Disclaimer: This here Ranma ½ anime sure ain't mine, not by a longshot.

Timeline:

G.I. Joe is around five months before the events in G.I. Joe the Movie. It has been a year and a half ever since the episodes of Arise Serpentor Arise took place.

Ranma ½ is three weeks after Ranma's battle with Saffron.

The year is 1987

A G.I. Joe/Ranma ½ Crossover

Crossing the Line

By Darksoar

Chapter 1:

Self Discovery

Part One

It was a bright Sunday afternoon with beautiful weather. Birds chattered and flew about; a mild, cooling breeze swept through the tranquil (for the moment) district of Nerima. A young Japanese teenager, his hair tied in a pigtail and wearing his usual Chinese silken attire, was lying on top of the Tendo household roof.

However, despite all this, Ranma Saotome was not having a good day.

Correction, he was not having a good life.

It had been only three weeks since the free-for-all invitational disaster that at vaguely started out as a wedding. But that wasn't the real problem; the Musabetsu Kakutou practitioner had dealt with worse.

Saffron.

Even the thought of the Phoenix God's name brought the memories of the tragic battle that had taken place at Jusendo. There, Ranma had been forced to fight with Saffron so that he could get the water necessary to save Akane's life. The last image of Saffron's face, just before the Hiryu Shoten Ha struck him, was filled with denial, anger, and shocked amazement. Then he had died.

Only two days after their return to Japan and Akane's miraculous revival, Soun and Genma sprung the surprise wedding on them. But that proved to be a disaster when, informed by Nabiki (for a price, naturally), a group of Ranma's various rivals and other 'fiancées' had crashed it, literally. The end result was the destruction of the Saotome family house and a further straining of the relationship between Ranma and Akane.

For some reason, the disruption of the wedding had turned his fiancée into a vicious wildcat. She had jumped to the conclusion that Ranma had told Nabiki to INVITE them to the wedding for the reason so it couldn't be finished, and so Ranma could escape being married to her. This triggered an incredibly stubborn "hate-Ranma" mode that Akane had been tuned in for almost three weeks. Ever since after the wedding, she had been prone to abrupt mood swings, violent tendencies, and unpredictable behavior, at least where Ranma was concerned. Thanks to that, he had sometimes slipped back into his old routine of insulting her and acting as if he didn't care about her feelings. Actually, Ranma wasn't sure what he felt for her as of now. But one thing was sure, her malice towards him was getting tiresome, and he wasn't feeling too happy about her.

But that wasn't the most important of Ranma's concerns though, and he could dwell on that another day. Right now, he had bigger problems that needed his attention.

Things had happened so fast that it wasn't until a day after the catastrophe, Ranma had some rare free time to himself. He'd abruptly realized something that shook him to the very core of his being. That something had bothered him immensely and it couldn't be ignored.

He had killed.

He, Ranma Saotome, had killed. Against his personal code of martial arts and honor, he had taken the life of someone else. The realization of that act began to weigh down on his conscience, and despite his efforts to try and ignore it, he couldn't. He soon found out that this time was very different from any of his earlier battles. Before he could easily blatantly ignore and shrug off the consequences of his usually rash choices. But now, it was a whole different story.

Ranma felt as if his soul was tarnished with the blood of Saffron. At first, he tried to vigorously scrub his hands clean in the shower until they were red, but to no avail. The powerful, sharp guilt closed upon him with claws of depression and self recrimination. The fact that Saffron had been reborn almost instantly after his death or the fact that he had no other choice available both did not help at all. The result of his victory haunted him in his sleep and also every moment when his mind was idle.

He began to have nightmares, each time replaying the battle, each time with a different ending. In some he'd died, while in others, he'd failed to bring the water to Akane in time. A good portion of those ended the same as the real event, except that Saffron's death was grossly focused on and accentuated. As a result, Ranma had found himself waking in cold sweat late at night.

All those nightmares soon began to have a visible effect on him. Lack of a good night's sleep made him easily irritable and more short-tempered. To make matters worse, his other fiancées and rivals increased their efforts to try and push Ranma and Akane apart.

His sense of his own mortality was sharper now, and more acute. Instead of taking tomorrow for granted, he'd begun to experience a new appreciation for life he'd never known before. Slowly, but steadily, his view on life began to take on a gradual change. Ranma began to think ahead; about how to face the future rather than just wallowing in the present, and about how to learn from the past. With this new philosophy taking root, he took a long look at the past year; at what had transpired ever since he and his father had first arrived at Nerima.

Very quickly, he arrived to the conclusion that his life up to this point had been…less than desirable. To his great dissatisfaction, he came to the startling realization (for him) that ever since he was born and up till the present, he had been controlled or manipulated by others. Since he'd never stopped to see how his life was going, he hadn't been in a position in thinking of ways to improve it.

But now he had.

It all started with his Pops. Genma, Ranma decided, wanted to let his son grow up to be extremely dependent on him and also wanted his son to quickly marry just so he could retire early in life. Soun was an emotional wreck with a total loss of self-control who pushed just as hard as Genma for their two families to be finally united.

Nabiki was the manipulator of all manipulators, and a master blackmailer. Despite all of that, Ranma grudgingly respected her abilities which placed food on the table and just barely kept the Tendo's out of poverty. That respect was all that stopped him from retaliating for all the things she had done to him; he had realized a long time ago that he and his father had added to her burdens, so he let her profit off him. Unlike his father, Ranma's honor demanded that he do something in return for the Tendos in providing free room and board. That didn't mean that he had to like whatever blackmail she did to him, though.

Ranma managed a wry smile of amusement. "I wonder if Nabiki ever realized that all this time I've been letting her get close enough to me to take all those photos." Shrugging, he filed that thought away for later contemplation and went back to cataloging his problems.

Next on the list was, of course, the Amazons. Since the beginning, Cologne and Shampoo had given it their all to try and drag Ranma back to China as Shampoo's husband. In that, they had attempted all sort of things, from magic potions to enchanted items and pressure points. Lately, they'd been quiet for a bit, but Ranma was positive that they were building up for another one of their schemes. While Ranma was grateful of Cologne teaching him some incredibly techniques, he'd be damned if he was going to let himself be reduced to just being Shampoo's foreigner, if highly skilled, husband. There was no way in hell that was going to happen.

Amazingly Mousse had proven himself not to be much of a problem. In fact, Ranma hadn't suffered an attack by the blind Master of Hidden Weapons ever since they'd returned from China. The young Saotome didn't know why Mousse's aggression towards him was significantly decreased, but he guessed that it had something to do with the fact that he had destroyed Saffron in battle. The wedding could have done nothing but help with that new line of thinking. Even someone as blindly obsessed with Shampoo as Mousse was couldn't have blatantly ignored the fact that Ranma had been willing to marry Akane.

Thankfully, Ryouga himself had been scarce for a long while now. Ranma suspected that Akari had something to do with that, and he was grateful for that. In the past, Ryouga was one of his biggest problems, and his P-chan identity had greatly complicated Ranma's uneasy relationship with Akane. "Thank Kami-sama for small favors," he muttered, and gave a quick nod to the heavens, just in case Kami-sama himself was watching him at that moment.

As if to make up for Mousse's peace and Ryouga's absence, Tatewaki and Kodachi Kunou had stepped up their efforts greatly in order to "smite/slay the horrible/horrid cursed Saotome/pig-tailed wench and earn the affection of the pig-tailed goddess/the manly Ranma Saotome." It seemed that every time he was male, Tatewaki would be attacking him at school and Kodachi would be throwing herself at him. When he became female, then the opposite would occur. To Ranma, it was grating heavily on his already frayed nerves and he was sorely tempted to dish out some much needed payback. Oh, he'd resisted (admirably, in his own humble opinion), but the urge to beat both Kunos into next week was almost more than he could stand.

Even though he didn't hit girls, he was thinking that he would have to make an exception for Kodachi. That laugh of hers didn't even sound ladylike, it chilled him to the bone no matter how many times he heard it. In fact, it didn't even sound remotely human, so Ranma was halfway to thinking that maybe slapping her down for a while would be doing a service for humanity, however brief. Still, Ranma would only knock her out as an extreme last resort; he understood that she wasn't all that mentally stable. Kind of like her brother, she had the uncanny ability to warp reality and make it fit into whatever delusion she desired at the moment.

With her brother, Ranma didn't have any qualms about hurting him. It was just that the damned idiot was so stubborn and had an impressive capacity for punishment. Ranma would knock him down, and a minute later the older boy would be up, spouting passages in his pseudo-Shakespearean speech about how he would free the pig-tailed goddess from the black-hearted magic of Ranma Saotome.

As for his pal, the one he thought he could trust, Ranma didn't know what he would do. Although he was angry at Ukyou for aiding in the disruption of his wedding, he also could not, in good faith, blame her, for he could see things from her angle. Ranma was lost; he had no idea even where to begin to handle this situation. He'd have to think about it more; maybe he would ask Dr. Tofu for advice.

He sighed. Ranma was quite certain now that he didn't want the situation as it was to continue forever. Before the battle with Saffron, he would have just went on and blamed his curse for all of his troubles, but now Ranma saw that line of thought was stupid. Not only did blaming the curse do anything for his troubles, but it was a complete waste of time.

Now, instead of lamenting about the past, Ranma was now thinking about how to change his future for the better. He cringed inwardly as he reviewed his actions earlier that year in which he had done in order to try and get a quick fix for his cure. He shook his head, almost not believing all the unnecessary trouble that had resulted. While Ranma was still not fond of his curse, he came to the conclusion that if he had just thought to look ahead, even a little, back then, more than half those troubles would have been easily avoided.

All this time, his key to victory in his fights was being able to successfully adapt and counter his enemy's fighting style, whatever it was. Now, he had an idea to apply that said adaptability not only in battle, but in life as well. His innate stubbornness made it quite difficult to admit that he was wrong, that he needed improvement in anything besides martial arts. But with his new perspective, Ranma was determined to not make the same mistakes again.

'Amazing how causing death first hand could change a person's life,' he thought.

To put it plain, Ranma was sick and tired of people demanding that they knew better than him on how he should live his life. His resentment was building, bit by bit, every time someone attacked him out of the blue, every time someone tried to force their feelings on him, and every time someone tried to make him do things he felt he wasn't ready for. For the past three weeks, he'd been thinking on this; now he was ready to start acting on it.

"I'm through with this. No one's gonna force me do anything I don't wanna do. I'm sick and tired of taking all this crap everyone shoves off onto me. I ain't gonna continue to be a scapegoat and a prize to win. From now on, starting this very second, Ranma Saotome is a new man," he declared, feeling better for saying it out loud.

His current line of thought was interrupted by a annoyed sounding female voice shouting his name from below.

"Ranma, get your butt down here! And I mean now, you jerk!"

"Saotome," he addressed himself, "looks like you've got a chance to start practicing that new line of yours right away."

On impulse, he jumped to feet and shouted aloud, "Stronger than a maddened gorilla, faster than a moving snail, able to jump to conclusions at a single glance!" Ranma looked down into the Tendo's front yard at his irate fiancée and pointed straight at her as he continued, "It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Akane Tendo!" 'Hehe, call me a jerk for no reason, will you?'

It seemed that his new resolution would face its first challenge in the form of Akane Tendo's legendary temper.

Predictably, the irate girl got even more irate as a furious scowl dressed her face. "Baka!" she spat, "What idiotic nonsense are you babbling about now?"

"Nothin' that you'd understand," Ranma quipped.

Her eyes smoldered; her fists clenched. All that anger really made her more uncute, Ranma decided. Then he said, "Hey Akane, don't take it so seriously! I was just joking with you, so relax!"

Akane, he decided, wasn't showing any signs of lowering her temper. Ranma had known that she wouldn't listen to anything else he would say; he knew her well that when she was in a mood like this, Akane would only focus only on his insults. It was rare that she would pay attention to any of his attempted apologies or 'takebacks'. Knowing exactly what would happen in the next few seconds, instead of trying to run away, Ranma took the exact opposite course.

He hopped down from the roof and landed a few feet away from the angry girl, whose next words were, "Are you calling me stupid?"

Mindful of her proximity, Ranma folded his hands behind his back and exuded an apparent air of careless indifference. Glancing at her, he asked, "Did you call me a jerk just a minute ago?" Which wasn't really a question, but the pigtailed boy carefully watched for the expected reaction.

He wasn't disappointed.

"Ranma no baka!" Mallet-sama appeared with a blazing flourish in her waiting hands as Akane wound up to take her wrath out on a very deserving (in her opinion) Ranma.

Within the two seconds that it took her to get within striking range, a multitude of thoughts rampaged through his mind. Akane seemed to be charging forward in slow motion as Ranma's lightning quick mind tried to hatch a viable answer to the upcoming conflict.

It had been a painful and frustrating experience every time Akane had struck him with her damn mallet, and he couldn't return the favor because of his personal beliefs as a martial artist. Needless to say, there had been a few times when he'd desperately wanted the chance to get revenge on Akane for her impunity of hitting him at will.

Then a sudden thought struck him. 'Wait', he asked himself, 'don't I usually dodge Kunou's bokken, Mousse's weapons, and Ryouga's umbrella and bandannas? If that's so, why couldn't I dodge this mallet like I did their attacks? What's the difference between them and her?'

His answer was almost reflexive, and Ranma could practically hear his father's voice in it. 'Because she's a girl, and your fiancée. She's practically your wife, and was almost three weeks ago. If she hits you, then it's probably because you deserve it. She's right and you're probably wrong. Just take your punishment like a man, and that'll be it.'

With his usual stubbornness strengthened and given new direction by his recently voiced resolution, Ranma worked out an answer to that.

'Bullshit, that's just plain bullshit. I don't deserve to be hit now, because I didn't do nothing to her. Sure I teased her, but she called me a jerk first without me doing anything to her! And she won't even say that she did! Fiancée or not, I'm sick of being pounded on for something so small. It's like she uses the tiniest thing as an excuse to pull out that damn overgrown hammer and whack me with it. Well, I'm sick of that, and I'm sick of her doing that, and I'm gonna do something about it!'

He quickly ran through his options. Well, he still couldn't get back at her physically, but just what if he didn't let himself get hit at all? Maybe if he avoided the mallet completely until Akane ran out of juice?

'Hey, that sounds pretty good! I'll give it a try,' he thought.

Time resumed its normal pace as Akane swung, aiming for his head.

Ranma, two months ago, would've tripped over his own two feet in his haste to get away, and gotten painfully smacked in the air for it.

Today's Ranma, however, narrowed his eyes and smoothly ducked the swing that was aimed at his head. Before Akane could recover, he jumped over her and landed several feet behind her.

When the expected impact didn't happen, Akane found herself in a dizzying, brief spin and collapsed to the ground, her world a revolving blur.

The unthinkable had finally happened.

Ranma idly wondered for a second if they were enjoying the sudden snow down there.

He watched silently as Akane slowly got up, taking the time for her dizziness to dissipate. She turned around and saw him there, free of any of the usual marks that spoke of forceful impacts with a certain oversized hammer. Confusion, rage, and astonishment fought for supremacy as she struggled to come to grips with the fact that she had completely failed in hitting him. That wasn't supposed to happen!

Noting the interesting array of emotions running across her face, Ranma said, "I've decided to stop being your personal punching bag anymore, Akane. I gotta warn you, starting today, I'm not gonna let you hit on me whenever you feel like it, whether I've deserved it or not. How 'bout we talk it over?"

Quickly shaking off the last of her disorientation, Akane's wrath surged anew. Ignoring Ranma's suggestion, she pushed aside the confusion and shock, summoned her trusty mallet yet again, and charged.

Ranma remained silent, but he put on his best arrogant grin on his face. Akane saw that irritatingly familiar smirk, and it goaded her to push the attack. She instantly made it her mission right there and then to wipe that most hated of expressions off his face anyway she could. So with great resolve, sheer contempt and anger for a certain Saotome family member, she swung her mallet with righteous fury.

With such enthusiasm and determination, it was a real shame that she missed. And missed. And missed again. With every miss, her frustration and anger increased.

Never changing his expression, Ranma twisted and turned his body, ever so slightly dodging each mallet strike. He turned the attacks into such close misses that each time that mallet swung by, he felt the brush of air as it gently caressed his body. Sometimes the oversized hammer itself would make brief contact with his silk shirt, but not once did it ever hit his body.

Her frustration grew as she kept swinging and kept missing. It fed her anger and increased it until her self-control (or what little remained of it) completely evaporated. Everything else blurred into the background; the only thing she could see was that arrogant jerk in front of her. Summoning all of her anger, she raised her mallet for another attempt. "Die Ranma!"

He promptly responded by pulling down his eyelid with his index finger and sticking his tongue out.

"Arrrrgghhhh!!"

The futile assault continued. Ranma was quite surprised at himself for the ease he was avoiding the attacks. It was a mystery to him; how was he doing this so easily when just two months ago any of Akane's attempts would unerringly strike on target? Why was he able to dodge as successfully as he was doing right now? Why was it so easy, when it had been practically impossible before? Was it all because of that new resolution he made? Ranma found no quick answers to his questions as he was forced to pay a minimum amount of attention to his evasive maneuvering.

After a good five minutes, Akane finally ran out of energy and she stopped swinging her weapon. Her exhaustion and weariness had finally replaced all of the anger within her and, without the anger to fuel the mallet, it dissipated. She stood a few feet away from Ranma, hands on her knees, hunched over trying to get her breath back.

"Oh good, you're finally done. It's about time. Well, later 'Kane, I've got something important to do. See ya!"

With that, Ranma jumped onto the roof, grinning wickedly to himself. Ignoring the stream of vocal wrath from below, the pig-tailed teenager engaged in an abrupt session of roof-hopping. As he did this, he though back over to what had transpired. Upon reflection, his idea had worked out perfectly. He wasn't hurt, Akane wasn't hurt, and she was now too tired to try and exact further 'vengeance' on him. Hmm, maybe not that perfectly because doubtlessly later on she would take umbrage at him for his unusual, though flawless, defense.

But at least he had avoided getting malleted, which was a definite improvement on the usual ending of such matters. As Ranma reflected upon his next move, a sudden barrage of questions made themselves to him known in midair.

It was time to start getting answers to those questions. It was time to start planning. By tomorrow he would be ready to begin changing his life for the better.

Now, where was a good place to do so?

Akane Tendo was at a complete loss for words. She'd been pissed off at Ranma before, and some of the stunts he did had left her in absolute disbelief, but this was different.

This took the cake.

She would have never thought of Ranma being able to evade her mallet, let alone escape her without being hit once. It was such an alien concept that when her emotions were spent, her thoughts went in circles of denial and disbelief of something like 'I don't believe…impossible, can't be…he got away…missed…I don't believe…impossible, how could he…'

Akane thought she knew him pretty well, better than the other girls who chased him. Such was the case that it was quite understandable that she was completely thrown for a loop, and more.

So like a statue placed at the middle of the Tendo front yard, she stood there in shock, her mouth agape, her shoulders hunched.

Nabiki casually strolled out of the house and regarded her unmoving sister. Flicking her eyes to her wristwatch, she quickly noted that Akane had been standing there for an hour.

Shaking her head, she turned and walked back inside, muttering "Just this once, I don't want to know."

Ranma was at the park, having arrived there hours earlier. He'd avoided being seen by the other Nerima martial artists by using the Umi-sen-ken. Here only a few other people, mostly young couples and a peace officer, whom Ranma was familiar with, named Ken Takuki, were evident. That was fine with him; the less people, the less chances of being bothered. He'd come here in need of a quiet place to plan and strategize his 'master plan'.

Predictability. Routine. Old habits.

All of these were his greatest enemy, Ranma decided. Unlike in a fight, where his prime advantage was his adaptability, his actions and reactions were predictable in his day to day living. Several people took advantage by preying on those. He frowned, remembering more…

Cologne and Shampoo, offering him a 'quick fix' for his curse in order to try and secure him as Shampoo's husband…

Nabiki trapping him into her schemes by challenging him and by playing on his stubbornness…

Akane, fiercely pounding on him on a whim, taking advantage of his utter reluctance to fight back physically…

Ryouga, playing on Ranma's sense of honor by sleeping with Akane as P-chan…

Genma, purposely engaging him to other girls for selfish reasons and expecting him only to honor one engagement.

Tatewaki and Kodachi Kunou, pursuing both of his forms for their own lustful purposes…

Ranma was getting angry, incredibly angry. In fact, the last time he could remember being this mad was when Mikado kissed him when he was in girl form.

Several minutes passed. With some effort, and by using the Soul of Ice, he pushed it down. Right now he needed a clear head unclouded by any sort of emotion if his plan was to work. Chewing his lip, he descended into deep thought. After nearly half an hour of intense mental work, he came up with something promising.

"Well, if everyone wins by using me and my predictability to get what they want from me, then I'll stop offering them such obvious leverage. Before I start attacking, first I'd better strengthen my weaknesses as best I can."

Ranma frowned again. He wasn't fooling himself; he'd made a mental listing of what he thought of as his 'usual habits'. Such a list tallied many items, and to change them would be very difficult and could turn out to be impossible on his part.

Then his grimace transformed into a small, yet genuine smile. A burst of sudden laughter escaped from his lips and he chided himself. How could changing his habits be any difficult than what he had experienced and overcome in the past year? Every obstacle and challenge that had been thrown at him, he had faced head-on and triumphed over. It would be no different this time.

"I am Ranma Saotome," he declared to the open night, "and I won't lose!" Ignoring the startled looks and whisperings of the other park visitors, he crossed his arms over his chest and looked up into the darkened sky.

"And the game is on," Ranma whispered, his eyes gleaming with determination.

End Chapter 1

Author's Notes:

Well, due to being sick for nearly a week really cut down on my writing. Also, a sudden hard drive crash absolutely didn't help at all. Thankfully, a partial copy was on hand via diskette, and I just rewrote everything from there on up. Lesson learned, now I'm backing my work on cd-rws now.

Hope you enjoyed it. Cya next time in Chapter 2 as Ranma puts his 'master plan' into action. C&C will be much appreciated. Thanks!