AN: This started off being a Ryoga only story, but as I wrote it I figured, hey why don't we just throw everyone in. Might take some time to get there, and most of it's still going to be Ryoga. Oh, and please be aware that I haven't read/seen Familiar of Zero, so I am kinda running off fan works and what little I can find on the net.

If I haven't scared you off yet, then here you go...


Ryoga. Lost.

It was all Ranma's fault, mused Ryoga Hibiki as a multicoloured vortex swirled around him, confusing his already challenged sense of direction even further. It had to be, every other thing to shatter his existence was caused by the infuriating martial artist, so this was probably the product of one of his schemes which had backfired. Again. Still, thought Ryoga, better get ready, I think the ground is coming at me.

He hit the ground at speed, causing more damage to it than to him, and was briefly the centre of a far larger explosion than he was expecting. Still, the lost boy had grown used to heavy impacts over the years, and pain was an old friend by now, easily ignored when needed. The heavy-set boy pushed himself to his feet and shook himself briefly before taking stock of himself. There were no broken bones, and no more pain than might be expected from the long fall. His ki seemed normal enough, settling down from the spar he'd been having with his rival. The dust was still clearing from the explosion, giving him a few seconds more to check over his clothing and equipment.

He was wearing his sparring clothes, durable dark grey trousers and his hard-wearing yellow shirt, both of which seemed intact. His bandanna was still in place, infused with a low level of ki to give him some protection around his skull – it never hurt to be careful after all. Unfortunately he'd gone past the initial stage of his spar with Ranma, and thus had lost his trusty weighted umbrella when the speedy martial artist got him into a joint lock. Not only that, but if he'd been yanked away from Tokyo then he would have lost his rucksack, along with all his stuff. Ryoga's mouth twisted into a grimace, his elongated incisors slipping over his bottom lip as annoyance flickered over his features.

The smoke and dust was clear enough to glance around the field he had just been unceremoniously thrown into, and he quickly surveyed the area. No Ranma, but enough people surrounded him to put him on edge, and his instincts pushed him into a defensive stance. He raised his arms in front of his chest and planted his legs firmly, waiting for the first strike to hit. A few moments passed without an attack, and Ryoga allowed himself to relax out of his instinctive fight or flight posture, assessing the people around him for threats. The crowd of people seemed stunned, though most were staring at the pink-haired midget in front of him than actually at the man who fell from the sky. The silence dragged on, and Ryoga began to feel more than a little self-conscious, standing there like he was seconds from death.

Suddenly, the silence was broken with a sharp bark of laughter from his left. A red-headed girl pushed her way to the front of the circle of people and began to shout at the midget in what appeared, to Ryoga's honed ear for languages, to be a thoroughly odd version of Belgian. Ryoga's eyebrows shot up his forehead as he considered what this meant. But how did I get to Africa from Japan so quickly? He shook the thought out of his head, concentrating on what the loud girl was shouting.

"Hah, you so fail at light, Nothing!" The pink haired girl seemed to take offence at this, returning fire with a shriek of her own.

"Shut out! It worked, chest, I bring mighty... er..." Ryoga cocked his head at the small girl, waiting for her to continue. It had taken him some time, but he'd finally learned that when two girls were arguing, the best response was to be as quiet as possible, and hope that no-one noticed him. It was a lesson that Ranma was yet to learn, to Ryoga's eternal happiness. Unfortunately, it appeared that his hope was going to be unanswered, as both girls had bothered to look at him, and it seemed his appearance had stumped both of them, as they were both simply staring at him in shock with open mouths.

The group was coming out of their stupor, conversations cutting across each other far faster than Ryoga could translate the language. Then a third voice cut across the verbal meleè, silencing it all with a clear tone.

"First, an odd occurrence. You bring boy, Louise." Ryoga's eyes snapped to the source of the voice, finding a genial looking man leaning on a staff. He looked to be around thirty, leaning towards fat, and wearing flowing red robes that stopped just above the floor. The people around Ryoga stopped talking as he spoke, and the situation suddenly seemed oddly familiar to Ryoga. This was, in some weird way, a classroom. And this man was the teacher. Ryoga's evaluation of the man was quick from long practice, and as the man continued Ryoga kept listening.

"Odd yes. But you end bring now." The pink haired midget's eyes seemed to almost pop out of her head at that, and she was winding herself up for another blast of noise when Ryoga decided to speak up, mentally translating his words into the little Belgian he knew.

"Excuse," he said warily, eyeing the crowd around him. "Where this?" Unfortunately, the pink haired girl spoke too, and at a much higher volume than Ryoga.

"What!? You not right, Coleman!" Ryoga's words were ignored under the short girls shout, and the crowd started to chatter excitedly, causing Ryoga to miss the response from the teacher. He shook his head and stepped towards the closest edge of the circle, intent on ignoring the crowd and making it to the nearest shore. From what he remembered of geography, Russia was a short boat trip from Africa, and a small detour through Australia should get him back to Tokyo in no time at all. Then he could punish Ranma for teleporting him round the world, and meet up with Akari for their next date. Unluckily for Ryoga, this step brought him closer to the pink haired girl, and his lack of attention meant that he missed her defeated expression. She stepped into his way, and he stopped short of walking through her as she started speaking again. Ryoga's brow furrowed as she finished speaking, as he hadn't been able to make heads or tails of the words she'd said, and his attempt to unravel this mystery gave her time to stand on tiptoe and plant a kiss on his cheek.

The suddenness shocked the lost boy, and he stumbled back a step, eyeing the girl with no small trepidation. He'd followed Ranma through China – he knew what cheek kisses meant to Amazons, and didn't really want to know what they might mean to Belgian schoolchildren. He lifted a hand to his cheek, and staggered slightly as he felt his ki shift within him, flowing from his cheek to the back of his left hand. He looked at his hand in alarm before his ki shrieked in agony and he collapsed to the ground. He'd thought he knew pain, but this feeling was beyond anything he'd ever felt before.

His ki was being torn out of it's normal path and his aura leaked to the surface, sliding along a new pathway being torn through the air. The crowd around them had gone silent again, watching as the pain finally overcame him and he screamed in torment as the dark green of his battle aura snapped into a line between him and the girl who had kissed him. Through the pain Ryoga caught a glimpse of his left hand, and saw arcane runes etching themselves into the back of his hand, searing heavy black characters into his hand as a presence seemed to settle into the back of his mind. With a sense of finality Ryoga watched the last rune finish through eyes made hazy by pain, and his ki snapped back to something approaching normality, though the sense of something inside his head remained. With a shuddering sigh he surrendered to the swirling in his head, unable to keep his mind active, and passed out.


Half an hour ago, Nerima...

Nabiki watched the two super-powered brawlers knock each other around with a sense of absolute boredom. It wasn't even worth running bets on the fights these days, Ranma and Ryoga had been sparring on and off since the failed wedding a few months ago and neither was taking it seriously. It had been weeks since either of them had used their main ki attacks on the other without a clear wind-up, and even then they hadn't come close to a full power strike. Still, she had to admit the sheer speed, strength and skill the two displayed was so far above the rest of the martial artists in Nerima that the other fighters were worth even less of her time than this. The fight was starting to come to a close now, both fighters coming down from their overpowered strikes and seeming to move back to normality from the insanity they pulled off in combat.

As the pair slowed to a point where they no longer blurred with their movement, Nabiki looked them over more closely. Ryoga was wearing his normal clothes, his oddly fang-shaped teeth showing over his bottom lip as he grinned with pleasure at the spar. She paid little attention to the eternally lost boy, he wasn't bright enough to interest her, and was never around for long enough to be exploited by her, and therefore she felt no need to know more about him. The other in the ring, however, she watched much more closely. Ranma Saotome, her younger sisters fiancé, was dressed in his customary clothes, his red silk shirt over black trousers flapping in the breeze created through his movements. He was still in his male aspect, having not run into cold water today, and his black pig-tail followed the movement of his head as he dodged around a fast combination of punches aimed for his head. The clothes hid the edges of his form as he flowed through his dodges and counter-attacked, but the movements shone through, his body fitting into each block and strike as if he had done each one a million times before. Then again, Nabiki considered, the amount of practice that Ranma went through may have meant that he actually had gone through them that many times. Still, it was nothing she hadn't seen before, and she prepared to leave the crowd that surrounded the duelling martial artists.

That was when something different happened, drawing Nabiki's eyes back towards the duo even as she picked herself up to leave. A green oval expanded out of a point of nothingness on one side of the combatants, and swept itself towards Ryoga's exposed back. Ryoga had no time to react, however Ranma saw it form, reacting with his trademark speed, and incidentally confirming Nabiki's suspicions about the supposed enmity between the two. The pig-tailed martial artist blurred up to Ryoga, attempting to throw him out of the path of the now man-sized ellipse that hurtled towards them. But Ryoga, assuming they were still sparring, held himself still, rooting his feet to the floor. Then, just as Ryoga caught the expression on his opponents face and understood that he was looking at something behind him, the oval was upon them. A bright flash of light lit out, and Nabiki covered her eyes as the flash briefly blinded her. When she moved her hand down, the makeshift sparring ring was empty. Both Ryoga and Ranma were gone.

Nabiki stared at the empty space for a span of minutes, along with everyone in the crowd. Rumour was that Ranma had an invisibility technique, after all, and Ryoga could well have copied it. Still, Ryoga was hardly one to stay invisible for long – subtlety had never been Ryoga's chosen path after all. As the minutes stretched Nabiki began to consider that neither boy was there any more, and quickly made her way to the edge of the crowd in order to get back to the Tendo dojo. After all, if whatever this new trouble was had got Ranma, then the dojo would be where he would go to lick his wounds. And even without that knowledge, there was still the fact that anything that hit Ranma inevitably bled over to her family. Still, she hoped the coarse martial artist wasn't dead. He brought in far too much money to go out like that.


Ranma, Very Lost.

A figure pushed itself to it's feet, covered head to foot in black ash. It shook it's head, sending a pigtail flying out, and brushed the ash off to reveal a red shirt and block trousers. Ranma paused, then took stock of his situation. Black ground covered in sticky ash surrounded him, and the sky above him was the colour of blood. A sinking feeling settled into his stomach as he reached out with his ki, only to find a sickly void surrounding him. No life. Not even insects, and Ranma knew just how many bugs there should have been, even near a volcano which could put out this much ash.

A grumbling noise drew Ranma out of his introspection, and he turned to possibly the most terrifying sight he'd yet to come across. A monster stood in front of him, towering to at least twelve feet tall, and seemingly half that across. It carried an axe in one hand, and as Ranma's eyes took it in he noted that the axe blade was practically as big as he was. The monster appeared unhappy to see him, and it's beady black eyes focussed on him as it drew in a breath. Ranma's brain disconnected as it let the breath out in an earth-shaking roar, drawing the axe back for a killing strike on the stationary martial artist. Luckily for the pig-tailed boy his father had been drilling combat into him so well that he could dodge attacks in his sleep, and the massively telegraphed attack spoke straight to the part of Ranma that had kept him alive for so long. He sidestepped the attack as the demon launched an overhead smash, the blade burying itself deep into the ash and rock where Ranma had stood. Still on autopilot Ranma responded, launching several strikes at the side of the creature as he danced around to it's back. A small part of him noted the tiny wings on it's back as his brain started to reconnect, and he began forcing more ki into his strikes as he kept himself behind the beast as it turned to face him again, swinging the axe in a lateral sweep to catch him. The spikes of ki seemed to do little to the creature, and Ranma danced out of reach to consider his options.

The space he created for himself gave him some time to think as the creature regained it's balance after it's hasty swing, and now that he had regained his own mental balance he gave it a critical view. Big, slow, heavily armed, able to shrug off blows like Ryoga and quite possibly some kind of demon. As the creature started to make it's way toward him Ranma gave a decisive nod. Get serious, and finish this quickly, he thought to himself. This thing isn't going to mess around, or let me go if it manages to injure me. Ranma pulled his ki through his body, energising him and letting him feel something of his opponent. It was mostly a void to his aura, but if he concentrated his sight on it there was the barest flicker of life at it's centre. Good, he thought as he gathered his power to himself. If it's alive then it can die, and if it can die it can be wounded. The monster bellowed another challenge as it came within range, spittle flying from it's mouth, and Ranma flickered forward to fight, a final hysterical thought running across his mind before he danced into combat. Damnit Ryoga, because of you I'm seeing Hell!