a hole in that back wall big enough for us to run through."

Nodding, Raphiel moves over to the wall and examines it to find the best place to rip out a section. He had to find the right place to do this before it was to late and flames were able to get into the building itself. He could already he could feel the heat coming off the wall as he ran his fingers over the wood, but within seconds he found what he was looking for. Focusing his mind on the task he felt his strength kick in again and he slammed a foot into the wall right where it was the thinnest and didn't have any bracing at all. It worked like a charm, sending a large piece of the wall crashing out ward and into the yard with loud crack of shattering wood. It also shattered most of everything above it as well and sent a large portion of the wood crashing down on his head, that he hadn't planned on. Cursing and grabbing his head in pain, Raphiel staggered around holding his head just as Ashaton grabbed him by the collar and dragged him though the hole, past the fire, and out onto the light. They jumped over the burning piles of wood that the broken pieces of the wall had shoved out of the way as it moved through, but there were five Knights waiting for them even as they got past the fire.

"Damn it! I knew it would be like this!" She cursed as she dropped Raphiel to the ground and sprang forward all at the same time. Conscious thought would have just slowed her down as she whipped her blade off her back, the long broad sword looked almost comical in her hands as she was spinning it around in front of her to create a quick shield in case they fired those crossbows. This let her have enough time to jump above their heads as she came down behind them and let the red jewels in the sword flare with energy. Lucky for her they were spaced out just enough for her to take them on one or two at a time with little problem, she hit it right in the small of its back like she had done before and smirked as it shattered it into various types of armor and ignored the cold wind that seemed to wash over her. Undead Knights without their armor were weaker than the average ghost and could be ignored for the most part.

The next Knight raised it's crossbow and fired even as she was turning to it and only instinct kept her from being hit with the bolt, her sword spun into place and knocked the bolt off course just enough that it grazed the shoulder pad of her armor and tumbled off behind her even as she performed a spin kick and knocked its helmet off, but it wasn't enough to stop the things. The armor had to be disassembled completely, but enough for her to get into position and use her sword to send it falling into pieces at her feet with a swift blow to it's slower back the seemed to cut the thing in half. Sword spinning in an arch she was able to knock the next couple of cross bow bolts out of the air and she turned to the next two just as they were reaching her. These were in the process of dropping their crossbows and pulling out their swords now that they were out of ammo, but the blades were silver so she still had to be even more careful.

"Raphiel, get up and protect yourself!" She yelled. "That blow to your head wasn't that bad."

He groaned, but otherwise didn't make any other movement. Cursing under her breath, Ashaton leapt forward and attacked the nearest Undead Knight in an attempt to push it back several yards, but if there was one thing an Undead Knight knew how to do, it was use a sword. It blocked her with ease and countered attacked in one movement without showing any kind of reaction at all to her hurried attack. She gasped as liquid fire flared in her shoulder where the tip of the silver sword had just gotten her and jumped back for a little room to check it out. The cut was somewhat minor, her armor had stopped most of it, but the silver had seared a large chunk of her skin and opened her up. Blood was running down her shoulder and the pain of silver char was just as bad as she remembered.

Growling, she spun the sword and narrowed her eyes at the Undead Knight. She hadn't wanted to show them that she knew a special attack, but this situation was getting way to dangerous not to, more and more of the things were heading for them as well as the green armored girl watched from the sidelines. That meant she would have to use her special attacks and take a risk, she could only use it a few times before she needed a day or so to recover, but these odds were looking worse and worse. She had to get into a position that would allow her to use it on a group instead of wasting it on a single target, that way she could take down more than one with a single attack. Then, much to her surprise, Raphiel rolls to his feet and kicks a nearby Knight in the lower back and sends bits of armor flying away from him. Taking advantage of the sudden distraction, Ashaton attacks another Knight in a savage series of blows using her enhanced strength and pummels the thing into the ground, scattering pieces everywhere.

There were a few Knights left, but Ashaton doesn't have time to attack the thing since Hanza had decided to participate and brought along a whole squad of Undead Knights. She curses as she counts over thirty of the things marching her way and wonders where the hell the girl was getting the things from. It was like she just called for a few new ones every time she lost one. There was no other choice, she was going to have to use something dangerous and take a chance that it would work, her sword was quickly re-sheathed on her back as she brought her hands to her side. "Raphiel, I'm going to do something dangerous and when I finish I'm going to collapse. I need you to grab me the instant I'm done and carry us far enough away from here to gain us some time to regroup a little."

"Okay, but how will I know you're done?"

Ashaton smirked. "You'll know."

"Whatever, just hurry it up a little."

"KILL THEM NOW!" Hanza yelled and the Undead Knights started to bare down on them, their weapons raised to deal them fatal damage.

Cupping her hands in front of her stomach, Ashaton growls as she gathers the energy she needs to perform her special attack. A shimmering rainbow like energy begins to form around her body, traveling from the ground, up he legs, and around her whole body in a matter of seconds. Still growling as she focused, a bead of silver colored energy forms in her hands and glows brightly enough to throw everything around her into long warped shadows. Raphiel, having seen things like this before moves behind Ashaton to see what kind of damage it will do. The Knights are slow to respond, but are closing the distance between them quickly enough for him to start worrying that she might not have time to power up enough of a blast. In the back of the group Hanza watches as well and decides that she might have underestimated this girl just a little to much. They would have been toast by now if this girl hadn't interfered in this fight, but Hanza was beginning to wonder if this mission was going to collapse around her like so many other jobs lately and it had started out so well to. She holstered her spear across her back and moved to twist her magic ring just as Ashaton's aura flared out around her body and lit up her eyes, brought her hands forward, and fired a blast of silvery rainbow energy.

"AERO BLAST!"

"Ah Shit!" Hanza snapped as she tried to get out of the way.

It was a wide blast, large enough to hit all of the Undead Knights at once and destroy them as the wave of energy rolled over and through them. Ring activated, Hanza used her haste spell to move out of the way as the wave of energy continued towards where she had been just a millisecond before. With nothing to stop the blast it slammed into the wall of the training hall with a massive explosion of wood and leveled it almost instantly. Most of the house went up a second later in a huge explosion of fire and destruction that completed what Hanza had wanted to do anyway, she almost cheered at the level of destruction. Even with haste activated, Hanza caught the very edge of the wide swath of energy though and was flung clear across the property through the remains of a small building. It exploded around her in a hail of wood and dust as she was propelled clear through it's flimsy construction with a loud scream of shock. Ashaton blinked tiredly and decided that she might have put to much into that blast even as she collapsed in Raphiel's arms. In a burst of movement they were flying across the compound area at high speed. He still hadn't completely recovered from the wound he had taken earlier or the blow to the head, but Raphiel was well enough to run in a somewhat straight line as he headed for the trees at the far side of the property for a little cover and place to rest.

They slowed to a stop at the edge of the property, inside a small area of trees that blocked them from view, but let them look out over the property to see if anyone was coming. Raphiel gaped in shock as the rest of the compound went up in flames and what was left of teh training hall collapsed in on itself, there was barely anything left of it. For the most part it was like a giant bonfire with a few pieces of wood sticking up here and there like bits of bone from some kind of giant monster. Undead Knights that had been inside the house could be seen staggering around inside the flames as their armor melted and their source of undead life slowly vanished. He was surprised they were still moving at all after a blast like that, Onoli was the only person he had ever seen before that could pull off this level of destruction if he needed to. The only thing that had ever come close was during a training accident at the school when one of the new recruits had accidentally killed himself by using a special attack when he wasn't ready to handle the added power.

He looked down at the girl in his arms and wondered if she could have beat Onoli in a fight if they both used their special attacks. Onoli's special attack was called Rain and was strong enough to kill a full powered wizard if it was used at the right time. It could get through any kind of shield or magical defense, the one time it had been used against Tyrant, the guy had been forced to run to save his life. Ashaton had just blown up the Edge Guard home, he wondered what they would say when they found out just how it wad done and how they would retaliate. Though now that he thought about it, where were the rest of the Edge Guard? Surely they would have heard about this by now and come to investigate? Thropan was supposed to be around the city somewhere, the fire and rising smoke must have alerted someone by now? Shaking his head, he carefully placed the girl on the ground.

Looking her over he saw that her injured shoulder was charred almost exactly like the wound on his leg. It was a silver burn, that could only mean she was a werecreature of some kind and she had fought that whole battle in human form. Why hadn't she transformed and used her hybrid from for it's added speed and strength? He frowned and checked her over a little more and wondered what she could transform into, there was nothing on her that suggested anything. The human form was almost always really weak and useless compared to the hybrid form that a werecreature could take, though he had to admit she was still really cute. Because of his own artificial creation he was permanently stuck in the hybrid form, unable to go fully human or cheetah. It had it's drawbacks, but it didn't bother him all that much since he knew what he was and that he had the freedom to make his own decisions now.

He examined Ashaton a little more and took a couple of minutes to make a bandage to place on her shoulder. Most of it healed already, at least enough not to cause her problems in a fight though it probably still hurt quite a bit, but it was still bleeding a little because of the silver char going so deep into the skin and even damaging a portion of her very soul. He was probably going to have to sew it back together if it didn't close soon, but her healing rate seemed to be up to the job so he would wait for now.

There was a noise behind him, almost a growl, and he turned to see protect Ashaton from an injured Hanza, but it was too late as the tip of a large green spear plunged into his stomach and came out his spine in a shower of blood that covered Ashaton. He cursed his stupidity as he clawed at the shaft of the spear and resisted the urge to scream in pain, he wouldn't give her the satisfaction of that after all this. Hanza stood there in her decimated armor, a toilet seat hanging around her neck, and blood running down her face and neck. She had an evil smirk on her face as she watched Raphiel's face fill with complete shock. Gripping the shaft in a better position, and snarled as she pulled it free. Raphiel hissed in pain, but all she did was spin the spear and slam it into the side of his neck with a resounding snap. His eyes slowly lost their life as he falls backwards across Ashaton in a spreading pool of blood.

"Mission accom...plished." Hanza said as she spit out a wad of blood and staggered off. "They are both dead, there's no way she can survive that level of damage, the Edge G...uard home is a...flaming wreck. It's b...een a good day. I need a beer."

Behind her, Raphiel's body convulses once and starts to melt into a gray, mud like substance as a puzzle piece made out of skin and bone pops out of his head and lands on Ashaton's chest. Within a minute there is nothing left of Raphiel's body, not even mud, except for the puzzle piece, but it will be hours before Ashaton wakes up. With all of Raphiel's blood on her and fading away slowly, she did indeed look quite dead, but it to slowly vanished along with his body so that she looked like she was just sleeping. If she had been conscious she might have witnessed several other fires sending smoke up into the air around the city a little while later.

Then the strange puzzle piece started to glow, at first nothing happened, but within a few minutes the glow spreads around Ashaton's body. She gasps as her body shivers and she changes, increasing in size, growing taller, gaining bigger breasts, stronger frame, a long tail, and spots in her hair that become more dominant over the course of a few minutes. She groans as she wakes up a little and sits up slowly, knowing that something bad had just happened, but not what and shakes her head to clear it. Opening her eyes she realizes that her body has changed again and looks down with a gasp in shock at the transformation, shock turns to amazement as she checks herself out. This movement causes the puzzle piece to fall into her lap, still glowing slightly, and she picks it up and examines it closely. Then promptly drops it with a gasp as she realizes that it seems to be made out of skin and bone.

"Raphiel?" She calls, but there is no answer.

Fearing the worst, she picks the puzzle piece up and wonders what it is and why anyone would leave such a thing just laying there in the first place. Shaking her head, she puts the thing in one of her pockets as she stretches out a bit to test the transformation of her body. She then notices that the Edge Guard Compound is almost completely gone and along with it her cloak, the one she'd tossed to the side when they entered the training hall. Cursing her luck she morns the loss of something she'd had for years, but that paled in the face of this current transformation. Raphiel had to have something to with it, she knew that, only another werecheetah could make her body transform like this since her werecheetah form had been sealed away when she was little for her own protection. She gasped as she remembered what was needed for it to happen too, blood, lots of blood. Raphiel must have bled all over her, but for him to give her the amount of blood needed to send her into a werecheetah transformation he would have been almost dead. Where was his body?

Shaking her head, Ashaton tries to think of something, but doesn't know what to do now that Raphiel is gone and his body missing. Where was his body and why had she been left there after Hanza went to so much trouble to hurt them in the first place. Her whole body hurt not that the fight was over, but she had to tell someone about this and maybe they could offer and explanation or two, but most of the Edge Guard were gone as far as she could tell. They hadn't been around to help out Raphiel when he needed them, or at least not close enough to make it here in time. She turned and looked out over the city and saw that there was a columns of smoke rising from several places around the city. That meant that this attack might not have been an isolated attack, but one of a series of places that were hit at the same time. It would explain what had happened to the other Edge Guard and why Raphiel had been left here alone. Taking a deep breath she used her werecheetah speed to break into a sprint, she had to see if she could find any of the other Edge Guard before things got out of hand. Unfortunately the only other one she even had a clue about was Sheila and she was in the forest swamp a few miles away, which by werecheetah speed was just a few minutes away.

**********

Rook sat on his throne with his black cape draped over the arm rests with his legs crossed. He had his hands laced together as he sat there looking down upon the new and improved G'nolga and he didn't like what he was seeing at all. She had been dressed in a form fitting dwarven leather armor and cleaned up as nice as can be, but he had expected her 'conversion' to be a little different than this. Over the last few years they had worked together and he had always admired her fire and passion, but this thing she had become under the wizard's tender treatment was almost an insult. Still, he had to admit that she was everything he could have asked for and more. Most of the wizard's girls had been kind of like this, but with more personality. He had been able to tell that G'nolga was a bit different from them the instant she walked into his throne room like a poorly created golem. Using jerky movements to move around and watching her kneel down and place her head on the floor at his feet had been both gratifying and horrid at the same time. He took a couple of minutes to take in all the changes, comparing her present state to what she had been like before he had her kidnapped out of the dwarven prison she had been in.

"Stand."

Slowly, almost hesitantly, G'nolga stood up to look at him for the first time and Rook frowned behind his mask. He had been planning to use her like a pawn that he could send out to do what he wanted, but her personality seemed to be completely gone. He looked into her empty eyes and decided that she wouldn't be able to do some of the jobs he had planned for her over the next few days, but that didn't matter, most of it had been stuff that would have been demeaning to G'nolga and this person in front of him had no soul. She was so broken that she would gladly do anything he ordered her to do. His enslaved undead wizard walked into the throne room as he sat there and twisted his long pointy hat in his hands. Rook scowled at him for a second before speaking.

"She is supposed to be enslaved, why is she like this? What's the point of breaking her if she doesn't retain enough of herself to understand what has happened to her?"

The wizard shuddered a bit. "I was rushed for time and didn't have time to make some of the changes you wanted."

"YOU SAID YOU COULD DO IT QUICKLY!" Rook roared.

"A-and I did, see, but for her to retain some of herself would have been impossible. This kind of thing can normally take months to accomplish, slowly breaking their will and destroying their mind. To do it quick tends to make them like this..."

"I TOLD YOU I WANTED HER TO BE LOYAL TO ME AND ABLE TO FIGHT, WHAT THE HELL KIND OF FIGHTER IS THIS LIVING VEGETABLE?!"

"Sir! She will be able to fight just as she always has, this way she will not be hampered by any emotions at all and is the perfect slave for your plans."

Rook rose to his feet, growled, and blasted the undead wizard out of existence with a ball of energy that barely missed hitting G'nolga, she didn't even blink. Turning to the woman Rook towered over her and decided that he would have to work with what he had been given even if he didn't like changing plans on such short notice. Time was one thing he had lots of and could spend decades making sure he succeeded no matter what, something he hadn't been doing lately. He motioned for G'nolga to follow him and did what he could to ignore her shuffling gate as she moved along behind him. A few minutes later they entered one of the parts of the castle that he used to house a portion of his army, those undead that he couldn't allow to roam around freely. These were his most dangerous undead, ones that were hard to come by even for him and all his skills, they were the pride of his collection.

He had to see if G'nolga could even do the job he planned for her to do and that would mean sacrificing one of his collection, but if she was able to take the thing down she would be good enough to do the job he wanted her to do. They entered a wire cage elevator that he had installed and motioned for one of his undead servants standing off to the side to lower them down into the darkness below. The skeleton jerked itself into position and grasped a handle connected to a wheel, there was a chain connected to this that ran to a series of pulleys up in the ceiling of the room. It turned the handle to move the wheel and the chains rattled as they slowly lowered into the darkness below. This was a section of his mountain top castle that very few of his ever saw, even those like Hanza who served him for a weekly bag of gold, if they even came across it by accident he would have taken steps to make sure they never told anybody about it. He had been working towards this day for to long to screw up now anyway, there would be no more mistakes like he'd made in the past. As the elevator descended into the pitch black depths and into the hollowed out mountain beneath his castle he glanced over at G'nolga and wondered if she was even feeling any kind of apprehension about what he was going to do. He kind of doubted it, that damned wizard seemed to have destroyed her mind completely.

She was still technically alive even with all that brainwashing the fool had done to her so she might actually feel something as they went lower and lower, this was a part of the castle that only the undead could visit and survive for any length of time or were like him and had the power to control any kind of undead he'd ever come across. G'nolga, the one she had been before her disgrace and downfall because of Tyrant, would have been right at home down here with nothing to fear. She was but one small step away from being an Armsmaster of Jade, only Julia Brigand-Diggers was better than her and those fights were always so close that it usually came down to who had more skill than the other or which one of them made the first mistake for there were times when G'nolga had won one of those battles. These two would beat on each other for hours before they began to tire and even then they both had the endurance to last as long as they needed to. Now though, with G'nolga in this state, he had his doubts about her usefulness to his plans and if she failed this test she would not return when he took the lift back up to the top. There was another he could call upon if he needed to, though getting him would be a thousand times harder to get on such short notice as this, G'nolga was perfect for his plans so hopefully he could tweak her conditioning in some way.

The elevator rattled as it descended into depths below and slowly moved into a pool of light illuminated by a couple of ever burning torches set up below. It eventually settled down upon a stone dais with a set of stairs that led to the floor about ten feet below, he stepped out and motioned for her to follow him down to the floor. G'nolga silently stepped out of the wire cage elevator and looked around as she followed Rook down the steps to a large metal door with a couple of more torches on either side of it and motioned for her to come forward and stand beside him. "This is the entrance to my catacombs G'nolga, since I'm the master of undead and powerful Necromancer this place is a little different than what a normal catacombs would be like. It is a small maze full of the more dangerous elements of my army, you have to go in there and retrieve something from a coffin several levels down from this one and bring it back to me within an hour. Do you understand?"

"Anything else?"

Rook was a bit surprised by the question. "Just survive, if you do then I will put you at the head of this army of undead and have you lead them against Seer's Hamlet to take the Great Tree."

Nodding, G'nolga opened the door, stepped through and shut it behind her without another word.

Rook was a bit surprised at what he head next, but it did put him in a rather better mood than he had been in. Maybe his plans weren't as screwed up as he thought, he stood back to listen to G'nolga make he way through the room beyond the door, it sounded like she was using the very traps that were in place to stop intruders to kill the undead that were attacking her. He chuckled as a loud roar sounded from beyond the door as the girl took down one of his more interesting finds. A though occurred to him as he stood there and moved over to another door and opened it to reveal a hallway that went on for about a hundred feet and ended at another door. Several symbols glowed as he walked up and with a gesture they opened on their own and torch light flooded out from within the room beyond.

A wave of magical fear flowed over him as he stepped through the door, but he ignored it. The room was a huge cave filled with billions of webs and spiders and they, surprisingly, had nothing to do with why he was here. Rising his hand he stalked through the thick webs and skeletal bodies of the those animals that had managed to find themselves within the room. Two glowing green eyes opened and gazed out at him from a shadow filled corner. Rook stopped at the edge of a small drop in the floor and looked into the eyes. "I have a job for you."

*Oh Really?*

"His name is Goldwave."

*An Ancient One?*

"Yes, he has to be removed for the plan to be successful."

*Then it will be done; when?*

"This afternoon, at sun down."

*Sounds like fun and it's been a while since I've killed myself an Ancient.*

Rook stood still and watched as a massive shadow moved forward, rising it's neck over a hundred feet in the air and it's body started to glow. The thing rose into the air and spread it's massive wings as it's head bobbed down to take a closer look at him, though the shadows were still thick enough to hide it true form quite a bit. A wave of magic flowed from the beast as a glow enveloped it for a brief instant and it vanished from the cave. Rook nodded and turned on his heel and stalked out of the cave and back to main room to be pleasantly surprised to find G'nolga standing there waiting for him to emerge. She held up a small box as he approached.

"This is the only thing that was in the coffin on the seventh level."

"Excellent work G'nolga, it's time for you to meet your troops."

"G'nolga nodded.

**********

At the edge of the Seer's Hamlet's main town square where dozens of booths set up for people to sell their home made items or services, the booths were given out as first come first serve basis so you had to show up early to find the booth you wanted the most. So even this early in the morning the place was starting to crawl with people of every type and description from all over the city, elves, dwarves, wizards, werecreatures, giants, and just about anything else that could be imagined as they set up their merchandise. Seer's Hamlet was world famous for it's the crafting abilities of it's local residents and always did good business no matter how bad the weather was. They offered the newest clothing, magical items, even musical instruments for those liked to play a little music when they could. Thropan, the tall, black furred werepanther strolled through the crowd checking everything out with an experienced eye. He was wearing his normal black pants, leather sleeveless shirt, and the items belt that was issued to all the Edge Guard members with his nunchaku hanging off a hook on his right side. On top of his normal duties as one of the Edge Guard it was also part of his job to find items and people that just didn't seem to belong.

Most of the criminal element kept to themselves while within the city limits because punishments could be severe at times, but every now and then, especially with all the bandits running around lately, they took a more active role. Lately they had been trying to use technology to mass produce things and Thropan as a kind of magical engineer had found that it fell to him to find these people and put them out of business. He had, with the help of the Mage Council, designed and crated all of the weapons that the Edge Guard currently used while in combat. While Gaja had used his powers to give them access to the various types of Elemental attacks with a bit of technical direction from him, it had vastly improved the efficiency of their team against all types of threats. His own weapons, a pair of bladed Nunchaku that he called an Earth Flail, were able to use the very earth to augment his attacks when needed. Miniature earthquakes, splitting the ground, and a few other surprises that he was experimenting with.

He stepped up to a booth where a group of men in armor were unloading swords, staves, bows, and crossbows from the back of a tarp covered wagon. From the way they worked it was obvious that they had been here more than once and quick look at the items they were putting out proved to him that they weren't mass produced devices. Everything had that hand made look that didn't show up in mass produced devices. They had some skill, but he had access to better stuff that could put these things to shame in every way. One of the men, a fat one with a long gray beard that looked like he hadn't taken a bath at any point in this life time waddled over pretending to wipe his hands off with a dirty rag. Thropan shuddered a little before turning to the guy and smiling at him, nearly falling over at the smell that wafted off the man.

"Morning young feller, want to see anything in particular?" Fat and smelly said and grinned, proving that he had a couple of still in tact teeth still. "We've got some quality stuff this early in the mornin."

"No thanks, just looking around and seeing what's available today."

"Well let me know if you want anything from the stock, it's some of our best work yet."

"No problem, you look like you should have a good day."

"I certainly hope so." He said, dirtied his hands some more, and started helping out with the boxes of weapons again.

Shacking his head, Thropan moved on to the booth which looked like it was setting up a to sell some fruit. There was a girl loading up the shelves and she froze when she saw him step up to look the fruit over. He smiled and waved at her, with a loud sigh and blushing furiously she keeled over in a dead faint with a large grin on her face. Thropan just smirked, it looked like his charm was still working as well as it ever had. An older woman looked up as the girl fell over and clicked her tongue as she spotted Thropan, she gave him a smirk as she helped her daughter to her feet and sent her into the back room for some more fruit and few minutes to compose herself. Then she cleaned up the mess before walking over to Thropan and punching him in the arm. "You shouldn't be doing things like that to my daughter."

Thropan grinned. "You make it sound like I did it on purpose."

"I know you did, you men are all the same."

"All I did was smile at her."

"See, and look what you did."

"Ah, well at least I know all my charms work the way they should."

"And what do you want to buy this morning so I can get rid of you?"

"How about a couple of oranges?"

"Just two now?" The lady said as she bent over the display and flashed her cleavage at him. Even though she was an older woman she still had a tight body and it showed in the way she moved and held herself.

Grinning, Thropan reached out and 'accidentally' rubbed the side of her chest with the back of his hand as he reached for the oranges. "They seem perfectly fresh to me."

"Oh a bit old, but still in perfect shape."

"I quite agree with that."

"Anything else?" She asked with a wink.

"Not today Mrs. Leela, but there is always tomorrow." Thropan said as he put the oranges in a magical pouch on his belt.

"See you tomorrow Cutie." She said with a sigh.

Chuckling, Thropan moved on, he hand know Leela for the last few years and every day she threw herself at him and he refused. He knew the type, they liked to flirt outrageously, but never wanted to go all the way, but he didn't mind all that much. She had never brought her daughter to the booth before, but they had met a few times before. He had a feeling that the daughter was going to look him up pretty soon, lots of girls did, so he would have to find out what she liked so he could impress her. With that in mind he wandered around to the rest of the booths in the square, but was unable to find what he was looking for. There was one particular booth that he was looking for, but they didn't get to come to square everyday like some did so he would have find them some other day. So he was going to have to find a different way to track them down, but that was half the fun of his job, these criminals were good at hiding their activities even when they were working out in the open. After making several passes through the market and several of the side streets and saying Hi to several of the girls. He headed through the large entrance to the park at the far end of the Square that the council maintained for the people and headed for his favorite tree to sit down. On the way there he pulled his Lute out of his belt pouch and started to fiddle with it, this caught the eye of every girl within a hundred yards and they converged on him like bees to honey.

He had a reputation to maintain after all.

Playing the lute gave him time to relax and think things through and give him an excuse to watch certain people if he needed to, it also got him a date any time he wanted one. All he had to do was pick the lucky girl and she was like butter in his hands and they never complained. He had watched Tirga for years and learned from his mistakes, the biggest one seemed to be leave them happy, not in tears, and it worked better than he would have imagined. Tirga had tried to do it once and ended up in traction for a week under Nali's care. Now he just had to tune his lute and play for a few minutes and he was always surrounded by good looking girls who would do almost anything for him.

It also gave him time to people watch as he played, they tended to let their guards down around certain kinds of music and this always gave him time to practice. Smiling at the girls, he glanced around to see just who was listening in. There was the normal group of girls who sighed happily whenever he came into the park, but there was also a tall man wearing a cloak standing behind all the girls. He sat down behind a couple of half delirious girls as they swayed to the music in front of him and gave quick hand signal, one that only a member of the Edge Guard would recognize. He nodded for him to wait as he finished up the song and stood up. All the girls sighed, as they realized that the show was over.

"Sorry girls, but I only had the time for a short song today. I'll try and come back tomorrow and give you a couple of more. Deal?" Thropan said with a wink.

They all cheered, jumped up, ran forward and hugged him while a few others tried to kiss him. He tolerated it for a few minutes before he waved them off, bid them good day, and walked over to the cloaked figure with a smirk. Thropan was surprised to find that the guy was a werelion like Onoli, they rarely came out of the Retreat anymore except on Council business. He reached into his cloak as they started walking and held up a scroll. "Hello Thropan, I see you still have the magic touch with the ladies."

"Heh, yep, Tirga still can't come close to approaching my record of collecting girls for any reason . All he wants to do is have sex with them and move on to a different one, but I prefer to play with them for a bit."

"He still think you're taking them all to bed?"

"Yep, he even follows me around ever now and then just to try and copy my style, but he couldn't play an instrument to save his life. So Vallen, what brings you out of the Retreat?"

Vallen held up the scroll. "This, the wizards of the Retreat have found a female werecheetah that isn't Britanny Diggers. According to the a few precog and scrying spells she is somewhere in this city."

"WHAT?!" Thropan asked in shock. "That's impossible, the whole clan was wiped out, there can't be another one running around without one of knowing about it."

"I know, there are several people trying to find out if these findings are a trick of some kind, but here's the weird thing, she won't appear for a few hours yet. One of the seer's saw her in a dream and said that she would need help before the day was out. There is something strange about her and they thought this might be why they hadn't found her before now."

"Did they say what it was?"

"No, only that she must have some way to hide herself from the spells that have been used to search for werecheetah's in the past."

"True, but that isn't to hard to do, I can think of several weres that have used magic to hide themselves over the years. Why bring this to me though?"

"You are the first Edge Guard member I found after crossing over from the Retreat."

"Onoli is still in town, why don't we go and give it to him?" Thropan suggested, this was something that their leader needed to know about anyway.

"You will have to do that I'm afraid, I can't stay here to long, I have to get back to my post."

Thropan nodded, Vallen was one of the guards that kept thieves and other people from just waltzing into the Retreat and taking what they wanted. Certain breeds of were cat were worth quite a bit of money on the black market so they had to be careful who they allowed in and out of that place. Taking the scroll, he put it in one of his belt pouches without reading it. That would be up to Onoli once he found him, but he could start looking for the girl almost immediately. "Do you know what this girl looks like?"

"Tall, red hair and spotted fur, a cloak, and quite a bit of power."

"That doesn't tell me much."

"Sorry, that is all that I was told and you know how unpredictable some visions can be so be on your toes. This one could be tricky."

"Alright, I'll have to work with it a little to see what I can find. Thanks Vallen."

"No problem, be careful as well you never know who or what might show up if she's the real deal." Vallen said ominously as he walked off, making a bee line for one of the local stalls that were selling fresh muffins.

A few minutes later he was turning down a different street and heading for the last place that Onoli had told him about. Thropan thought about heading back to the compound to see if Onoli might be there. Then he'd remembered that as their leader he had a full day planned, doing his normal stuff and taking care of Gar's duties as well once that was done. That meant he would have to take the time to find their leader on his own and he wasn't to sure which one Onoli had wanted to start with first. Pulling his cloak out of his belt pocket, he shrugged it on and tied it around him with the hood down so that most of his face was hidden. Next he pulled out a pair of leather gloves and pulled them on, clenched his fists, and smirked at they started to glow just a tiny bit. He had developed these a few years ago and never had the opportunity to recreate them. They were a set of magical items that he used whenever he could and this situation definitely qualified. Now all he had to do was find this werecheetah and see if she was the real deal or something else entirely. It wouldn't be the first time he had encountered anything like that before.

**********

[Earth]

"WHAT THE &%$# KIND OF JERK FACED BASTARD HAS TO TAKE FOUR PLANES, A BOAT, THREE TRAINS, AND AN EXTENDED HIKING TRIP AROUND THE WORLD TO FIND HIS OWN HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Ionis, doing an incredible life like impression of Soun Tendo's Demon Head attack, screamed in Ryoga's face as they stood atop a small cliff over looking the Scottish Highlands with nothing to see but grass and trees for as far as they could see in any direction. He couldn't even remember walking over half of it and had no clue how they had gotten here from Hong Kong just a few hours ago. On top of all that his feet were starting to hurt and he was completely exhausted, if he had to walk anymore today he was going to kill this kid.

"I know it's around here somewhere." Ryoga said with a nervous laugh.

"We've passed the same tree thirteen times in the last five minutes and you were walking in a straight line the whole time! Quit stalling and tell me where your house is or I will KILL YOU!!" Ionis screamed, his patients at the last tiny bit and if one more thing happened he was going to make this little bastard pay.

Ryoga just laughed a little. "It's by Mt. Fuji, were close, I know we are. I always have to pass this one bar six or seven times before I get home."

"WHAT?! BAR!!!"

"Um...the one we passed about two hours ago."

Nearly foaming at the mouth, Ionis shuddered a little as he forced his anger down. He was tired, hadn't had a bath in days, and really, really need a bottle of scotch to calm his nerves. "This is the last time I will follow you Ryoga, if you don't make it to your house by the time noon rolls around, I will...MAKE YOU PAY!!!"

Ryoga just laughed a little and nodded, stepped to the right and fell off the side of the cliff before Ionis could even blink. He stepped over and saw that there was no body at the bottom of the cliff, surprisingly common with this weird kid, sighed loudly and waved his hand. Seconds later a book appeared in his hand and he opened it up to a page he'd nearly memorized by now and with a few short words he vanished in a bunch of sparkly lights and appeared in front of the very bar Ryoga had just mentioned a few minutes earlier and put the book away. He had been planning to stop here the next time they passed by anyway, that kid was going to be the death of him and he couldn't even return to Lord Talon until they found that stupid dog. Now Ryoga had just pulled one of his vanishing acts, again, normally he would have used that tracking spell to find him, but at the moment he didn't even want to think about the little bastard.

He stepped inside and slumped his way over to the bar and sat down with a heavy sigh. The bartender walked over and raised and eyebrow and barely batted an eye at having such a strange looking man appear in his bar. "Give me a bottle of scotch, the best stuff you got and not watered down."

"It'll be expensive."

"I don't care." Ionis growled.

"Right, right, that will be 150 dollars up front."

Wincing a little, Ionis reached into his pocket and conjured up the money and handed it over. A few minutes later he had drank over half the bottle and felt a lot better about life in general, of course he was plastered out of his skull, but that didn't bother him in the least as he nursed his bottle. The next time he saw this Ryoga he was going to make the boy wish he had never been born. No matter how loud he yelled or what he threatened to do the kid just took it all in stride as if he knew that there was absolutely nothing in this world that could harm him. Ionis had disliked the kid from the moment he saw him and the feeling hadn't improved a bit during the last few days as he was treated to a world tour because of the kid's direction sense. How anybody could wander around in a circle and not even notice what was happening like this kid did was totally beyond him.

He had to think of a way to make the kid suffer before he killed him, using his magic would be a good place start, but Lord Talon didn't like him using it unless he was in a dire situation or on a mission. It wasn't like he ever listened to the kid about that though, he had to practice after all, but it was the principle of the thing. Just from looking at the kid's aura he knew that there was already a bit of magic mixed in with his life force and plenty to play with if he wanted to, all he had to do was give it a little push in the right direction and he could have his revenge. The kid would never be able to find anything at all after that. Lord 'Peewee' Talon wouldn't hold it against him for 'accidentally' killing the kid. This Ryoga was to stupid to live, there was a lot of strength there, but over all he was all muscle and no brains. Sighing, Ionis drank some of his scotch and wasted a few hours getting drunk. The bottle was nearly empty as the cell phone he carried around with him started to ring. Groaning at the injustice of it all, he reached into his pack yanked the offending little device out and flipped it open.

"WHAT?!" He screamed.

It rang again.

Then he remembered to push the 'on' button. "WHAT?!"

"Ionis, you better not have just yelled at me."

"L-lord Talon, what can I do for you?" Ionis stuttered out and started to sweat a little.

"Well?" Peewee asked in a flat voice.

"O-of course n-not Lord Talon, I'd never think to such a thing." Ionis said nervously.

The line was silent for several seconds before Peewee chose to speak again. "Where are you? It's been almost a week, I have plans to set in motion if we are ever going to get our revenge on those Digger Brats and you are wasting my time?"

"Lord Talon...this kid is..."

"Standing right next to me!" Peewee yelled.

"What?"

"He returned a few minutes ago, with his dog, but where the hell are you?" Peewee growled. "I told you to go with him to make sure he could make it back here."

"But...but..." Ionis heard a dog barking in the background.

"You have ten minutes to get back here or I won't use my skills to give you any more genetic improvements."

"But..."

Click.

He carefully put his cell phone back in his pack, stood up and chugged the last bit of scotch in the bottle and staggered around for a second as his eyes watered and he had to gasp for air. At one hundred and fifty dollars a bottle he wasn't about to just leave it sitting on the bar for anyone to drink after all. For years he had been wondering when his life had entered the first level of hell and now he was beginning to understand. Getting drunk off that much scotch gave one a particular point of view, this kid was going to have to go, he was going to have a bad influence on Talon. Once he managed to stay standing for a second he held up his hands, still barely a few feet from his table, and said a few magic words of a spell he used quite a bit. Still drunk, he barely noticed as he got a finger out of place while saying the syllable of magic. He vanished from the bar in a flare of bright white light, conveniently leaving behind all his clothing, his pack, and his wallet.

Splash!

Ionis flailed about for a second, he wasn't sure what was going on but after a couple of seconds he realized that he had some how fallen in hot water and that it was only a couple feet deep. He stopped moving, shook his head to clear it a little and got his feet underneath him so he could stand up. Something in the back of his mind, still under the effects of all that scotch, told him that something wasn't right almost as soon as he was fully erect. The instant he looked around he realized what the problem was, he had landed in the hot tub instead of his room. He was also completely naked and standing less than foot from two equally underdressed girls named Link and Zelda.

These two girls didn't get along to well, they constantly fought each other to point that Peewee got tired of placing them in one of his cell regenerators. Peewee had even gone to point that if damaged each other in their fights they had to pay for the others damages and expenses with their own money, they had very little of that to spare lately, it also didn't help tha they had been old high school enemies. They had, from the looks of the room started yet another fight and ripped each others clothes off in the process and broken pretty much everything in the room until they landed in the hot tub. Zelda had Link's long brown hair in her fist and was about to belt the other girl a good one, but they had froze in shock as he arrived and stood up. Now his manhood was less than six inches from Link's face and he paled as both girls eyes moved up toward his face and turned flinty. For the first time in weeks Link and Zelda managed to agree on something as they kicked his ass, though in the end he was glad he had saved up enough money to have Peewee increase the size of his manhood, it was the only part of him that was left unbruised by the time they were done.

**********

Look at the drink, drink the drink.

There wasn't much else a person could do in a bar at the edge of town, that was why Tirga was there, and to see the half naked girl dancing on stage of course. He sighed as he sat down his fourth mug of beer with a thump and admired the girl's body as it curved around a pole the owner had thought would be a good idea. Normally he would have been right there at the edge of the stage to let her know how much he liked what she was doing, but today he was in mourning. He had lost Sheila, the one girl he had lusted after for the last few years. Most of the time he could charm any girl into bed that he wanted, even ex-girlfriends if he wanted to, but Sheila had always resisted him even as they flirted with each other, but it was time to throw in the towel now that she had found that strange human. He wasn't as clueless as most people took him to be, just a little on the obsessive side when it came to girls, he liked them just a little to much at times.

He looked at the drink and drank the drink.

He was kind of like that card game that Brianna had told him about once, Pookemon or something, he had to catch them all. It had taken a kick to the nuts to finally get the idea that Sheila had moved on to someone else through his thick skull and he didn't like the idea at all. Normally he just shrugged such things off and tried again a day or two later and kept it up until he succeeded, but he truly cared for the girl and always thought that they might one day end up together in a more permanent relationship. Instead he found his eye was always wandering to the next set of big tits or well rounded ass and off he would go for another night on the town. He liked the way he lived his life too, all the girls were like a bonus that just made it even better. Then Ranma had come out of nowhere and taken Sheila away from him with just a few words and a smile, even Gar didn't like the guy, and that was saying quite a lot. Gar was so laid back and peaceful at times that he was willing to let Sheila do anything she wanted so long as it wasn't dangerous. Now though, Sheila had run off with the guy on her 'hunt', the one guy that Gar didn't really like, they knew what she was hunting alright and it sure wasn't the monsters out in that swamp forest.

That place was dangerous, but not all that dangerous if one paid attention, he had taken several of his girlfriends out there on camping trips for a weekend of fun. All of it inside a tent or out in the grass with a whole lot of humping going on. They rarely complained about it at all, it was only after he went after someone else that they really started to complain, but they were all just so good looking. He glanced up at the girl on stage and she winked at him to let him know that she had noticed his interest. Sheila was after the same kind of thing in his mind and the though almost made him laugh, a place to get that guy where she could jump him without developing a certain kind of reputation. Not like his away, but it proved advantages at times so he never bothered to change it. He sighed, almost wishing she did have a reputation like that, but instead all he could do was watch her when she wasn't paying attention and imagine things. Grabbing his beer he nearly finished it off in one long pull and slammed the cup down with anther sigh. He just couldn't understand why he was feeling this way. Heck as far he was concerned Sheila had just as much right to play around as he did, but instead it was bothering him.

Look at the drink, drink the drink, drain it dry.

It was like he had just lost his best friend or something. He waved at the waitress to bring him another beer as she walked by, when it arrived she gave him a concerned look as she sat it down. "Are you alright Tirga, I don't think I've ever seen you like this before."

"I'm fine Elly, just a little depressed."

She thumped him up side the head with her empty tray a couple of times. "My name is Amberlie, you would think you would remember who you went to bed with just a couple weeks ago!"

Tirga laughed nervously, he hadn't even recognized her even though she had brought him several beers already. "Sorry, I'm just not paying attention today."

"Humph! Well don't think you will be getting anything like that from me again, your a louse and I hope you've finally learned a lesson. You're depressed enough, maybe I'm right and you will finally grow up learn how to be a nice person."

He smirked and swiped his hand at her in one of his trademark techniques even as she tried to avoid it. "Heh, still too slow." He said as he held up a pair of panties and rubbed them between his fingers.

She gaped at him and blushed.

"I always remember a smell girl, I am a tracker, and now that I smell these delightful panties I recall the wild night we had on the side of that hill, in the tall grass, as it rained." Tirga said with a huge grin as she steadily got redder and redder. "If I recall right we were pretty drunk that night and didn't really take the time to learn each other's names." Snatching her panties out of his hands, Amberlie ran back to the bar to try and save some of her dignity as Tirga leered at her and fondly recalled thee hours they had played around in the tall grass at the height of a pretty big down pour. Those were the kinds of night that he liked the most, they were always full of something new and different. He wondered if he might be able to do that with her again, though this time inside a real bedroom with lots of lighting just so he could see what her body really looked like.

Knocking back yet another beer, Tirga instantly forgot about the girl an went back to brooding. Though that didn't stop him from leering as the girl on stage removed her top and tossed it back stage with high kick from the pole that gave him a quick look up her short skirt. He was about to give her a couple gold pieces to take the rest off when the door to the back stage area of the place slammed open and half a dozen half naked girls ran out screaming. Sitting up, he was about to whistle at them when he senses something that sends a shiver down his spine. He stands up just as the last of the girls race out into the street, and holds out his hand.

"FIRE CLAW!"

In a burst of fire, a morning star mace appears in his hand. The handle is made out of a dark wood and carefully wrapped in leather, the chain and morning star ball are made out of dwarven steel and if one looked close enough they would have seen Thropan and Gaja's initials etched into the bottom part of the wooden handle. Tirga frowned and glared at the door to the back stage area just as Undead Knights started to walk out with drawn swords and crossbows. This was enough to send the rest of the patrons running for their lives, though Tirga took a second to leer at the dancer as she hopped off the stage with all parts jiggling as she ran for it. He turned to the owner of the bar owner.

"Jacob, make sure all the people are out of here. I'll take care of these walking tin cans!"

Jacob nodded as he ran for the stage and headed through the second entrence to the back rooms with a small multi shot cross bow in his hands. Dismissing him from his mind, Tirga noticed that the Undead Knights weren't heading for the door as he had expected. Instead they were slowly coming for him as they moved across the wide room, grinning, he spun Fire Claw a few times and summoned up its magic. A crossbow was brought up and Tirga turned serious when he saw the glint of silver and realized that they had come prepared. He snapped the ball like casting a fishing line and the spiked ball flew out like a rocket propelled baseball on the end of a string and slammed into the knight holding the crossbow. Shattering the crossbow into splinters and slamming into the chest of the Knight and sending it flying backwards even as two others raised their crossbows and fired.

Crouching low to avoid the bolts, he ran forward in a move that he had witnessed a few Armsmasters use, Fire Claw flew out, it's steel chain glittering in the low light of the room as he wrapped it around another knights legs, he stopped, yanked it off it's feet. It clattered to the floor with a loud metal crash, but not enough to do any damage to the thing as it used it's undead strength to kick out with its bound legs and send him flying across the room and through a wall. Cursing himself, Tirga landed in a roll even as the shattered wood of the walls rained down around him. He had just lost the only weapon that might have been able to take these things down. Playing with them really hadn't been a good idea, now he was really in trouble.

From where he was standing he saw Jacob and several guys run out a back entrence to the bar. He glanced around for a second just before he went back in and really wished he hadn't just spotted a collumn of smoke rising from about where the coupound should have been. Now he had to get his weapon back, he could call the others with it and get this mess figured out once and for all. Running forward he jumped back through the wall and just barely dodged as several silver tipped bolts were fired at him, landed, rolled, and came to a stop just behind a table. The Undead Knights seemed to be locked onto him, they had been facing the door, but when he came back in they turned toward him and raised their weapons. His weapon was on the floor all the way across the room where it had been thrown.

He hated undead, they were so hard to deal with unless you were prepared and who the heck carried holy water around with them to a bar with nude dancing girls? Growling, and hoping Jacob wouldn't be to mad, Tirga reached out and snapped the legs off the table he was hiding behind. Training with other types of weapons was required to be an Edge Guard member for times exactly like this. Transferring them to his belt for a second, he roared like a tiger as he heaved the table up by it's remaining legs and used it as a battering ram, running forward with it and plowing his way through Undead Knights. He also thanked whoever had made these things that they were so stupid when there wasn't anyone around to direct them. Half a second later he was through them and standing over his Morning Star as he twisted around and used all his werecat strength to throw the table like a low flying Frisbees to take out Knight. Shattering it to pieces as he caught it in the back.

Using his foot in a well practiced maneuver, he tossed the weapon into the air, caught it in his and and screamed as a wave of fire exploded around him. Leaping forward, he sent out the emergency call to all the Edge Guard members in the area. The Morning Star arched out and smashed into a nearby knight, crushing it under it's magical weight even as he brought his foot up to kick one in the head. Normally this would have been ineffective, but he was a weretiger and possessed enough magically enhanced strength to rip a tree out of the ground with his bare hands. The Knight didn't' have a chance as it's helmet was nearly sheered off it's metal body. This distracted it enough for Tirga to bring his weapon around and crush another one, melting it under the flare of heat that exploded off the attack. Since it was a magical attack, he was immune to his own weapons destructive powers while he was holding the weapon.

Within seconds there was nothing but melted slag left of the Undead Knights, he stood among the destruction in a ready position for several seconds gasping for air. His eyes were nearly glowing with suppressed rage as he tried to find more targets to hit, but they had stopped moving. Eventually the rational part of his mind took over again and he relaxed a little. Most of the bar had taken damage, but it was still standing and all of the Knights had been destroyed. Cursing, he headed outside and glared around at the small crowd that had gathered to watch him in action. Tirga was known to be a ladies man and had quite the reputation for it, but he was also a member of the Edge Guard and they were some of the cities defenders so his unique approach to things was tolerated by most because he could do things just like this. Ignoring them he used his strength to jump over the crowd and headed for the compound to see if there was something bad going on over there. Raphiel might be in trouble and he wouldn't abandon a team mate, especially one this inexperienced.

Then as he rounding a corner he spotted something that made even him pause in shock and took a few seconds for the sight to trickle through his brain. It was a girl, a well rounded really pissed off girl, a well rounded, pissed off, werecheetah girl to be exact and she had just ran into him going full speed. He didn't have time to react as they went tumbling for several yards, but he did what he could to cushion the girls fall to make sure she wasn't hurt. They came to a rest in a heap near one of the buildings and she groaned a little and started to move around. Tirga smirked as she rested her hands against his muscled chest and took a second to sit up and look at him. "Your one of the Edge Guard aren't you?"

He gave her his best smile and wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her athletic body a little closer, it was lust at first sight. "Oh yeah, I know what you want."

That caused Ashaton to blink in surprise and realize the strange position she had just found herself in. "What do you think you're doing?"

"You're kind of cute and incredibly rare as well." Tirga said with a leer at her breasts.

"Let go of me, we have to go and..."

"Find some place more private? Oh yeah, I'm all for that." Tirga said in a suggestive way.

Her eye started to twitch a little as he refused to let her go and she started to reach behind her that Tirga realized that she was going to pull this rather large broadsword off her back and use it on him. He let go and scooted away as fast as he could and started laughing nervously. "Now I'm not into any of that kind of sexual play type stuff, let's just find a room and have some fun."

"PERVERT!!" Ashaton screamed and raised her red bladed weapon above her head to slice him into two separate pieces.

"What did I do to deserve this?!" Tirga yelled and ran for it, barely dodging a blow that would have removed his whole reason for being a man in the first place. The enraged werecheetah followed, close on his heels screaming death threats all the way. He couldn't help leering at her as he fled though, she was really cute, this just succeeded in pissing her off even more. This just wasn't his day.

They ran through the main square and attracted quite a crowd of people as Tirga ran in circles, around booths, and into the park where a certain werepanther was just taking his second morning break. Ashaton didn't notice any of this, she just wanted to crush the pervert into tiny little pieces. No one did that to her and got away with it. "COME BACK HERE AND DIE PERVERT!!"

"Forget that, I'd rather do something more fun than that cute stuff!" Tirga yelled, having a grand old time.

Thropan just blinked in surprise and jogged off after than, if that wasn't the werecheetah he'd been told to keep an eye out for he would eat his lute. The hair, the tail, the enraged scream of female indignation that only Tirga could get a girl to utter, oh yeah it was her alright. Now all he had to do was catch up and find a way to talk to her without being attacked, maybe if he played her a song she'd calm down a little. Liking the idea he smiled and just shook his head at the destruction that was left in the path of the two. The girl was swing that sword all over the place, where the heck did she find a red blade like that though, and smashing anything that got in her way. He had to dodge around several crushed or broken wooden carts, a booth where she had crashed through one wall and out the other instead of using the door like Tirga did, and even a couple of toppled trees.

Yep, a song would be just thing to calm her down, then groaned as Tirga led her right into the men's public baths and a few seconds after they entered the eruption of silence was enough to make even him worry and he headed into the bath house and down to where the fight had ended up. He expected to find a bleeding or injured Tirga down on the floor or a fight in progress, what he got instead was whole lot stranger. Then came a blood curdling scream of horror that sent a chill down Thropan's back as he looked across the room to see Tirga about to be killed by a 'male' werecheetah as it raised the girl's sword above his head. There was no sign of the girl though.

**********

They hand been minding their own business when Ranma had accidentally stepped on thing's head, which was, interestingly enough, attached to a rather long neck that stuck out of the swampy water off to the side of the path they were walking along and resting on the soft sand at the edge of the water among the bushes. Shock didn't begin to describe what Ranma felt as the thing's head lifted up into the air and towered above him with a hungry look in it's eye for disturbing it's nap. It was huge, over twelve foot tall, blue and black, covered in thick slimy scales and had more teeth than a shark on the hunt. Running on all four legs, the thing roared at them and tried to bite Ranma in half with a snap of it jaws. A quick jump and roll was all that saved Ranma from losing his head, he landed and barely avoided giving away his curse, and broke into a run even as the thing started to run after him.

"RAUGHAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Roared the Bog Thresher, it echoed all across the area.

B looked on from his place in Sheila's back pack with an amused expression on his face as he yelled. "RUN FOREST RUN!"

"Oh be quiet you, we need to find a way to get in front of that thing so we can take it down." Sheila said as she struggled to catch up with the pair, though she did wonder why B wanted Ranma to run into the forest.

In a burst of speed she took off after the Bog Thresher, Ice Fang appeared in her hand as she ran. Even though her werecat gene was screwed up, she had always been thankful that her speed was in this particular form and not her human one. This kicked in as she ran and was quickly zooming through the water logged forest paths after Ranma. She was quite impressed at just how fast the guy could go when he really needed to, though with a twelve foot high armored Bog Thresher on your tail it was only understandable. Taking advantage of her small size, Sheila picked up the pace as much as she could and was soon running even with the Thresher, though about fifteen feet off to the side. She began to angle in toward them so that she could intercept them and take the thing down. Ranma obviously didn't know about them and how vulnerable they were to dwarven steel.

Up in front Ranma used his Ki control to run far faster than he ever had before, moving so fast that he was able to keep well ahead of the monster. Though close enough that a simple glance back was enough to see it's blood stained teeth and the drool dripping off it's chin. He had never seen anything like it before and wondered what they were weak against, ever animal had a weakness, it was just a matter of finding it. Taking out mountain bears and such were usually pretty easy, all it took was a stone crusher fist to the forehead and they went right down with everything in their skulls caved in. Killing them on the spot. He wasn't sure about this thing, it seemed to be armored better than an alligator, ten times as big and fast. It had too many teeth to count, long claws on it's feet that ripped holes in the wet grass as it ran and threw divots of dirt into the air behind it . The thing had been made for this kind of environment as far as he could tell, it was fast and dangerous, exactly what this hunt was all about. He looked ahead and decided that he had run enough, this thing needed to be taken down before it hurt anyone like Sheila. He thought about it for a second and came up with a plan.

Off to the side he saw Sheila coming toward them at high speed with a sword in hand, moving faster than he'd ever seen her move before. Then he recalled that she was a werecat, he kept forgetting that she was covered in fur and had cat like features, and that most of them could move at a high rate of speed when they wanted to. Being around Britanny had shown him that she could do some pretty amazing things when she wanted to, massive amounts of strength and speed on command. He figured Sheila was the same, with that he adjusted his plan a little and scanned ahead to see at what point they would cross paths. Narrowing his eyes he spotted the exact area about ten seconds before he reached it, picked a tree and headed right for it. He had used to do this to his old man all the time because it confused him while they were fighting, though eventually he had learned to anticipate it and devised some counter attacks that were really painful. The monster didn't know how dodge the attack so it would be perfect in this situation and would allow Sheila to get a good shot in while he was in the air.

Sheila almost panicked when she saw Ranma heading for a rather large tree off to the side of his path, if he ran into it at the speed he was going he would be hurt badly. She was about to shout at him to turn when he picked up speed and suddenly seemed to run right up the side of the tree with no apparent effort and launched himself into the air way above the Bog Thresher and performed a slow backwards flip that would allow him to land behind the thing with little effort. She saw that he was giving her a chance to take the things down and shot forward as she came into range and attacked just as the Thresher ran head first into the tree and buried it's claws into the thick bark with another roar. Her sword Ice Fang flashed out just as she reached the thing's head and sliced through its neck before it could shake of the blow it had just taken from the tree. By the time it fell down dead Ranma was walking up with a weird look on his face.

"Are you alright Ranma?" Sheila asked.

"Kick his ass for being and idiot." B grumbled from her back pack.

"Oh hush." Sheila said and thumped B to quiet him down.

"I'm fine, what the heck did you do? That thing seemed a lot more dangerous than that, yet you just run up and behead the thing with no problems?" Ranma muttered as he kicked the things foot.

Sheila grinned. "Bog Threshers are all look, they are dangerous when they get this size, but their scales spend so much time in the water that they are more like a thick rubber than anything else. They make up a good portion of most adventurers diets these days, they make perfect steaks."

"Man if I had known that I wouldn't have run, I thought it was armored like an alligator was and those things are dangerous if you get to close."

"Bog Threshers are very dangerous on their initial attack, fast and deadly, but after that they become vulnerable to swords and axes."

"Ah...so what do we do with it now?"

Reaching down, Sheila slammed her sword into a small horn on it's head and removed it. "We take this with us, when we return to town we will get a few gold pieces for it from the city council."

"What about the body?"

She shrugged. "We can skin it and make some clothing like boots, gloves, and armor while using the meat for food. Or we can just leave it here and it will feed the other swamp animals for a couple of days."

B sticks his head out of Sheila's pack again and looks over at Ranma. "Why don't you eat it Ranma?"

"Why?"

"Brianna has seen you eat more food than ten people could ever consume, you could certainly pack away this little thing, it's just a light snack after all."

"Snack?" Sheila mutters as she gazes down at the huge monster in front of them and figures it's enough to feed about twenty to thirty people easily. "You're kidding?"

"Nope! The human garbage disposal over here can snarf down that and more." B yells out.

Walking around the Bog Thresher, Ranma examines a few areas to see if he might like it or not. "Sounds like a good idea to me, why let it go to waste."

"You're going to eat the whole thing?!" She screams.

Ranma shakes his head and shrugs his pack off and pulls out some knives and other items he might need, surprisingly unmolested and in good shape even after all this. "Well maybe not the whole thing..."

"Jeeze you had me worried for minute there."

Ranma nods and starts setting up a small fire for the job. "I'm just going to eat the good parts."

Sheila facefaults as B starts laughing inside her pack.

A couple of hours later they crest the top of a small hill and look out over even more of the swamp and stop to rest. Sheila turns and looks around for a second before she nods and turns back to Ranma. "This is where we will really begin, this area is full of monsters and other nasties that we will have to take care of. See that sign down there?"

Looking down the small rise Ranma can see a wooden plank nailed to the side of a tree and nods.

"The mage council set that up, there's a spell on it and three others spaced around this small valley that makes it so that monsters can go in, but they don't want to leave."

"So it's like a magical fence?"

"Yep, it keeps most of them here, but every now and then one will find a way through and go on a rampage across unclaimed parts of the swamp and cause the farmers that live near this swamp problems."

"This should be easy enough." Ranma said with a smirk.

"I told you not to act that way Ranma, these monsters are dangerous, even with special weapons and such they can still kill us if we make a mistake." Sheila snapped. The boy was cute but for some reasons just didn't seem to grasp the concept of just how dangerous this was.

"Bah, that's easy enough to get around."

"Oh, and how would you get around this danger?"

"That's easy, just don't get caught."

Sheila facefaults with a thump. "...ow..."

"Sheila you should know by now that he a few fries short of a happy meal." B says from her pack. "He has no concept of his own mortality."

"You alright, I didn't see you trip there." Ranma says as he helps her up. B glares at him from the inside of Sheila's pack.

"Um...yeah." Sheila says as she tries to figure out how a guy can be this dense, he didn't really strike her as the good looking but stupid type. One minute he was a normal guy, the next she had to fight of the urge to deck him one and the feeling just confused the heck out of her. She didn't normally want to get violent with the guys she went out with, but Ranma just brought it out of her a little to easily.

"You better put him on a leash girl, I don't think he's house broken yet and you should see what he does when you throw cold water on him." B yells as Ranma steps away from Sheila.

Ranma glares and Sheila just blushes at the leash comment, though completely missing the what B is talking about and instead thinking about what Ranma would look like in a wet t-shirt and all those rippling muscles.

"Heheheheh, feel my wrath." B proclaims with an evil sounding laugh.

"B if you don't shut up I'm going to boot you so far into the swamp that even you won't be able to make your way back out again." Ranma growled.

"Ha! You and what army?"

"Now you two calm down and lets get to work, we will be here for a few days at least and we need to take out as many of these monstes as we can."

"Yeah, tell that to the Transvestite here." Be laughs and takes off down the path as Ranma lunges for him.

"What the heck is with that Peebo?" Sheila asks herself as she follows after them at a jog. Then boggles as B takes to water off to the side of the path and performs a little mecha configuration in mid air and lands in the form of a little boat and plays a loud nautical tune just to irritate Ranma.

"Since when can you do that?" Ranma yells and throws a couple of rocks at B.

"I always could, you were just to lazy to read the owners manual." B shot back and fired a couple laser blasts out of his eyes, but Ranma dodged them. Then his water gun raises out of his back and Ranma starts to sweat a little and glances over at a confused Sheila as she follows along. "Now let's see you dodge this Ranma!"

"Oh Shit!"

**********

Onoli made his way through town following a path he only used once a month, as always he stood so tall that he was unmistakable in a crowd and everyone knew who he was the instant they saw him. His head and shoulders were visible even at the center of a large crowd of people, to tone things down a little he had adopted a cloak to wear while he was out of the compound. It helped to keep him covered and somewhat anonymous among all the people that populated Seer's Hamlet at any one time. People stepped out of his way as he moved and he quietly thanked them with a grin and wave as he moved by, being a werelion had it's advantages at times. When he had been in the Retreat with the others of his clan they had all been about the same size as him, but now that he was among the humans all the time he tended to stick out a bit more than he was used to. He considered himself a peaceful man by most standards and as the acting head of the local Edge Guard he had certain responsibilities to uphold. He had taken the time to train in some of the more daring forms of Martial Arts available on Jade and used Meditation to keep his soul pure.

Less than a year ago his greatest friend and mentor Gaja had been killed, at the time Gaja had been the head of the Edge Guard with him as the field leader. Gaja was the magic user of the team, a very skilled practitioner that had been cut down by Tyrant and his gang of thugs. Gaja had died in his arms even as he passed the mantle of leadership over him. Rain, one of the legendary artifacts of the ancients and was so old that no one even knew its true history, just that it had a special power that few could use. It and it's brothers had been used to defeat the Shadows millennia before. He had used it's power to later avenge Gaja and learned how to wield the incredible amount of power the was available to him as the one that currently possessed the stone. Since then he had managed to gain even more control over it. He still wished that Gaja was still here to guide him, but that was impossible, he missed him and wanted to talk to somebody. The rest of the team tended to hang out together, but he had no one he could really call a friend at the moment, as leader he tended to be a bit of a loaner between missions. Spending a good portion of his time in training and making sure everybody on the team was constantly ready for anything that might arise. As the leader he had to set a certain example and he did that very well, but at times even he wanted to relax a little and with Tirga around that was simply impossible.

Shaking his head he turned and spotted the Great Tree that dominated and supported Seer's Hamlet. It was the central focus of the spell that had created the pocket dimension that held the whole city. Most of Seer's Hamlet was built at the base of this great tree, it was where the Mage Council held it's meetings high above in the branches of the massive tree that rose thousands of feet into the sky. No one knew the trees age, but they figured that it had to be millions of years old to have grown so large and even after all that time it was still a thriving entity. Magic of the highest order had been cast over ever inch of the thing to make it hard to find unless you were shown the way or a member of the council itself or were a high powered mage. He'd spent ten years under Gaja before he even found out about the existence of the Great Tree and even today it's location was nothing but a legend to those that lived in Seer's Hamlet. There was a stair case spiraling hundreds of feet up into the thick branches of the tree.

Here on the ground there was a small palace where about a hundred guards lived and trained constantly, protecting the only access way onto the stairs themselves. The people of Seer's Hamlet assumed that the small palace was were the Council actually made the rules adn major decisions that affected the city. Wizards and mages who could teleport could go directly to the main building built high above them, a twin to the small palace but on a far larger scale, but if you didn't know any you had to take the stairs. Taking out his badge of office, Onoli walked over to the first gate where a Paladin was standing at attention waiting for him to approach. This wasn't a Paladin like those that followed a religious order to ridiculous extremes, but part of a group of highly trained, magic using, battle mages that protected the council from any and all threats. They were all large, wore perfectly evil looking armor that gleamed in the sunlight, and were more dangerous than even some of the worst criminals. They never left their posts, so few in town truly knew just how good they were, but he had seen them at practice more than once over the last few months and knew the truth.

"Your cleared to the next check point sir." The Paladin said and saluted.

"Thank you." Onoli said and moved on towards the next gate. He had ten of these gates to get through and then a race up those stairs that he wasn't looking forward to this morning, not with the long day he had ahead of him now that Gar had vanished without getting his orders for the day. It usually took him over an hour using his werelion strength and speed to reach the top and that was a giant pain in the ass. He'd to do it once every two weeks now that he had taken over Gaja's position on the council as the Edge Guard liaison to the Council. Most of the mages that made up the council were a decent sort, if a bit eccentric at times. A few of them represented the darker types of magic and they had pushed through a rule a few centuries before stating that people that didn't' have any magic had to use the staircase to reach them and spent a pleasant few years laughing at those who didn't have power to teleport killing themselves on the staircase. It had later been amended to a year and after that they would hand out a ring that would automatically teleport them to the top of the stair case. They were usable by only the person they were given to and even then were only given out sparingly. The Council liked it's privacy and didn't want it disrupted by just anything that came along.

Gaja had never had to use one because of his high level of magical ability, but because of the rule it meant that he had a few more months before he earned one for himself and wouldn't have to put up with this climb anymore. Luckily there was small fountain every hundred feet or so, installed by the more compassionate mages that didn't' like the rule, where a climber would rest if they wanted to and get some water. After passing the final gate, he bowed to the guard then turned and removed his cloak. Underneath he was wearing a pure white leather dress uniform, he rolled up his cloak and held it in his hand as he did a few minutes of stretching. The second he finished he shot forward at full speed and raced up the stairs four at a time and bounding up them as only a werelion could. One thing he had to admit to himself as he raced passed the first fountain was that this climb was enough of a work out to even tax his stamina, but all he had to do was stop and rest at the top for a couple of minutes and he would be back to normal courtesy of the magical water.

Every time he did this he tried to beat his best time, which was fifty two minutes, but as he passed the final fountain some time later he was sure he was behind schedule. A couple of minutes later he passed over the final stair and slid to a halt as he landed on a walk way filled with benches for people to rest on and glanced at the sun. It had taken him fifty five minutes, which was about average really and decided that he would increase the pace a bit the next time he had to do this. flicking his wrist he unrolled his cloak and quickly donned it as he walked down the hall, his regenitive abilities already erasing the fatigue his run created. Passing out of the small rest area he found himself on a huge branch that was almost thirty feet wide all around and a little distance away there was a huge Palace built right into the side of the tree. This was the Mage Council's true home. By his count they should have been in session for a few hours now while they took care of the business that didn't concern him, the little day to day things that were required for any city to run.

He approached the main entrance and two of the Paladins at the base of the steps came to attention. There were ten steps leading up the huge front doors to the place and there was an elaborately dressed Paladin standing on each end of the step eyeing him coldly. He presented his badge and nodded to them as he passed by. At the top of the steps was a sight he hadn't seen in a while and it surprised him more than a little, two female elves wearing slave collars kneeling on either side of the main door wearing next to nothing, even then they were excellent examples of their kind. Their presence meant that one of the dark ones had decided to show up for once, a rare occurrence to be sure. He still didn't like the dark wizards, but he had been told that even though they were somewhat evil people, they had proven themselves more than once to be loyal to the over all plan to keep Jade from falling back into the hands of the Shadows if they should ever reappear in these modern times.

The door opened as he neared it and presented his badge to the final guardian just inside the main entrance. This was a fully grown ancient gold dragon who used the main hall as his lair and made sure no one but authorized people ever entered the palace. It was full of various items including a bed of gold coins that it used for a bed, dozens of chests full of jewels, scavenged armor, gifts from members of the council, and even an impressive art collection that covered the walls of the massive room. It's gigantic head lowed to the floor to get a better look at him and examine the badge and Onoli was almost positive that the dragon was doing more than that. At times he wondered if the thing was judging him in some way for every time they met he felt like he didn't quite stand up to the dragon's views on the subject. He noticed that it's eyes were a dark gold color with white flecks floating around in them as it used it's magic to run the final check. Then it smiled and showed of hundreds of huge and very pointy teeth. "Hello Onoli, I see you are still running up those stairs."

"Hello Goldwave, how are you doing. Another few months and they should be giving me a ring so that I can teleport directly to the top of the stairs like everybody else does."

"Heh, well have fun at the council if you can. Ol'Barrone is here for once and as usual not in a very good mood."

"Any idea what prompted him to show up?"

"No, but those girls outside came with him."

"I saw them." Onoli said flatly.

Goldwave nodded and grinned again, the iris's in his eyes spinning a little to show that he was amused. "You should have heard those two when they first arrived, they are more dedicated to him than some wives. They threw up such a fus when they were told that they couldn't enter the building. It seems they are his nurses as well as his slaves, you know Ol'Barrone is getting on years."

"That's strange, did they do anything else?"

"Nope, Ol'Barrone got a good laugh out of it though and just shooed them outside where they sat down and haven't moved since. It's like their strings were cut or they can't function when he's not about."

"Thanks for the info Goldwave."

Goldwave nodded and moved back over to his bed of gold and curled up to catch some more sleep, it would be a few hours yet before he had to leave and go out to hunt for his supper and he wanted to have a good flight. After moving out of the large hall, Onoli heads up some more stairs and enters the main part of the building where a dozen more Paladin guard the next set of doors that lead into the council chamber. There are a few mages standing around near the open doors talking to each other as he approaches, but they don't even seem to see him for one reason or another. Then he saw the one person he hadn't expected to see, Julia Brigand Diggers sitting lazily on one of the benches by the door watching Dr. Diggers as he's talking to a couple of friends. She recognized him as he walked toward them and stood up with a smile. Onoli bowed to her as he saw that Dr. Diggers was discussing something about a decision the council had just made.

"Hello Julia, it's good to see you again."

"Onoli, it's been a while, how's the Edge Guard doing these days?" Julia asked.

"Pretty good, were still recovering from when we lost Gaja and without a decent magic user we aren't as effective."

"Have they made any decisions on who might be replacing Gaja?"

"Nope, there just aren't any more Mages available with his level of experience and a few have even suggested that Thropan take over the duties, but he's got enough to do as it is. The few others have been suggested so far but they just haven't fit in with the team, I've been asking for another Werecat of some kind with mage abilities, but those are even harder to find since most of them are already assigned elsewhere. I was going to suggest that we check with the Council that oversees the Retreat if they had anyone that wanted to join us voluntarily."

Julia nodded. "That sounds like a good idea, they don't like it when a were leaves the Retreat, but for this they might make an exception. Have you thought about asking Seance?"

"Who's he?"

"He's one of my husband's apprentices and a very skilled Aura Mage, though he is human."

"I'm not sure if that would work out really." Onoli said, actually considering the suggestion, anyone trained by an Archmage of Dr. Diggers skill had to have some skills to back them up.

"Why is that?"

"Our team is sort of specialized and that is causing problems that don't normally happen in other teams."

"Oh?"

"Yep, Gar has been a bit of a problem lately." Onoli said with a sigh. "I'm kind of used to it with Tirga, he's always been a bit of a loose cannon, but his heart is usually in the right place when he's needed the most. Gar on the other hand has been acting strange lately, that's why I'm glad I ran into you, I was hopping you could talk to him and find out what is wrong."

"What's he been doing? Gar is usually your second in command and I'm kind of surprised he isn't here with you, since he's the reason I'm here."

Onoli raised his eyebrows a bit at that. "He's been having problems with the people that Sheila is going out with, especially with that new student of yours, Ranma Saotome."

"You're kidding, I talked to him about that a couple months ago and he said he'd back down. Is he still trying to break them up?"

With a sigh Onoli nodded. "It's worse than that, he's starting to become obsessed with the idea that Ranma is stealing his sister away from him. He even sneaks out at night to follow Sheila just to make sure she isn't going out to see him or some other guy."

"He's never been that over protective and with Ranma, at the time anyway, still with me and Theo in Earth Realm, he shouldn't have had to worry."

"It started the same day that Sheila told everyone that Ranma was coming to participate in her little 'hunt' out on the edge of the Black Moir Swamp, where the forest is being slowly being taken over by the water."

"I've been there a few times, there are some nasty monsters out there if you aren't careful, but Ranma and Sheila are both good enough that they can take care of themselves."

"Normally I would agree, but Gar followed after Sheila and Ranma this morning just after they left and hasn't reported back in to me or the compound and hit has me worried. What did you want to see Gar about?"

"Oh, Luan will be away for a few more months training, I wanted let him know about it so he didn't worry since she's taking an advanced course from that guy she's training under. He was supposed to be here with you, now it looks like I will have to find him and knock a little sense into him."

"Just be careful Julia."

"Oh I will, he's a good fighter, but there is no way he can beat me yet." Julia said with a smirk.

"I certainly hope so."

A Paladin stepped out of the council chamber and looked around until he spotted Onoli. "Master Onoli, the council will see you now."

"Thank you." Onoli said as he nodded goodbye to Julia and stepped into the chambers and shut the doors behind him."

Dr. Diggers, who had just finished with his portion of the council finished up his talk with his friend, a tall man wearing a very black robe and golden colored skin. They shook hands and parted, the stranger heading for the teleport area and Theo stepping over to his wife. "So what did Onoli have to say?"

"It seems there is something wrong with Gar."

"Oh?"

"He wasn't sure what it is, but there is something about Ranma that Gar doesn't like and he's been over protective of Sheila, almost to the point of an obsession."

"That doesn't sound like him at all, any ideas?" Theo asked.

"Not at the moment, but I need to get a look at him before I can even guess what is going on and he's all the way over on the far edge of Black Moir Swamp."

"We can go there right now if you want to..." Theo said. "Lets just step on over to the teleport area, no need to set off any of the alarms in here after all."

**********

"AGHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! !" Tirga screamed as the scene replayed in his mind again and again.

He'd just run into the men's public bath house to see if the girl would actually follow him in there while waving that large sword around. Grinning he'd run down the short hall and into the bath itself with the girl on his heels the whole way. Then the whole plan had gone to hell and he couldn't have predicted this one even if he'd been a precog with perfect abilities, how could someone predict it? About a dozen men had looked up as he slammed the door open and ran straight into the large heated pool of hot water that was used to relax after a hard days work. It was only mid morning so there weren't all that many people there to see his shame, but enough to make him whimper even now.

That female werecheetah hadn't opened the door, no, she had slashed it off it's hinges and shattered the rest of it with a well placed kick as she stalked into the room and glared around in fury. There was another door to the room on the other side of the large furo and he was making his way over to it when she entered, the rest of the guys in the room cringed a little as the girl stalked past them with that giant sword and knew better than to even say anything at all. Those guys that didn't bother to cover themselves were a bit disappointed when the girl didn't even seem to see them, her rage was focused completely on him and at the time that was how he had wanted it.

Tirga shuddered and wanted to throw up again. Then he remembered what he'd said to her and wondered why he wasn't dead or castrated, especially after that remark. "Hey baby, let me show what a real man can do in a place like this." Leer.

Then she had entered the heated water and his world shattered as she seemed to grow over a foot in height and turn into a really pissed off guy, a male werecheetah, still pissed off and coming for his head. The sight had struck the rest of the guys in the room like a ton of bricks, but to him it was worse. He'd come on to the girl/guy and been making suggestions for the whole run here, things that he could do and how they worked on all the girls he'd met. Then he/she had pointed that huge sword with it's red blade at him, the one that fit this form a lot better than the other one. "You are a dead man you perverted little @$$#@)3."

He couldn't only scream as the full reality of the change in the guy's gender finally penetrated his mind, threw up, and fainted as he looked beyond the thing and saw that Thropan entered the room and saw the whole thing. Now he was laid out on a bench in the locker room with a blanket over him and shivering in shock and disgust. Never, he never wanted to go through anything like that again. He could live with being beaten up by a good looking girl, but the idea that he'd made a pass at a guy just made him want hurl. Thropan was sitting nearby snickering at him ever few minutes and had been forced to leave the room on a couple of occasions already so he could let it out. Even worse was that the thing was there as well, the shape changer who had introduced him to the worst beating he'd had to endure in months. It seemed his name was Ashaton Chaos.

Thropan snickered some more and hunched over to control his laughing fit. "So, stud, how's it feel to expand your tastes a little? BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!"

"You sick &%$# I'm going to kill you for that!" Tirga yelled and lunged for his supposed friend and fell off the bench.

"He nearly beat you to death with a really big one too! HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!"

"AGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!" Tirga screamed and lunged for Thropan again and ended up slamming his head into the wall as the werepanther just dodged out of the way while still laughing.

Thropan fell down at Tirga's feet. "Take it like a MAN! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!"

Ashaton sighed and let the two guys get it out of their system, he would have taken off all together if they hadn't both been member so of the Edge Guard. He hadn't even had time to tell them about the Compound yet and it's complete destruction. Though he did plan to leave out that he'd been the one to send it to it's ultimate demise, they didn't need to know that little detail. "Um...guys, I really need to tell you something."

Tirga groaned, this had to be the worst day in his life. First he's attacked by some walking tin cans, then gets chased halfway across the city by an enraged shape changer, now it wanted to talk to them. What else could go wrong, he didn't want to know how much worse this day was going to get. He rose to his feet, ignoring Ashaton completely as he moved to walk out of the locker room. Now all he just wanted to get home and sleep the rest of this day away or find a girl and hire her for a few hours. That was an idea he could life with and he knew it would make him feel a whole lot better. It would also keep Thropan from spending the rest of the day laughing at him, that laugh of his was beginning to get on his nerves.

"So are male or female?" Thropan asked Ashaton.

"Male, I've had this curse most of my life so I'm kind of used to it, but I still prefer girls."

Thropan nodded, snickered, and started laughing again as Tirga brushed past him and stalked out of the room. "So what did you want to talk about?"

"Well I was looking for one of the Edge Guard when I ran into Tirga there..." Ashaton started.

"Ran into...HAHAHAHAHAH!"

Ashaton rolled his eyes. "Um...anyway, there was little incident at your compound a little while ago."

"Oh?" Thropan asked as he stopped laughing.

"It isn't very good news either."

"What happened?"

"I'm afraid that Raphiel was either kidnapped or killed."

Thropan blinked and paled. "He's dead?"

Ashaton shrugged. "I think so, I happened to be in the area when those Undead Knights attacked the compound. We managed to hold them off for a little while, but in the end I was knocked unconscious and when I woke up he was gone." **

With a loud sigh Thropan nodded, his good mood at seeing Tirga in a position like that completely gone to hell. "I need to see the Compound to see if we can find his body, if not, then we need to find Onoli and tell him about it."

"What about the others? Do we need to gather all of them together?"

"Yes, but for now we just need to put them on alert and we need Onoli to send out the word." Thropan said as he started to head out of the room. "You're caught up in this and Onoli will need to talk to you I think, so you might as well come along."

"What about Sheila?"

"You know her?" Thropan asked in surprise.

"Yeah, I helped her out last night." Ashaton explained. "After we get to the compound I need to see if my cloak survived the fire when the training hall collapsed."

Thropan blinked in surprise, but didn't say anything as they left the bath house. They continued this way for most of the walk back to the compound and neither of the could fail to see the rising tower of black smoke rising into the sky from where the compound used to be. They rounded the final turn and came upon Tirga gazing in shock at the leveled remains of their home and base. From the level of the fire it was clear that they wouldn't even be able to get near it, the magical wards that had been placed by Gaja so long ago had activated to protect the forest and houses that were to close to the compound. The flames were being confined to what was left of the compound itself and letting it burn out. Thropan had forgotten all about them and he'd even helped to craft and install them over five years ago.

"What happened?" Tirga asked in shock.

"A battle according to your friend here, some Undead Knights attacked the place after we all left this morning to kill or kidnap Raphiel."

"Why would they kidnap Raphiel? He wasn't even a full member yet and...oh..." Tirga muttered.

"He was the weakest of us all." Thropan stated.

"So he's probably dead then. Was it just Undead Knights or something else?" Tirga asked.

"There was a girl leading them, but I never did get her name, she was wearing this green armor, showing a lot of skin, had this funky looking spear and was giving orders to the Undead Knights."
"Sounds like Hanza, she's been getting more and more bold in her attacks lately. We're going to have to track her down and punish her for this." Thropan said.

"I think we have other things to worry about right now. Two things to be exact..." Ashaton said as he pointed back into the city where several more columns of smoke were rising into the sky.

"What's the other thing?" Thropan asked.

"Them." Ashaton and motioned with his chin to the other side of the flaming wreckage where four columns of Undead Skeletons were marching out of the woods. They were silent as death itself, they had on basic armor and were carrying old rusty swords in their bony hands as they moved. Off to the side was an Undead Knight in black armor on a horse leading them straight into the city.

"Oh &%$#." Tirga snapped as they all pulled out their weapons. "It's a large scale attack."

"Ashaton, I want you to run to the Palace on the far side of the city. There will be several armored men out in front of the entrance gate. Tell them that there is an undead army attacking the city and that we need the city militia gathered." Thropan said in an icy calm voice.

"Right, right." Ashaton said and using the full speed of his werecheetah form headed right for the palace. He didn't even hear the sonic boom as he passed the sound barrier, but a lot of people did and it saved allowed several people to save their lives as column after column of undead skeletons and zombies began to enter the city from every direction. He just hoped that he made it in time and that these guys would have enough time to throw together some kind of defense or this whole city was going to go up in flames by the end of the day. With that though he picked up speed and set off a second sonic boom and didn't even notice the large dust cloud forming behind him as he ran.

**********

Black Moir Swamp was one of those places that reminded Ranma of a training ordeal he had gone through under his old man some years before. He didn't really want to think of the midnight runs through the swamp with a large couch on his back, his old man asleep on top, and a pack of wolves chasing after him everywhere he went. Instead he was being reminded of a few things that had happened after that, namely the strange animal attacks. Back when he was ten and running through the swamp he had been forced to deal with wolves, large snakes, and flesh eating fish that went for one's toes. This place was no different it seemed, so far Sheila had lopped the head off of three snakes that couldn't have been less than thirty feet long and killed two alligators. He was amazed at just how fast she could draw and attack with that magical attack of hers, the feel of the magic as it swirled around them just before it was released was quite an experience for him.

He was feeling a little left out though, he hadn't taken down anything yet and it was getting on his nerves. So he was stepping through the shallow water as carefully as he could with his sword, the one he had gotten from Gina that was stored in his bracer, at the ready. Behind him Sheila was moving with such grace and stealth that he couldn't even hear her move, but whenever he looked back to see if she was okay she would be just a couple steps behind and smile at him. It was making him nervous, like he was being hunted or something. Another thing that he had nearly forgotten about was his curse, it rarely activated, but when it did the thing caused him no end of trouble. The water they were moving through wasn't that cold and he couldn't figure out why. He had been several steps into the swampy water before he remembered about the curse at all, being distracted at the time by B firing streams of water at him. So why wasn't he sporting a nice pair on his chest and missing something down below as Sheila called him names?

That little robot was being a pest too, floating around on the water and occasionally more water at him. So far he'd been able to dodge all of it, but Sheila was starting to wonder why he even tried to dodge the water even after a couple hours of it. Be was just about fifty feet away amusing himself at the moment, but Ranma knew the thing would be back to torment him some more eventually. The thing had a limited attention span, but that and the constant attacks were making it hard for him to keep his magical abilities bottled up. He had come close to throwing a fire ball at the him on a few occasions already, but Sheila had stopped him. Now he just wanted to get back on some solid ground and dry off a bit.

"There's a bit of dry ground up ahead Ranma, let's take a break when we get there." Sheila said.

B came out of nowhere and fired another stream of water at Ranma, bit it was dodged as quickly as it had been fired. "&%$#!"

"B you cut that out!" Sheila yelled as the little robot sped away.

"I doubt he will listen Sheila, he's having fun and he won't listen to anyone when he's like this." Ranma muttered as they made their way over to small island like bit of land and gave a bit of thanks as he stepped back onto some solid land and grabbed onto a low hanging tree to pull himself up the seep embankment. At least he thought it was a low hanging tree branch, and now that he had millisecond to think about it, why was it hanging down like a rope and slightly curved? He heard Sheila gasp just he realized it was a medium sized snake that dropped it's head out of the tree and swung it's head around to bite him. Reflexes took over and he snapped the snake like a whip and banged it's head against the tree, the one he thought he had been reaching for, and tossed it over his shoulder like yesterdays garbage. He saw that Sheila was putting her sword back and glaring at him. "What?"

"You have to be more careful, there are dangerous animals all around us and you are playing games like this."

"But..."

"Pay more attention or you will be dead. That snake was a Black mamba like they have in the Earth Realm where you come from and one of the deadliest snakes in the entire world. It's bite would have killed you in less than 2 minutes, this swamp and the magic in the very air make things twist and mutate into some really dangerous animals. Where do you think the Bog Threshers came from?"

"Yeah, yeah." He grumbled.

"Don't be like that, just be more careful Ranma. I don't want to be the one that has to drag you all the way back to Nali's clinic because you didn't take this place seriously enough."

Muttering to himself, Ranma moved a little further onto the solid ground and helped Sheila up the small muddy embankment. Then what he was worrying about happened, Sheila reached out and grabbed the tree and gave it a hard yank as she pulled herself up beside them. The tree was covered in a thin layer of morning dew that was very at home in this wet climate, water came raining down on them. Ranma's eyes widened in shock as he felt his body suddenly shift and morph into his female form while holding Sheila's hand. Compensating instantly he managed to adjust his pack before she fell over, but not before Sheila saw the change and gasped in shock.

"Ah &%$#!" Ranma screamed and slumped over.

"R-Ra-Ranma? Is that you?"

"Hey, I thought you were human. How come you didn't tell me you were a shape changer?" She asked as she examined his now female hand and new body.

Poke, poke.

"Um...huh?" Ranma squeaked out, she wanted to run and get away as fast as she could, but Sheila wouldn't stop poking her chest to see if they were real.

"What are you looking so scared for? Why didn't you tell me you could change your shape like this? I'm a werejaguar you know, I have two other forms I can shift to whenever I want."

Ranma stopped struggling, he kept forgetting that Sheila could change shape, he was so used to her werejaguar hybrid form that it just slipped his mind. "I..."

"This is so cool! Can you shift to a mix form between male and female? Or are you like a Rakasha who can change into any shape they want to please their partner? Or an illusionist who can create any image they want?"

Grope, Grope. "You're even bigger than me, I'm so jealous!"

"It's a CURSE!" Ranma yelled and why did the name Rakasha sound so familiar, like she had heard it somewhere else?

Sheila poked Ranma's breasts a few more times just for the fun of it and grinned at Ranma's discomfort. That little robot's actions were beginning to make a little more sense now that this had happened. "A curse huh? I know of at least ten guys back at Seer's hamlet that would give their entire fortunes for a chance to change into a girl like this."

"Hey, don't do that. It happened back on Earth, during a fight with this guy named Daishi, he got the better of me and knocked me into this cursed spring, when I got out I looked like this."

"Hey cool! Where the same height now." Sheila said with a giggle. "How do you change back?"

"Hot water will reverse it, but we might as well wait until we leave the swamp now that I've changed. Every time we hit cold water this is going to happen."

"Why didn't it happen before now? That swamp water is cold, very cold." Sheila asked and glanced back the way they had come and shivered a little.

"No it wasn't, that's what was bothering me, that water was cool, but not cold enough to activate my curse."

"Ranma that water that just fell on you is just as cold as the water we were walking through, maybe colder since it hadn't been warmed by the sunlight yet."

"Then how come it didn't activate my curse?" Ranma asked.

B skimmed across the water and beached himself on the one bit of beach that the small bit of land had and converted back into his wheeled form and raced up to Ranma. "Boss we got problems heading this way."

"Boss?"

She didn't get a chance to say anything else as there was a roar of some kind out in the swamp, this was quickly followed by several others and she saw Sheila's eyes widen and her hand flexed and Ice Fang appeared in her hand. Half turning, Ranma half a second to flex her own hand and bring her sword back into existence just as she hopped back on instinct and back fisted the attacking Bog Thresher that must have been hiding somewhere in the trees around them. It's head whipped back so hard there was a loud snapping sound as it seemed to raise up on it's tail, hold for a second and before it fell to the ground and rolled into the swamp water below and lay still. Ranma turned back to Sheila and raised an eyebrow. "So how come the water didn't activate my curse?"

"How in the world did you do that?! One simple blow and that thing is dead as can be? I've seen Tirga or a werewolf do something like that, but never a simple normal human! You're a girl too, you should have been at an even bigger disadvantage." Sheila gasped out, she'd nearly dropped her sword in shock.

"I'm a fully trained martial artist Sheila, that was a simple Ki enhanced back fist attack, I've performed it thousands of times." Ranma said with a shrug and smirked knowingly. Then she spotted something she hadn't ever seen in her life and wondered what it could be. "What the heck is that thing?"

Sheila, who had already had enough shocks today barely raised an eyebrow and said mildly. "It's an zombie I think, one of the local farmers most likely since it's wearing those tacky clothes and staggering around with that hoe in its hand.

"You don't sound all that scared." Ranma noted.

"A single zombie? That's like being afraid of a single mouse, it's a little dangerous, bit they are so stupid that defeating them is pretty easy. There's been some guy raising the dead like this for years, we've just never been able to capture him."

"Um...should it be here?"

"Nope, we kill it and release it's trapped soul so it can have a little piece."

"How do you kill it?"

Sheila raised her sword. "We hack it to pieces until it can't move no more or burn it into a fine powder."

"Um...right." Ranma said with a sweat drop forming on the back of her head and eyed Sheila a little differently.

"Oh, Oh! Ranma's quaking in her pants now, so drop them because I want to see what kind of panties your wearing before you start fighting with all that 'talent' floating around!" B yelled suddenly and let off an evil laugh. Maybe he'd been wrong about the danger heading this way if these things were that easy to defeat.

"B!" Ranma yelled as the undead farmer shuffled toward them at an incredibly slow pace. She turned to Sheila and grinned. "So you up for lunch before this guy gets here? At this rate it's going to take at least ten minutes before he even starts to climb up to where we are and those fish eating his legs seem to be having a fine ol'time too."

"Hey you two, look over that way." B says and tries to point with his head and eyes.

They turn to see a wave of undead animals, beavers, fish, gators, and a whole host of other slimy looking things swarming for their little island through the swamp water. Sheila slashes with her sword and sends out a wave of Icy magic, it slams into the swarm of animals and takes out about a dozen or so, but there are hundreds more it doesn't touch and they just ignore the frozen bodies within seconds they are stomped into the swamp under thousands of little paws and legs. Ranma concentrates on the one spell she's been wanting to cast all day long, forms a ball of fire at the tip of her finger and combines tiny bit of Ki into the spell pattern. The fireball flies out and expands to over twenty feet around, blows Ranma off her feet, knocks over several trees and slams into the oncoming wall of undead animals.

"Ah &%$# I added to much to it, get down!" Ranma yells as she moves behind a nearby tree. It explodes with the force of several boxes of TNT and Sheila dives for cover behind another tree and B hides behind Ranma. A wave of heat and charred corpses rains over the island for several seconds. "Oops !"

"Ranma! What the heck just happened?!" Sheila yelled, she was used to magic users but that was a bit to much even for her.

"Eh hehehehe I just used a bit to much magic." Ranma explained with a shrug. "I got them didn't I?"

Sheila looked back at where a large bonfire was burning among the trees and shook her head. "No, you just routed them away from us, there's still to many to count out there and if you look off in the distance there they are starting to come at us from a different direction. How many of those can you cast before you run out of energy?"

"I don't know, I'm still new at this, but I can manage several more easily."

They moved away from the trees, Ranma picked B up and handed to Sheila to store in her pack. "B you stay in there for now, that way I know where you are."

"Sure thing Boss." B said with a nod.

Looking around the small island proved that there wasn't anywhere that they could defend and counter attack these things at the same time. That mean that they would have to find one, and quick or they would both be dead. Ranma was beginning to understand what Sheila meant about one of them being easy to defeat and the implication that more than one was incredibly dangerous. This was Ranma's first undead attack so he didn't quite know what to do just yet, but that didn't last long as Sheila came up with a plan and motioned for him to follow as she jumped into the trees and headed away from the island at high speed. B was glad to be in Sheila's pack, there was no way he'd have been able to keep up with them in his current form and he did have a job to perform after all.

"We have to get out of here, there's way to many of them to fight right now!" Sheila yelled.

"What about that slow one we left back there?"

"If they were all that slow we wouldn't have any problems getting away." Sheila yelled as she started tree hopping, looking for anything that might give them an advantage.

Ranma followed close behind her, keeping her tail in sight as she moved through the trees. "Do you have any idea where they are coming from?"

"No, there is usually a wizard around somewhere, but I don't see one anyone near here so they must under the control of something powerful." Sheila yelled back as they left the area still using the trees, and moved deeper into the swamp. The undead animals could bee seen moving through the swamp all around them in huge undulating masses, trying to catch up and cut them off. Ranma stopped in one tree, took a second to form another fireball and launched it out into the closes mass he could see, the explosion leveled dozens of trees and vaporized a hundred or so undead. It barely slowed them as another group jus swarmed around the fire and continued to follow them. Sheila was positive that something was controlling these things in some way, but she had no clue what do about it. She recalled her fight with those Undead Knights just the night before and wondered if both of these situation could have been directed at her for some reason.

"We have to do something Sheila, I don't like running from these things, and if I use my fireball again those things need to be in a bigger group! I fire off several more, but they're all around us, I can't get them all." Ranma yelled as he took off after Sheila again and glanced back to see the hoard of undead things surging after them. Her fireball hadn't even slowed them, in fact it seemed that it might have stirred them up somewhat, like poking an ant hill with a large stick. These things had all been in hiding, but now they were everywhere and they wanted to catch both of them.

"I'm open to ideas Ranma!" Sheila yelled back as she rebounded off a particular tree and sailed into the air for several yards before resuming her tree hopping. Ranma followed close behind her, somewhat amazed that she could move like this when even on earth it was really rare skill for anyone to have. She grinned and just went with flow, they were in danger and had thousands of undead things on their tail and she was starting to have fun. Then he reminded himself that she was a werecat and that she was probably tapping into some of her abilities and that this hybrid form had all the flexibility and speed of a real Jaguar. He was just catching up to her when she spotted something and changed direction by bounding off another tree. Ranma followed along as best she could and they were able to make some good time through the trees for the next several minutes. She noticed that the were slowly increasing the distance between them and the undead animals as well and wondered where they would go if they did lose them. They reached a series of trees suddenly and jumped into a clearing that was filled with swamp water for hundreds of feet in every direction with a large hill of mud rising up from the center like an ant hill of some kind. They landed here with a loud splat and sank a few inches into the mud of the island. It seemed to be the only land in the area and it was covered in small bushes and fist sized rocks.

"We seem to have lost those things for the time being, what is this place Sheila?" Ranma asked as she glanced around. This place was a little more defensible because it was a lot smaller than the other island, but she didn't think they would be able to hold that hoard off form long.

Sheila frowned as she looked down at her outfit and all the mud that she had gotten on her outfit, it was even in her fur. She tried to brush it away as best she could and glanced over at Ranma. "I'm not sure, I don't recognize this area so it might be something new that sprang up in the last few months. This is a swamp, they can change the way they look almost overnight if it rains or something weird happens. Those fireballs of yours are going to change the way the swamp looks by the time the fire dies down."

Nodding, Ranma just glanced around as she suddenly felt a pair of eyes on her again and hears a voice.

"This is the 'Forbidden Heart' of Black Moir Swamp." Says a mans voice from behind them.

They spin around to see a mud covered man step out of a nearby cave that Ranma hadn't even noticed, she curses to herself for being so lax and wonders if this guy is going to be a problem. It takes few seconds to look beyond the thick covering of mud, but Sheila is surprised to see that it's her brother Gar as he steps forward to meet them. "Gar?!"

"Sister." Gar says with a grin.

Almost instantly Ranma can tell that something was wrong with the guy he had met before just a few weeks before, something he couldn't quite put his finger on though. The guy's eyes were flickering around the area like Ranma remembered his father's eyes doing whenever he was looking for trouble, his senses on high alert for any kid of attack. The other thing that struck him as odd was that Gar was wearing a simple loin cloth caked with as much mud as he had on his body. Looking over at Sheila he could tell that she knew something was wrong as well, though she seemed to be quite surprised by this current change in her brother.

"Gar! What are you doing here and what the hell are you wearing?!" Sheila yelled. "You should be taking care of those bandits in the southern part of the valley today."

"No today sister, I've got something else to take care of, this place is very special and can be dangerous if you aren't careful enough." Gar said with a smirk as he slowly walked towards them. "As for my clothes, I had to go cat for a little while and didn't have time to take them off so they were destroyed. I managed to save enough for a loin cloth though so I'm fine. Please get out of the way, me and this boy have a bit of talking to do."

"Huh?" Sheila asks, she's never heard her brother talk in that tone of voice before. So cold that it would have made Ice Fang look tame.

Gar stops a few yards from Ranma and glares at him, clenches his fists in anger, and snarls. "You! I knew you were a danger to my sister the instant I saw your transformation back there on the little island! I won't let you have perverted ways with her anymore, I will kill you first!"

"Huh?" Sheila gasps.

"Wha?" Ranma mutters as he takes a closer look at the seven foot tall, chiseled muscles of a fully mature werejaguar glaring at him with hatred. The claws on Gar's hands slowly extending out and gleaming in the poor lighting in the swamp as he takes up a stance that Ranma has seen Julia use before. One that has proven to be his downfall in more than one practice match over the last few months, getting her into a position to throw him into the side of the house using her feet. Glaring, Ranma prepares for battle, he can see enough hated in Gar's eyes to know that this will be an all or nothing match and that he will have to be prepared for anything Julia has used against him so far.

Gar intended to kill him and because there was no way he could use his magic against the guy he would have to depend on his Martial Arts. Grinning, Ranma knew the next few minutes were going to be quite dangerous, but also a lot of fun if he went all out. He wondered what fighting an enraged werecat would be like and if the Neko-ken would be of any help in this fight. "Bring it on goof ball."

"Gar! What are you doing?!" Sheila yells as she runs forward to stop him and got the surprise of her life as her brother, the man who had taken care of her ever since their parents had been killed, back handed her away like an annoying fly. She gasped in shock and completely forgot about her in his rage as she landed in a nearby bush to watch in amazement at her brother attacked Ranma. Shooting forward as only an enraged werecat could, moving so fast that he could barely be seen. Snarling and roaring as he ran, his hand spread out, his claws passing through the air in some kind of berserk rage Gar attacked Ranma.

More than willing to protect herself and get in a blow or two for what Gar had just done to his own sister, Ranma dodges Gar's blows effortlessly, taking advantage of his female forms natural speed and dexterity. "Why exactly are you attacking me again? This just doesn't make any sense to me."

Gar ignored Ranma and simply snarled in rage, increasing the speed of his attacks, though not really using much in the way of martial arts any more. This was a big surprise to Ranma because of the stance Gar had started out in, but she kept his guard up as she weaved around the quick but poorly executed attacks. "Can we talk about this, if I beat the crap out of you right in front of Sheila she might take it the wrong way. Be a good kitty and lets talk this out before I have to hurt you." Ranma said as she dodged, twitched, jumped, and blocked the various attacks sent at her with ease. The guy wasn't using any of his skills at all, just trying to overpower her and take her down with nothing but his strength. Against Ranma that was a mistake that could only be made once.

"You will DIE!" Gar yelled and suddenly started to use a bit more of his martial arts skills and almost caught Ranma off guard and managed to get a blow to the head that sent Ranma flying back and into the ground face first. She rolled to her feet just as Gar decended on her from above and slammed his fist into the mud where her chest had been a half second before and buried his arm clear up to the elbow.

"That was a pathetic attack Nature Boy, my pop could do better than that." Ranma taunted him.

"AGHAAAAAAAAAA! I WILL MAKE YOU PAY!" Gar screamed like an insane banshee and ripped his arm out of the ground.

"For what?" Ranma asked mildly, getting more than a little annoyed with the guy as she dodged a series of punches and kicks. Her patients could only last so long and it was getting to the point that she would to start and really fight back.

"Gar! Stop this!" Sheila yelled from where she had landed, still shocked about what had happened and beginning to realize that something was really, really wrong with GAr. "Ranma, what's wrong with him?!"

"How should I know? He just started attacking me! He's got a screw loose or something and he's beginning to tick me off!" Ranma yelled as she grabbed Gar's arm and used it as a spring board to flip over the guy and land behind him. She kept an eye on the guy as she circled around him and noticed that he was just standing there, slightly slumped over looking completely insane. She almost swore that he had a line of drool hanging off the side of his chin, but with all that much covering his body he wasn't really sure. 'This might be kind of fun, I wonder what else he might be capable of if pushed clear to the edge and possibly beyond?' Ranma wondered to herself as she took up a more defensive stance. "I'm going to have to take him down Sheila."

"Ranma, don't you dare hurt my brother! There's something wrong with him, we have to reverse it somehow."

"How the heck am I supposed to fight him if I don't fight back Sheila? He is trying to kill me you know!"

"Just do it, knock him out or something. Just don't hurt him by using magic or anything like that."

"I wasn't planning to use magic anyway, this a marital arts fight and it would be like cheating if I was to even think about it."

Ranma relaxed and channeled a bit more of the environmental Ki she'd been gathering throughout her body just as Master Julia had been instructing her to. Though now that she'd had a bit of time to train under Dr. Diggers she knew how to use Ki on a whole new level of skill and knowledge. She had noticed that that Aura magic was simply Ki and magic combined into a kind of flowing dance to weave the spells together and it was quite possible that she could have used the magic against Gar if she wanted to. That would have gone against her sense of honor though and even in a life or death match like this she wasn't willing to take that chance. So she turned her Ki senses on Gar to see just what the guy's Ki would tell him and found that he was giving off a somewhat odd looking aura that was nearly identical to the one that Sheila and all werecreatures seemed to generated at times.

As far as she could tell there was nothing wrong with the guy, he just seemed to be really pissed off about something, but the oddest thing was that his aura was 'normal', almost to normal. It didn't show any of the feelings the guy was currently showing, like anger, obsession, or even just plain insanity. Where there should have been the reddish black of anger, there were signs of deep meditation and peace and Ranma had no idea how one could make their aura look different than it should or why anyone would want to do it in the first place. Ranma adjusted her stance, she needed to test this guy out a little more to see just what he had in mind. She shot forward and started to use a basic Anything Goes combo that would have tested the speed and dexterity of any fighter.

Gar just grinned as Ranma started to throw the occasional punch, dodged a couple of spin kicks, and tested his defenses. He shook his long hair for a couple of seconds so that it left over half his face hidden with only a pair of glowing eyes looking out at Ranma. A grin, half mad and evil, formed on the guys lips as he jumped back a few yards and crackling energy began to swirl around his body and drying out the mud almost instantly. With a growl Gar's energy increased in power and his muscles bulked up to over double their original size.

Ranma heard Sheila gasp as Gar's body changed and an aura of power formed around him. His claws darkened into a solid black and a pulse of power washed over the area. Growling, Ranma cursed her luck as she stepped back a couple of feet and wondered for the thousandth time why it was she kept running into really, really strong opponents lately. She reminded herself once again that she was strong enough to take this guy out and that holding back and playing with him was not an option. Losing was not an option, not any more, she would not accept defeat at the hands of anyone ever again. What ever this guy had just done looked like it was going to make fighting him a lot harder than it had been so far, that meant she would have to use her strongest technique. If Gar was able to defeat her while she used it she would be surprised, so far she hadn't had a reason to tap the full technique and hoped that it would stay that way. Taking a deep breath Ranma found her center, changed her stance once again, and dropped over so that it looked like she was standing on all fours and released the hold she kept on the Neko-ken and let a bit of its strength run throughout her body.

"Ranma what are you doing?!" Sheila asked, still having problems understanding the situation, but knowing just how powerful this technique was since she'd helped him master it just a few weeks before. "You promised not to hurt him!"

"Meow!" Was all Ranma said as she sniffed the air and felt the power pulsing off of Gar just a few yards away.

With a loud growl Gar shot forward with his clawed hands leading the way, his mud covered body glistened as it was showing off every stretch and pull of his muscles as they moved to do his bidding. Ranma just hissed as she let the cat take over and rolled out of the way of Gar's initial slash as it ripped up the dirt right where Ranma had been kneeling seconds before. She rolled back to her feet and came around to face Gar once more, as her face took on a childlike innocence as she sat back like a cat on its back legs and swiped her fingers at Gar. Four wide arcs of whitish energy flew out of her hand and slammed into him, sending Gar flying back with a scream of pain.

"GAR!!" Sheila yelled, but Ranma jumped on front of her when she tried to go to her brother and refused to let her get near him. "Let me go to him Ranma!"

"...nNnnnnnooo, Sheeellliaa, brotherrrr...faking...." Ranma tried to get out, but in the throws of the Neko-ken she had problems talking normally. "Seeee fiiinnneee."

Gar was climbing back to his feet, four large gashes marred his chest, but even Sheila could see that his body was regenerating from the damage much faster than it should have been doing even for a werecat. He growled again, deep in his throat as he glared hatefully at Ranma and held out his hand as if to grab something. In a flash of lightning, Thunder Edge, Gar's magically enchanted spear, appeared with a loud clap of thunder. It was almost six foot long and had a handle made out of a dark wood and a bluish white blade at one end sparking with electricity. He spun it around his body a few times at high speed just to intimidate his opponent a little.

Ranma cocked her head to the side and tried to understand what Gar had in mind, while under this much influence from the Neko-ken she was still able to retain her sense of self. There was one draw back to it though and that was that it restricted her thinking to a degree to let the cat like aspects of the technique take over just enough to grant her all the abilities and strengths of a great cat. These same instincts just didn't understand what a stick could do to hurt her when a simple slash would turn into several little pieces. Shaking her head, Ranma forced the idea through her befuddled brain, this was a magical weapon and they were something to be respected at least, and decided that it would be best to do two things. Make sure Gar never had a chance to use that thing's magical attack on her and to spend a little more time training so that she had this stupid technique totally mastered. It was to hard think straight.

It was already obvious to her that she didn't have enough control over the thing to completely control her actions while under it's influence, that would be fixed as soon as she had enough time to do so. The fear of cats was gone, but it was obvious that she hadn't spent enough time working with the meditation techniques as she should have been and there was no one to blame but herself. Hissing from all fours, Ranma ran forward, bounding across the ground far faster than any human could ever run on two legs and watched as Gar suddenly started to move to the side. Her eyes focused on the toy that Gar had in his hand as he brought it to bare and pointed the shiny pointy end at her as she ran. Sensing the danger, Ranma jumped at him from ten yards away and did an unexpected roll in mid air. At the same time she formed her Ki claws again and sent a second set flying at her enemy. She hissed in anger as he waved the staff around and blocked her attack with ease, a stick shouldn't have been able to do that. Then Gar ran forward and in the blink of an eye Ranma found herself on the defensive as he spun the spear around his body at incredible speed and she paid the price a half second later when the blade slashed across her leg and it's magic activated, electrocuting her on the spot.

"AGHAAAAAAAAA!!"

"Ranma!" Sheila screamed.

The red head collapsed to the ground as Gar brought the spear around, hitting her across the temple with the shaft, and prepared to plunge it through her chest a second later. Gritting her teeth, Ranma forced the muscles that were still working o respond to her will as she called up a magical pattern in her mind, as she rolled forward and between Gar's legs as he screamed in rage and planted the blade right into the mud where she had been laying a half second before. Ranma took a second to get her energy back and felt her body respond to the technique even as Gar spun around and thrust the spear at her exposed back in an attempt to hit her. Taking control of her mind back and re-submerging the Neko-ken, Ranma snarled in anger as she grabbed Gar by wrist holding the spear and twisted it with a sickening crunch, and then threw an elbow shot to his forehead the instant the spear was dropped to the ground. Gar staggered back shaking his head and holding his injured arm. There were signs of true pain in his eyes as Ranma stalked forward with an angry glint of her own in her eye as she took up a stance she hadn't used in months. It was about time she went back to her training and use a secret technique of the Saotome School of Martial Arts.

"I WILL NOT LOSE!!" Ranma screamed as an aura of power formed around her and started making her clothing ripple under it's full force.

She blurred as the old form came back to her in an instant increasing her confidence and her power twenty fold. Small bursts of Ki exploded from her fists and feet every time they made contact with Gar's body, whipping him around like a piñata on a string as Ranma moved around him in circle of attacks. She didn't bother to shout out names or anything like that, she was to angry and within a few minutes Gar was helpless within the ring of attacks as Ranma used her limited Ki control to pick up the speed even more. A werecreatures biggest gift was their regenerative ability, allowing them to survive things that would kill anyone else, but in Ranma's rage at the possibility of being beaten yet again she turned this advantage to a something else. Within a matter of seconds Gar's whole body was covered in bruises and cuts as blood dripped off his chin as the blood ran from his shattered nose. Every time Ranma hit or kicked him there it would send a spray of blood flying away from.

Ranma just screamed as she continued the ten minute long fast attack kata and kicked Gar's ass, then as she reached the end and saw that he was wavering she kicked out at his legs and sent him to his knees with a cry of pain. Her hand clasped together, Ranma used all her Ki enhanced strength to slam five really powerful blows to his head that nearly knocked the guy unconscious and kicked him hard enough to send him flying away from her and collapse on the ground about ten feet away. Ranma stood there gasping for air for a few seconds and watched to see if Gar would get up from that kind of beating. She nodded to herself when she saw that his wounds were healing, but at a much slower rate than normal. Sighing quietly she turned to see how Sheila was doing and found that she was being held back by two people she hadn't expected to see for a couple more weeks, Julia and Theodore Diggers.

"Master Julia?" Ranma asked, her tone calm and controlled as she struggled to keep from collapsing completely. "Where'd you two come from?"

"Teleport spell." Dr. Diggers said as he walked over and looked down at Gar, quite curious to see what might have been affecting the young man.

B had his small head peaking out of Sheila's pack and had a look of shock on his face before turning around and vanishing into the depths of her pack. Ranma didn't really think much of it or didn't notice as she tried to calm down, but would have thought it was a bit of relief not to have to fend off the little guys verbal assaults like he normally did. Dr. Diggers had an odd look in his eyes as he looked at Ranma, but he kept his thoughts to himself as he knelt beside Gar and cast a couple of quick spells. A blue glow formed around Gar's body as he lay there and Dr. Diggers seemed to see something after a few seconds. "I think I know what has happened to the poor guy."

"What would that be?" Julia asked as she held Sheila from running to her brother.

"He has been placed under a very sneaky kind of spell."

"Spell?" Sheila asked as she stopped struggling and looked at her brother.

Dr. Diggers nodded. "It's a very subtle one that can be cast quietly and without the victim knowing about it. It's called Diana's Touch and is normally used to bring out the repressed feelings of people having relationship problems. It was created a couple thousand years ago by this kindly old witch that used to live on the other side of the continent and used to keep her sister's husband from being to abusive. In this case it was used on Gar to bring out his over protective nature and from there, with a little kick at the right time, he would go into this berserker rage that we just witnessed."

"How can you tell?" Ranma asked as she walked forward and looked over all the damage she had just done to Gar and winced a little.

Reaching out, Dr. Diggers pulled Gar's mud covered hair to the side and pointed to a small rune on the back of his neck. "That is a rune an example of Diana's Touch and from the look of it the thing has been there for some time, several weeks at least."

Julia finally released Sheila as they walked over to examine the rune as well. "Why didn't anyone notice that he was behaving oddly? How long has he had this thing?"

"Something like this works really slow, so slow that the victim won't even notice his feelings and thoughts as they are slightly warped in accordance to the spell. It usually takes outside interference to even notice them changing, it's that subtle, and I'm kind of curious to know just who placed it there."

"What were they trying to accomplish with this?" Sheila wondered as she kneeled next to her brother.

"My guess would be that it was used to cause strife among the Edge Guard Sheila, Gar's increasing paranoia would certainly cause problem. It's hard to say what else they had in mind, there are hundreds of possibilities to choose from, they might have used it for revenge, or to weaken the team, or even something even more sneaky." Dr. Diggers said with a shrug.

Sheila nodded, Gar's attitude lately had been causing problems between all of them and if he was here that meant he wasn't out doing his assignment either. She was going to have to get him back to the compound before he got into to much trouble and have a little talk with Onoli about this.

"I also think that what happened was aggravated by Ranma here and made him go berserk a little early." Dr. Diggers said as he pulled a few items from subspace and started building a spell.

"Huh?"

"Sheila he will protect you above all others, it's in his nature, so when Ranma came along and you showed such an interest, it frightened him enough to set this reaction off. I'll be he's even been following you around the city to keep an eye on you and make sure you're safe. We're just lucky that Ranma was able to take him down, I would have been forced to use much damaging methods to do it myself and he did it without even using magic. I was quite surprised to say the least, most magic users are totally dependent on their magic."

Ranma just shrugged and scratched his head at the base of his ponytail and ignored Julia as she smirked at him.

"Maybe, but I would have taken him down if Ranma hadn't done it." Julia said. "I also think that if they got to Gar with this spell they might have gotten to some of the others as well."

Theo just frowned as that little idea rebounded across his mind a couple of times and nodded. "I would actually be surprised if Gar was the only one who's been acting a little odd of late."

"Would the symbol be visible by just looking at the back of someone's neck?" Ranma asked as she moved to look under Sheila's hair and found nothing there.

Sheila blushed, but let him do it without comment.

"We're going to have to check all the Edge Guard over when we get to Seer's Hamlet."

"I guess we have to call the Hunt off, huh?" Sheila muttered.

"Yep, but not to worry, you can always come back out here tomorrow." Julia suggested.

"Um...what about the undead animals?" Ranma muttered as she looked out into the swamp.

"Undead animals?" Dr. Diggers asked as he pressed his hand to the rune on Gar's neck and finally cast his spell to remove the mark. When he removed his hand a few seconds later the rune was gone and Gar seemed to deflate back into his normal self, though he looked haggard and beat.

Ranma and Sheila nodded. "Just before we got here a whole bunch of them attacked me and Sheila and we had to run for it, we lost them and ended up with Gar here."

"Let's get out of here for now, I'm getting a bad feeling about this. Something is going on that I just don't understand." Theo said.

"Agreed, I sense something off in the distance, deeper in the swamp, but it's so hard to tell what it could be." Julia said.

"Why won't Gar wake up?" Sheila asked. "His wounds are healing normally again now that you cast that spell."

"He will sleep for the next couple of days, that spell did a number on his mind and even with the counter spell I just cast he's going to need time for the full effects to wear off. Sleep will speed up the process and Nali can make sure it's completed properly." Dr. Diggers said as he lifted his hand up and they all vanished in a flare of light. Behind them, the cave that Gar had come out of at the beginning of this whole mess seemed to shimmer just a little before returning to normal and the world around the island became silent once more.

**********

To Be Continued...

End Notes - I had a bit more I was going to add to this chapter, but I decided that it was time to send it out to everybody instead of making them wait a bit longer. At the moment it's over 200kb already and that's more than enough. The next chapter, GO09c [currently 40kb] will be the final part to this mini saga I've saddled myself with and will tie up a lot of loose ends and reveal Rooks full plan as it brings all the various characters together in one large battle. I have no clue how large it will turn out to be in the end, but I hope to make it a good sized chapter as well, just like all the previous chapters.

* This needs and explanation: Ashaton Chaos is a character created by Teamrocket251 and he wanted me to use the Character in the story sometime. He has the same curse as Ranma, but that isn't to much of a problem at the moment since this will probably be the only part where Ashaton shows up in. He is from another dimension after all. How people react to the character will depend on if I use him again so we'll see.

**Ashaton is glossing over certain things he doesn't want Thropan to know about


(I want to thanks To RedPriest17, Teamrocket251, Blindmanx, and everyone else that helped me out at one point in time or another on this chapter.)


The Edge Guard: http://www.monmouth.com/~roxikat/edgeguard.htm

Sheila is Gar's sister. She has a rare werecat birth defect where her human form has her strength and speed instead of her hybrid form. She's an adult in a teenager's hybrid form. She chooses her hybrid form in combat usually because her human form lacks the healing and jagwere dexterity. Also, she's accepted more as 'one of the guys' when she's small, not as a gorgeous damsel to be put on a pedestal to court. Despite her insisted maturity, she uses words like pow and kapowie. Most of her elemental attacks are based around them. She's infatuated with Tirga, but refuses to let him know.

Race: Jagwere
Class: swashbuckler/ fighter
Weapon: Ice Fang, scimitar
Special Ability: The fastest healer in hybrid form.
Gar is second in command of the Northern Edge Guard. A dark and brooding warrior since Brittany Diggers spurned his affections after he tried to defeat her lover Stripe in hand-to-hand combat. Since he was trained by the famous armsmaster, Julia Diggers, the fight was nearly his. Gar refuses to let go for reasons of his own. But Julia taught him first and foremost to have patience without hesitance.

Race: Jagwere
Class: Martial artist/ fighter
Weapon: Thunder Edge, partisan (spear)
Special Ability: During a solar eclipse, Gar can focus his power to perform the Lunar Rave, increasing his strength, speed, and size.

Tirga is a hedonistic, vain womanizer, who relies on his charm to get out of most scrapes. But behind his fun-loving demeanor, Tirga is a cautious, secretive person. Often uses disguises to blend into his surroundings when tracking his quarry.

Race: Were-tiger
Class: Rogue/Tracker/Tactician
Weapon: Fire Claw, morning star mace
Special Ability: His powers of vanity allow him to grow his hair to any length or style to aid in his disguises.
Onoli is the leader of the Northern Edge Guard, and their strongest and wisest member. Raised in bushido schools of thought, Onoli lets little disturb his tranquility. Well-versed in the laws of the Retreat, he makes an eloquent public speaker at the Council.

Race: Were-lion
Class: samurai
Weapons: Seraphim and Necro, swords of Light and Dark soul energy. The Jasper - Rain
Thropan is a mechanical artifact expert as well as a mechanical and magical engineer. He rebuilt and modified the standard issue Edge Guard elemental weapons and gear with his own experimental designs including the device that lets them gate around. With science and technology outlawed on Jade, Thropan toes the line with all his technological experiments using magic for power.

Race: Were-panther
Class: Magical engineer/ martial artist
Weapon: Earth Flail, dragon's claw (bladed nunchaku)
Special Ability: Master of the School of Xiao Pai Long