I don't own Ranma or Tenchi or any thing else that may be hinted at in here. So much fanfiction has been written that is guaranteed that anything I write is probably plagiarism of some sort.
Brief A/N: I have been aware that there are inconsistencies between the various Tenchi movies, TV series, and OAVs and that many fanfiction writers mix and match to put out what they want. I am no better than they are and put my own spin on the platter. Mea culpa, my bad, sorry...not. My stuph is AU and unabashedly OOC at times. While my writing is not as good as many, I just do this for fun and because I feel obligated to put something out there in return for the hours of enjoyment that other fanfiction writers have given me. I only pray that some few find it entertaining and decide to add their own creativity to this experiment. Okay, so it wasn't too brief. Frodo and Mary Sue live!...in the Poconos.
A Wild Horse and His Cabbit
Hello Nerth
RanmaRanmaRanmaRanmaRanmaRanma
Washu was sitting at the evening meal when her alarm started to vibrate. "Sorry folks, gotta go check on a project. No rest for the weary you know." A mad dash into the lab and seconds later, she had the screen displaying a map of Japan with two red dots that were so close together that they seemed to be one moving toward...her location. "Great! I love it when I don't have to chase guinea pigs down!"
Ranma was following LinOhki as she homed in on her mother and something yummy. They had made good time in spite of the occasional zig through a carrot field. Ranma had refined her flying and phasing ability during their travel. She had even figured out some tricks that Lin-chan didn't realize they could do. An example was phasing through the soil, leaving carrot shaped voids as she passed through the garden row, LinOhki had been pulling them out.
Finally, the two cabbits were looking at a valley containing a beautiful lake, a shrine and a large house that looked like something that Frank Lloyd Wright would have built. Lin-chan sensed the yummy goodness that would allow her and Ranma to fully evolve. It was just inside the house and through a twist in reality. The two cabbits moved carefully toward the house, using every available bit of cover. They both sensed several very powerful auras inside. Ranma felt her hackles rise at one of them, until she realized the feeling was coming from Lin-chan. An image of a man wielding a sword made of light seemed to appear in her mind. It seemed that he had been involved in causing LinOhki's mother pain. Filtering that out, Ranma couldn't sense any outright evil in the house.
They phased through walls and saw the space that they needed to penetrate. To their senses it looked like a cocoon of light behind the door to a broom closet under the stairs. They zoomed through a large living room filled with people, phasing through the walls and making a twist to enter the subspace pocket behind the closet door. The two saw the prize in a vat standing in one corner and LinOhki sped up and passed Ranma. Ranma's vision unfocused and her ki senses detected a shimmering crystal lattice surrounding the vat and had an instant feeling of foreboding. She sped up and shouted 'It's a trap!' through their link. Ranma knocked LinOhki to the side but could not avoid contact with the curtain of force. LinOhki watched helplessly as Ranma shrieked becoming tangled in the web of force. Ranma's last conscious thoughts were 'Lin-chan. Get the others! I ...'
Lin shot out of the pocket dimension and took ship form as soon as she had cleared the treetops. Even with full stealth mode she could feel a tracer trying to grasp her presence and didn't lose the sensation until about Mars orbit. LinOhki was worried about her bondmate and the lost linkage, but did not return to the valley with the shrine. She would do what her partner requested and pick up her 'crew' before trying to save her.
The great crystalline ship took a tortuous path back to Mount Horaisan, streaking in from a south polar approach, flying just high enough to avoid a ground effect rooster tail over the ocean. At last she was close enough to detect the campground with passive sensors, and every one was there except for the panda man. Lin did not want to mess around, so she proactively teleported every one and their effects aboard and shot out and away to the far side of the moon, leaving a crystalline probe in a geostationary orbit to monitor the valley.
Cologne, Shampoo and Mousse were seated on a couch in front of a monitor and a hologram of a cat-like person (Lin-chan had taken a lesson from Ranma's playbook). The old woman broke the silence hanging in the air that followed LinOhki's tale. "You now wish our aid in getting Ranma free of the trap that would have taken you?"
LinOhki's hologram spoke, taking a cue from Ranma's example. "Cologne-san, I believe that Ranma is in trouble that she won't be able to easily get free of. Whoever made that place knows entirely too much about my kind and I don't think that they will listen to me or Ranma because we were originally created to serve as ships and pets. Ranma and I are the first, to my knowledge, to be fully independent in thought and will. Though we share a link, I know that I can leave if I wish. What I need are people who can make my case and possibly act as partners to convince them that we aren'tjust property."
"Well, child, I 'am' willing to use my three thousand years of Amazon battle tactics to aid you in your quest, should it come to that."
"Okay, are you willing to take the lesser bond and be my captain?"
The Elder was stunned. An opportunity to be in command of a starship. To be trusted after the way that she had treated Ranma indicated a level of desperation or forgiveness that she wondered if she deserved. Of course it helped to have three hundred years of experience in the art of war. She cackled to herself a bit. "I would be honored to be your captain, LinOhki-sama." She bowed low to the hologram.
"Very well. I appreciate your friendship. Soon I'll initiate the bond and we can get in some practice."
"Now, I want to bring you up to date on the history of the Juraian Empire and Earth's place in it. Then we can prepare to save Ranma. I hope that it will be as simple as opening a channel of communication and straightening out a misunderstanding."
After educating her passengers on all things Jurai and the Galactic Police, LinOhki let them in on her plans to save Ranma and protect herself. Soon, she was several miles up over the center of the Moon's farside and the powering up began in a similar manner to the blatant show of power that had impressed Prince Herb, days before. Beams emitted from the forward crystalline structures and a globular chunk of the moon disappeared in a flash of light. The Moon now had a new crater about four miles in diameter and five miles deep. The edges overhung the black abyss that was the interior.
A beam came from a surface below the environmental dome, striking the center of the crater in the depths. Lightnings twisted and spiraled around the pillar of light as something formed and penetrated a good way toward the Moon's center. When it winked out a few minutes after it started there was a crystal pyramid several hundred feet tall. Only LinOhki knew its purpose and her passengers were not told the truth about its creation or why she invested so much of herself in it. When she was done, it was a simple matter to generate a moonquake that caused the overhanging edges to collapse, covering the construct from prying eyes. Burying the pyramid in no way reduced its effectiveness and would shield it from prying eyes.
Cologne sat meditating inside a crystalline construct as LinOhki went about placing organic crystalline linkups to her navigation, sensory, weapons, and drive systems in the Elder's brain. She maintained her overrides but gave the ancient woman plenty of leeway for battle situations. Unknown to the elder, were tie-ins to health maintenance nanites. Lin didn't want to lose her captain to frailty during a fight.
"Whheeee! Hoo Hah!" Cologne was having a blast. She wove through the asteroid belt like a bat out of hell. Make that an old bat out of hell. She could 'feel' the solar wind on her crystal skin. She could 'see' 360 degrees in x,y,z! Mousse and Xian Pu were terrified, watching the old crone sit in the captain's chair, cackling away while space spun around in a mad, dizzying dance outside the environmental dome. Every so often the gravitic compensators would shriek and they would float up or jerk into moment restraints that would appear in their seat. Suddenly on the far side of Saturn, a great hole formed in the rings as LinOhki shot through, slowing slightly as she absorbed the mass to neutronium ammunition.
Hours later LinOhki called a halt to the training as they grazed Europa at a significant fraction of light. To an earthbound telescope, it was the single most spectacular cosmic event in the solar system in decades, sparking debate about dark comets. "Cologne-san, let's not get too carried away. I think that you've gotten the hang of operating my systems in battle mode."
"Of course, dearie. Its just that I haven't had this much fun in 'centuries'."
"Cologne sensei, you've taught me a lot about battle acrobatics as a ship. Obviously Amazon Wu Shu makes excellent pilot training."
"When we get Ranma-chan back, we can come up with some cabbit katas for your ship form. If, as you tell me, Juraian ships can't maneuver like this, we will have an edge to compete with anyone." 'And I can start some long term plans for the tribe...especially if we can breed cabbits. I hope I can get Ranma to cooperate. Heh heh.'
Two days after creating the pyramid, LinOhki and her passengers were entering the atmosphere on a trajectory designed to approach the valley where Ranma had been trapped. At about one hundred thousand feet her sensors detected an explosion equal to the power of a tactical nuclear device in the valley of their destination. A ship of unfamiliar design emerged from the mushroom cloud, streaking off, followed by two cabbit ships. A scan showed that the house and a good portion of the valley had been flattened, except for one large tree. She figured that two of the ships were her mother and Ranma. Cologne concurred and turned to follow as discretely as possible while LinOhki tried to reestablish her link to Ranma.
A/N Sorry about the long dry spell and short chapter. The next chapter will go over what happened to Ranma and the Tenchi crew. It'll be out when it's ready. 27DEC05
