This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.
This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｃｈｅｂｍａｓｔｅｒ。ｃｏｍ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .
(シーンブレイク)
Your Destiny Is Annulled
FYI in case you wonder why our hero(in)es act too mature: it's three months since they graduated school, they are around 18 of age (as if desperate battles weren't enough). More details in Chapter Six.
(シーンブレイク)
Arc One
No-holds-barred clash
WARNINGS:
1. I learned English all by myself, by reading fanfics. No textbooks or tutors. I can barely speak it, too.
2. The genre is really adventure/thriller.
3. Any discrepances with Sailor Ranko series are deliberate. Consider this an AU of sorts.
4. version 1.5: in April 2016 I rewrote Part One because the initial version was an ugly mess I am now ashamed of.
5. This fic is a profound failure according to Metarule #7 in Ozzallos' second list. It means there are not enough gimmicks that define the Ranma and SM series. The actions of the heroes are dictated by necessity and outside forces so much it could be arguably a story about someone else, not necessarily Ranma. That is why I don't like this fic of mine. It is a bland, mediocre work twice the size it should have been.
Chapter 1
We came so far, hand in hand...
(シーンブレイク)
(Tokyo, Senjuku ward, summer of 1995)
Sun is pouring heat from high up in the bottomless blue sky. Towering skyscrapers cast shadows at the roofs of high-rises below turning the chaos of antennae, vent boxes and dormant advertising boards into a veritable labyrinth of light and shadows. Something is flickering in this labyrinth, dashing from roof to roof, too fast for human eye to see.
Eventually a white-red blur freezes turning out to be a redheaded girl in a white, red-trimmed outfit not unlike cheerleader's. She is listening warily, shifting around half-crouched, ready to dash away. An industrial air conditioner behind her, thrice her height, is humming loudly, straining against the summer heat.
Suddenly, an another shadow comes, all blurry flickers of white and blue and skin tones. The redhead blurs in a flurry of blows, then both fly away rebounding from the roofs and advertising boards like crazied balls in a superhuman ping-pong. Surprisingly, there is to damage to the fragile constructs as if both combatants were really weighless.
But there's a sudden pause. Two girls freeze on a narrow edge of an advertising board. They are in the shadow of a skyscraper, but the world around is suffused with light. In the gap between skyscrapers, the white cone of Mount Fuji could be seen, floating in the blue expanse.
The second girl - in a similar but simpler outfit - has short raven hair. Her eyes are narrowed, glinting with the trill of challenge. Her white leotard is supplied with a dark blue sailor collar and a pleated mini-skirt of the same color ending just above mid-thigh. There are dark blue knee-high boots and short white gloves ending in wrist-hugging dark blue rings. The big bows on her chest and the small of her back seem light sky-blue at the first glance, but there are subtle shifts of color playing on their curves, like those of butterfly's wings. The jewel at the center of her front bow is sparkling, throwing off flashes of deep, rich colors like a barely restrained rainbow.
The redhead's hair is tied in a pigtail reaching down to her shoulder blades. There is an insufferable grin on her face. They are both short and atletic, but this one is slightly shorter and stockier and definitely curvier, her opponent looking boyish in comparison. Her seifuku if a bit more elaborate: the same white leotard has a red sailor collar and segmented shoulder pads like tiny featered wings, Her white gloves are coming from under simple golden bracers. A pair of crimson sandals is hugging her legs with rings of leather straps connected with golden studs to the central strip running from between her toes up almost to the girl's knee. Her pleated skirt is white, outlined with scarlet piping and double trim of scarlet and crimson. Her bows are crimson, the oneon her back trailing two quite long ribbons while the one on her chest is hugging rather peculiar jewel like a bright yellow four-pointed star of solidified flame.
The momentary lull is over, both girls blur at once. There is only place for a head-on collision on the narrow edge, they exchange blows with machinegun-like crackle. Jumping apart, they both dive for the roof to begin a mad game of play tag between the vent blocks, fire exits and other equipment. The raven haired girl is zipping around like crazy, it seems impossible to keep track of her as she is blatantly ignoring the laws of physics. It's like inertia is not about her. The redhead is dashing around pith pointed laze, deflecting all blows aimed at her so easily it is clear she is reading her opponent's moves quite a bit forward.
But here the redhead jumps up to an advertising board and rebounds towards the next rooftop, tumbling through the air in a deliberately wide and slow arc. The bait is so glaringly obvious that surprise flashes briefly on her face when the opponent takes it zipping headlong into the prepared trap.
Leaving her element, the raven haired girl is barreling through the air to intercept the redhead.
(シーンブレイク)
She was always fast. So fast that she kept outrunning herself, ever looking an awkward, ham-handed gorilla. Her innate speed, which she barely understood herself, had been negating itself like a car skidding off the road going into a turn too fast. The cooking failures filling everyone around her with dread, the constant stumbling and sprained ankles, the ugly mutant towels and other horrors of handicraft — these all, as it turned out later, stemmed from the hurry-scurry, from inability to control her own speed. And the worse she did, the harder she pushed for success driving herself deeper into the vicious circle.
She couldn't say herself why it was enraging her so much when he called her slow.
Accepting the challenge of the purple-haired amazon she suffered a shameful defeat. Shameful not because that girl was two or three times stronger and knew techniques of martial shiatsu. Oh no. Her shame was in opening the battle with a classical move designed for a slow and strong enemy, classically losing against the fast and agile Chinese bane. In putting everything into a straight right punch, utterly transparent and visible from a kilometer away. Granted, if it connected... If. The amazon avoided it by jumping over her head, just like her fiance did in their first sparring. Only this time it didn't end with just a friendly finger jab at the back of her head.
No, the purple-haired bane wasn't 'superhumanly' fast as her exaggeration-loving future father-in-law was telling. She saw it perfectly clear: the opponent landing behind her, the two hands blurring towards her head. She just couldn't do anything, overextended, completely opened like an unskilled newbie.
Then there was a flash in her head, like a lightning. And the blackness of unconsciousness. She learned later how the Chinese girl had brainwashed her, working for almost a minute on her insensate body paralysed by a double finger strike at her temples. Fifty six seconds, what's 'superhumanly fast' here? She now could do better, having gone through the Chestnuts Fist training, having long ago defeated that rival. But the lesson she did learn - slowly and with too many repeats - but she did learn it. The speed alone wasn't enough, even having finally mastered her speed, her innate birthright. note 1
(シーンブレイク)
Colliding mid-air the girls merged into a vicious furball, fighting to get the upper hand while the roof was still ten meters away. Arms and legs were flashing in a whirlwind of techniques that would make Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee die of envy. Strikes able to shatter a concrete slab sounded like a machine-gun fire. The raven-haired one fought viciously, but out of her element, her speed advantage mostly useless in mid-air, her struggle was futile against the redhead's advantage in experience and mastery. Abusing their uncanny regenerative ability able to mend even broken bones in a matter of hours if not minutes, the pigtailed sailor-suited warrior held nothing back, unleashing a hailstorm of potentially crippling blows at the blue-skirted girl. Cornered, the raven-haired girl was trying to give as best as they got, pusing herself past her limits. She held for a little while while out of sheer stubbornness, but the gap in their power was too great.
They would never have employed this insanely effective - and dangerous - method of training back when they were but mere mortals. Now, it was a completely different matter. Not a year ago they had ascended, becoming Sailor Senshi, the magical champions of their planet.
Finally the tangle of girls slammed into the roof cracking it a little from the impact and raising a cloud of dust.
When the dust finally settled, the raven-haired warrior found herself face down in an unbreakable submission hold, her hand wrenched back painfully, a hard knee stabbing into the small of her back.
She made a half-hearted attempt to get free, then slumped in defeat: "All right, you win."
Both were breathing raggedly, worn and exhausted.
"Of course! I'm the best!" Sailor Sol, mundanely known as Ranma Saotome, was obnoxious as usual.
"Yeah, yeah. And who won before that? Just you wait!" Sailor Iris, mundanely known as Akané Tendou, was stubborn as always, never backing off, even when prudent.
"I'll always be better!" Sol informed her, releasing the hand of Iris. The raven-haired girl rolled onto her back, but Sol didn't hop off her, ending up straddling her waist. Iris blushed slightly when the fiery-haired nuisance bent down, looking at her from inches away... then broke the magic by pulling down her eyelid and sticking out her tongue. Iris giggled, squirming under the feather-light weight of her soul-mate. Their oh-so-intimate position made her remember, and she laughed, unable to hold it. What a great irony: when they first found themselves in this position, she wasn't amused at all...
(シーンブレイク)
That was the year of fear and anger. The year of strife and looming menace. The year when she waged the crusade against her natural enemy.
It's hard to believe that just a few words of that idiot were enough to rally them. Rejected by her for an uncounted time, he had his revenge in such a twisted way... Or it wasn't revenge and he just tried to achieve something. Who could know the ways his thoughts meander through Kunou-sempai's brain eternally clouded with samurai romance?
One way or another, they had accepted the idea that the one who beat her would date her. They grabbed at that idea with an unhealthy vigor, unhealthy as everything about them. And so, day after day, month after month, she had to fight her way through a crowd of excited males. But they didn't stand a chance against her, even those wannabes from the karate club. Every day she entered the schoolyard leaving a heap of groaning bodies behind.
And there, each time, she was challenged by the instigator of this all. The one truly able to hold his own against her. And they fought, fist against wooden sword, and each time she won.
But the nagging doubt remained. Kunou clearly held back against her. Was it a noble gallantry? Or was the accursed male just biding his time, playing with his prey like a cat with a mouse? You never know what these creatures are thinking.
She had to be constantly on her guard, always tense. The enemy, ever watchful, lurked in the dark corners, waiting for a moment of weakness. The enemy peeked at times into the girls' locker room, receiving a united rebuff — but never giving up, never stopping salivating at her, always following her with their hungry eyes.
She got used to supplant her fear with rage, her temper rapidly worsening as a result. Akané had only one relief. An heir to a true martial arts school with its own doujo, she was the best fighter around. No one could best her.
And then her world shattered.
First, a girl appeared in their home, a girl with her fiery hair in a Chinese pigtail. That girl defeated her with a frightening ease. It was like fighting a phantom. 'It's good that you aren't a guy', she told her. The ominous, prophetic words. But in that moment all she felt was relief. She was horrified to even think what would happen to her if one of these... male-things had such a battle prowess.
And then she entered the bathroom, the place she subconsciously deemed safe, where she could relax... She entered there disrobed, defenseless, not ready... Only to meet, face to face, a creature of her nightmares.
But that wasn't the most terrifying part, oh no. Soon she found out that the fiery-haired girl she had almost made friends with was a lie. That she was in truth a cunning male cursed to turn into a girl with a splash of cold water. And worse: he was her fiancé. In other words, she was designated fair game for him.
Her father betrayed her, just like that, sacrificing her to the beast for the sake of 'uniting the schools'. The sisters... Those she could understand. After all, who should stay in the line of fire if not her, the martial artist of the three?
Many things transpired after that. She came to terms with Ranma being around, almost befriending him. On the surface he was a decent person, if obnoxious. But she never forgot his true nature, lurking in the dark depths, waiting just for the right moment to overcome him. He was a weremale, a person with a rapist locked inside.
And he was hopelessly better than her.
Akané felt herself living in a house with a pet man-eating tiger. There were no safe places for her anymore. The fear built up bit by bit, boiling away with anger, pouring out with the brutal beatings the cement blocks received from her in the doujo. Yes, during the day she ruled, beating the beast again and again, subduing it, proving to herself that she was the one in control, that the beast was tamed.
But the night... The night was the time of predators and were-creatures. She got an iron-clad proof one night. Waking up to find the... male-thing lying on top of her, already turned. Already ravenous. She felt his carnivorous heat even through the blanket separating them.
The horrifying situation was discharged via brutal beating of the intruder with a bamboo sword. She barely heard his attempts to explain, seeing red in her fear-induced brutal rage. He was probably saying something about P-chan... note 2
(シーンブレイク)
"Hey, why are you laughing?" Sol asked her in confusion.
"Nevermind. I just remembered how we first met," Iris replied waving her concerns away. "Just to think of it, for how long I was afraid to be left alone with you!"
Sol just blinked at first in confusion. Then she got it and frowned, offended. But the laugh of Iris was too contagious, and soon both were laughing out loud. The irony here was truly epic.
"We lost so much time," Iris drawled looking into the bottomless sky.
"Not a big deal, we now have all the time in the world," Sol said, smirking arrogantly. "Kinda destiny and stuff."
"Watch it," Iris warned her. "You won't even notice as it gets into your head, you'll get careless and get yourself killed stupidly. I will..." she stuttered, "hurt then."
They had had a couple episodes where Sol missed her death by a hair's breadth by using her forbidden ultimate technique. Iris didn't want a repeat of that.
"Don't worry," Sol tried to divert the incoming blues. "You'll just ask Pluto to rewind time, and..." She stopped short seeing her words having a reverse effect.
"I don't trust her," Iris said darkly. "Keeping us in the dark, withholding important things from us..."
(シーンブレイク)
They performed a miracle. They struck Sailor Galaxia down. And the victory tasted like ashes. Sunshine emerged through the dissipating darkness, its radiance shining upon Eternal Sailor Moon... shining upon the ruins stretching up to the horizon, the crushed remains of what only this morning had been the capital of Japan. The decorative pseudo-angelic wings on Usagi's suit looked like a mockery, her face full of deep, unquenchable sadness.
There were no bodies on the streets. People whose Star Seed is torn out just vanish into the thin air as they cease to be. Those few who were especially unlucky, whose destruction was stopped in the last moment, they turned into monstrous mockeries of themselves, into phages whose Star Seed had returned, blackened by the brief exposure to the real world, corrupted by its own impurity.
The insane phages roamed the devastated land destroying each other. Hunting the rare human survivors. Thousands of phages across Japan. Millions across the world. And only Usagi was able to turn them back into people, by using all her strength. One at a time. Maybe a dozen or two in a day.
The darkness was gone and the sun shining on the planet that became one immense graveyard. Humankind was entering a new era and its future had never been this bleak during all its history.
Iris sat curled up from the pain in her heart, clutching at Sol like a life-line. She didn't even have the strength to cry. Everyone was silent, crushed by the magnitude of the disaster. In the dead silence they could hear from afar the yelling of phages full of insane merriment.
That's why, when Sailor Pluto appeared suddenly from hell knows where like a jack-in-the-box — Pluto, who had hung in parts unknown all this time — and proclaimed, with that insufferable condescendence of hers, that she would sacrifice her life to make everything right... Iris didn't feel any gratitude towards her. Iris saw red, she wanted to grab the woman by her collar and ask why she hadn't intervened before!
She did just that when they stood amidst the intact Tokyo, and everything was again right in the world, and her sisters were alive, and Ranma's mom was alive. To her outrage, Setsuna replied that she had no idea what had just happened and vanished saying that she had to check the records of the Space-time Door!
Akané's resentment towards her just grew from that.
(シーンブレイク)
Ami walked a crowded Juuban street recalling her recent talk with Pluto. Of the whole team, only she was able to somewhat understand, or at least imagine, the complexity of the matters the lone Senshi had to deal with.
The multi-dimensional force fields, the mind-numbingly complex dependency graphs. The system so complex that a human brain could grasp only a tiny part of it at a time, leading to the dangerous temptation of building and operating a simplified model. The need of complex transformations beyond a mere mortals' ability — just to get a representation suitable for the human senses. Despite having some understanding of the dimensional physics, having built a working portal by scientifically enhanced trial and error herself, the time was still beyond her grasp. She even doubted if Pluto herself had a full understanding of it.
There was one more thing only Ami could fully comprehend and feel sympathetic for. Not so long ago, Setsuna had made a very tough choice. The right one, but still weighing heavily on her.
For thousands of years Pluto stood a lone sentinel beside the Door. Staying beyond the time flow, she was able to look into the future, to change the past. Separated from the world, she had a great freedom of action, her own thread of fate not being woven into the fabric of time. But could a human being withstand such a burden of loneliness? Could one who withstood it remain human?
Pluto had made her choice, joining the battle, joining the goings of the world. Making herself a part of it. The Senshi gained a mighty comrade in arms. Pluto gained something priceless: her friends, her family.
And lost nine tenths of her abilities.
Woven into the fabric of time, she could no more look into the future freely. Knowing too much became an impermissible luxury for her; it could create a paradox and destroy everything she held dear.
Giving the team her power of a Senshi, Setsuna deprived the team of an ally able to shuffle their very fate.
But maybe this was for the better?
"I fear to imagine that somebody could be foolish enough to meddle with Time just for their convenience", Setsuna told her. "Any manipulation comes with a price — a price usually much heavier than any gain one gets."
Ami expressed her surprise. There were two times when Pluto had acted completely contrary to these words, first allowing the Senshi to travel into the future, second rewinding the time itself back. It was the mysterious Senshi of the Underworld, after all, who saved the majority of the Earth population all but exterminated by Galaxia. And after having done that she said these things?
"I'm but a human," Setsuna replied with a sad smile. "I cannot always act as the cold logic dictates. When a mortal danger threatens everything dear to me, I'm unable to think of possible consequences or the price to pay afterward... The very fact that I continue to exist is a miracle. I'm glad but... also scared. Because it means someone has yet to pay for what I have done."
(シーンブレイク)
Ami started, awoken from her reminiscences. What was that, someone screaming nearby? Horrified people running in other direction triggered a conditioned response. Dodging into a narrow side alley she transformed and opened up her computer to begin scanning right from the cover. Looking at the data she frowned: there was only random static. Was it some sort of jamming, or...? Mercury hastily sneaked to the alley exit, carefully peeking outside. What she saw made her jerk back and flatten herself against the wall, her heart slamming against her chest.
A shaky finger pressed the emergency all-call button on the communicator. "Mercury here." she said with a strange aloofness, noticing a tinge of panic in her voice. "I need support now! I'm right in the center of the shopping district, there's a kaiju-class snail attacking! I repeat: a giant monster, I'm unable to scan it! It already got hostages! I'm coming out! Mercury out!"
(シーンブレイク)
September 27, 2009. 40percent rewritten March 17, 2012. Finally re-translated April 01, 2012. Retconned in half January 30, 2016. 20percent Rewritten again March 7, 2016.
Comments:
1
A canonic fact: Akané managed to see as Shampoo strikes her from behind. Moreover, the brainwashing took fifty-six seconds — I checked it by both the Japanese original of the manga and the VIZ translation — not "five or six" as some ham-handedly made anime subs say.
Meaning Shampoo knocked Akané out first, then performed brainwashing on her unconscious body. Otherwise Akané would at least try to resist during that almost a minute.
2
However important for understanding Akané's character, the signs — rare but undeniable — that she was afraid Ranma would rape her, these were mercilessly censored out of the anime. Remember that story with hypnotic mushrooms? Where Akané sits watching some musical playing the thematic "yapp-pa-pa", then she sneezes and Ranma !glomps! her? Well in the manga she was watching a late-night movie nervously annihilating cookies as on the screen, a guy started tearing clothes off a hapless girl. And right then Ranma glomped her. While they were all alone in the house. Just imagine how bad a scare it should have been for her, worse than a werewolf suddenly jumping off the screen into your room!
Thanks for C&C to:
— OSMQEP
— Hraefn - huge thanks for an in-depth constructive critic
— Climhazard
— Н. Кута
— Kinematics
— LawOhki
— Orphus users (139 bugs so far)