The World at War: Prologue

Three months have I searched, three months have I wondered an Asia
decimated by newly arisen barbarism, and in that three months, not
even so much as a glimmer of a cure has surfaced. Sure, I've run
across other Talented people, some even reasonably powerful, this is a
land of ancient mysticism and spiritual awareness, but none have been
able to tellme anything I didn't already know about the poison that kept
me from my Ami.

Sometimes I would run across a bastion of peace, a small valley, too
isolated to be in danger, maybe one where a sorcerer had made himself
at home, but mostly, whenever I found someplace where people were
relatively safe and well fed, those people had banded together into
militia type units. They fought off the bandits and thieves that such
a drastic societal change can create.

It was at one such town, a sizable affair of nearly three thousand
people, that I'd been confronted by the Elders and Commanders in
charge of the place. I'd thought at first they would attempt to press
me into service for them, it'd happened, unsuccesfully, before. Not
this time. They knew I was coming. How? They had a precognizant
child living within the walled city. At least they're not so bad as
psychics.

"Please, your Mightiness," begged the Elder in charge, a wiry little
man with no air and watery eyes,"we will be crushed without your
help." He was referring to an approaching attack force from the
Alliance. I'd taken the time to listen to his story because I was
starting to miss hearing Japanese, even if my Chinese was steadily
improving.

Why not? Maybe there would be some Amazons in this group. I nodded,
pulling the old guy to his feet. The senshi wouldn't be bothered with
this kind of thing. They probably wouldn't have participated anyway,
but the powers that be that even knew about them, namely Cologne,
were smart enough to keep them and their pokemon in reserve for when
such high numbers had to be fought that too many mundane warriors could
be lost."Just stop the begging, please." It was embarassing.

I was led, parade-like, through the dirt streets of the town. I
couldn't help but admire the amount of work done to turn the place
into a defensible retreat. Walls may keep out wild animals and men
with clubs, but they were useless against the type of warriors
produced by Jusendo.

A few hours of being treated like a king were all I could stand. I
made my departure from the hastily thrown together celebration as
politely possible. These people would be feeding me for a time, and I
didn't want to needlessly offend them.

****

There wasn't much of a wait. An endless stream of pretty girls kept
my bed warm at night, may Ami forgive me, and I spent most of the
daylight hours cooking up nasty little one use enchantments that would
permanently turn Amazon women into Amazon men. I'd probably be able
to hear the screams of agony from here when they try to cure their
warriors with the cursed water of Jusenkyo. Setsuna's ring had
finally yielded its knowledge to me and I was making use of it to
torment the Amazons every chance I got, a sort of poetic justice. By
my last count, just under three hundred had been transformed.

There were a few more complicated spell constructs that would be able
to turn the wings of the Phoenix People into lead and to use their
crossbred DNA to drive the Musk into killing frenzies(they always went
after other Musk when that happened). Each construct was simple, a
small glass bead, but it would be the most effective weapon my
benefactors would ever have against the Alliance.

Two weeks, four days, and three hours after I'd been asked to fight
for the town, it was attacked by a joint force of Phoenix People,
Musk, and Amazons. The attack came at midday, not the best time for a
raid.

Each faction of the Alliance fought differently. Saffron's people
always chose to dive at high speed, levelling off rapidly and leaving
trenches carved in the Earth where the vaccum force generated by chi
strengthened wings struck. The more talented of the winged warriors
didn't need this action to produce the deadly attack, but dove anyway,
launching from their wings a combination of enchanted steel feathers
and more accurate vacuum blades that they could specifically target
their victims with.

The Musk preferred to use the extremes, brute strength, raw speed, or
sheer power. Their strong warriors were never just big, they were
huge, and they simply smashed through any defenses erected before them
and crushed any type of offense. The fast Musk were typically small,
both short and thin, and some could nearly rival the Amazon Elders and me
in speed. Give one of them enough knives or a good sword, and
they could reek absolute havoc within enemy ranks. When it came to
power, the cousins and siblings of Herb, all with lower amounts of the
dragon blood within their veins that gave them their huge chi force,
simply stand around and lob energy blasts, blowing up anything in their
path.

Amazons were all skilled. Their strength and speed, on average, was
less than that of the Musk, but the combination of what they had with
that skill made them the equals, if not betters of any other non-
ruling warrior in the Alliance. When an Amazon learned the tribe's
secret techniques, she gained, temporarily, the speed of a speed bred
Musk with the kacchu tenshin amaguriken. The bakusai tenketsu
increased their endurance to nearly that of the Musk powerhouses and
the ability to explode solid, non-living matter almost made up for the
difference in strength. Chi training, though not enough to bring most
Amazon warriors up to the dragon descended Musk, was used widely
enough that the greater number of chi using Amazons could equal the
fewer, if more powerful Musk royalty.

The people designated to handle the enchantmented weapons, held their
ground, using up the stored energy within each bead. Amazons who were
affected, when they realized they'd had the wammie put on them,
started screaming in terror and became pretty much useless. Phoenix
People fell from the sky like stones, smashing into the ground with
pleasing splats. The Musk started howling and eating each other.

That left about three hundred warriors, all of superhuman ability, for
me to deal with. Not the easiest thing to do when you consider that I
was inside of a walled town and could only defend one area at a time.

****

I took to the air after a near miss from a trio of extremely powerful
chi blasts. They wouldn't have gotten through my shields, but I
didn't feel like getting battered around by that much concussive
force. My clothes were literally saturated with the blood of my
victims and in there were tears and slashes in the cloth where a few
enchanted weapons had gotten through my shields. That had prompted a
reworking of my shields so that I didn't get a mystic arrow in the
back.

There weren't really all that many Alliance soldiers left. Those that
remained were arrayed around me. The Musk only had a few royal
descendents, the Phoenix People had the most remaining, almost a
dozen, and one of them was a moderately powerful sorcerer. The sole
Amazon was, to my suprise, an Elder. What was an Elder doing
attacking a relatively useless town in the middle of China? For that
matter, what were seven, four of whom were now dead, of Herb's cousins
doing here? I didn't know enough about the organization of their
forces or Talented to non-Talented ratio of the Phoenix People, but
I'd guess that there was significantly higher number of heavy hitters
in the ranks that was common.

Well, it looked like I'd have to spare one of them long enough to find
out what was going on. I smiled at the Elder, a gesture barely
discernable through the distortion of the heavy battle aura and dense
shields I was maintaining."Do they still scream?" I asked."Or has
someone put them out of their misery yet?" My choice to leave Jusendo
had been prompted as much by a desire to help Ami as the need to
separate myself from those who I had destroyed. I never have felt
'guilty' about what I did, but definitely uncomfortable.

The Elder, one of the few who had remained silent as I'd laid down the
rules all those months ago, gasped as realization came to her. Ahh,
she knew who I was, and she was scared. The Elder began to step back,
steadily gathering and focussing as much chi into an impending strike
as she could. I looked her in the eyes, never breaking the line of
sight, even as I deflected a series of concentrated energy bolts
designed to strip away my shields. The sorcerer responsible for the
attempt didn't get a chance for another spell. I used the back trail
created by the attack to force enough energy into the Phoenix Person
to permanently sere the Talent from his soul.

"DIE!!!" roared the Elder, now glowing a bright yellowish-orange. Her
impressive aura flowed across her lithe body and coalesced into bright
spheres of power that she launched at me. The attack was powerful,
truly worthy of an Elder of the Amazon Nation, but, fully aware of it,
I was able to redirect its power. I channelled the captured chi energy
through the enchanted sword held at my side and used it to
incenerate the three Musk. Not a drop of my own power wasted.

Exhausted by the ill prepared attack, the Elder collapsed to the burnt
grass. She would be my unwilling informant soon enough. I turned my
attention to the Phoenix People. None of them had attacked me, yet,
not even while my back was turned, but they couldn't be allowed to
survive. No one could know that it was I who had destroyed this
force and several others. The safety of the senshi and the
others from Japan depended on it.

The fallen sorcerer clutched his head between his hands and rocked
back and forth on the ground, weeping. I sympathized with the guy, I
really did, but he shouldn't have tried to kill me. The ten warriors,
four glowing with battle aura and at least one of them a member of the
elite soliders who had those magic steel feathers, formed a barrier
between me and the sorcerer. I ignited my spell, a type of fire that
only destroys living matter. The screams were horrible as the winged men
and women slowly turned to ash. When it was over, nothing remained in
the area except for myself and the unconscious Elder, who I had protected
from the magical fire

True, I could have used some other, less painful, method, but I wanted
to get some of the enchanted feathers carried by that one guy, and the
other enchanted weaponry I'd spotted among the warriors without
damaging it. The quality and strength of the enchantments and the
enchanted material itself had improved dramatically a little over a
month after the war started. Just out of curiousity, I wanted to know
why.

****

"Are you sure this will work?" Akane asked Kasumi. The Tendo sisters
were living in the countryside, far from any other humans, and the
lack of men and electricity had been devastating, to say the least.

Kasumi nodded enthusiastically, happy to finally be getting some from
someone besides herself or her sisters."Oh yes, he's just wonderful.
It's a little unusual at first, what with all the hair, but
I think you'll enjoy him just as much as I did."

Akane and Nabiki were following their sister through the woods,
supposedly to meet with a man that would be able to satisfy them all.
The two younger Tendos wouldn't have believe anyone else, but this was
Kasumi, and she had been practically glowing when she's stumbled into
the camp, barely able to walk.

She led her sisters around a bend in the trail and into a small
clearing. Waiting for them there, was a giant panda. It was munching
lazily on a stalk of bamboo, but when it saw the three girls, hastily
climbed to its feet, its hind legs actually, and began looking cute.

"Isn't he great?" Kasumi asked, running up to the giant panda and
hugging him fiercely. She made sure to give his dick a good hard
squeeze so he'd know what he was in for.

Nabiki and Akane exchanged glances, shook their heads, and were about
to tell Kasumi that she had gone absolutely insane, when from the
panda's waist, grew an enormous dick. They nearly gagged on their own
tongues before they could gain control of themselves.

Was a panda really so bad? They were gentle creatures, and from all
Nabiki had heard, very loyal. It appeared to be very intelligent and
its sheer bulk would scare off the majority of predators, human or
beast. Then, there was that giant piece of meat...

Akane had to count backwards from ten, repeatedly, to keep the
fantasies from intruding on her mind so heavily that she couldn't
think. Leave it to Kasumi to be the lucky one, getting to break in
this wonderful animal.

****

Genma Saotome shook his head minutely, careful not to give away more
than he should. The schools would be joined, no matter what he had to
sacrifice. He would live with the girls, help them any way he could,
and when the time came, reveal his true identity. By then, they would
be dependent upon him for more than just sex, they wouldn't be able to
survive in this harsher world without him.

If Ranma wouldn't do his duty, Genma would. Besides, if the other
girls were only a fraction as good a lay as Kasumi, he was in for
quite a vacation.

****

Author's Notes: Here's the first part of 'The World ar War'. From
here on out, Ranma will be meeting new people, helping some, and
killing many, many more. He'll be moving on to Russia in the next few
chapters, and I am going to have him meet the first of some of the
characters submitted to me by my readers(this one is your's, Ginne).
I've been thinking, and decided that I wanted to try to bring Resident
Evil into this as more than just a cameo appearance. I'm not sure if
it will work out, but having genetic mutations within the populations
of the world due to an uncurable virus could be fun. I never finished
the first game(stupid memory card burnt out and I was too lazy to go
through the whole game again) and have only read one of the books, so
any info on Umbrella and anything else about the world of Resident
Evil would be a big help. Finally, I'm gonna stop taking character
submissions in a week. I appreciate all your help, but my mailbox is
getting hard to check. C&C me at [email protected]

P.S.- CIGAW was my first finished work, ever! Yay!