Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Gold Digger Fan Fiction ❯ Golden Oportunity ❯ Chapter 05 ( Chapter 5 )

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

Notes - Finally an update for this story, it's only been three months ^_^;; Well for once I have a bit of good news, because of the length of time I have lots and lots done. I'll save a bit for the end and explain a bit more on that little subject.



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Golden Opportunity
Chapter 05
Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(c) 2002
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Seer's Hamlet, as mentioned before, was located in a kind of sub-space pocket maintained by magic so that the grassy plane around it wouldn't be destroyed by the cities very existence and had been like that for a very long time. It was a city like any other and had a governing body that made decisions for everyone, being wizards, these people tended to be quite knowledgeable about things. When people broke the laws of Seer's Hamlet they tended to be judged by a fair standard, but due to past experience they had been force to adopt certain ways to punish criminal behavior.

They didn't like it most of the time, but criminals didn't respond to well to magical curses and spells to keep them in line. There was always an evil wizard around that could remove or alter the punishment over time, this had forced the city to make certain compromises when dealing with law breakers. There were all types of criminals, from the small time thief to the professional assassin and the city had to deal with all types. Those criminals who proved to be impossible to change they tended to exile with magic that would kill them if they entered the area again, though this was rarely done. There were only five people on record that had ever received this kind of punishment and they had never been heard from again.

The next level of criminal was the repeat offender, those that just wouldn't change their way of life even if it killed them. Most thieves fell into this category and this was why a special punishment had been created just for them and as wizards with access to lots of magic this had proven to be pretty effective, though when they were let go most thieves just went back to stealing eventually. The rulers of Seer's Hamlet hated to let these people back into the city, but luckily their idea of punishment was effective enough to keep crime down to a minimum and when the criminals were let go at the end of their sentence they usually left the area.

What was done to them? They were sent to the Mines in the mountains to the west, where they would spend eighteen to twenty hours a day pounding on walls of rock for little to no results. They were treated fairly, but with little or nor freedom to do anything but pound on the wall or they got the lash. This was where our latest victim of the law was being sent and would most likely learn his lesson, thieves were not to be tolerated and most of them were very slippery characters that couldn't be trusted to do much of anything. Sometimes they had interesting uses though and that was why one of them would sometimes be broken out of the mines and put to other uses.

**********

The shadow moved through the tunnels deep in the prison mine with as much care as possible, he had been doing things like this for years and had more practice than anyone else alive. It didn't matter that what he was doing was criminal in nature and would have gotten him placed in a place like this if he ever did get caught. He did it for the thrill and a chance to snub his nose at the established authority, they had ruined his fun more times than he could count and this was the prefect revenge. He grinned as he flowed right by the guard that was standing in the dark passage, the man was taking a perverse pleasure in using his whip on the prisoners that were busy using picks to pound on the walls for little or no progress.

The stone of this mountain had originally been worked by a race of dwarves for several hundred years, but they had the special abilities to work the stone properly. Humans on the other hand could pound on the walls with any manner of tools for months on end and barely make any progress, maybe a foot of stone could be removed. The mines had been used as punishment for several generations, though not the worst place one could go in Jade, they were renown for being hard and demanding work. Few criminals ever returned here though, the guards were cruel, the work back breaking, and being chained to thirty to forty other men who had committed any number of crimes was more dangerous than the mines themselves.

This was the environment that the Shadow like being was moving through and it could do anything it wanted while here. He had entered this particular mine several times before to find certain people, to get information, and to make sure some of the 'guests' didn't leave the place alive. The shadow smiled evilly as it went down to the third level through a special series of hidden tunnels that had been created by the dwarves long before the humans took over the place. He moved through several doors, up and down a series of stair cases and across a long unused bridge that spanned a black pit that the guards used to dump bodies, it was a unique system of justice in his mind and something the guards were more deserving of this hell than half the prisoners themselves.

He took several minutes to cross the huge bridge to make sure there weren't any guards on the other end, they tended to use this place sporadically and used traps instead of guards to protect it. That wasn't something that bothered him in the least, he knew this place better than all the guards combined. Once across the bridge and moving past several of the floor traps he moved into a nearly hidden hallway, this one was used to hold new prisoners for several weeks before they were brought out and placed on the work gangs and literally whipped into shape for the duration of their sentence.

These cells were some of the worst in the prison, the pit cells where newbies were shown just what they had to look forward to if they didn't work with the guards. Those that resisted were brought back down here and left to rot, a death sentence in everyway unless one knew how to survive the place. His target had been here for two days according to the paperwork he'd seen and would be in cell four with several other men. Counting off the doors he quickly reached the fourth one and slipped through the open door. Unlike most of the tunnels he had gone down so far, there were no torches in here to provide light and shadows for him to blend into, this room was pitch black and devoid of the one thing he was looking for.

His eyes shifted into the low light spectrum and instantly told him the pit was had about three feet of water at the bottom and was completely devoid of life. His target wasn't here, this was a first, the guards didn't usually change their habits unless something weird had happened. He had to find the target as soon as possible or things would be bad, he'd already spent about a fourth of his payment before he even began this trip. Cursing under his breath he moved out of the room and started checking the other rooms, these, like the others, were all empty and full of water.

This wasn't good, he knelt down in a shadow for a second to think, then shrugged and moved out of the hallway, the needed to move up one level and see if the target had been placed early. The water suggested that they might have been forced to stop using them for the low risk prisoners like they usually did and placed them right into the gangs. If so, things would be a little harder, but nothing major since this place was nearly escape proof if one didn't have outside help. He raced back across the bridge and up to the next level, the instant he came across the first work gang he grinned, his target was banging a hammer against the wall in a bored way, trying to pass the time.

The Shadow moved forward with purposeful steps, the guards didn't what hit them and his target...fainted.

What a spineless wimp.

**********

One little twist of the wrench and Gina was positive that she would have the Hydroelectric Plant ready for it's first set of testing trials. It was a delicate machine and had to be set up and placed in just such a way to get the most efficient use from flow of the water itself. She moved slowly, silently wishing she had remembered to bring along that Sonic Wrench she had developed a year or so ago after watching a Doctor Who episode. The principle had been elementary, but she had made a much better version that that little dinky thing the Doctor used. There were so many more uses a larger version was capable of doing. She had at least ten of the things back in her lab, but rarely used them out in the field unless she had some specific reason to do so.

Gina's finished tightening the last little bit and sighed, she so liked it when a plan came together. Then she blinked as something at the back of her mind tried to warn her of something...BBBBBBBBBBOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM...and the ground she was kneeling on started to shake, tossing her to the ground as the shock wave moved through the area and kicked up a ton of dust and nearly damaged the Plant. This wasn't a good thing in her opinion and there was only two possible people such a thing could have done such a thing. Gina climbed to her feet and dusted herself off as she looked around.

Off on the other side of the small river she could see a column of smoke rising above the trees. Right where Brianna has set up a small area to work on some of her other projects since at the moment she wasn't needed for work on the Plant. She had helped to move rock and other things out of the way with her explosives, cutting through stone like a hot knife through butter while the bots cleared away the rubble. Until they got the Plant up and running Brianna didn't have much of anything to do and had grown 'bored'.

This was a bad thing, when she got bored she started working on her special projects, things like her Brianna nitro. It was absolutely stable and had ten times the kick of normal nitro, she used the stuff in her Peebo's for when the little AI's exploded. From the looks of things, she had been working on the things again and that spelled trouble. They were already wearing their welcome out with the Amazons and she wanted to be done in as soon as possible. Unfortunately their Hydroelectric plant was being stubborn, it didn't want to go into place like it should and she couldn't find any mistakes in their calculations that pointed to a mistake.

"What did she do now?" Penny asked as she walked up, she had rag in her hand and was using it to wipe her face clean. It looked like she had been to close to some mud, she was covered in the stuff.

"What in the world happened to you?"

"I was installing those safety devices up by the water turbines when the explosion went off, fell off right into the mud below." Penny snapped with an irritated glare at the smoke in the distance.

Gina just blinked and adjusted her glasses. "Oh...um, I'm not sure what happened with Brianna. Her explosion knocked me off my feet too. Luckily I had just finished tightening the large bolts on the Plant, it didn't budge an inch."

"Well that was a stroke of luck, I don't want to have to come back here anytime soon so we need to keep your sister away from the Plant or occupied with something else."

"She's bored and went off to 'play', you know how she is."

"Why isn't she helping you with this?" Penny said and waved at all the stuff that had yet to be installed.

Gina flushed and looked away. "When she got bored she started to try and 'improve' on some of the equipment here and ended up turning a simple piece into something else. I'm not sure what she did, but the emergency power supply went from being gas powered to fission operated and increased the efficiency of the thing by 2000 percent and thousand times more dangerous."

Penny winced. "Didn't she create those Peebes the last time she was bored?"

The name Peebes sent a chill down Gina's back and she shuddered, instantly trying to get the memories of those things out of her head. They were one of Brianna's nastier creations, her idea of a replacement for the bullet, about the size of a large marble, they had limited intelligence and were programmed to take out all the 'bad' guys by slamming into them and exploding. This was good idea on paper, but went bad when put into practice and had caused more harm than any other item Brianna had ever created. Brianna had designed the guns they fired out of to send them out in groups of 2 to 10 and allowed them to go where they wanted after that. The problem was that they when they went after a 'bad' guy they tended to be a bit subjective, they blew up muggers, criminals, jay walkers, shop lifters, people who cussed in public, littered, even Brianna herself for firing them off in the first place and using the to blow up a large section of Seer's Hamlet once. After that they went after themselves, it hadn't been pretty.

"Yeah, they're the reason Brianna didn't go to Jade with mom. She isn't welcome in certain sections of town because of something that her Peebes did the last time she was there."

"You don't think she's working on them again do you?" Penny asked nervously, she had heard about what Brianna had done to Gina's lab one time.

"I would hope not, I made her get rid of all her prototypes and plans a couple of days after she got back from Jade. As far as I know she has been working on her Peebos and couple of other things lately."

"Well grab a fire extinguisher and lets get over there, the Amazons seem to be avoiding the area so we may be the only ones that would help your sister if she is in trouble."

Gina shrugged, she had seen her sister blow herself up so many times that it was almost common place now. Then made their way across the small stream and into the Brianna's camp, at first they couldn't see much, but eventually the wind blew most of the smoke out of the way and they were able to see most of the damage. Brianna was sitting at her worktable covered in black soot with smoke wafting off her hair. She smiled as they came into the area and waved them over.

"Brianna, what in the world happened?!" Penny yelled out as she ran over to the girl.

"Brianna, are you alright?" Gina asked in concern.

She nodded and waved them off. "Yeah I'm fine, I've had worse than this before."

"SO WHAT HAPPENED?!" Gina yelled.

"I was working on my Peebos, adjusting their programming and adding in some special stuff."

"What kind of improvements?" Gina asked nervously.

"Increased intelligence, tactics, and a higher range explosive that can be preset to explode in a certain way." Brianna said with a strange glint in her eye. "I also designed a new and improved version of my Peebochu and built a prototype Peebochu for the fun of it so that I could start and work the bugs out of it."

"Peebochu? Isn't that the little Pikachu robot that Rook Killed?"

"Yeah, I still owe him a little more payback for doing that." Brianna growled.

"Um...Bri, look around you. Your little explosion has destroyed a good portion of this area and I don't see any sign of your little robot." Gina said as she watched Penny move about the area putting out some of the fires before they got out of hand.

"AHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!" Brianna screamed as she jumped up and started digging through some of scorched remains.

"Um...Brianna?" Gina asked in confusion as her sister sat up holding a slightly melted mini-tire.

"Thank God it's not his!" Brianna yelled and went back to searching the decimated remains of her lab are.

"What's with her Gina?" Penny asked, she had always been a little hesitant around Gina's other sister.

"BWHAHAHAHAHAH HEHEHAHAHAHAHAH!!" Brianna cackled as she stood up. "He's not here, that means he was blown out of the area." She declared and dove for her still intact equipment and flipped a switch. It beeped and came to life showing a holographic screen of the area, but this was full of static because of the damage.

Gina moved over to look at the screen she noticed that it was a tracking device, but the damage to the machine was enough to make it nearly impossible to pinpoint it's location, only that it was about a mile away and from where they were right now and moving. "Looks like it's south of us."

"That's in an area we were told to stay away from isn't it?" Penny said.

"Yeah, it is. We'll need to talk to one of the Elders to go and retrieve the little robot before it caused some kind of problem." Gina said and turned to her sister. "Let's go Brianna..."

There was an empty spot where Brianna had been standing and a dust trail heading to the south.

"Jinkies!"

"Lets hurry and get to one of the Elders." Penny said.

"Okay."

**********

"Peebo! Pe-Peebo ebo..." The lightning striped Peebochu chanted as it made its way though the tall crass.

Behind it were about four preadolescent girls carrying an assortment of weapons as they all stalked through the grass. The girls were all from the Amazon village and in the early stages of their training. They had all been in the field practicing stealth and going through some basic conditioning when they had spotted the strange creature making its way through the grass. They had never seen anything like it before and when one had taken off to see what it was, the others had followed. Currently they were in awe that such a thing could even exist, never in their lives had they come across such a thing.

"What is it?" Poa asked as she peaked out from the bushes. She was about eight, long brown hair, wearing a pantsuit, and carrying a bow that she was supposed to be practicing. Beside her were Lima, Choola, and Vespa, they were all wearing similar clothing and weapons. About the only difference was their hair colors, being Amazons they followed the tradition of having weird hair colors. Lima had blue green hair that hung down her back, Choola had short blonde hair, and Vespa had purple hair in the same style as Lima. They had been training together for the last three years and were always competing against each other in everything they did.

"It looks like a rat of some kind." Lima said.

"A yellow Rat?" Choola asked in dismay. "But it's so CUTE!!"

"I think it's a Pikachu." Vespa gasped out, her eyes huge and misty.

"What's a Pikachu?"

"One of those creatures from that Anime I saw a few weeks back."

"Since when can you see something like that?!" Lima snapped, it wasn't like electricity was an easy thing to come by in their village. Only a few of the Elders had small gas powered generators and even those were only used as a last resort.

"At my cousin's place, I saw it when I went to the big city with Elder Lo-sion."

Choola and Lima gasped, they remembered when Vespa had come back from that trip and been warned by the Elders not to discuss her trip with anyone. Of course that didn't stop her from telling her two best friends about it and all that she had seen. It was partly because of that trip that they had decided to go a little more modern with the electric plant those Outsiders were setting up for them. Vespa moved out of the bushes a little to take a closer look and saw the jagged, lightning shaped tail and Knew she was right.

"It is a Pikachu." She gasped in awe.

"Pe Bo ch-chu..." Peebo-chu chanted as it explored this new and strange place, there were so many different things to look at, to scan and touch. It Peebochu'd happily and continued on it's merry way, silently wondering if it would meet up with some strange and dangerous animal and have to take 'special' measures to get rid of it. Its eyes rattled in anticipation, this place just kept getting better and better. Then it spotted something in the distance and wheeled forward at fast speed. "Peebo Chu!!" It yelled as it left the girls in the dust of it's back wash.

"Whoa!!" The girls said and took off after it.

As it got closer, Peebochu started to detect something at the extreme ranges of its sensors. It slowed down to take a better look, it wasn't worried about the four girls behind it either, and they weren't doing anything to make it think they were a threat. No, this was something different and it rolled silently into the grass around it and went into stealth mode. Brianna is a mechanical genius if nothing else and her stealth mode was just that, Peebochu vanished from sight before the four girls eyes. It was the most amazing thing they had ever seen and it was just enough to distract them from watching their environment like they had been taught.

Three large men stepped out of the tall grasses around them and started chuckling, the girls spun around and gasped. The men were easily recognizable as being Musk animal warrior of the Monkey class, they had more hair on their bodies and were a little taller than most men, had longer than normal arms and the classic monkey like features. A scientist would have called them Cro-Magnon men of some kind and tired to capture them for a few experiments and declared them the missing piece they had always been searching for. The Musk were almost the exact opposite of the Amazons and used Jusenkyo as a way to dunk criminals and animals into the drowned girl springs and created wives so that they could have more children with the genetic abilities of the animals they used.

There were tiger tribes, monkey tribes, wolf, and a whole host of others that were only rumored to exist. The leader of the Musk, Prince Herb was in fact descended from a Ki Dragon that had been defeated and splashed with some of the drowned girl water to make it into a wife and pass it's blood onto the next generation of Musk. Over the years this blood had become deluded a little, but Prince Herb was still a force to be feared when he used his full power. His men were not quite as tough, but they did have the abilities of the animals that gave birth to them coupled with human intelligence.

The girls didn't care a thing about any of this, all they knew was that their parents had told them about these creatures. They were brutes and slavers that wanted to dominate everyone and everything they could, kidnapping was not beneath them and all of them had been told to run from any Musk warriors they might have encountered. The monkey men quickly surrounded them and start grinning evilly.

"Girls." One of them said as he started to drool a little.

"MUSK!!?"

"Aji, cut it out, they are to young to be used like that!" The apparent leader said.

"But Fennel, their GIRLS!!" Aji begged.

"Fennel is right, their too young for breeding, knock them and we'll wait for them to get a little older and use them when their ready." Dill said with a lecherous smirk a Poa.

She gulped and looked at her friends, they had to get away, these were fully trained Musk men and no matter what they sounded like they were known to be very stubborn and dangerous when they set their minds on something. Poa controlled her fear and pulled the bow off her back, the rest followed suit and gained a little confidence from holding their weapons. "P-plan 3d."

"Gotcha." The others said and crouched down like they were at a bat in a game of baseball.

"Just what do you think you're going to do, snap your puny weapons on my chest?" Dill said with a grin and crouched down. The other two just laughed and nodded as they decided to play with their new toys.

Poa swung her bow around and used it like a golf club, sending it right between Dill's legs and right into the one piece of anatomy that all Amazons loved to hate. It hit with a resounding crack, Poa's bow snapped in half and she lost her balance as Dill screamed in pain and fell to the ground. An instant later she heard Fennel and Aji scream out and go down around them, the girls screamed and took off at a full sprint for the village. A few seconds behind them the Peebochu rolled out of the high grass chanting to it's self, "Sneak, sneak, sneak..." as it was ringed in surges of electricity and an angry look in it's strangely intelligent eyes.

The Musk warriors rolled to their feet and growled at the girls as they ran, they started to run after them with noticeable bow legged steps. Then one of them noticed the little metal animal coming up behind them and stopped to look it over, wondering if it had found something for lunch once they caught the small females. Fennel, Dill, and Aji were caught completely by surprise when a surge of electricity fired off the thing's body and used them as a target. They screamed in pain as thousands of volts of electricity ran through them for several seconds, then the little yellow thing stopped and seemed to give a satisfied smirk. All three of the Musk crashed to the ground in a heap, groaning in pain and smoldering.

"That'll teach you to pick on little girls who are just trying to have a little fun." The Peebochu snapped as sit spun around and flicked its tail.

WOOSH!!

Wind washed over the area as Brianna came to a stop in front of the little Peebochu and glared down on it. "Peebochu?"

"Hi Brianna, just following orders." The little Peebochu said as it seemed to try and stand at attention, a strange feet for a little machine.

Brianna flicks her hair and looks over at the stunned and smoldering Musk warriors, she also notes the small sized weapons on the grounds. "Good work Peebochu, you shouldn't be in this area though, it's off limits to us."

"That wasn't in my programming."

"You were cut off from the download you were going through when that explosion happened."

"Of course, then I need to finish that before I'm complete."

Brianna smiled, personality was one of the final things that her creations had downloaded into her little friends and artificially intelligent explosives and multi use creations. She bent down to pick up Peebochu, she tapped a spot on the button of it and a small cover to reveal a series of touch pad buttons. With a couple of taps she turned him off and pulled out a Peebochu's 'brain', a special three-inch stick design that she had developed. As she had though it was slightly burnt at one end, luckily her design was able to take major amounts of punishment to accomplish its goal.

She wasn't about to let what happened to the first Peebochu happen again and had designed in several back up systems. With a burst of speed she ran out of the area, leaving a giant cloud of dust behind her. A few seconds later Cologne hopped out of the trees with several of the Amazon warriors and the four little girls, they quickly tied up the Musk and got the ready for their trip to the disposal site. She looked off in the direction that the outsider had gone and shook her head.

"What should we do about the Outsider Elder?" Asked one of the girls.

Cologne considered it for several seconds, they had stumbled across the tail end of the battle just as the little machine took out three fully trained and mature Musk warriors as if it was nothing. "For now I'm not going to do anything, she broke one law and managed to save some of our children by doing so."

"SHE BROKE THE LAW ELDER COLOGNE." Yelled one of the older girls.

Cologne turned and slowly glared at the girl, it took a few seconds but she managed to remember who she was. "Li sion, you are one little step away from being punished by the council, do you understand me." Cologne said in a deadly low voice, she would not let her authority be questioned by an old fashioned idiot.

"The law must be maintained! If you don't I...Uhg!!" Lo sion yelled as Cologne's staff hit her in the forehead and sent her flying back.

"That is enough!!" Cologne yelled. "We must alter our ways or OUR CULTURE IS DEAD!!!! How hard is that to understand, it has been over a century and a half since we last adapted to the current times and we are dieing because of idiots like you who can not seem to understand that little fact!"

Lo sion rolled to her feet and glared at Cologne. "I understand fine, but we must not forget the old ways over night."

"We won't just the stupid and idiotic ones, I've always wondered what the ancient Amazons were smoking when they decided that everyone but them had to be killed or enslaved for the littlest reasons." Cologne snapped as she hit Lo sion again, this time sending her into dreamland for several hours. "Perfume!"

"Elder?"

"Drag her home, she is to be held there until the strangers leave."

"Of course Elder." Perfume said with an evil grin, she grabbed Lo sion by the foot and dragged her off. She decided that taking the scenic rout through the rockier terrain would be better for all involved, Lo sion wasn't liked very many anyway and a few bumps and bruises would do her a world of good.

**********

The cliff above Brod's tower went up nearly eighty feet, not that high really, but nothing to take chances with either. If you were normal that is, Ranma was anything but a normal human being, he had spent too much time learning some of the best kept secrets in the world. He was a powerful martial artist and well on his way to being the best there ever was, it had been a dream of his since he first started his training. He had been here at Brod's tower for close to a month now, a month in hell, a month of intense training and pain beyond imagination. There had been a lot of thought going into his final training in the Neko-ken, a lot of what if's and other questions to make sure he knew what he was getting into.

It should have taken a week at the most, but then just as he was getting things set in his mind something would change. They had locked him in the room and teleported a small kitten in, it was really cute and playful. Ranma remembered screaming in terror for a full ten minutes before he blacked out, all his meditation had had seemed meaningless in the face of a real cat. Oh he could control the fear to a small degree, but the had eventually come to the conclusion that he was just learning to disassociate werecats as humans. The real thing still held total control over his mind, the fear was always there just below the surface, waiting for the right time for the conditioned response to be activated. He hadn't been training with real cats and this mix up was the end result, the fear hadn't been as blunted as it should have been, according to the book things should have been lessoned after using the techniques for a few weeks, he still wasn't sure where he had screwed up. The next several days had been exactly the same, he would wake up and come out of the Neko-ken and be allowed to eat some food and get cleaned up, then they would send in another cat and would start screaming again. He had never been so humiliated in all his life, he had felt pathetic and useless the whole time.

Ranma shuddered a little and felt like a pathetic wuss, it had taken him ten days of this 'training' before he was able to finally gain a tiny amount of control over his fear. Within a matter of days, once this had happened, he had managed to fight off the fear and stay out of the Neko-ken for a full hour as he focused on the meditation techniques and controlling his intense fear. By the time the hour was up he had been shaking like a leaf for ten minutes before his mind blanked out and he plunged into the Neko-ken. After he had managed this he had been given twelve hours to recover instead of the normal two that the book suggested before they started all over again, eventually he was able to move on to bigger cats. Control had come to him a little quicker once that first major block had been passed, within another ten days he had managed to move on to the next level of the training and begin training in the kata of the Neko-ken itself. it took him three days to figure out how to manifest his Ki claws and willingly regress himself down into a cat like state and still keep control. He only fell off the edge once and entered the Neko-ken without his mental control and even that hadn't been anything like normal, he remembered the twenty minutes that he was under. It had allowed him to experiment and find a way to pull himself out of that horrid state so it had been well worth it in the end, though Dr. Diggers had chewed him out for his lack of control during the next break.

It was at that point that Ranma had thought himself completely cured and asked to be let out, but Master Julia had told him that he had several days worth of training to go. His claws had been his next lesson, he found out the hard way that they tended to manifest themselves if he wasn't paying attention, he'd nearly send a claw through the magically enhanced door that Brod had set up for the training. Now that he had mastered himself with the normal house cats, the type that he had been trained with, he had to move on to the other types. The medium and big cats that he would encouter every now and then, like bobcats and lions. That had caught Ranma by surprise, then he remembered looking into the room where the cats had been caged and seeing all the different sizes of cats just waiting to be set free. Next had come the bobcat, a Panther, lion, tiger and others that he had never heard of. The fear had returned in full force, nearly catching him by surprise, but had mastered it through sheer strength of will. He had no intentions of ever being seen as weak because of the Neko-ken again.

The whole process had been sheer hell and Ranma never wanted to go through anything like that again, but knew that he would have to put the pain behind him and move on, who knew what the future would bring. When they finally let him out of the room Ranma had been changed in a number of ways, this didn't include the fact that he was stronger and faster because he now unconsciously tapped into the Neko-ken and had become even more deadly than he ever was, but changed mentally. Dr. Diggers had noticed it first, he had been quiet and withdrawn, not speaking to anyone unless they talked to him first. Then a few hours later he was back to his normal self, but when no one was looking at him or paying attention he blended into the background and kept to himself. Julia had noticed too and been worried about him, she had tried to talk to him, but he just hadn't wanted to talk about it.

Now Ranma was up here on top of this cliff over looking the whole valley, he had passed his training and grown in strength and couldn't figure out why he didn't really care. There was a part of him that wanted to run and jump like had always wanted did, but there was another part of him that didn't and it was full of emotions that he didn't understand. He could feel something there and it was very strong, all he had to do was reach out and touch it with his mind and he was filled with this power that was unlike anything he had ever felt before. The Neko-ken had been the first step to achieving this level of power, he knew that, but this felt like it had always been there and he had just been unaware of it until now. He sat there brooding over this for several minutes as he watched the sun set, his mind again wandering through all the things he had experienced over the last month. One of the biggest changes was that he wasn't thinking along the same paths as he had before, he felt more grown up in some ways. That was a change that he hadn't expected, his mind seemed to have finally caught up to the corrections Gina had done to him when she fixed him up with those machines of hers. Yet there was a part of him that wanted to rebel against it, it was like he had grown up to fast and he didn't want to just yet.

He held up his hand and made a fist, with a flash of light four claws made of Ki seemed to extend from his hand, right from the valley between each knuckle, just like a cat's claws. They extended out close to a foot and glowed brightly and even at this low power he could tell that they were cutting through the light breeze that was blowing across the top of the cliff. He reached out to the edge of the stone by his leg and sliced off a sliver of stone like a hot knife through warm butter. It was one thing to know he could do something like this, but to actually see it was absolutely amazing. Even after ten years on the road training with literally hundreds of Martial Arts Masters, he had never encountered something like this. As he sat there Ranma could also tell that the Ki flows inside his body had changed to accommodate his increased abilities, where before he'd been forced to almost grapple with his his Ki, it now seemed to flow and move at his mental command as easily as thought.

It was almost too easy to access now, he could feel it flowing through him almost demanding to be let loose and it frightened him just like the first time his old man had tossed him off a roof to teach him how to take a fall. In all his years Ranma had never had this kind of trouble controlling his Ki, it had always been something he had to force to his will. This wasn't even emotion based Ki either, but pure Ki that was raging within him as easily as his own blood. He let the claws go and watched as they faded away, then held his hand out, pointing at a target about forty feet down the cliff, and fired out a small Ki blast. It was silver in color and flew out of his hand like a cannon shot to obliterate the small rock out cropping he had been looking at. Dust rained down on the ground below like fine mist, Ranma had never dreamed of being able to do anything like this before.

This kind of power was what made good people turn bad, he didn't want to fall into that trap like some of the other people he had met. He had never met anyone with this kind of strength, for some reason he felt like Goku in the Dragon Ball manga back home. He had so much power and still managed to keep it in check and stay the good guy when he had been tempted so many times before. Training and discipline were the only things that came to mind as he sat there, they were the only way to control himself now. He would have to be on his guard constantly, even when he was asleep or he might hurt someone. That was the one thing didn't want to do, it would compromise his honor and the vow he had taken to protect the weak and innocent.

Ranma's head came up and he looked at a spot just behind him, he could feel something at the very edge of his senses. Then for a blink of an eye that spot wavered and Dr. Diggers appeared, Ranma felt the energy of the spell waft off as the man walked forward. As usual Dr. Diggers was in his mage suit and it was making him blend in with the shadows given off the stones and trees all round them as the sun hovered just above the horizon. Ranma blinked at him and turned back to face the sun again, he hadn't been in much of a talkative mood lately, though he knew the others were worried for him. He supposed it was about time he talked to someone about what was going on his mind.

"Hello Ranma." Dr. Diggers said. He looked out over the valley as he looked at what Ranma was, it had been a long time since he had seen its like.

"Hi Dr. Diggers, what brings you up here?"

"Julia was worried about you and asked me to see if you were alright."

"I'm just up her trying too come to terms with what happened."

"Ah, well you did very well Ranma. That training should have been done within a month after you completed the Neko-ken the first time, it would have taken a week or so to complete and you would have been fine. It has been about nine years since that happened Ranma, you had built up a lot of resistance to the fear and it took more time to break through it."

Ranma nodded, they had explained that.

"I'm actually surprised this didn't take even longer than it did."

"You're kidding, for me to take a month to learn something like this is pathetic. I should have had it down by the end of the second week at the latest, I've never taken this long to learn something." Ranma complained.

"Maybe, but you had a lot of built up mental walls to break through Ranma, they were a lot harder to get through than what you went through when you first got your curse. There is also a second reason that you had problems..."

"Oh?" Ranma asked as he turned to look at the older man.

"Yes, I meant to talk to you about it once you finished your training, that's why I'm here now. It has to do with your curse."

"Everything seems to be because of the damned curse!"

"Actually your curse doesn't exist anymore, not as it was when you first got it anyway..."

"Doesn't exist?! Let me get some cold water and I'll show you doesn't exist!"

"That is just the curse's effect Ranma, it's magic has become a part of you, so much so that if you were to ever lose it, you would die."

"What?!"

Dr. Diggers sighed and nodded. "The curse has altered itself in some way and changed you as well."

Ranma sighed, maybe that explained his suddenly increased power and ease that he could channel his Ki. "So what do I have to deal with now?" He asked sarcastically.

"Actually you have gained something you didn't have before, the ability to use magic."

Now Ranma was gapping at Dr. Diggers.

"The magic merged with your soul and turned you into a being that can tap into the magic available in the environment around you. That is usually done by casting a special spell on a prospective student and letting them slowly learn how, you had it thrust on you without warning."

"I can hear a problem in there."

"Correct, I have to teach you some basics of magic before you really begin to use it unconsciously and end up hurting someone by accident."

"It's just one thing after another isn't it?" Ranma snapped, he was at his wits end with all this crap, he stood up and started pacing back and forth and wondered what the next thing would be. Would his cursed form suddenly step out of him and go off to whore herself for a little cash, he though bitterly. "How much more of this am I going to have to put up with before the next problem shows up?"

"The last few weeks have been hard on all of us Ranma and I understand what you're going through to some degree, you're not the first person to have this kind of thing happen to them. We call those like you a 'Wild Talent' and it's best to move carefully so that more mistakes are not made. I just wanted to let you know what you still had to do and to prepare for it, you can take a couple of weeks off to calm down and relax. Your training in magic will take several months, there isn't a major hurry, but it has to be done eventually before you start to surge to much."

"I understand, sorry for snapping at you like that." Ranma said with a sigh, relived that he didn't have to rush right into the next thing. A break from the norm would be nice, he couldn't remember the last time he had actually had time to himself, the old man had certainly frowned on him ever getting time to think for himself that was for sure.

"Don't worry about it, you just need a little rest after going through that kind of experience."

Ranma laughed bitterly. "Don't let my pop hear you, he says one must always be prepared for an attack, anytime and anywhere. He would never let me rest after something like this, just move on to the next insanely dangerous exercise. I always wondered if he thought that the time I spent unconscious was a rest stop, I used to relax while we were on the road and between training grounds, so this will be a good chance to unwind a little. A rare opportunity really."

"Good, good, come on down when you're ready and we'll get dinner ready."

"Alright." Ranma said and waved as Dr. Diggers vanished in the same way he had appeared. He was seeing magic, at least he thought he was and that explained why he could tell when Dr. Digger's was using magic. To Ranma it was just one more headache to put up with, but if it had to be done to protect others, even from himself, it would be worth it. Ranma grinned, when the old man found out all that he had learned on this trip he was going to have a coronary.

"Bwhahahahahahah!!" It was a bit bitter, but it made him feel a lot better than he had been.

With the sun finally down Ranma went back to brooding as he sat there an considered what he had just been told. Magic, who would have thought he would ever have to learn how to throw spells around? Just so he wouldn't accidentally hurt someone, no he had better control than that but he felt it would be a good place to start on continuing his training. He lay back and looked up at the darkening sky, the unfamiliar stars had bothered him when he first arrived here, but he didn't really care about them now, they had just become one more thing for him to learn about on his endless quest to be the best.

The Diggers were so strange at times, they were smart and well trained in many fields, Gina had introduced him to the world of science and taught him some things that were just so incredible to him. Then there was Brianna and her weapons, she just loved to tinker with those things and to test them out on her friends, Ranma had been at ground zero of a paint bomb more than once in the last few months. Dr. Diggers had expanded his mind by teaching him about life, showing him two different worlds, and would soon start showing him how to cast magic. He would be learning a whole new art now, it would have to be added to his martial arts school, bit that would come later, or on the fly if it was an emergency. Master Julia had increased his skills to levels that were just plain amazing and she wasn't close to stopping yet, by the time he got back to his father, the old man would be way to easy to beat. Ranma grinned, he had wanted to get a bit of payback on the old man for as long as he could remember.

Everyone he met lately seemed to expand his knowledge in one area or another, even the Edge Guard. Onoli had taken the time to show him some of his own personal calming techniques while he had been trapped in the room, Sheila had also stopped by to help him maintain control and even braved the room on several occasions to give him a hand when it looked like he was in trouble. So many changes to his life had occurred in such a short time, he wasn't the same Ranma Saotome that had stumbled upon Shangri-la just a few weeks before, he wondered if he was even close to the same person anymore. He had been forced to put up with so much bullshit in his life, it was a welcome change of pace, but he knew it wouldn't last. He knew that from experience, his life had been too hectic to believe other wise, when it came to describing him the word 'normal' was just a strange foreign sound.

Ranma came out of his thoughts as his danger sense went off, it wasn't an instant death kind of thing, but a someone is watching you feeling. At first he though it might be Dr. Diggers again, but after a few seconds he ruled that out, the Ki didn't feel right. It was laced with fear and determination so it had to be someone or something that was being forced to do an act against their will or wasn't used to being in danger. He let out a calm breath and entered the first stages of the Neko-ken and let the increased senses of the technique wash over him. His eye sight became incredibly pronounced and he could smell things that would have amazed a normal human.

He crouched down on in a cat like stance, started sniffing the air, and to reach out and feel the unknown Ki. He couldn't locate it's exact location, but he could tell when it suddenly turned panicky and was suddenly laced with a more pronounced fear, then as quickly as it appeared it vanished completely. At first he didn't know what was going on exactly, but as he moved about the area he quickly realized that the enemy was no where to be found. Even after sending his Ki out for a more powerful look at his surroundings revealed next to nothing out of the ordinary except for some animals hiding in the bushes around him, so he relaxed slightly and let go of the Neko-ken enhanced senses. He didn't want to stay like that for long if he had any choice in the matter, it was just so tempting to use it at all times. It would be some time before he got used to using the technique as part of his main style, but now that he had it mastered he would be able to use it whenever he wanted.

He had control down, now he had to work with it until he had it down so absolutely perfect that he could expand upon it at will, there wasn't a thing that would stop him either. The Neko-ken had been his greatest weakness, it had plagued him since he was a little kid and now that it was gone he would sooner die than go back to that way of life. Ranma sighed and walked back over to the edge of the cliff and looked out over the small valley, the sun was almost completely down now, he had to get back to the tower before it went down all the way over the horizon. With a shrug he flared his Ki and stepped off the edge with a smirk and plummeted down the face, he grinned when he kicked out and bounced off the stone face, rolled into a ball, and flipped the last few meters and landed on the soft grass that surrounded the tower with barely a sound.

Someone started clapping and Ranma turned to see Master Julia standing beside a tree, she was blending into the darkness around her almost completely. Ranma reached out with his Ki to see her better in the low light and realized that he couldn't detect her Ki signature, if he closed his eyes it would have been as if she wasn't there at all. He had never met anyone with that kind of control before and he been taught how to look for the tiniest signs of an aura by a master thief. "Very good Ranma, that was an excellent test of your skills."

"Thanks."

"How are you feeling?"

"About normal, though ever since I gained control of the Neko-Ken I've been feeling a little weird."

Julia nodded as she walked over to him and sat down. "Sit down Ranma."

Ranma shrugged and sat down.

"What do you plan to do now that this is over with?"

"I don't know really, I still have about four months to go before our deal is over with."

"Your skills are amazing Ranma, you do know that don't you?" Julia raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Of course. I'm the best!" Ranma said with a smirk.

"Ranma!"

"Yeah, yeah, tone down the arrogance. You know, until I met you no one ever complained about me like this."

"That's because it allowed you to be used and manipulated quite easily Ranma, that is how I tricked you into that fight after all." Julia smirked.

"I know, but you've helped me out quite a bit really. I don't think I would've been as good as I am without the type of training you put me through. Oh yeah, Dr. Diggers was telling me that I have to learn some magic too, did you know about that?."

"Oh yeah." Julia said with a frown, she didn't like the idea one bit but trusted Theo to do the right thing "What do you think of that?"

"Nothing really, it's just more training. It's all I've ever done, as far back as I can remember I've done nothing but train and train and train until I dropped in my tracks. Then pops would kick me until he was sure I wasn't faking and go eat all the food rations before I woke up." Ranma shrugged and smiled as if it hadn't bothered him a bit, then jumped a little when a pair of large torches flared up on either side of the main gate to Brod's Lookout.

"I was thinking of allowing you take a few days off from training, what do you say to that?"

Ranma blinked. "Huh?"

"A day off to play around and have some fun."

"You mean one of those mystical 'day's off' that I've heard about, there is no such thing as rest for a martial artist, pops says so, all I'm allowed is a night of sleep and even then I would have to be ready for an attack at any time."

This time Julia blinked, there was that strange man's rules again. She wondered how many bad habits the man had instilled in his son over the years, Ranma was arrogant to the point of being a total jerk, mean, said things out of the blue that were grounds for a good beating, and now this? Was there nothing that the man did right, he was already walking across deadly ground for the nearly half dozen cases of child abuse she could pin on the man, Ranma had the scars to prove it several times over. She shook her head, Ranma was the only reason she hadn't turned him in that first day and that was because she had been asked not to by her new student.

"Ranma, all martial artists take a break every now and then, even me."

"Well whatever, I wouldn't know what to do if I wasn't training. Pop's wants everything to be training, if I was to go to the movies I had to get in without being caught by using stealth. Dinner always consisted of a battle over food, a habit you made me break by the way, and even then pops usually got most of it before I got it to my mouth. I don't know what I would do with nothing like that to deal with, sit around? Watch the plants grow?" Ranma asked.

Julia shook her head, mentally Ranma was quicker than he had been before and he had the knowledge from all those books in his head now, but at times he was still as dense as a board, it was as if all her work had been a complete waste of time. "Okay then, well tomorrow well will be taking a break, but I think I'll include some games for you to play and a couple of techniques for you to study so you can pass the time I don't want you to be bored."

Ranma smiled. "Sure..."

"Ranma?"

Ranma turned to see Sheila standing by the front door to the Lookout, one of the torches giving her quite a back light effect. She was wearing her usual clothes and had a back pack with her, even from here Ranma could smell some of the food that was in it. "Hi Sheila, how's things going back in town?"

"Pretty good, were wearing down all the bandits in the area, they've been backing off a little. Are you alright?"

"Sure, why?"

"You were still going through that horrid training the last time I was here and I had to go in that room to help you out." Sheila said quietly, a bit of apprehension in her voice. She could still see Ranma's soulless eyes as he gazed at her in confusion.

With a shrug Ranma stood up and stretched a little, he didn't see Sheila blush a little and step into a nearby shadow to hid it from Ranma. "It was just training, nothing to worry about."

"NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT?!!" Sheila screamed out. "You were running around on all fours and scratching an ear with your foot!!"

"Huh?"

"There are times when Ranma goes into the Neko-ken that he has no recollection of the time he spent in it Sheila. That was the reason he went though the training in the first place, so that he could gain conscious control over it, he shouldn't be doing things like that anymore." Julia said.

"Oh that." Ranma said a bit nervously. "I've got it under control now, that should never happen again."

"Thank God!" She sighed in relief. "Well let's go inside, I brought some snacks for everyone."

"Cool!!" Ranma yelled and hopped over to Sheila and opened the door for her. "You coming Master Julia?"

"No thanks Ranma, I'll stay out here a few more minutes."

"If you're sure..."

"Of course Ranma."

"Alright, have fun." Ranma said with a wink and led Sheila inside where several of the Edge Guard and Brod were sitting around a fire drinking and going over some of the lookout's library.

Julia turned and looked out into the darkness. "Well?"

Dr. Diggers appeared beside his wife. "We have to be careful, he is going to be stubborn if I mess this up."

"He looks at it as if it was normal martial arts training, there shouldn't be to much a problem."

"That strange aura of his keeps throwing me off, even my friends are a bit stumped about what to do with him."

"They have no clue?" Julia asked with a frown.

"Every time I scan him his aura changes, I've done so three times this week and got an aura that could tap Water based powers, then Air, then something even I've never seen before. Dee'em is stumped, Nali has no clue what to look for, and Bugee hasn't had a chance to look him over yet. Even Brod is unsure what to make of the boy and he usually has a good grasp of the stranger situations."

"But just teaching him the basics won't hurt will it?"

"Most anyone with the tiniest amount of magic skill can master the basics, but they do so by dedicating themselves to one class of magic."

Julia looked into the sky for several minutes before the replied, then an idea occurred to her. "Well, if he always has a different aura teach him to use all the different types."

"That's impossible, the human body couldn't take the different kinds of stresses required to handle the varying types of power, it has to adjust to one or two types or it would be burned out almost instantly." Dr. Diggers said.

"...how many of your magic students could have handled what Ranma went though this month and survived, dear?"

"...."

"Hmmm...?"

"None of them."

"Is there a class of magic that you haven't considered yet, something that hasn't been around for some time?"

"A different class?"

"Yeah, I know of the normal types like Aura, Illusionist, Summoner, and a few other common types that are around now, is there something that was abandoned or forgotten about long ago?"

"If it was forgotten about, how do you expect me to know anything about it?" Theo said with a grin.

Julia punched his arm. "You know what I mean!"

Dr. Diggers just continued to grin as he rubbed his arm. "Well me and Nali were discussing the possibility of the Shi Hanna the night before we left to come here."

"Shi Hanna...doesn't that translate into 'Death Blossom'?"

"Yeah, but it's a legend that very few people know about."

"Oh?"

"It's so old that it's been all but forgotten over the last few millennia, back during the Great Rebellion in fact."

"That was back when the 'Games' were going on..." Julia gasped, as an Armsmaster this was something she should have known about. They always had to be on guard in case some of the old legends came back to haunt them, there was a responsibility that came with the title.

Dr. Diggers nodded. "Before the First Armsmaster showed up, it was believed that the Shi Hanna would appear to free the people, even the Gladiator Slaves of the time, but after everyone was freed by the First Armsmaster, the legend was abandoned in favor of a more popular one."

"Is this guy supposed to do something else other than free the people?"

"I have no idea, the legends says that the Shi Hanna is supposed to be incredibly powerful, both good and evil, able to whatever he wants without any kind of ramifications. It's one of those typical god like power entities that will come down and kill the enemy and free those that have been enslaved." Dr. Diggers said with a shrug.

"That almost sounds like a something to look forward to and you think there is a chance that Ranma could be this 'Shi Hanna' character?"

"I certainly hope not!"

"Um...why?"

"The old histories are a bit vague, but they mention things about ultimate power and other hair raising items. I don't want anyone running around with that kind of power on his hands, it would be a living nightmare waiting to go off. The Shade's had us enslaved for eon's with their power, what would this guy do if he ever truly existed, we could quickly find ourselves in the same position again."

**********

"So what did you find out?" The armor clad knight growled as the small fox ran into the stone lined room and stopped in front of the throne, it transformed into humanoid shape. That for some unknown reason known to most censers, acquired a complete set of clothes even though it was a naked fox when it came in.

Blain the Fox shrugged. "He is incredibly sensitive Master Rook, he spotted me almost the instant I got close enough to see him."

"This is the same guy that put you in jail, why didn't you attack him? I got you out of that punishment mine for reason you know."

"Yes sir, but I have to do this carefully. It doesn't help that he is surrounded by several of the Edge Guard, an Armsmaster, and a powerful Aura Mage almost constantly." Blain said nervously, he wished he was still in the mines, at least he only had to worry about cave ins while he was there. These people hadn't given him a choice in the matter when they came for him, come or die, he had picked the safest rout available to him, he'd fainted and been dragged out of the mine against his will.

"I don't want to hear excuses Blain, we freed you for a reason and you will do as you're told or I will make your life a living hell."

"I-I'll do as you've asked, but I have to find a way to get close to him without the others detecting me. That Lookout is full of werecats that can smell any kind of creature at a hundred yards."

"You are supposed to be an exceptional thief, getting close to a target should be second nature to you!"

"I'm an exceptional pick pocket sir, not a second story man who goes into other people's houses for stuff."

The armor clad man rubbed the forehead of his helmet as if he had a headache and leaned back in his chair. "HANZO!!!"

All was quiet for several seconds, then they heard one of the other members of Rook's new gang. "FUCK OFF ROOK!! You rusty piece of SHIT, I'm still trying to recover from the pounding that boy gave me!" Hanza yelled as she staggered into the room and stood there in her bandages. "and for the last time, my name is HANZA!! H.A.N.Z.A. get it right for once!!"

"As fun as teaching you the true joy's of being a woman would be, I need you to help our newest recruit here."

Hanza growled in fury and thought about killing Rook once more. "He's a thief, have him go and steal something, I have to take a little while to heal up."

"It's been a month, you're fine." Rook snapped.

"I'm still dealing with the internal damage."

"So what, be a 'man' and deal with it."

"mummble...mummble.." Hanza grumbled.

"What was that?" Rook inquired.

"I said I'm dealing with a really bad series of cramps this month because of the internal damage I received in my fight." Hanza snapped, she blushed a little.

Rook fell out of his chair. "I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU'RE EXPERIENCING THIS MONTH!! Go and give Blair here a hand keeping his presence from being detected, you can even get revenge on the guy that beat you up since Blair is going to be watching over him for a little while."

The irate boy turned girl turned to glare at the cowering werefox for a few seconds before turning to Rook. "Fine, it'll take a few days though. I can't function properly when I'm like this for any length of time."

"Fine, fine, just so long as he can get the information I need within the next few months." Rook said with a sigh and made some shooing motions with his gauntlets. "Just get out of here."

Hanza grabbed Blair and dragged him out of the room. "Come on hair ball, we can begin your training in the wonderful world of sneakery at the very least."

"Um...yes ma'am." Blair stuttered out.

Hanza growled.

"Be careful 'ma'am', fox boy might be getting some romantic notions!!" Rook called out just as they left the room.

"FUCK YOU ROOK!!!"

"BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!"

Hanza pulled Blair down the hall for a ways before letting go of him, but made sure he stayed with her until they reached the one of the lower levels of Rook's castle, he had reacquired it after he regained his freedom. Rook being an undead monster with more brains than the rest of them, he always had a couple dozen undead of one kind or another around to give him a hand, but also liked to keep a few live ones around for special missions. Hanza was also indebted to him for her current freedom, even if she did hate his undead guts.

"So what is the tin can asking you to do?" Hanza asked. "And why exactly do I need to teach a thief how not to be detected?"

"Don't you know why I'm here?" Blair asked in surprise.

"Rook seems to think us humans are able to read minds and know what he's thinking, the arrogant jerk, he never explains his orders."

"Oh, well he wants me to attack this guy that put me in a mine prison. Rook had me broken out so that I could get my revenge."

"What was this guys name?"

"Ranma something."

Hanza stopped walking and turned to glare at Blair, she raised her hand a little over her head. "About this tall, black hair, look's like an idiot and good at fighting?"

"Yeah, that sounds like him."

Blair coughed as the wind was knocked out of him a few seconds later, the evil looking girl had firm grip on the front of his shirt as she held him against the wall. "Where is he right now?" She hissed.

"B-Brod's Lookout..." Blair gasped out.

"What is he doing there?"

"I'm not sure, some kind of training that is supposed to be extremely dangerous."

"Give me details, Foxman." Hanza said and thumped him against the wall a couple of times.

"Mrs. Hanza I'm a p-pick pocket, not a spy, I wasn't a-able to get all that close before I was n-noticed." Blair muttered, he silently wondered if he could take the girl out with her so obviously injured. Then quickly decided against it when he realized that she was a highly trained fighter and even injured she was way to dangerous to provoke.

With a growl Hanza let go of Blair's shirt and let him slump down a little, the anger in her eyes was enough to scare the crap out of him. "Fine, let's get this over with, if he's training that means I have to as well if I'm to get him back for beating me up like this."

"I-If you want I'd be more than willing to go back to the mines, at least I was safer there."

"Oh no, Rook may be a jerk, but he actually has some brains under that rusty helmet of his and a good number of his plans actually work the way they're supposed to and if he wants you to do something, you will do it." Hanza snapped and pushed the scared fox creature in front of her. "Now let's go, we need to see if the Practice room is open right now."

Blair paled. "R-Right."

This wasn't actually a room, but a powerful and huge magical construct that Rook had stolen some years before in one of his most notable attacks. A very strong wizard had started a war with Rook, this hadn't gone over very well with the Undead Commander and he'd retaliated against the wizard by attacking him with the very magic that Rook uses to create his soldiers, Undead magic. Hanza didn't know who that wizard was, but Rook had acquired quite a large number of magical devices. Unfortunately most of them were useless when used by the undead of his army, but there were several things that were and the Practice room was one of these.

Like Seer's Hamlet, it was contained in a small contained space and designed by a master mage. It was contained inside a large crystal that Rook had set up in the lower levels of his his castle, he used it to test out some of his plans and to train his soldiers. Its only drawback was that he could only train up to ten people at a time in there, so he used it for small teams and speical training. Most of the high powered or governing bodies knew that Rook had the crystal, but he had transformed his mountain top castle into a fortress that was almost impregnable at the best of times because of the Raise Dead spells that covered the whole area. Rook kept his troops by letting armies attack him and waiting for their dead to get back up and change sides to fight for him.

Several years before Rook had been defeated by Julia Diggers when she found out the secret weakness of his magic armor and used it against him, entombing him in a solid wall of stone. He was later released and forced to work for a man named Tyrant that was trying to rule over all of Jade, but again defeated by Brianna Diggers and Sheila of the Edge Guard. He hadnt' taken this very well and used his powers to cement his hold over his troops and rethink his plans for revenge. He wasn't forced to be someone's pawn anymore, but there were people out there that needed to be destroyed. So he had gathered to him a number of people that he could use effectively, though there were things he was holding over all of them so that they didn't get to out of line.

Hanza resented the situation, but on top of all that she was still being paid for her services, so she tolerated it as best she could and did the job Rook forced her to do. So she was going to make sure Blair learned what Rook wanted him to learn, they reached the room where the large crystal was kept under constant guard by a small detachment of undead guards that had orders to keep anyone from using the crystal. As one of the few humans in the castle, Hanza was one of the few to have a chance to use the magical device because it furthered Rook's plans in someway. The large and smelly undead guards at the door completely ignored them as they entered, Hanza tend to come down here two or three times a week to practice her skills.

She had been planning to use the Practice room to get herself in shape for a rematch with Ranma after she was completely healed, but with Ranma already training she had to start as well. Having to train this thief would work in her favor as well because it was light work and mostly learning how to hide one's presence from someone else, she didn't use the skills all that much, but she did know how to use them somewhat. Though she had to admit that she probably wasn't the worlds best at using them and tended to rely more on magic than her own skills, like the time she used the silence spell on herself to keep from being heard by Sheila that one time.

"Well, place your hand on the crystal and do as I do." Hanza muttered, this was going to take a while.

"Yes ma'am."

Hanza grabbed him by the throat and glared at him. "Call me that again and I'll rip your throat out, go me?"

"Yes ma...eh...sir?"

Hanza grinned evilly as she looked the little fox creature over and made Blair shiver in fear. "That's better."

**********

Among Gina Digger's most notable accomplishments was the fact that she was a robotics genius, everything she built had a bit of this technology somewhere in side it. Her computer, her vehicles, her weapons, and her robots of course. She called her main robotic creation were her Hurt Bots, they were just one step below being fully functioning Artificial Intelligence. They could learn, adapt, and plan as easily as any human could and had all the benefits of a being robots, increased strength, speed, and attached weapons.

She had three levels of Robots, level A bots were for defense and combat, their main use was to guard Gina's lab and equipment from any kind of theft or harm, giving their all to protect it all. Most of the looked like modern versions of a heavily armored Knight from long ago, faceless engines of destruction. Level B's were for miscellaneous work and designed to look more human, Gina used them for almost everything when she needed an extra pair of hands, lab assistance, extra muscle, and anything else she might need. They even took care of the yard work around her house and kept things tidy, happily working away in preprogrammed bliss.

That was why she had them helping to build the hydroelectric plant while Gina and Penny installed the main equipment, they were doing massive amounts of landscaping, building trails, even rerouting the river just a slight bit for better access to the plant. Level C's were for special projects that she needed things that the others were not available for use, these were usually the non humanoid robots like Brianna's Peebos, underwater exploration, high altitude scanning, and field work.

Gina had brought about thirty of the level B's with her when Ace started to ferry equipment back and forth from the docks at the coast and the larger equipment though the Light Gate teleporter, they worked day and night without stop and was one of the main reasons they were able to get the whole place built as quickly as they did. They only required a ten minute recharge every twelve hours, so Gina had them working in a staggered shift throughout the day and taking care of their own recharging while she concentrated on the main installation of the plant. She made it a habit to check on them every few hours to see if they were having any problems with anything and rarely had to take a hand in anything they were doing, everything that they needed had been downloaded into them and off they went.

Bot #42 was working at the far section of the property taking measurements to make sure they had gotten everything built correctly as they slowly transformed the entire area from wild wilderness into a nice looking park by moving bushes, transplanting trees and all sorts of other things like running underground wire from the plant to the Amazon Village. Along with the measurements he was making out the next ground level trench on his way to the outskirts of the village where another crew was working to get the houses set up for electricity. It had been noted it's memory logs that the Amazon's would either avoid them, pretend they didn't exist, or get confused about whether they were real men or not.

So it was with some surprise that it's senses detected something moving up on it from the side. #42 looked up to see a large human raise up out of the bushes off to it's right. The human was rather large, almost seven foot tall and cloaked shadows so details were impossible to make out. #42 turned to face the human and saw that it was armed with some kind of long object, then it jumped forward and brought it's weapon to bare. #42 was only a level B robot so it didn't have the defensive capabilities that the level A's possessed, but it was designed for emergencies and it automatically jumped back and attempted to block the weapon with it's arm.

The area is filled with the sound of wrenching metal and sparks as #42 skids to a stop against a tree, it's entire arm is missing, and sparks are arching along the injured limb. "Error 01-E." It says and transmits and emergency message back to camp.

"I thought you would be a bigger challenge robot, oh well, I've had my fun." The man says as he puts his weapon away, flexes his muscles, and lifts his fist high. "I think this will hurt you way more than it will me." His 'Evil Grin' was visible in the shadows around him.

CRASH!!

"Error 01-E."

CRASH!!

SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEE BZZZZZZZ

"Error 01-E..."

"Heh, that was fun." The man says and walks away from the pile of shattered metal and circuit boards, he stomps on it a couple of times just to be mean.

**********

Brod may have been a troll, but he was an educated one that had achieved the title of Archmage in magic and had established his home as a small library of magical lore. He had lived here for years and used his magic to make his life a little more comfortable compared to some of the places his people tended to be found. They had this reputation as stupid idiots that liked to throw large stones at anything that moved, this was a race prejudice that he strove to make people understand about trolls. It didn't apply to him and he was proud of his accomplishments, but it had also gotten him somewhat exiled from his own people, they avoided him like the plague, it had been nearly forty years since he had seen another troll and that one had totally ignored him.

His library was of use to the other races though and he had opened it up to anyone that wanted to visit and study, but in his loneliness he had worked some special spells upon several of the rooms in the tower and on some of the caverns he had found deep inside the cliff that his home was built against. He had several rooms designed to put up guests, one room for every kind of magic that he studied and had books on, but it was his 'special' rooms that he was known for, the specially designed prayer rooms that pilgrims used to meditate, the observatory that he had built in an upper part of the cliff, and the gardens.

It was rare for any one person to visit this place more than once in a lifetime if they were anything other than a mage or friend. Julia had visited him about 15 times in the last twenty years and that was more than most, he considered her a good friend along with anyone in her family. A long time ago she had been caught in a magical trap that was set to kill her husband, Theodore Diggers. It had been a complete accident that she was caught at all and it had exiled her to Jade, away from her family and her love, only once a year could she see them and that was through a portal that formed in one of his prayer rooms. From this room she was able to move between the planes and visit her family for exactly twenty four hours.

She had never told him of the curse, he didn't know why and respected her privacy enough not to ask. There were things he didn't want others to know about him too, so he kind of understood. Only once had she shown her his greatest secret and that had been done without words, his special rooms were for those he trusted. His observatory was his alone and off limits to everybody, but his gardens were open to a rare few and Julia was one of those, she had requested earlier that Ranma be allowed to see them. At first he had been hesitant because of what Ranma had gone through just a few days before, but changed his mind when she gave him that look that turned his iron hard will to jelly. As a troll he cared about people way to much, but it was better that way in his opinion.

Brod knuckled his way across the room as the small part continued all around him, waving and acknowledging everyone that said something to him. Eventually he reached the spot where Ranma was sitting and motioned for him and Sheila to follow him deeper into the tower. They shrugged and were soon on his heels as he passed through the doors that led to the room that Ranma had trained in. Brod watched as he stopped and hesitated for a second and looked at him for an explanation.

"Where are we going?"

"There is a place inside that Julia asked me to show you, I don't show it to very many people, but she thought it would help you to relax a little."

"Am I allowed to see it too?" Sheila asked.

Brod turned his bald head to her and thought about it for a few seconds and shrugged, so long as you respect the place I won't mind if you go in."

"I promise." Sheila and Ranma said.

"Good enough, it took me years to get the place just right working on my own and I rarely show it to anyone because of that very reason." From there he led them past the area where Ranma had trained, they had teleported the cats back to where they had got them in the first place, and moved into a section that gave Ranma's senses a weird feeling.

He looked about the hall they were walking down, his senses trying to figure out what was different. It wasn't a bad feeling, but a feeling like he was missing something obvious and important. "..."

"Brod, where are all the torches. There seems to be plenty of light in this hall, but I don't see any torches like you used in other areas of the tower." Sheila pointed out as she looked around.

Brod pointed to the quartz that ran along the walls and ceiling. "That quartz originates in the room I'm taking you too, I cast some spells on it and it works like a large light spell, though it's brighter in room up ahead."

"What would you need with all that light?" Ranma asked.

"You'll see in a minute."

At the end of the long hall they arrived at a huge stone door, Brod actually had to lean against it to make it open enough to let them into the room. The instant it cracked even a little bit the whole hall was filled with light, enough to almost blind them, but Brod ignored it as he moved inside and beckoned for them to follow him. Squinting against the light the stepped through the door and found that effect was deliberate, once past the door the whole room opened up in front of them and they gasped in awe.

There were flowers and trees for as far as the could see, they could even here some animals running around in the bushes, birds in the trees, and light shining from the far side of the room that lit the place up as bright as day. It was probably one of the most beautiful things Ranma and Sheila had ever seen and they were both well traveled enough to have seen quite a bit. Brod smiled at them for a few seconds as they took in the garden for the first time, then he motioned for them to follow him deeper into the room, they had to scramble to catch up with him. They followed a gravel path through the trees for a few minutes, then they entered the center of the room. Water could be heard as they moved through the trees, they eventually reached an over look that took placed them right above a forty foot water fall with a large pond down below them.

"This is incredible!" Sheila gasped.

"How can such a thing exist inside the cliff side?" Ranma asked as he looked down, he resisted this sudden urge to kick a rock off the edge to see how far it would fall.

"I've got books here at the tower that describe the rudiments of magic that allow Seer's Hamlet to be held in it's pocket dimension, I used the same idea for this place when I created it some years ago. I built this place for a place to relax and think about some of my problems, it calms the soul and allows me to express my other skills."

"Can we look around?"

"Sure, it's why I bought you here. After what you went through to master that horrible technique I think you deserve a few hours in here at least. Enjoy yourselves while you're here, go swimming, play in the trees and have fun, I don't mind what you do so long as you don't destroy anything permanently." Brod said with a smile and knuckled his way back down the trail, he turned just before he vanished from sight. "Keep following the path and it will take you all over the room, I have several things on display in here that you might find interesting if you know what you're looking at!"

Ranma waved and turned to Sheila and realized they were alone.

Sheila waved and turned to Ranma and realized she was alone, with Ranma.

"...Um..." They said at the same time and blushed as they suddenly found their hands quite interesting.

"D-do you w-want to look a-around?" Ranma stuttered out.

"I w-would like that." She said hesitantly.

"Cool, then come on, let's see what he was talking about." Ranma said and set off down the trail, it wound it's way around the water with a small bridge.

Sheila gawked at the boy and growled under her breath for not acting like she was expecting him to, why were all men so hard to understand? Then she had to rush to catch up with him before he all but disappeared from sight among the trees. She caught up to him a few seconds later as he stopped in front of a small stone pillar with a tiny statue on it, the thing had to be one of the oddest things she had ever seen before.

It was made up of a dark stone she hadn't ever seen before, shaped to make the statue look like a kind of formless mass, kind of like modern art. Ranma was leaning over the statue to get a better look at the thing, he had a weird look on his face as he tried to figure out what it was. He walked around the things several times, kneeled down and studied it for a while, and looked completely confused though most of it as he wondered why Brod would put such a thing here in his garden. That is, unless the thing represented what it actually looked like and if that was so, then Brod had a weird sense of humor.

"What's wrong Ranma?" Sheila asked.

"What is this thing?"

"I'm not sure, it doesn't look like anything I've ever seen before."

She knelt down beside Ranma to take a better look at the thing, carved right into the side of the stone pillar was a small plaque with some strange writing on it. Sheila took a closer look at it by running her fingers over it, but the writing was in a language she had never seen before so translating it was impossible. "I can't make out what this says."

"It's probably in Brod's native language."

"Maybe it is, it's a hard language to understand. Most trolls use common whenever they are out in the world."

"Do you think I should tell Brod that his statue looks like a large pile of..."

"NO!" Sheila said and punched him in the arm. "That would be rude, unforgivable, and a very stupid thing to do Ranma!"

"Okay, okay, no need to yell."

Sheila snorted as she turned to smile at him. "Even if it's true."

"Um..." Ranma said nervously.

She blinked, this boy was so hard to read at times. "What's wrong Ranma?"

"Why's it start'n to glow like that?" Ranma said and pointed at the statue.

"What are you..." Sheila started as she turned to look at the thing. "What the hell?"

The 'strangely' shaped statue was sitting there innocently, just starting to glow a soft bluish black color. She stood up and moved back, trying to pull Ranma with her, but he didn't budge. Then the glow flared and washed over them in a wave, blinding them almost completely and causing her to lose her balance. Sheila crashed to the floor and dragged Ranma with her, his hands slammed down on either side of her head as he tried to control his fall. Their foreheads slammed together with a thump, Ranma lay there for several seconds shaking his head to clear it.

Sheila blushed as the realized what they must have looked like with him between her legs that way. "Um...Ranma?"

"Aw man, that hurt worse than being hit in the head with a two by four." Ranma mumbled.

"What did you Say?!" Sheila snapped.

Ranma seemed to ignore her as he lay there, he seemed to be perfectly comfortable using her as a bed. "What in the world is your head made out of, metal?" Ranma groaned in pain.

"Um...I'm in my hybrid form right now Ranma, a blow like that wouldn't even faze me in the least, though you did hurt me a little, it was almost instantly gone due to my regeneration ability." Sheila said with a blush, she was beginning to heat up and she liked the way Ranma felt against her. Then Ranma chose that time to roll off of her and stand up, he was rubbing his forehead, there was a large red welt beginning to form. She didn't know whether to be insulted or relieved that he was off her, so she ignored the odd feeling and stood up as well.

"Where in the heck are we?" Ranma asked as he looked around.

Sheila looked around and noticed for the first time that they weren't in the garden anymore, but a small cave full of sand and shells. "What the heck?"

There was sunlight coming through the entrance to the cave and Ranma moved over there to see where they were, then he ran into an invisible wall that ran right across the front of the cave. "Ouch!" He muttered and rubbed his nose.

"What the heck is going on here?" Sheila asked as she ran her hand over the wall, it was completely invisible, so she could see out over the grassy plane outside the cave and about a mile or so down, it ran for several miles before it hit another mountain. She looked up into the sky and gasped, Ranma moved over and looked as well and gaped a what they had seen.

They were looking at several ships as they hovered above the plane below then, Sheila had never seen anything like these before, they were larger than most cities and were glowing with a faint aura of power. Ranma just gaped, he'd been exposed to a number of things over the last few months, but his had to take the cake for the weirdest yet. Learning about magic had been a wake up call after he received his curse, but seeing this put that on a whole new level of weirdness. Those ships up there, nearly two dozen large ones and countless little ones were giving him the creeps and setting off his danger sense.

"Look at that Ranma, they're landing over by those mountains on the far side of the valley." Sheila said.

Then they had to blink in surprise as the mountain seemed to shudder and opened up to reveal a large metal interior, like hanger bay, the large ships floated down and vanished within one at at time while the smaller ships seemed to swarm around and entered the mountain from the other side and vanish. "This is your world Sheila, where are we?" Ranma asked.

"I don't know, I don't think I've ever been to a place like this before."

"Do you recognize those ships?"

"No, technology like that is forbidden on Jade."

"If only we could get out of this cave, I want to go over there and see what's going on." Ranma said as he punched the invisible wall with no effect.

Sheila sighed, this situation was starting to frighten her just a little bit, but she had to be strong and be able to report this back to her Brod and the Edge Guard. Brod had told them this place was save and a that they could relax here, that suggested that he had lied to them or that he didn't know his art work could do things like this. This reminded her of the ancient magic her people had used generations before, back when all the non-human races had been at war with each other. Back in the first golden age of magic and discovery items like this had been common place and used for amusement, if she remembered some of her magical history right, but most of those had stopped working long ago.

"What's that?" Ranma asked and pointed out side.

Turning back, Sheila looked where he was pointing and at first didn't see anything, but that quickly changed as she saw movement at the base of the far mountain where the ships had landed. It had closed up while she was thinking and now had a number of people moving around the base. This had to be the strangest things yet, they were moving at superfast speed as they performed jobs of some kind, as she watched the sky seemed to flicker a little and after a few minutes a large palace began to take place. As this was nearing completion they watched as several other building started to take shape and spread out from the palace, even stranger was the fact that these weren't simple wood and stone houses with thatch roofs like she was used to, but like something from the Earth realm of modern day.

"This is like watching a film in fast forward." Ranma muttered, recalling some of the movies he had seen in his youth.

"Huh?" Sheila asked.

"Look how fast they are going, it's like a movie on fast forward or something like that."

"A movie...Oh! I know what this is now!" Sheila yelled in relief.

"What?"

"It's a projection stone, it's showing us a scene from way in the past." Sheila said and hopped around in relief. Then she turned back to the invisible wall, her eyes widened and she screamed in pure terror.

Ranma jumped forward as she turned around and tried to run from whatever it was she saw out there, she crashed into Ranma as he grabbed her in confusion and continued to scream. "What is it what's wrong?!"

Sheila just continued to scream, she broke from Ranma's arms and crawled into the back of the cave, curled up into a fetal position, and started shivering and whimpering. To say Ranma was surprised would be and understatement, he was completely shocked that his friend could act like this. He turned to look outside and saw that the city was going up still, though it looked like they were building a large stadium now, quite a large one. There were large droves of humanoids flowing over everything like ants and at this distance it was hard to make out details.

Looking closer, Ranma noticed that the humanoids were being treated like slaves by these larger things. He wasn't to sure what they were, but they seemed to be guiding the building of the city while torturing the humans. Ranma still didn't see what would make her act like this, this was a 'movie' so there shouldn't have been anything out there that hadn't happened already, so what had set this off? He wanted to help, but if she wouldn't let him touch him he had find some other way to do it. His mind sparked a bit and he considered the fact that she might have seen something out there that he didn't understand, this was her world after all and with all the different races running around he was a little out of his depth.

That possibility seemed to be a little ridiculous though, there wasn't any out there that he couldn't take and those strange slavers seemed to be the biggest threat. He studied them as best he could and noticed that they seemed to be made up of darkness, they didn't move as a normal person would, but flowed around and used this to their advantage. From a fighters stand point they were fascinating and would have been a lot of fun to fight since they weren't human, but seemed to be dependent on their technology to do anything.

By this time the city had filled the entire valley and he could tell that things were slowing down a little on the play back, those things seemed to be everywhere as they kept the humanoids in check. Ranma already didn't like them, but still didn't see the problem that was causing Sheila to be afraid of this. He walked over and sat down beside Sheila, she was still shiveirng and even shedding a bit, so he just let her latch onto him and as she calmed down. After about half an hour there was a flash of light and they suddenly found themselves back in the garden, sitting on the ground in front of the statue.

Ranma breathed a sigh of relief, whatever had happened was over and they could get out of this crazy place, he helped Sheila to her feet. She was still nervous, but seemed to be calming down quite fast now that they were out of that place. He took a second to dust himself off before glancing at the pillar again, from what he could see the thing looked just like it had before it decided to show them that city being built. Though he kind of regretted missing the last of the thing, he wondered what he might have missed if he'd seen the whole thing. Sheila hadn't really been harmed, just scared by something that he didn't understand, he wanted to know what that was too.

"So Sheila, what scared you so bad that you couldn't even look at it?"

The nervous werejaguar looked at him as if he was stupidest thing on the face of the planet, then took a deep breath when she noticed that his eyes seemed to show that his question was completely innocent, he really didn't understand what he'd just seen. She was a little embarrassed by her reaction, but it had been the last things she had ever expected to see and her hair was still standing on end from seeing that horror brought to life. "You really don't know do you Ranma?"

He shook his head.

"Do you know anything of Jade's history Ranma?"

"Not really, just that you guys don't like technology all that much and that there are races here that are not on Earth, Elves, Dwarves, werecats, and even magic users, things like that are almost unheard of on Earth."

"I suppose that is probably why you didn't understand what you saw in that vision Ranma, that was a scene out of the distant past, when this planets greatest conquerors ruled over us and used all the races as slave labor."

Ranma nodded. "I'd noticed that there were some dark thing in that playback that were keeping the humans as slaves."

"Those Dark Things were Shadow's Ranma, the evilest and most destructive race to ever exist in our planets entire history. They had us as slaves for countless generations, they had doing all their work for them, killing, cooking, everything so that their lives could be spend doing other things. The history is to hard to even describe and even today is one of the things we tend to try and for get, if it hadn't been for the first Armsmaster we would most likely still be enslaved to the Shadows even today."

Ranma looked a bit confused as he gazed at Sheila. "That still doesn't explain why you were so scared, that was a replay of something that happened long ago. So there wasn't anything there to be worried about."

"Ranma, Shadows haven't been seen in hundreds of thousands of years and yet even today we are afraid of them and still use them as a kind of boogie man tale to scare our children straight, but one of the things that is known is that in all that time there hasn't been one Shadow seen on this planet, we didn't know what they looked like anymore because all the pictures of them have been lost over time. I saw one of them Ranma, I saw what they looked like and how horrible they were and that image will haunt me for the rest of my life." Sheila sobbed out.

If there is one thing that Ranma can't stand it's a crying girl, she hadn't really been crying in the cave and he'd been a bit distracted at the time. So he carefully drew her into a hug and let her cry for several minutes as she let out the emotions she was trying to control, at least her reaction made more sense to him now that she had explained it a bit. He needed a way to distract her from that strange statue and could only come up one thing as he stood there holding her.

"Let's see what else he's got floating around here?"

With a loud sniff, Sheila nodded. "Alright, I just hope that is the last time I encounter one of those evil things."

"You'll be alright." Ranma said and patter her on the shoulder, they moved on and followed the path around the large garden for several more minutes, ducking around some trees and wondering how long it had taken the old troll to build this place and why he had placed a magical item like that on display. Eventually they reached a small path that seemed to lead them right into a marble structure of some kind, they headed on in to see what else they would find. Sheila wasn't all that pleased to find another pillar and statue, but was relieved when she saw who it was a statue of. This one was a lot bigger than the last one, way bigger, it towered above them by almost ten feet. The pillar came up to Ranma's waist, the statue was of a huge man bulging with muscles looking majestic and dangerous as his long hair waved in the wind behind him. Sheila sighed and kneeled down to get a better look at the plaque at the base of the statue and found that this one was in elfish.

"Let's see here, this is a statue of Matta, the first Armsmaster of Jade and one of it's most powerful warriors. He freed us from the first scourge and led all the people of Jade out of slavery and to freedom." Sheila read out loud, there was a hint of awe in her voice as she realized what she had just read.

Ranma looked up at the man and wondered how someone with so much muscle mass could be that good a fighter. All the strength in the world was useless in the face of a foe that was fast and cunning. "This is the guy that saved all of you from those Shadow things?"

"I guess so, I've never seen a statue to him before." Sheila muttered as she took a closer look. "It's been a very long time since he was alive, a few millennia actually, so he's degenerated into a legend just as the Shadows have. Even today we have an Armsmaster around just incase they are needed again and only the best of the best can hold that title, Master Julia currently holds that honorable position."

This statue, unlike the last one didn't seem to be magical at all and Ranma wasn't about to try and find out. All this magic was making him nervous, he wanted to get back to things he understood. For now he held his peace as Sheila spent the rest of their walk though the garden telling him about the history of Jade and some of the more notable fighters of this generations. The one Ranma found the most interesting was a the dwarf G'nolga and her rivalry with Master Julia, he wanted to smack her one for what she had done to his teacher in the latest Tournament of Arms. He was also kind of curious about some of the other fighters that were mentioned, they all sounded like they would be a lot of fun to fight.

"So what did you two think of our world now?"

"You must lead an interesting life."

"I'm rarely bored for very long, that's for sure, and with all these bandits running around lately we haven't had to much time off lately." Sheila said with a laugh.

Ranma shrugged, he'd had a good time with Sheila even before that strange statue had shown them that scene from the past. "That first statue still has me thinking though..." He mussed to himself.

Sheila punched him in the shoulder again. "Stop that, I don't even want to think about that stupid thing again."

"Um...yeah."

Brod stood up and opened the door for them as they approached. "So what did you think of my Garden?"

"That magical statue of yours was a dirty trick Brod, it nearly scared me to death." Sheila snapped.

He gave her a blank look. "What magic statue? I don't have any here in the Garden, all of my magical items are in the vault."

"That first one down the path, the one that looks like a pile of..." Ranma started, but Sheila punched him in the arm again.

"Stop that!"

Ranma blushed a little. "Um...okay."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, the only statue I have in the whole garden is of the First Armsmaster and it isn't magical in the least, kind of a bad likeness as well, I've seen much better."

"Not that one, the one just down the path there." Ranma said and pointed.

Brod looked confused again. "Could you show me?"

A few minutes later they were at the spot where the first statue had been, but there was nothing there but a large rock. Sheila was almost as confused as Brod as they searched the area over, but after several minutes they hadn't found a thing. Ranma was all over the place, in the trees, the bushes, looking for the thing that had scared Sheila so bad, but it seemed to have vanished in thin air. Even his enhanced senses seemed to be at a loss, there was no sign of the thing and they all had to give up a few minutes later.

"I don't understand." Ranma and Sheila said.

"I'm not sure what you saw, but I do know something was here even if we can't find it." Brod said.

"How?!"

Brod laughed a little, I cast a detect magic spell and this whole area is giving off a reading, it's barely readable, but it's there. I'll look into it a little more to see if I can find out what happened. Now, I'm glad you liked the garden anyway, but most everyone has gone to bed. You might want to retire for the night as well, it's pretty late and you do have things to do later on today."

"That sounds like a good idea." Ranma said with a sudden yawn.

Sheila agreed and stretched a little as she yawned, it was a good trick to play so that she could catch Ranma's attention, then she realized two things wrong with her plan. One was that she was in her werejaguar form and it was to small to be of much use, and second, Ranma had left the room without inviting her along. He'd done it to her again, she sighed loudly and heard Brod chuckle again as they moved out of the room.

"That jerk!!"

"He'll grow out of it."

"He doesn't have a clue what's going on does he?" Sheila muttered.

"I've known a lot of humans like your friend there, he acts like that because no one has ever placed him in a situation where he could learn what you what him to know. Julia said he grew up really isolated from the rest of the world as his father pushed him to be the best fighter of his generation."

"He can't be that naive."

"He is only inexperienced Sheila, you might have to take the first step if you want a relationship.

"Oh like that would help, the only way he would notice a girl is if I hit him over the head with a board." Sheila muttered.

Brod chuckled again, this time with a deep rumble to his laugh. "Those kind of men exist Sheila and that is exactly the kind of guy Ranma is, remember how he was raised."

"We'll see about that. Things started out pretty good, but then he seemed to forget I existed, it was weird."

"He was probably embarrassed."

"Hmph!!"

**********

To Be Continued...

Ending Notes - As I mentioned above I have lots done, in fact I have most of chapter 06 already done. It just needs to be expanded a bit and edited to make it ready to be posted.

Okay, if you know anything about Gold Digger, you'll notice that I gave a bit of a Jade's history from long ago. This stuff wasn't mentioned all that much in the comic so I had to improvise a bit on things. The Shadow's are a race in name only, I can't recall them ever being described so I took a guess when describing them. I do know that they were kind of like the alien race from Indepencence Day, and relied very heavily on their technology for most everything they did and had the locals completely out classed for thousands of years before they were brought down by the First Armsmaster. The Shadows designed and build several statiums at various points on Jade and held gladitorial matches there with special deviced that made magic next to useless inside the structure.

Weaponmasters were some of the top fighter slaves of the shadows from each region that had a stadium, of these, on slave would be the best of them all and he was called and Armsmaster. It was a position that few wanted because even if they there good fighters, they were still slaves to these things an were kept in line through harsh means. Then Matta showed up (No name is ever given so I Made it up) and lead a battle of some kind that kicked the Shadows off the planet, how he did this is completly unknown, but I do know that he access to special weapons of magic and technology that was used to finally purge the Shadows and their rule of the planet.

A lot of Jade's history isn't really mentioned in the comics and I've had to make suff up or make some educated guesses about things. I won't be doing this much, but I have an idea for a chapter or two of this story that will deal with Jade and a major adventure for Ranma, I'll explain more on that later.

You'll notice that Ranma is still growing in this chapter, even with his training he is still learning to do things and hasn't become all powerful. I like this trend and will keep it up for a bit of realism, on that note, I want to know if anyone wants me to focus on any of the other characters like Britanny, Gina, or even Stripe (Britanny's husband) as the story goes along. One of the things I like about Gold Digger is that expanding on the various characters is pretty easy, so let me know if there is anything you want to see. ^_^

C. Rose
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