Please Answer: A Ranma 1/2 and Night Wizard fanfic
By: Kami Kat
Well, another present fic for the wonderful God of Dead Fandoms, Lunaludus Scribex! This year for Christmas he asked for quite the doozy, but hopefully this delivers.
His exact phrasing when I asked him what he wanted for a fic for Christmas was:
OK, here's an idea for a crackfic that might be amusing.
"Ranma-kun? Please answer the following question 'Hai' or 'Yes.'"
And given that I haven't watched Night Wizard recently (or that I really didn't completely follow it when I saw it), you can see why this may not be the greatest work I've ever done. But it definitely is "crack."
Disclaimer: I own the entire Ranma 1/2 manga series, available now from Viz!… and that's about it. I don't think that really qualifies as owning much, especially not any of the original ideas that became Ranma 1/2 or Night Wizard, now does it? =P
Nerima was a place that defied the norm. This wasn't so much an opinion as a reality that its residents lived with every day. Especially those attending Furinkan High.
It used to be somewhat normal. If asked, the local high school students could recall days of complete and boring normalcy. They would also tell anyone who listened, and didn't already know, that this all changed with the introduction of one Ranma Saotome.
They would be partially correct.
Hard though it was for the students to remember, Akane Tendo and Tatewaki Kuno were not exactly students. Kuno's lunatic family issues aside, he was a brilliant practitioner of kendo and very strong. Akane, a martial arts enthusiast with an extreme hatred of boys, could break bricks with her bare hands.
Definitely not the greatest examples of normal high school students. But not quite so blatant in their displays of the abnormal as the Saotomes that came later.
Ranma Saotome, a boy capable of turning into a perky girl with a shower of cold water. Genma Saotome, an old man with the parental skills of a rock (actually, a rock might have been a better parent) who turned into a panda with cold water.
And after those two showed up, the crazy characters kept coming, most with some form of a water-based curse.
A location-challenged boy capable of pulverizing steel with his bare hands who turned into a pig.
A Chinese girl seeking revenge--and then love--who turned into a cat.
A Chinese boy with eyesight worse than a mole who turned into a duck.
Even a ruthless Chinese boy who turned into something that might be capable of making H.R. Giger wince.
And that was just the beginning.
No, normalcy was not associated with Nerima any more.
So the extravagantly powerful demons trying to take over the Earth by preying on humans really shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone in Nerima.
But, shockingly, no one really expected it. Least of all those directly involved.
It actually started with what was fast becoming a regular occurrence.
Akane Tendo was missing. From her room. And she had definitely entered it last night to sleep.
This led her father, Soun Tendo, to start wailing and running around the house, being of help to no one. He was promptly ignored.
Ranma had quickly plucked the somewhat-distressed black piglet from Akane's room and headed towards the bathroom.
"So, what happened Ryoga?" Ranma asked. Ryoga shook his head to clear the hot water from his eyes.
"She was there last night, Ranma," replied Ryoga, who was also growing used to this. He could easily understand why every man that met the irresistible Akane would try to kidnap her. It was just fortunate for her that she had Ryoga around to rescue her.
And Ranma sometimes helped, too. A little.
Ranma frowned. "You didn't see anything?"
"Akane rolled over onto me and I blacked out sometime around midnight," Ryoga admitted, casting his eyes everywhere but at Ranma. "She does that a lot."
Ranma rolled his eyes and left the naked boy in the tub as he raced outside, intent on finding clues to Akane's kidnapper (they always left clues of some sort).
Ryoga yelled at Ranma to wait up, tried to race after him and promptly screamed and ran for his backpack when Nabiki walked out of her room, a vicious smile on her face and a continuously clicking camera aimed at Ryoga in her hands.
(Granted, the market for photos of naked boys wasn't the greatest in Nerima--the naked girl pics sold extremely well, thankyouverymuch--but the middle Tendo girl liked to have as much blackmail/profitable material on everyone as possible.)
Ryoga somehow ended up outside rather than in Akane's room--where his backpack was, a mere five feet from Nabiki's room--and fell in the koi pond, triggering his curse. He then tried to get back to the tub of hot water and, a few hours later, was wandering around Fukuoka.
At any rate, Ranma was busy checking the roof, the house, and the yard for evidence of an escaping entity.
And luckily for him, it had rained last night, so the giant bird footprints were very clear. Also clear was the direction the owner took away from the Tendo residence.
Thus, Ranma proceeded to follow the footprints.
He should have known something was wrong when, in a shocking display of normalcy, nothing bothered or impeded him as he raced from rooftop to rooftop. No flying ribbons or random bricks or enthusiastic fiancés or attacking rivals vehemently trying to best him.
The red moon in the sky was also a major clue that all was not usual. But Ranma was more concerned with looking down at the trail of muddy footprints and wondering what the heck Akane had gotten herself into this time.
The trail stopped in the middle of one of Nerima's many construction sites. (Thanks to the overwhelming number of insanely powerful martial artists that didn't give a damn about the surrounding area during their battles, the construction business was very lucrative in Nerima.)
Ranma walked into the middle of the area. "Akane?" No answer. "Yo, whoever you are, I know you're here and you took Akane!" Still nothing. "Show yourself!"
The area was calm enough that the sound of scales against concrete seemed to echo with startling clarity somewhere to Ranma's left. His instincts--which he trusted more than anything else in his life--warned him half a second before a massive tail slammed down where he had been standing. As he landed on one of the steel beams of the unfinished building, he got his first look at his opponent.
Ranma had faced some freaky stuff in his short life. Dragons, beast-men, martial artists of various styles, but nothing had really prepared him for this. The thing appeared to be a gross combination of a bug, a dinosaur, and a rooster with several gems on its body and a distinct lack of eyes. The gems glowed a ghastly green as the thing moved its pincers and hissed at him.
He recovered from his shock within a second. "Where's Akane?" Ranma demanded.
The thing did not answer and instead screeched at him. Ranma leapt off the steel frame as streams of sticky fluid hit where he'd been moments before. The thing's head turned and tracked the young pigtailed boy, the stream continuously flowing from the space between its mandibles.
Ranma managed to bounce from random objects, dodging the stringy phlegm, until he got close enough to strike its midsection. He fist flashed out, his intent to pummel the thing in the same spot a few hundred times so the carapace would collapse.
After the first punch, he dashed out of reach.
His arm hurt! Not the normal pain his training might yield, but a stinging pain that managed to make his eyes misty and his whole body seize up. Ranma wondered if he'd somehow gotten shocked or poisoned from touching the thing.
Maybe both.
With a nasty growl, the thing suddenly turned away from the pigtailed boy and leapt up to the unfinished rafters of the steel frame. It grabbed at something white and cocoon-shaped, then jumped and--
Was gone.
Ranma blinked, wondering if his teary eyes had played a trick on him. But it was impossible to lose something that big while it was in mid-air!
Right?
His eyes widened as he realized that the cocoon might have--and with his luck, probably--contained Akane.
Despite the pain and his obvious disadvantage against the creature, Ranma screamed, "Come back here with Akane, you bastard!"
Silence. Ranma let loose a wordless scream of frustration and straightened his body, pushing the pain into the back of his mind. He prepared to run after it… somehow.
"Oh, dear, you seem to be at a loss."
Ranma tripped over his own feet from trying to halt his jump and turn around at the same time. But nothing was there, despite that the voice had been behind him. What was going on?
"Please hold still while we transport you."
Red filled the martial artist's vision, then…
Well, between the thing that he had fought, the way the fight had gone, and his current location, Ranma had to conclude that appearing in a European ballroom was the strangest thing so far. And the little girl dressed like a Victorian princess wasn't helping him figure anything out.
"Please sit, Ranma-san, and have some tea," the girl said. Ranma just stood there, blinking.
"It's quite good," the girl continued, sipping delicately and with a smile on her face that sent shivers racing up and down Ranma's spine. He'd seen that sort of conniving smile on too many women, women who had later tried to do things to mess up his life.
Something wasn't right. Many things weren't right. And Ranma needed to find and rescue Akane.
"Sorry, girly, but I've got no time for tea." Ranma glanced around, half-expecting to see the creature from before. "I've gotta go looking for a tomboy."
"Akane is fine for the moment," the girl replied calmly. "The Emulator that kidnapped her hasn't harmed her yet. In fact, they probably want her alive for the ceremony."
"You know where she is?" Ranma stomped over to the table the girl sat at. "Tell me, where is she?"
"You must sit first, Ranma-san."
Ranma growled, but sat down on one of the ridiculously fragile-looking chairs. He waited, but the girl merely continued sipping her tea.
"Are you gonna tell me anything or not?" Ranma finally demanded, angry and more than a little worried about Akane, though he'd never admit it.
"Very well, since Ranma-san is so impatient." She placed the teacup delicately on a saucer and turned her full attention to the pigtailed boy. "My name is Anzelotte, and it is my duty to protect this world from being conquered by the Emulators. You saw a fairly low-level one not too long ago."
Anzelotte smiled at Ranma, who suddenly felt his stomach drop. Low-level? Shit!
"The Emulators cannot be harmed by traditional means, as you witnessed. Only wizards possess the power and tools necessary to take them on. Quite fortunately, you possess the qualities of a wizard and would be able to access your artifact with just the basic tips on how to do so." Anzelotte's smile widened. "Becoming a wizard is the only way to save the girl."
"Just tell me what to do!" Ranma demanded. Every second wasted grated at his small supply of patience.
"Very well, then!" Anzelotte chirped, incredibly pleased. "We will recruit you as a Night Wizard and instruct you what to do. Pay attention, Ranma-kun…"
Ranma had to admit, compared to learning the Nekoken, or the Hiryu Shoten Ha, or even the more mundane Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken, bringing forth his artifact had been easier than breathing.
The steel-like gloves covering his hands had a blue sheen and made him feel like he could punch anything.
The insect Emulator had been nothing. One punch had smashed its body like a Ming vase and with its demise, the cocoon melted away, revealing a sleeping Akane inside.
Ranma breathed a sigh of relief as he picked up his fiancé. The red and black landscape faded into the Nerima construction site, just as Anzelotte had promised it would. He still didn't fully understand why Akane was specifically necessary for the ritual the Emulators were trying to perform, but whatever. He didn't need to know that to save her.
What surprised him the most was that almost no time had passed. He returned Akane to the Tendo residence an hour after they had discovered her disappearance, and the day proceeded quite normally from there.
Or at least normal for a Nerima with Ranma in it.
It was later that night that Ranma realized he might have gotten in over his head.
He was out back, practicing a few kata before bedtime, when an unexpected voice sounded from behind him.
"Ranma-kun? Please answer the following question 'Hai' or 'Yes.'"
Ranma ground his teeth as the red filled his vision and wondered if the whole Akane-kidnapping wasn't just a plot to make his life even more messed up than before.