Love is a stranger to the miko of the Hikawa Shrine, a girl destined to become the Senshi of Mars, the warrior of fire. This is a story of her experience in that time, the people she met and the boy who taught her how to love.


My Love's Flame
A Ranma 1/2 & Sailor Moon Fanfiction
by Ryan Erik

Chapter Two

As the wandering martial artist, the boy who called himself Saotome Ranma, leapt over the rail around the cafe in one fluid motion, Hino Rei stared in shock. Talking about being a martial artist from a manga was one thing, but moving like one was another. She could hardly protest before he was halfway down the block, nearly blending into the crowded market. The moment she had caught his stare after his second apology for knocking her over in the street, a lump had begun to form in her chest as butterflies buzzed around her stomach. Had she not gathered her wits, she might have sat at the cafe for the rest of the day, let alone been able to ask him to follow her to the restaurant in the first place.

"Hey, wait!" she yelled in hopes to stop him a second time, but whatever obligation he had felt for knocking her over had obviously passed. She sat down again, staring vacantly at the people in the market, wondering if he would return.

After a few more minutes trying to stave off the disappointment, Hino Rei gathered what was left of her dignity, her shopping bags and her senses and left the cafe. It was late afternoon, but she had not lied when she'd said that missing the bus would cost her additional chores. She would be spending the rest of the daylight scrubbing floors because of him.

What a jerk, she thought, as she wandered back to the bus stop. She found the bus stop empty, having just missed another chance to get home in a reasonable amount of time. Talk about no manners. I'm better off without a friend like that. Her defenses kicked in just in time for her to remember the manga she had purchased at the bookstore earlier.

Blood Brothers Vol. 2 turned to Vol. 4 by the time her transportation home arrived. She sighed. Why do martial artists have to be so awesome? She felt angry at herself for not stopping him, but she had no idea how she would have done that. Her imagination had plenty of fantastic answers for that riddle, however unlikely.

From top to bottom, Saotome Ranma looked like someone right out of a manga, and appeared to be her age, too. Stop it! You'll never see him again! She found an empty seat on the bus. Scrubbing the floorboards suddenly sounded like a good idea, a way to clear her mind before doing her homework.

"What kept you, young lady?" Grandfather Hino demanded, glaring up at his granddaughter, as she strolled into the temple courtyard nearly an hour later. She had made good time once catching the bus, but the market was pretty far into the city.

"Sorry, Grandfather," she said warily, looking around. The entire courtyard looked neater than it had in years. The path to the temple was remarkably clear of leaves and footprints, and from the broom in the diminutive man's hand, he had done it all himself. "You did my chores?"

"You left me no choice, young lady!" he said with feigned anger. The brimming smile on his face gave him away. "I am meeting a cherished old friend soon and you won't have time to clean properly before I bring him and his son here."

"Sorry," Rei apologized again, bowing her head. "I lost track of time. It won't happen again."

Putting his hands on his hips, he scolded her. "If I had a yen for every time you said that..." He trailed off. "Oh, forget about it. Do your homework right away. You can repay me being on your best behavior and welcoming our guests warmly. That means bringing us beer when I say, not him. And keeping an eye on the valuables and artifacts." He then chuckled.

The old man walked up to her. She tried to take a step back, but he grabbed her shoulders. "Rei-chan, what's wrong? Sick?" He got on his tip toes and placed his forehead against hers. "Nope. What's wrong, girl?"

Rei waved her hands. "Nothing. I... I just spent too much this afternoon." Obscuring the truth is lying, too, her conscience reminded her. She smiled at him, trying to show him a happy face.

"Child, you look like you're trying to smile with a lemon in your mouth." Her grandfather gave her a pat on the cheek. "Go now, we can talk about it later."

"I swear, it's nothing," she protested on her way towards the temple.

Moments later her grandfather was on his way to meet his friend, and Rei had the entire complex to herself. She put her thumb and index finger in her mouth, producing a loud whistle. A flutter of wings from the trees caught her attention as two shadows dove towards her.

The twin ravens landed on her shoulders, Phobos on her left shortly before his brother Deimos on her right. They both squawked once each before she gave them a pat on the head.

"Hello there, gentlemen," she said with a smile, her thoughts of her misfortune at the market disappearing in seconds. "Would you be interested in the finest of bird foods?"

"Kaaa!" Deimos replied. "Kaa kaa!" Phobos agreed.

"Well then, let's see about finding you some peanuts." No one in the household liked peanuts, except the dark birds that she had met the day she started living at the Temple, after her mother had died. The pair had scared her at first, landing on the window seal of her room anytime she left it open. However, they won her over with their truly unbirdlike behavior and total fearlessness to her presence.

The afternoon began to drift to night slowly, yet suddenly for Rei as she worked through her math homework. The tip of her pencil cleanly snapped off the base and fell onto the page of her math workbook, scattering bits all over. A few choice swear words slipped out of Rei's mouth as she gritted her teeth in frustration.

She rifled through her book bag for her eraser, when the sudden sound of the temple's bell ringing from the other side of the compound startled her. Her heart skipped a beat at the sound. Her Grandfather had closed the gates on his way out, yet someone had barged into the temple anyway. She crept into her closet and located the bokken she had rescued from the trash after it had sat in the lost and found for a week. It was covered in dents and scars, but it would still smack the heck out of a pervert or a high school student on a dare.

Summer had just ended, replaced by the autumn, but its warm breezes had yet to cool. Tonight was especially warm, leaving her in shorts and a baggy blouse, so when a shiver shot up her spine, she looked up in wonder. The courtyard of the shrine lay empty before her as she spied it from the trees on the east side of the compound away from the lights.

"Old man, where are you?" a male voice shouted from the Temple. "Come on out before I beat that ugly bald head of yours."

Her eyes widened in fear. Someone was threatening her grandfather, who had not yet returned.

"I waited for you for hours, but now I've had it. Come out!"

She spotted his shadow around the side of the temple, cast against the dirt. Sneaking towards him, she readied her weapon.

"Don't make me come find you, stupid old man!"

No one calls my grandfather stupid! Rei got within five feet of him, and sucked in a breath. The noise must have caught the intruder's attention, so she closed the distance and swung downwards at his head with all the force she could muster.

"There you—Argh!"

The bokken broke in half against the intruder's skull, the tip flying away into the darkness.

"Got you!" Rei yelled in triumph, looking down at her opponent. Her shadow covered him in darkness, but she could tell he wouldn't be bothering her grandfather anytime soon.

A moan from the person below caught her attention. The voice sounded a bit too high to be a grown man, and he wasn't built very thick. She stepped out of the way of the light, illuminating his face.

Blood matted the hair of her escaped ronin. Saotome Ranma looked like a fresh corpse on the battlefield. The miko with the bokken in the Courtyard. Where was Colonel Mustard when you need him to take the rap?

"Oh no!"

As she stared down at him in horror, she heard a creak of the gates, followed by thunderous laughter echoing across the courtyard. Rei could tell her grandfather's laughter from that of anyone else in the world. She felt relieved for only a moment, until she realized she had just killed someone, the boy from the market, with a weapon she had told her grandfather that she had thrown away. She was in so much trouble.

"Haha! Genma, you devil!" Her grandfather's voice rang out from the courtyard.

She half-considered dragging the poor boy into the bushes and hoping for the best, rather than disappoint the old priest. Tossing the bokken into the brush, Rei watched it disappear into the darkness. She turned back to stare at Ranma in a panic, when a low moan from his mouth filled her with instant relief.

"Are you okay?" she asked, rushing to Ranma's side. She knelt beside him, brushing away his wet, black bangs. A welt stuck out directly at the center of his forehead. There was a small cut on his head that she must have inflicted when the bokken snapped.

His eyes flickered open and rolled in their sockets. It took a moment for his eyes to focus on her. She lifted his shoulders and wedged her legs under his head.

"Don't die," she commanded him.

"Says you," he whispered, followed by a moan. "Where am I?"

She might have answered him, explaining how he had burst into her home and yelled threats at her grandfather, but decided she had best let him not die before charging him with anything. She also might have told him where he was, telling him about the Hikawa Shrine, and she planned to do just that, but a loud voice from her grandfather's quarters boomed out instead, causing a chain of events that she would feel for the rest of the night.

"Hino-sensei, you old cad!"

Ranma's eyes suddenly grew sharp, she noticed suddenly as she examined his head.

"Pops?!" his voice called out, startling her. He then sat up rapidly, smacking his injured head into her forehead.

Seeing stars usually meant bumping into Akira Kurosawa and getting his autograph, going to an Aino Minako concert and sitting up front. Instead, she fell back, cradling her head as sparkly stars shone before her closed eyelids. Pain seeped through her head as she shrieked.

Between Ranma's grunt of pain and her shriek, the courtyard filled with echoes of their accident. She grabbed her forehead as she heard the footsteps of the two men, who were rush to their position.

"Ranma? Where are you, my boy?" the stranger who had been making all the racket called out.

"Rei-chan?!" Her grandfather's voice resounded across the courtyard.

Despite being in the exact situation the two adults were witnessing, Rei looked up with a bit of curiosity as to the fury in both of their eyes.

"Ranma, what brute did this to you, son?!" "Rei-chan?! Did the monsters who did this violate you?!"

Rei took stock of the situation. Two downed barely-teens, stacked on each other like corpses, both with head injuries. She decided to play it safe and hold her tongue. Is it lying if I just lie here?

Her grandfather's guest grabbed his son and shook him. "Get a hold of yourself, boy! How many were there? Did you beat them back?"

Ranma seemed to come to, holding his head warily. "Pops? Is that you?"

Was it lying if I just say the number "five" – a late answer to my math homework?

Her grandfather crouched over her. "My granddaughter looks okay. Your son must have fended off the villains and saved her."

"Oh, my son! So manly! It must have been at least five to cause this much damage, and manage to get away with their lives."

Rei blinked. She did not even have to break her promise to never lie. It seemed simply thinking the answer would be enough. Mind over matter, perhaps? Let's treat these two to ice cream.

"Let's bring the hero and my granddaughter inside, before they catch a cold."

Close enough.

Ranma seemed too groggy to remember anything that had happened in the last hour, let alone whether or not he fought to save her, so she just smiled and nodded along with the two drunk old men. After Genma carried Ranma inside, she had sat nearby to play nurse as they began drinking to Ranma's heroics, and her saved "honor" – whatever that meant.

Rei had only said a few words since coming in, staring at the boy with a bag of frozen edamame pressed against his forehead. The pain in hers was still present, and she would probably have a bruise in the morning, but she – and, more important, Ranma – would live. From the drunken tales told between the two adults, she had pieced together that Genma had been friends with her grandfather when they were youths, and Genma had apparently lived not far from the Temple. She also extracted that they were only sticking around for another night before heading south.

She now got a good look at this "Saotome Genma" as he had introduced himself before. He wore a bandana over his obviously balding head, and thick glasses. His enthusiasm for beer and boasting only rivaled her grandfather's, apparently. From the glint in his eye and all of the clues she had gathered, Rei labeled him in her head, Loser.

However, that man's son didn't share his demeanor. When she'd catch his eyes before he'd awkwardly turn away, she could see genuine good in them. She could feel it at the market, as well. She had good senses when it came to people. However, she was still mad at him for leaving suddenly, and then later bursting into her home, causing her to nearly kill him in response.

"That settles it!" Genma shouted, clinking his bottle against her grandfather's. "We'll stay here while he recovers, and then defend against any more bandit attacks for a while!"

Rei's eyes snapped to the two men. "What?"

"You're a good man, Saotome! My granddaughter will take care of him while he's here! The Temple has been in need of some serious fixing, and I remember you did some carpentry back in the day! We will make this place like new, together!"

"Did I say "we" – I meant, Ranma will do that after he gets better. I have business... yes, business in... Hokkaido. I'll be back when he's done, of course!"

"What?" Ranma moaned. "You ditching me, pops? I'm fine, we can go together!" He tried to stand, but quickly fell back down to his backside.

"Stay still! You'll only hurt yourself," Rei said, putting a hand on his arm. Her face warmed as she realized just how good of shape his taut arm muscles were in. Okay, maybe the hand will go up to his shoulder. She adjusted her grip. "Don't try to get up for now."

"No, Ranma. You're needed here. And as you explained to me earlier today, you don't like my business. So when I come back, you better have this place looking like a million yen!"

"Agreed, Saotome! Our children will be best friends, and will make the Hikawa Shrine anew!"

When did wanting to see someone again mean that I wanted him to live with me?

Ranma didn't look any happier, though he was also wet from the melting edamame, had a gash on his head, and had no idea what had happened to make him that way.

The two old men stood and went to go scrounge for more alcohol, leaving their kids alone.

"Why me?" Ranma looked her dead in the eyes. "Stupid old man, leaving me with an even older man and a girl."

Rei blushed. "Hey, you get to stop traveling for a while. What's wrong with that?" She was rather partial to the temple as well. It was a lovely place in every season, and it was the only home she had ever really knew.

"Stuck in some temple, doing manual labor for who knows how long? No, that sounds great." He dropped the frozen vegetables and brushed her hand off. "No offense, Hino-san, but that sounds pretty awful to me. I think I'd rather freeze in a snowstorm."

"Give it a few months, and I'll hold your head under the snow this winter," Rei snapped back.

He shrugged and stood. "There weren't any ninjas or brigands, were there? I didn't hear you say anything. It was you who smacked me in the forehead, wasn't it?"

Rei rose quickly and took a step back. "Me?"

Ranma nodded and took a step forward. "Yeah, don't worry, I won't say anything. I'd rather be the unfortunate hero, than suffer through a month of pops yelling at me for letting an uncute miko getting a surprise attack on me. What was that anyway, a crowbar?"

Rei narrowed her eyes. "No comment."

So much for the adventure manga where the valiant martial artist dazzles me with his skills and his humility. I'm the straight man in a slapstick comedy. She glared at Ranma. He must be Larry.


Until her fated meeting with the Princess of the Moon, the woman that was and will be Sailor Mars, one of the defender of our Solar System from threats alien and terrestrial, Hino Rei is just a thirteen-year-old girl with pragmatic sensibilities and a heart of gold. Fate introduced chaos into her life in the form of Saotome Ranma once before, but that was a chance meeting of two kids bumping into each other in on a crowded sidewalk. The arrival of the boy and his father at her home signals that life will be much more interesting from now on.

Read on to continue to the journey of Hino Rei and the boy crashing into her life.