Ranma: Senshi of the Moon - Chapter 1

Ranma: Senshi of the Moon
A Ranma 1/2, Sailor Moon Crossover Fan Fiction
By Michael A. Ivins

What was that? You say I don't own Ranma or Sailor Moon? Are you sure?
Oh, all right! If you insist! I'm just a fanfic writer playing around with other people's characters. There, I said it! Are you happy?

Chapter 1
Changes

As she stepped out of her tepid shower in the Gym locker room area of Juuban High School, Tsukino Ranma reflected on how much her life had changed. Just a few months ago she had been living in Nerima. After returning from a trip to China where she had fought a creature believed to be a god, she, well he at the time, had been pushed into a wedding with the uncute tomboy.

Weddings were supposed to be joyous occasions, weren't they? This one had been total chaos. So much so that the actual purpose of the wedding, getting married to Tendo Akane, had not been achieved.

Two of Ranma's other fiancées had appeared and thrown bombs made of exploding food. Kuno Tatewaki had shown up, swinging a real steel katana and looking for all the world as if he really intended to end Ranma's life. The sword swinger's crazy sister showed up wearing a black wedding dress and it looked as if she would try to hijack the ceremony to see to it that she was the bride.

One of the worst parts of the day had been when a cask of Naniichuan water had been produced by Tendo Soun. Something of a minor battle royal had erupted among the male Jusenkyo victims in an effort to gain possession of the cask. The hope for a cure had ended when Happosai, of all people, had appeared and drank the water in the cask after mistaking it for a container of sake.

Thinking back on it, Ranma had to question if that really had been the worst part of the wedding. She had been getting used to the curse and didn't really mind changing into a girl so often. There were times when the curse was useful and even fun, even if she had made a big deal of always saying, "I'm a guy, damn it!"

Upon reflection, the worst part of it was Akane's reaction after the wedding. She had thought that the tomboy had come to terms with the curse and had accepted it at least a little. Then after it was all over Akane stated that the only reason she had been willing to go through with the wedding was the thought that Ranma would be cured.

They'd had a huge argument after the wedding. Akane had loudly proclaimed that she didn't want to have anything to do with a "sex changing pervert" like Ranma. It had been bad enough that she had to marry a male-only pervert, but for the sake of family honor, she was willing to make the sacrifice. If one could believe what the tomboy said, there was no chance now of them ever getting together. This argument was concluded by a trip to the koi pond by way of Mallet Air.

Ranma toweled herself off and went to the locker room to get dressed in her school uniform. She continued to think about how she had come to be here.

Because of the destruction of her house in a fight between the fiancées to obtain what they had believed to be ring, Saotome Nodoka had been staying with the Tendo family. This had allowed the auburn haired mother to keenly observe the interactions between Ranma and Akane as well as the rest of the fiancees. The week after the failed wedding she and Ranma had had some long talks.

The primary topic of conversation during those talks had been what had happened to Ranma on the training trip and during his stay in Nerima. Ranma's mother learned of the insane training methods, including the nekoken. She learned of all of the petty theft of food, and small valuables. She learned of how Genma had sold out her child for as little as a meal. Then there were all of the fiancées.

It would be an understatement to say that Nodoka was not happy with what she had heard. Ranma had to physically restrain the woman from taking her katana and slicing up her husband. She had been seriously considering turning the man into a panda skin rug.

Thanks to Ranma's efforts, the auburn haired mother had calmed down. With calm came a return to rational thought. When she was able to think things through she decided on a different course of action, one that would ultimately hurt Genma worse than the sword would have. Thus it was that a month later Saotome Genma was served with papers declaring that his wife had divorced him, and had legal custody of Ranma awarded to her. She had also removed both herself and her son from the Saotome family register.

With the blessing of her father Tsukino Kenji and the rest of Tsukino clan, Nodoka took back her maiden name and got Ranma's name changed as well. Nodoka's siblings, Shingo and Usagi had been supportive in this as well. The wrecked house in Nerima was sold for the value of the land, which turned out to be worth quite a bit. The sale brought enough money for Nodoka to purchase a newer house in a middle class neighborhood in the Azabu-Juuban district of Minato Ward.

All engagements were declared null and void. Nodoka had not taken kindly to having bombs thrown at her during the wedding. She had looked with even less favor on the abuse that Akane had been dealing out to her son. While it was true that Ranma was not the most tactful of people, he did not deserve being beaten with a mallet over speaking a few poorly chosen words.

Ranma's ruminations were interrupted as a tall brunette with her hair in a high pony tail came over and asked, "Hey Ranma, are we still on for training tomorrow?"

Grinning, the pigtailed redhead replied, "Of course, Mako-chan. Unless you have something better to do, like... a date maybe."

The tall girl let out a sigh and said, "No such luck. Kenichi and I broke up."

"Oh no!" Ranma exclaimed in sympathy. "And you seemed so sure that this one was going to last." She placed a consoling hand on her friend's shoulder and said, "You'll have to tell me and the girls about it after our sparring session."

"Yeah, we can talk about it tomorrow," the tall girl agreed. "I've got stuff to do at home, so I'll head out now."

As she watched the other girl walk away, Ranma reflected that this was another way in which her life had changed. It had started during those talks with her mother. Nodoka had been curious about the curse and how Ranma was dealing with it.

When Nodoka had first learned of the curse she had been willing to tolerate it as long as Ranma remained male in thought at least. However, she had insisted that her son change back to male form as soon as possible.

It had been a week before the trip to China that Ranma had spent a day with his mother. They had spent much of the time walking around Nerima Ward and she had seen first hand how hard it was for the boy to stay male sometimes. In that day Ranma had gotten splashed by the ladle lady, a malfunctioning lawn sprinkler, a sudden rain shower that seemed to fall only on Ranma, wash water being dumped from the balcony of an apartment building and a car driving through a puddle.

After each of the splashing incidents, they had stopped at a restaurant or yattai to get hot water and change Ranma back to male. Yet that was not enough to keep Ranma in his birth gender. By the time the day was done, Nodoka had been forced to concede defeat and allow her son to remain her daughter for the rest of the day.

Further questioning brought out the fact that the curse seemed to want Ranma to spend at least half of his time in cursed form. If he went too long in male form, the curse seemed to magically attract water and that was what led to all of the strangely coincidental seeming water accidents. Although Nodoka found it slightly disturbing to think that a magic curse might actually want something, she decided that it might be possible to work with that.

Showing a keen grasp of the principles of logic, Nodoka proposed an experiment to try once they had moved to Juuban. Ranma would deliberately schedule time to spend in girl form. She would always sleep that way and spend at least part of every day like that. The result of this simple-seeming step was amazing to the aquatranssexual. Water accidents stopped happening.

That led to the current arrangement. Not only would Ranma sleep in girl form, but her mother registered her at Juuban High School as a girl. All time outside of school or sleep was spent in male form. This also had the effect of helping to erode many of the macho attitudes the martial artist had held onto.

Attending school as a girl did have its challenges. Ranma had to be careful to avoid hot water, but was grateful to find that she could wash and shower in water just slightly under body temperature without changing.

Without having to worry about people thinking her a freak, she was able to make friends. One of the first friends she had was Naru, a shy girl who seemed really nice. Then there was Mizuno Ami. At first it had seemed to be the oddest friendship. The martial artist and the genius.

Ami had learned to look past the surface and found that Ranma was as much of a genius in her own way as Ami was herself. With the help of the blue haired prodigy, Ranma started learning how to apply her intelligence to subjects other than martial arts and athletics. With that aid her grades had displayed a remarkable improvement until she was a possible challenger for Ami's spot as the top of the class.

Then there had been Kino Makoto. The girl had been a severe discipline problem and had been kicked out of several schools for fighting. She had prided herself on her martial arts skills but had a temper that led to problems. Then she met Ranma and found that, compared to the redhead, her martial arts skills were as a beginner compared to a master.

Another girl Ranma had not met at school. She had met Hino Rei when she and her mother had gone to visit the Hikawa Shrine that was close to where they lived. The girl was smart, pretty and had a fiery temper. In spite of that temper she was also kind and caring and was unlikely to go beyond yelling in the expression of her anger.

Even if she was starting to accept the femininity of her girl side, Ranma was sure she wasn't so far into it that she could ever feel any attraction to men or boys. No, her only attraction was to girls and she felt a strong attraction to Rei. Even though the shrine maiden had expressed interest in boys, Ranma suspect that the girl might also harbor a hidden attraction to girls as well. She hoped so, because the curse almost required that any girl she got together with would have to be bisexual.

She had been trying for a while to try and figure out how to approach the other girl to find out what her preferences might be in that direction. If much more time went by without any progress, she was going to have to ask her mother for advice. Considering all the weird manliness crap Nodoka had spoken of in the past, Ranma was hesitant to ask.

Because all of her friends were girls, Ranma had begun to learn the ways of that previously unknown form of communication known as girl talk. Ranma could participate in on subjects such as boys and would commiserate with friends in regard to their romantic problems. She wouldn't speak openly of it, but the other girls got the impression that Ranma wasn't really into boys. Since she didn't make any moves to aggressively pursue other girls, they didn't make any complaint about her presumed preferences.

Even with girls she wasn't actively friends with, Ranma was at least on good terms. Part of that was due to Ranma toning down her arrogance and behaving less like a jerk. True, as a girl she was an outrageous tomboy, but she was a nice one. As she left the school she waved at some of her friends. After having so few friends during the training trip, she treasured each friend she made now.

It was fortunate that the school was within walking distance of her home. She could have gotten there by roof hopping, but she was trying to keep a low profile and blend in with the "normal" girls. A few times she had to run off some persistent guys who had tried to get fresh with her, but they had not been a problem.

Her route took her past a park. On some days she would detour into this place to enjoy the neatly trimmed lawns and well kept trees, but didn't feel in the mood for it today. However, when she was opposite the park she had a sense that something was wrong.

Listening to her danger sense, Ranma leapt over the street and to the sidewalk on the other side and then ran into the park. Screened from view of the street by the trees and shrubbery there was a pond. Near to that was a large humanoid, vaguely female looking... thing. It looked to be a little over six feet tall with leathery-looking brownish-green skin and eyes that seemed to take up a third of its face.

The monster seemed quite pleased with itself as it surveyed several people who looked to be unconscious on the ground by its feet. Not content to simply accomplish its goals, the creature loudly proclaimed, "For the greater glory of the Negaverse, your energy is mine!"

What was the stupid thing babbling about? Energy? Ranma used her ki senses to scan the bodies on the ground. They were alive but their ki levels were dangerously low. Ok, it seemed obvious that this monster had somehow sucked the life energy out of those people like some kind of vampire or maybe a little like her English teacher back at Furinkan.

The martial artist knew what she had to do. It was the duty of a martial artist to protect those who could not protect themselves and it looked like those people were pretty helpless at the moment. She shouted "Moku Takabisha!" launching one of her strongest attacks.

The creature's celebration of its victory over puny humans was interrupted when it was struck. The ki blast knocked the creature down and seemed to disorient it a bit, but didn't do any other harm Ranma could see. Of course! If the creature absorbed ki then it must have absorbed at least part of the blast. The blast would have been too much, too fast for all of it to be absorbed, but it wasn't doing enough damage. Maybe it even used some of the absorbed energy to heal the damage.

Hmm, getting in close to pound on the monster didn't seem like a good idea either. Whatever she did, she would have to do it quick. The monster seemed to have recovered from its daze and was starting to move toward her.

Quickly choosing a plan of attack, Ranma made a slashing motion with one hand while calling out, "Kaijin Raishu Dan!" An invisible vacuum blade flew through the air and hit the creature in the waist, cutting it in half. The two halves fell in opposite directions and a moment later they disintegrated into dust and made a small pile on the ground.

The red haired girl quickly rushed forward to check on the people lying on the ground. Even as she got there she could tell that their ki was going back to previous levels. It would seem that whatever energy the monster had absorbed was now being fed back to the people it had been stolen from.

A short distance away there was one more spectator to the battle. A small black furred cat was under a bush. The cat had an unusual intelligence in her eyes and to further show her difference from normal felines there was an odd crescent moon mark on her forehead. She had witnessed the whole battle and had been amazed by the fighting prowess and skill displayed. While she had watched the strange girl she had noticed a mark glowing on her forehead. The mark had the appearance of a golden crescent moon symbol.

Could that be her? Could her long search finally be coming to an end? That mark should only appear on the face of Sailor Moon. The cat cautiously moved out from under the bush and approached the girl. With the recovering people all around to act as witnesses, she wouldn't be able to talk to the girl, but she could at least make her presence known.

Young girls usually loved cats. There should be no problem in getting the girl to accept her and maybe even pick her up and take her away. If they could get to the girl's home then Luna could talk to her and tell her about her destiny as the lunar defender of Love and Justice.

Ranma was helping one of the monster's recovering victims to her feet. The girl said, "What happened to me? I remember coming into the park and I saw a weird creature."

"Don't worry about it," Ranma assured her, "The monster won't bother you again."

With her attention on the girl she was helping, Ranma didn't see the cat approaching. Then from behind her a voice spoke, "Ahem! Meow."

The red haired girl's head whipped around and she saw a creature of nightmare. In her instinctive fear reaction it didn't occur to her that what had come from the cat was words as a human would speak, not the actual meow a real cat would produce. All she could think at this moment was that she was confronted by one of those demon spawn of hell with fangs and claws and it would probably try to eat her.

With a scream of, "CAAAAT!!" the redhead ran off out of the park.

Momentarily frozen in shock, the moon cat quickly shook off her amazement and took off to run in hot pursuit She thought, "I wasn't expecting that reaction. Why would the Senshi of the moon be afraid of cats?"

Author's Note: Sorry for the short chapter. I know I'm going to catch some flack for the battle so let me defend myself. I've read fics where Ranma hit a youma with a ki blast and it did nothing because the creature absorbed all of it. Personally I can't buy that.

Here's my reasoning on this: Imagine a garden hose where you hold it up to drink out of it. If there's no spray nozzle, it would be pretty much like a drinking fountain. Now imagine trying to drink from a high pressure fire hose. You might be able to get some in your mouth but you would be just as likely to be knocked over by the force of the water stream.

The point is that the life energy in a ki blast would be coming too fast and too intense for a youma to absorb all of it. It would still take some damage, just not as much as if it wasn't absorbing anything.