Power Overwhelming

[Raven]

Raven was fast asleep in the high branches of a tree in the middle of the forest. He was totally exhausted after the battle against the raven, not to mention the gorilla, the lion, those weak mercenaries, and Nimaki's ninja. He finally had a chance to rest, the forest was peaceful and quiet. There was nothing that could have woken him from his deep slumber, not even the sound of the man coming down the path to Sekai Town. The man was a Habari, he carried a spear on his back and wore a light blue cloak. He also had a symbol depicting a spear impaling a sword on his shoulder. The man walked down the path carrying a large brown package in his hands and had an envelope sticking out of his pocket. He stopped at the foot of the tree where Raven was sleeping, and looked at a strange compass in one of his hands in confusion. Then he put it away and looked up to the top of the tree and looked straight at Raven.
"Hello up there!" The man yelled up to him.
Raven stirred slightly and slowly opened one eye, turning his head to look at the man who was speaking to him.
"Hi, are you Mitsuri Hinas?" The man asked from the base of the tree.
"Who are you?" Raven asked back.
"My name is Henry Gigo," The man replied, "You didn't answer my question."
Raven suddenly swung down from branch to branch to get to the ground, and stood in front of Henry.
"By birth yes, but I prefer to be known as Raven." Raven said looking him straight in the eyes. "Why do you ask?"
"I have a package for you." The man told him thrusting the package into his hands. "It's from your parents."
"How do you know my parents?" Raven inquired suspiciously.
"I am a member of a secret organization known as the Habaraki, we are totally dedicated to overseeing the collapse of Nimaki's criminal empire. Your parents found us and we are keeping them safe in our midst, if you see this symbol on a light blue cloak it is someone you can trust." He said pointing to the symbol on his shoulder.
The man then put an envelope in Raven's only free hand and turned and disapeared into the forest. Raven, who was still half asleep, looked confused at where the man had stood. Why would you tell anyone that you are part of a secret organisation and how to tell your people apart from everyone else? Raven suddenly remembered about the package in his hands. He put the actual package on the ground and read the letter in the envelope.

[Raven]

My dear Mitsuri

Your mother and I miss you very much, but we are being well taken care of by some nice men we have known for years. We thought that in light of all we had been hearing about, all the dark animal attacks recently in Karini Forest we thought you could use some help. Your mother and I worked very hard on this gift, I crafted it, and she enchanted it. You'll be pleasantly surprised at all that this thing is capable of, we won't ruin the surprise by telling you but you'll probably see soon enough. This was made with all our love Mitsuri, we love you and we hope that you will stay out of trouble. I dare say that this is the best thing I have ever made, and your mother is proud of her work with the spells. We will see you again someday.

Love,
Your parents

[Raven]

That was his parents all right, always made light of everything and hoped that the son they dropped with Master Kinbara all those years ago wouldn't be reckless enough to get into impossible battles. He hadn't been in that much trouble yet, except maybe the time he had ten guys with crossbows firing at him in his parents shop. Oh well, Raven thought he'd try his best. He suddenly became overwhemed by curiousity as he stared at the package. What could it be? He opened it up and found the most expertly crafted swallow he had ever seen. The blades were perfectly curved and just the perfect length, and where there usually would have been a wooden rod between the two blades, there was a metal rod. He raised the weapon into the air and swung it around to get a feel for it, it was surprisingly light for its size and materials. It would not slow down his attacks, if anything it was lighter than his old one, it would allow for much greater attack speed. In his happy mood, he slashed at the nearest tree removing a good chunk of bark and leaving a large gash in it. It was even better than he thought it was, that had been a weak attack. He put the weapon in the usual place on his back, it fit in the holder perfectly. He began to walk away but a shadow crossed his path, and he looked up to see the source of it. Standing on the path was a strange man with green hair, and a forest green cloak. He had a deranged look on his face, and a staff in his hand. He looked straight at Raven, and growled like an angered dog.
"You dare hurt this forest!" He yelled with the voice of a lunatic.
"What are you talking about?" Raven asked.
"You slashed the tree, you hurt the tree, my precious tree!" He wavered.
"Okay? I slashed it but it was just to test out my new weapon." Raven told him.
"So you admit to it, well I'll just test out my weapon on you then!" He cried.
The madman ran at Raven, his staff high in the air.

[Raven]

Raven pulled his new swallow from his back and blocked the man's downward attack with the metal shaft of his weapon. The man cried out in rage and tried to hit Raven with the flat end his staff, which Raven blocked with the flad side of one of his blades. Two tries and this guy was already starting to annoy Raven, not a smart thing to do when he was cranky from lack of sleep. Raven jumped back and then charged at the man to slash him with the swallow blades. On his way there he tripped over a tree root and began to fall, but he recovered doing a handstand flip. He landed on the ground behind the enemy and slashed, the man tried to block the attack with his staff but his weapon was sliced in half. Raven stood up and looked the man right in the eyes.
"Your weapon is broken, surrender now and I won't kill you." Raven declared.
"I not done by a longshot." The man told him.
The man started to laugh at Raven's ultimatum, and held his hands out in front of him.
"In fact you're the one who is defenceless, and I will show no mercy to you." He said.

[Raven]

Raven looked at the man with a strange look on his face, what the hell was wrong with this guy? He looked and talked crazy, so what was his problem? The questions were soon answered when a nearby tree uprooted itself and flew up above his head. It began to spin around super fast and then started to shrink, it took the form of a staff in his hand. Raven stared in awe at this man, he'd never seen anything like that.
"What the hell are you?" Raven asked.
He didn't get an answer, the man ran for Raven with his new staff in hand. Raven tried to move out of the way but his foot was caught on something, but when he looked down there was a vine wrapped around his ankle. The vine just came out of the ground and wrapped itself around Raven's foot. The man was now upon him, and he began to block blow after blow from the staff. Raven slashed him across the chest with the blade of his swallow, the man stumbled backwards clutching his chest. Raven sliced the vine and rose up to face the guy with his swallow. Suddenly he raised his hands looking like he was surrendering, and Raven let his guard down. Then the forest began to shake with a heavy wind, and the trees swayed back and forth.
"Fool!" The man screamed, "the whole forest is alive with my power. I control all plantlife I see, and this place is covered in it. This is my turf and you can't hope to defend yourself against me."

[Raven]

This was not good, if this guy was telling the truth then Raven didn't hold much hope of winning. He'd have to think of something fast or he was a dead man walking. Then one of the trees swung at him with one of its branches, he jumped back to avoid the swing but another one swung behind him and knocked him down. Raven was going to have a hell of a time with this one, there was pretty much no way of beating this. He began to chop branches from the trees that were attacking him, then another vine came from the ground and wrapped itself around his foot. Then more and more came until he was totally tied up and helpless, the man just laughed.

[Raven]

Raven was bound to the spot where he stood, vines were wrapped all over his body, leaving him motionless. The man laughed and slowly walked over to the defenceless Raven and proced to lay blow after blow on his head. Raven knew he couldn't take much more of this, it wouldn't be long before he was beaten to death. He couldn't die, he still had far too much to accomplish before it was his time. He had to stop Nimaki once and for all, not to mention taken out Yiso Kaliber and his army of black creatures. He had to survive, he had to win, but it didn't look like he had much of a choice. Suddenly the man stopped the beating and began to admire his work, Raven's bruised and bloodied head. Then he took the swallow from Raven's motionless hand and admired the craftsmanship, then snapped it like a twig. Raven stared in horror as the two pieces of his swallow fell to the ground, he felt a deep rage welling up inside of him. He didn't know what angered him more, the fact that this guy had just broken the weapon that his parents had made for him, or that he just broke a good weapon that Raven hadn't had a good chance to try out yet. Raven began to tremble with rage, and then the vines snapped and burned. Raven was once again engulfed in flame, a flame so intense that it burned the grass all around him to cinders. Raven looked at the hippie treehugger with murderous rage in his eyes, this guy was going down. The man looked at Raven in sheer terror, the light from the flames glinting in his eyes.
"How did you do that? There's no way, you don't control flame. How?" The man sputtered.
"I'm not sure how, and right now I don't really care. I just care that you broke my swallow, and now you're gonna pay." Raven declared.
The man stumbled backwards as Raven inched forewards, and then bent down to retrieve the pieces of his weapon. It was broken but the blades could still do their job, he'd just have to use a new approach. He wielded the two pieces like katanas and got into his fighting stance, this was gonna be sweet.

[Raven]

Raven ran towards his now cowering opponent with both pieces of his swallow in hand. The man tried to use more vines to restrict him, but they burned to ash on contact with Raven's flaming body. The man raised his hands once again and the trees seemed to come to life, Raven avoided all of the attacks from the branches but one tree moved into his path.
"Swirling Saw!" Raven cried.
His swallow became a wheel of fire in his hands, he sliced the tree in half and the remainder burst into flames. Raven was now upon the treehugger and did the same his staff as he had done to the tree. The staff became ashes at the man's feet, and he bagan to stare at Raven with imense fear in his eyes. Raven felt a slight amount of pity inside of him, so he made a decision. He put the flaming blade to the man's throat and delivered his ultimatum.
"Leave now and I'll let you live."
The man got to his feet and ran away, as he faded into the distance Raven's flame began to disapate. He wanted to know how he did that, but his mind was on other things. He looked at the pices of his swallow, thinking how wasteful it was. He noticed that the broken ends had begun to glow in unison, as if they longed for each other. Raven connected them together and the crack between them disapeared. Raven tried to pull them apart again but they wouldn't budge, he knew his mother had put spells on it but this was awesome.
"Such a good weapon deserves a good name, I call it the Pheonix Blades because it rises from destruction to be as good as new."
He placed his weapon on his back and took off for Sekai town.

End Adventure

[Jino]

Reward: New Armor
Metal Boots (Level 2)