Welcome to part two. I'm Muse Of Fire and normally I'm a crusader for the virtues of erotic love stories but this was too much fun to pass up. This is a lemon (I wouldn't really call it a mature story, but it is for mature readers only) so if your not of legal age to read this wherever you live scram, scat, shoo, I mean it.

More importantly if you think this kind of submission fantasy accurately reflects emotional reality get the hell away from my lemon and seek professional help. People don't enjoy rape, and they don't bounce back from it.

A lot of these characters aren't mine. Akane, Shampoo, Ukyou, Kodaichi (whom I have a rather unusual take on), Gosunkugi, Ryoga and Ranma are property of Takahashi Rumiko-sama, I grovel before her and beg forgiveness for my terminity is using her characters.

Catti-brie, Drizzt, Gheunivar, and Danica are property of R.A. Salvatore, see above (I'm not worthy! I'm not worthy!)

Kakugo Jin and the Mimic belong to Hiei.

The others are mine! My babies! (My god, what am I doing to them?) Please leave Kara-ray, Ariana, Ryu, and Coyanascotsy alone till I've had a few years to show them to assorted publishers in an un-ravished state.

Continuity note: I’m not sure if time is a stable concept in Pandemonium, but these events occur before Dark Mai appears in anyone’s stories but Heie’s, and before the prohibition against abducting competitors has gone out. And lastly, a warning: This story contains one or two meaningful sex scenes. Yes, I hear you booing, hissing and gagging. Chill. Get a life. And relax, the rest of them are as gratuitous as they come.

Enjoy.

A Matter of Differing Powers part 2

Catti-brie’s problem probably started a week ago when she encountered a girl she’d known back home in Icewind Dale who was happily married to a minor merchant and had two children. Her name was Miri.

They were both twenty-two. Miri had been seventeen when she married, and that was considered a little old on the harsh frontier of Icewind Dale. Catti-brie had been quietly sleeping with her fiancé Wulfgar for less than two months before the yochol had killed him. It had been a year before she could think about him without regrets surging through her, but she had healed. He was gone. She missed him, she’d get him back if she could, but she couldn’t, so she had to get on with her life.

She was on the road with Drizzt Do’urden. The rouge dark elf had been her dearest friend since her tenth summer. For a long time now, and up to a week ago, they’d been very slowly, very gently, almost subconsciously building their relationship into something more.

Miri shattered that. Miri reminded her she was only human; she’d be lucky to live to see her eightieth birthday. Miri made her remember how it felt to be loved, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, not as a daughter or a surrogate sister or as a traveling companion but as a woman. That patient love she’d been barley aware of had been washed from her mind and she’d tried to seduce Drizzt. She’d done it right to; neither too subtle nor too aggressive, her hand on his knee, her fingers laced through his, her eye’s drowning in the violate pools of his. She would have given everything to him at that moment; she would have been satisfied with a single kiss, anything to let her know that he saw a woman when he looked at her.

Instead he’d walked away from the fire and vanished into the night. So she ran. Sprinted down the mountain at reckless speeds, leaping ravines and skipping boulders. Her thick auburn curls and the large, firm breasts within her tight, short tunic bounced vigorously with the power of her gate. The sword Khazid’he and the bow Tamourill the Heartseeker bounced against her powerful, shapely hips. She ran from the memory of Wulfgar’s hands all over her body, her lips on his iron-hard chest, his hardness throbbing inside her, seeing herself a goddess in his eyes. She ran from the fact that, of the only two men who ever mattered to her Wulfgar was gone and Drizzt thought of her as a baby sister or a vestal virgin who should spend her whole life in mourning.

The dry, wry, slightly demonic, tenor “voice” of Khazid’he (one who saw many worlds might find it similar to the Sayan warrior Vegita) slipped into her mind.

“Practice helps.”

“Amend that. There are three men who matter in my life, one is dead, one thinks I’m a kid, and one thinks I’m made of steel. Don’t you care about anything besides forging me into the best?”

Khazid’he seemed to contemplate the question. “Well, yes and no. I suppose you could say I care about the best who wields me, but the point is that before I fell into Mezoberanzen I’d had wielders with these problems and practicing helped them channel the emotion. Channeling the emotion by practicing helped make them the best.”

Catti-brie half groaned, half laughed, “I’m going to throw you down a well someday.” Then Khazid’he was unsheathed and flashing in the moonlight as Catti-brie danced around the clearing slashing through hordes of imagined goblin’s with the grace of a panther and the beauty of a woman. Trying to drown her thoughts in complicated combinations of techniques and footwork and a pile of imagined monsters.

“Snap out of it, Catti-brie, you being watched.”

Her eyes flew open and darted madly about, not certain if she wanted to see beady-red orc’s orbs or lavender fires of passion. Instead she saw writhing, glowing silver lightning circling the pupil’s of human sized eyes before a fairly handsome, richly dressed man with long, dark hair and swashbucklers weapons faded out of the shadows.

“Greetings lady Catti-brie, Daughter of King Bruenor Battlehammer, Companion of the Hall.”

“Ye have me at a disadvantage,” she replied, trying to hide her shame and fear at the fact that he’d snuck up on her.

He swept off his hat and bowed gallantly, “Gayarth of Waterdeep, emissary of Lord Kakugo Jin, at your service.”

“An’ what can the Companion’s o’ the hall be doin’ for ye,” she found her dwarven accent thickening self-consciously. Was it a result of her embarrassment at being snuck up on or a response to this handsome man, a way to push him away?

“It is not the Companions I seek but you, fair lady. My lord is hosting a tournament of the greatest swordladies and fighting women in the world. He’d be honored if you’d enter.”

“Tournament?” If Khazid’he had ears they’d have perked up, “Excellent, Catti-brie, we can take them by storm. Half the world to test ourselves against in a single event!”

“Feh,” she answered silently, “there are better ways to test yerself.”

“Are there really? Skilled opponents? No corpses? Nothing to prove that you don’t bring with you?”

Unable to hear her dialogue with the sword lord Gayarth continued his pitch.

“The winner of the tournament is to be granted her hearts desire, perhaps the return of Wulfgar, Son of Bornegar, from the grave?”

Her knees went week and Khazid’he’s listing of the virtues of tournaments went unheard. “You can do that?”

“Of course.”

“When can I leave?”

“Is now good?”

“Can I bring a friend?”

“You must go alone.”

Fine, she thought, I don’t need Drizzt or Ghuenivar. I don’t need a big brother holding my hand. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Ghuenivar, the astral panther, wasn’t quite clear on what was wrong between his two-legged friends. When Drizzt summoned her he was silently angsting atop a ledge with a haunted look in his violate eyes. He asked her if she thought he’d just lost his only chance by hesitating. Then he’d asked her to find Catti-brie and make sure she was all right.

It must be mating problems; she could smell the unbalanced hormones.

When she reached the end of Catti-brie’s trail fear and rage surged through her. Her friend was stepping through an inky black interplaner gate held open by a man who stank of the lower planes. She tried to roar a warning but Catti-brie was already through. She hurled herself at the closing gate but four inky tentacles of inter-planer energy hurled her back. She caught one with a claw and pinned it to the ground as the rest of the gate vanished.

She turned to give the fiend a single roar, its message plainly clear, “I’ll be back, and you’ll be dead.” Then she leapt across the planes, darting after the escaping tentacle. She ran through tunnels first silver, then rainbow, then gold, then mist, then utterly black nothingness wherein she almost lost herself, then breaking through to swirling, chaotically clashing colors emanating from a world walled off by a golden barrier. The barrier was powerful work done by powerful goodly beings. Even in the week spot that the tentacle disappeared through she wasn’t certain she could force her way in, so she paced back an forth, occasionally hiding as a fiend sent another victim through, trying to decide what to do. Force her way through and try to help? Return to Drizzt and try to communicate the problem?

A bird cawed in spirit language. Panther, it said.

Raven, she replied.

Have you lost a friend to this hungry dimension as well?

Yes.

Come this way. Pierce Time this far. Go to this place. Move past Ethereal towards Spiritual this much. We have a plan.

* * *

In a pristine glade somewhere in the vicinity of Silverymoon a drow danced naked in the moonlight. Her body was small and lithe and tight. Thick, wild, knee length hair the color of clean snow swirls around her as her feet fly over the grass, baring now a perky, grapefruit sized breast bouncing gently against her tight chest, now a delicate, pointed ear, now a tight, small bottom, now a lithe, trim thigh, now a v-shaped bush of curly white pubes.

As beautifully arousing as the dance is the arousal is secondary to the totality of the dance. She prances serenely about the glade, delicate feet seeming to never quite touch the ground, perfectly loving, perfectly beautiful. In time even the most banal viewer will feel his arousal fading gently into the background and come to understand he is watching a unicorn frolicking through the meadow, rejoicing in the beauty of the grass, the moon, and life. Even selfish, jaded Gayarth is beginning to see this, but he can see also the ripple in her serenity.

The message had been fairly unbelievable. This woman is a priestess of a goddess of good drow, a patron of artists and outcasts, a champion of mercy. Two years ago on a divine quest she’d met a man named Daedalus, a student of ancient histories and a dabbler in magic who’d been merged with a griffin. He sounded like a total bore, but she’d loved him. Then, six months ago, he’d left her over some silliness about not wanting her to marry a man whom she’d out live by seven hundred years.

Heh, silly sentimentality, but it played right into his hands.

As the dance ended the woman drifted to the ground, her hair falling around her like a blanket. “Greeting’s Ariana Stardancer.”

She was up like a startled doe, her ruby eye’s measuring the distance to the swords resting atop her gauzy dress. “Who are you?”

He bowed and turned up his charm. “Forgive my intrusion, lovely lady, my name is Gayarth and I have traveled far to see the beauty and skill of the legendary Ariana Three-blades.”

He could see her cheeks heating slightly in pleasure. “Indeed, you are every bit as spectacular as Daedalus’s the Sage claimed you were. What a fool he was to spurn you.”

Yes, he had her now. He could see the pout creeping in to her fine elven features. He held up an ebony ball. “When he told me of your mastery of swordwork I knew this was meant for you. My master, Lord Kakugo Jin, is hosting a tournament for the greatest warrior women in the world. This will take you to it if you’re interested. He is a mage of great power and will grant the winner her hearts desire. Are you interested?”

He could see it in her eyes. This woman was a devoted priestess. Normally she would tell herself all she ever wanted was her art and her divine calling, but by turning her mind to the man called Daedalus he caught her, offered her the one thing that would slip through her priestly serenity and tempt her into his web.

“I’ll go,” she said.

“Catch.” Her hand caught the ebony ball. The portal exploded around her. Tentacles shot out and caught the three swords, the gauzy silver dress, the battered, pointed hat, and the pack that she’d left at the side of the glade.

* * * Katharoth studied the new girls carefully, reading their abilities and skill through their auras. One was a formidable swordswoman with two powerful weapons. Her chi was awakened in a strange way, to him at least. It was not quite toughening and not quite regeneration, but whatever it was this woman could withstand incredible damage and still fight. Formidable as she was, though, he did not sense the threat in her that he did in Danica.

The other was, in a way, rather laughable. She was fairly skilled as a fighter and a formidable magician, but what made her a threat was the veritable arsenal of items of power she began attaching as soon as Lord Jin had extended his invitation and left. Items that potentially made her the match of a veteran warrior even without using her magic. Black bracers to grant her hands’ speed. A hat with transformational properties to change her features and feed her feminine vanity. A hip-pack accessing several pocket dimensions that had been shoved through to pandemonium. Four magically enhanced swords, a dagger, and a bow. A holy medallion enchanted to enhance her magical abilities. A shirt and skirt of colorful, translucent crystal links hardened into formidable armor. Two magical rings, one a defensive probability bender and one holding powers relating to water.

He wasn’t certain whether to take her as a joke or a threat. Didn’t all that borrowed power handicap her? It must surely make her a walking bulls-eye. That was the… alarming… part. She handled all those magics with easy familiarity. She’d been wielding them for some time and, so far at least, no one had succeeded in taking them from her.

Neither of them merited Dark Mai’s attentions. The first wasn’t threat enough, and the second would find her magic and her arsenal severely impaired, if not crippled, by the chaotic nature of Pandemonium.

“So, pretty ones, I can see you know how to use those swords. Let’s see how you handle a less physical threat.”

* * *

Ariana padded quietly across the grassy moor as the two larger suns set. This was definitely not what she’d expected. She’d thought she’d be entertaining an aged wizard in an arena by testing her skill against other warrior women with a wishing ring or something for the prize. Instead Kakugo Jin was a young-looking warrior who’s race she didn’t recognize with cold eyes. The tournament seemed to be a free-for-all on the road to a castle beyond the Black Mountains. She was supposed to fight three special, group matches against people with “differing powers” at a circle of standing stones.

Oh yes, Gayarth had failed to mention that only the winner could go home, hadn’t he? “Well, I’ll just have to change the rules when the time comes, won’t I?” A fog was slowly building up on the moor and her thoughts were slowly turning to Daedalus. What was wrong with the man? They were perfectly in love, yet when she’d asked him to marry her he suddenly went off on some silly noble tangent about how she deserved a man who could match her life span. Didn’t he see it was infinitely better to loose him after sixty years then to loose him after two?

Her memories slowly drifted to happier times. Pulling him into that misty hot spring. Splashing and laughing and wrestling till finally he’d wrapped her up in his soft wings and strong arms and kissed her with a fire hotter than the water.

Wasn’t this fog getting a little warm?

Her breasts pressing into his hard chest. Her delicate fingers tracing the contours of his muscles. His hand running through her hair. Stroking down her sides, cupping her tight bottom. Her own hands tickling the sensitive areas where his wings sprouted from his shoulder blades. Her tongue exploring his mouth. Her hand sliding down to his hard bottom and slipping between his legs. His gasp as she tickled his balls from behind. His hands caressing her shoulders, then gently turning her around. His hands sliding up her legs, caressing up her stomach, cupping her breasts.

Sweat was soaking the thin padding under her armor till the garment, already magically molded to her curves, felt like it was glued to her skin. She found her tabard and cloak dissolving through the power of her magical hat, her breeches shifting into sheer leggings. Her hands sliding up and down the contours of her body. The small sun gave the thickening fog the slightest green glow. The fact that she could barely see three paces ahead of her gave her a sense of privacy.

He was always so gentle. That was his nature, strong and wise and gentle, and that gentle nature became exaggerated when he’d gained the strength and deadly talons of a griffin, but in all their months as lovers he’d never hurt her. She remembered how he’d caress her breasts with the flats of his fingers till she thought she could feel the fingerprint ridges. She remembered how he’d gently worship her nipples between finger and thumb pad.

She was gasping and moaning as if he was really touching her. Her cheeks were starting to take on a violate flush and sweat mingled with the fog condensing on her brow. Drops of it slid down her pointed chin and high cheekbones. She remembered how he’d shuddered as her hair slid across his chest and stiff cock. How his wing-feathers had brushed across her, electrifying her whole body. She remembered how he’d gently leaned her over the bank, his gentle hands caressing across the silver charm to prevent pregnancy on her upper thigh. Remembered how she’d eagerly spread her legs for him, remembered his huge cock finding her entrance…

Through her half-closed eye’s she saw the flash and dove reflexively to the side. The magically charged silver arrow streaked out of the mist like a rocket and grazed painfully along her armored flank. A voice gasped and panted, “I don’t know what yer doin’ to me but I want ye… Oh!… I want ye to stop!”

Catti-brie had been wandering this gently rolling more for over an hour when the fog rolled in. She’d found the hunger in her body subtly building, memories of the first night she and Wulfgar made love danced through her mind. The picnic on the mountain slope. Wulfgar’s familiar kisses, his clumsy but attentive caress as his strong hands tried to learn her body through her shirt. The chill rain that blew in just as they’d gotten each other’s clothes off. Hiding from it together in his huge fur cloak, naked flesh pressing on naked flesh. The painfully hard bar pressing against her bare thighs as she explored his body from inside the darkness of his cloak. Her hands learning every inch of him while he shuddered stoically and pretended he wasn’t on fire inside, quelling his desires till the shower passed so he could love her properly.

She’d purchased a new outfit in a town yesterday, hoping to catch Drizzt’s eye. The tough black cotton breaches hugged her legs like a glove. The tight purple tunic had only rudimentary sleeves baring her powerful, tanned arms. It bared her tight, bronze midriff; if her breasts were less firm they might fall beneath the hem. Instead she found a hand slipping up, inside the tunic, and kneading her breast, tweaking its stiff nipple.

She remembered the heat coming off of him. She remembered how he trembled under her fingers. She remembered her long fingers sliding over his cock, testing its thickness, it’s length, tracing the throbbing vein on its underside. Feeling his need. She’d knelt between his legs in the darkness of his cloak and kissed its head tentatively. She’d brushed her lips along first the left, then the right, then lowered a bit more and tasted his balls. As he shouted in ecstasy she’d opened her lips and tried to see how much of his huge manhood she could hold. She sucked gently and bobbed her head on his shaft, her silken lips and hot tongue barley managing to caress half of his huge cock. Then he’d stiffened and roared, his hips quivering and stiffening as something salty shot down her throat.

Catti-brie couldn’t believe how hot she was! Her right hand had left Khazid’he’s pommel to mold her other breast. Her tunic was shoved over her breasts as she kneaded them hungrily, rolling them around and gently twisting her nipples. A lock of her auburn hair fell across one and she tickled herself with it. Then the fog swirled and parted giving her a glimpse of a frighteningly familiar form. She saw ebony skin, long, snow white hair, and luminous red eyes and her confused brain jumped to an entirely wrong conclusion. She jerked her tunic down and drew Tamourill the Heartseeker.

It’s a drow priestess, she thought, she’s doing this to me as part o’ some plan to sacrifice Drizzt or capture me father’s kingdom.

Were she thinking clearly she would have realized the unlikelyhood of this and approached peacefully, but she was facing a traditionally male problem. Her hormones were clouding her judgement.

A silver arrow flew from Tamouril towards the shadowy figure. (Damn, I’d intended that to be a warning shot and I almost hit her.) “I don’t know what yer doin’ to me but… oh… I want ye to stop!”

The figure rolled quietly through the fog, circling her, fading out of sight despite her best effort to track on the shape.

Suddenly a glowing, rippling, green elven shape darted past her from behind and she spun to follow it, knocked and drew an arrow but held, questioning the wisdom of shooting someone who’s specific intentions she didn’t know. Then there was a sword blade resting against the side of her neck from behind, she couldn’t see it except as an absence of light, but a whole foot of it was there. A musical voice spoke calmly, despite husky undertones of arousal. “This is Shadowweaver,” the tip of a second blade settled gently into her back, “and this is Stardancer. I can slit your throat, run you through, and blind you with a twist of my hips. Or you can put away your bow and I can sheaf my swords and we can talk like the two civilized people meeting accidentally on a strange road that we are.”

Tamourill and the silver arrow went back in their quiver. A moment latter the swords slid into two of the three sheaths on the stranger’s back. “now, what is it you thought I was doing to you?”

Catti-brie stammered as she turned to face Ariana, but the blush on her cheeks made it clear. “Oh that,” she gasped. The passionate buzz was returning as quickly as her adrenaline was ebbing. “That got me too. I don’t know what’s causing it. I’m Ariana.”

“Catti-brie,” she panted as the fires grew even stronger within her.

“The Catti-brie? Of Mithril Hall?”

“Aye.”

“Wow. I always wanted to meet you and er…” Ariana’s cheeks turned purple as her memories of the handsome drow man openly walking the streets of Silverymoon brought a fresh series of erotic images flashing through he mind. The moonfire that Ariana had used as a distraction shattered into dozens of willow-wisp like points and drifted through the fog. She got an eiry sensation they were watching her.

A few awkward, twitching moments latter Catti-brie asked, “so, are you in the tournament to?”

“Yes.” Ariana twitched. Warm, sticky love juice was starting to stain through to the outside of her leggings and her padding was intolerably muggy.

“Do’ that mean we really should be fighting? With the flats an’ all, o’ course.” Her hands kept twitching towards her painfully hard nipples.

“I don’t think so. If you’re in the group fight at the standing stones, that is. I can’t stand to wear this in this muggy fog anymore!” She grabbed the hem of her crystalline chain skirt and jerked the whole thing off of her head. Her ebony breasts slipped free and bounced in the cool air. Their hard nipples strained towards Catti-brie.

“Aye. I’m in the group fight.” She couldn’t stop it anymore; her hand jerked under her tunic and started tweaking her nipples. Her other hand slipped inside her breaches and quested for her cunt. “I guess that means we’re teammates. Sorry about the arrow. I’m not thinking to clearly.”

“Me neither,” Ariana gasped as her hand’s convulsed over her breasts. “Well met.” She freed a hand to clasp wrists with her future companion, who pulled hers clear of her breast self-consciously and wrapped her fingers around the drow's.

Up ‘till that moment neither of them had had the slightest thought of asking the other for help in relieving their passions. In their minds if they didn’t have a man they loved they had their own fingers, period. But when their wrists clasped the pleasure that arced through their sensitized bodies overwhelmed any thoughts of love, monogamy, or gender. Their only thought was that by touching each other the hunger could be filled.

Ariana, far more accustomed to touching strangers, moved first. She flung herself atop Catti-brie and devoured her lips.

An instant later Catti-brie was kissing her back. Her tongue shot eagerly into Ariana’s mouth and danced with the drow’s. Her hands shot up to cup Ariana’s breasts and knead them eagerly. She cried passionately as Ariana’s deft, agile fingers found her own breasts stroked them with delicate passion. Ariana’s garments melted into nothing but a sash and a hair ribbon. Catti-brie’s hand snaked between her silky white curls to stroke her nether-lips. Ariana yipped in passion, then sucked her lovers tongue hungrily as she fumbled with the laces on the sides of her pants. “

Oh, oh, oh,” she gasped as the laces suddenly came loose. She couldn’t tell what she’d done to the knot, or even if she’d done it, but Catti-brie’s demanding moans shoved the thought aside and she slipped her fingers into the pants and panties and danced lightly over Catti-brie’s nether lips. She gasped and moaned rhythmically as Catti-brie’s first two fingers dove repeatedly in and out of her pussy and their unattended breasts ground into each other. Her deft fingers found Catti-brie’s clitoris and stroked it quickly and gently till they both found themselves screaming in rapture. Their juices bathed each other’s fingers as their cries were swallowed by the hollow fog and drifting motes of green light. Their lips locked passionately as the fires in them barley seemed to ebb at all, but then they shoved each other away.

“What the hells are we doing?!” Catti-brie gasped as her fingers slid inside her pants and danced over her nether lips.

“Something we shouldn’t.” Sweat powered down her purple-flushed face. “I mean, this is just a hunger, right? You don’t…oh… touch someone that way out of hunger. That’s something for people in love, right?” Her fingers plunged in and out of her own pussy as she tried to make herself believe something that she’d known all her life.

“Right. It’s just a hunger. Oh!” Catti-brie collapsed to the ground gasping as love juice spurted from her nether lips.

Ariana felt her hair brushing across her breasts and sighed in satisfaction. Then she realized it wasn’t her hair, a tendril of fog had gone solid and was caressing her breasts. “What the…?”

A second tendril began to worry her other breast. She groaned in rapture as her lips formed the word, “Catti!”

“What?!” she gasped.

“This fog’s alive!” she screamed as tendrils wrapped up her arms and waist and lifted her into the air.

As Catti-brie saw this a tendril caressed her cheek and Khazid’he shot out to sever it, but a dozen more tendrils coalesced and wrapped up her arms, her waist, her legs, and began an amorous assault on her body. As the spread eagle girls slowly drifted around to face each other a dozen tendrils caressed every inch of their bodies. They saw the horror and rapture in each other’s eyes as tendrils ripped Catti-brie’s pants in half and shredded her tunic. They felt like a hundred-thousand feathers, some cool, some warm, were being run expertly over their bodies. Their nipples rose higher than ever as they thrashed about, struggling to free themselves, but how can you escape from the very air around you? Two dozen tiny tendrils worshiped each breast, stroking and tweaking with feather light touches of velvet and satin. Then tiny tendrils combed through flame red and snow white hairs to caress sopping pussy-lips. They stroked the entrances wide, tickled clitorises. They divided infinitely smaller till it seemed every nerve was receiving individual attention. Hazy green lights devoured them like eyes as two long, thick tendrils cycloned into being and seemed to study them.

“No,” Ariana gasped.

“Please no,” Catti-brie echoed, but the tendrils plunged mercilessly into them, filling them with pleasure hard as flesh and cool as night wind and soft as silk with the texture of a thousand feathers.

“AAHHHHH” Catti-brie screamed.

“No! Nonononononoooo, no no no nonon… oh! OHHHHHH, yes!” Ariana screamed as the tendrils worked passionately into them. The two floating women bounced atop them, breasts heaving and rocking, cunt lips grasping and pulling hungrily till they found themselves screaming as simultaneous orgasms spiraled through there writhing bodies.

And the tendrils didn’t let up. Thin ones probed their anuses, then thrust in slowly and relentlessly. Smaller tendrils slipped into their cunts beside the big one and pumped in contrasting rhythms. Their pleasured bodies writhed and squealed. Ariana’s ruby eyes widened in shock. “Catti--- oh! Oh! Catti, oh, oh Catti-brieieieieie.” She screamed and shuddered as another orgasm wracked her body.

“Ah, ahahahahah, what? Oh, that’s so nice.”

“Are you, oh, ah oh, are you feeling weaker?”

“How could I be feeling week? Every nerve is on fire. Ah, yesssss. No! No, wait. I am feeling week, oh, oh, oh, oh ohh!!!!”

“These things, oh! These things are draining our energy, oh!” She shuddered as juices ran along the tendrils. She was about to come again, and she wasn’t certain if she’d stay conscious through the experience. “The more we enjoy ourselves, Oh! The more pleasure we feel the weaker we get…ahhahahaha.”

Catti-brie didn’t seem to hear. She was lost in writhing, screaming pleasure. Her body trembled and shook as she cried out in orgasm after orgasm. I’ve got to dissipate the fog… oh!! There’s a spell, ah ah ah! An air spell that creates a column of wind to break falls. Maybe that will work.

She opened her mouth and began to sing the spellsong, struggling to cease her sighs and shrieks long enough to form the spell. One of the gleaming points of light seemed to study her, and a tendril snaked into her mouth. Her spell was lost as she gagged, then it backed off enough that she could close her lips around it and respond to her bodies prompting and suck on the solid air. Oh, now what am I going to do? She thought. I can’t hold back much longer, this thing is going to suck my dry but I can’t hold back, it feels so good!

As her breasts rocked and her pussy clenched every nerve in her body began to flow slowly towards her pussy. Then it hit her, the weak spot! The green glows that were devouring her body like hungry eyes! As the ecstasy built higher and higher five points of silver radiance slid out of her heart. As she screamed in ecstatic rapturous, delight and her juices bathed the tentacles the five dots exploded from her breasts as whizzing silver darts of power and embed in the five largest points of light. As she convulsed in wave after wave of pleasure the dots exploded like the firecrackers behind her eyes and the girls dropped to the ground. The mist demon screamed and fled.

Ariana threw her arm around Catti-brie for warmth before passing out.

* * *

I came in from my three hour morning training and found a strange woman in the kitchen cooking something that smelled like it should be served to the August Personage of Jade.

I dropped to the pallet (anyone know the term?), dumfounded, as she walked towards me carrying a large platter of sizzling meets and crackling shoots. My vows did not limit me to rice, beans, salad and water but I’d never needed anything more. Not until I smelled this, that is, and saw her.

She was tiny, well under five feet. Her smile was warm with adorable dimples. Her raven-black hair was long and thick and wavy, wisps of its vivacious wildness floated over her shoulders and drifted over her breasts. Her skin was the color of sweat, milky mocha. She wore a simple, light blue sundress that swished over her dimpled knees and barley covered her huge, round, firm breasts.

In a voice as bright and kind as the morning sun she said, “You’re just in time for breakfast, husband, how was your workout?”

It was her. My “wife.” The mimic.

I should be destroying it.

When this farce began I’d asked it, ordered it, to limit its feeding to me. Last night it said it was hungry, and my supposedly disciplined thoughts were flooded with a thousand memories of beautiful dreams of the first time I would make love. I knew not one of them would come true, ever, I was going to give myself to the hunger of a damnable mimic.

It was my duty.

Gods forgive me, I was afraid.

So I stood, stiff and still, and waited for her to seduce me, rape me, anything so I didn’t have to open my arms to a damnable mimic.

No. Don’t dishonor yourself further. The body she wore then was beautiful, slender as a reed and lithe as a dancer and ripe as a maiden. The gift of imagination is mine, I could have ignored her nature easily.

I was afraid.

So I stood there, waiting for it to work the wiles that the taunting, jeering mimics at the “wedding” claimed it worked so well. Sacred virgins and celibate priests could not resist it.

It walked away into the night and I rejoiced. It was leaving. The farce was over, and I was not at fault.

I understand now, and I am ashamed again. A dutiful wife does not force her husband. Surely such an accomplished sexual predator would see seduction as the same as rape in that respect; both were ways to feed on the unwilling. It was doing its duty. Damn her, she… it shamed me again. Now it had gone out and found a new form that could do a better job of being a dutiful wife… Oh, gods, it fed! That sweet girl, the real her, is lying somewhere half dead from ki drain. Did it even bother to find her shelter or is she lying in a stream somewhere freezing to death and filling with fever just like my sister?

I should be killing her.

But I am a monk of Tai Ki Ken. I do my duty. I do not let fear rule me. I do not upset the balance for revenge or love or sense of right and wrong. Every philosophy must be balanced by a counter philosophy and true wisdom is only found at the fulcrum. As much evil as good. As much law as chaos. As much black as white. As much yin as yang. There is no growth without movements acting in opposition.

The mantra has never sounded so hollow before.

I should be destroying it.

Yet it stands there, its innocent beauty horrible for the cold predator within it, doing its duty.

And I am ashamed.

“My training was invigorating, and this breakfast is the most heavenly thing I’ve ever smelled.” I ate, and the meal was pure poetry to my lips.

The mimic said, “I’d heard of a woman in the wetlands sector who was said to be the best cook in Pandemonium, I thought you might find her… pleasing.” For a moment the predator flashed through the wide, liquid eyes. Oh yes, it said, I know how to please you.

Seeing I had all I needed she knelt on the pallet across from me.

“Please join me.”

“I’ve already eaten.” It had to remind me, and it bowed its head slightly as if it had committed nothing more than a minor breach of etiquette. “And, delicious as this is, it is nothing more than a sensation to me.”

I knew my duty. When the marvelous feast was done I asked, “You never told me if you had a name, wife?”

“You could not comprehend it, husband.”

“Is there something else I may call you?”

“What would you name me, Ryu-kun?”

“Beledandy?”

“Hmm. I do not like it, my name should be simple.”

“Do _you_ not like it, or your form?”

“It is the same thing, but when I am no longer the worlds best cook I will still not like it.”

A shudder ran from my spine to my toes and I didn’t quite care when her nostril’s flared hungrily. Before I knew it my mouth was opening I said, “I could never resist a woman of paradox.”

Then I was sputtering between a blush and an outraged outburst.

A few moments breathing exercises later I continued, “so, you want a simple name? But your such a complicated… being.”

“That’s the point.”

“Eieko then?”

“Hmm. Yes, I like that.”

Many quite minutes latter, as we tried to share cups of tea, I began,

“Eieko-ch…” I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t be disrespectful to her and I couldn’t address my wife formally, but I could… not… ascribe it the femininity implicit in the familiar form.

Suddenly her voice was something half way between a lusty purr and a predatory growl. “Can you not manage even that?”

I was dumbstruck by the outburst.

“Aren’t I doing my damndest to be a dutiful wife?”

“Y… yes,” I stammered.

“Couldn’t you at least pretend!? What are you afraid of?”

“…”

“Are you afraid I’ll find a way around your precious defenses and drain you to death?”

I am, aren’t I? “Y…”

“Well be afraid, damn it!!” She was over the table and slamming me into the wall before my shocked mind could react. Her tiny human body held every ounce of her monstrous strength. Her voice was a predatory growl, a hungry wolf articulating human speech. “I loathe this charade every bit as much as you do. Do you know what I want, Yumeno Ryu? (Dream’s Dragon) What I dream every hour?”

Her free hand was on my cock, her clever fingers ordering it to eager stiffness even as my blood turned to ice water and her pleasuring fingers threatened to crush my manhood. “I dream that I at last earn your trust, give you rapture beyond your wildest imagining while I disable your defenses and drain you dry. You writhe in my arms and beg me for more even though you know I’m killing you, and I do. As you die in ecstasy no mortal has ever known I steal your form and power and the world is mine. With your power merged with mine I’d be unstoppable, a dozen warrior women would feed me at a time! That’s what I dream, I’m a predator, damn it, but here I am _cooking_ and _cleaning_ and _simpering_ for me _prey_ who won’t touch me, and won’t let me hunt, so again I ASK YOU AM I DOING A DECENT JOB OF BEING YOUR WIFE?!”

“Yes.”

“And is my form pleasing?”

“Very.”

“Well, in about ten hours your wife is going to be reduced to a featureless, sexless, gray skinned, black taloned form with the intelligence of a hunting cat. How am I going to cook and clean for you then? How are you going to feed me then?”

Maybe it was just her expert fingers refusing to let my manhood soften, but I swore I heard a vulnerability in her predatory growl.

Then it hit me like a giants fist, she hadn’t fed! She’d kept her word.

However she’d taken this form she hadn’t fed.

“Eieko-chan,” I took her hand from my shirt and kissed it, “I apologize. I’ve been a very bad husband.”

Had I softened her eyes? Moved her? Or had the predator simply ducked back under the form? I knelt, bringing my face on level with hers, and gently kissed her full, soft lips. I moaned into the kiss when she removed her hand, then sighed as her tongue caressed my lips.

Tai Ki Ken rarely seek romance. For people who must hold themselves above the world it is difficult to have a lover outside of the order, and few women have joined us. Though I had trysted before kissing was a fairly new sensation to me; soft and languid pleasure punctuated with gasping spikes of rapture almost too intense to endure. The paradox of those lips was driving me wild, her human part submitting to my yang self, calling me to protect her and pleasure her, while the predator within dominated and manipulated my passion masterfully. I felt like I was sparing a Tai Chi Chuan master, I pleasured her one way and she yielded to it, and every yielding put her in a position of greater advantage. I was putty in her arms and a puppet to her lips. When her gentle hands began to unlace my pants I almost didn’t care.

Yet there was one discordant note, and I gently pushed her a few inches back. It wasn’t what she was or who she was, that didn’t bother me any more, or at least not so much that I was aware of my objections over my trumpeting desire. It wasn’t that I didn’t love her; since when did people go into arranged marriages loving each other? It was my sense of duty, no, my sense of rightness, that made me pause. “Is this nothing but feeding to you?”

The liquid black eyes went sardonic with an edge of steel, “did you expect me to tell you I loved you or something?”

“Of course not! I mean does the pleasure you give me give you nothing but nourishment?”

Her kind eyes laughed now as her fingers crawled up my chest. “Did the food I just cooked for you give you nothing but nourishment?”

“Of course not, it was delicious. Is this the same thing?”

“Not exactly, but yes.” Her hands ran up my throat and around my ears.

“Do you enjoy it for something more than the feeding?”

“I enjoy it for the hunt and for the seduction as well.” Her voice was perky sunshine again modulating into a feminine purr. It expressed no hurry and no hesitation at the topic of conversation.

“That’s not what I meant, at least I think it’s not. Is the pleasure itself more than feeding?”

She ran her fingers down my cheeks, and looked earnestly into my eyes. “If you separate a sensation into it’s component parts you invariably loose some of it.”

“Do you enjoy seduction more than attack?” I don’t believe I’m saying that so calmly.

“Of course, it is a higher form of hunting.” Her fingers were gently caressing my chest. “Any brute or newborn can feed by attack, especially against a woman. It takes skill and art to seduce; the feeding is better and the sensation sweeter,” her fingers glided a millionth of an inch over my manhood, “and I am an artist.”

“Then may I, as a husband should, take some time to give you sensation?”

She paused, startled, and seemed to grapple with the concept. “Had a mimic said that it would have been a threat or a challenge. You are trained in Tai Ki Ken sex craft, you must realize the kind of trust you are asking of me.”

My fingers glided down her bare arms and I breathed into her ear, “no more than you are asking of me.”

“Very well, if it would please you.”

“If it will please you,” I whispered.

“I won’t know until you try,” she breathed, and her white teeth nipped at my ear.

I kissed her again, then nibbled on her throat, then inhaled her scent: good things cooking, clean hair caressed with herbal soap, rose honey, and feminine arousal. I hesitated a moment at the thought of gallantly carrying her into the bedroom, thinking it might insult her strength. Her sigh at my lips on her smooth neck told me that she would go along with whatever this experiment entailed. I rocked back on my ankles, pulling her soft chest into mine, and tickled the back of her knees as my arm slid around them. My other arm settled behind her back as I straightened to my full height and kissed her again before carrying her into the bedroom. Her eyes refused to meet mine.

I gently laid her on the futon and knelt beside her feet. I held one tiny foot. To part of me it was an amazingly complex map of pressure points, to another it was a thing of beauty, and I treated it like both. I ran my fingertips over it, gently caressing certain points while studiously ignoring others, some because they were unpleasant, others to build the sensation with painstaking slowness. After my fingers had run feather light over both feet I gave them the same attention with my lips, no more than breathing over her sensitive big toe. I worked up her legs to her hips the same way, silken brown flesh sliding under the pads of my fingers, then the nails. Then tasting the sweet, soft flesh one inch at a time. She was trembling.

I lifted her upper body. She started to sit up but I said, “hush, relax,” and I pulled one band of her sundress down past her arm, revealing the outer curve of her huge, firm, breast. Then gave the arm the same attention I’d given her legs.

I did her other arm next, the top of the dress lay across the twin mountains of kissable brown flesh just above the nipples, but I reigned in my impulses, determined to finish the loving ritual I’d designed and dreamed of performing for years. My fingers and lips brought every nerve in her arms to life. I finished the caress by nibbling on the webbing between her fingers, the powerful caress promising better to come.

I turned my attention to her face. Her lips were trembling. Her eyes refused to meet mine but she gave no other sign of displeasure. While lightly caressing I triggered endorphin points on the sides of her head, caressed around her eyes and cheeks for clear breathing. I finished by first outlining her full lips, then tracing her small, delicate ears.

Her whole body was trembling by now. I gently kissed her heart chackra, tasting her spirit and finding it filled with equal parts horrible fear and unquenchable desire. Her aura was chocolate and leather, sunshine and blood. I lift her up again to remove her dress. My eyes drank in the dark aureoles and nipples that were everything they promised, then I turned her over. I ran my fingers along her shuddering back, applying the tiniest bit of pressure and energy to points that I could have used to overload her with pleasure. She writhed as I slid between the cheeks of her curving bottom to brush against the lowest point of her pussy, then I gently lifted her up and turned her over again.

Now my hands worshiped her front. I offered the gentlest caress and the gentlest stimulation to every inch of her delicate and chest and huge, round breasts and trim stomach and curling black hair and misting, shivering cunt lips; never giving any one part more attention than any other.

Now her eyes were closed tight and her entire body was trembling. I could see with my ki sight that every pleasure point on her body was alight with sensitivity. I straddled her body and gently sped my attentions. First they were just deepened caresses, but they slowly turned into an amazingly complex pattern, tracing caresses from one pleasure point to another, never stopping at one longer than it would take to energize it and twist my fingers gently into it before running my fingers over to a new one. She was squealing and panting and gasping, her breasts quivering, her pussy contracting. As I hit a point on her chest that sent pleasure arcing into both her nipples at once while my other finger brushed her clitoris I swear she squealed, “more, please!”

She was convulsing as my caresses went faster and faster and hit her points deeper and deeper. I knew the slightest misplaced caress would drive her over the edge now, but I wanted her to feel an orgasm beyond any she’d ever imagined. I started to fret over the levels of finesse necessary to build her higher without pushing her over the edge and almost put to much pressure/energy into the point three inches below her left nipple so I let all conscious control go and ran on pure reflex.

When her entire body was on fire with pleasure enough to drive her mad were it not released I slammed my fingers powerfully into the two most sensitive spots on her body and she screamed in orgasm as her back arched and tears spilled from her eyes. There was a sudden rapport between us, as if the pleasure in her was feeding back through my fingers and it shot through me, my muscles contorted in ecstasy and fire erupted from my manhood.

When it was over I collapsed atop her and her shining eyes met mine and instant before we both blacked out.

Yumeno Ryu awoke then, almost sobbing at the emptiness of waking up alone. His past life memories were often like that, so intense and vivid that he wanted to weep for what he couldn’t have.

He’d had that memory before, many times before, and it was more intense every time. He remembered what happened next, how Eieko had demanded that he give her the same trust she’d given him by letting her feed on him without him hitting the points that would instigate the mutual feeding. She even knew the secret series of pressure points that would bypass his immunity to ki drain. They were easy to defend against but still one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Tai Ki Ken order, and he didn’t think she’d ever revealed how she’d learned them. He remembered how she’d given him hours of ecstasy, always subtly teasing him with the question of whether or not she was going to kill him till the fear was as sweet as the pleasure and both were as intense as pain and he’d been drained to unconsciousness. He remembered waking up a day latter with another exquisite meal laid out for him and knowing they would always trust each other after that, they had no choice.

He remembered at least a hundred different beautiful women Eieko had become for their mutual pleasure. He remembered her ever escalating psychic abilities and how he’d felt both their pleasures at once. He remembered how her curiosity had matched his own, spending hours talking about the similarities and differences between human and mimic.

He remembered the night she’d asked him what love felt like, and he’d opened his heart to her telepathy and they’d both known that, impossibly, they were in love.

He remembered the coming of the demon legions. His first view of the demon armies was his last memory of that lifetime, yet he new there was something he was forgetting, something wonderful.

What he could never remember was how they’d gotten into that situation. He had no recollection of why his superiors had ordered him to marry a mimic, or why Eieko’s superiors had ordered her to marry him, or who Eieko’s superiors where. His studies and observations had never revealed any command structure in what passed for mimic society. In their natural forms they were cunning but unintelligent predators didn’t socialize at all. In human forms they never seemed to defer to anyone or give orders to anyone, the exception being the ones who’d joined Kakugo Jin’s armies, and they chafed at orders.

The Tai Ki Ken monk was twenty-five. In the lifetime he’d been remembering he was blonde and green eyed, tall and broad shouldered. This lifetime he was dark haired and blue eyed, tall and lanky. Such was his mastery of meditation that, though he’d only slept for two hours on a hard tree branch, he felt like he’d rested for eight on a feather mattress.

He stalked through the bushes to where a hill overlooked a strawberry blonde mimic performing incredibly complex kattas that were as much dance as combat. Sometimes she used war-fans, other times twin crystal-bladed daggers, one with a silver tiger for a hilt, the other with a golden dragon. Sometimes she melted into shadows so well she was almost invisible, others she broke stones with her hands and feet and head. Once she ran straight down the face of a cliff and landed unhurt. She laughed a great deal and spoke in two different languages. She manifested ki-fire attacks, burning energy as if it were going out of style.

“Is it you?” he whispered. “Is the mimic-who-became-more reborn in you, and can our impossible love somehow live again?”

Eieko had taught him something one night, well into their relationship. He’d asked her if there was a way he could know her whatever form she was in; when she changed forms it could take him hours to recognize her, to spot the few personality characteristics that were consistently her. (A fact which she’d used to make all kinds of mischief.) She pressed his ear over her heart and told him to listen with his spirit. In time he heard a pure, true, balanced note: middle A.

“Every mimic’s core identity cycles a steady, unique number of times in a second. I cycle 440 times. If my mimic name were translated to human speech it would be 440.”

He’d caught her note at a distance a month ago and slowly tracked her down. He’d been watching her for several hours now. He craned his spiritual ears till he could hear her note, but it wasn’t true middle A, it was almost imperceptibly flat, almost imperceptibly out of tune.

“No...” he moaned.

“Now what?”

He found he couldn’t give up on her that easily. In these dark days the only happiness he could find came from his past life memories. Even the satisfaction he took at Tai Ki Ken training and learning was soured by the fact that they weren’t allowed to stand up to the demons who destroyed the balance of his beautiful world.

So he watched, and he waited.

* * *

Many people call Kuno Kodaichi crazy. She is, but most people are talking about the selfish, insensitive, slightly vicious part of her, the “I think rubbing salt in your paperecuts is funny because I don’t know any better” part that lets her do what she does. That’s not insanity at all, that’s just the nearly inevitable result of being a spoiled rich girl who never learned empathy, especially one who hasn’t quite gotten over her samurai heritage.

What’s insane is the quite chaos of thoughts and emotions that constantly churns through her mind that makes her do what she does: win at all costs, express herself in ways nobody understands, ruthlessly hunt the love of Soatome Ranma. I’m not telling you this to preach at you or try to teach you. (That’s another story.) I’m just pausing a moment to help you understand how she thinks because her story has begun and I want it to make sense. Happiness and pleasure and power are secondary motivations to her, she wants sanity.

The Black Rose skipped and cartwheeled down the Nerima streets. Those who knew who she was got quickly out of her way and wondered what she was up to this time. Not everyone knew of her though. The women though it sweet that the cute girl was so happy, the men stared in envy, sensing that she was going to meet a boy, wishing they were so lucky. The men stared at the large breasts and slender waist and elegant legs that her tight gymnastics leotard and hose did little to conceal. The more mature also admired her lovely heart shaped face, her wide, shining eyes, and the black rose she held in her perfect white teeth. The waving bounce to her silky black ponytail. Then their eyes went back to the breasts bouncing with her stride and her tiny feet clad in black ballet slippers and long, thin legs springing effortlessly through the air.

The source of the often brooding girls happiness was, of course, Soatome Ranma. She’d overheard her brother, in his usual bad poetry, rambling about how Ranma had been searching everywhere for Tendo Akane, Shampoo, and Ukyou. Her plan was simple enough, she’d help Ranma search for them. She could spend time with him, get close to him, and the appearance of selflessness would surely turn him on. And if they found the girls she might have a chance of making sure they’d stay lost.

Excellent, she’d found him already! He was in girl form, but she could fix that soon enough. “Ranma-sama,” she cried out as she hurled herself across the street into his arms.

He caught her and ran on, but he didn’t quite seem to notice her. If he were in his true form this would be quite acceptable. She took her rose in one hand, wrapped her arms around his neck, gazed into his eyes and tried to loose herself in the warm quietness they invoked, but the panicked terror therein was ruining her moment. She kicked her feet in vexation, then slipped into the dreamy, husky purr she reserved for him alone. “What’s wrong, Ranma-sama; how may the Black Rose aid thee?”

“C… c…c…”

“What?” She leaned close to his ear.

“Cat!” he shrieked at the top of his girl’s lungs.

She winced and rubbed her ears. “Where?” Then she looked behind them and saw a humanoid, nine foot tall orange tabby cat with Arabian daggers for claws and radiation-green fire in its luminous eyes. “Oh, has that been there all along? Be brave, my Ranma, I will help you slay the beast.”

She scrambled up onto his shoulders and conjured a hoop from her Aura-Pocket. She hurled it at the cat’s legs, then leapt as it’s eyes tracked on the spinning projectile. Her roundhouse took it in the jaw as it hopped the hoop. She spun with the roundhouse and knocked the teetering feline farther to the side with a hook-kick, then mule kicked into its shoulder and tapped it’s ear, giving the impression that her flick was what finally knocked it over.

There was no audience for her shenanigans or heroism, Ranma had continued to run and disappeared around the corner.

“Oh, Ranma-samma, why are you so cruel to me? You fought the Cat-Ghost for that barbarian Shampoo, will you not so much as face this beast beside me?”

Around the corner.

Something wormed it’s way into Ranma’s phobia-mad mind. He skidded to a halt. “Kodaichi?” Wasn’t Kodaichi with me a second ago? He thought, is she fighting that thing?

He spun to see a an orange cat demon dropping to the ground at the corner and barreling towards him. “Eep! Guess not!” He took off again, red pigtail and perky breasts bouncing, cute eye’s glazing over in panic.

Atop the roof of the shop at the corner Gosunkugi crouched in the shadow of an air conditioner and laughed maniacally. “You fool, Soatome, how easily you are deceived. And how clever of me to go to the trouble of acquiring twin Rakasha. Soon Tendo Akane will be mine and all the rest of your women will be gone!”

Meanwhile.

The Rakasha was pulling to its feet. Kodaichi manifested her gymnastics ribbon and snagged a pork bun stand which she shattered over it’s head.

Did I get it?

from it and tore into Kodaichi with a flurry of claw swipes. It’s fur bristled in rage. Kodaichi dodged and blocked with all her skill and speed, the monster’s agility was tremendous. She shifted her grip slightly to lay a well manicured finger over a hidden stud. The Rakasha yowled as her next two blocks left bloody punctures on it’s forearms. It hopped back to study the gymnast, but she’d already retracted the spikes so the dumb creature came at her again.

A few blocks latter the gymnast popped out the spikes again and pressed the advantage when it flinched in pain and confusion to smash her clubs up into it’s chin. Next she leapt, flipped and twisted, and landed on its back. Her club slipped in front of it’s throat. She took it in both hands, leaned back, and strained with all her might. The creature staggered about, fighting not to choke, then growled, “Rubbed the Wrong Way Technique!”

Huh?

It’s back arched and it yowled as every hair on it’s body stood on end. Static ran down every hair and a massive spark of electricity transferred into Kodaichi. She lost her grip on the club as agony contorted in her muscles. She flew back and smashed through the girder supporting a shopkeepers porch. The porch roof collapsed and what felt like every pot in the world crashed atop her head followed by the junk hidden on the roof behind the pots; an old TV, a couple of hundred pounds of bricks, and finally a half ton of strings and keys and hard wood bonged as it shattered atop the dazed and agonized gymnast.

Somewhere not too far away Hikaru thought, what an excellent set up that was. I wonder if the piano was too much, though?

Through an agonized daze Kodaichi saw the Rakasha approaching with hunger, vengeance and lust burning in its luminous eyes.

“I’m not worthy, Ranma-sama.” She struggled to clear her head, to fight, to move, but it was all she could do to hold keep herself from being swallowed by the blackness behind her eyes. The Rakasha stood over her, leering, and popped it’s claws one by one.

“Strike of the Sulfuric Gas Pocket!” A flaming fist burst from the rubble beside her and crashed into the Rakasha’s stomach. It hurtled back across the street and landed, staggering, on its feet.

A boy dressed in a black school uniform rose from the wreckage and faced down the shocked Rakasha. He clenched his fist at his sides and drew them back. His twiggy arms rippled with tensing muscles. His black-rimmed eyes grew even wider. A black battle aura with snakes of molten lead sprang into existence and cycloned around him. Flames built higher and higher atop his head. “Goblin Fire!” he shouted and the flames dove into his head and erupted from his mouth and eyes. The column of ki-fire smashed into the Rakasha and hurled it’s burning form through the wall of the pet store behind it. It lay limp in a pile of shattered dog food bags.

Kodaichi’s head slowly began to clear. She started to stand up, but thought better of it. She forced her eyes to focus on the awesomely powerful stranger.

“Thank you so much, sir.” He was strangely familiar. “Do I know you?”

He bowed politely. “Gosunkugi Hikaru, Kodaichi-san, I’ve been around, but you wouldn’t have noticed me.”

Unable to stand and bow she inclined her throbbing head. “You have saved my unworthy life, how may I repay you?” there was more than a hint of innuendo in her husky voice.

He shrugged. “A spot of bad luck, that’s all, you would have had the beast had the fool who owned this store not so irresponsibly stacked his garbage on an unstable roof.”

“Do you really think so?” She perked up at the compliment. I can tell

Ranma-samma I defeated the cat for him, she thought, he will be so grateful. She sighed, already dismissing Hikaru as a man.

“With all my heart, Kodaichi-san. Indeed, I am a recruiter for a tournament for the finest fighting women in the world and I feel you are more than a worthy to enter. Indeed, I’d wager you would win, and the winner is to be awarded her hearts desire.’

“My hearts desire? Even the exclusive love of Ranma-sama?!”

“Whatever you could wish, Kodaichi-san.”

“Well then let’s go!”

Kodaichi should have been angered or concerned at the fact that she could only leave if she won this tournament, but she was enjoying herself too much. The energizing pringle of danger, the clarity of anticipated battle, there was plenty of time to worry about going home latter; besides, the Black Rose rarely lost.

She’d crept through this strange underground labyrinth for almost half an hour, evading small, scrawny humanoid creatures, attacking them from behind and by surprise when she felt like it. She’d forgotten how exhilarating it was to play daggers in the dark, and theses monsters were so easy to overpower, it was thrilling indeed.

From the chamber ahead of her came a the red glow of fire. She slipped up to it and saw that to cross the ten meter (about thirty-five feet) long, three meter (about ten feet) wide chamber to the open door one needed to leap across stone pillars, each about fifteen centimeters wide, and evade three half-ton stone pendulums. If one fell from the pillars they would plunge three meters into crackling fires covering the floors. The heat pouring out of the room was already plastering her leotard even tighter to her body with sweat. She couldn’t imagine a more fun setup.

She wondered where the warriors would come from?

Pulling club and hoop from her aura-pocket she hopped out onto the columns and paused, scanning for a challenger.

It wasn’t long in coming. It was less than a meter tall with bat-like wings. It’s leering, long-nosed face had the exaggerated features of a big headed charicature. It’s fingers were clawed. The monster’s skin and long hair were the color of flames. It looked at her and it’s leering grin seemed to split its head. It’s mouth opened and a gout of fire shot towards her. Instead of dodging Kodaichi hurled her hoop at the monster and spun her club so rapidly that it dissipated the flames.

Sure enough two more of the creatures rose into the air at the pillars she’d been most likely to dodge onto. As her hoop smashed into the first monsters throat her ribbon came out, caught the hoop, and spun both towards the monster to her left. The ribbon looped around its neck and she sent it flying into the first swinging pendulum.

As she did this the third monster exhaled a gout of flame towards her. She tried to leap clear of it but flames bathed her legs, scorching her hose. She winced and continued her leap, over the imps head, flipping and twisting to alight on a column behind it. As it spun to face her her now bare leg roundhoused into it’s nose. She pirouetted with the roundhouse, spinning her bloody ribbon above her head. As the beast swooped towards her she slowed the spin letting the ribbon surround her. The monster was knocked into the back wall and the ribbon shot out again, smashing the hoop into the monster.

All three monster’s reduced to limp masses in the fire-pit she laughed huskily and sprang and flipped across the room, evading first one pendulum then another. As she sprang past the third pendulum her world was swallowed by flames. She shrieked in pain as she was hurled into the air. Her vision cleared and she saw the bar that held the third pendulum shooting towards her. She twisted desperately in the air to catch it-side on and spin around it like a parallel bar. Her clothing had been incinerated, her reddened skin was burning painfully, and six of the red monsters were flying up to circle her. She flipped faster and declared, “vertical dismount strike.” She shot away from the bar, mule-kicking one of the creatures and driving it into the back wall. One down.

Before she could fall her ribbon was out again and wrapping around the middle pendulum, shooting her across the room and away from the confused horde. As she passed her ball manifested and smashed off of a veering monsters head, bounced against the side wall, and back out into the air. She released her hold on the ribbon and handsprung off of the wall she was flying into, flew through the monsters, and landed on a pillar before catching the ball and smashing it into the same monster again. Two down.

Never pausing for and instant she leapt through the veering monsters, grazing two with clubs, to catch her ribbon which still clung to the pendulum. She swung around the pendulum, her speed building as the ribbon tightened, then knocking two of the monsters out of the sky with her club and her speed before releasing the ribbon and crouching atop the swinging pendulum.

The remaining two monsters were so dizzy from veering around again and again to follow Kodaichi that the room seemed to be spinning around them. Tired of playing keep-away they both chose the gymnast in the middle and unleashed their fiery breath. Kodaichi leapt clear with the force of the pendulum, twisted and sprang off of the wall, and manifested her hoop as she hurtled towards the imps. She began to flip. The hoop hooked one around the waist which was promptly flipped upside down as she caught the other inside the now tightly packed hoop. She landed atop a pillar with the dizzy imps trapped, one head up, one with his feet kicking futilely in the air. She tossed the hoop straight up and declared, “strike of a dozen clubs!”

The flurry of blurring blows pounding into the falling monsters seemed to come from a dozen clubs at once. Of course, it did. She struck with one club then tossed it up to catch another and so on; it was very difficult to defend against because your enemy was never certain which club would strike next. These monsters were beaten, of course, she just felt like showing off. Three seconds and thirty-six blows later she twisted the beaten monsters free of the hoop, put all her weapon’s away, and hopped across the room to the landing and the open door. She spun to face them and called out, “the Black Rose salutes you!” as a swirl of black rose petals filled the air to cover her exit. Someone had other plans. A voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere moaned, “hungry!” and a stone portcullis slammed down in front of Kodaichi.

“Now what?” The naked girl’s full lips pouted at her ruined exit. She turned back towards the fire pit and saw the hazy shapes of the supposedly defeated monsters sliding through the fire towards each other. They seemed to be huddling, no wait, they were merging!

She glanced towards the portcullis again and saw that it was farther away than before. She shook her head to clear it, but the fact did not change. The balcony she was on had stretched.

The monsters flowed together into a bald, lava rock skinned man with the arms and chest of a three meter tall body builder with a five meter long snake’s tail for legs.

Behind him the middle pendulum flowed like diluted clay and shaped itself into a six legged cat with two phallic tentacles sprouting from its flanks.

The fiery snake-man, the salamander, moved through the columns towards her while the living dispalcer beast statue languidly picked it’s way along the stepping columns.

“Ikazu bakemono, (Let’s go, monster,)” Kodaichi challenged the salamander, “you may have gotten bigger but you’ll only fall harder. You’re no match for the Black Rose of St. Bachuss School for Girls.”

She waited calmly, unarmed. When the monster reached the edge of the fire pit it reared up to towered above her and Kodaichi made her move. She darted up in front of it and leapt straight up. Her foot shot up towards it’s chin and the monster countered with a double low block, hoping to catch her foot between crossed arms.

The kick was a feint, of course, and Kodaichi jerked it easily clear of the trap as her hands went over her head. She manifested her hoop and smashed it over the salamanders head and shoulders.

Before her feet could touch the ground or her voice brag about her mastery of an endless arsenal of weapons the salamanders mouth gaped impossibly wide and spit a half dozen lava-skinned snakes onto her. They writhed around her, binding her wrists and ankles. The hog tied girl grunted as she hit the hard stone ground; then hissed as one of the snakes sank its fangs into her neck.

The stone displacer beast gave a sound half chuckle and half purr as it leapt over the salamander to study it’s helpless prey.

The salamander wiggled and struggled but couldn’t free itself from the hoop.

“Hey, get me out of this first,” it demanded.

The stone beast gave it a smug look and resumed it’s contemplation of Kodaichi. Slender body reddened and sensitized by heat as if she were already blushing. Full, round, breasts like the jade emperors peaches. Tight, slender waist a large man could wrap his hands around. Full, curly bush the color of chocolate. The monster leaned down and stared into her eyes. It’s sculpted orbs somehow communicating superior, possessive lust. Kodaichi turned away and squeezed her eyes shut in fear and shame, yet her treacherous mind brought forth a blush that spread from cheek to chest as the lust fulfilled her feminine pride.

The cat nuzzled her breasts with fur as cold as stone but as soft as lambswool, tickled them with cool, bristly whiskers, then licked them with its dry, bumpy tongue and molded them with lips and tentacle tips.

“No. Oh no,” Kodaichi moaned as heat built in her body and blood and love-juice moistened her slit. The beast licked down her stomach and Kodaichi clutched her legs together. The cool tentacles slipped between her ankles and pushed up her trim calves to her knees, then force them apart.

“Ahhh!” she screamed, then gasped as the bumpy tongue rasped across her nether lips and pushed inside moistening itself with her love juice. The tongue licked deeply and slowly, first up and down, then in and out, then twisting side to side till Kodaichi was trembling and begging for, “more, more, more, oh please more.”

Why am I enjoying this, her mind demanded, I don’t want this monster to be my first… well, second time. I don’t care what the manga say, I should be dry as a bone and screaming in pain, what’s going on?

The snake! That snakes venom must be an aphrodisiac! Gods I wish it would make me come… I mean gods I wish I could milk that snake!

“Hey, don’t wear her out,” the salamander demanded, “I want some too!” The monster was shoving futilely as the hoop with the tip of its tail while its twelve inch phallus stood at attention, hungering painfully for the woman who was helpless before him yet helpless to act.

The cat ceased its attentions and chuckle/purred again. It stared smugly at Kodaichi as its right tentacle teased ever so lightly at her opening but neither entered not brushed her clitoris.

Kodaichi moaned in hunger, trying not to sob with her need. She looked into the cat’s eyes coyly and pursed her lips in offering. The cat obliged her by snaking it’s left tentacle into her mouth.

She sucked eagerly on it. Her soft lips slid on and off, her flushed cheeks sucked in as she did her best to give the purring statue delicious suction and her tongue wrapped around it and dug gently into its tip. When she felt the cats pleasures approaching their peak she stopped. Her lips went slack and her tongue limp. The cat coughed in frustration and she gave it a superior look. It conceded the point. Kodaichi squealed in delight as the cat’s right tentacle pushed slowly into her wt pussy. She groaned in satisfaction as she and renewed her attentions to the tentacle in her mouth. As the beast thrust steadily into her her tight breasts rocked back and forth and her bound hands clenched and contorted in pleasure. The tentacle in her mouth thrust faster and she sucked harder till the cat roared as sugary seed poured down her throat.

The cat pulled both tentacles out. Kodaichi squealed in sexual anguish and demanded “No! I’m not finished yet!” A moment later she was filled again as the left tentacle plunged into her pussy and the right filled her mouth with more sugary seed.

Then the cat went at her in earnest. First it abruptly accelerated it’s pace, stroking far too fast and too hard for Kodaichi’s pleasure. Just as her body adapted to the pace it slowed to long, languid thrusts as Kodaichi’s nerves screamed for hard and fast. On and on it went, too fast, too slow, too hard, too soft, till Kodaichi’s pliant body was putty in the cats power; instantly adapting to whatever pace the cat demanded.

Then every muscle in the hog-tied girl contracted and every nerve lit up with burning pleasure like none she’d ever imagined. Juices shot from her womanhood again and again and again as the cat roared his ecstasy. Both tentacles stiffened and ripples and sugary seed poured from the one in her mouth in almost unimaginable quantities.

“Let her go you monster!” a familiar voice screamed in shocked outrage from behind the portcullis, but Kodaichi was too exhausted and too awkwardly tied to turn and see who it was.

* * *

Ranma couldn’t escape it. Wherever he went the Cat was a few steps behind, tireless, merciless, he was so tired of being afraid he almost wanted to die so it would stop.

As he dashed down yet another street with the Yoma not far behind he heard a voice around a corner demand. “Where is Soatome Ranma?”

Yes! Finally! Ryoga must have got my message.

He spun around the corner to see a man skittering away from Hibbiki Ryoga who was carrying a massive bag over his back.

Ryoga saw him sprinting up and demanded, "What’s this about, Soatome?!” Ranma’s fist smashed into the bag. It exploded, scattering catnip across the street. Without so much as a pause Ranma snatched Ryoga and leapt away across the roofs. Ryoga watched as the Rakasha caught a whiff of the offering and rolled around in the street, purring like an old-fashioned vacuum.

A few blocks away Ranma stopped, put Ryoga down and gasped for breath as he paced in agitated circles.

“What’s this about, Soatome? “Find all the catnip you can carry and wander the streets until I find you. Try not to leave Tokyo.” What kind of challenge is that, where have you been all day, and where is Akane!”

“I don’t know, damn it! My best friend, my to cutest enemies, and my f… f… f… Akane are all missing and I can’t do a thing about it because that bloody cat won’t leave me alone! You’ve gotta fight it for me.”

“Soatome you coward! The lovely Akane is missing and you still cannot face your fears!?”

“Don’t you get it, you moron? It’s because Akane is missing that I can’t face it! If I face it down I’m gonna go into the Cat-Fist and the tomboy’s the only one who can snap me out of it! I might spend the rest of my life as a cat, and worse, don’t pretend I’m not unstoppable in that berserk. I would tear this city apart! So are you gonna help me, Ryoga?”

“Feh, how pathetic, begging for my help. Very well, I shall destroy the cat for you.”

“Great, meet me at Ucchan’s when your done!” The pigtailed martial artist dashed away.

“Soatome! How am I going to find it?”

Ranma was already four blocks away. He leapt to the street, mopeds and delivery trucks ate his dust. At last he was in control again. At last her could get something done.

A black blur flashed from a roof and a foot blurred out to sweep his legs. Ranma flipped with the sweep and landed on his feet. He hopped, twisted his hips, and side kicked towards the target behind him who skipped back and fell into a Tiger Kung Fu fighting stance. The entire exchange took less than half a second.

Ranma blinked. “Gosunkugi?” he gasped incredulously. Since when could that geek fight? “What’s this about, Gosunkugi?”

“Soatome Ranma, you are a disrespectful, irreverent, inattentive, crude idiot.

You are unworthy of the lovely Tendo Akane; I challenge you for her hand. Icazu!” (Let’s go!)

“Sounds like fun, Gosunkugi, but I aint got time for this. Akane ‘s been missing since after the Martial Bowling Tournament, so I’ll have to take a raincheck. See ya.”

“What did you say?”

Ranma turned back to him and said, “I said I’d hafta take a rain check, some things are more important than…”

“No, when did she disappear?!” he demanded, his battle aura flaring.

“Yesterday after the Martial Arts Bowling Tournament.”

“It can’t be,” he gasped, “that was Himato Yhoko.” He thought back; the girl had most definitely not been Akane but… If the short, feminine hair were blue instead of golden, the eyes dark instead of green, the breasts a year or so less developed, the beauty mark gone from her cheek. “No!” The blood drained from his face and he fell to his knees. “What have I done? What have I done!?” His wail echoed across Nerima as his heart died. Then ice water filled his veins as Ranma spoke in a voice as cold as slow death.

“I don’t know, Gonsenkugi, what have you done?”

The end for now