Clan Of The Dragon God

Ranma and Wheel Of Time Crossover by Zaknafein

Disclaimer: I don't own any of this

***-----***

Chapter 01

***-----***

Ranma ran his fingers over the intricate lines of the dragon tattoo, each scale perfectly smooth and unmarred even in the ridged areas of his upper torso and muscled neck. It seemed almost alive, a perfect representation.

"Farewell, Nerima," the martial artist whispered, his expression sorrowful, almost pitiful, as he stared at the Tendo Dojo.

"I cannot in good conscience stay here any longer, for I fear I would lose my very identity."

His sigh was one of sincere resignation. He had fought long and hard, and at great sacrifice, to get to this point. Yet Ranma had come to know it was a false victory. He wanted to deny it, to walk right back inside and go blindly on, hoping for the best.

Ranma sighed away the momentary weakness and turned to begin his journey, only to be confronted by the wizened grandmaster, Happosai.

Happosai stared up at Ranma for a long, silent while, until finally he seemed to reach some decision.

"I will not stay" Ranma reminded him.

The features of the grandmasters weathered face crinkled, for he knew that this would be their final meeting for the next few years. Even though he seldom let it show, he truly did consider Ranma as his heir. It was just that, until this point the boy had lacked maturity.

However, he had now demonstrated to his satisfaction that things had changed.

And so, as the aged man had always planned, Happosai reached into the recesses of his age worn gi, and drew forth a large, hide bound, book. Now Ranma was shocked, he knew the value of the book he drew forth, as it was what had brought him to this path. To say that Happosai was acting out of character would be a major understatement.

"You are sure," Ranma argued, not yet reaching out to obtain the tome. "I may not return, and it would be lost..."

"Take it," Happosai demanded sharply, "For all you have sacrificed to reach this point; there is no other that I consider worthy".

The master paused then, his gaze locking with Ranmas own cobalt orbs. "My Student."

Ranma eyed the leather bound volume for a long time. He had found it one afternoon a month previous, while searching Happosai's room. It contained a listing of every technique that the master had ever encountered, those he could use and those he could not.

"This should help you to fulfil your desire," Happosai said helpfully.

Still Ranma made no move. "I want you to have it," Happosai insisted, understanding the boy's hesitation and jerking it out toward Ranma. Finally accepting the wish of the aged figure, he held up his upraised hand, accepting the book. Conscious of the frailty of such an important tome, Ranma quickly stored it within his subspace pocket. Hidden weapons just one of his myriad of new skills.

Happosai, after a momentary pause, shrugged his shoulders, and brought out his pipe.

Ranma left without a word.

Many hours remained before dawn; Few people stirred in the Tendo Dojo, It seemed perfectly quiet, perfectly peaceful. The young mans hardened fingers traced the grain of a wooden door. He had no desire to disturb the person within, or should that be people, for as had been the case since the month after Ryoga arrived, there was the steady breathing of two people within.

Why she had insisted on the cruel charade he did not know, and finally he could put thoughts of the two unpleasant people contained within the room behind him.

With only a short pause at another door, that of his dearest friend, he left his home of the past year, perhaps forever.

***-----***

Ranma was a long way from Nerima when the sun came up.

He didn't sit and enjoy the dawn this day. When the initial glare had subsided, he looked out towards the north and west, to the distant spectre of Mt Fuji, and remembered….

The month following his confrontation with Herb had been rather trying for him, yet not unmanageable. He had become complacent in his time at the dojo, and ultimately, had forgotten what and who he truly was.

The martial arts were all about the never-ending search for self- improvement, and he had become content to remain at the same level. Sure, he may have learnt some new moves, but not one had been learnt for the pure sake of improvement. He had allowed the mentality of those around him to become his own, this was not a good thing.

Cologne and Happosai both had their own agenda's, and ultimately, learning techniques that they had mastered years before would be detrimental to his standing with them. If he ever wanted to gain their respect he would need to start on a training mission of his own, away from their sphere of influence.

Ranma had thought long and hard about this, and in the end the simple truth was that martial arts was number one in his life at the moment, and most likely always would be, just when he had lost track of that he did not know, but it was past time to do something about it.

This realisation had led to him finding Happosai's tome, and the event that had changed his life. The first thing it contained was an in depth description of ki, in all of its forms. And there was more than one; this was but the first of many such discoveries.

Emotional ki, the most common and widely known variant, required an emotional focus to access, its fatal flaw, as the more someone used this ki form, the more their emotional focus came to dominate their behaviour. Happosai, Genma, and Soun were prime examples of that little known fact. He had confronted Happy with this information, and the withered master told him that by the time he knew of the other forms, he had used emotional ki for far too long, and his behaviour was irrevocably changed.

Pure ki, the most user friendly, but also the most difficult to access, required a person to be absolutely centred. And the amount drawn would only grow with time and use.

Elemental ki, involved drawing in the ki from a single element, and when applied the ki took the form of that element.

Environmental ki, drawing in the ki from the environment. Normally both environmental and elemental ki could be drawn in only in the amount of pure ki you had, however that was where the second thing it detailed came into play.

It detailed a ki construct called a ki void, a very complex concept that used a large variety of different elements. It had two primary abilities, the ability to constantly draw in ki from the environment, the ability to provide ki for external use. Both of these things could be performed simultaneously, and to finalise the construct one had to focus the construct within themselves and it would morph into a physical object of some kind.

This brought his thoughts to Happosai's wooden pipe and Colognes staff. Both items that he knew should hold no real importance to either of the grandmasters, but oddly were very important to them, now he knew why. Curious as to what form his construct would take he painstakingly followed the instructions as had been laid out, forming it within the space between his two outstretched hands.

However, when he went to focus it within himself, he had felt an overwhelmingly painful sensation stretching from just above his abdomen, to just below his chin, this phenomenon was not supposed to happen, yet before he could do anything about it, he passed out.

Upon awakening, he immediately noticed something different, He had a huge tattoo of a dragon winding it's way around his body, the tail starting at the small of his back and the snout finishing at his neck, very strange. Looking around for his new void he could find no new object within the room, his attention once again on the tattoo, he reached out to it and tried to obtain the ki within, and just like that it came to him, within moments he had a ki- ball easily the size of a moko takabisha hovering within his outstretched hands.

Deciding to see if anything else had changed, he released the ki from the dragon, and attempted to summon his battle aura.

Nothing happened.....

Or for a moment it was seemingly so, upon closer inspection the tattoo had begun to move as if alive and he could access his ki as normal. This was very bizarre; he could no longer call forth a battle aura. Thinking on this he eventually came to the conclusion that it was actually an advantage, as an opponent could no longer tell if he was powering up or not.

Satisfied with this, he had replaced the book and left Happosai's room, hopefully he could hide his new knowledge from the others. He would spend the next month learning to access the other ki types on his own, by that time, if nothing had changed, he would leave.

A month passes…..

As arranged, he had gathered everyone at the dojo to tell them of this decision, and its ramifications on his life. From his perch upon the rooftop he had observed his guests, careful to keep unseen. When at last everyone had arrived he rose up from his crouch and quietly descended, coming to rest to rest before the koi pond.

Initiating the umisenken cloak, he made his way inside to get a feeling for the emotional state of those contained within. It seemed that Cologne could see through the thief cloak, interesting. She watched him make his way around the room, yet did not alert the others, so he did not make an issue of it. Satisfied that he could handle the reaction of this oftentimes-volatile group, he dropped the technique.

Instantly, he had everyone's full attention, so he began. "I am glad that you have all decided to come along as I had asked, as I have recently come to a decision on how I have been living my life. This was made after a lot of thought on my part, so do not think for a moment that anything you could say will change my mind. No, I have not decided who I will marry, I am still young and have no intention of marriage until I am at least 21, five years from now. I have decided that at this time in my life, martial arts are the most important thing to me, and over the time I have been here I have somehow lost track of that. To rectify this I have decided to go on a training mission consisting of one, myself. I will not return until this day four years hence. Should any of you find this unacceptable I only have this to say to you, I will no longer consider you engagement valid, as any woman I would even begin to think of marriage to would respect my decisions. Finally, to remain in contact with those of you who wish to I have opened an e-mail account, and will communicate through this method. Any Questions?"

There were, however ultimately he made them see that his decision was final, and gave them his email information even though he suspected that the only ones who would contact him would be Kasumi and Nabiki. And, that was that. . .

Shaking himself out of the memories, he set off once again, if he was to reach his destination by nightfall, there was no time to waste.

***-----***

Ranma picked his way south for many days, putting as much ground between himself and Nerima as he could. His trail eventually led him to a wide pass in the mountains and to a steep and rocky gorge filled by the mist of some roaring river far below. The air had been getting colder, and the moist vapour felt good to the boy. He picked his way down the rocky cliff, a journey that took him the better part of five hours, and found the bank of the cascading river.

Ranma had seen many rivers in his travels, but none to rival this. The Tamagawa leaped across stones, throwing spray high into the air. It swarmed around great boulders, did a white faced skip over fields of smaller stones, and dove suddenly into falls five times the boy's height. Ranma was enchanted by the sight and sound, but, more than that, he also saw the possibilities of the place as a sanctuary. Many culverts edged the river, still pools where water had deflected from the pull of the main stream. Here too, gathered the fish, resting from their struggles against the strong current.

The sight brought a grumble from Ranmas stomach.

He knelt down over one pool, his hands paused to strike. Suddenly, with a cry of "Katchuu-Tenshin-Amaguriken" Ranmas hand plunged down and came back up firmly grasping a foot long trout. Ranma tossed the fish away from the water, letting it bounce about on the stones, and soon had caught another. He would eat well this night, and he had enough clear and cold water to satisfy any thirst.

To Ranma, with the easy supply of food and water and the comfortable mist to battle the surprisingly chilly air, this gorge seemed the perfect retreat. He decided that for at least the next few months, this gorge would be his home. Acting on that decision, he set his tent up in one of the many shallow caves provided by the cliffs overhang, and then made himself a vast store of firewood from one of the numerous trees in the ravine.

His first few days in the retreat were completely consumed by him reading the entire booklet, thrice. When he was satisfied that he had committed its contents to memory, he then examined the time available to him, and what he wanted to accomplish.

His current ki level still remained low, if gathered in it's entirety to form a ball it was around the size of a softball. Emotional ki was out, after a week of cold turkey, he could now see that he too had fallen victim to the pitfalls of that element. Confidence, while a benefit in small portions, the overwhelming certainty of his superiority had just been pure foolishness. To face combat without even a trace of fear was just asking for defeat.

The amount of environmental and elemental ki that could be drawn in was limited to the amount of pure ki one had available. Hence, for the month following his arrival he worked exclusively on that aspect. The book said that building your reserves entailed time, and use. So he conceived of every possible basic use, and implemented those uses in stages, all the while drawing on the exercises contained within the book for guidance.

And so time passed….

Autumns warning blasts gave way quickly to the onslaught of winter. It hadn't taken Ranma long to figure out the significance of grey clouds, but when the storm broke this time, in the form of snow instead of rain, the boy knew that it was time to move on. His training had progressed very well over the last two months, his reserves increasing dramatically. Where once it was a struggle just to maintain a constant ball of ki within his hands, his battle reserves had now grown to rival those of Happosai.

Nevertheless, he had remained isolated for long enough, it was time to once again focus on the more physical aspect of the arts. To do this he had decided that he would become a dojo destroyer, it was a good way to work up a reputation, and also the simplest way for one to learn a lot of new styles, one simply changed the victory condition from taking the dojo's sign to teaching him their style.

This worked well for the boy, and he found that he would often stay on at each dojo long after he learnt the style at the behest of the sensei, particularly, to demonstrate his mastery of ki. It seemed that for most of Japan it was a lost art. This was a shock to the boy when he first heard it, as nearly every martial artist he had met while on his trip had some form of ki manipulation, even if only for physical boosts. It was scary really, some of them looked at him as if they did not believe he was real.

After six months of this, the publicity was beginning to become to great, he had managed to avoid being filmed in action, but many of the previous dojo's had taken photos and somehow the national media had gained a copy. Luckily he had convinced each sensei to let him wear a ninja mask for each photo so only his eyes and hair were visible.

He was a very private person by nature, largely due to his upbringing, so there was no help for it, he would have to stop and let the hype blow over. It was about the time he had planned to stop anyway, time to move in to an apartment in Tokyo with his best friend. She had already begun University for the year, and currently used the spare room for storage. He had decided not to tell her of his arrival, he wanted to surprise her.

***-----***

Reviews Welcome.

Zaknafein.