Greater Power Prologue
Dragonball crossover with Ranma 1/2
by Naquiel

Disclaimer - Ranma and Dragonball (or Z or GT) don't belong to me so please don't sue.
Note - For further explanation of the theory in this Fanfiction, please refer to my Author's Notes.

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Chapter 0

Ranma sighed as he looked from the rooftop to the scene. Currently a mob of righteously furious women; were out for the perverted, shrunken dwarf's blood, again. Happosai was being particularly frisky lately, annoying women in greater numbers, who became even more angry and much more often!
To think that the three-foot tall, three hundred year old pervert was his school's Grandmaster, sickened him to the depths of his stomach. Such a title upon such an unscrupulous perv, it was sacrilege to the name of Anything Goes!
Ranma casually sent a powerful Moku Tashiba at the place where the shrunken 'man' would be.

Below, Happosai was having the time of his life. He had stolen, err, liberated, roughly forty pairs of unmentionables. He was being chased by the hoard of angry women, laughing joyfully as he ran for his life.
Quite suddenly he sensed a powerful Chi blast coming toward where he would last. He recognised the Chi as that of Ranma's.
Ha, the foolish child; thought the grandmaster of the school of Anything Goes martial arts. That, I can easily dodge, he pondered, condescendingly.

Ranma smirked. As he thought, Happosai had dodged, but couldn't dodge enough to save his sack of women's garments.

Happosai was struck dumb as his sack was burnt through by the Chi blast. The silky darlings inside ignited by the high temperature of the Chi attack. He could only stare in horror, as his worst nightmare, came to life. It was then that the hoard of angry women descended upon him.
As he was getting battered within an inch of his life his only thought was, Ranma Saotome, shall pay dearly for this!

Said martial artist was currently roofhopping away from the scene, completely unaware of what he had put into motion! But very aware of the three dangers that lay in the Tendo Dojo, Akane's anger, Akane's mallet; and Akanes' cooking!

The next day, Ranma was walking along the fence as usual, with a steaming Akane on the pavement below. She gave him occasional glares that would have vaporised a lesser man, or one that was actually bothered about what she thought of him.
Suddenly, the pressure within Akane was vented through giving the fence, under Ranma, a sharp kick. Ranma was too unprepared and lost in his thoughts to notice until he was already under water, in the canal that was on the other side of the fence. He rose from the water, pissed, wet and as a red-haired buxom, if short, girl.
He, um, she glared at the figure of Akane, walking cheerfully along the path, on the other-side of the pavement.
He, would get his revenge, oh, yes, he will get his revenge! "Hee, hee, hee, ho, ho, ho, ha, ha, ha." She started off chuckling then into full-blown laughter.
The local pedestrians would attest; that the sight of a short, well-endowed red-haired girl, laughing insanely, Kodachi Kuno cum Iori Yagami style, floating in a canal, was seriously freaky, even for the Tokyo district of Nerima.
When she finally managed to arrive at school, Kuno tried to spout some poetry and was stopped very suddenly before he could utter the first syllable, by Ranma's fist impacting into his head.

In class, Ms. Hinako was in her child form, sucking a lollypop and marking test papers. The students filed in to the room, she gave each of them, small glances before returning to the test papers.
As soon, as the female Ranma, walked in, Hinako gave her a scrutinising look, wondering why Ranma would come willingly to class as a female, it didn't happen all that often, unless. Ah, she remembered, the school's hot water was turned off because of damage to some pipe-thingamajig, probably from one of Ranma's fights. She didn't really care!
Ranma took her seat, and received a glare from Akane, for no apparent reason but existing. As usual, Ranma was too, well, Ranma-like, to notice or care.
Soon, as Hinako began to talk about English grammar, Ranma's eyelids began to become heavy. Then she remembered what would happen if she fell asleep. Hinako could and would drain her of her battle aura, her accessible Chi. By keeping that thought in her mind, the memory of the unpleasant sensation, she gave herself plenty motivation not to sleep.
Throughout class, Ranma was staring at Hinako, taking notes and essentially studying.
Ranma was taking down notes, about the various different past tenses, (had, was, etc,) when she noticed, that almost every desk in the class was slowly shuffling away from her, and the pupils at them, looking at her with fear.
Ranma looked at Hinako, to continue her studying and ignore the odd, odd, people in the classroom, unfortunately, Hinako was one of them. She was pressed against the blackboard, ashen-faced, pointing a shaking finger at Ranma.
"You, your," Hinako gulped audibly. "Studying!" she cried in abject terror.
"Yeah, and?" asked Ranma, like she was speaking to a small child, which she was, as Hinako hadn't drained any battle auras to regain her adult form, yet.
Many of the surrounding students, about six feet away from him, took out various items, from bags, pockets, and desks. The items varied from rabbit feet, Shinto good-luck wards, wards against evil, lucky coins, holy water, garlic, crosses, a picture of the Pope, a picture of the Vatican, a picture of a semi-nude woman, obviously in the hands of either, or both, Hiroshi and Daisuke.
Ranma frowned as he saw the various students take out these items and hold them in front of him, like he was a demon, or pitifully holding them, a few were praying. She frowned, causing a wave of fear through the assembled students, pressing themselves against the walls, she didn't know their were so many Christians in her class, oh, well, learn something new every day!
Ranma sighed and thought; I need to go to a saner school!

At lunch things were calm, until his other two fiancées popped out of the metaphorical woodwork.
"Ranma, Honey," and, "Niaho, Airen," echoed through the air in symphony. Ranma groaned, his day was getting ever so gradually worse. He should have expected this, just as he expected Akane's overreaction. He wasn't disappointed, and soon found himself, chewing the cud, under a huge mallet!
"Today, Ranma Saotome, I shall make you pay!" screamed a voice akin a petulant child. The voice was recognised as the old pervert, known as Happosai. Despite looking around, none could see where the immensely perverted and aged creature was.
Ranma got up from his indentation on the ground and stood, scanning the grounds with his eyes and Chi senses, finding the pervert leaping from a tree onto the ground a good twenty feet from Ranma. Ranma noticed that Happosai had two very good opportunities and six lesser opportunities to cop a feel of any number of the schoolgirls. For Happosai to do that was akin to a Lion getting a consensual sexchange or Akane becoming a nice person or Kasumi swearing. He was either very ill or very serious or it was the end of the world.
Happosai revealed a scroll in his hands, hidden previously in his 'unmentionables' bag. It was yellowed with age and was sealed with red wax, onto the paper was stuck a number of Shinto wards. Ranma, with the knowledge he had gleamed about demons and bindings over his lifetime, could tell that it would be quite bad for Happosai to break that seal, as it would release a strong demon onto their plane.
Ranma wished with all his might, that Happosai would not be so stupid as to open that scroll. The great and knowledgeable Powers That Be gave him an astral middle finger, and Happosai broke the seal deftly with his thumb.
As the old perv stood in the centre of the sports field, a red corona surrounded him and in a flash of blood-tainted light a real, live, Minotaur appeared in front of Happosai.
"Go demon, make Ranma pay!" screamed the old and very sick man.
The demon charged him, in an attempt to gore him. Ranma leapt over the hairy, half-man, half-bull demon, and gave a sharp punch to its' back, between the shoulder blades.
This unbalanced the creature and caused it to ram itself into the ground with its' own momentum. Ranma fell upon it and delivered a vicious beating to its' back, and once again leapt away to safety. The minotaur struggled to get up, and turned around, to receive two rabbit punches, three rights to the abdomen and a leg-sweep.

Throughout his demon's vicious beating, Happosai was split between pride for his heir, and anger at the demons' losing. Eventually the anger won out and the old master ran to and attacked Ranma, just before he landed the finishing blow.
Their fight then moved further from the crowd, using their normal attacks, Ranma Chi attack, Moku Takibisha

Of course, this resulted in Ranma, fighting it. It was very one-sided; the demon never had a chance. It was then that Ranma realised that Happosai underestimated his skill, and, if so, he had a certain advantage. So deep in thought was he, he didn't realise the beaten-up demon crawling away, until it caused some girls in the crowd to scream.

Ranma tried to chase after it but it was very quite and remarkably sneaky, he lost its trail after ten steps out side the school grounds. After this search, he returned to the playing field, where Happosai remained.

"Ranma," asked Uyko, carefully. Trying to casually into his shadow-shrouded eyes, and hence try to discover his reaction and wither the Minotaur demon was dead or not. He didn't even look at her, he walked in a straight line to the laughing shrunken thing. If his eyes couldn't give her a clue, the red aura that drew around him as he came within ten feet of the pervert, was a definitely a sign that he was pissed.

"Happosai, you are unfit for the title of Grandmaster of the Anything Goes school of martial arts. I challenge you for the title, here in five days!" demanded Ranma, upon stopping, five feet away from the 'Master,' his normally blue aura, red with rage. "You have perverted the name of Anything Goes before even it's conception, and you have unleashed a demon upon the unsuspecting innocents of Tokyo. You have no honour and no decency. In five days either you will defeat me, or you will never trail the name of anything Goes in the mud again!"
A very surprised Happosai made an affirmation, and Ranma turned round and disappeared, walking sharply to his destination.

Ranma walked determined into his room. For the next five days, he pledged, he would hunt down that demon and train for his conflict with Happosai. He began to pack his things, necessities, and only necessities, well, perhaps some of Kasumi's cake, and maybe some of her cookies, and maybe...

For an entire day he had tracked that darned demon, trekking through mud and through small forests. He was tired and cranky, he hadn't even had a chance to try some of Kasumi's cooking, and now it led him to 'this!' Thought Ranma irritated, as he looked at the cave entrance. It wasn't very inviting, perhaps it was the time of day, the way the light hit it, or perhaps it was because of the giant maw of a carved demon-dragon. Nonetheless, Ranma persevered and followed the slight tracks and faint residual demonic energy
It soon became obvious and he explored the caves that first cave was connected to another dozen caves and another after that, it was quite the maze. Which made sense, after all minotaurs have a deep seated mythical connection with mazes and labyrinths.
Unfortunately, the monster must have been mapping out the caves itself, its' residue was everywhere, and tracks overlapped tracks, therefore it could no longer be traced the usual way. Ranma shrugged and followed his gut instinct.

He spent the next hour searching for the demon and another hour making sure his markers were accurate enough to lead him out. He continued on after that, until he discovered that the demon or something else had destroyed or dislodged his markers.
Ranma was very quickly becoming pissed. If I get lost, he thought, Im gonna hunt down that minotaur to the ends of the world! Then he thought of how Royoga-ish he sounded, and laughed at his wierdness.
He turned round, and came, eye to blood-shot eye with a large, hairy, smelly, and evil-looking demon. Ranma, threw one arm out towards the demon, and bent backwards.
He held on the one of the demon's horns, as it tried to puch him. This caused it to overbalance, and it came falling down to Ranma.
Ranma quickly did a backflip, both hitting the beast in the snout and getting out of the way of it's falling, bulk.
He made turn after turn, quite randomly, hoping to find an exit, instead he found a pissed off minotaur-demon.
Ranma walked up soundlessly to the winded demon. He used one of his father's secret schools, the Yamasenken, with the help of a vacum blade, to decapitate the demon.
Its' body turned slowly, hard and pale, til it was completely stone. Then it crumbled into gravel.
He felt only a slight amount of remourse as he saw this, but he knew that if he let it live people would have been hurt. He learnt, and accepted, this after the Phionex Mountain incident. Having to kill Saffron was painful, but a necessary evil, to save the one he thought he loved.
Ah, the second lesson courtesy of Saffron. He thought, not sure what his feelings were towards the Phionex God, gratitude or hatred, pity or contempt! Whatever Saffron had done, he had enlightened Ranma's view on life.
He didn't love Akane. Sure, he said he did, but he didn't feel it. As soon as he said it he felt as if it was false and hollow: a lie. He had come to accept that, just like with the first 'lesson.'
Ranma walked away from the pile of dust, feeling hollow. All he wanted was to get out of this maze and enjoy a good soak at a local hot spring!

Ranma wandered around the maze, aimlessly, yet passivly active. He didn't want any more surprises like that demon being right behind him, to occur.
He came across an intressing little puzzle. He found a half-buried marble doorway, the unusual thing about it was the fact the demon hadn't went any more than five feet from it, the residue told him that much.
Curiosity, or a deathwish, drove him to go through the passage, by going over the mound of rocks and dirt and seeing what was inside. He was happy to find that he didn't die a gruesome death.
After he crawled warily through the opening, Ranma was in awe of what he saw.
Giant varnished oak bookcases covering all of the fifteen-foot walls, books and scrolls inhabiting them, disorderly. On the ceiling was covered in a mural of an ibisheaded man, another man with winded saddles, and a last figure of an amazingly beautiful eastern dragon, all of them slighly dulled by the layers of cobwebs and dust, both on the giant mural and everywhere else in sight..
It was obvious what it purpose was. A giant library!
Ranma, turned around and saw that around and above of the mostly blocked off doorway was devoid of any bookcases, instead, murals and scrolled writing decorated the walls.
In this extraordinary place, extraordinary things can happen, like Ranma enjoying reading! He learnt all that the murals could tell him. The story of the Sanctuary, a place of learning created by the mages of their enclove. The enclove being a group of Greek, Roman and Asian worshippers of their relative gods of Wisdom: Thoth, Hermes and the, ancient, forgotten Rana Hyru.
They created the library, teleporting to it when they needed to, depositing their scroll, and books of learning.
They created a place of arcane, devine, mystical, and martial knowledge that was and is unsurpassed, anywhere in the world.
The murals didn't say how they all died, how the library became abandoned, why they hadn't tried to save the knowledge from degradation.
Ranma menatally shrugged, and decided to tuck into those books and scrolls. Contrary to common belief, Ranma did like libraries; he just couldn't stay awake to read through a book, unless it was martial arts related. And from the looks of the rusted weapons adorning half of a wall and what the murals said, Ranma would love to sink his teeth into those books!