Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Ranma ½ and its characters and settings belong to Rumiko Takahashi, Shogakukan, Kitty, and Viz Video. Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko, Koudansha, TV Asahi, and Toei Douga, and DIC.

I didn't exactly burst through the door to my apartment, but I did enter with full powers active and senses at their peak. I wasn't really worried. Probably some demon or another, stopping by to pay me a visit.

Yep. Two demons, actually.

"Ranma," one of them said politely, "would you like to share our meal?" He— at least I think it was a 'he', never can tell with those chaos demons though— lifted the remains of a human heart. I was about to zap someone when I noticed they had laid a tarp out so that none of the blood got on my carpet.

"Uh, no thanks. Not into cannibalism. So what brings you by the neighborhood? Oh— and by the way, who are you?" I had mostly relaxed, keeping only a trace of power with me just in case someone decided to crash the little party.

"Don't tell me you don't recognize your old pal Phil?" he asked, feigning hurt feelings.

"Ah, Phil. What happened to the scar?" I never meant to cut his head in half; eight-year-olds tend to overreact when the boogey man crawls out from under their bed.

Phil reached across the bloody tarp and patted the other chaos demon lovingly on the bare, boil-covered scalp. Now that I looked closely, I could see a slight set of breasts on the other one. Wow, that's like finding a human woman with basketball-sized implants.

"Cindy here is an excellent demonic healer," Phil cooed. Demons getting sappy, what was the world coming to? Never mind, stupid question.

"Hi, Cindy. Nice to meet you." I threw myself onto the giant sofa and flipped the TV on. "Not to sound like an ungrateful host, but what are you two doing here? Tokyo is pretty much the devil hunter capital of the world."

"That's why we're here," Phil sounded scared, probably for Cindy. "We've been attacked by three different sets of them. I think the last ones were the Sailor Senshi, but they were different than what the stories say."

I grinned sheepishly. "That's my fault about the Senshi. I made a deal with one of them, a powerful temporal mage, to teach them magic in exchange for a way to mask that damned demonic presence that I give off. Turns out that I got screwed over in the deal. The thing that hides my true presence turns me into a girl. Guess I should have known better than to make a blood pact."

Phil was looking at me in sympathy, horror, and not a small amount of anger. "You're actually teaching those little girls how to be better killers? Ranma, I thought you were smarter than that." Not many people can get a moral dressing-down from a demon that's feasting on someone's heart— my next-door neighbor's, for all I knew.

"Look at it from my perspective. I'm human. I figured maybe with Pluto's help I could actually settle down for a little while, have a relationship that lasted for more than a weekend, and get a job. Always have wanted to try my hand at assassination." There's supposed to be this big time law firm out in L. A. that specializes in supernatural stuff. They occasionally put word out that they were recruiting. "But the ring she gave me turns me into a girl whenever I use it. This isn't exactly fun on my part. Sailor Pluto is probably wishing that she had never met me now, though." I grinned maliciously. "Remember that big book of curses I found in your closet last year?" Phil nodded. "She's currently on number seventy-three."

The breath hissed out of Phil and Cindy's lipless mouths in their form of laughter. "Where'd you put the nipple?" he asked, the topic of my and his Senshi problems forgotten for the moment.

I tapped the end of my nose. "It should fade away in a few months, but for now it'll be hard as hell to cover up."

"When you say she's on the superfluous nipple curse, do you mean you've done all the ones before that to her?" Cindy asked. She too must have a copy of that book.

"Yep, all in two weeks, too." I watched TV while the demons finished their meal. When they had cleaned up their mess, they joined me in the living room. "Where you been lately?"

"Family reunion," Phil answered. "My great-great-aunt was in charge this year, and she picked a plane so far from earth that we had to sacrifice ten virgins just to get there. She was 'accidentally' left behind when everyone else went home." Phil shuddered. "It was a horrible place, Ranma, all covered in wildflowers and cute little birds."

I myself don't really have anything against flowers or birds; I do, however, know the effects they can have on some demons. I grimaced in sympathy. Back to more important issues. "I know for a fact that the Senshi won't be out for the next few hours, and they don't go out in the morning. I've been regularly kicking their asses and calling it physical training." It really was, but Phil didn't need to know that. "I wouldn't bet on any one of them being able to stand right now."

"Could we crash here? Cindy and I both had to use a lot of energy to escape."

"Sure, no problem. I don't have a spare bedroom, but this couch is one of those fold-out deals."

Cindy was in the bathroom doing whatever female demons do to get ready for bed when Phil slipped over to me and my latest attempt to locate Setsuna's home. The spell collapsed before it even got close. Oh, well.

"Ranma, I didn't want to mention it in front of Cindy since there's no reason to frighten her, but there were some other guys out tonight. They were all non-Talented humans, I'm sure, but they had some unusual weapons with them. They tried to get us when Cindy was unconscious from the energy drain of a spell, but when we got away they turned on the devil hunters. Just figured you might not want to get too comfortable in that woman disguise. They probably won't care if you come across as good or evil."

"What kind of weapons?" I asked while using a small hand broom to clean up the chalk dust from the spell. I think that I had spotted the same guys Phil was talking about last week, real military types, but I needed to be sure.

"Looked like a new kind of stun weapon that throws weak energy bolts. Not particularly strong by itself, but they could lay down continuous fire and there were at least a dozen of them."

I nodded. That kind of firepower can add up quick-like. "This place is safe, I'm sure. If you want to, you and Cindy can just stay for as long as it takes to fully recover, and I'll help you leave the city. I don't really get much company, anyway."

"Listen up, girls," I said to the gathered Senshi. I'm proud to say that Ami and Makoto were taking the time before lessons began to practice what I had already taught them. "If you ever run across a couple of demons with yellow hamburger-ish skin that drips puss, don't try to hurt them unless they're trying to tear someone's heart out. Even then, I just want you to scare them away." I had talked this out earlier with Phil, just encase he ever needed to hole up in my apartment sometime.

"We fought some like that last night," Usagi said cheerfully.

"Yeah, those are the same ones I'm talking about. They're friends of mine, and the only reason that one of you girls isn't short a heart this morning is because they were tired from fighting off earlier attacks by more wannabe devil hunters like yourselves." 3… 2…1… bingo!

"Friends?!" Rei exploded. "You're friends with heart-eating puss demons?" she demanded.

"Actually they're heart-eating chaos demons. Puss demons are much more lumpy and have a gray complexion. And yes, I'm friends with them. I'm friends with lots of demons. You don't think some little old lady working in a tea shop taught me magic, do you?" I snapped.

Rei seemed no less angry, but her enthusiasm was greatly deflated. "But… demons…"

"Not all demons are bad," I said carefully. "Sure, some of them may eat a person occasionally, but who here doesn't like to eat a cheeseburger every once in a while? It's not their fault that they were made that way. I would have died years ago if demons hadn't saved my life." I let that sink in before continuing. "I'm not saying don't kill demons. No; but if you see one minding its own business, just scare it off. They tend to go into hiding for a while if confronted by someone strong enough to take them out. Demons in the process of killing, eating, or hunting people— they're fair game."

"You can't tell us what to do," Rei almost shouted. Angry tendrils of flame were writhing around her hands. Oh ho, what have we here? She couldn't honestly be planning to challenge me. Only Usagi had that potential, and that was years and a brain transplant down the road.

"Well, not really, but my advice is still worth listening to. Mostly because almost all demons you find just walking around not trying to do demonic things are supremely confident in themselves, which means they have power, maybe more than you can handle. None of you girls should forget that you're just beginners in the heavy sorceries."

The next few hours were spent going over simple kata for the energy swords that I had included in the new Senshi transformation. I didn't really care whether they cut their own feet off with the things or not, but it was so fun watching Usagi try to fight a tree, I just couldn't help myself. I wrapped up the session by introducing them each to the first part of a new spell. They were far enough along that I had broken their education up to the elemental affinities that they so strongly possessed. Their limitation was going to save me years of time.

Ami caught up to me before I left and asked, "Earlier today when you said that demons saved your life, why did they do it?"

"They thought that what my father was doing to me was atrocious and that children shouldn't have to suffer like I was." She gave me a blank stare full of horror. Oops, I think I gave her the wrong idea. "He was trying to teach me a new martial arts technique. It involved throwing me into a pit of starving cats while wrapped in fish stuff. I was six at the time, so you can imagine…"

She lost the repulsed look and got one of profound sympathy. "Was your father a demon?" she asked in a whisper. "I promise not to tell anyone."

"No," I laughed, "he isn't a demon. He's just the biggest moron ever." I patted her shoulder. "Thanks for caring, though." My fading into the shadows didn't really surprise her. She was far enough along and sensitive enough to trace my path through the darkness.

Over the next few weeks, the Senshi continued to learn from Ranma. With the exception of Usagi, they were all steadily improving, Ami most of all. Setsuna found herself the victim of three hundred and seventeen temporary curses, a new world record. A race of super-powerful dimensional space slugs landed on earth with the intention of conquering it for its use as a vacation spot. Fortunately, the invasion fleet arrived in the oven of a noted French restaurant and was never heard from again.

The population of the United States of America embraced Windows X with the same wholehearted enthusiasm that they always have for new and mostly useless crap. Unfortunately, Windows X allowed Bill Gates to take control of all electronic equipment larger than a wristwatch. The United States was promptly renamed the Land of Gates. The new Wizard of Gates immediately began funding an advanced genetic research program with the mission of reengineering Janet Reno into a Sasquatch.

"Anyone want to go out for ice cream?" I asked.

The girls were all pretty perky because I hadn't made them do anything but memorize part of a spell. I had never invited them out with me, though, and I wasn't sure how they would react. It was damned funny the way Usagi's eyes glazed over and she began drooling.

"Ice cream!" the blonde cheered.

Mental note: use ice cream to make the idiot learn. All I had to do was work out some kind of controllable mental suggestion that wouldn't allow her to eat ice cream… hmm, that bore definite thinking over.

"That'd be great," Minako said with much greater control than I had expected.

The ice cream parlor was about to close when we finally arrived, but when the man behind the counter saw Usagi he threw a knife across the room and pinned the sign that a younger man was turning to say Closed to the wall.

"Are you stupid, Hiroshi?" the man snapped. "Who do you think I get enough money from to pay you?" he asked, all the while discreetly pointing to Usagi.

This was scary. "What's going on," I whispered to Makoto.

"Oh, nothing really. Usagi only put his children through college and kept him going through that last recession." The way she said this with such nonchalance was by itself amazing. If the girl ate that much ice cream, how did she maintain her figure (only interested out of curiosity, not feminine vanity)?

"Oh," was my only response.

Over the next hour I witnessed something that will remain in my memory for however many millennia I shall live. Usagi Tsukino, one of my least favorite people in existence, consumed three times her own body weight in a combination of forty-six different kinds of ice cream and a vast array of toppings. At first I assumed that she may be able to convert mass to energy, that would explain her high energy levels, but I ruled that out pretty quickly. That much energy would have turned her into a human glow bug, permanently.

I thought my two gallons were respectable, but the condescending sneer the girl leveled at me was as humiliating as anything I could remember.

My first run in with the military guys came a few days later. I was just stepping out of a corner convenience store with a few necessities when men and women in black fatigues overlaid with some kind of plastic body armor came swarming over the walls on repelling lines and filled the street with three large vans which poured forth more of the soldiers. Heh, guess they thought I was pretty important. I counted sixty visible individuals and three snipers positioned further down either side of the street.

"Hey, nice night out, eh?" I asked innocently, stalling for as much time to erect my defenses as possible. Woo, a helicopter. I'm moving up in the world.

"Place your hands above your head and slowly walk into the light," ordered a man who sounded like he'd had a baseball bat shoved up his ass at birth.

Now these guys obviously had some pretty reliable sources of information, and they were extremely well trained if they were willing to hunt down demons without magic, technology be damned; so what made them think having my hands in the air would matter one way or the other when I started blowing stuff up?

"Nice guns. Could'a swore those were illegal in Japan," I commented as I complied with the order, first setting my groceries out of harm's way on a newspaper rack. Phil had been right on the money when he described the weapons they carried. I could feel the electric charge contained within them. I couldn't stop a derisive snort from escaping. Completely non-magical. Phil must have been good and tired before he ran into the goons. They probably were effective against vampires and the like, though.

"Do not speak unless you are spoken to," baseball bat ordered.

Blah, blah, blah. Poor guy's one of those dips who gets off on telling other people what to do, or I'm not about to throw this fireball… "Kiyaaahh!" Heh, bet they weren't expecting that! The ball of emerald green fire grew from a pinprick of light a meter from my chest and into a two-foot sphere of controlled death in a fraction of a second. This was going to be a majorly bad way for all these relatively innocent people to die.

Tiny bolts of electricity rebounded from my personal shields for another second or two before the sphere exploded. I couldn't make it take out the snipers without killing a few dozen families, so I guess word would be getting back to the guys in charge what I was capable of. If only they really knew.

Around me and my little calm piece of space, green and purple fires raged, slowly eating away at anything living. The screams were earsplitting and lasted for nearly a minute. When I cut power to the magical fire, the street was littered with the clothes, armor and weapons of all the dead soldiers, and there were three vans with government tags on them sitting as pretty as you please in the middle of the street with no evidence that they had ever been occupied.

I wondered if they were really government sanctioned, or if the plates were false. If they were false, then I had just pissed off a really rich man or woman that had more money than they know what to do with and could expect to deal with more of the same shit on a regular basis. If they were government, everything would be the same as above, except I would most likely be killing more of them next time.

I decided I'd better warn the Senshi, just in case they, too, were now in season. The shrine where Rei lived was the only place I knew of to find any of them, so I headed there as soon as I returned my groceries to the apartment.

The shrine was closed for the night and I had to knock on the door for a few minutes before anyone answered. I remembered to go girl only moments before the door opened. It was that little old man I'd seen a few times while teaching the Senshi. He seemed nice enough and never butted into other people's business, so I had nothing against him. Too bad he was so old, he would have made an excellent sorcerer.

"Ah, young Ranma. What can I do for you at such a late hour?" he asked cheerfully. The old guy gave me the once over, but I couldn't really blame him, not when I spent a considerable amount of time in front of the mirror every morning checking out my own bod.

"Is Rei here? What I need to tell her could wait till tomorrow if she isn't, but it's important that I speak to her if she is." I felt him sloppily probing my aura as I spoke. Hmm, he most definitely had had more than the spiritual training expected of a Shinto priest.

"Of course she's home," the grandfather replied. I think he was Rei's grandfather, anyway. "Come in, come in." He led me through the spacious interior living quarters and stopped in front of a traditional sliding door. "I'll leave you two to your girl talk."

As the little old man made himself scarce, I knocked on the wooden frame of the paper door. "It's me, Ranma. Open up."

A few seconds later the door slid open and Rei stood staring at me in a pair of baggy red and black pajamas. "What do you want?" She didn't sound happy.

"Lighten up. I came to warn you, since I don't know where the other Senshi live. A company of commandoes attacked me tonight. From reliable sources, I have info that they're going after anybody with supernatural abilities, good or bad, regardless of intentions. Call the others on that cute little wrist phone thing and tell them to meet at the shrine at 6:30 tomorrow morning. And from now on, don't go anywhere by yourself; always have at least one other Senshi with you. Oh, yeah, feel free to kill as many of them as you can if they do try to take you in." I finished and turned to leave, catching the barest hint of a nod from the girl.

To be continued.

Author's Notes: I really need suggestions on this fic. It's weird. Tell me if you think I'm being too hard on Usagi. I'm sorta biased (really hate her). Send me C&C at dark_phoneix@hotmail.com

Webmaster: Larry F
Last revision: May 21, 2007