Super To See You — Attempt 3
Ranma stretched and yawned. Someone had been yelling at him in English to wake up from outside his bedroom door.
Fragments of memory were coming back to him. He'd been found as a baby in the center of a crater after a large explosion in the desert.
Testing had confirmed he was human, but the nurses had discovered his changing gender while bathing him so it was decided to foster him to a super family, as they were more equipped to deal with the unusual.
The Strongholds had just had a son a few months before and when they'd heard the government wanted a super family to adopt a child who could turn out to be super himself, they leapt at it.
Both had been the only child in their families and they wanted their children to get the chance to have a sibling, but, their continually on-call status meant that just taking the time off to have Will caused a thirty percent increase in the crime rate.
Yes as far as they were concerned Ranma was a godsend.
With his memories returning he knew how he'd gotten here. It had been a Sailor Moon fused universe and he'd tried to save Hotaru from being forced to relive childhood again just to see if he could.
He'd ended up blown into a foreign universe by the destruction of the creature-alien-god at the school, but he was pretty sure he had succeeded and Hotaru hadn't been reduced to a baby, even if he had been.
Rather than suffer through childhood and potty training for a 2nd time he'd locked away his memories. It was just easier that way and now that summer was beginning and high school was approaching his lock on his memories was released.
He had a pretty good life with none of the chaos that generally followed him. Truthfully he missed it a little. Maybe high school would provide a bit more excitement. Sky High certainly sounded like fun.
*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*
"Morning everyone!" Ranma said cheerfully, dressed in his comfortable silk tongs.
"Morning, dear," Josie said smiling at her son. "Nice outfit."
"Thanks," Ranma replied. "It's stylish, comfortable, and fits either sex I happen to be at the moment."
"Any luck controlling that this year?" Steve asked hopefully, knowing that the uncontrolled changing of genders made things more difficult for his son/daughter than they needed to be.
"Yep, my powers kicked in, I have complete control now."
"That's great!" Steve burst out, quickly followed by Josie and Will's agreement.
"So fireproof and can change sex at will?" Will said. "I'd go with something like phoenix for a name."
Ranma chuckled. "I also have a good deal of martial arts skill but I'm a bit out of shape."
Josie's eyes lit up. "So would you like to practice with me?"
"I'd love to," Ranma said shifting to his female form.
*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*
Summer had passed all too quickly as far as Ranma was concerned. Sure he'd managed to get back into acceptable shape, but he'd been a bit rushed and had to reveal more of his abilities than he'd planned on and Will was feeling a bit jealous since his powers had yet to make an appearance.
Ranma leapt up on the roof just in time to see Layla hand Will an apple. "Holy shades of paradise, Batman! Seeing the two give him blank looks he sighed. "Adam and Eve? Bible? Girl handing guy forbidden fruits?"
"I was trying for a lemon," Layla said. "But I can't seem to get lemons right."
"If you ate more lemons that wouldn't be a problem. It's easiest to create fruit you are familiar with, which is why you can get oranges and apples easy, but lemons are beyond you."
"You'll have to excuse my brother, since his powers kicked in he thinks he knows everything there is to know about having powers," Will said a bit bitterly.
Ranma narrowed his eyes. He could understand Will being a bit upset because he hadn't gotten his powers yet and Ranma had, but that didn't give him the right to take it out on Ranma.
Layla winced and tried to think of something to say to defuse the situation, but before she could say anything...
Ranma held out a hand and a branch from a nearby tree reached out for him, sprouting a lemon as it did so and dropping it in his hand.
He handed it to Layla and hopped off the roof without a backward glance.
Will groaned and buried his face in his hands. "And I keep acting like a jerk to him."
"How many powers does he have?" Layla asked shocked.
"He's always been fireproof and able to switch sex, but now he's better than mom at hand to hand, definitely stronger and faster than normal, and I've seen him cling to walls like a fly."
Layla peeled the lemon while Will talked.
"He once muttered something under his breath about turning me into a jackass if I kept acting like one, but I'm not sure if that was just wishful thinking or not, especially now. What are you doing?"
Layla made a face. "Eating a lemon. I'm going to see if he's right."
Will sighed. "He probably is. Since he got his powers... sometimes it's like he's older than mom and dad. I miss my brother even when he's here, but I can't be in the same room with him without turning into a jerk."
Layla made a noise like she was trying to talk, but it came out garbled. Will looked up and started to laugh as apparently she'd stuffed the entire lemon in her mouth to try and finish it as quickly as possible.
"Let's see if it worked," Layla said and held out her hand just as a nearby branch dropped a lemon into it.
"Notice my lack of shock," Will deadpanned.
*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*
Ranma looked in the mirror again and sighed, she may have preferred to spend most of her time as a male, but she missed having breasts. Sure it was just because of her pride in her female-side's good looks, but it was still annoying to be nearly as flat chested female as male.
Grabbing her backpack Ranma hopped down the stairs and breezed through the kitchen managing to snag a full breakfast on her way through and kissing her parents goodbye.
Will looked over at his sister who was scarfing down some sort of breakfast sandwich with one hand and holding a glass of juice in the other. "Why are you attending as a girl? I thought you were a guy now. and isn't mom going to get mad at you for taking glasses from the house?"
Ranma tossed back the juice and the glass vanished. Sure showing a variety of powers wasn't really helping things, but Ranma was still annoyed at him. "What glass? I'm registered as female and I'm never going to be all one or the other with the way I am."
Will nodded and sensing his sister's mood decided to keep quiet rather than risk opening his mouth and sticking his foot in it again.
Layla added another power to the list of things Ranma could do and briefly wondered if it was going to feel strange showering with him...erm, her.
The bus pulled up and Ranma could tell it was the right one, unless there was another school bus filled with empowered teens on this route. Ranma hopped on board and found a seat next to a bespectacled black kid who was probably written off as a geek throughout high school, but had a surprisingly deep well of power.
"Hi, I'm Ethan," he introduced himself extending a hand.
"Nice to meet you, Ethan. I'm Ranma. If it's not being too nosy, what's your power?"
"I melt," he admitted reluctantly with a blush, unused to pretty girls taking an interest in him and not exactly proud of his powers.
"I'm going to need more detail than that. The possible powers from those two words number at least half a dozen."
"Sorry," Ethan apologized. "I turn into a puddle of liquid Ethan."
"Including whatever you're holding or wearing?" Ranma asked.
"Yeah." the boy said dejectedly not looking up at her as his face felt like it was on fire.
"How big a puddle?"
"Not very," Ethan sighed.
"Is your smaller liquid state very dense?" Ranma asked curiously.
"Not noticeably," Ethan replied nervously, wondering where she was going with this line of questioning.
"So basically you can add and subtract mass as well as size, because at your volume you should be a really big puddle or an extremely dense one."
"I guess so," Ethan replied, feeling a bit better about his power.
"I'm assuming you reform everything when you reform yourself, so have you ever had anything you thought was damaged, but when you reformed it was fine?"
"Yeah, for instance, I discovered my powers when I got hit in the face with a soccer ball. I heard my glasses crack and suddenly I was a puddle, but they were fine when I reformed."
Ranma nodded. "So you can manipulate matter in its melted state.."
"I never even noticed half of all this and it's my power," he said in wonder. "What's your power?"
Ranma grinned. "A little bit of this and that. Strong and fast with an instinctive grasp of martial arts as well as fireproof and able to switch gender at will."
"Wow! You're hero material for sure!" Ethan enthused.
"Nah, I'm only going to admit to fireproof, and changin' sex. Being a hero is mostly ego, I'm more interested in the programs available for sidekicks."
"I never thought of it like that," he replied thoughtfully.
"I'm thinking of forming a group after graduation, which means I'll need competent well trained people, not glory hogs. See, my parents barely had the time to have my brother and adopted me because they didn't have enough time to have any more kids, unless they wanted the villains to take over while mom was on maternity leave. So I figure with a group of people working together we'll be able to cover an area more efficiently." Ranma was making it up as she went along, but the idea was sounding better the more she thought about it.
"So are you trying to recruit me?" Ethan asked hopefully, not having a lot of friends and seeing this as a way to get some.
"Not yet. I won't be recruiting for a while, but for that to work I'm going to need a decent size group of well-trained people to recruit from, so really I'm scouting for potentials and you hit the radar as having great potential, plus the seat was open, so I figure I'd scout you while introducing myself."
"I hit the radar?"
Ranma grinned. "I can sense power levels and despite what you think, you have a good amount. With proper training to learn to manipulate it, your power should be a hell of an asset."
"And if I can't do anything but switch it on or off?"
"Then it'll just be a minor tool for you. Your powers aren't all that you are, they are the smallest bits of you. With the right tools and training I can turn anyone into a hero."
"Huh," Ethan blinked. "I never thought I would be a hero without my power."
"The most important thing you can have is the will to succeed and the right attitude, anything else is a bonus."
Ethan smiled and relaxed, just before automatic restraint harnesses snaked out of the seat and strapped everyone down and the bus drove off an uncompleted overpass.
Ranma's laughter as they fell shocked Ethan out of screaming like everyone else on the bus and he began to laugh with her as the jets kicked in sending the bus hurtling through the sky.
*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*
Ranma chuckled to herself as the bus driver gave Will his card and generally acted a bit like a fanboy.
"Ron Wilson, bus driver for sky high. Both his parents were pretty big names in the business, but he never got his powers, at least, he hasn't got noticeable ones yet," Ranma explained.
"Yet?" Ethan asked curiously.
"His aura's pretty strong meaning he has some power, but unless I spent a week examining him I couldn't tell you what it was doing or how to get it to activate or whatever."
"So you could give him powers?" Ethan asked.
"I'm not talking about empowering someone," Ranma explained. "I'm talking about bringing latent power forward, but there is always a chance they won't like the results. For example, you know The Mad Wrangler?"
"Draws power from the amount of cattle he has around him, militant vegetarian terrorist?" Ethan asked.
"Yep. His powers connected him to the nearest source of cattle when they activated and unfortunately that was a slaughter house at the time. Before he got his powers he was a short order cook and normal as you please."
"I never heard that," Ethan said.
"I did a thorough study of all information available over the summer, including a lot that were locked away in secure systems, as preparations for joining this world," Ranma said, waving a hand at the massive school and it's grounds, floating above the clouds.
"How'd you get access?" Ethan said curiously, being enough of a geek that he'd love to be able to read through the data she described.
"I had an A.I. friend of mine go digging for it, I'll see about grabbing an extra datapad for you to read through it later."
"Thanks," Ethan began, just before a tornado of wind formed around them forcing all the freshman together.
Ranma caught sight of the chubby teen herding them together, but before she could do anything Ethan, wanting to impress Ranma, melted right into the speedster's path sending him skidding out of control and into the fountain.
Ethan reformed just a second before an angry, soaking wet speedster attempted to hit him.
Attempted because Ranma caught his fist easily despite his speed, and pulled it down so they looked more like they were shaking hands. "Man good thing you startled The Melter into activating his power, because mine almost went off and getting hit with it would suck!"
Speed was shocked at how easily this freshman girl was handling him, but her words penetrated quickly. "What's your power?"
"I'm Ranma Stronghold and I change people's gender."
Ranma shifted to male and back to female in front of the startled teens. "Changing my own back and forth is easy, I've had practice, but with other people it sometimes takes me months to change them back, if at all."
Speed was so pale he could have been mistaken for an albino or a ghost or something. "Thanks, man," he said sincerely to Ethan. "I was just showing off a bit, but now I'm going to go change." And he was gone.
"You still activate your powers on accident?" one of the freshman asked.
Ranma chuckled. "Nope, but we don't have to let speedy know that, do we?"
Ethan got some pats on the back for his quick action.
"I don't remember you ever changing someone's sex before," Layla said.
"You expect me to tell the truth to a bully?" Ranma asked, to a lot of laughter.
A voice from the front of the group called for attention. "Hello everybody, I'm Gwen, a senior and I'm here to show you around."
"Thanks for covering for me back there," Ethan said as they followed the crowd.
"Nah, you did good. Fast response and the best use of your power at the time. I'd fake having it happen a few times where he can see you just to back it up though. I've always favored faking a sneeze making it go off. It's like performance art."
"I'll do that," Ethan said thoughtfully as they filed in and a man with a voice like thunder introduced himself.
"I'm coach Boomer, you may remember me as Sonic Boom. I'm here to test you for power placement, where I'll decide whether you are a hero or a sidekick," he almost sneered the last word.
As the testing went on it became rather obvious that he was only interested in impressive looking abilities and that he liked dropping cars on people a little too much for comfort.
"Hero support, right?" Ethan asked.
"That's what we're shooting for," Ranma assured him.
"Good cause that's all my powers are good for at the moment."
"Meh, if you like we'll grab hero status senior year."
Ethan quickly climbed up on stage and as expected was labeled a sidekick, retaking his seat with some satisfaction.
Zack's demonstration of glowing in the dark brought a groan from the two, who really felt for the poor guy.
"Don't suppose you can do anything with his power?" Ethan asked.
"Almost no power unfortunately. If he turns out to be a decent guy I'll see if he can handle power without becoming a jerk, but his current power isn't really important."
"You can give him power?"
"Sure, I know dozens of ways to turn people into heroes, but I want to make sure he won't become a villain with it first."
"Ranma Stronghold?" the coach said with a grin. "I worked with your parents, come on and show me what you got!"
Ranma walked up to the coach who gave her a funny look.
"Adopted," she explained as he made an 'oh' of surprise and nodded.
"I'm fireproof and I can change people's genders. The second is still a work in progress. Changing them is easy, but changing them back is a bitch."
The coach snorted. "You've got to be kidding me," figuring she was simply making up powers.
"Nope, those are my powers."
"Well we aren't allowed to set students on fire, so I guess you'll have to use your second ability," he said sarcastically.
Ranma shrugged and flicked a finger at the coach, changing him to her.
"What the?!" Boomer shrieked causing most of the students to clasp their hands over their ears.
"Easy Coach. Female vocal chords are different than male ones. Rather than having a voice that slams people around you have one that can shatter concrete. More edged," Ranma explained.
"Change me back," Boomer demanded — read whined.
"I told you it's not that easy. Fortunately for you I was focusing on making it reversible, so by the end of the day I should be able to change you back, if not I'll be able to do it easy by morning."
"Quite an interesting couple of powers," Boomer said trying to think of a way she could send the girl to the sidekicks without having to worry about sitting down to pee for the rest of her life.
"More sidekick territory than hero," Ranma said bluntly giving him the out he was looking for. "If I get perfect control that may change, but for now I'd suggest sidekick."
"Good call," Boomer said relieved and waved her down to the sidekicks.
"Will..." The bell rang interrupting her. "That's lunch people we'll pick it up with Will after lunch."
Layla poked Ranma in the side to get her attention. "I thought for sure you said you couldn't change people's sex and you only mentioned a couple of your powers to the coach."
"I didn't say I couldn't, I just gave the impression I couldn't. What I actually said was never tell the truth to bullies, I hadn't planned on showing I could, but Boomer quite literally asked for it," Ranma explained.
"And the additional unmentioned powers?"
"I feel like being a sidekick this year. I hear they get much better training," Ranma said exchanging grins with Ethan.
"Easy for you to say," Will groaned. "He's going to kill me for being related to you."
Ranma rolled his eyes and flicked his hand through over a dozen ninja hand signs in a blur of movement before slamming a glowing palm into the center of Will's chest.
Will's breath rushed out for a second as he hit the wall.
When he caught his breath he immediately pulled out the front of his pants and boxers to make sure he still had his original equipment.
Will was so relieved he didn't even notice the wide eyed and extremely red faced Layla who'd take the chance for her own peak.
"What was that for?"
Ranma handed will a sphere about the size of a softball. "Squeeze it."
Will squeezed it and figured it must be some kind of silly putty until it heated up and he dropped it to the ground where it made a harsh clanging noise.
Ranma picked it up. "If you deform metal quickly it heats up."
"You activated my powers?" Will asked, wide eyed.
"Normally it's better to let your powers activate at their own pace and I wouldn't interfere, but Boomer is going to drop a car on you after lunch," Ranma said. "I'm afraid you are going to have to skip lunch and do some quick adapting so you don't hurt anyone."
"Sure," Will said instantly.
"Layla he'll need your help," Ranma added.
"Not a problem. I'd love to help," Layla offered.
"Good, Now I could explain how the exercise works, but frankly that would take hours. If you really want me to explain I'll do it after school, for now I just need you two to practice," Ranma explained. "Pick a place where you two won't be noticed and grow some bushes around for privacy. Will you hug Layla very carefully, as if she was made of glass with her letting you know when you get the pressure right. She also has to squeeze you back in turn. If you two do this in a confined area about the size of a closet so your auras continually overlap each other he should be mostly in control of his strength by the end of lunch. Now shoo, times a wastin'."
Layla drug off a barely protesting Will.
"That will teach him to control his strength?" Ethan asked.
"Yep, it's about the fastest way. The fact that it'll also clue him into the fact that Layla is a girl and crazy about him is a bonus," Ranma grinned.
Typing by: Stephenopolos
TN: This attempt seems much better.
AN: Third times a charm. I think this one came out much better.