Disclaimer: The usual. I don't own any of these characters. They don't belong to me. The story does though..so....no stealin'!! Hehehe..j/k! If the characters are a bit OOC then please forgive me!

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Chapter Four: Just a Simple Stroll in the Park

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She sneaked a glance beside her and immediately covered her mouth to keep from laughing. She would have succeeded if not for the not-so-quiet giggles that escaped her mouth.

The Chinese boy's face darkened. For a tomboy she was sure acting like a giddy girl.

"It's not funny, Ranko." Relina grumbled uncharacteristically as she rubbed her nose.

Ranko burst into laughter again. "But it is."

As one, the ex-Gundam pilots and one ex-queen of Earth growled, "IT IS NOT." Sadly so, their warning went unnoticed by the redhead who energetically shook her head smiling broadly.

"Nah uh uh."

"It isn't!" Relina exclaimed. "Try facefaulting sometime! It isn't very pleasant you know."

"Well..maybe..." She drawled out in mock indecision.

"Ranko..."

She smiled waving her hand in a warding gesture. "Okay, okay!" She shrugged as she took in her surroundings. "This is a VERY big park." The park was humungous with various types of plants that filled the whole area.

Relina gasped as Ranko leaped into the air and landed high up on a branch. She stood, not even slightly worried about how small the branch was, lightly on her right foot.

With a sparkle in her eyes she held up her left hand to above her eyes on her forehead and turned her head from left to right. She spotted an area filled with many colorful flowers next to a huge water fountain and clapped her hands excited.

Without saying a word to her companions she jumped off of her branch and started to jump from tree to tree in the direction of the flowers.

". . ."

Jaws dropped as they stared at the redhead vapidly disappearing from their sight.

"Oh my!" Relina exclaimed as she immediately started to run after her new friend.

It took the others several more minutes of blinking to actually start following the two females of their group.

Wufei grumbled silently to himself. That woman! Always making trouble.

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Landing beside a big lilac she kneeled down sniffing lightly, taking in the flowers' fragrance.

Huffing and puffing Relina ran up to Ranko followed shortly by the five heavy breathing boys. "R-Ranko, *gasp* what's *puff* wrong?"

"Yeah. *heave* Whatza matter?" Duo gasped, falling down to lie on the soft grass.

She smiled softly. "Nothing really. I just like to be in a beautiful place like this to practice the Art. It is really soothing."

Wufei snorted. "You don't need a beautiful place to practice the Art. A TRUE martial artist can practice anywhere, in ANY situation."

"Wufei you jerk. You sound just like Kaneda! Oh..." Her irritated expression faded as sadness filled her face. Kaneda...

"Who's Kaneda?" Duo asked.

She blinked, pushing the waves of pain to the back of her brain. She shrugged and casually said, "My fiance."

"Your..fiance?" Duo said slowly, trying to keep the disappointment he felt from seeping into his voice.

Ranko didn't notice Duo's tone but the rest did. "It's nothing really. He's a jerk that my father got me engaged with. It's an arranged marriage."

"Oh." Was the only reply which was suspiciously filled with a lot of brightness and.. relief?

Though Ranko was struggling to hide the sadness that enveloped her every time she thought about the blue haired boy, Relina and Quatre could both feel that she carried strong feelings for the boy.

The redhead flashed them a smile, forgetting about the jerk that she would probably never see again. "Are you guys hungry? I bought along food so that you could eat while I practice."

They nodded unsure. "Sure..but where's the food?"

She smirked, holding up her right hand. "Here."

"Where? There's no food there!" Wufei yelled at the lying girl.

She rolled her eyes. Stupid MALE. With a quick flick of her right hand a large brown basket appeared.

Relina's eyes widened. Just when she thought that Ranko couldn't surprise her anymore she had to go and do this. Where did the food come from?

As if hearing her silent thoughts Ranko replied, "It's a technique I learned from a near blind Amazon boy. It's called the Hidden Weapons technique which is how I carried the basket without it being seen."

"Oh."

Wufei scowled. Every single minute the girl was continually doing something that practically screamed 'I'm the greatest martial artist!'

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She closed her eyes as she started to practice her katas. Moving fluidly she continually switched from one form of martial art to another, never once stopping. To the outsider she was practicing her katas so gracefully that she could be mistaken for dancing.

To Ranko, however, it was a haven. A place where she could hide and be safe. Where she could hide her feelings. Where she could finally be at peace.

Images of Kaneda kept popping up in her mind. Memories of the time they spent together kept playing over and over. An image of when they first met. An image of him trying to save her from danger even when she was far more skilled than he was. An image of his sweet smile.

She willed herself to forget him. To forget Kaneda Tendo. Oh man, she thought silently while her body was still automatically practicing. I can't do this. Even the Art can't save me from thinking about him. Please let something happen to keep me from thinking about HIM!

She stopped moving as her senses picked up something. Thank you, Kami-sama!

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Relina and the rest of the gang was staring at Ranko in awe as she flowed through her katas. She was confused when Ranko had suddenly stopped.

Quatre shivered slightly at the evil smirk Ranko had on her face as she walked up to them.

"So.." She started. "Have you ever seen a demon before?" In unison they all shook their heads, quiet. "Well, you are going to see a lot of them now."

"What?"

Then hell broke loose. Literally.

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"Arguh?" The dark and menancing demon quirked his eyebrow in confusion. Things were NOT going right. Not at all.

"Here demon demon! Come one! Come and get me!" taunted the hyper redhead jumping around the irritated demons' attacks.

Nope. He sighed, slumping his bulky shoulders. It was just suppose to be harmless fun, but nooo things just had to go wrong.

The plan had been to have scare a few pitiful humans, maybe even have a scaring contest, and then book it. That was all since trully demons aren't all bad.

*SHIVER*

Who'd a known huh? Only once in a while were there an overconfident fool that thought that he could take over the world. Fools they were. Don't they know that somehow someone was just gonna kick their butt?

The demon gasped as one of his fellow demons was bodily thrown onto him. "Oof!" He took one glance at Theous and started shivering.

"Let's get out of HERE!!" He yelled out panicked. The other demons all agreed without ANY protest. Poor Theous, he thought as he pulled the bloody mess by his hand. He hurriedly opened a portal to 'Hell' and jumped through.

The others immediately jumped in back to safety. They almost all made it. Almost.

"LEAVE HIM! There's NO time!" Kwuen barked out. The others not-so-regrettably closed the portal.

"Oh my." Whispered one of the female demoness. "Oh well. Reowin wasn't such a great guy anyway."

"Yeah."

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For the umpteenth time since the redhead had dropped in, the G-boys and Relina were gawking with their mouth agape. Relina, after realizing how unladylike it looked, quickly closed her mouth.

"I don't believe this." muttered Duo. The others nodded their head.

Before the appearance of Ranko Saotome, they had never encountered anything supernatural. They never encountered humans that had magical curses. They never encountered a person that could move as fast as the redhead had moved. They had DEFINITELY never encountered a group of menancing looking demons.

Especially a group of demons having their butts kicked by a petite girl. Nope.

After asking them about if they had ever seen a demon she had grinned rather evilly and walked away. Then in a few minutes several dozen demons appeared out of some doorway from hell.

They had been a little bit frightened, although Wufei swore that he was not one bit scared, at first. Of course when Ranko had started to beat the living hell out of the demons with ridiculous ease, they sweatdropped.

"No way."

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Panicking the demon ran as fast as he could to the quickly closing portal. "Nah uh uh." He gulped, distracted by the redhead's voice for a second. It was one vital second wasted he realized too late as the portal closed.

"Oh, no."

Ranko lunged for the demon eager to finish unleashing some of her anger on it. Seeing the portal closed she grinned. It had no where to go. She reached to grip his shoulder and to her surprise, she missed.

"Huh?"

She stopped to see a nervous demon several feet away from her. Her grin grew wider. So, she thought silently, this demon CAN fight. She charged at him, throwing chi-powered punches and kicks. When the demon dodged all of her attacks, she stopped blinking.

"What the..?" A suspicious look got on her face. The way the demon moved was familiar. A memory flashed in her mind. She growled.

"REOWIN NO BAKA!!!"

The demon jumped up from where he had just been embedded. "HEY!" He yelled indignant. He paused and thought about how silly it looked in his demon form. He immediately switched to his human form and yelled again, "HEY!"

"Don't you HEY me." Ranko said leaning on the very big mallet in her hands.

Reowin sniffed. "It hurt you know."

Ranko smirked. "I know, that was the point." Her smirked disappeared and she glared at the demon transformed dark haired boy.

"Grr.. You didn't have to hit me. It wasn't my fault." He grumbled rubbing his head.

"Oh yeah I did. Just what were YOU doing HERE?" She fixed him 'the LOOK.'

"Uh..my fellow demons and I were just visiting Earth. We just wanted to see how beautiful the parks were and bumped into you." He said, coughing slightly.

Eyes narrowed. "What do you take me for? An idiot? TELL ME. NOW." She growled out menancing.

"Hey you know Ranko-chan, you're are really good at that menancing tone. Quite an actor. I have you know that it is actually hard for me to sound menancing sometimes. You have a talent there.."

Reowin shivered at the look Ranko gave him. It clearly said, 'You are bad at changing the subject, quit it and you ain't funny *DOUBLE GLARE*.'

"OKAY OKAY! I admit it! We just wanted to have some fun and scare a few humans. You know, a little bit of harmless pranks."

"Oh so you have fun SCARING humans?!"

"Uh..yeah..no..uh.." He looked to the ground, not wanting to meet Ranko's gaze.

The redhead rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. Reowin looked up immediately, recognizing that sigh. His eyes met a smiling beautiful face.

"It's nice to see you again Reo-kun."

"Same to you too, although I wish you hadn't hit me so hard." Reowin said while giving Ranko a friendly hug.

"Whatever."

"Ahem." Slight coughing was heard and they blinked.

"So Ranko," Wufei started, "Care to introduce us to the guy you are currently embracing who I could have sworn was a menancing demon a moment ago?"

Relina was confused as well but raised an eyebrow at the same time Quatre did at Wufei. Was it just their imagination or did Wufei sound a BIT jealous when he said 'embracing?'

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Deep space. Very dark and very vast. Far away from the colonies was a section in space that was undisturbed by people from the colonies and Earth. In a huge asteroid was, surprisingly, a very large spaceship.

Dark purple eyes twinkled with evilness as they stared at the image of Earth on the large screen. "Soon." A soft and dark voice said. "Soon I will rule the universe. I will be the rightful ruler of Earth and the colonies. It is my destiny. I was born for this."

She smiled viciously as she flipped her long black ponytail over her shoulder. Her eyes moved off the screen as the man beside her spoke.

"Yes you were."

"I know," she replied. "Now, Eein if you would kindly leave me.."

The blonde man nodded. "Yes I understand." He turned around and left silently.

The raven haired girl smiled and sat down elegantly on her red chair. "Finally, peace and quiet."

"Excuse me." She blinked at the voice. Who dared to interrupt her moment of peace?!

The male voice continued. "Would you please tell me the way to the Tendo Dojo?"

She stood up angrily and whirled around to face a handsome dark haired boy. "How in the world did you get in here?!" She ignored the boy's question and pressed hard on the blue button on the desk before her. "QUEN! Tell me how the heck did fang boy here get into my office?! How in the world did he get inside this space ship?!" She yelled into the speaker.

Ryouga Hibiki stared at the woman yelling angrily at whoever Quen was and shook his head. If she didn't know the way to the Tendo Dojo then she should have just told him so.

Weird girl she was. What did she mean by spaceship? Was she hallucinating?

Oh, well. He shrugged and started walking. Things like this always happen. He left the spaceship in mere seconds leaving behind a very pissed off Ruler-to-be-of-the-universe yelling at her head guard just how the heck did a bandanna boy get into the spaceship and leave without him noticing.

End Chapter Four.