Prince Lost, Knight Found
A Ranma Nibunoichi x-over
by Matthew Talbain
Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma Nibunoichi, nor do I own Sailor Moon. Pyra (Flame), Glacia (Ice), Alundra (Lightning), Erosa (Love), Tecta (Earth), Ocea (Water), Thanata (Death), Krona (Time), and Faytha (Healing) ARE mine, though I got the idea for 'em from Jade Hunter's "Love For All Time".
--------------Chapter Two: Who I Am--------------
Ryouga paced in the emergency room of Juuban Memorial Hospital. His thoughts drifted to the young man whose life was hanging by a thread. A young man Ryouga had realize mere moments ago was, and had always been, a friend.
Ryouga's thoughts drifted back to the day he'd first met Ranma. Sure, Ranma'd gotten the bread, but it wasn't Ryouga's in the first place. It was up for grabs. Ranma had earned it by getting it. Then, that afternoon, they'd fought. Ryouga had lost, but Ranma hadn't insulted him, as Ryouga had been doing since their meeting in the cafeteria. Ranma had called it a "good match" and led Ryouga home. The next morning, he'd led Ryouga to school. It became a sort of ritual, a daily thing. Go to school, cafeteria war, after-school battle, go home.
And then, Ryouga thought, came the day of the challenge. He'd spent four days trying to find that lot, four days, and Ranma was nowhere to be found. Ryouga had found a scrap of paper from a Chinese brochure, a page about the Bayankala mountain range. And so he'd followed them.
He'd been blaming Ranma for every little mishap, every single spot of bad luck, ever since that day. But today, Ryouga had been proven wrong. Ranma had thought of Ryouga as a friend ever since they'd first met. And it hadn't been Ranma's fault he wasn't at the duel, even four days later. It was his father, Genma's, for beating Ranma unconscious and practically kidnapping him. Ranma had wanted to wait for Ryouga.
And now, the very day Ryouga had accepted that Ranma was not at fault for anything other than the occasional curse-cure fiasco, which weren't even his fault in the first place, the young man Ryouga had finally accepted as a friend...was bleeding to death, his lung pierced by a tree branch. Ryouga sighed, kicking himself for not realizing things sooner. That Akane was a spoiled, possessive bitch, that Ranma had been the one to go through Hell, that Ranma had always been a friend, no matter what...
But now it might just be too late. He looked over to Mousse, who he knew was having similar thoughts. Mousse had certainly been blind, not realizing that Ranma wanted little to nothing to do with the Amazons. Hell, they'd both been blind. But that did nothing to change Ranma's condition. Ryouga sighed and sat down, unaware of a new weight, the weight of a long, ornate serpent sword resting against his backpack. Moments later, he got up to go to the bathroom. He was so distracted he never realized he made it their and back without once getting lost.
Mousse was indeed having similar thoughts. How could he have been so blind? Ranma had never wanted Shampoo. Mousse had only felt threatened and responded, rather inappropriately. He'd realized that Ranma had indeed been a friend, but it had taken so long. After all the times they'd fought side-by-side, battling Herb, the Ghost-Cat, Saffron, and the Seven Lucky Gods, how could he have not realized it? It was of little matter, it didn't change the fact that Ranma had had a tree branch rammed through his rib cage earlier that morning.
Mousse had thought long and hard on another matter, as well. Shampoo. She was acting to him almost exactly as Akane had acted towards Ranma. She severely disapproved of him going out with any other girls, she hated him touching her, and she despised that he could talk Japanese more fluently than her. And with each "transgression", Mousse would find himself in a world of hurt, much like Ranma every time Akane perceived a slight to her person or another by Ranma, even if it had just been a sneeze. And Ranma was dying from such treatment. When would Shampoo decide she was using too little force and nearly kill him for something he had little control over?
Mousse vowed then and there to change, and promptly found his feelings for Shampoo disappearing. He wondered for a brief moment before realizing that he hadn't been allowing himself to see past his own twisted emotions. Shampoo had been using him as a tool, and Mousse had had enough. He was so caught up in his thoughts that when an elderly woman looking for her glasses asked Mousse what time the clock read, he didn't realize he could read the clock face without any trouble. Nor did he notice the pair of footand-a-half-long curved fighting claws resting in the sleeves of his robes.
Both looked up from their musings when a young woman, a gorgeous, tall brunette, ran into the hospital. For some odd reason, she felt vaguely familiar to the two of them. They shook it off when she looked at them, tears in her eyes.
"Where's my brother? Where's Ranma?"
Ryouga leapt to his feet, followed by Mousse. Neither wasted time in restraining the girl and sitting her down. As they were about to begin explaining to her, Nodoka appeared from within the hospital's depths, a doctor at her side. The brunette ran forward and held her close. Both women were in tears.
"Ahem, Hibiki-san, Tsu-san. I apologize for the wait, but we needed to take time to see if his lung was healing properly. We have the assurances of one Ono Tofu that he will indeed be fine, in time, but we needed to be sure."
Ryouga's heart jumped. That had to mean he was alright!
"So what's the news?!"
The hearts of all present fell when the doctor cleared his throat.
"It's amazing, simply amazing. His body is healing at an accelerated rate that his martial arts training can't account for! I watched the wound in his long stitch itself back together before my very eyes!"
Ryouga's own eyes widened as he thought of the implications. Ranma's ki must be dangerously low after healing that fast. And a sudden loss of ki would mean...
"However, despite the healing of the wound in his abdomen, he has yet to awaken from his comatose state."
"NOOO!!!!"
The wail rose up from the brunette in Nodoka's arms. She barreled past the doctor and into the hall beyond, looking into each room for the black-haired martial artist she knew her brother was. The doctor's pleas were silenced by a crowd of three following the brunette, Ryouga in the lead. They ran through the hospital's recovery rooms, checking each one until they found a site that left all three speechless.
Ranma lay in bed, his head propped against a pillow, tubes connected to his nostrils and wrists. An EKG wire was connected to his bare chest, and an intravenous drip delivered fluids and nutrients to a tube in his neck. The brunette was holding his hand, crying softly as she looked at his face. He appeared gaunt and lifeless, though Ryouga could tell by looking into his cloudy half-open eyes that Ranma was fighting a battle within himself. And from the looks of his EKG, he was winning...
Okay, so it wasn't really a battle. Ranma was just doing push-ups in a blank area of his own consciousness. He'd been there for a while, and was starting to feel rather restless when a misty shape appeared in front of him. Ranma pushed especially hard against the floor and flipped backwards, taking a loose stance in front of the shape.
It was him. The hair and clothes were different, but it was him, albeit rather cloudy and blurry. Ranma moved forward and waved a hand through the figure.
"Wha...?"
The figure chuckled and shook its head.
"Ranma, Ranma, Ranma...welcome to your inner mind. I'm Ravyn."
"Lemme guess....you're the me I've been seeing in my dreams? The Ravyn that Helios was talking about?"
"The very same."
Ranma nodded, having expected something like this to happen ever since he'd felt the joy of being with Helios at Phoenix Mountain.
"Alright, so I know who you...uh...I...WE are. So what was up back then? And why're you so blurry?"
Ravyn sighed.
"Forty thousand millenia ago, there was a grand kingdom that spanned the Solar System. This Moon Kingdom lived in a prosperous age called the Silver Millennium. All was ruled by the Queen of the Moon, the Queen Serenity. Everyone looked up to Serenity, even the queens of the nine planets surrounding the sun. However, there was a kingdom within the sun that held even more power than Queen Serenity herself. It just never chose to exercise that power, and very few knew about it. It was the Sun Kingdom, ruled by Emperor Apollo Sol and his two sons, Helios and Ravyn Sol."
Ravyn paused to see that Ranma had absorbed all he'd said. Ranma merely nodded, an indication for Ravyn to continue.
"The Serenity at the time was the sister of Apollo, making her our aunt. She enjoyed having us at the palace. When we were but one year old, our father fell in love with the queen of Jupiter. Within a year, we had a younger half-sister, a wonderful girl named Sonata. We loved her dearly, and were fiercely protective of her growing up. Our older brother, Helios, was also protective of her. We grew up together, and kept nothing from each other.
We were ten when we met Koga and Fox. The two were fighting over some pointless asteroid. Koga, the shadowed fighter, was from Nemesis, the tenth planet, known for its intense gravity and incredibly harsh environments. Fox, we found out later, was from an ice giant that existed only then, Cristar. It was to ice as our sun was to light and Nemesis was to shadow. The Three Giants, our homes were called back then.
Anyhow, we stopped their battle ourselves. Within an hour, we were all laughing and joking with each other, Koga, Fox, Sonata, Helios, and us. We became inseparable, playing together, joking together. We were a rowdy bunch as we grew older. But no matter how many pranks we pulled, we were all loved by the courts of every single planet.
But things change, and the peace was not meant to last. On our sixteenth birthday, the Guardian Spirits of Sol, our sun, Cristar, and Nemesis approached Koga, Fox, and us. They said our services were needed, that the Senshi would be no match for the threat ahead. We accepted the burdens presented us. We became the Phoenix Knight of the Sun, of Sol, and we fashioned a weapon from the purest light, a weapon that took the name of our title, Phoenix. Koga, who I believe is Ryouga in this life, became the Dragon Knight of Nemesis, and his weapon, Shadow, was an ornate black serpent sword, though he could change it into a long black spear. Fox, your friend Mousse, was transformed into the Tiger Knight of Cristar. His weapon was a pair of silver-and-black striped fighting claws, though he could change them into a similar katana."
Ranma nodded.
"We fought many threats to the Silver Millennium, detecting each before even Serenity with her Silver Imperium Crystal. You, the leader of the Knights, crafted a set of nine gems, modeled after the crystal, to help us detect a threat to each planet. The gems were each cut from the core-gems of the planets they represented, with Earth as an exception. Instead of Earth, you used a cut from the center of the moon. The gems were Faytha, the diamond of healing from the Moon, Pyra, the ruby of fire from Mars, Glacia, the aquamarine of ice from Mercury, Alundra, the garnet of lightning from Jupiter, Erosa, the topaz of love from Venus, Ocea, the sapphire of water from Neptune, Krona, the emerald of time from Pluto, Tecta, the amethyst of earth and space from Uranus, and Thanata, the onyx of death from Saturn. Each of them was carved into a geometric diamond and fastened into our breastplate by our father.
It wasn't much later that we fell in love. It was a curious thing, that love. We started out hating each other, Setsuna hating us for being so damned good at what we did and "getting one over her scouts", and we hated her because she wouldn't lay off insulting Sonata. But one day, she foresaw a threat in the Gates of Time and showed up at our bedroom door in the Palace of Sol. She cried and begged us not to go, saying if we died she wouldn't know what would happen to us. Now, she didn't know it, but we'd gotten a vision from Krona that in a battle for Cristar, she would die. We felt the same way, and asked HER not to go. We both went anyway. We survived, but when we got back, the first thing we did, in front of the whole ballroom full of victory celebrators, was ask Setsuna to marry us. We were wed in a week.
"It was fortunate we wed then. If we'd waited any longer, we'd never have known how we felt about each other. During our wedding, Cristar had been destroyed. The backlash killed Fox. But we had no time for mourning. Beryl, a jealous bitch duchess from Earth, attacked with her legions of youma, decimating each planet systematically. There was a brief pause in the assault while she gathered forces to attack the Moon. She could never take the sun, so she never tried. But during the lull, she sent three assassins to kill Koga and I in our sleep. Each of us was injected with a sample of her blood. The chaos inherent in her blood filled us, replacing our silver blood of Order with the black blood of Chaos. The conflict was killing us. Koga died after saying two of them, and we finished the last one ourselves before using my magic to teleport to the Sea of Serenity. We landed on an outer wall of the palace and fired my last bolt of magic. After a brief goodbye with all of the senshi and our sister, we sent them in to protect the palace, the queen, and our wife before we detonated the light energy within us, taking out most of the youma and injuring four generals of Beryl's in the process."
Ranma felt a gentle tug of awakening, but ignored it. He looked up at Ravyn. "So why're you so blurry?"
Ravyn sighed.
"I'm blurry to you because of the Chaos within your blood. Because you were born human, and no, Genma is NOT your father, you can live with the Chaos flowing through your veins. But there is no Order to balance it, and without Order, I cannot give any of myself to you, just my memories. When you wake up, you'll remember everything I do. But you'll still be you, if you wish. There will be some changes, but nothing too strong. And your transformation to Phoenix Knight might have changed. You'll have to follow your instinct on that one."
Ranma nodded, somehow understanding, and he took a deep breath.
"Anything else?"
Ravyn nodded and held up a scared, black kitten with a moon crescent on her forehead. Ranma almost leapt backwards, but found that he was not afraid of the kitten.
"This little guy is Aten. He was our advisor, and recognized us for who we were when we were six in this lifetime. He allowed Genma to catnap him and bonded his soul to yours when he was killed during the Neko-Ken training. He's the spirit that takes over when you go cat. With my help, when you wake up, you'll be cured of your fear and Aten will be nearby. Take care of him, Ranma. He was one of our best friends, and he's been scared ever since you met Akane."
Ranma nodded and obeyed the pull, Aten's shape glowing with a fiery light...
Ryouga gasped as Ranma's eyes fluttered open. Ranma looked over to the brunette holding his hand, then his eyes flicked over to Ryouga, Mousse, and Nodoka. Ranma looked up and sighed.
"Hi, guys. Sorry 'bout this."
Ranma's signature quote was cut off as the young brunette threw her arms around him and hugged him fiercely.
"Hi, Ranma...I'm Makoto Kino, your sister..."