"This would have been easier if this happened during the school day," Thrud noted as she appeared in the Labyrinth through a full gate with most of the Jindai students and staff she'd been responsible, as well as their families.
Around her, several puffs of smoke were erupting, showing that Moloch and his set were likewise bringing in surprised and terrified civilians.
***********
"Oh no," Eija said quietly, looking out to see several points of battle going on throughout the city. "There's more than just him."
An explosion rocked the city maybe five miles away and she was washed over with the sensation of people dying. Painfully and suddenly.
"This is it," Kaname said, coming up beside Eija.
"Come on," Sousuke said. "We have to find a way to get both of you out of here."
"I can help now!" Kaname protested.
"You're not trained for this," Eija said quietly wincing again. "I'm not really trained for this. Only Sousuke is."
"Correct," Sousuke said.
Eija winced again, and this time Kaname with her.
"Damn it!" Kaname said. "Will you two stop trying to shelter me? I've already helped kill one person! I really tried to make it two."
They stopped looked back toward Kaname, fire and wind raging in the background. Missiles streaking to and fro, pinpoint devices of destruction capable of targeting human sized objectives from miles away without causing much in the way of collateral damage to the surrounding area.
"Poseidon," Eija said.
"Kaname," Sousuke said. "I didn't..."
"Come on, soldier boy," Kaname snapped. "We've got to get started DOING something. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it! This is our home! I'm not just helpless anymore!"
And she dived to the ground as something exploded a mere hundred feet behind sending showers of shrapnel and fire around the scene. Sousuke immediately stepped forward, to put himself between the debris and the girls.
The debris stopped short of the three.
And then it became clear that what had been destroyed was an Amalgam Venom.
"Urzu-7, your job here is combat," a voice said and the three turned to look as a Korean woman stepped forward, depositing an expended RPG as she did so. Another woman moved in on her side, a younger Japanese woman.
"I'm the one responsible for Miss Chidori's and Miss Satomi's protection detail," the Korean woman said firmly.
"But I want to help," Kaname snapped stepping forward.
Wraith didn't hesitate and simply slapped her. Eija stepped forward, a shocked look on her face as she came to Kaname's side and Sousuke pushed forward to get in Wraith's face.
"You claim to be their protection?!" Sousuke demanded angrily.
"The lot of you need to stop being selfish and start being soldiers, now," Wraith said. "Sgt Sagara, you are a combat specialist in a war zone. Your task should be obvious, but you are wasting time escorting your girlfriends and that just puts them in danger longer."
Sousuke winced at the reminder.
"Eija Satomi," she said next. "You are a combat medic, yes, but emphasis on medic and one who is uniquely equipped to recover injured soldiers and keep massively injured people alive long enough to be saved paranaturally or scientifically. We need to take you to a medical facility where you can do some good, not playing hero out here."
And then she turned to Kaname.
"And you aren't trained for any of this," Wraith emphasized. "At all, you are clever, you are intelligent and you learn quickly. You are also a key element in this Silmaril network and someone who has invaded another network in the past. You're going to Geisthexe and helping her shut down the power on these lunatics at the source."
The three looked at each other; Kaname contrite and sheepish, Eija hanging her head and Sousuke still glaring angrily; as other people started to come into view behind Wraith, mostly human but with one Ainur woman who seemed vaguely familiar to Sousuke, possibly from a report somewhere.
It was likely the Ainur who'd stopped the debris, as probably he, Eija or Kaname should have been able to do if they'd thought of it.
"Sagara," Wraith said handing the glaring soldier a comm unit. "The Arbalest should be coming soon, Captain Testarossa will give you coordinates. Use it, Intelligence is taking charge of your girlfriends here. In all meanings of the word. We won't lose them."
"That was an Amalgam AS," Sousuke noted.
"Yes, it was," Wraith noted. "And there are probably more. Try to do your job and find and kill them. We'll do our job you do yours."
***************
"Well?" Hayes asked.
"We've got several reports of attacks across the globe," Major Davis said. "They're moving mostly into cities making it hard to target them without civilians in the line of fire. Balor is reported to have made himself known in Japan leading probably the largest group. Fighting has started there between our forces, Japan's and elements of Mithril and Psyche forces."
<HR>
The Demon walked boldly down the street, destroying everything he could see as he did, not bothering to determine whether there were humans in the midst of the lot or not.
He turned a corner, seeing a number of pathetic sheep fleeing the wolf. Weak Demons and Gods who never bothered to make much use of their powers, humans by the plenty. Worms and corrupted weaklings that needed to be culled for the health of whole. They'd been at some sort of evacuation point when he attacked and scattered.
Running from battle, the weaklings.
Then he blinked as he saw a rifle butt filling his vision.
The Demon was briefly amused by the sight and then it struck and snapped his head backward and sent him sprawling to his back in surprise as he looked up from his position to see a smirking Chinese woman shouldering the rifle as she glowed brightly white, green marks flaring on her face.
"Heya, Barney," she said with a snicker.
Shards of metal carrying the glowing force of a massive amount of chi ripped into the ground beside the Demon as he barely rolled out of the way and to his feet.
The red glow of pishogue enveloped him and he reached out to summon a linking cord of stone and shards to form a long whip of earth.
"I am Belial, fool," he said. "I don't know what you think you can accomplish with whatever artifact you've gathered, but no pathetic chi is a match for the force of pishogue Lord Ba..."
He was interrupted as Mao strafed across him, rolling her eyes. He had to dive forward to avoid the majority of the chi empowered bullets and come up close enough to lash out at Mao.
Grimacing, Mao reached out to catch the whip with her rifle, locking it in place.
In reaction, Belial charged forward, hand reaching back, summoning or creating a stone blade as he did so. Slashing downward, Mao held up an elbow into it's path. The stone sword shattered on her arm as if it were glass.
"What?" Belial asked before the butt of the rifle was again slammed into him, this time his abdomen.
"Oh come on, Barney, you're not even trying," Mao said as she started to bring down her rifle on top of his head. "Sing it with me now! I hit you," the rifle butt came down, "you hit me," her knee came up into his face "we're a brawling virtuosity."
Growling, Belial's fist burst upward into Mao's jaw knocking her across the street. Lashing out with his whip again, Mao grimmaced as it scored a line down her arm cutting through the battle aura as this time he extended his chi around it.
"You pathetic copy!" he shouted. "How the hell do you expect to beat me. Even if you're into the power of the 2nd category, I am far stronger than that now."
His battle aura loomed over his body as he took his reptilian ancestral form and slashed out again with his sword as he came in at her.
She rose a block with her rifle, being shifted aside several feet and almost knocked off balance.
"You've got the power to destroy the world," Mao said with effort. "And you're wasting it on fisticuffs?"
"If I kill you too quickly, worm," he said. "How will I enjoy it."
"Your call, Barney," Mao noted, twisting her rifle and firing a burst almost wildly, causing Belial to step back.
The chi enhanced bullets curved about as Mao continued to fire, following Belial and forcing him to dodge aside so that they'd destroy themselves against the terrain.
Then he was in her face again, powering through the block this time, wincing as his attack allowed some of her bullets to strike him through the battle aura. Still, Mao staggered as he smashed through her own hardened rifle and drove her painfully down to the ground.
"What made you think you could even think about taking me on, worm?" Belial demanded leaning over her and leering with sharpened teeth.
"In position, civilians clear, evac ready," a voice said in Mao's ear. "Do it."
"Sergant Major Melissa Mao," she said, struggling to her feet and boggling that the Demon would let her. "And to tell you a secret. I'm really not rated category 2. 8-2+6-26-13+12-1312..."
As the numbers moved on at high speed, swirling about her in various manipulated patterns, her aura flared out again and she thrust outward with enough power that where it slammed into Belial's aura, the visible light around them bent in odd, unpredictable ways.
Surprised, he crossed his arms and put all his own effort into countering her aura where it matched with his.
The stone earth around Mao rose up to stab out at her as an orbit of white glowing orbits circled her intercepting everything come into her frame and she focused forward, stepping against the force of Belial's aura, a brilliant white and green star pushing on a sea of red fire half again her size.
Around them, the Earth warped and shards of metal whipped about attacking each other and intercepting attacks, digging a crater about them and collapsing buildings.
"Just call me the Ainur of Lesson Learned!" Mao shouted over the din.
"You fool, I don't know where you're getting this much power, but you'll tire out before I will," he shouted, pushing more effort into his attack.
"Oh yeah, Barney!?" Mao shouted. "But when that happens, are you going to have enough?"
Growling into a roar, Belial pushed forward, pishogue slamming through Mao's defenses and a stone outcropping brute forcing its way through the orbits of shrapnel into her chest and sending her flying backward.
Breathing heavily his shoulders heaved as he moved back into his human form and strode forward to where Mao was trying to shake her head clear. Grabbing her by the throat, he lifted her up from the ground.
"Enough for what?" he asked. "What do you have left?"
A puff of smoke appeared behind Mao as a second demon appeared to wrap arms about her. The Ainur smirked at him and winked.
"Friends, Barney," she said before vanishing into smoke with the second Demon.
Belial blinked at that statement wondering what she could mean when a pair of cruise missiles slammed down on his position. He just barely raised the last fleeting amount of effort he could put his body too.
The explosion ripped outward from his position, encompassing a region twice again that which he and Mao together had destroyed and, as the smoke cleared, all that remained was a barely conscious form that tried to pull up to one knee only for a succession of small rockets to swarm his position.
A mile away, Mao saw the results of the explosion as she sat and caught her breath, letting the Demon and a human medic look her over.
"Good work, Sergeant Major," a tall man said as he dropped his hand down and looked over at her.
"Thanks, sir," she said. "By the way, is there a less math-heavy way to handle our network access?"
************
"Tokyo?" Ranma said, surprised. "Not here? What's in..."
"What is it," Natsume asked.
"Gods, there are Gods in Tokyo," Ranma said. "Refugees. Probably more than one death seer. At least one: Eija."
She smacked her forehead self-deprecatingly and started drawing a circle in the ground.
***************
A small force of Demons, trusted with less power than the rather blunt and poorly imaginative Belial found their own block in the form of two teenagers standing in the open with green marks on their faces.
"What's this?" one of the Demons said. "Who are you."
"We're stopping you here," Deimosu said stepping forward.
"6-4+2-42-31+11-3111...," Yonjuu was saying as the numbers swirled in the air around her. "...18195415515-181954+15515*=*28+17-10+8-1+8-9"
A stretch of chi moved between her and Deimosu then.
The Demons blinked, some recognizing the basic influence of numerology in the chant, but not the particular manipulations going on. And the numbers were rolling out so quickly, as if the girl were speaking in extreme fastforward.
I think it worked, I'm now seeing what you're seeing too, Yonjuu said.
Same here, Deimosu said. Watch my back.
Yonjuu stepped around to put her back against Deimosu's.
Then the Demon's charged forward.
The first two of the small squad leaped forward, wind lashing out with sickles invisible to the naked eye.
Deimosu saw the fractional disturbances in the dust as they struck in and returned with his own yamasenken sickles to slash through the demonic wind.
The Demons circled around to surround the two and come in at the girl at Deimosu's back. Instead they found bursts of yellow lightning striking down at them even as the girl kept pace with Deimosu, reciting a quick routine of numbers that merged together too fast to catch.
Yonjuu's mind was working furiously, focusing only on the access of powers and trying to remember all the practiced manipulations starting with the single digit number representing her and moving out to the component's of that reduced digit, the digits of her name added together, and then outward, working through the manipulations that reached the sisters she had that she knew.
Around her, using both her eyes and senses, Deimosu intercepted anything that came at either of them and added to her fire with lightning he needed no mental manipulations or borrowing for.
A knight defending his sorceress out of the old tales.
Though Yonjuu did not represent the classic image of the cool, confident sorceress or faithful priestess. She nervously and loudly chanting numbers after numbers and forcing herself to keep her eyes open not to rob Deimosu of some of his field of vision. At her side her fingers were snapping to give her mind something to focus around and focus her intentions through.
Nor did Deimosu, wielding lightning and fighting with no created weapon present the classic image of the night in shining armor even as he and Yonjuu moved through the lot of the 'small fry'. Though they still had vastly more power than they were used to.
"I've got all the powers of my sisters in mind and ready!" Yonjuu called out psyching herself up. "And there are a LOT of us."
Her point was made as waves of fire, lightning, disorienting sonics and more cascaded about her, forcing their opponents into place for Deimosu to easily finish them off one by one.
Hardly any of the Demons noticed that while they were fighting these two here, most of those falling weren't do to the highly flashy displays in front of them.
Yonjuu's senses were being shared across more than just her and Deimosu.
"Taking the shot," Kurz said calmly seconds before a Demon shuddered in confusion.
Most warrior type Demons and Gods had gone through processes similar to Naiki that made their skin nigh invulnerable to normal weaponry.
Of course, these days, there were sniper rifles designed to fire through light armored vehicles.
"Got a shot here," another Mithril sniper, not an Ainur, but still benefiting from Yonjuu's effect. "Taking it."
"I'm seeing reinforcements on the way, and the DaDanan is inbound," someone noted. "Get the wonder-kids out of the line of fire."
"Already going," one of a pair of Demons said, bursting into smoke to appear around Deimosu and Yonjuu and pull them out again.
Other Demons appeared around the various snipers and they vanished into smoke themselves.
And then the cruise missiles struck down.
************
Balor laughed as he faced a handful of Demons and Gods with some of these strange new immortals with the green marks. They were putting up a good fight, but he'd given himself more than double the normal allowed power of any one Demon.
He fancied he had even more power than Hild would have been allowed now.
He would have been disappointed.
There was a little fluctuation as the eye opened and power washed over the people in front of him. A Japanese soldier with Ainur marks shoved Bastet aside as he was torn to pieces by the wave of death. Bastet herself still caught the edge of it and landed in a pained heap, limping back behind cover.
He hadn't found what he was looking for yet.
"Keep moving!" Thor shouted angrily as he moved in on the side of Balor and slammed his hammer into the Demon's side, only for it to be deflected.
And then he barely dodged out of the way as Balor turned to give his eye a look at the God of Thunder. Behind Balor, Thor smashed his hammer down bringing across a roaring crackle of thunder that even shook the empowered Balor on his heels.
"I'm pulling Bastet out," a Demon said grabbing the cat Goddess and vanishing into a puff of smoke.
Hidden around the site, other Demons were filtering and quietly manipulating their own Realms in support of the Gods, Ainur and one or two on site Rakshasha Demon warriors.
Balor growled as the dust and ash and other things persisted in blocking his sight. He glanced aside again, this time feeling pain as his eye triggered and another pair of front line warriors were killed.
The heavy head of Mjolnir slammed him upside the head sending him reeling back and then again. He tried to vanish away into smoke and found, surprisingly that he couldn't.
About half a mile away, Nimu Ichi sat with a Demon and a God meditating. In her case she was borrowing her sister Shichimu's power of distance viewing and letting it spread between the two other Immortals with her.
Dosojin, God of Traveling and Herne the Demon of Obstacles.
The three of them were all focusing their efforts, including Nimu's telekinesis, on containing the rogue God's ability to escape.
Sitting together in a three-pointed circle heightening the amount of energy they had access to, he'd still eventually brute force through them, but by then it would be too late.
Then something burst out of the murk and dust, slamming into Balor viciously and kicking him out of the fight with Thor and the other warriors moving forward to join in on whittling down the Rogue Demon.
"What the hell was that?" Thor demanded.
Naiki pulled her arms together as she kneeled atop Balor and got ready to rip them apart for yamasenken focused with all the power she could put into it.
"Ah...Naiki Satomi, Demoness of Torrent, I call in a favor, take me your house, immediately," he said.
"Shut down Satomi's teleport!" one of the soldier's shouted across toward the three focusing on holding Balor.
But Naiki had already reached forward to grab Balor and both her and the rogue Demon vanished.
************
"Wha...what did I just do?" Naiki wondered shocked.
"You fulfilled a favor," Balor said, pushing off the girl as he looked around her house. "Now you're going to do me one more. I call in a favor, Demonic daughter of House DisPater, bring your sister to have a talk with me."
The look of horrified realization came over Naiki's face then as Nidhog started working to enforce the request, well within the limits of a category 3 favor.
Naiki stood up smoothly though she didn't want to and vanished to the last place she knew Eija had been at.
And then she started hunting.
**************
"This is Wraith," the Korean woman said. "We're about to reach the designated location, I've got both packages with me and Sgt Sagara should be entering the fight."
"I hope everyone is..." Eija started to say.
And then there was a burst of smoke briefly revealing Naiki before both Satomi sisters vanished.
"Damn it!" Wraith snapped. "Kaname where is she?"
"She's at her home," Kaname repeated. "With Balor?"
"This is Wraith, we have a situation," the Korean woman said.
"This is Captain Testarossa," Tessa's voice said. "We're handling it. I've got contact with Naiki again. Get Kaname here, Geisthexe needs everyone we can spare to shut these people down. We're holding Tokyo, but there aren't enough of us around the world, and the Americans have had rumblings of nuclear reaction from the Soviets."
***************
"You'll forgive me if I keep talking," Balor said. "My favor wouldn't allow me to just outright ask your sister to capture you for sacrifice, but as long as I talk to you, she has to make you listen and I can do what I want."
The Demon, looking significantly battered walked around the house as he spoke.
Tessa?! Naiki called out. What do I do?
This is WHY we wanted to seal you, idiot, Tessa snapped back, uncharacteristically angry for the moment. Keep him busy.
"Just talk," Naiki insisted. "I don't have to let you do anything else."
"Yes, little Demoness," Balor said. "But don't you see, you can't successfully kill me either. Not that you have a chance. You're...category 2 on your own? Something like that. Category 3 in the system. You see, Eija, trying to kill me would end the conversation, and she can't do that."
Eija looked up at the angry expression on Naiki's face and then over toward Balor, and frowned at him.
"You're eye is broken," she said. "I can see it leaking death into you every moment."
"I'm hoping to fix it," Balor said. "It seems like some of pishogue has turned rotten somehow, maybe a bit of death-charged mana will fix that."
If he has to keep talking to keep Naiki from fighting him, Kaname called out to Eija. Then maybe it works both ways.
"You know," Eija said hesitantly. "This works two ways, you can't really attack me or Naiki or else she can act and then we'll fight back."
"If you really think that will work," Balor said smiling darkly as he took down one of the swords and looked it over, "then you would have just stopped talking and attacked. Because as soon as you attack, then conversation is over and she can fight. But we both know you can't beat me."
"Speak for yourself," Naiki said. "As soon as this talk is over, your throat is mine."
"Your sister knows better, Demonling," Balor said chuckling.
"Then why do you bother keeping the conversation up?" Eija asked. "If you know you can beat us."
"Because it gives me time to prepare a few things so that when we do fight," he said. "I can take you alive and tear your sister's head off without damaging you."
***************
Kyoko and her parents huddled against the wall as another explosion rocked somewhere in the neighborhood. They jumped as a short brown haired girl with long braids came around the corner.
"Lusca!" Kyoko said.
"Is..Naiki here?" the Demoness asked. "I've been looking for her."
"Should't you be gone?" Kyoko asked. "You can just puff into smoke and pop."
Lusca shook her head.
"I was looking for Naiki and, well," she shrugged. "One of the jerks cursed me! I can't teleport right now! If I were fully grown or put to the right category in the system I could shrug it off! But right now the damn thing sticks!"
"This girl is a..." Kyoko's father asked.
"Hey, I'm Lusca Kraken Demoness of Crushing," Lusca said in a friendly tone.
"Okay," Kyoko said. "Do you know where we can..."
A roaring battle cry called out behind Lusca and she turned around, eyes wide.
"Oh this is so not funny," she said.
Leaning forward, Lusca stepped in front of the humans and concentrated. Massive tentacles rose up out of the ground and lashed out of every surface she could see as she turned taller and her brown braids stretched out into thick, reptilian tentacles which lashed out to grab the walls around either side of her, a thick webbing between them forming a thick wall protecting the people behind her.
She'd had thousands of years of boredom with the only thing to pass the time being variations in her ancestral form. Where as most Demons felt it was a weak, civilian's weapon at best, there weren't many who had so severely honed their ancestral bodies as the Kraken.
Save maybe Poseidon.
For the moment, however, she was still limited in power.
"Oh Kami! She's a monster!" Kyoko's mother gasped.
"Stay behind the monster!" Kyoko called out, moving up behind the wall Lusca was forming.
Ahead of them, the tentacles growing out of the landscape reached out to grab at the Demons charging them and toss them aside, but they were being hacked apart almost as fast as Lusca could summon them. She used them as walls, limbs, weapons, and each that was cut down by one of the Demons that were pushing toward her produced a wince from the monstrous form of Kyoko's friend.
"Call Naiki!" Kyoko shouted.
"But..." Lusca winced. "What if she's needed where she is?"
"Tell her to bring anybody on our side with her!" Kyoko said. "You made her come from across the Pacific Ocean last week, you can make her come across town!"
"But..."
And then one of the Demons started to push in so that Lusca had to reach out with her real arms and dislodge two of the tentacles forming the wall of webbing behind her to grab him.
"Naiki Satomi, Demoness of Torrent!" Lusca shouted. "Bring anybody who can help us with you and save us!"
"What's that supposed to do?" Kyoko's father asked.
************
"Tell Tessa I'm on my way," Ranma said. "Going quiet."
"Right, Ma'am," Yomiko said. "Right away.
And then the circle underneath Ranma flooded with power and she was gone.
*************
Naiki blinked.
Problem solved! she declared victoriously. "Sorry, this is over."
"Oh?" Balor said, pausing in the middle of drawing a circle.
"Bigger favor to fill," Naiki said. "Eija we're going into a fight."
"So's Balor," Eija noted.
And the two vanished in a puff of smoke.
"Damn it," Balor said. "I'll have to hunt them down the old fashioned way. But what were they talking about."
"She was talking about me," a woman's voice said.
Balor twisted about towards the sound of the voice and saw nothing.
"What?" he asked.
"Do you know what the first rule of dealing with a feng shih is?" the woman's voice asked again.
He whirled again and found nothing.
"No, what's the first rule of dealing with a feng shih," Balor asked.
The walls and floors and ceilings around Balor suddenly seemed suffused in power. Highly concentrated, efficiently channeled and focused power slipping in along the routes about the house in twisting in and upon itself in ever more intricate manners, knotting and reknotting.
And if he could have seen past the walls, he would have seen the knots and lines of networked and prepared power work outward into the whole of the old neighborhood and its mostly abandoned buildings. Places Ranma had easy access to and most no one disturbed.
A domain of several city blocks prepared over months, even longer going back before she had moved in, by one talented feng shih.
Just in case.
"Never, ever, ever," the woman's voice noted. "Piss off a feng shih on their home ground."
Balor turned about to see a woman with red-hair standing before him and all the power of the house was knotted and concentrated in her. Every path came through her and out of her.
He opened his deadly eye and she stepped aside into the corner of his other eye's vision such that power of his weapon washed out into the house and was quickly choked to death by the insistent flows of chi in the middle.
Ranma stepped forward smoothly and with terrible determination. Carrying the strands of power with her, her hand stabbed into the weakening flow of energy from Balor's weapon.
"Ahh, an opening," Ranma said, noting where the corrupted energy left it unstable.
White chi flooded into the flow of Balor's pishogue and split through like scissors through felt cloth. The recoil startled Balor back but seemed not to unsubtle the house or furnishings at all while Ranma stepped quickly forward again and, in a flash of wind passed Balor's face, moving too fast to see, but a burst of incredible pain followed as he felt his terrible weapon wrenched out of his face.
"Master of the Quiet Thief Way," Ranma said.
And then she tossed the artificial eye up into the air and slashed her arms out, two vacuum blades destroying it in midair.
"Master of the Loud Thief Way," Ranma said.
"Mortal!" Balor shouted. "You dare to affront me this way! I am more powerful than anything you have ever faced."
He charged forward, striking out against Ranma as he moved.
The woman shifted in size and shape and a dark haired man caught Balor's arm well before he could get into the optimal angle and then Ranma shifted forward bending that arm back with a the cracking and snapping sound of broken bones.
Roaring in pain, Balor stepped back and willed his arm to heal as he slashed out with an arch of fire.
Ranma crouched down, shifting back into female form such that the arch passed right over her harmlessly.
"Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken Kansei," she said lunging forward into a charge.
The female form shifted into male in mid flight keeping the same momentum and gaining mass as it struck into Balor's chest, feet first. Ranma let the Kansei go as he grabbed one of the Demon's flailing limbs and shifted back into female form for the agility to slam the Demon into one of her walls.
The wall should have been obliterated, but held out easily.
Balor turned around to see the woman spinning into a jumping roundhouse and shift into male form in the midst of it so that the heel of his foot slammed into Balor's head and sending him across the room, into the training area.
He came to his feet and tried to punch through his opponent again, blinking as Ranma melted into a woman again and the strike passed harmlessly out of the way.
"Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken!" Ranma shouted as thousands of blows struck each of the vital areas of anatomy he'd been told a Demon had.
"Wait, wait!" Balor shouted falling back from in front of the woman.
He scrambled away trying to put together the effort to teleport away, realizing he should have dealt with that immediately.
As he was working at pishogues and slowly trying to work his way through the knots of mana, chi and pishogue that nailed him down, Ranma stood straight and brought her hands together in a hand sign Balor had seen used by exorcists in the past.
"You..you're going to seal me, of course, you mealy cowardly hero types do so hate to do anything evil," Balor said. "Well, next time I see you, it will be outside this house, feng shih, and then you shall be smited for this little match."
Ranma arched an eyebrow and cocked her head to the side.
"This is my house," Ranma said. "Someone should have told you. All smiting privileges are mine."
She altered the sign of her hands.
"Hun Tun," she whispered darkly, and then pulled her hands apart.
Balor had no words to explain what happened next as Ranma's chi reached in and started undoing all the logical bonds and relationships of Balor's physical existence. A terrifying wash of spreading non-existence that spread between the seconds so that he knew both an eternity of pain and yet be dead in the very next breath.
And before even Balor's soul could escape, the waves of chi and power flooding the region came crashing in upon him, slashing into the pieces of his soul as the points came together and coalesced into a tiny pearl which dropped to the ground at Ranma's feet.
The red-head gasped in a sharp breath and shuddered bending at her knees and dropping to her knees.
Catching her breath, Ranma picked up the pearl and then moved over to her desk and started writing a message on a scroll of butterfly paper.
Around her, several puffs of smoke were erupting, showing that Moloch and his set were likewise bringing in surprised and terrified civilians.
***********
"Oh no," Eija said quietly, looking out to see several points of battle going on throughout the city. "There's more than just him."
An explosion rocked the city maybe five miles away and she was washed over with the sensation of people dying. Painfully and suddenly.
"This is it," Kaname said, coming up beside Eija.
"Come on," Sousuke said. "We have to find a way to get both of you out of here."
"I can help now!" Kaname protested.
"You're not trained for this," Eija said quietly wincing again. "I'm not really trained for this. Only Sousuke is."
"Correct," Sousuke said.
Eija winced again, and this time Kaname with her.
"Damn it!" Kaname said. "Will you two stop trying to shelter me? I've already helped kill one person! I really tried to make it two."
They stopped looked back toward Kaname, fire and wind raging in the background. Missiles streaking to and fro, pinpoint devices of destruction capable of targeting human sized objectives from miles away without causing much in the way of collateral damage to the surrounding area.
"Poseidon," Eija said.
"Kaname," Sousuke said. "I didn't..."
"Come on, soldier boy," Kaname snapped. "We've got to get started DOING something. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it! This is our home! I'm not just helpless anymore!"
And she dived to the ground as something exploded a mere hundred feet behind sending showers of shrapnel and fire around the scene. Sousuke immediately stepped forward, to put himself between the debris and the girls.
The debris stopped short of the three.
And then it became clear that what had been destroyed was an Amalgam Venom.
"Urzu-7, your job here is combat," a voice said and the three turned to look as a Korean woman stepped forward, depositing an expended RPG as she did so. Another woman moved in on her side, a younger Japanese woman.
"I'm the one responsible for Miss Chidori's and Miss Satomi's protection detail," the Korean woman said firmly.
"But I want to help," Kaname snapped stepping forward.
Wraith didn't hesitate and simply slapped her. Eija stepped forward, a shocked look on her face as she came to Kaname's side and Sousuke pushed forward to get in Wraith's face.
"You claim to be their protection?!" Sousuke demanded angrily.
"The lot of you need to stop being selfish and start being soldiers, now," Wraith said. "Sgt Sagara, you are a combat specialist in a war zone. Your task should be obvious, but you are wasting time escorting your girlfriends and that just puts them in danger longer."
Sousuke winced at the reminder.
"Eija Satomi," she said next. "You are a combat medic, yes, but emphasis on medic and one who is uniquely equipped to recover injured soldiers and keep massively injured people alive long enough to be saved paranaturally or scientifically. We need to take you to a medical facility where you can do some good, not playing hero out here."
And then she turned to Kaname.
"And you aren't trained for any of this," Wraith emphasized. "At all, you are clever, you are intelligent and you learn quickly. You are also a key element in this Silmaril network and someone who has invaded another network in the past. You're going to Geisthexe and helping her shut down the power on these lunatics at the source."
The three looked at each other; Kaname contrite and sheepish, Eija hanging her head and Sousuke still glaring angrily; as other people started to come into view behind Wraith, mostly human but with one Ainur woman who seemed vaguely familiar to Sousuke, possibly from a report somewhere.
It was likely the Ainur who'd stopped the debris, as probably he, Eija or Kaname should have been able to do if they'd thought of it.
"Sagara," Wraith said handing the glaring soldier a comm unit. "The Arbalest should be coming soon, Captain Testarossa will give you coordinates. Use it, Intelligence is taking charge of your girlfriends here. In all meanings of the word. We won't lose them."
"That was an Amalgam AS," Sousuke noted.
"Yes, it was," Wraith noted. "And there are probably more. Try to do your job and find and kill them. We'll do our job you do yours."
***************
"Well?" Hayes asked.
"We've got several reports of attacks across the globe," Major Davis said. "They're moving mostly into cities making it hard to target them without civilians in the line of fire. Balor is reported to have made himself known in Japan leading probably the largest group. Fighting has started there between our forces, Japan's and elements of Mithril and Psyche forces."
<HR>
The Demon walked boldly down the street, destroying everything he could see as he did, not bothering to determine whether there were humans in the midst of the lot or not.
He turned a corner, seeing a number of pathetic sheep fleeing the wolf. Weak Demons and Gods who never bothered to make much use of their powers, humans by the plenty. Worms and corrupted weaklings that needed to be culled for the health of whole. They'd been at some sort of evacuation point when he attacked and scattered.
Running from battle, the weaklings.
Then he blinked as he saw a rifle butt filling his vision.
The Demon was briefly amused by the sight and then it struck and snapped his head backward and sent him sprawling to his back in surprise as he looked up from his position to see a smirking Chinese woman shouldering the rifle as she glowed brightly white, green marks flaring on her face.
"Heya, Barney," she said with a snicker.
Shards of metal carrying the glowing force of a massive amount of chi ripped into the ground beside the Demon as he barely rolled out of the way and to his feet.
The red glow of pishogue enveloped him and he reached out to summon a linking cord of stone and shards to form a long whip of earth.
"I am Belial, fool," he said. "I don't know what you think you can accomplish with whatever artifact you've gathered, but no pathetic chi is a match for the force of pishogue Lord Ba..."
He was interrupted as Mao strafed across him, rolling her eyes. He had to dive forward to avoid the majority of the chi empowered bullets and come up close enough to lash out at Mao.
Grimacing, Mao reached out to catch the whip with her rifle, locking it in place.
In reaction, Belial charged forward, hand reaching back, summoning or creating a stone blade as he did so. Slashing downward, Mao held up an elbow into it's path. The stone sword shattered on her arm as if it were glass.
"What?" Belial asked before the butt of the rifle was again slammed into him, this time his abdomen.
"Oh come on, Barney, you're not even trying," Mao said as she started to bring down her rifle on top of his head. "Sing it with me now! I hit you," the rifle butt came down, "you hit me," her knee came up into his face "we're a brawling virtuosity."
Growling, Belial's fist burst upward into Mao's jaw knocking her across the street. Lashing out with his whip again, Mao grimmaced as it scored a line down her arm cutting through the battle aura as this time he extended his chi around it.
"You pathetic copy!" he shouted. "How the hell do you expect to beat me. Even if you're into the power of the 2nd category, I am far stronger than that now."
His battle aura loomed over his body as he took his reptilian ancestral form and slashed out again with his sword as he came in at her.
She rose a block with her rifle, being shifted aside several feet and almost knocked off balance.
"You've got the power to destroy the world," Mao said with effort. "And you're wasting it on fisticuffs?"
"If I kill you too quickly, worm," he said. "How will I enjoy it."
"Your call, Barney," Mao noted, twisting her rifle and firing a burst almost wildly, causing Belial to step back.
The chi enhanced bullets curved about as Mao continued to fire, following Belial and forcing him to dodge aside so that they'd destroy themselves against the terrain.
Then he was in her face again, powering through the block this time, wincing as his attack allowed some of her bullets to strike him through the battle aura. Still, Mao staggered as he smashed through her own hardened rifle and drove her painfully down to the ground.
"What made you think you could even think about taking me on, worm?" Belial demanded leaning over her and leering with sharpened teeth.
"In position, civilians clear, evac ready," a voice said in Mao's ear. "Do it."
"Sergant Major Melissa Mao," she said, struggling to her feet and boggling that the Demon would let her. "And to tell you a secret. I'm really not rated category 2. 8-2+6-26-13+12-1312..."
As the numbers moved on at high speed, swirling about her in various manipulated patterns, her aura flared out again and she thrust outward with enough power that where it slammed into Belial's aura, the visible light around them bent in odd, unpredictable ways.
Surprised, he crossed his arms and put all his own effort into countering her aura where it matched with his.
The stone earth around Mao rose up to stab out at her as an orbit of white glowing orbits circled her intercepting everything come into her frame and she focused forward, stepping against the force of Belial's aura, a brilliant white and green star pushing on a sea of red fire half again her size.
Around them, the Earth warped and shards of metal whipped about attacking each other and intercepting attacks, digging a crater about them and collapsing buildings.
"Just call me the Ainur of Lesson Learned!" Mao shouted over the din.
"You fool, I don't know where you're getting this much power, but you'll tire out before I will," he shouted, pushing more effort into his attack.
"Oh yeah, Barney!?" Mao shouted. "But when that happens, are you going to have enough?"
Growling into a roar, Belial pushed forward, pishogue slamming through Mao's defenses and a stone outcropping brute forcing its way through the orbits of shrapnel into her chest and sending her flying backward.
Breathing heavily his shoulders heaved as he moved back into his human form and strode forward to where Mao was trying to shake her head clear. Grabbing her by the throat, he lifted her up from the ground.
"Enough for what?" he asked. "What do you have left?"
A puff of smoke appeared behind Mao as a second demon appeared to wrap arms about her. The Ainur smirked at him and winked.
"Friends, Barney," she said before vanishing into smoke with the second Demon.
Belial blinked at that statement wondering what she could mean when a pair of cruise missiles slammed down on his position. He just barely raised the last fleeting amount of effort he could put his body too.
The explosion ripped outward from his position, encompassing a region twice again that which he and Mao together had destroyed and, as the smoke cleared, all that remained was a barely conscious form that tried to pull up to one knee only for a succession of small rockets to swarm his position.
A mile away, Mao saw the results of the explosion as she sat and caught her breath, letting the Demon and a human medic look her over.
"Good work, Sergeant Major," a tall man said as he dropped his hand down and looked over at her.
"Thanks, sir," she said. "By the way, is there a less math-heavy way to handle our network access?"
************
"Tokyo?" Ranma said, surprised. "Not here? What's in..."
"What is it," Natsume asked.
"Gods, there are Gods in Tokyo," Ranma said. "Refugees. Probably more than one death seer. At least one: Eija."
She smacked her forehead self-deprecatingly and started drawing a circle in the ground.
***************
A small force of Demons, trusted with less power than the rather blunt and poorly imaginative Belial found their own block in the form of two teenagers standing in the open with green marks on their faces.
"What's this?" one of the Demons said. "Who are you."
"We're stopping you here," Deimosu said stepping forward.
"6-4+2-42-31+11-3111...," Yonjuu was saying as the numbers swirled in the air around her. "...18195415515-181954+15515*=*28+17-10+8-1+8-9"
A stretch of chi moved between her and Deimosu then.
The Demons blinked, some recognizing the basic influence of numerology in the chant, but not the particular manipulations going on. And the numbers were rolling out so quickly, as if the girl were speaking in extreme fastforward.
I think it worked, I'm now seeing what you're seeing too, Yonjuu said.
Same here, Deimosu said. Watch my back.
Yonjuu stepped around to put her back against Deimosu's.
Then the Demon's charged forward.
The first two of the small squad leaped forward, wind lashing out with sickles invisible to the naked eye.
Deimosu saw the fractional disturbances in the dust as they struck in and returned with his own yamasenken sickles to slash through the demonic wind.
The Demons circled around to surround the two and come in at the girl at Deimosu's back. Instead they found bursts of yellow lightning striking down at them even as the girl kept pace with Deimosu, reciting a quick routine of numbers that merged together too fast to catch.
Yonjuu's mind was working furiously, focusing only on the access of powers and trying to remember all the practiced manipulations starting with the single digit number representing her and moving out to the component's of that reduced digit, the digits of her name added together, and then outward, working through the manipulations that reached the sisters she had that she knew.
Around her, using both her eyes and senses, Deimosu intercepted anything that came at either of them and added to her fire with lightning he needed no mental manipulations or borrowing for.
A knight defending his sorceress out of the old tales.
Though Yonjuu did not represent the classic image of the cool, confident sorceress or faithful priestess. She nervously and loudly chanting numbers after numbers and forcing herself to keep her eyes open not to rob Deimosu of some of his field of vision. At her side her fingers were snapping to give her mind something to focus around and focus her intentions through.
Nor did Deimosu, wielding lightning and fighting with no created weapon present the classic image of the night in shining armor even as he and Yonjuu moved through the lot of the 'small fry'. Though they still had vastly more power than they were used to.
"I've got all the powers of my sisters in mind and ready!" Yonjuu called out psyching herself up. "And there are a LOT of us."
Her point was made as waves of fire, lightning, disorienting sonics and more cascaded about her, forcing their opponents into place for Deimosu to easily finish them off one by one.
Hardly any of the Demons noticed that while they were fighting these two here, most of those falling weren't do to the highly flashy displays in front of them.
Yonjuu's senses were being shared across more than just her and Deimosu.
"Taking the shot," Kurz said calmly seconds before a Demon shuddered in confusion.
Most warrior type Demons and Gods had gone through processes similar to Naiki that made their skin nigh invulnerable to normal weaponry.
Of course, these days, there were sniper rifles designed to fire through light armored vehicles.
"Got a shot here," another Mithril sniper, not an Ainur, but still benefiting from Yonjuu's effect. "Taking it."
"I'm seeing reinforcements on the way, and the DaDanan is inbound," someone noted. "Get the wonder-kids out of the line of fire."
"Already going," one of a pair of Demons said, bursting into smoke to appear around Deimosu and Yonjuu and pull them out again.
Other Demons appeared around the various snipers and they vanished into smoke themselves.
And then the cruise missiles struck down.
************
Balor laughed as he faced a handful of Demons and Gods with some of these strange new immortals with the green marks. They were putting up a good fight, but he'd given himself more than double the normal allowed power of any one Demon.
He fancied he had even more power than Hild would have been allowed now.
He would have been disappointed.
There was a little fluctuation as the eye opened and power washed over the people in front of him. A Japanese soldier with Ainur marks shoved Bastet aside as he was torn to pieces by the wave of death. Bastet herself still caught the edge of it and landed in a pained heap, limping back behind cover.
He hadn't found what he was looking for yet.
"Keep moving!" Thor shouted angrily as he moved in on the side of Balor and slammed his hammer into the Demon's side, only for it to be deflected.
And then he barely dodged out of the way as Balor turned to give his eye a look at the God of Thunder. Behind Balor, Thor smashed his hammer down bringing across a roaring crackle of thunder that even shook the empowered Balor on his heels.
"I'm pulling Bastet out," a Demon said grabbing the cat Goddess and vanishing into a puff of smoke.
Hidden around the site, other Demons were filtering and quietly manipulating their own Realms in support of the Gods, Ainur and one or two on site Rakshasha Demon warriors.
Balor growled as the dust and ash and other things persisted in blocking his sight. He glanced aside again, this time feeling pain as his eye triggered and another pair of front line warriors were killed.
The heavy head of Mjolnir slammed him upside the head sending him reeling back and then again. He tried to vanish away into smoke and found, surprisingly that he couldn't.
About half a mile away, Nimu Ichi sat with a Demon and a God meditating. In her case she was borrowing her sister Shichimu's power of distance viewing and letting it spread between the two other Immortals with her.
Dosojin, God of Traveling and Herne the Demon of Obstacles.
The three of them were all focusing their efforts, including Nimu's telekinesis, on containing the rogue God's ability to escape.
Sitting together in a three-pointed circle heightening the amount of energy they had access to, he'd still eventually brute force through them, but by then it would be too late.
Then something burst out of the murk and dust, slamming into Balor viciously and kicking him out of the fight with Thor and the other warriors moving forward to join in on whittling down the Rogue Demon.
"What the hell was that?" Thor demanded.
Naiki pulled her arms together as she kneeled atop Balor and got ready to rip them apart for yamasenken focused with all the power she could put into it.
"Ah...Naiki Satomi, Demoness of Torrent, I call in a favor, take me your house, immediately," he said.
"Shut down Satomi's teleport!" one of the soldier's shouted across toward the three focusing on holding Balor.
But Naiki had already reached forward to grab Balor and both her and the rogue Demon vanished.
************
"Wha...what did I just do?" Naiki wondered shocked.
"You fulfilled a favor," Balor said, pushing off the girl as he looked around her house. "Now you're going to do me one more. I call in a favor, Demonic daughter of House DisPater, bring your sister to have a talk with me."
The look of horrified realization came over Naiki's face then as Nidhog started working to enforce the request, well within the limits of a category 3 favor.
Naiki stood up smoothly though she didn't want to and vanished to the last place she knew Eija had been at.
And then she started hunting.
**************
"This is Wraith," the Korean woman said. "We're about to reach the designated location, I've got both packages with me and Sgt Sagara should be entering the fight."
"I hope everyone is..." Eija started to say.
And then there was a burst of smoke briefly revealing Naiki before both Satomi sisters vanished.
"Damn it!" Wraith snapped. "Kaname where is she?"
"She's at her home," Kaname repeated. "With Balor?"
"This is Wraith, we have a situation," the Korean woman said.
"This is Captain Testarossa," Tessa's voice said. "We're handling it. I've got contact with Naiki again. Get Kaname here, Geisthexe needs everyone we can spare to shut these people down. We're holding Tokyo, but there aren't enough of us around the world, and the Americans have had rumblings of nuclear reaction from the Soviets."
***************
"You'll forgive me if I keep talking," Balor said. "My favor wouldn't allow me to just outright ask your sister to capture you for sacrifice, but as long as I talk to you, she has to make you listen and I can do what I want."
The Demon, looking significantly battered walked around the house as he spoke.
Tessa?! Naiki called out. What do I do?
This is WHY we wanted to seal you, idiot, Tessa snapped back, uncharacteristically angry for the moment. Keep him busy.
"Just talk," Naiki insisted. "I don't have to let you do anything else."
"Yes, little Demoness," Balor said. "But don't you see, you can't successfully kill me either. Not that you have a chance. You're...category 2 on your own? Something like that. Category 3 in the system. You see, Eija, trying to kill me would end the conversation, and she can't do that."
Eija looked up at the angry expression on Naiki's face and then over toward Balor, and frowned at him.
"You're eye is broken," she said. "I can see it leaking death into you every moment."
"I'm hoping to fix it," Balor said. "It seems like some of pishogue has turned rotten somehow, maybe a bit of death-charged mana will fix that."
If he has to keep talking to keep Naiki from fighting him, Kaname called out to Eija. Then maybe it works both ways.
"You know," Eija said hesitantly. "This works two ways, you can't really attack me or Naiki or else she can act and then we'll fight back."
"If you really think that will work," Balor said smiling darkly as he took down one of the swords and looked it over, "then you would have just stopped talking and attacked. Because as soon as you attack, then conversation is over and she can fight. But we both know you can't beat me."
"Speak for yourself," Naiki said. "As soon as this talk is over, your throat is mine."
"Your sister knows better, Demonling," Balor said chuckling.
"Then why do you bother keeping the conversation up?" Eija asked. "If you know you can beat us."
"Because it gives me time to prepare a few things so that when we do fight," he said. "I can take you alive and tear your sister's head off without damaging you."
***************
Kyoko and her parents huddled against the wall as another explosion rocked somewhere in the neighborhood. They jumped as a short brown haired girl with long braids came around the corner.
"Lusca!" Kyoko said.
"Is..Naiki here?" the Demoness asked. "I've been looking for her."
"Should't you be gone?" Kyoko asked. "You can just puff into smoke and pop."
Lusca shook her head.
"I was looking for Naiki and, well," she shrugged. "One of the jerks cursed me! I can't teleport right now! If I were fully grown or put to the right category in the system I could shrug it off! But right now the damn thing sticks!"
"This girl is a..." Kyoko's father asked.
"Hey, I'm Lusca Kraken Demoness of Crushing," Lusca said in a friendly tone.
"Okay," Kyoko said. "Do you know where we can..."
A roaring battle cry called out behind Lusca and she turned around, eyes wide.
"Oh this is so not funny," she said.
Leaning forward, Lusca stepped in front of the humans and concentrated. Massive tentacles rose up out of the ground and lashed out of every surface she could see as she turned taller and her brown braids stretched out into thick, reptilian tentacles which lashed out to grab the walls around either side of her, a thick webbing between them forming a thick wall protecting the people behind her.
She'd had thousands of years of boredom with the only thing to pass the time being variations in her ancestral form. Where as most Demons felt it was a weak, civilian's weapon at best, there weren't many who had so severely honed their ancestral bodies as the Kraken.
Save maybe Poseidon.
For the moment, however, she was still limited in power.
"Oh Kami! She's a monster!" Kyoko's mother gasped.
"Stay behind the monster!" Kyoko called out, moving up behind the wall Lusca was forming.
Ahead of them, the tentacles growing out of the landscape reached out to grab at the Demons charging them and toss them aside, but they were being hacked apart almost as fast as Lusca could summon them. She used them as walls, limbs, weapons, and each that was cut down by one of the Demons that were pushing toward her produced a wince from the monstrous form of Kyoko's friend.
"Call Naiki!" Kyoko shouted.
"But..." Lusca winced. "What if she's needed where she is?"
"Tell her to bring anybody on our side with her!" Kyoko said. "You made her come from across the Pacific Ocean last week, you can make her come across town!"
"But..."
And then one of the Demons started to push in so that Lusca had to reach out with her real arms and dislodge two of the tentacles forming the wall of webbing behind her to grab him.
"Naiki Satomi, Demoness of Torrent!" Lusca shouted. "Bring anybody who can help us with you and save us!"
"What's that supposed to do?" Kyoko's father asked.
************
"Tell Tessa I'm on my way," Ranma said. "Going quiet."
"Right, Ma'am," Yomiko said. "Right away.
And then the circle underneath Ranma flooded with power and she was gone.
*************
Naiki blinked.
Problem solved! she declared victoriously. "Sorry, this is over."
"Oh?" Balor said, pausing in the middle of drawing a circle.
"Bigger favor to fill," Naiki said. "Eija we're going into a fight."
"So's Balor," Eija noted.
And the two vanished in a puff of smoke.
"Damn it," Balor said. "I'll have to hunt them down the old fashioned way. But what were they talking about."
"She was talking about me," a woman's voice said.
Balor twisted about towards the sound of the voice and saw nothing.
"What?" he asked.
"Do you know what the first rule of dealing with a feng shih is?" the woman's voice asked again.
He whirled again and found nothing.
"No, what's the first rule of dealing with a feng shih," Balor asked.
The walls and floors and ceilings around Balor suddenly seemed suffused in power. Highly concentrated, efficiently channeled and focused power slipping in along the routes about the house in twisting in and upon itself in ever more intricate manners, knotting and reknotting.
And if he could have seen past the walls, he would have seen the knots and lines of networked and prepared power work outward into the whole of the old neighborhood and its mostly abandoned buildings. Places Ranma had easy access to and most no one disturbed.
A domain of several city blocks prepared over months, even longer going back before she had moved in, by one talented feng shih.
Just in case.
"Never, ever, ever," the woman's voice noted. "Piss off a feng shih on their home ground."
Balor turned about to see a woman with red-hair standing before him and all the power of the house was knotted and concentrated in her. Every path came through her and out of her.
He opened his deadly eye and she stepped aside into the corner of his other eye's vision such that power of his weapon washed out into the house and was quickly choked to death by the insistent flows of chi in the middle.
Ranma stepped forward smoothly and with terrible determination. Carrying the strands of power with her, her hand stabbed into the weakening flow of energy from Balor's weapon.
"Ahh, an opening," Ranma said, noting where the corrupted energy left it unstable.
White chi flooded into the flow of Balor's pishogue and split through like scissors through felt cloth. The recoil startled Balor back but seemed not to unsubtle the house or furnishings at all while Ranma stepped quickly forward again and, in a flash of wind passed Balor's face, moving too fast to see, but a burst of incredible pain followed as he felt his terrible weapon wrenched out of his face.
"Master of the Quiet Thief Way," Ranma said.
And then she tossed the artificial eye up into the air and slashed her arms out, two vacuum blades destroying it in midair.
"Master of the Loud Thief Way," Ranma said.
"Mortal!" Balor shouted. "You dare to affront me this way! I am more powerful than anything you have ever faced."
He charged forward, striking out against Ranma as he moved.
The woman shifted in size and shape and a dark haired man caught Balor's arm well before he could get into the optimal angle and then Ranma shifted forward bending that arm back with a the cracking and snapping sound of broken bones.
Roaring in pain, Balor stepped back and willed his arm to heal as he slashed out with an arch of fire.
Ranma crouched down, shifting back into female form such that the arch passed right over her harmlessly.
"Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken Kansei," she said lunging forward into a charge.
The female form shifted into male in mid flight keeping the same momentum and gaining mass as it struck into Balor's chest, feet first. Ranma let the Kansei go as he grabbed one of the Demon's flailing limbs and shifted back into female form for the agility to slam the Demon into one of her walls.
The wall should have been obliterated, but held out easily.
Balor turned around to see the woman spinning into a jumping roundhouse and shift into male form in the midst of it so that the heel of his foot slammed into Balor's head and sending him across the room, into the training area.
He came to his feet and tried to punch through his opponent again, blinking as Ranma melted into a woman again and the strike passed harmlessly out of the way.
"Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken!" Ranma shouted as thousands of blows struck each of the vital areas of anatomy he'd been told a Demon had.
"Wait, wait!" Balor shouted falling back from in front of the woman.
He scrambled away trying to put together the effort to teleport away, realizing he should have dealt with that immediately.
As he was working at pishogues and slowly trying to work his way through the knots of mana, chi and pishogue that nailed him down, Ranma stood straight and brought her hands together in a hand sign Balor had seen used by exorcists in the past.
"You..you're going to seal me, of course, you mealy cowardly hero types do so hate to do anything evil," Balor said. "Well, next time I see you, it will be outside this house, feng shih, and then you shall be smited for this little match."
Ranma arched an eyebrow and cocked her head to the side.
"This is my house," Ranma said. "Someone should have told you. All smiting privileges are mine."
She altered the sign of her hands.
"Hun Tun," she whispered darkly, and then pulled her hands apart.
Balor had no words to explain what happened next as Ranma's chi reached in and started undoing all the logical bonds and relationships of Balor's physical existence. A terrifying wash of spreading non-existence that spread between the seconds so that he knew both an eternity of pain and yet be dead in the very next breath.
And before even Balor's soul could escape, the waves of chi and power flooding the region came crashing in upon him, slashing into the pieces of his soul as the points came together and coalesced into a tiny pearl which dropped to the ground at Ranma's feet.
The red-head gasped in a sharp breath and shuddered bending at her knees and dropping to her knees.
Catching her breath, Ranma picked up the pearl and then moved over to her desk and started writing a message on a scroll of butterfly paper.