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Prologue

Thirty years have passed since Talpa was defeated by the Ronin Warriors. Though their lives have been far from total peace, Ryo and his friends have found time to make lives of their own.

Ryo, after getting married to Dannin Hyrosha (Anubis' little sister) and having a baby girl, moved back to his home country of America. There they had another child, a boy named Ryu. Their daughter Dani has moved back to Toyama, alone, while her parents and brother remain in California.

Sage, ever the warrior, got the chance to open his own Dojo and has done so. The Date Training Dojo is actually popular amoung the teenagers of Toyama and Sage has found himself with his hands full often.

Cye remained in Japan, opening a resturaunt with Kento. The two are still the best of friends, and happy bachlors. Dani works at their resturaunt and they like nothing better than teasing Ryo's daughter.

Rowen graduated top of his class in college, traveled around the world, and eventually returned to Toyama to open his own bookstore. Things are pretty slow for him.

Kayura and the Warlords live in the Nether Realm, trying to make it the paradise it was long ago. The Warlords are always there, but Kayura does come to the Mortal Worlds to visit from time to time, mostly with the Ronins and their families.

Chapter One: The Ascension of Rage
Dani Sananda laughs as Kento and Cye clean up the kitchen in their resteraunt (sp?). The two were like brothers when they were her own age, and are still just as close now as then. The Ryu-Mouri Noodle Shop was closed for the night, the next day being Saturday. It was late, almost midnight. Cye and Kento didn't let Dani work the last shift of a school night.

Eating a bowl of Kento's noodles, Dani waves her chopsticks at the two who she had known all her life as her Uncles.

"Uncle Kento," she says, "You know I'm going to the bookstore tomorrow, right?"

Kento peeks his head out of the kitchen. "Yah, Rowen's store. Be sure to say hi to him for us," he says, "he comes here Saturdays for dinner anyway though."

Dani hear's Cye's voice in the kitchen laughing. "If he gets out of his store in time."

And the badgering began, the teasing between Cye and Kento. No hard feelings, it was a bit of fun. Dani yawns as she finishes her late night snack. She looks outside. A storm had moved in over the last few hours, the howl of the wind and crash of thunder making Dani uneasy.

---

Rain was always and ever. Batrias had known storms of all kinds. He had known storms that flashed pink lighting because someone was drawing on the power of the netherworld. He had known rain to fall for months at a time and cause the land to be forgotten under water. The storm that flashed its tongues of lightning before him, however, was not like anything he had seen before. There was something of the netherworld in it, but also, more...and less, somehow. He could only explain it to himself as an inverted rage.

A rage that he was causing.

He liked the feel of the rain on his hair. It fell down inexplicably, exploded and left him wet. Like someone else I know, he thought. He smiled wistfully at the thought of all the companions he had known over the years, all the people he had gone through life with, trying to destroy this evil or that evil, or do something or not do something.

Now, he was the evil. He was the only one who kept his armor out of a will to do battle. He was the one looking for a fight, and the unusual powers of the Armor of Holy disturbed nature in a way he couldn't have anticipated, even though he had yet to summon his armor. He knew someone would seek him out eventually, try to find where he was, try to discover the source of all the disturbances.

He would welcome them when they came and fight them as only he could.

---

Dani yawns as Cye and Kento finish cleaning the shop and close it down. After a bit of poking, the two get Dani up the stairs to the room she was using above the kitchen of the shop. She walks into her dark room, her drapes cracked and letting the light from the lightning outside to flash in her room. She walks up to a small chest beside her bed and opens it.

Two katana swords were carefully wrapped in red silk, the fabric holding white flowers on it. These were simple swords, but they were the first Dani had ever used. In a small box under them was a silver orb, the symbol on it glowing a firey red.

"Wildfire," Dani wispers, "why would the armor be reacting. My Uncles have not used theirs, if they still hold the nine armors themselves. Why would Wildfire, the keeper of Inferno, react to a simple storm."

"Because that storm is not a natural phenomenon..."

The voice was ethereal, and seemed to come from everywhere in the room, though Dani could be certain that noone heard it but her.

It's origins, unknown.... but the tome of it sounded like a nearby neighbor- a striking woman who had no past.

Dani nodds an "ah-ha!" thinking of the woman she had made friends with since she came here.

Dashing for her phone, her slides onto her bed, pulling the phone and dialing a number.

"Come on," she wispers, "Shade-san, please let the phones work in this storm."

Shade herself had been watching the storm since it had rolled in, her paperwork for martial arts ling forgotten across her desk...

"This storm is not a normal storm.... how I know that..... "

DO DO DO DA DE DE DOO DOO DOO DA DE DE DOO DA DEE.....

She almost flew through the roof as the ode to joy, the ring tone on her cell phone, went off at full volume.

She let it jingle for a few seconds to let her heart rate slow down before answering a bit calmer.

"Konnichiwa, if you're a telemarketer, go away, if you're anyone else, what can I do for you?"

---

Batrias felt the energy in his fist. He could call the armor and exercise it, but he didn't think he would. Someone would come, because those who held the armors- who were able to sense what he was doing- would also be clever enough to know where he was doing it from. They would come, if only out of curiosity, to seek the one causing the disturbances. They would come. He hoped they would.

Pink lightning fled from his fist as he unclenched it. The fingers that had once caused the fall of continents, had caused nations to sway upon their foundations, the very fingers of Batrias now were telling him that he had awakened to the power of the netherworld. And how could it be otherwise? The essence of his armor, wrath, was not one that sought good. It only sought revenge. Therefore, his armor worked best when there was some battle to fight, some wrong to be set to rights. He could only follow its dictates as best as he could.

The problem was that, after all his long years, there was no one left to fight.

He waited, and started to smile. They would come. They always did.

---

Dani smiles as Shade picks up her end of the phone.

"Shade-san," she says, "It's Dani. You been looking outside lately? My, uh, Dad's present has been acting up. Wondering if you knew anything."

"I feel as though I should, though I can;t say why. Why don;t you bring it over here and we'll see what I can find out? I'll make tea."

The crash of thunder makes Dani jump. Her cat ears she has from her mother's clan. She swollows and nodds.

"Sure thing, I'll bring my homework," she says, "be over in a bit."

She hangs up the phone, putting on a long hooded trenchcoat, hiding not only the ears in her hair, but the tail threatening her back. She shoves the armor orb in her pocket. She grabs her back pack and heads towards the door. Cye sees her from the living room.

"Where you off to on a night like this?" he asks.

"Shade said she'd help me with my homework," Dani says, "I'll be back in a few hours."

He nodds, and she walks out the door, heading for Shades house in a run between the raindrops.

Shade had, after hanging up with Dani, started her tea, since it took her a while to go through the, well, small ceremony she always did... and to get her journal of everyhting she remembered out.

She knew about the Ronins. She knew the truth about them, and she knew what had happened thirty years ago.... but she did not know why she knew this, nor why she knew it was a good thing to listen to her premonitions and instincts.

She knew that she had a yoroi.... but she did not physically possess it. Yet.

She did not pay attention as her door unlocked, and Dani arrived, speaking more to the storm than to anything else...

"Dark have been my dreams of late... "

Dani closes the door behind her, shaking off the water on her jacket. She removes her bandana, tries, and failes, to smooth down a pair of black and red cat ears sticking out of her hair. She shakes her head, looking up at Shade.

"Did I ever mention how much I hate thunder," she says, "always makes these things show up."

Another crash of thunder and another yelp from Dani, making sound more like a cat for a moment than a human being.

Shade snook her head with a smile.

"It means you're nervous, I can understand that."

She produced a towel out of nowhere, and handed it to Dani.

"Dry yourself off, I can;t let you catch a cold, your mother would have my hide. Take a seat, I have something I want to tell you... it's half-remembered."

She retreated to a room off to one side... returning with an intricate silver tiara. It was sculpted to show dragon wings, the eyes were set with amythysts that winked in the light. engraved along the sides of the dragons were different creatures, stylizations of clan sigils... one of the ones facing dani was a wildcat.

"I... found this. Not found... reclaimed? something like that. You know I don't have much of a memory of my own past.... point of fact it starts with myself being in a hospital bed. They told me I had been in a coma, they claim amnisia, but... somehow I know there's more to it than that. Just Like I know about your dad and his history as the Wildfire bearer."

She sat down.

"I don;t know my part in it, I know I';ve told you before but...."

She looked out as the thunder sounded again.

"Just like I know that you collectively are the good guys, I know that storm is caused by an armor, and it is caused on purpose."

---

Batrias reveled in the lightning and the thunder, both of which arrived simultaneously. No one who witnessed a storm that didn't move, but just stayed put, could say it was natural. Espicially that distant person Batrias sensed, an armor bearer. The feelling was like a faint resonance in the back of his mind, a sensation he would have missed had he not experienced it so often before.

"Come lightning, come thunder, I will tear all the armors asunder!" Batrias cried into the air.

---

Dani dries as best she can, taking off everything but her t-shirt and jeans. With the towel around her shoulders, Dani finds a seat near Shade and looks at the tiara.

"Dragon," she says, "interesting. Mom doesn't tell me a whole lot about the Clans, but most were named after animals." She points to her ears, "and for good reason. I don't know all the Clans, opposite, I know only a few. Maybe your Clan had something to do with a Dragon."

She grabs her back, shuffling through what is inside to pull out an old book. She flips a few pages and stops at a child's drawing. There are a lot of animals in the picture, most of the mystical kind. Wildcats, Dragons, Wolves, Humans, even some of the elements were within the drawing.

"My mother made this, when she was a kid," Dani says, "before the Wildcats were destoryed. She won't tell me why she did it, but every time I ask her about the Clans, she says that this picture is an answer in itself."

Shade looked at the picture for a long minute, then back at the delicate circlet she held in her hands.

"Perhaps it is... the environment is connected intrinsically, even the elements effect it... perhaps.... perhaps the clans themselves needed each other to survive? But then, why would a dragon be one of them? Weren't dragons.... evil?"

She paused.

"And if that is the case, then why do I somehow feel...."

Thunder rumbled again,. distracting her.

"Dani.... feel like going on an adventure?"

Her eyes were on the window, and were slit-pupiled, feline-like... except even Dani knew that Shade was no kind of feline.

Dani nodds, watching Shade for a minute.

"Uh, sure," she says, "We've got time to burn. What'cha thinking of doing?"

I have some good rain gear in the closet... I'm almost curious about what it is that has managed to anchor this storm... it reminds me of one that happened in Toyama thirty years ago.... how can I remember something like that...."

She looked at Dani, and seemed, for a moment.... to be *more there* as she spoke the next.

"Beware the Wrath of Holy turned dark... it upsets the delicate balance, ask your mother about that sometime. Dragons are not all evil, least of all those with no memory of themselves."

She blinked, and shook her head, eyes returning to a silvr from the deep, almost disturbing slate grey they had been as she looked out the window.

"Can you feel it? It is like.... whatever is causing this is.... calling."

Dani shivers, rubbing her arms.

"Yah, I can feel it," she says, "now that you mention it, it DOES look alot like the storm dad told me about when he met my Uncles. Wonder if any other Ronins are in town."

---

Batrias tried to control the storm. He wanted to direct it. However, the storm, like all of his creative emotions, did what they did. He had no control over them, one way or the other. The best he could say was that he could keep the storm from growing. Beyond that, nothing else.

The pink lightning gathered itself in his fist- quite against his will- and he found himself enjoying it. He could no more explain this than anything that happened. Yet, he was tied directly into the power of his armor. Even while he was drawing upon dark powers, his kanji glowed a dark shade of red on his forehead. He was being true to the power of his armor- and the power of his armor demanded destruction. If no one would come, he would start to actively search for things to destroy. He didn't know what pleasure he would get out of it at all; he only knew that he would. Like drawing water from a precious fountain or receiving a blood transfusion, such things had become necessary for him. He wanted to destroy. He craved to kill. Someone would stop him, of course. If they didn't come, if no armor-bearers were left, he would very possibly put on his armor and see just how much power he had.

He had no doubt of it.

---

After speaking with Shade for a moment, Dani tells the other that she is going to investigate as a Ronin for a while, and when all is safe, she will come back for her friend. Clutching the armor orb in her hands, Dani's outfit changes to her Ronin red and white sub-armor. The only difference of the Wildfire armor between Dani and when her father, Ryo, carried it, is her figure seems to be shown with the subarmor.

She grabs her trenchcoat and walks out the door, searching for the cause of the storm.

Shade shook her head.

"Be careful, Dani..... there.... is someone powerful behind this, don;t get yourself hurt...."

She put a hand to her head as a migrane began. She got them every now and then, and usually with them came a few more fragments of memory....





***********************************************************

"Anubis gave his life to save them! Why are you so angry?"




"I then pronouce thee both wed, under all the laws of the Clans and elsewhere."




"I'm.... terribly sorry, Kaylyn but... the Armor of the Ogre has been passed on to Anubis.... "





"There arent; any dragons left."
"I'm the last of an ancient race misunderstood because of a few who destroyed all the others."
"Aren;t dragons evil?"
"Most of them."




"Koishii...... I will wait for you as long as I have to."

"Anata.... don;t die....."

"You must do your duty... you must guard those who will follow.... all of us.... aishiteru, shadowsage....."

********************************************************

She sat down, working with the pain.... her heart hurt as well, as though there was someone important to her she had forgotten as well.....

Dani smiles as she leaves, her cat-like ears perked up in the storm. She walks along, feeling more than seeing until she sees a man in, what she thinks, is armor. She sheilds her eyes for a moment, then speaks with a voice that holds both the sound of the young leader of the Ronins, and the last heir of the Wildcats.

"Who are you?" she says, "do you command this storm?"

Batrias sees two figures he cannot quite define. He allows his eyes to focus, and one of them he recognizes at once. He cannot place the name- he had met far too many people in all his long years- but he knew the face. He responded to the other person who had spoken.

"I truly do not know," He said, exhiliration taking hold of him. "Either I command this storm, or it commands me. But, then, you must ask yourself, which is the storm? Do you believe the rain and lightning to be the storm, or do you see something else?"

Batrias wanted to have an answer right away, but he knew he could wait. These people, after all, were going to be his first victims.

Dani closes her eyes for a moment, her cat-like ears twitching in the wind.

"I see three storms here," she says, "a storm in the sky of rain and light, a storm of power, and a storm within a hidden soul. I see all three within you and come to stop at least the storm in the sky and the storm of power. Your personal storm is beyond my control."

She was looking at Batrias.... as she caught up tpo Dannin. the rain did not touch her, and the power rolled off her like she was parrying it. Her face was filled with confusion, as was her entire body posture.


Softly, but in a voice that had a knack for carrying....

"Who are you? Why do I know your face, yet do not? why is it.... I can feel a power around us...... but cannot name any of it?"

She took a step closer to Batrias, eyes flushing a beautiful silver again, narrowing in recognition, then deepening again back into a lost look.

"You wear an armor named Holy.... but who are you?"

Batrias, in exhiliration, clenched his fist. Lightning poured out of his clenched hand, exploding on the ground, leaving a pothole. "I know you very well. I think, perhaps, I will hold my rage until I find out why you don't remember me. You should, as you remember the name of my armor. Yes, it is Holy. And I am Batrias Kenketsu, of no clan and no age. I am what you see. Surely you cannot have forgotten entirely? Have you?"

He looked from one woman to the other. The storm lessened in strength as his mind set to the problem at hand. Could there be some connection between his anger and Shade's memory? Not that mattered- he wanted to kill them both.

But he would solve the puzzle first. The kanji flickered on his forehead and went out as the problem tumbled through his mind.

"Shade-chan!" Dani looks over at her shoulder, "You shouldn't be here. If he has an armor, then it's too dangerous for anyone without one!"

She turns back to Batrias, "And I am Dani, of Wildfire. I don't know what it is you want, but I know your name."

Batrias smiled, the grin of a wolf ready to hunt. "My purpose is to destroy you, and everyone who bears an armor. When I've killed everyone, I'll destroy my own armor."

He waited to hear what the other one, Shade, would say. Her reply would matter the most, he knew.

Dani beat her to it.

"You're a loony," she says.

Dispite the storm, the young Wildcat lets her coat fall, revealing her red and white subarmor. It looked, for the most part, like the subarmor Ryo had worn when he first used the armor. but it was more red than white, telling anyone that this was not the old Wildfire armor.

Shade shook her head.

"Everything beyond two years ago to me is only fragments. Some things I should not remember, because I can;t posaibly be that old, aome things.... I just seem to know and I don't know why."

As Dani showed her subarmor, Shade put a hand to her head.

"For some reason...."

She let her other hand drift to her side, and stunbled back a few steps in surprise when a staff appeared in it, staring, eyes wide.

"...I should know this but I do not...."

"Enough talk!" Batrias, his kanji flaring on his head, raced forward in his black sub-armor. His eyes closed as he let all of his weight go into the punch intended for the one he remembered as Hopesong.

Shade flinched, instinctively placing the staff between her and Batrias.... his punch connected solidly with a dome of force that just barely defended the woman behind it.

She opened one eye, and he could watch as it turned a misty silver..... and went slit-pupiled.

"Seems there are times when I remember everything, however, Batrias. I am not the one you knew as Hopesong, that facet of my life ended decades ago."

Her voice was different, a few not4es on the scale lower, as though she was a different person.

She streightened, and spun the staff in a fluid and well=preacticed gesture, as if testing it.

"You want a fight, Batrias of Holy?"

eek Dani blinks several times, looking from Batrias to Shade, and back. She had been ready to pick a fight, used to it in fact, and here he was attacking her friend.

"Hopesong?!" Dani finally says, "she died a long time ago. Dunno where you been, but this is Shade, my friend. Ain't no Hopesong."

Shade managed a tight smile. "That's... half right, Dani." She took a fighting stance that dated back to the *old* days of fighting with the staff, her clothes.... henshining for lack of a better word, into silver and grey clan robes.

Dani is still blinking. "Half-right, whatcha talking about?"

"It seems.... my past comes and goes as needed. Hopesong is as dead as Anubis was when he took the Ancient's place, were he to choose a new name when he had his change of heart."

Dani blinks again, "My Uncle? He was always Anubis...."

"Hopesong did not die."

Dani tilts her head, "Yah she did, me mother was there."

"Dannin..... knows that what drove the person named hopesong ceased to exist, the same time someone else joined what would best be called Balance. Then again, Shadowsage never did enjoy being well known."

"Shadowsage.....my mother always mentions her with my aunt Kaylyn," Dani says, "but they all died before I was born; Anubis...Kaylyn...Hopesong...all of them."

"Dannin was a very precocious child, even before she was kidnapped." Again, she moved with a well-practiced ease as she stepped between Batrias and Dani. "Not all of them died, though they let that belief remain in favor of starting again."

Dani is confused again, her head cocked like a kitten in a new place.
"But Anubis and Kaylyn, I know they died...."

"Kaylyn and alaric were tragedies, though it is almost ironic that the Armor of the Ogre passed from one bearer to the next in a strikingly similar fashion. Anubis.... is missed."

Dani shakes her head, she knows the name Alaric, but when she heard her mother speak of Alaric and Kaylyn, it was always with saddness in the elder Wildcat's eyes, and with Anubis, it was regret. Dani knows little of her Wildcat half, but enough that she is proud to be one.
"What are you saying?" she asks

"The balance is fragile right now, I have all of my memory at this moment..... but when I no longer need it to survive, it will fade on me again. I am saying something you must tell me when this is over and we are talking to your parents. My given name is Kageseji Hopesong. Translate it, Dani. What name does that become? Who else died that knew your family before the Wildcat clan was all but wiped out?" Her eyes glimmered, slit-pupiled and draconic, as her raven hair aquired a shimmer that was definately more than human.

The wheels in Dani's mind begin to turn. She stays confused only a moment longer, then snaps her armored fingers. "You! You're Shadowsage! You knew Kaylyn and Alaric, everyone. You helped my aunt and the Ancient create the armor I wear!"

"Once upon a time....... yes. Don;t press me about my past, or even tell me about it beyond stories.... your parents are right in letting me remember on my own, just please figure out how to help me do so faster. What time I had to remember myself...... is now gone."

Dani tilts her head again. This is all pretty close to frying the poor Wildcat's head.
"I don't understand, but I'll do what I can," she says

"We have a fight to survive." Shade says

Dani looks at the storm, Batrias, then back at Shade, "I figured that much."

No one is playing them, so we don't know. I assume they all lived normal lives like the Ronins.

post a short bio for both of them in the bios thread.