I don't own any of the characters mentioned here.

tTtTt

"RANMA YOU JERK!"

*WHAM!*

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*sigh*

The sound was largely lost to the winds as an annoyed, still wet, and female Ranma whistled through the air like a human bullet.

"This has GOT to end. I can't keep having to take half my day to make my way back just because she misunderstands… well, EVERYTHING. This ends today." Ranma related to the wind. The wind said nothing back, but it was therapeutic for Ranma to voice her troubles regardless.

Shortly after coming to this decision, Ranma noticed gravity was finally taking hold of her again. 'Now where did she send me this time…' Ranma wondered. She righted herself from her relaxed position, readying herself to touch down.

Unfortunately, a building happened to be right in the way.

*WHAM!*

eEeEe

Ranma blinked. She was staring up at the sky, surrounded on all sides by enormous buildings.

"Wha?..." Ranma stood up, trying to recall what had just happened. She was lying in the middle of the street, surrounded by a sea of people. Akane had hit her, and then...

"Right, I smashed into a skyscraper." Ranma shrugged, not particularly bothered by this. She'd had worse from Ryouga and Pops. Smashing into things at high velocity was still better than things going AT high velocity being smashed into you, like someone else's foot, fist, or ridiculously thick skull.

Ranma was wondering how she'd ended up on the ground though, considering she'd hit the building near the top. How'd that happen? Had someone carried her down?

Whatever, there was no real point dwelling on that when she was already down here. It wasn't really a pressing concern. All that was left to do was figure out where she was, get some hot water, and get started on heading back to the chaos that was Nerima.

Ranma stood up and stretched, talking to herself while she did so. "Guess I'll just ask a random person where- huh?"

Her train of thought was interrupted due to having stepped on something hard. Lifting her foot and looking down, Ranma realized she had stepped on what appeared to be a black pin with an odd, pointed symbol on it. She picked it up to examine it- the white symbol resembled some sort of sharply pointed cross, with added wing like embellishments to its top and bottom.

"Huh… cool design." Ranma pocketed it, figuring it would make a nice keepsake when she got back from… wherever this was. Getting back to her original task, Ranma picked out a random girl from the multitude passing by, and walked over to ask where she was and the location of the nearest train.

"Hey, excuse me, but could you- hey!" Ranma squawked as the girl kept walking, having totally ignored her. Granted, she was on what looked like one of those annoying cell phones (though it looked like a miniature model), and the street was pretty loud, but Ranma had been right next to the girl. She'd had to have been deliberately ignoring Ranma to not hear her. Ranma bristled. 'You meet more and more jerks every day I guess…'

Trying again, this time Ranma picked a girl that was not on a phone. Walking over, she asked the girl "Excuse me, I'm a bit lost. What city is this?"

Ranma cringed, hoping she didn't sound too much like Ryouga right now. She'd had to do this far too often for her liking, and frankly she was starting to wonder if the lost boy had cursed her to carry a similar moniker whenever Akane got mad.

It turned out not to matter, as this girl appeared to be ignoring Ranma as well, and was walking away. Now Ranma was rather angry. Pouring on a little speed, she caught up rather quickly with the departing girl. "Hey! Girl! I'm talking to- huh?"

Ranma had just tried to get the girl's attention by putting a hand on her shoulder.

Except that her hand had passed right through the girl.

"What the-" Ranma experimentally poked her hand through the girl's back. And again. And again. Until, had Ranma been able to actually touch the girl, she would have had a couple hundred holes punched in her lower back.

Ranma stepped back from the young woman, who wandered off, still oblivious to the apparently intangible and unhearable girl. This was a new one. A sudden complete inability to be noticed by anyone else? Ranma's mind rapidly sorted through possibilities. Curse? Probably not. She was fairly sure she hadn't done anything that would cause something like that this time, so that was out, or at least unlikely. Spell? Possible. If it was one it was more likely than not a result of Kuno or Mousse screwing around again. Kuno seemed to have a talent for happening upon idiotic magical items, and Mousse had access to tons of Amazon magic right in the building he lived in. But Kuno almost certainly would have done the same thing he'd done with the wishing sword, and loudly proclaimed his ownership of such before actually doing anything, and Mousse usually at least waited until he thought Ranma had offended Shampoo to do anything, and Ranma hadn't even seen recently. Maybe Cologne? Was the wrinkled old prune going to show up and demand Ranma marry Shampoo to get rid of whatever this was? It didn't seem like her style; she was usually fairly passive...

Thoroughly weirded out, Ranma decided to forget this for now. It was time to find a map; she could figure this mystery out after she figured out where she was.

Testing just how untouchable and invisible she was, Ranma passed right through entire hordes of people without even slowing down. She couldn't really see while passing through, but she was perfectly unharmed coming out the other end. Bizarre, but she wasn't going to learn anything from just doing that repeatedly.

After a minute or two of this, Ranma noticed something odd- nothing hurt. She seemed to have taken absolutely no damage from impacting the building. Normally she'd just put that up to her conditioning, but from the height she had fallen Ranma was almost certain she would have taken SOME damage. She sighed. 'Odd… great, another mystery to figure out.'

Suddenly, Ranma heard panicked screams off to her left, her head whipping around at the sound. "What the- great, something else to deal with." The redhead ran towards the sound, arriving at the source in only a few seconds. A young, green haired guy (Green? Yeesh, what had that kid put in his hair?), probably a few years younger than her, was scrambling and cowering at the base of a statue of a dog, evidently being attacked by a couple of… frogs? What was so scary about frogs? Said frogs were admittedly rather large, and had very odd, tattoo like legs, but still…

Regardless, the guy was screaming his head off, apparently scared beyond measure by the odd-looking amphibians. The frogs leaped at him, and the teen scrambled out of the way like the frogs were on fire. The boy was holding what looked like some sort of small circular object in front of himself and wildly gesturing with it, but it didn't seem to be doing anything. Recognizing that he needed help, despite how unnecessary it seemed (and how WEIRD it felt to have to rescue a guy), Ranma ran over to help him out.

As she approached, an odd feeling swept over Ranma, as if she had just dived into water but somehow remained dry. However, the desperately flailing kid was taking up most of her attention right now, so she pushed the oddity to the side and skidded to a halt in front of the screaming teen, placing herself between him and the pair of giant frogs. The boy looked surprised to see her, cutting off his cries of terror.

Both amphibians leaped toward Ranma at the same time, apparently uncaring of the fact that the new girl seemed to be far less easy prey than the boy they had been attacking before. Ranma caught the one that had leaped at her face while simultaneously kicking the other one straight at the side of a nearby building. The frog she had kicked vanished in a burst of what appeared to be static the second it hit the wall's surface.

Ranma gave the frog in her hand a quick glance. Aside from its appearance nothing seemed off about them. Judging from her hand they weren't poisonous, so why was this kid so scared of them?

"Well, you don't seem so- OWWW!" The frog had blown a stream of bubbles at her head that, despite all evidence existing of bubbles NOT being sufficiently solid enough to hurt anything, had each hurt like a hard slap to the face. "HEY! Why you little-" Ranma threw the frog straight up into the air, intending to destroy the thing with a burst of ki.

"MOKO TAKABISHA!"

Nothing happened.

Ranma's eyes grew to the size of saucers. She quickly brought her gaze down and stared at her hand like she had never seen it before. What was going on? Why couldn't she channel her ki? Why-

Her thought were deterred by the sound of a frog smashing into pavement. The moment it hit the ground, the frog disappeared, leaving behind another shred of static, which also disappeared a moment later.

Calming herself, Ranma decided that she would most definitely NOT panic. This was the third or fourth mystery in ten minutes and Ranma would be damned if she didn't figure out this one at the very least.

Closing her eyes, Ranma felt deep down... and found nothing. She was completely bereft of life energy. It was as if nothing had ever been there in the first place.

How...?

Coming back to full awareness, Ranma noticed that the boy she had saved was speaking excitedly with a girl with short purple hair, who had seemingly shown up from somewhere while Ranma had been searching for her ki. Both were looking at her wide eyed, and seconds later started to approach her. Ranma couldn't focus on what the two of them were saying, her mind trying but failing to remain calm in the loss of the one thing she knew better than almost anyone. She had to figure this out. Why would her ki suddenly have just vanished? Could it be part of whatever this no one touches-no one sees thing? But how could anything just drain all of her ki? Even the moxibustion point had left SOMETHING, and it should have been constantly being produced...

She needed to sit down and figure this out somewhere less crowded, the noise of the crowds was making it impossible to think. Mumbling a half-hearted "You're welcome" to the pair, not having heard them at all but whom she was pretty sure had just thanked her repeatedly, Ranma turned to leave… and stopped.

Wait a moment.

These two could see her.

They could see her, when evidently no one else could. So it stood to reason that they might have some clue what was going on. It was certainly worth a shot, and Ranma had nothing to lose by trying...

The duo of girl and boy had apparently sat back down at the base of the statue and started checking their rather tiny phones due to the lack of response from the redhead. Ranma started to walk over again, grimacing. 'Am I the ONLY person who doesn't own one of these things? I don't think many people in Nerima have them, so why are they so popular here?'

As she walked over, she froze momentarily.

A possible explanation had just occurred. It was a horrible thought, but it seemed to fit all too well her current situation. The mysteries currently plaguing her made all too much sense if...

A grim expression slowly settled across Ranma's face. It didn't explain everything, and it was definitely unpleasant, but it made too much sense not to consider the possibility. If she had no ki, wasn't producing any more, and was still walking around, plus the fact that no one could see or touch her, as well as the apparent lack of damage from hitting the ground...

"Hey…"

The couple looked up to stare at the girl who had saved them from the frogs.

"I'm Ranma Saotome… are we dead?"

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AN: Revision three- changed to fit better with how Noise battles work. If something still seems off, trust me, all will be explained later. Also, most definitively NOT an Akane bashing story. I can't explain at this point, but trust me, it's not.