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Knocking on Heaven's Door [MtG/Multicross/SI]

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Chapter Twenty-Six (Ranma 1/2)
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    • Chapter Twenty-Six (Ranma 1/2)

    Later that night, as the whole of Nerima slept, I crossed my arms behind my head as I watched the latest episode of Kamen Rider for the time period at hand. Rito sat by my side, his body twitching slightly from the amount of glorious training he had gone through during the few hours he had been there.

    "You know that you're the one choosing whether or not to feel pain, right?" I remarked, glancing down at the broken pile of limbs. "I mean, if you just wish for it, you'll be back up in no time."

    "Ah...really?" Rito groaned, "And how...do you do that?" he asked.

    "You just concentrate and wish for it," I replied. "It's like asking a bird how he flies. Instinct goes a long way," I added as I made a slurping noise, take-away Chinese on the table in front of me. There was one of everything, and as I ate, Rito simply concentrated. I could feel tiny wisps of Green mana drag themselves through the air to heal his tired muscles, and within seconds he was back up and running.

    Well, not really running as much as twitching right and left trying to get rid of the tiny leafs that had sprouted from his arms and legs. "Gah!" he exclaimed as they rustled before falling off him. "That's-"

    I glanced back at him, and then chuckled. "Nice hairstyle, Sakura," I commented. Rito didn't understand at first, but as he passed his hands through his hair, and brought a lock of it to his eyes, he gasped. His hair was a bright cherry blossom pink, and tiny petals were falling off it. In a matter of seconds, he had shaken off both the color and the petals, making a mess of the sofa.

    "This is so strange," Rito muttered, grabbing hold of a lonely petal, "I grew petals."

    "You were probably thinking about the cherry tree," I replied. "I don't think I need to tell you to be careful about what you wish for, but just in case...be careful what you wish for."

    I resumed eating the spicy noodles, and as Rito glanced at me after letting the petal fall on the floor, he spoke again. "Do you spend your nights eating?"

    "Sometimes," I acquiesced. "Other times, I spend them rewriting under the form of alternate history fiction real events that happened in another world. And I laugh at people complaining how they're utterly impossible and I know nothing of history," I chuckled. "It's amusing how they think that everything must make sense or be logical in order for it to happen. Hell, in one world I visited, it was a perfect replica of Earth but the leader was chosen at random across the entire world's population. It was amusing because there was no age limitation. One day, a thirteen year old passed a law that curfew couldn't be enforced before two in the morning, and it stuck."

    Rito stared at the pile of Chinese take-away food and then grabbed a carton filled with fried duck pieces. He grabbed a pair of chopsticks and began to eat carefully, dipping the single pieces in soy sauce or in the bittersweet reddish one that I always forgot the name of, but since it was sauce, it wasn't like it mattered much. "I'm not sleepy," Rito said abruptly, "And...well, I'm not even hungry. I'm not full, but—"

    "Those are sensations," I acquiesced. "You can dull them out, not think about them, or think more about it. Say you're doing something fun and you don't realize you're hungry. When the fun thing is over, you suddenly realize it. It's the same. If you want to, you can feel normal hunger, or the gnawing hunger of a man who starved for three months and then have it disappear as you gorge yourself on food. Nothing beats going thirsty for a week and then drinking fresh water though, or depriving yourself of the sensation of touch for a year and then pinching the cheeks of a newborn baby."

    Rito stared at me, and I shrugged. "Life experiences, like putting a teapot to orbit around the moon."

    "A what—no, why?" Rito asked, munching now on the roasted bits of pork meatballs that had a sweet and sour sauce dripping from their top.

    "Because it's funny," I replied nonchalantly, "Or at least, it was. Seeing the faces of those in Nasa when you etch on the side of the moon Hic Sunt Leones and a date for them to wonder how the ancient Roman reached the moon is something utterly amazing. The way they screamed and yelled at each other trying to understand what was going on, ah...good times," I laughed softly.

    "I don't remember that happening," Rito asked, his eyebrows furrowing, "But...don't you think you exaggerated?"

    "Please," I scoffed, "It's just one world out of countless infinite numbers of them. You still have bonds, and are young at this, but I've had thousands of years, even more I guess, to deal with this. One day, you'll stop cherishing those near you and start growing bored by their trifling, eternal and always identical interactions. Say one thing? Get that answer. Say another? Get that answer. It's boring. Like reading a manga a million times until you grow so bored by it that rather than put it back on the shelf you burn it to cinders, just to see how far the flames can reach."

    "That's...that's horrible," Rito said. Whether he was agreeing with me or disagreeing with the flames part, I didn't bother finding out.

    I scoffed. "That's life." I nodded. "But don't believe me. Nobody does. They go around, prancing with their fancy beliefs and their egoistic desires of doing the shit they want to do, and who cares if a world loses his temporal axis or rifts spread open? No sir, not our shitty fault sir, well, those spoiled children can fucking sod off and die for their sins. I have better things to do," I grumbled as I summoned forth a cask of wine, "Want some?" I asked next. "This is the best wine in the entire world. It was made two hundred years ago. I know because I had a single wine taster taste all possible wines in existence until he declared this one as the best of them all."

    Rito squirmed on his spot on the sofa, and placed back on the table the half-eaten pork meatballs. "I'm a minor."

    "And I'm so old I stopped counting my years," I drawled. "You only live eternally, Rito," I continued as I uncorked the wine and took a deep gulp of it, before exhaling and passing it over. Rito stared at the bottle for a brief second, as if unsure on what to do, and then finally took a sip from it. The moment he did, his face turned a deep red, and he gasped and shuddered.

    "It's..." he muttered, "It's good. It's fruity-like and...and it's good."

    "I know," I chuckled. "I knew it was," I corrected myself. I gestured at him to take another sip, and as he did, he suddenly blinked.

    "It's water now," he muttered, looking down at the contents. "Why is it water?"

    "So you'd understand," I said calmly, locking my gaze with his. "What it feels like for me to drink that." I slowly moved my left hand's fingers, and the bottle returned to holding into it the best wine in the whole world.

    "I...look, there are a lot of things I don't yet understand about this, but can't you just, I dunno, forget about—"

    "I did that too," I said gingerly. "I crafted cocoons and filled them with memories of having done things, but then I ended up lacking space," I chuckled bitterly. "In the end, I manned up and decided to suffer through eternity."

    "There's no...there's no other way?" Rito asked, "Like, returning mortal or...or something?"

    "Or something indeed," I hummed. "But no, there isn't," I continued. "Once a Planeswalker, always a Planeswalker."

    Rito stared at the bottle of wine, and then most aptly chose to return to his pork meatballs. "I'd rather live like a human," he said in the end. "When—Can a Planeswalker die?"

    "If another Planeswalker kills them, or a God-like powerful entity manages to snuff out the life of a budding Planeswalker, then yes. But the older and stronger the Planeswalker, the more difficult it gets," I explained.

    "I have to ask," Rito muttered, "Have you...ever thought about it?"

    "No," I answered honestly. "Because I am not alone," I patted my chest. "I cannot die, lest I take with me countless billions. They too deserve their chance at prosperity, thus I will let them live their eternity, bound together until the Multiverse itself will cease its existence." I laughed. "Whatever you do, Yuuki Rito, let me give you bit of counsel." I sighed. "Don't regret. Don't you ever regret anything. Because if you do...you'll keep regretting it forever, and forever...is a long, long time."

    If you mewling, pathetic, simpering children cannot decide, then I will rip the choice out from beneath your feet.

    Witness me, for I am the greatest thief the Multiverse has ever seen!
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Oh my, Shade!

    I can really feel the hate in you. Good job!

    As for being the greatest thief, I think Lupin the Third has some thing to say about that.
     
    shadenight123 said:
    I crossed my arms behind my head as I watched the latest episode of Kamen Rider for the time period at hand. Rito sat by my side, his body twitching slightly from the amount of glorious training he had gone through during the few hours he had been there.

    "You know that you're the one choosing whether or not to feel pain, right?" I remarked, glancing down at the broken pile of limbs. "I mean, if you just wish for it, you'll be back up in no time."

    "Ah...really?" Rito groaned, "And how...do you do that?" he asked.

    "You just concentrate and wish for it," I replied. "It's like asking a bird how he flies. Instinct goes a long way," I added as I made a slurping noise, take-away Chinese on the table in front of me. There was one of everything, and as I ate,
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    Can I just how impressive it is for Shade to be able to eat take-away noodles (as stereotypical as it is) with his arms behinds his head?
    :p

    shadenight123 said:
    "I cannot die, lest I take with me countless billions. They too deserve their chance at prosperity, thus I will let them live their eternity, bound together until the Multiverse itself will cease its existence."
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    I have something to say, but it's nothing good. So let's forget that I had something to say.
    :V
     
    shadenight123 said:
    Nasa
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    NASA

    There are two styles for abbreviation—one is to write it lowercase and put in periods (a.m., e.g., i.e., etc.) and the other is to omit the periods and use capital letters (NASA, AMV, CPA, FDA). The former is frequent in BrE while the latter is frequent in AmE. I'd give a quote, but I'm really not feeling up to it. :/
    EDIT: Fuck it, have quotes.
    Garner's Modern English Usage said:
    ABBREVIATIONS. A. Acronyms and Initialisms. Six points merit attention here. First, be aware of the technical difference between the two types of abbreviated names. An acronym is made from the first letters or parts of a compound term. It's read or spoken as a single word, not letter by letter (e.g., awol = absent without official leave, radar = radio detection and ranging, and scuba = self-contained underwater breathing apparatus). An initialism is also made from the first letters or parts of a compound term, but it's sounded letter by letter, not as one word (e.g., r.p.m. = revolutions per minute).

    Second, the question often arises whether to place a period after each letter in an acronym or initialism. Searching for consistency on this point is futile. The trend nowadays is to omit the periods. Including them is the more conservative and traditional approach. Yet because an acronym is spoken as a single word (e.g., UNESCO), periods are meaningless. If an initialism is made up of lowercase letters, periods are often preferable: rpm looks odd as compared with r.p.m., and am (as opposed to a.m.) looks like the verb. But with initialisms made of uppercase letters, the unpunctuated forms are likely to prevail (as in ABC, ATM, HIV, IRA, SUV, URL, etc.).

    Third, the best practice is to give the reader some warning of an uncommon acronym or initialism by spelling out the words and enclosing the acronym in parentheses when the term is first used. A reference to CARPE Rules may confuse a reader who does not at first realize that three or four lines above this acronym the writer made reference to a Committee on Academic Rights, Privileges, and Ethics. On the other hand, well-known abbreviations don't need this kind of special treatment—there's no need to announce a "Parent Teacher Association (PTA) meeting."

    Fourth, capitalization raises various questions. In AmE there is a tendency to print initialisms in all capitals (e.g., FMLA, NJDEP) and acronyms in small capitals (e.g., GAAP, MADD, NASA). Some publications, however, use all capitals for both kinds. But in BrE the tendency is to uppercase only the first letter, as with Ifor and Isa for Implementation Force and individual savings account. An influential British commentator once suggested (with little success on his side of the Atlantic) that the lowercasing be avoided: "From the full name to the simplified label three stages can be detected. For instance, the Society [for Checking the Abuse of Public Advertising] . . . becomes first S.C.A.P.A., then SCAPA, and finally Scapa. In the interests of clarity this last stage might well be discouraged, since thereby the reference is made unnecessarily cryptic." Simeon Potter, Our Language 177 (rev. ed. 1966). American writers have generally agreed with this view.

    Fifth, don't use abbreviations that have already been taken. Although it's understandable how a writer in 1959 might have used PMS for primary message systems, this would be worse than ill-advised today, since premenstrual syndrome is more commonly referred to by its initials than by its name. E.g.: "There are ten separate kinds of human activity which I have labeled Primary Message Systems (PMS). Only the first PMS involves language. All the other PMS [read PMSes] are nonlinguistic forms of the communication process." Edward T. Hall, The Silent Language 45 (1959). The language doesn't easily embrace dual-meaning acronyms. One exception is IRA, which has long referred to the Irish Republican Army but in the 1980s came to denote also an individual retirement account. Other examples exist, but all are generally to be avoided. Once everyone thinks of the FAA as the Federal Aviation Administration, it's unwise to use that initialism in reference to the Federal Arbitration Act.

    Sixth, when an indefinite article is needed before an abbreviation, the choice between a and an depends simply on how the first syllable is sounded. A vowel sound takes an, a consonant sound a—hence an MGM film, an SOS, a DVD player, a UFO. See a (A).

    B. Resulting Redundancies. Some acronyms and initialisms often appear as part of a two-word phrase in which the second word is what one of the short form's letters stands for. So a bank customer withdraws cash from an ATM machine, using a PIN number as a password. A supermarket clerk searches a milk carton for its UPC code. High-school seniors study hard for the SAT test (though the SAT owners now insist that the T does not stand for test—see SAT). Economists monitor the CPI Index. American and Russian diplomats sit down to negotiate at the SALT talks as their military counterparts consider whether to launch ABM missiles. Websites may display pages in PDF format. And scientists try to unlock the mysteries of the deadly HIV virus.

    The problem with these phrases, of course, is that they are technically redundant (automatedteller machine machine, personal-identification number number, Universal Product Code code, Scholastic Aptitude Test test, Consumer Price Index Index, Strategic Arms Limitation Talks talks, anti-ballistic missile missile, portable document format format, and human-immunodeficiency virus virus). And although the redundancies may be passable in speech—especially with unfamiliar acronyms—they should be avoided in edited writing.

    A slightly different type of redundancy arises if you define ATC as the airtraffic control system (the hyphen is preferable for the PHRASAL ADJECTIVE) but later write ATC system, as here: "The third factor I mentioned is the air traffic control system (ATC). The United States ATC is the finest system [delete system] in the world, and on a good weather day, with runways and navigation facilities working, things operate smoothly. However, sometimes the ATC system [read ATC] must slow the arrivals at a particular airport." Don Carty, "Why Was My Flight Canceled?" Am. Way, 1 May 2001, at 10. Perhaps the better solution in that passage would be to leave system out of the definition—e.g.: The third factor I mentioned is the airtraffic control (ATC) system. The United States ATC system is the finest in the world, and in good weather, with runways and navigation facilities working, things operate smoothly. But sometimes the ATC system must slow the arrivals at a particular airport.

    See REDUNDANCY.

    C. Initialese. One of the most irritating types of pedantry in modern writing is the overuse of abbreviations, especially abbreviated names. Originally, to be sure, abbreviations were intended to serve the convenience of the reader by shortening names so that cumbersome phrases would not have to be repeated in their entirety. The purported simplifications actually simplified. But many writers—especially technical writers—seem to have lost sight of this goal: they allow abbreviated terms to proliferate, and their prose quickly becomes a hybrid-English system of hieroglyphs requiring the reader to refer constantly to the original uses of terms to grasp the meaning. This kind of writing might be thought more scholarly than ordinary, straightforward prose. It isn't. Rather, it's tiresome and inconsiderate writing; it betrays the writer's thoughtlessness toward the reader and a puerile fascination with the insubstantial trappings of scholarship.

    Three examples suffice to illustrate the malady:
    • "As a comparison to these item-level indices, the factor-level indices IFS and C_ANR [sic] were both computed for the maximum likelihood factors. . . . Compression of the factor space tends to decrease both IFS and C_ANR, while excessive expansion is likely to also decrease the C_ANR, while the IFS might be expected to be reasonably stable. Thus, four rotation solutions were computed based upon Matthews & Stanton's (1994) extraction of 21 factors, the Velicer MAP test indicator of 26 (PCA) and 28 (image) factors, and Autoscree indicators of 17 and 21 factors for PCA and image respectively. From these solutions, it was hypothesized that a full 31 factor rotation might provide the optimal C_ANR parameters for the OPQ scales. Further, as a by-product of the use of MLFA, it is possible to compute a test." P. Barrett et al., "An Evaluation of the Psychometric Properties of the Concept 5.2 Occupational Personality Questionnaire," 69 J. Occupational & Organizational Psychology 1, 12 (1996).
    • "For the initial model, the significant variable TRANS is only significantly correlated with SUBNO. SUBCTY is correlated with NI, with SUBNO, and with FSALEPER. NI, however, is significantly correlated with: (1) DOM-VIN; (2) METH1; and (3) METH3. In the reduced model, these intercorrelations with NI are not an area for concern." Karen S. Cravens & Winston T. Shearon Jr., "An Outcome-Based Assessment of International Transfer Pricing Policy," 31 Int'l J. Accounting 419, 436 (1996) (parentheticals omitted).
    • "SLIP, like VALP and ECC, is a defeasible constraint that is obeyed by all the types of headnexus phrase considered thus far. It guarantees that (except in SLASH-binding contexts that we turn to in a moment) the SLASH value of a phrase is the SLASH value of its headdaughter." Ivan A. Sag, "English Relative Clause Constructions," 33 J. Linguistics 431, 446 (1997).    ​

    And so it goes throughout each article. See OBSCURITY.

    When naming something new, one sometimes finds the task hopeless: consider the ALI–ABA CLE Review, as opposed to calling it the American Law Institute–American Bar Association Continuing Legal Education Review. You can't choose either one enthusiastically. Both sponsors must have their due (in part so that they can have their dues), and the initialisms might gradually become familiar to readers. But they aren't ideal because they give bad first impressions.

    Remember that effective communication takes two—the writer and the reader. Arthur Quiller-Couch reminded writers never to forget the audience:
    [T]he obligation of courtesy rests first with the author, who invites the seance, and commonly charges for it. What follows, but that in speaking or writing we have an obligation to put ourselves into the hearer's or reader's place? It is his comfort, his convenience, we have to consult. To express ourselves is a very small part of the business: very small and unimportant as compared with impressing ourselves: the aim of the whole process being to persuade.​
    Quiller-Couch, On the Art of Writing 291–92 (2d ed. 1943).
    ​
    Abbreviations are often conveniences for writers but inconveniences for readers. Whenever that is so, the abbreviations should vanish.

    Robert Burchfield warned that the proliferation of initialisms could profoundly affect the language as a whole: "As formations they are often ingenious—for example KWIC (Key Word in Context) and CARE (Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere, a federation of U.S. charities)—but they are barren, in that they cannot generate anything except themselves, and etymologically rootless. Each one that is formed takes the language fractionally away from its Germanic, and ultimately its Indo-European, origins." Robert W. Burchfield, Unlocking the English Language 65 (1989).

    D. Plurals. See PLURALS (I).
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    shadenight123 said:
    Rito stared at the bottle of wine, and then most aptly chose to return to his pork meatballs. "I'd rather live like a human," he said in the end. "When—Can a Planeswalker die?"
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    Text following an em dash should not be capitalized unless it's a proper noun—the word can is not. So you can either put it as lowercase or put it in a new paragraph.

    "When—

    "Can a Planeswalker die?"
    shadenight123 said:
    "If another Planeswalker kills them, or a God-like powerful
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    or a godlike

    AmE is not very hospitable to hyphens outside of phrasal adjectives. An exception exists in co- & re- pairs because of clarity; there is a significant difference between resign ("to give up") and re-sign ("to sign something again").
     
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    Hey, on the plus side? When the Mending happens, Shade will be forced into being a NewWalker. And NewWalkers are mortal.
     
    Ellf said:
    Hey, on the plus side? When the Mending happens, Shade will be forced into being a NewWalker. And NewWalkers are mortal.
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    That is IF Shade lets it happen. He could easily prevent it, either creating new rifts or just hindering their closing. At least, I think that's the case.... It's kinda a catch-22, reminiscent of Gollum. He hates and loves the immortality of Planeswalkers, just as he hates and loves himself. Interesting narrative that it creates. Looking forward to the madness that is coming.
     
    Pietersielie said:
    That is IF Shade lets it happen. He could easily prevent it, either creating new rifts or just hindering their closing. At least, I think that's the case.... It's kinda a catch-22, reminiscent of Gollum. He hates and loves the immortality of Planeswalkers, just as he hates and loves himself. Interesting narrative that it creates. Looking forward to the madness that is coming.
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    It also depends on if it happened already and just didn't affect him
     
    Akritedes said:
    Yes.

    Because everything makes more sense when you realize that there is only one Ilya, and they are all the same person.
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    Illya is Illya. But not all people called Illya are Illya, and not all Illya are called Illya.

    There's the girl from Fate/Zero, of course; Kiritsugu's daughter. In one timeline she summons Berserker, dies or sacrifices herself, and sometimes makes up with her brother. She isn't a nice girl.

    In another timeline Kiritsugu betrays her family, seals her away, and later (much later) she takes the name of Chloe. She isn't a nice girl either, but from watching her sister she has a better idea of how to behave.

    There's Illya, from Prisma Illya. She isn't the same person at all, as you'd guess I might say. She lacks the implanted memories and skills, and though she's certainly Chloe's twin sister, their personalities could scarcely be any more different. If you're talking about Illya, then you'd have to be specific if you actually mean this one.

    She managed to befriend Gilgamesh, which is quite a feat, but in a sense they're book-ends. Gil is the first hero, and Illya is the last. After her, the world ends.

    There's a couple varieties of Shirou-Illya fusions, between the original doujin and Sword Dancers. That's an Illya as well, but between those two broken people you just might get, just barely, a single functional person. Not in the same way that Prisma Illya is functional, though.

    Kaleidoscope Liner... All Liners are bullshit, but this one especially so. Ruby partially replicates the function of a Spark.

    ...pick Miyu. :p
     
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    Chapter Twenty-Seven (Ranma 1/2)
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter Twenty-Seven (Ranma 1/2)

    Being the headmaster at a school filled with illogical people was perhaps a nice change of pace, but as the clock ticked, the first troublesome individual arrived. Ryoga Hibiki, with his yellow and black bandana, the heavy umbrella on his shoulders and his large backpack on his back stepped into the ring of war that was the courtyard after having cried tears of joy at having found the right location. His emotions were short-lived, though.

    Mostly because I intercepted him on the path. "You're late for school, kid," I drawled as I walked towards him from the main door of the school, "Come on," I continued as I gestured at him, "We'll get you sorted out and all."

    "Uh? Excuse me sir, but I'm not a student here," Ryoga said, his voice polite as I simply raised an eyebrow in his direction. "I'm looking for that accursed Ranma," he continued, clenching his right fist and turning sideways, gritting his teeth in the meantime. "To challenge him and have my honor restored!"

    "Well," I said flatly, "You are Ryoga Hibiki, yes? Your parents wished for you to further your education," I continued, "So they simply spoke to the minister of education while meeting him by chance in Tokyo while trying to reach Moscow." I shrugged lightly as Ryoga actually bought the lie with the hook, the sinker, the cane and the fisherman without the need to effectively alter his mind to accept it. "So whatever school you're in, you'll get enrolled for free."

    "My parents did that?" there were tears coming out of his eyes. His gaze lifted to the sky, filled with emotions. I stared blankly at him, and then inwardly decided not to mess with his pure smile. I shuddered the next second, and gestured at him to follow me.

    "Now come along, Mister Hibiki," I said as I began to walk back inside the school, only for Ryoga to start heading towards the backyard. I sighed, and silently altered the very fabric of the world. Slowly, but surely, Ryoga's steps brought him back by my side and as we walked inside the locker room, I showed him the newly materialized locker where he could change his shoes and grab a school uniform. "Lessons have already begun, but for today I'll close an eye on your tardiness. Ensure it doesn't happen again," I continued, before turning around to let him change. There was no one in the school entrance, and once Ryoga was done, I began to walk once more.

    Guiding him through the hallways, I came to a halt in front of the door of a very specific classroom and knocked resolutely against it before stepping inside.

    "Ah, headmaster," the professor wheezed out. He was old, and wrinkly, but he still had that typical teacher-like behavior that made one either respect him, or outright ignore him. Ranma apparently had chosen the latter, seeing how he was looking at the ceiling until the second I had stepped inside. Rito had instead been paying attention, and as his gaze fell warily upon me, I smiled in the general direction of the class.

    "Good morning," I answered before ushering Ryoga inside. "We have a new transfer student, so—"

    "Ranma!" Ryoga bellowed, pointing a finger in his direction before outright rushing towards the boy, only for him to nimbly jump backwards and begin dodging the blows coming his way. The rest of the students hastily moved out of their desks, even as Ranma's dodging brought him close to the wall.

    "Oi! The hell are you doing!?" Ranma yelled, only for Ryoga to increase the speed of his attacks.

    "My dreadful enemy Ranma! Today I'll make you pay for what you did to me!" as the wall began to crack, I neared the fighting duo. A single strike hit Ryoga squarely in the stomach, my fingers moving nimbly to strike at pressure points across his front and freezing him in place.

    "No fighting allowed at school I'm afraid," I said with a sigh, shaking my head as I plopped Ryoga down in the nearest desk. "Don't make me come down here to stop a fight again, or you'll regret it," I added with a grin as I pressed a couple more points on Ryoga's shoulders, lifting the paralysis off him. "If you want to fight, just go at it outside the school," I continued as I turned to leave. "Have a nice day."

    I left the classroom sliding the door to a close, and stepped back into my headmaster's office just in time to gaze through the eyes of a Sliver left behind at the battle of spit and paper that was now underway between Ryoga and Ranma.

    I had, after all, put them one next to the other. I chuckled as I watched the fists fly, the hands slap away the incoming blows, the other hand busy crafting paper balls to chew and then spit. It was a war that had no respite. It was a war that held no peace, and that would concede no quarter. Such brutal tactics as bogeys and snot were used, filth scraped off the desks, and chewed gums thrown for the hair-shot.

    Admittedly, it was far more entertaining than it had the right to be, and as I watched it, I sighed at Rito's non-interventionist political stance. While being Switzerland was all good and nice, Rito needed a push in the right direction, I reckoned. The rest of the students had stopped paying attention to the professor, and were currently watching slack-jawed the developing fight, Nabiki having somehow left her class as if on a sixth sense, and taking bets in a corner of the room.

    I pinched the bridge of my nose.

    A chuckle escaped my lips as I watched with wonder the childish fight. While there most certainly was heat, there was innocence to it. It was endearing. Ryoga wanted to beat Ranma, but most certainly he didn't want to rip his limbs off, replace them with mechanical parts, and then alter his mind to become a dull servant of the will of Phyrexia and Yawgmoth. A Powerstone slowly ripped itself out from my skin, and as I glanced at the shining bright light within it, I sighed.

    The stone disappeared back into my skin the next second, my ears twitching in alert.

    Someone was coming.

    No, not just a random someone.

    Admittedly, meeting Planeswalkers wasn't that rare of an event, especially because they tended to gravitate around specific planes, but if one went to the fringes of the Multiverses, then normally the ratio of encounter would be greatly reduced. It still meant that once in a while, another Planeswalker would be met. It wasn't difficult to hide one's Spark from scrutiny across the planes, just like it wasn't that difficult to pierce through obscuring magic to find them depending on the skill of the hunting Planeswalker.

    "Probably felt Rito's Spark," I mumbled as I felt the energy spread and twitch, appearing out of thin air a short distance away from the school. The Spark was burning a bright shining light of judgment, and inwardly I reeled back from the feeling and the sensation of pure, unwashed righteousness that emanated from it.

    If there was one thing I detested, apart from naive fools, it was when righteous sanctimonious Planeswalkers came by pleading for my aid against this or that great evil, as if expecting a lesser evil such as myself to aid them every single time.

    I had seen my fair share of ancient evil gods and mighty cruel dragons from worlds that Planeswalkers just budding into their powers couldn't defeat alone.

    The fight between Ranma and Ryoga forgotten, I concentrated and slowly brought a Sliver closer to the Planeswalker. The shadows twitched and streamed, the eyes gazing at the somber looking figure of a young and pretty man.

    I groaned.

    Out of all the possible chances, this Planeswalker clearly was the one type of individual I hated the most.

    A mixture of White and Blue Mana surrounded his frame, his glowing eyes and light hazel hair cast in an unearthly glow. He was the classic martyr type. I could smell the stench of his beliefs, his cult leader-like appearance made my skin crawl and he was, without a doubt, not here for sightseeing.

    He moved forward and with purpose, heading through the courtyard and straight into the school.

    It was once he stepped inside Rito's classroom that I understood just what kind of guy he was.

    "You!" he bellowed, pointing a finger straight at Rito. "Quick! Come with me if you want to live!"

    I stared, befuddled, at such an earnest introduction.

    This was going to be fun.
     
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