The Youngest Senshi

Chapter 3 "Pillars of Light-merging of destinies"

Disclaimer- No I don't own Ranma ½ or Sailor Moon, and I thank Rumiko Takahashi and Naoko Takeuchi for creating these two universes.

Ranma stretched and yawned. Ever since their arrival, Ranma had found he had quite a measure of peace he had never had before. Two months, and yet there had been no attacks from anyone from Nerima. This in itself was odd, because Ryouga should have wandered through by now, but he liked the change. At first, Ranma and Kasumi had been staying at the shrine, but then they had met Rei's friends. One of them, Minako, had taken an instant liking to Ranma, and had decided to take him in. But that wasn't the most interesting part of it all. The entire group was the Sailor Senshi. Ranma personally felt they were a little too strong, and for the most part unskilled. Fortunately, he had a plan for that. At the same time, he was beginning to see how Kasumi had held the Tendos together throughout the years after her mother's death. It seemed like she was a different person, a truly amazing difference. Yet…at the same time, she treated him differently than when he was his real age. Despite his protests, Kasumi had created a legal identity for his girl side and forced her to go to school. It was like she was trying to create a completely different persona. The only good thing is that Ranma did not have to wear any excessively frilly outfits. That, however, was about to change…

Minako Aino bounded into the room where Ranma lay rubbing his eyes. She had a plan today, and it involved shopping and Ranma's girl form. She had noticed that Ranma had no proper female outfits today, the beautiful day of Saturday, was the day to change that. Ranma would have a proper wardrobe; after all, Ranma couldn't learn to attract boys without having cute outfits to wear!

"Ranma, time to get up! I'm not going to let you sleep in on a beautiful Saturday morning like this one! It's time to go..."

The blonde paused for a moment, savoring the anticipation. At Ranma's pointed stare, her face broke into a grin.

"Shopping!"

Ranma merely groaned into his pillow. Shopping with Minako when she was shopping for herself was bad enough, even with everyone else around. At least she was treated in one way her own age, except as a girl. Minako seemed to have forgotten that Ranma's natural form was a GUY, permanently.

Eight hours later, Ranma had finally figured out the secret to Minako's bad grades. It wasn't that she wasn't stupid- she simply preferred to focus on fashions instead. Especially since she went on a quest to dress Ranma in every cute dress for little girls in every store in the mall, seemingly ignoring Ranma's wishes for a few pants. Currently, our poor protagonist was found dressed in an extremely frilly pink dress, complete with two petticoats, a pink hair band, and Sailor Moon slippers. Did we forget to mention the fact that Usagi had already seen him and planned to set out to make him a complimentary Sailor Moon outfit?

Suddenly, Minako's communicator beeps, and Ranma breathes a sigh of relief. Hopefully, this meant there was a youma attack, and he had a break from this madness Minako said "come on, we have to go, there is a youma attack."

Ranma had found out about their secret a few weeks ago, when he went looking for Minako once and went into the room they were meeting in. As it happened, the entire crew had been there, and Pluto had been in full uniform, which clued him in as to who the rest were. They were shocked that Ranma had gotten in so easily, but frankly while Ranma had gotten younger, he really had not lost any of his skills-just his speed and strength.

Getting in had been relatively easy, as Genma's skills at thievery had given Ranma the ability to pick any lock. The problem was that he nearly got hit by a Dead Scream when he walked in, as Pluto was the only one able to attack. Unfortunately, all her time spent alone had vastly improved her skills, thus meaning that she actually had the skill to attack. Fortunately, Usagi felt that Ranma had every right to know, since he had gotten in at all, and the Outer Senshi weren't about to doubt her on that, not since she had defeated Uranus and Neptune.

Ranma closed his eyes, as Minako transforms. The first time he had seen it, he had nearly passed out at the display of nudity, something, despite the comeliness of Minako, and he had no desire to see again. Suddenly, he was picked up, and off they went. Ranma hated it now; the senshi commonly roof hopped everywhere, and it made him nostalgic since he could no longer do so.

The sight of a battle appeared on the horizon, making Ranma's blood race. Being left on the roof of a nearby building, Ranma watched Venus fire off a quick Crescent Beam, instead of a long and useless introduction. At least he had managed to change the senshi's strategy somewhat to use sneak attacks, but they still lined up too often in shoot formations, rather than trying to actually outsmart the youma. Come on, it wasn't that hard. Unfortunately, the sneak attacks did not seem to be working today- the attacks simply seemed to bounce off the youma. Suddenly, Mercury's fog clouded the area, and the Senshi regrouped atop the building where Ranma watched.

"We need to try a combined attack; this youma is far too strong for us individually"

"But we've already thrown everything we have at it."

"I figured out that the youma has a weakness, however, to sound. So we need to catch it off guard with some noise."

"You mean Moon's crying could actually hurt this thing?"

Ranma rolled her eyes. It was always rather entertaining to see Usagi cry, but as Sailor Moon, she doubted Soun Tendo would be able to match Usagi. At least they finally came up with a decent plan.

Battle tactics had always seemed to be a problem with the senshi, since they generally had no formal training for this sort of thing. Most of their skills relied heavily on using high-powered combined attacks to bring the youma down, a strategy that often suffered, it seemed, against an opponents top ranks. Fortunately, they had gotten better at it after Ranma had resolved to teach the team basketball, which worked favorably to attack against even odds or when outnumbered. At least they weren't dancing around just trying to blast attacks at the youma now.

The fog cleared, and only to find one little problem to this plan. The youma had somehow managed to find its way behind Ranma, and promptly grabbed her up. The senshi gasped- how were they going to rescue Ranma? Venus looked shell shocked. Ranma realized that her current outfit was not very good for kicking, and needed a way out. So she attempted to use a battle scream, and suddenly, help came- in a much unexpected way. Both Venus and Ranma suddenly disappeared in a flash of light.

Hey everyone, I'm back, after over two years. I hope you liked this chapter. I'm sorry for making it move so fast, but the truth about Ranma and Minako will be revealed in the next chapter- including their current day relationship. I fully intend to release the next chapter within 2 weeks. I'm looking forward to your reviews, because I need help to improve flow anyway.