This is a story that is totally off the wall. I got the idea for this story while I was watching the Ranma ½ Anime series. I had read a series of books by Eric Van Lustbader starting with the book "Ninja" and I had an interesting idea for a crossover. Please keep in mind while you are reading this fanfic that it is mainly basing the character for Ranma on the Anime series only and taking some from the series of books. This will also incorporate some general assumptions given in several other fanfics on this site.
Please also do not assume that this fanfic will follow the events in the Anime or the manga, it is actually based about twenty years in the future, from the end of the manga or Anime that is.
One other note, I am not too well versed in using the traditional anime terms so please feel free to write me reviews and giving suggestions, I would welcome the criticism, but please no flames or spiteful reviews. Be nice but critical. This is my first time writing one of these fanfics and I am not very sure how it will go.
Disclaimer- I did not make up these characters, because I would probably not be writing this fanfic if I had, I would most likely be driving around in a Trans Am and living in a mansion purchased from the astronomical proceeds of the idea.
Ranma the Ninja Warrior
Prologue
A darkly clothed ninja sneaks over the wall of the Tendo Dojo. It is pitch black and the perfect night for revenge. There are no lights to spoil the dark contours of the back yard, and the koi pond is as smooth as glass. The stars glare with a wilting light, but the figure in black takes no notice.
"Ranma, you had your way with my life once too often!" a deep voice growls. "Even though I thought you were my best friend, why did you have to do that to me!?" continues the black clad figure, in a tone barely above a thought, "A ronin, and all because of your damn pervertedness!!"
The figure has reached the back door of the dojo, and instead of crashing through it as a normal anime Burgler would, he slowly picks the lock and slides the door open, softly now, in order to have none of the Masters of the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts wake up.
The figure goes first to Akane's room, puts a cloth over her mouth, and then throws the limp girl over his shoulder. Then, silently, the figure sneaks back over the wall and away from the Dojo, never looking back at the place where the people who tortured him are sleeping.
He takes the limp girl and runs across the rooftops until he gets to the other side of Tokyo. Then starting a long trek, he gets to his hideaway, well before midnight.
"Well, that's one part of the bait!" and with that and an evil cackle he starts running at full speed, back towards the city leaving a helpless Akane tied and gagged in such a way that there is no way she could get loose, even though she is totally knocked out from the hellish sleeping potion the ninja had given her.
A trail of dust winds its way from the hideout to the edges of the city. Then begins the trail of rooftops. It ends at a somewhat familiar house. It is the Saotome residence.
The only person who has lived in it has done many things over the years. She has mainly been worried about finding Ranma, her son. Now in these last two years since he saved her and did it in spite of the seppuku pledge on his life, becoming a man among men in her own eyes, she has slept deeper and more relaxed. She knows that she will have a son she can trust, unlike that idiot she married. She has followed her nightly ritual, practicing some katas and her daily kendo routine before collapsing into bed, it had been a rough week, what with all that fuss over Ranma turning 18 and being named as the head of the household only three days ago, and the wedding scheduled to take place on Monday, only two days from now. The hectic life after years of doing nothing but searching has taken its toll on Nodoka Saotome. After passing over the clan sword to her daughter she gave him strict instructions on its use. She finally believed that she had gotten over her disappointment in the curse, after all it was useful in at least one aspect, the demon hunting clan could go about their work, with their first male heir, from a hidden matriarchal society the first man would do the work of a woman, and protect Japan from the demons, that seemed to be dying off, now that she had been using the sword. She now had to practice with her own sword, the one her mother had given her long years ago when she first became a demon hunter by killing a minor demon lord with her bare hands. An amazing feat but paling in the light of Ranma's spectacular defeat of one of the highest ranking demons at the tender age of seventeen and a few months. Just giving the magic sword, it was losing its magic, like all cursed or blessed people seemed to do, was a great relief, she no longer had to shoulder the burden, albeit not a great one since the last demon had been killed off in that one great battle about a 6 months ago, where she and Ranma had fought side by side while Genma, that worthless lout, and Soun stayed safely hidden beneath that precious rock of theirs. That was the last time she had ever thought of the curse being a curse, instead she had changed sides of the coin and now called it a blessing.
Eventually her train of thought runs out as she lies on the bed. She lies there looking at the ceiling and watching the stars out the window, and then she starts to notice that there is a strange smell on the air. She sniffs and starts to get up, but is totally unable to as she flops, paralyzed, back onto the bed. She tries to stay awake and actually succeeds at doing that. But she soon learns that it would have been better to be asleep.
The nightcrawler softly makes his way across the yard and comes up to the bedroom window on Nodoka's house. He can barely hold back the evil laughter he feels rising to the surface when he silently cuts a hole in the wall and lets in the gas. He waits the correct amount of time and then quickly pulls the window out, darts around to the other window and does the same thing to it. He then backs off until the gas clears. He then goes in and slings the terrified Nodoka over his shoulder. He knows that his plan is working perfectly, too perfectly.
As he swiftly runs over the roofs of Tokyo he realizes his mistake, he forgot to leave the correct notes in the correct places, but he is already too far committed to worry about that, he will simply stash Nodoka in his secondary hideout somewhere on the other side of town and then continue back and fix the notes. So, he leaves her tied up and comes back to switch the notes.
Ramna is just waking up. He looks around the screen to where Akane has been staying the nights for the past six months and finds her gone, her bed rumpled and a note on her pillow.
'That's odd' Ranma thinks, 'she usually doesn't leave a note when she goes out on her morning run.'
He goes over to find out what the note says
I have your Mother!
Unless you bring yourself and yield your life you forfeit the life of your Mother,
Ranma, and don't think I am joking, this is for real!!
BwaHaHaHaHaHa
That brought some clear thinking into Ranma's head 'Why would Akane leave such a note, that is quite odd?' '!!!' "What was that?" Ranma wonders aloud, as he hears a noise against the window. As he turns to look he sees a ninja sitting there. Ranma doesn't think, he just attacks, through the glass and everything else in the way, he leaps for the ninja, thinking that it is Akane and that she wants to have a fight and prove how good she is, but as Ranma grabs the figure it starts to fight back, in a style that Ranma has never seen before, it is the use of pressure points on the hands to force the body to obey, and it is very useful on an aggressive enemy with bare fists. Ranma is knocked down and hits the pool, splashing up a gigantic waterspout and comes out looking not just slightly peeved at being a girl again and almost boiling at the treatment she received from that ninja. She jumps out and starts following almost immediately.
She easily follows the tracks made by the ninja on the roofs. She can still see him in the distance but only barely can make out that he actually goes into an apartment building somewhere on the other side of downtown Tokyo.
Just as Ranma starts to really get warmed up and hit her stride, a roof caves in below her and plunges her straight into the girls side of a bath house. Underwater Ranma makes the change back to male and desparately tries to hold his breath to get to the other side of the house, under the wall separating him from the men's side of the pool. He doesn't quite make it and as he sticks his head up from the pool he starts to hear the screaming of "Pervert! Pervert!" "Get away you lecherous old man!" and then realizes that he had accidentally dropped in on one of Happosai's weekly bath house trips. He scrambles from the water and gets away as quickly as possible because he wants to catch the ninja. He manages to get going again but that fall and Happosai's lecherous behavior had cost him five minutes of time that, he was quite sure of this by now, he would live to regret.
Within the next five minutes he had made it to the apartment building and hopped in the window he had seen the ninja enter by. The sight curled his hair, curled his toes, and dropped him to his knees, screaming in grief. The sight that had greeted him as he entered the building was a horrific one. His mother was propped up against the wall, blood running out of various cuts, and with two limbs severed most of the way and the other two limbs, being hacked to bits and nowhere to be seen. She was still conscious though and she was moving her lips in a way that suggested she wanted to say some last words.
"What... did....I....do...to...des..erve...this?" Nodoka whispered weakly, her life draining out of her.
Ranma cradled her head in his arms and held his dear mother, the second person in the world that he really truly loved, as she died.
"Save.........Akane!" Nodoka gasps with her last breath. "Sa......"
Ranma is in shock as he sits there with the blood cooling and congealing on his clothes. He can hardly process this. 'Why is my mother here dead?' he asks himself, 'and what did she mean by "Save Akane"?' he wonders. 'Maybe he left some clues at my mom's house.'
Slowly the shock wears off enough for him to move. He is able to get up, and then takes off, at his top speed for Nodoka's house. He gets there, bloody and disheveled, and runs into the house. He goes to Nodoka's bedroom where he sees the broken windows and the same disarray as in his room. He looks on the pillow and finds a note reading
Ranma
You stole my honor, now you will pay
I have your love, so now will she die
If you want to save her you will have
to give yourself up to me to face a
punishment of death, which is
better than you gave me.
Meet me at the old quarry where
Cologne trained Ryoga. There you
shall learn the meaning of pain.
Ranma, totally griefstricken, heads straight for home to pack the supplies he will heed for his trip, not many since he is resigned to die for Akane. He is desperately in love with Akane. Ever since about a year and a half ago she started to understand him and he fell in love with her in a way that had been foreshadowed by the way the two acted during their sophomore year in high school. They had actually come to admire each other during that year of battle and heartache, and then it actually showed up during their junior year. It went so far that they were couple of the year in their senior yearbook. It was working out so perfectly now, and even despite their parents protests refused to marry until they were done with high school and were both 18. Ranma had been looking forward to living his life with Akane, a kind an loving girl, if ever there was one on earth there could have been no other for Ranma. This grief sped his feet. By noon he was almost there.
He started into the valley and stopped short when he heard Akane scream. That scream lent wings to his feet. He started to run, faster and faster. Just as he got there the ninja finished what appeared to be a hair treatment on Akane and turned to face Ranma.
"Stay right there Ranma," he said, "or else Akane dies right now."
Ranma started to move but came up short when he felt a tiny tap on a certain spot and just couldn't move. He tried to move, but he soon found that he was almost completely paralyzed, he just had enough balance that he stayed on his feet.
Just then, the ninja lets Akane go and tells her "This is one of those perverted boys you have been having so much trouble with every day, I think he needs a lesson in courtesy"
Ranma big sweats.
He looks at Akane and sees no recognition of him in her eyes. Then the ninja gloats as Akane slowly gets up.
"Hey Ranma, beaten up by your own fiancé, what irony, didn't this used to happen lots about two, three years ago?" He gloats even more "Ranma, she doesn't even remember the past three years right now, she will never remember them again because I will kill her in front of your eyes after she has beaten on you for a while."
"BwaHaHahahaHaHahahaHaHahaha, the evil laugh sounded.
Three days later, Nabiki, the now straight con girl, found Ranma, aimlessly wandering the streets of Tokyo. He had missed the wedding and so had Akane. She was incredibly glad to see Ranma and went up and tried to talk to him. Ranma would have nothing to do with her, which Nabiki noted, for their relationship at that time that was 'just kinda weird.' Ranma did not resist however when she slowly coaxed him to the Tendo Dojo and brought him inside. She got him to the main room of the house and let him almost collapse on the floor. Nabiki was still only slightly worried right now but she was letting it amp up another notch when Ranma asked to see everybody, and by everybody, he said that he meant Soun, Kasumi, Dr. Tofu, Genma, and even Happosai. Nabiki noticed something strange there, the tone of Ranma's voice was very depressed, never like the Ranma she knew, and then he hadn't asked for the old pervert Happosai, again very unRanmalike. So, not knowing what else to do, she went and got everybody.
Nabiki got everybody seated in front of Ranma and the story just started spilling out, in steel tones at first and then breaking into sobs of grief and something even deeper than grief. The story came out, and the whole family was sitting there in shock. Then Ranma shocked them all again.
"I'ill never practice the art again," he said simply, "it weren't enough to save the ones I loved most, why should I use such useless knowledge ever again? I vow that I'll never use my skills and will never have anything ta do with these schools again, I can't live with this, and the practice of such skills'll only make the loss greater. So I give up my claim to the Anything Goes School. I'll never practice the art again."
This is my first fanfic. Please let me know how you like it. If you don't understand where I am going, just wait until my first real chapter comes out!
Disclaimer: Again, restating what I said at the beginning of this piece, These characters and ideas are not mine. If they were, I would be rolling in dough at this very instant instead of writing this.