Bleach Fan Fiction / One Piece Fan Fiction / Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Dimensional Warriors: Assorted Stories ❯ Akane's Strength ( Chapter 4 )

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

Metudo a tall and imposing man. He arrived one week after we had begun holding out at this base. With him was a group of powerful people. Odin quickly folded power over to him, and he rapidly changed the way we did things.

Over the next few weeks, we switched from using the entrances at the base of the mountain to using tunnels Odin had constructed that reached far out into the surroundings. We had food suddenly, a garden indoors. Even though we quickly got tired of fruits and vegetables, it was better than starving. We had power as well, earlier one of the women that had woken up, Bulma, had figured out a way to hook up a series of lights so that the lower tunnels weren't luminescent at best. Now we had a more stable power source, and a new guy, Tech, who quickly replaced the old lights with something more powerful; giving the whole base a kind of sci-fi feel.

I couldn't help but feel something was wrong. Metudo managed to get everything working well so quickly; it felt like we went from barely surviving to having a chance. Then I was picked to go out on the field.

Ranma raised a fuss, but unfortunately he had gotten hit in the side pretty deep earlier. I was more than happy to go, my energy still needed work, but my physical strength had rapidly earned me a top spot in most training groups. The group structures were fairly typical, a powerhouse, a healer, a scout, and a face man. All of which had some way of fighting back. In my case I was going to be working with a girl who was close to my own age named Sakura. She had short pink hair, but from what I had seen she was probably stronger than I was. She would be our healer; Ichigo was our face man, and Yamcha was our scout.

To make things quick, and keep us safe, Yamcha offered to fly me up, so far we had only heard of a few encounters with anti-air forces. So far those of us who could fly always took priority as scouts.

It was exhilarating, feeling the wind whip across my face as we sped high above the ground. Ichigo and Sakura were keeping an easy pace below us. Ranma had mentioned seeing a city last time he was out, and we were heading out to go find it.

It wasn't long before we spotted what Metudo called Solarus, those empty armored creatures that had chased me. Their numbers were sizable, but they had been growing since we had been making these attacks. Ichigo closed distance first. There was a shockwave and I could see bits of metal flying everywhere. They had trained their guns on him, but none of their shots landed. Then Sakura came in, slamming into the ground, the surrounding earth shattered; sending everything on it flying. Yamcha shifted me fully onto his back and began spraying a volley of blasts into the enemy mass.

From what I had heard this wasn't uncommon. The Solarus had virtually no reflexes, move incredibly slowly when compared to most of our fighters, and relied solely on their guns. Once we had figured that out, we effectively made them a non-issue. It was still impressive to see in action, it seemed none of the creatures could handle us. As I thought this I suddenly felt a sharp pain across my arm. I was falling.

Looking up I saw a large winged creature barrel into Yamcha, the both of them landing not far away. I started to get up, and heard the sick sound of a bullet piercing flesh. Ichigo was standing over me, blood running down his head. He looked back at me, flicking the stunted bullet off his forehead. It had left a deep dent, and the wound was bleeding freely, but Ichigo didn't seem to care. At the same time I saw the same creature preparing to attack from Ichigo's blind spot.

I got up, using all the energy and anger I could muster. It had already begun barreling towards us, and couldn't change its course. I felt time slow down as it approached, I swung my fist, aiming for it's deformed head. I felt my hand hit flesh, then bone, then air. The remains of the creature flew backwards faster than it had charged at us. Where it's head had been was a burnt mass. I realized my hand felt hot to the touch.

Not wasting a chance I drew on that same emotion, and took aim at a Solarus that was sneaking out of the nearby underbrush. Fire leapt from my hand, hitting the thing square in the chest. It fell backwards and shattered. I was elated, but I suppressed that emotion and charged in. Within minutes I was dishing out as much damage as Sakura had been. My body seemed to be charged with an unlimited source of power. Once I had closed in to the remaining Solarus, my martial arts provided more than enough fighting strength to punch, grab, tear, and throw them around. The creatures were slow, even to me; and even at a range I managed to successfully recreate the fireball I had thrown earlier a few times.

By the time Sakura had cleaned up Ichigo and Yamcha I was done with the leftovers; and feeling very proud.

I went out a few more times that week. It became more of a routine, and I seemed to keep getting stronger.

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“Ranma!” He was hiding here somewhere. I looked around the empty storage room, he had apparently run into the girl's bath, again. I don't really care what his excuse was, he still needed to be punished. Then I spotted him crawling along the ceiling, trying to hide. “What are you?” I yelled, throwing the broom I had grabbed while chasing him. He fell, and I grabbed him by his hair.

“Ow hey! Akane!”

“Now, come on. There's a group heading out, and unless you want me to hurt you you're going with it.” I said, dragging him along. As far as I was concerned he was punished, but the other girls could be a little less forgiving. I felt him sigh and allow himself to be dragged.

To be frank I hadn't been surprised the first time he had crashed in on the bath. It wasn't uncommon before for him to come barging in, or falling through the roof, or popping out of the floor. Sometimes he was obviously chasing or fighting someone. Actually it was most of the time. Still my reaction was to pound him and leave him.

Unfortunately, he barged in this time and was met by an array of energy blasts. The women put him in the hospital. Now I was supposedly his 'caretaker' to keep that from happening. I looked down at him, a long red streak ran across his face where the broom had hit him. He was pouting.

“So who were you chasing this time?”

“The old freak.”

“Uh-huh. And where was he?”

“He kicked me through those doors. He's probably in a pot or barrel somewhere.” I thought for a moment, and wondered if Happosai knew the level of danger he was in. He hadn't been caught yet, unlike the monk, or the cook. But I knew sooner or later he'd slip up. Ranma suddenly got up.

“Hey Akane, I heard we got these stone things that generate a lot of power recently.” I had heard something similar.

“What about them?”

“Apparently they're building something to locate the rest, sounds like they're going after 'em.”

“Okay.” He turned to me.

“I know you've been going out.” His face was so serious. “Be careful.” We had arrived at the delegation room, where people were sent out.

“Ah Ranma, recovered from your accident already?” I looked in, the board consisted of three people, an elderly man sat on the right, his long white beard melding with his white overcoat. He was Yamamoto, apparently leader of the Shinigami. On the left was a beautiful woman with long blond hair. At the center of her forehead was a small green mark. She was Tsunade, leader of a shinobi village. At the center was a young man, holding a pacifier in his mouth. He wore deep blue robes, and normally looked like a small child. This was Koenma. Tsunade had been  the one that had busted all of Ranma's ribs when he crashed into the baths.

“Yeah, I jump back fast.”

“Good, we need you to run with the next group. We're low on scouts.” Yamamoto said calmly.

“And Akane's here too. We actually could use you, can you do basic first aid?” Koenma was giving me a stern look. I nodded slowly, I had patched up Ranma often enough and a lot of his wounds tended to be bad. “Excellent, we're sending your team fairly far and we're shot on medics.” No surprise there, very few people here had magical healing, or even regular healing capabilities. Even fewer were fit for the field. In fact I was pretty sure there were only three; Orihime, Sakura, and Chopper.

“You'll need this.” Tsunade said, handing me a kit. “And you better hold onto this.” She handed me a small device, it had a green radar screen on it and was beeping slowly. “The rest of your team will fill you in. Good luck.”

“Remember, you're going as the medic, try not to get into the fighting.” Yamamoto said. I nodded and went to tunnel five as instructed.

It didn't take me long to figure out why I was going as a medic, I was actually running back-up to Chopper, we had a man named Urahara and a demon named Mukuro were filling “scout” duty. And we had four powerhouses: Sesshoumaru, Gohan, Kakashi, and Knuckles. We were going deep into enemy territory after what Knuckles referred to as a Chaos Emerald. I was carrying what we hoped was the matching Dragon Ball. A golden orb with five rusted stars floating in the center.

The tunnels got our party pretty close, but it wasn't long before we encountered the main army.

The gem was supposedly resting in a cave system, among some buried ruins. A few miles off we began having some skirmishes with Solarus. Our group, however, easily blew through them. Then we began running into machines and renegade demons mixed in. The bots were fairly easy to crack open, and the demons had a bit more of a range. It wasn't until we reached the cave entrance that we actually began having trouble.

Solarus were swarming all over the place, sensor bots were placed all over as well, turret guns, demons, and despite all of that a massive pressure pulsed from the cave.

“Okay, here's the plan.” Gohan said, sketching into the dirt. “Kakashi and Sesshoumaru will take out the sensors quietly, then I will destroy the turrets before we go and begin a general melee with the remainder.” Alarms began sounding near the cave; he sighed.

Urahara was already in the center of the clearing, his blade dancing in the sunlight. Nothing could get close. Gohan launched after the turrets, creating a series of explosions along the cliff face. Mukuro landed near Urahara, the two were just watching the cave entrance; their combined energy ripping apart anything that dared get too close. Finally Kakashi disabled the last alarm and silence fell over the field.

The ground shook, power surged from the cave. I had heard Metudo describe a creature made of shadow, formless and powerful. What surged out of that cave he hadn't done justice to. Darkness poured out of the cave like a faucet, crushing the surrounding cliff, and reaching up and outwards. It's shadow eventually drenching all of us in darkness.

“Akane!” I heard my name called from behind. “We'll handle this, go into the cave and get the emerald!” I nodded, not sure who had said it, and bolted for the cracked opening.

I felt rather than saw the others push away the creature's attack as it tried to follow me, then I was inside the pitch black of the cave.

If I had thought I was alone in the darkness before, that thought was pushed from my mind the second a demon leapt out of the consuming darkness. I was fortunate that my energy was fire based and I had used a fallen plank to create a torch; otherwise I wouldn't have seen it coming.

I backed against a wall, feeling more than seeing the presence of other assailants. I heard gears shift and threw a blast in the direction of the sound. The cave lit up with the explosion, I counted eight demons and two robots before the light faded.

I pushed away from the wall, holding the torch like a sword. I took a deep breath, preparing.

“Come on you cowards!” I yelled into the darkness, inspiring the creatures to strike.

The first demon had the misfortune of getting a mouthful of my torch. It's head lit up like a candle, and it ran into the darkness screaming horribly. I spotted another opening, and sunk my fist into the creature's gut, launching it into the far wall. With that step forward, I was being surrounded, so I swiped my torch around, catching another demon on fire before getting a clear shot at one of the bots. It exploded, lighting up the cave again. I saw more had appeared, but I also saw a tunnel going further in.

I pressed my attack, setting fire to anything that came too close as I pushed into the tunnel. Fortunately I hadn't run into Solarus yet, in these close quarters it would be hard to dodge their shots. As I fought backwards, I felt the small orb I had been given vibrate. I was close, so I took it out of my pocket, holding it out behind me as I fended off my attackers.

It slipped from my hand suddenly, but a second later a blinding light filled the cave. It eventually became a deep blue color, I reached out and grabbed the blue stone with five purple stars in the center.

Energy immediately filled my body, my skin felt like it was on fire. It was so much I felt like I could burst.

All at once the cave, the enemies, and the ground vanished. My eyes refocused on the crater that I was at the center of. I had no idea what had happened, all I knew was I was suddenly exhausted.

“Akane!” Chopper had rushed to the edge.

“I have it! Here!” I yelled back, tossing him the stone. He rushed down and picked me up easily.

“Get out of here!” Urahara said, skidding to a stop near us. His shoulder was bleeding freely. The creature still towered in the sky. “I'll hold it here.” He said.

“You can't! Not with that wound!” Chopper yelled back. He just grinned down at us.

“Go pick up Sesshoumaru and treat him.” I was handed off to Gohan, who was breathing heavily.

“We're heading out.” He said, flying down low enough to pick up Kakashi. I saw Knuckles below us dragging Chopper and Sesshoumaru away.

“They'll die.” I said, struggling a little. I felt a hand on my backside, then darkness.
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