Temporary Note

Here's another (unfinished) story from my site, recently revised and updated. I'm going to upload chapters for this story twice a week (every three and four days) while I work on others, but I'll upload them as well when I finish a chapter for them, rather than holding off until all of the chapters for this one are available here.

Preface

Dragon Half is the reason for this story's existence, plain and simple. It's my favorite manga (yeah, it's not Ranma 1/2), with a bit of a story between it and I, but I'll reserve that for another time and place (if ever asked).

The Dragon Half portion is barely present until later in the story, when the setting for the series comes into play. For the most part, Ranma 1/2, Sailor Moon, Tenchi Muyo and Aa! Megami-sama! will get more exposure in this tale.

Beyond that, my efforts for this story are a bit more lax than it is for others, because I'm attempting to inject more humor than I normally do. (Let's just assume that it will fail.) There was also this thing that I wanted to do with "Kami-sama," because I didn't really care for the guy. It seemed like most everyone else was depicting him in a positive light (in Ranma 1/2 crossovers, at least), so what I would do with him became clear. XD

Prologue

Ranma and Akane returned home after an uneventful day at school, with Akane announcing their arrival. They removed their shoes inside of the genkan before proceeding further into the house, their school bags in hand. Rather than go to his family's room, so he could drop off his school bag, Ranma headed for the living room instead. Kasumi, whom he and Akane had passed while she was sweeping the sidewalk in front of the gate outside, had mentioned that a package had come in for him.

Ranma wanted to investigate what had been sent to him and get it over with, since there was a good chance that it had been sent by Tatewaki or some other nuisance, while Akane — out of curiosity — followed him. He knelt before the chabudai, in front of a rectangular box that had been placed there, and set his school bag aside. He looked over the box, but he didn't see any tale-telling signs of who it belonged to, or that it had been opened.

Akane, who had chosen to stand behind Ranma, looked at the box from over his shoulder and asked, "What's that doing there?"

Genma, as if only now noticing the presence of others in the room, didn't look away from his game of Go with Soun as he said, "It was delivered earlier. This letter came with it."

So saying, Genma procured the letter from where it had been tucked into his top and promptly tossed it toward Ranma without looking. Ranma deftly caught it between the index and middle fingers of one hand before holding it with both and looking it over.

"A letter, huh..." Ranma commented, with a dubious expression on his face, before he looked for the address of the sender.

"Who is it from?" Akane inquired.

After seeing who had sent him the box, Ranma frowned and lost interest in its contents. He simply handed the letter over to Akane and dismissively said, "Just that place where we got that dōgi from."

Akane confirmed — with her own eyes — that the box and letter had indeed been sent by the Monkey-Mountain temple, where the seemingly-alive and ability-enhancing dōgi — that had chosen her as its master — had come from, before she opened the envelope and removed the letter. However, once unfolded, she found said letter void of any content.

She frowned. "That's odd. Nothing's written on it."

"Really?" Ranma responded, now looking up at Akane. "Here; let me see it."

"What's there to see?" Akane remarked, even as she complied with his request.

Ranma looked down at the letter, and — contrary to Akane's assessment — he did see a message. Instead of reading the message right away, he said, "What are you talking about? The message is kinda short, but it's there."

Akane looked at the supposed letter once again, as Ranma held it up and pointed out where the message was written, but she still didn't see anything written on it. Feeling a bit irritated by this, she said, "And I'm saying that there's nothing there. If this is some kind of joke, it's not funny."

"I'm not joking," came Ranma's defensive reply, as he began to become irritated as well. "Why would I claim to see something that isn't there?"

"Maybe you need your eyes examined," Akane replied, in a tone that suggested that she wasn't about to fall prey to what she thought of as some kind of practical joke.

"Or, maybe, you need your head examined," Ranma retorted, as he stared at the message written in the letter. "It's probably suffering from the same thickness your waist is."

In response, Akane brought her school bag down upon his head with enough force to make him slouch. Ranma closed his eyes, furrowed his brow and didn't respond to the blow, since he had been expecting such a reaction.

It was at that moment that they heard Nabiki's arrival. Akane, thinking that she could convince Ranma to give up on his game if another person's judgement corresponded with her own, got Nabiki's attention and explained what was going on. When she was finished, Ranma stood up and handed her the letter.

Nabiki studied it for a moment before an expression of shock appeared on her face. She held the letter away from herself, and with a voice tinged with awe she said, "This... This is...!"

Ranma leaned in closer to Nabiki, intrigued by her response, and inquired, "What? What is it?"

Nabiki, similarly, leaned in closer. She took in Ranma's serious expression for a few seconds before she voided her face of expression and flatly said, "I'll tell you for only one-thousand yen."

Ranma, exasperated, glared at her in response and snatched the letter away from her. Akane, who was also not amused by her sister's response, sarcastically said, "Gee, what a lot of help you are."

Nabiki simply smiled at that and said, "Just glad to do my part, sis."

Before Akane could ask what "part" her sister was talking about, Kasumi, who entered the room with a plate of senbei in her hands, caught her attention. Akane approached her and asked if she would be willing to help her with something, and explained what that something was. Kasumi agreed to take a look at the letter, and set down the plate of senbei upon the table so she could accept the letter from Ranma.

"I'm sorry," Kasumi apologized to Ranma, after she had taken a momentary glance at the letter. "Was there supposed to be something written here?"

Feeling vindicated, Akane was more than happy enough to face Ranma and crow, "Ha! I told you so."

Ranma, knowing that Kasumi wasn't the type to lie or play jokes on someone, felt confused as he accepted the letter back from her. He finally began to wonder if he might be wrong about what he was seeing. Whoever heard of ink that was visible to only one person? Personal experience told him that it wasn't outside the realm of possibility, and yet...

"I don't know what you hoped to accomplish," Nabiki remarked casually, "but the gig's up. I swear, Ranma: you have no imagination, at all."

Taking offense to that, Ranma hotly countered with, "But I'm not joking around! How come I'm the only one who can see it!?"

Genma chose that moment to scream in frustration, flip over the small game table that he and Soun had been using, and exclaim, "I can't concentrate with all this nonsense going on in the background!"

"But... I was about to win..." Soun muttered faintly, his hand outstretched toward the fallen game board and its pieces. By the look on his face, one might have assumed that he had suffered the loss of his one, true love.

"Mr. Saotome?" Akane spoke in a questioning tone, as the Saotome patriarch stood up and faced Ranma with an air of authority.

"If there's really something written on that paper," Genma began calmly, before he pointed his index finger at his son challengingly and declared, "then shouldn't you be able to tell us what it says!?"

"Of course," Nabiki thought to herself, understanding Genma's intent. "We'd be able to tell if Ranma can't make something up on the spot."

With all eyes in the room now focused on him, Ranma smirked confidently and said, "Fine. I'll tell you what it says."

"Dear Saotome Ranma," he began to read aloud. "Please do not share this with anyone."

Ranma paused to wonder if he should continue or not. However, that gave Akane enough time to yell, "why won't you just admit that your joke failed," in exasperation before kicking him out of the house. "Honestly!"

She sent him flying toward the koi pond, where he unceremoniously plunged into its cool depths. Akane turned about and marched out of the room before he could surface, with the intent to change out of her school uniform. Nabiki shook her head at what had transpired before she left the room herself, having much the same plan in mind as her younger sister. Kasumi left the room as well, but for a different reason.

Once Ranma had her feet underneath her, she stood up and found herself waist-deep in the koi pond's waters. With a dour expression on her face, she climbed out of it and trudged her way over to the engawa, where she sat down. She glanced at the letter that she still held in her hand, and she was surprised to see that the paper and ink had been unaffected by the water.

She put the letter aside so she could take off her clothes, but she continued to wonder about it as she squeezed the water out of her shirt, which was soon followed by her undershirt and pants. Once she was wearing nothing save her boxers, she put the last of her damp clothes aside and retrieved the letter. Unconcerned about baring her breasts, since she knew that Mr. Tendo was usually mindful enough to avoid looking in her direction after such an episode, she began to read the rest of the letter.

"I have chosen you to bear a great burden," it read. "The suit that I have sent to you should grant you access to the greatest power that I know of. I'm confident that your experience and training will prepare you for the trials ahead, should you choose to wear it. That's all that I can say for now, but all will be revealed should you choose to accept this task. I have faith in you."

The letter wasn't signed. However, seeing as it was written by someone from the Monkey-Mountain temple, it didn't really matter to Ranma: it sounded like something from a cheesy movie with a bad plot, the kind where the hero was destined to save everything from certain destruction. So, she spared the letter an incredulous look before setting it aside.

Kasumi returned a short time later with a kettle of hot water in one hand and a towel in the other. Ranma thanked her as she accepted the kettle first, the contents of which she poured over her head without delay. After he handed the kettle back, he took the towel and began to dry his face with it.

"Why not see what's in the package?" Kasumi suggested, as if trying to take his mind off of what had happened with the letter.

"I guess it couldn't hurt," Ranma absently replied, as he worked the towel into his hair. "But I'm gonna call them up, tell them they made a mistake, and send it back."

"Really?" Kasumi replied, tilting her head slightly to one side. "I thought it was addressed to you."

"Well, yeah..." Ranma conceded, as he flossed his back with the towel. "Doesn't mean I have to accept it. It has 'weird' written all over it."

He stood up once he was done drying himself off and gave Kasumi the towel when she held out her hand. With that done, he walked over to the box that was on the table, and absently noted how Mr. Tendo was still looking for the black and white pieces for his game. His father was nowhere to be seen, who had no doubt left the Tendo patriarch the job of picking up the pieces by himself.

Once he was kneeling at the table, Ranma made quick work out of opening the box. There was no protective packaging inside of it, so he picked up the only thing that he found within. Said thing appeared to be a suit, but he couldn't really tell what it looked like — in detail — as he held it up, since half of it was still in the box while the other half was covered in what appeared to be a large mane of crimson-colored hair. With that being the case, he stood up, in order to draw the entire suit out of the box, and immediately regretted doing so.

"Oh, my," voiced Kasumi, as she covered her mouth with her hand.

What he held over the box could not simply be called a suit, seeing as it appeared to be a rather anatomically correct skin of a person — and of a pubescent girl, no less. The sight of it made him pause in mild shock, as even his past experience with weird and disgusting things hadn't quite prepared him for something of its ilk.

As luck would have it, Akane chose that time to return, now wearing a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. She took one look at the skin suit, saw him in nothing but his boxers, and immediately concluded that he had undressed to wear it.

"This... This isn't what it looks like!" Ranma declared his innocence as he dropped the skin suit and frantically waved both of his hands about in front of himself, hoping that it would ward away his advancing fiancée.

Undaunted, Akane reached him and screamed, "you pervert," before launching him out of the house with a punch to the face.

Kasumi watched Akane storm out of the room before she turned her attention to Ranma, who once again found herself in the koi pond.

"I better prepare some more hot water," Kasumi idly commented to herself.

She picked up the kettle and headed back to the kitchen, leaving the upset redhead to her own devices until she returned. She didn't notice that her father was frozen in shock, due to catching a glimpse of the skin suit.

Genkan: An area — often with a recessed floor — within the entrance of a home, where one removes their shoes to avoid dirtying or damaging floors.

Chabudai: A short-legged table often employed in the family/living room, used for various things and occasions (which usually includes meals).

Dōgi: A martial arts training uniform.

Engawa: A hallway-like section of flooring (usually wood) separating the rooms within traditional Japanese homes from the outside, yet still allowing access to it when storm shutters and such aren't in use.