Updated Chapter 1 on 6/14/04 to include Genma and Cologne's Escape from
Tokyo. These parts are located towards the beginning of that chapter and
are important to understand parts of this one. Thanks for Reading.
AN: Ranma Timeline (I have only read the manga and not watched the Ranma anime) – This story takes place after Herb, and just before Umi-sen-ken. So Ranma does not yet have knowledge of his mother (I'm pretending the short incident with his mother that happened sometime before the Umi-sen- ken never happened.)
AN: Sailor Moon Timeline – This obviously takes place at the end of the series making the inner scouts the same age as Ranma (16). I will state now that I have very limited knowledge about the later seasons of the Sailor Moon anime, just what I have read and two episodes of stars, so Sailor Moon nuts might have to be a little forgiving.
Ranma – A Senshi of Earth
Chapter 3: Where Angels Fear to Tread. [Tent 859, Refuge Camp A26]
Ranma paced the interior of the tent, a wave of dizziness passed over him almost causing him to stumble. It had been occurring whenever he was male since whatever it was had happened. The night he had transformed it had taken him two hours of trying before finally figuring out the mental trigger that released him from those ridiculous clothes. The sickness however was better than the near uncontrollable urge to find whoever it was he felt when in his girl form. It had been a week since then and when female it took nearly every bit of discipline to stop himself from leaving the camp and heading north. Someone was calling to him and whoever it was they were hurting badly. He couldn't help but feel that the person he was being drawn to knew the answers to his questions. He was stuck though. Until Soun showed up there was no way he could leave the girls, he had given his word to protect them. Growling in frustration he continued to pace again.
"Ranma Stop That! Anymore of that pacing and I'll send you north by air, get it!"
"Geez Akane, I can't help it okay. It would be bad enough to be cooped up in here without the weird stuff in my head."
Akane's hand visibly twitched but she restrained herself from belting the Baka. After all, the tent would probably get damaged and she had no desire to spend the remainder of the year in a leaky one. "Ranma," Akane said in a strained voice, "just stop the pacing and be still. Write something in your journal, draw, play solitaire, try to find some new way of meditating, but for the love of kami-sama and your own body stop the damn PACING!"
"Aren't we just the picture of domestic bliss." Nabiki said as she stepped into the tent followed by Kasumi.
"Any word about Daddy or any of our friends on the boards?" Akane asked nervously as Nabiki and Kasumi set down tonight's ration of MREs and took off their ponchos.
"Not yet Akane, but we did actually run into Sayuri in line. She's over in tent 530 with her mother. She said when the weather lets up she would try to come over." Nabiki said as she handed Akane her dinner. Akane smiled at the fact Sayuri was alright and even in the same camp, but frowned at the thought of not knowing what happened to her dad. "Don't worry Akane; I'm sure he's alright. I never thought I would say it, but for once I'm glad the panda came into our lives. He wouldn't have left father behind and he's sneaky enough to find a way into the camps, after all if he left father who would he mooch off of?" Nabiki reassured.
Kasumi walked to the back of the tent to hand Ranma his dinner. "Oh my Ranma-kun, are you feeling alright? You look pale."
Ranma took the dinner and set it down next to him. "I'm alright Kasumi. Just feeling a little queasy, it'll pass in a bit."
Kasumi nodded, she had noticed this since Ranma had become a magical girl. It tended to get worse the longer Ranma went without being female. After a little while he could change back and be alright for a while before he started to get sick again. "You should really change Ranma-kun. You always feel better after you do."
Ranma sighed, Kasumi was right, not that he particularly wanted her to be. He stood up and stuck his arm through the flap in the back of the tent. As the cold rain came down, he shivered and then felt his form change. Unlike before his girl body was now basically the same height as his boy form; it was the only good thing that had happened since the event. No longer looking up at everyone in the world was nice. She pulled her arm back in and dried it off on the towel that Kasumi handed her.
"Thanks Kasumi."
"You're welcome Ranma-chan. I'm sure that we will figure this all out." Ranma gave her a half smile before her stomach reminded her that she was no longer queasy and grumbled loudly. A decimated MRE package was soon the only evidence of her dinner.
.............................. [Cherry Hill Temple]
Pluto stepped out of the portal and sighed. The gates where still mostly useless due to the current upheaval but she had been able to get brief glimpses and they had been enough to confirm her suspicions. The power had linked with a girl. On one hand the new Sailor Earth would be significantly more powerful than Endymion would have ever been; which should help the scouts greatly. On the other she wasn't sure how the princess would take the news that she was now bonded to a girl. Just as the moon was bound to the earth by gravity the new scout wouldn't be able to help but feel Usagi and the opposite was equally as true. That link had been easily accepted by Usagi and Mamoru because of sharing it in a former life and the romantic involvement they had in both. How the two girls, complete strangers to one another, would react to having an irrevocable intimate bond between them that neither asked nor was prepared for she simply didn't know.
Setsuna walked into the bedroom in the temple where Usagi had spent most of her time since Mamoru had died. The future queen was currently staring out the window towards the south.
"I can feel her, somewhere off to the south I think. She's confused, anxious, bitter." Usagi stated in the voice and tone of Queen Serenity, another thing that had changed since Mamoru's death.
"So you already know."
"Yes. It's a strange feeling, having a stranger in my head, knowing only their basic feelings and none of the motivation or thoughts fueling them. I never really realized just how much passed unspoken between Mamoru and I until it wasn't there anymore. I suppose I can adjust, it's no stranger than the world has become. The only thing that troubles me is that every once in a while the feelings completely stop. The first time it happened I thought that whoever they were had died, but a few hours later they came back. It has since happened almost like clockwork every few hours and the first feeling to come through the bond every time it comes back is always resignation." She glanced over her shoulder towards Setsuna. "Were you able to find anything out at the gate?"
Setsuna stood in silence for a moment pondering what Usagi had told her. The last part was a little troubling. She knew of very few things that could sever the bond between the earth and moon senshi, few of them left a person sane or alive at all, and none of them was temporary. "Nothing but vague images, there is still too much chaos from the freeze; it will take awhile for the time stream to settle down into what will become the most likely futures. I know that the new senshi of Earth has bright red hair. I was able to catch a brief glimpse of her in the gate. It will be several more days before I am able to get anything more concrete."
"I understand, is there anything else?"
"No, for the moment there is little to do but wait." Setsuna hesitated for a moment before continuing. "Usagi you should leave this room once in a while. The others are worried about you."
"I know. It's hard, everything reminds me of him."
In a rare show of emotion Setsuna stepped closer to Usagi and gave the shorter girl a comforting, if somewhat awkward hug. After a moment Setsuna pulled back and looked into Usagi's eyes. "Just don't lose yourself in there Usagi; there is only so much of Serenity that one can take."
A ghost of a smile graced Usagi's face.
.............................. [Rail Line, 80 miles northeast of the bridge that connects Honshu to Kyushu]
Ukyo shivered as she braced herself against another gust of glacial wind. She felt a tug on her waist and suppressed her irritation as she pulled Ryouga back into line. There were about two hundred that had survived the train derailment. The survivors had tied themselves to each other in groups of five. Theirs had been the last train to depart from Tokyo before the brunt of the storm hit. As it was she doubted if half of those currently walking down the rails would survive the trip. She grimaced at the thought, but she was a practical person and the facts were not going to be denied. It was because of her practicality that she had been able to give Ryouga one of the yellow passes that guaranteed a person a space in the refuge camps on Kyushu. She had about thirty of them inside her pack. It had been distasteful, but the little yellow slips were simply too valuable to leave behind with people that would no longer be needing them.
Ryouga stumbled as Ukyo once again jerked him back onto the tracks that they were following. He hoped Akane was alright, if Ranma had let her get hurt he vowed never to forgive him. It would be the thirty-fifth such vow he had made since this morning. He grimaced as he felt a snowball pelt him in the head, but decided it wasn't worth it to turn around and find the perpetrator. The giggling behind him was a big clue. Not far from where the train had derailed they had passed a small suburban train station and found the luggage cart that he was currently pulling. Said cart was filled with a group of eight children ranging from two to ten years old. Ukyo had conscripted him into being a draft horse as soon as she had seen it. He just hoped his luck held out as far as his curse was concerned. He had taken as many precautions as possible: goulashes, rain suit, poncho, and his ever present umbrella. Under other circumstances he would have worried about just how ridiculous he looked in said getup being led by a rope and hitched to a cart to top it off. He thought he would likely have to fall into a lake to trigger his curse. With that disturbing thought Ryouga decided to keep an eye open for said bodies of water.
.................................... [Evacuation Command Center, Fukuoka, Island of Kyushu, Japan]
Soun anxiously sipped coffee in the cafeteria of Fukuoka Command, formerly known as Fukuoka Center High School. Nodoka stood beside him and he was having an increasingly difficult time avoiding answering the woman's questions about her son.
"My son must be quite manly for you to have entrusted the safety of your daughters to him?" Nodoka said in a way that was half a statement and half a question.
Soun chuckled nervously; Genma had told him of the ill-fated pact concerning Ranma's manliness. "He is an exceptional martial artist Saotome- san, I'm sure you will be impressed by his skill in the art." Soun Hedged.
Nodoka frowned slightly before stating in a quiet voice, "He should be, after ten years...." She then perked up. "Tell me, is he popular with girls?"
Once again Soun let out a nervous laugh. "You could say that Saotome-san."
Nodoka smiled and briefly descended into a fantasy about what her manly son was doing unsupervised, alone, and confined in a tent with Soun's three daughters. Images of grandchildren danced in front of her eyes for a moment before she spotted a panda in the uniform of a Colonel in the Self Defense Force walking towards them. Said panda was leaving a wake of stunned silence among the enlisted personnel running back and forth on various errands.
Soun spoke first, his anxiousness for his daughters slightly besting Nodoka's for her Son. "Were you able to find out which camp they were assigned to?"
The panda nodded and then whipped out a sign. =Yes, their train number was assigned to=, Flip, =Camp A26 down by Kagoshima.=
Nodoka getting a little exasperated at communicating via sign with a panda grabbed Soun's coffee cup from his hand and threw its contents on the surprised and now scalded Genma.
Genma, after frantically brushing off the near boiling liquid from his face, continued. "It will take a little more bluffing to get transportation there however. Don't worry not even this crisis will prevent the schools from being united!" Genma stated as he raised his fist in the air.
"Husband, stop your foolishness. I've waited ten years and I don't want to be separated from my son a moment more than there is need to be."
"Yes dear." Genma sweated, he still wasn't sure what he was going to do to prevent Nodoka from learning his son's secret. It had been impossible to hide his own curse from her, and had thus far told her that he was the only one that had been cursed in the springs. Even then he had very nearly been skewered for simply taking the boy to such a place.
............................. [Ridge overlooking Kagoshima, Japan]
Ranma stared down from the ridgeline at the city of Kagoshima and the bay beyond it. She was pretty sure that the city would become the focal point of what was left of the country. She could see the huge green spread that was the refuge camps encircling it like a hostile army preparing to lay siege to the town. She was cold, but it was the first day since they got here a week and a half ago that it hadn't been raining, sleeting, hailing, or snowing and no amount of cold was going to keep her in that tent today. The run from the camp and the climb up the ridge had done wonders to relieve some of her stress and brought her back from the brink of cabin fever. The officer in charge of their camp had given today as a free day, mostly to let the ground dry out some, but had told everyone to be sure to pick up their duty assignments for tomorrow when collecting dinner tonight. It was a smart move, both for the fact that there was a lot that needed to be done simply to maintain the vast camp and the fact that giving the people something to do would keep them out trouble and keep them from thinking about missing friends and families. So Ranma had fled the camp as soon as she could wolf down her breakfast and now stood watching as more and more small boats made their way into the harbor in the fading light of day.
'Oh well, might as well do what I said I was going to when I left this morning.' Ranma thought as he took out a small pen that appeared in his hand after he had de-transformed. As soon as her hand wrapped around it a phrase jumped to the front of her mind. Even though she felt stupid she followed the subtle urging of her body's new instincts and raised the pen above her head and called out,
"Earth Star Power, MAKE UP!"
AN: Ranma Timeline (I have only read the manga and not watched the Ranma anime) – This story takes place after Herb, and just before Umi-sen-ken. So Ranma does not yet have knowledge of his mother (I'm pretending the short incident with his mother that happened sometime before the Umi-sen- ken never happened.)
AN: Sailor Moon Timeline – This obviously takes place at the end of the series making the inner scouts the same age as Ranma (16). I will state now that I have very limited knowledge about the later seasons of the Sailor Moon anime, just what I have read and two episodes of stars, so Sailor Moon nuts might have to be a little forgiving.
Ranma – A Senshi of Earth
Chapter 3: Where Angels Fear to Tread. [Tent 859, Refuge Camp A26]
Ranma paced the interior of the tent, a wave of dizziness passed over him almost causing him to stumble. It had been occurring whenever he was male since whatever it was had happened. The night he had transformed it had taken him two hours of trying before finally figuring out the mental trigger that released him from those ridiculous clothes. The sickness however was better than the near uncontrollable urge to find whoever it was he felt when in his girl form. It had been a week since then and when female it took nearly every bit of discipline to stop himself from leaving the camp and heading north. Someone was calling to him and whoever it was they were hurting badly. He couldn't help but feel that the person he was being drawn to knew the answers to his questions. He was stuck though. Until Soun showed up there was no way he could leave the girls, he had given his word to protect them. Growling in frustration he continued to pace again.
"Ranma Stop That! Anymore of that pacing and I'll send you north by air, get it!"
"Geez Akane, I can't help it okay. It would be bad enough to be cooped up in here without the weird stuff in my head."
Akane's hand visibly twitched but she restrained herself from belting the Baka. After all, the tent would probably get damaged and she had no desire to spend the remainder of the year in a leaky one. "Ranma," Akane said in a strained voice, "just stop the pacing and be still. Write something in your journal, draw, play solitaire, try to find some new way of meditating, but for the love of kami-sama and your own body stop the damn PACING!"
"Aren't we just the picture of domestic bliss." Nabiki said as she stepped into the tent followed by Kasumi.
"Any word about Daddy or any of our friends on the boards?" Akane asked nervously as Nabiki and Kasumi set down tonight's ration of MREs and took off their ponchos.
"Not yet Akane, but we did actually run into Sayuri in line. She's over in tent 530 with her mother. She said when the weather lets up she would try to come over." Nabiki said as she handed Akane her dinner. Akane smiled at the fact Sayuri was alright and even in the same camp, but frowned at the thought of not knowing what happened to her dad. "Don't worry Akane; I'm sure he's alright. I never thought I would say it, but for once I'm glad the panda came into our lives. He wouldn't have left father behind and he's sneaky enough to find a way into the camps, after all if he left father who would he mooch off of?" Nabiki reassured.
Kasumi walked to the back of the tent to hand Ranma his dinner. "Oh my Ranma-kun, are you feeling alright? You look pale."
Ranma took the dinner and set it down next to him. "I'm alright Kasumi. Just feeling a little queasy, it'll pass in a bit."
Kasumi nodded, she had noticed this since Ranma had become a magical girl. It tended to get worse the longer Ranma went without being female. After a little while he could change back and be alright for a while before he started to get sick again. "You should really change Ranma-kun. You always feel better after you do."
Ranma sighed, Kasumi was right, not that he particularly wanted her to be. He stood up and stuck his arm through the flap in the back of the tent. As the cold rain came down, he shivered and then felt his form change. Unlike before his girl body was now basically the same height as his boy form; it was the only good thing that had happened since the event. No longer looking up at everyone in the world was nice. She pulled her arm back in and dried it off on the towel that Kasumi handed her.
"Thanks Kasumi."
"You're welcome Ranma-chan. I'm sure that we will figure this all out." Ranma gave her a half smile before her stomach reminded her that she was no longer queasy and grumbled loudly. A decimated MRE package was soon the only evidence of her dinner.
.............................. [Cherry Hill Temple]
Pluto stepped out of the portal and sighed. The gates where still mostly useless due to the current upheaval but she had been able to get brief glimpses and they had been enough to confirm her suspicions. The power had linked with a girl. On one hand the new Sailor Earth would be significantly more powerful than Endymion would have ever been; which should help the scouts greatly. On the other she wasn't sure how the princess would take the news that she was now bonded to a girl. Just as the moon was bound to the earth by gravity the new scout wouldn't be able to help but feel Usagi and the opposite was equally as true. That link had been easily accepted by Usagi and Mamoru because of sharing it in a former life and the romantic involvement they had in both. How the two girls, complete strangers to one another, would react to having an irrevocable intimate bond between them that neither asked nor was prepared for she simply didn't know.
Setsuna walked into the bedroom in the temple where Usagi had spent most of her time since Mamoru had died. The future queen was currently staring out the window towards the south.
"I can feel her, somewhere off to the south I think. She's confused, anxious, bitter." Usagi stated in the voice and tone of Queen Serenity, another thing that had changed since Mamoru's death.
"So you already know."
"Yes. It's a strange feeling, having a stranger in my head, knowing only their basic feelings and none of the motivation or thoughts fueling them. I never really realized just how much passed unspoken between Mamoru and I until it wasn't there anymore. I suppose I can adjust, it's no stranger than the world has become. The only thing that troubles me is that every once in a while the feelings completely stop. The first time it happened I thought that whoever they were had died, but a few hours later they came back. It has since happened almost like clockwork every few hours and the first feeling to come through the bond every time it comes back is always resignation." She glanced over her shoulder towards Setsuna. "Were you able to find anything out at the gate?"
Setsuna stood in silence for a moment pondering what Usagi had told her. The last part was a little troubling. She knew of very few things that could sever the bond between the earth and moon senshi, few of them left a person sane or alive at all, and none of them was temporary. "Nothing but vague images, there is still too much chaos from the freeze; it will take awhile for the time stream to settle down into what will become the most likely futures. I know that the new senshi of Earth has bright red hair. I was able to catch a brief glimpse of her in the gate. It will be several more days before I am able to get anything more concrete."
"I understand, is there anything else?"
"No, for the moment there is little to do but wait." Setsuna hesitated for a moment before continuing. "Usagi you should leave this room once in a while. The others are worried about you."
"I know. It's hard, everything reminds me of him."
In a rare show of emotion Setsuna stepped closer to Usagi and gave the shorter girl a comforting, if somewhat awkward hug. After a moment Setsuna pulled back and looked into Usagi's eyes. "Just don't lose yourself in there Usagi; there is only so much of Serenity that one can take."
A ghost of a smile graced Usagi's face.
.............................. [Rail Line, 80 miles northeast of the bridge that connects Honshu to Kyushu]
Ukyo shivered as she braced herself against another gust of glacial wind. She felt a tug on her waist and suppressed her irritation as she pulled Ryouga back into line. There were about two hundred that had survived the train derailment. The survivors had tied themselves to each other in groups of five. Theirs had been the last train to depart from Tokyo before the brunt of the storm hit. As it was she doubted if half of those currently walking down the rails would survive the trip. She grimaced at the thought, but she was a practical person and the facts were not going to be denied. It was because of her practicality that she had been able to give Ryouga one of the yellow passes that guaranteed a person a space in the refuge camps on Kyushu. She had about thirty of them inside her pack. It had been distasteful, but the little yellow slips were simply too valuable to leave behind with people that would no longer be needing them.
Ryouga stumbled as Ukyo once again jerked him back onto the tracks that they were following. He hoped Akane was alright, if Ranma had let her get hurt he vowed never to forgive him. It would be the thirty-fifth such vow he had made since this morning. He grimaced as he felt a snowball pelt him in the head, but decided it wasn't worth it to turn around and find the perpetrator. The giggling behind him was a big clue. Not far from where the train had derailed they had passed a small suburban train station and found the luggage cart that he was currently pulling. Said cart was filled with a group of eight children ranging from two to ten years old. Ukyo had conscripted him into being a draft horse as soon as she had seen it. He just hoped his luck held out as far as his curse was concerned. He had taken as many precautions as possible: goulashes, rain suit, poncho, and his ever present umbrella. Under other circumstances he would have worried about just how ridiculous he looked in said getup being led by a rope and hitched to a cart to top it off. He thought he would likely have to fall into a lake to trigger his curse. With that disturbing thought Ryouga decided to keep an eye open for said bodies of water.
.................................... [Evacuation Command Center, Fukuoka, Island of Kyushu, Japan]
Soun anxiously sipped coffee in the cafeteria of Fukuoka Command, formerly known as Fukuoka Center High School. Nodoka stood beside him and he was having an increasingly difficult time avoiding answering the woman's questions about her son.
"My son must be quite manly for you to have entrusted the safety of your daughters to him?" Nodoka said in a way that was half a statement and half a question.
Soun chuckled nervously; Genma had told him of the ill-fated pact concerning Ranma's manliness. "He is an exceptional martial artist Saotome- san, I'm sure you will be impressed by his skill in the art." Soun Hedged.
Nodoka frowned slightly before stating in a quiet voice, "He should be, after ten years...." She then perked up. "Tell me, is he popular with girls?"
Once again Soun let out a nervous laugh. "You could say that Saotome-san."
Nodoka smiled and briefly descended into a fantasy about what her manly son was doing unsupervised, alone, and confined in a tent with Soun's three daughters. Images of grandchildren danced in front of her eyes for a moment before she spotted a panda in the uniform of a Colonel in the Self Defense Force walking towards them. Said panda was leaving a wake of stunned silence among the enlisted personnel running back and forth on various errands.
Soun spoke first, his anxiousness for his daughters slightly besting Nodoka's for her Son. "Were you able to find out which camp they were assigned to?"
The panda nodded and then whipped out a sign. =Yes, their train number was assigned to=, Flip, =Camp A26 down by Kagoshima.=
Nodoka getting a little exasperated at communicating via sign with a panda grabbed Soun's coffee cup from his hand and threw its contents on the surprised and now scalded Genma.
Genma, after frantically brushing off the near boiling liquid from his face, continued. "It will take a little more bluffing to get transportation there however. Don't worry not even this crisis will prevent the schools from being united!" Genma stated as he raised his fist in the air.
"Husband, stop your foolishness. I've waited ten years and I don't want to be separated from my son a moment more than there is need to be."
"Yes dear." Genma sweated, he still wasn't sure what he was going to do to prevent Nodoka from learning his son's secret. It had been impossible to hide his own curse from her, and had thus far told her that he was the only one that had been cursed in the springs. Even then he had very nearly been skewered for simply taking the boy to such a place.
............................. [Ridge overlooking Kagoshima, Japan]
Ranma stared down from the ridgeline at the city of Kagoshima and the bay beyond it. She was pretty sure that the city would become the focal point of what was left of the country. She could see the huge green spread that was the refuge camps encircling it like a hostile army preparing to lay siege to the town. She was cold, but it was the first day since they got here a week and a half ago that it hadn't been raining, sleeting, hailing, or snowing and no amount of cold was going to keep her in that tent today. The run from the camp and the climb up the ridge had done wonders to relieve some of her stress and brought her back from the brink of cabin fever. The officer in charge of their camp had given today as a free day, mostly to let the ground dry out some, but had told everyone to be sure to pick up their duty assignments for tomorrow when collecting dinner tonight. It was a smart move, both for the fact that there was a lot that needed to be done simply to maintain the vast camp and the fact that giving the people something to do would keep them out trouble and keep them from thinking about missing friends and families. So Ranma had fled the camp as soon as she could wolf down her breakfast and now stood watching as more and more small boats made their way into the harbor in the fading light of day.
'Oh well, might as well do what I said I was going to when I left this morning.' Ranma thought as he took out a small pen that appeared in his hand after he had de-transformed. As soon as her hand wrapped around it a phrase jumped to the front of her mind. Even though she felt stupid she followed the subtle urging of her body's new instincts and raised the pen above her head and called out,
"Earth Star Power, MAKE UP!"