AN:
Ranma(Ranko?) isn't going to make a whole lot of sense for a while he(she?) hasn't really had the cannon up bringing, but the reasons why won't show for a bit.
You don't really need to know much about Flame of Recca to get this. It's helpful if you've read the manga up until the tournament starts, but Recca provides a bit of awkward summarization near the end of the chapter for those who are unfamiliar with the story, and the details that are needed will be explained to Ranma as necessary.
Now onto more important business:
This Ranma/Flame of Recca Crossover was developed by the Ranma/Sailor Moon Crossover creator.
I'll pause a moment here for the looks of confusion to fade as the sensation of 'yes, he did actually type that sentence' fades.
…Has it passed? Good.
Long story short, there is a Sailor Moon element to this story… But, with the exception of the prologue (which has a lot), and one other significance, it just comes later. Much later. A long ways off later.
Therefore: I do not own Ranma ½, I do not Own Flame of Recca, and I do not own Sailor Moon.
As is usual for me, this is the only disclaimer you will get for the story. I don't have the time or inclination to write something this witty for every chapter. God help us all.
Prologue: Sparks
Three Years ago:
Four figures kneeled in front of a throne. She glared down at them. "Report."
The first, the blond with short hair, responded. "My Queen, the dimensional barriers have weakened enough for us to slip out and begin harvesting energy."
The woman pondered this for a moment. "And how long until it fails completely?"
"Perhaps another year or two."
She nodded shortly. "We've waited more than one and a half thousand years for this. Another year or two is nothing. We wait."
They nodded. She waved her hand dismissing them, and they rose to leave, but a flash of light distracted them.
The light left behind a young man somewhere in his teens, with black hair. His face was unreadable, nor was his eye color discernable, due to the face mask he wore. Glancing around, he dropped to one knee before the woman on the throne.
"My Lady…"
"You are not allowed to directly address the queen, knave!"
Malachite swung his fist down, but the boy broke from his kneeling position for only enough time to kick the older man under the chin before settling down kneeling again.
Beryl smirked, amused. "You will all leave." She gestured to her generals.
Nephrite looked shocked. "But-"
"NOW!"
As they left, Jadeite glanced at Malachite who was nursing a sore jaw. Malachite noticed this and sighed, but spoke only a single word. One that made a chill run down the other's spines. "Granite."
Back in her throne room, Beryl smiled at the young man who remained kneeled with his face towards the floor. "Rise, Granite…"
He did so, and Beryl sat back in her throne. There was amusement in her voice. "Time was you would have knocked Malachite out with a kick like that."
He shrugged and gestured at his form. "This body is not as developed as my last, my Queen."
She nodded. "Still, I am surprised to see you here, Granite. As I recall, you died, did you not?"
He nodded. "In the final attack my hand was an inch from Serenity's neck when Saturn's lance burst through my spine, lungs, and heart. But I did hear her final spell as I died. She sent all of her court to be reborn. I know not why I was carried as well, proximity perhaps, but we should be wary of resistance, your majesty."
Her face hardened a bit. "I shall be wary of resistance. You shall not."
The man known as Granite took a step back in trepidation. "My Queen?"
She shook her head. "I apologize, Granite. You were always my most loyal soldier. But you are not ready for this fight. Unless you are ready to take a blessing from Metallia?"
Granite shook his head. "I have seen what this has done to your 'generals'. I cannot adequately protect you if my head is clouded with other matters."
She sighed. "We will not move again until the barrier around us fully falls. Approach me when you reach maturity, Granite, and we'll talk then. Until then, return to whence you came, and work to strengthen yourself."
Granite nodded. "As you wish, my Queen."
A wave of her hand opened a portal, and Granite walked towards it. Just when he was about to step through, Beryl's voice caught him.
"Granite?"
He turned. She smiled softly at him.
"It means a great deal that you were loyal enough to come back. Many would not have."
He nodded, then slipped through the portal.
Beryl sat back on her throne, and sighed, feeling the weight of her years. Then Metallia's influence came back to the fore and she smiled wickedly.
Two months ago:
She fought against her opponent, a young girl in a gown of blinding white. She fought her hardest to win. She had to have it.
The power. That was what she needed to win.
Wasn't it?
An image of a stone mask floated in front of her face for a moment, and her attack faltered for just a moment before the image was banished by the dark force within her.
Still, it was enough.
Enough for the girl in white, Princess Serenity, to smash through her defenses a final time.
It was a bitter victory though, as her own powers killed her in the process. Still, Beryl could already feel the pure, positive energy gathering, and the princess's final wish. For her friends and her beloved, those who had perished for this victory, to be brought back.
But not for her. No, never for Beryl.
The red haired woman just lay there in the snow, the negative energy fading out of her green eyes, changing them to their original hue of bright blue, wondering bitterly where it had all gone wrong.
Metallia.
That was where it had gone wrong.
It wasn't power she had wanted then. She had wanted power, but only as the means, not the end. But as all things like that did, evil perverted the means into the end, and she began to fight Serenity and her Silver Millenium not for the downtrodden as she had started, but for mere control of the woman's empire.
But was it Metallia's evil, she wondered, or her naivety that had started her down that path?
Beryl of the Negaverse brushed the question aside. It hardly mattered. She'd be dead soon, and that would be that, paying for her sins in her death.
But where was he, she wondered? Where was the man in the stone mask?
Ah yes. She remembered now. She'd sent him away. He had asked to stay at her side, and she'd sent him away because…
She couldn't remember why.
Too much of her blood had left her already, she guessed. The mask appeared in her mind's eye again, and she smiled in memory.
She reached for it…
To find she could feel it.
He did not wear the uniform of a Negaverse general. He instead wore a short sleeved, form-fitting but not skin-tight shirt of armor, constructed of plates of metal about the size of the nail on his pinky finger. These were woven together incredibly tightly, so that the shirt would move like a second skin. His trousers were constructed similarly, but of a looser weave, allowing them to billow slightly. He wore bracers of true dragon scale, silver, and their elasticity allowed his wrists free movement even as they protected him, moving up beyond the normal range to end as fingerless gloves. His boots were black scale, and came up over the pants.
"Granite?"
"My Queen."
It was a rough voice, just like the gray-blue stone of his mask, just like his name. She could see him now, the warm, gray-blue eyes behind the mask.
She could remember now, that he had always been that. Coarse, rough, and rugged. But always strong, and always dependable. Not like the ones Metallia had made her cast him aside for. "You came back…"
"Not fast enough, my Queen."
She smiled, despite her weakness. "No. You came back in time. I am still here, am I not?"
He shook his head, and she didn't need to see his face behind the mask and shaggy hair to feel his grief. "No. I was not fast enough to defend you, my Queen. I have failed."
"I should not have driven you from my side, Granite… I do not remember why Metallia made me… but I think it had something to do with the memories you brought up… of the time before her."
"Then it was still my fault for letting you out of my sight in the first place, all those years ago. The failure is not yours; it is, and was, mine."
"Always so noble, Granite?" She said, still smiling. Then she lowered her eyes slightly. "I… I will not last long Granite. Lift your mask? For me?"
He nodded slowly, and gently lifted the mask away from his face with one hand, revealing a tattoo along the left side of his face, a dragon colored of black trimmed in gold. Beryl ran a finger down the dragon's body. "You always come back, Granite. Always. No matter how many assignments of certain death Metallia and I sent you on, you always came back to me. It would have been easy enough to fake your death and run. Why?"
"Because no matter how many times my training forced me to obey you, to kill for you, I was loyal to you. I was your bodyguard first."
"Even to the last?"
"Ever to the last. I will not let you die here, my Queen."
Her smile turned grim. "You cannot prevent it, Granite."
"Then I will die trying. And if that cannot stop me, then I will die in vengeance."
"A wasted effort." She stroked the dragon with her hand once more, her smile lightening a bit, with a twinge of bitterness. "I think I wasted too many dreams on that silly little prince."
"My Queen?"
"Call me by my name, Granite? I haven't heard you say it for far too long. Not since we first met…"
"Yes, Beryl."
She smiled.
"One last command from your Queen."
"Anything."
"Kiss me."
And he did. He kissed her as he had always wanted to in the Silver Millenium, when the young daughter of a Duchess had set him loose from the executioner's block. He kissed her as her as he had wanted to when he had watched her grow, protecting her from unseen foes. He kissed her as he had wanted to when she had smiled at him despite Metallia's influence.
He kissed her, taking her last breath of life into his mouth, and the last of her essence into his soul. Clutching her body to his chest, her roared at the sky, demanding she be returned to him, infusing the entirety of his aura into his voice so that the gods would be sure to hear his call.
"BEEERYYYL!"
But the heavens did not answer. No hand reached up to caress his face, or even slap him for impertinence. She lay still and lifeless, cold as the snow around them.
A glow came up from beneath him, starting in her blood, and working its way to the body in his arms, dissolving it into motes of light. It swirled around him, temporarily blinding him, and when he could see, she was gone from his arms, and from his life.
He kneeled then, and whispered a few quick words to his departed love, never truly realized, and picked up his discarded mask. The man hardened his features even as he placed the mask back on, his hardened eyes hard to pick out of the hardened stone of the same color.
He disappeared in a flash of light.
One month ago:
Sailor Pluto could not believe her eyes. She'd just seen her son. She hadn't seen him in four hundred years, ever since she'd thrown him into a time warp, but there he was.
She stood, frozen in indecision. She wanted to call out to him, to run to him, to tell him that everything would be fine… but she couldn't. She couldn't drag him into the life of a Sailor Scout. Just being with her would expose him to danger. She bit her lip as she considered, then closed her eyes and cried silent tears as she walked into an alley.
Recca was a born flame master. He had the potential to survive, and even assist in the coming fights. But she would have to test him. His strength, his resolve, and his heart.
Recca was a chaos agent, it seemed that any child she had would be, but She'd reviewed the coming timelines so often looking for flaws she knew them by heart.
In this moment of decision, she knew she could go back in time and ask the Queen, or even reveal herself to the princess in this era and ask. But she knew the answer already. Both would tell her to go to her children, damn the future. Better a moment of happiness than an eternity of misery. She'd just have to try to keep Recca out of Juban until certain things came to pass.
And just maybe he'd be able to stop a few problems before they became true threats for the senshi.
Her course set, Setsuna teleported to the time gates. They could not track her son, but she kept several items there. And the world-shadow ball would be able to do the job quite nicely, despite the chaos factor.
Now:
"Why the hell would you want six person teams in a tournament?! Wouldn't that mean a constant need for tie breakers?"
The creepy guy with one huge eye smiled evilly. "Ah… but the tie breakers are what bring in the biggest bets, you see. If there hasn't been a fatality in the match yet, chances are, it'll still happen there…"
Recca grumbled, and handed the man the form with their names on it. "Fine, whatever."
The man chuckled, and pushed the paper back. "Not so fast. Now come here for a test of your skills. I have doubts that you are as strong as people say."
The old man opened a door, and behind it were twenty big men waited. "It's ridiculous to think that children like you could actually fight Lord Kurei! KILL THEM!"
It was pitifully short. It took only 15 seconds for Recca, Fuuko, Domon and Tokiya to destroy the twenty men.
The man, bleeding from the forhead, grumbled a bit, but relented. "Very well. But keep in mind that the majority of the fighters in the tournament have already reached this level. Don't think you can win. Now, the form."
Recca looked puzzled for a moment, then began patting himself nervously. He scratched the back of his head. "Eh heh heh…"
The man chuckled. "Well, if you don't have a registration form…"
"It's right here."
There all turned to look at the new voice. She was a little on the short side, wearing a red Chinese tang and black kung-fu pants. She had a large chest, and her hair was pulled back in a pigtail. She had a smile plastered on her face. "Long time no see, Recca. You've improved."
Recca blushed. "R-Ranko… It's certainly a surprise seeing you here."
She grinned. "Yeah, yeah. Didn't expect to see you here either." Then she glanced around. "Hey, mind if I join your team?"
"You're entering?"
She looked at Recca like he was crazy. "Why else would I be here? Look, it's complicated. Can we talk about it later?"
"Oh, no! I remember you! You're the red head who was sharing a room with Recca back a few years ago!"
They both turned to look at her. Ranko grinned. "Hey, it's the tomboy!"
Fuuko screamed in frustration. Tokiya could be heard mumbling in the background. "But she calls herself worse all the time…"
Fuuko groaned as Ranko and Recca walked out of one of the rooms where they'd been conversing alone. "Why'd we let her join us again?"
Setsuna, the green haired woman who had once been 'Kage Hoshi', smiled. "Because Recca believes her to be a fantastic fighter, and we stand a better chance with five than four." She thought for a moment. "Perhaps I should have joined myself… it'd be best if we had six."
Recca turned sharply over to her. "Forget it mom. You may not age, but you're not invincible. Let us handle it."
Ranko stuck up for him. "Yeah. Parents are things that need to be protected! Ya' can't just risk 'em like that when you've got options."
Deciding that they had the matter settled, Recca continued. "She's an excellent fighter, and she's got her own reasons for being here."
Fuuko arched a brow. "And they are?"
Recca frowned at Fuuko as Ranko wandered over to the buffet. "None of your business. She'll tell you if she wants to. The only thing I'm allowed to say is that some bad things have happened to her recently, and the cause of most of her problems is leading a team in A block."
Ranko butted in at that point, having returned with two plates, each with half what had remained of the buffet table on them. "Which is why I was looking for a team to join in there. Come on, Recca."
Recca nodded, and the two sat side-by-side, one plate in front of each. Then they began to play a game whose only goal seemed to be to see who could steal the most food from the other and eat it before it was stolen back. Choice pieces often changed hands several times before being eaten.
Later that evening, Ranko and Recca stood on the balcony of their room. "So what's up, Recca? Why exactly are you in this. I told you mine earlier. What's yours? You aren't the type to join this kind of thing without a good reason either."
Recca smiled. "Well, it started when I met Yanagi - Princess. That was when Mom appeared. She said that she was 'Kage Hoshi' and wanted to fight me, but I got out of that fast, grabbed princess and ran. Then she tried to go after us through Fuuko, some mind control thing. And then, and I'm still a little sore about this, mind you, she sent Tokiya to get in between Princess and me. But, everything's cool now so…
"Anyways, but then we got a new teacher in class. He knew stuff about the original Hokage ninja. Then Kurei sent his goons to kidnap him. And they got Princess too.
"Princess, has this power, like my flame, to heal people. And they wanted that. So we went and busted up Kurei's place to get my teacher and Princess back. Well, we ended up fighting some guys before Kurei. First there was Ganko, who was calling herself Reiran. She's got a madougu that lets her control dolls. She's just a little kid, so Fuuko went easy on her, but had to use fujin, which lets her control wind. She's living at Fuuko's house now. Doesn't have anywhere else to go."
Ranko nodded. "I know the feeling."
"Then, after that, Domon fought this guy named Sekiou. Domon did great in that battle. Then the guy pulled a madougu that gave him stone armor. But Domon was wearing this nose ring that Mom switched out with the Dosei ring, which gave him more strength, enough to plow through stone easily.
"Then, we fought Kaoru Koganei. Well, actually, he trapped us under a wall. But that was when Tokiya showed and fought him while the rest of us went after Kurei. Kaoru uses the Kougon Anki, the five formed weapon. Tokiya beat him though. He uses Ensui, a sword that uses water to make a blade."
Ranko shivered.
Recca rolled his eyes. "I know. You and water, I swear. Anyways, we got to Kurei, and started talking. He'd killed Sekiou for failing, took his head off even, and he was the one who told me… I'm from four hundred years ago…"
Ranko grinned. "The old woman's about three hundred. I can believe people last that long."
Recca shrugged. Whatever. Kurei sent me, Fuuko and Domon down a pit, where I pretty much destroyed this guy named Moruken in one shot."
Ranko arched an eyebrow, and Recca shrugged again. "What can I say? Plants and fire don't mix.
"We too the elevator up, and that's where we found out that Kurei's got flame powers like mine. Then, Tokiya joined us, and Mom showed up again. Mom told me to take my Tekko off. If I left it that way, it might kill me, but for a little bit it could increase my power.
"And it did. Every flame master has a flame spirit, the animal shape that your flame naturally takes. And I have what's supposedly the strongest of all, eight flame dragons. Heh. The lead dragon, Ressin, kicked Kurei's ass. He left before we could finish though, and we had to scram.
"A day or two after, Mom took us to the old Hokage place and told us the truth. About who she was, everything. Pretty much confirmed what Kurei told us. Then these guys working for Kurei showed up, and we beat 'em down. After that, I started training with the flame dragons, only mastered two of the eight so far, to get stronger. That was when we heard about this."
Recca sighed as he trailed off. The night was silent for a bit before he continued. "We couldn't just let it go. Kurei'd come after Yanagi again. At least here we've got a shot at pulling it off."
Ranko nodded. "Right. Just making sure you've got a good reason. Don't worry, Recca. I'm with you."
Recca smiled. "Thanks."
Ranko smiled. "Hey, it's the duty of a martial artist to protect the weak, right?"
The two chuckled, and the conversation turned to more lighthearted matters as the night wore on.