Chapter 3

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.

"Damned pervert!" Hotaru hissed as she followed closely behind Ranma. "I can't believe that his father is the principal." They were heading for Ranma's house, where he assured Hotaru his mom would be able to help her get re-enrolled in a school after getting expelled for 'attacking the principal's son without just cause'.

Ranma looked back to grin at Hotaru then decreased his sliding pace along the sidewalk and came to a steady cruising speed beside the girl. "What I can't believe is that no one minds the principal dressing up like a woman," he said. Principal Kuno was the most hideous woman he'd ever seen.

Hotaru made a gagging noise deep in her throat and replied, "Ugh, don't remind me." Hotaru easily kept up with Ranma, though she couldn't reproduce his gliding trick, and the pair streaked down the street towards Juuban. Raising her voice to be heard better, Hotaru asked, "Ranma, are you sure your mom can get me back in school? Grandfather may do something to that cross-dresser that could get him in bad trouble if she can't." Perverted Happosai may be, but he cared greatly for his heir and had an overprotective streak a mile wide.

"Trust me on this, Hotaru, I've seen her make grown men cry just by glaring at them." It didn't hurt that she carried around a katana, either. Nodoka had as forceful a personality as any Ranma had ever encountered, and his mother didn't mind using it to her advantage.

Hotaru nodded hopefully. And sped up to catch up with Ranma who had began to increase his pace.

Hotaru still wasn't having much trouble keeping up with Ranma, but fifteen minutes into their trip, Ranma suddenly reached out and grabbed a lamppost, using it as a fulcrum to change his momentum and propel him down an intersecting street like a bullet. Hotaru cursed as she frantically launched herself into the air to avoid running into traffic. A nearby apartment building served as a springboard, and with a few secondary jumps from surrounding buildings, Hotaru was back alongside Ranma.

"Idiot!" she snapped, bopping him on the head with her staff. "You could have at least warned me!" The staff slid back into stasis and Hotaru apologized, "Sorry, that was uncalled for, but don't be so mean next time."

Ranma took the hit in stride, sensing that there had been no real harmful intent and not really minding the small amount of force she had used. "I didn't leave you behind intentionally," Ranma claimed, "I’m just used to running on my own, and forgot about you for a minute."

Hotaru accepted Ranma's apology and assumed he accepted hers. From a few scattered signs, Hotaru could tell that Ranma had led her to Juuban. Tokyo was much larger than she at first believed. They'd been clearing better than fifty kilometers an hour for at least twenty minutes, and there was no sign of an end to the sprawling metropolis.

The air in front of Hotaru, within a heartbeat, thickened noticeably and Ranma's arm snaked out, catching her around the waist tightly. She nearly squealed in fright, not expecting the sudden action, but an iron will and Ranma's hand across her face kept her silent. They were no longer moving, Hotaru noticed, yet only a moment earlier and ten feet back the pair had been blurs of super-fast movement. The trick with the air must have been Ranma's version of brakes.

"Shhh!" Ranma whispered fiercely as he held his finger across his lips. Hotaru nodded and he withdrew his hand from her mouth. "Look," he breathed, pointing around the corner of a small intersection.

Hotaru followed Ranma's gaze and tensed in preparation as she saw a nine-foot-tall, vaguely female demon ravaging a storefront and smashing several parked cars. Now that she had stopped moving, Hotaru could easily hear the destruction. "That looks like one of grandfather's creatures." Happosai was always summoning up demons for her to fight. It kept her sharp, he claimed. He'd never before raised one that did anything but attack her, though, with the exception of some smaller dog creatures that he occasionally took out on panty raids.

"Huh?" Ranma asked dumbly. As a frequent visitor to Juuban, Ranma had seen plenty of these things, but at the urging of his mother, always kept to himself and left the Sailor Senshi the task of eliminating them.

"Grandfather uses demons to train me sometimes, but they never bother anyone else." The creature in the meantime had destroyed another car with a blast of purple fire.

"Oh, well, that's something different. This is probably just another of the demons that are always showing up around here. You ever heard of the Sailor Senshi?" Hotaru shook her head negative. "We’ll wait here so you can watch the show. They're really pathetic. I mean they have these little tiny skirts and can't fight worth a shit. Mom says not to pick on them, but sometimes I can't help it. About the only thing they have going for themselves is their magic. I don't know where they got it from, but the stuff is pretty effective. Anyway, you'll see."

Hotaru was about to ask Ranma what in Hell he was talking about when a loud voice rang out across the impromptu battlefield. "For destroying such a wonderful place as a lawyer's office… Wait, never mind that! I commend you for your service to the community, but the destruction of so many innocent automobiles cannot be forgiven! I, Sailor Moon, warrior of love and justice, shall punish you!!!"

A girl with long blonde ponytails, dressed as Ranma had said in a tiny little multicolored skirt, as well as a skintight bodysuit that showed off her curves in their entirety. "You didn't mention stupid speeches," Hotaru whispered to Ranma.

Ranma grinned evilly. "I didn't want to spoil it for you."

Back on the battlefield, Sailor Moon had been joined by another four sailor-suited warriors of love and justice. Similar speeches were spouted and four more girls made fools of themselves. "This is embarrassing to the female gender," Hotaru said in disgust. "Why would anyone choose to fight in micro-miniskirts?"

Ranma shrugged. "I don't have a clue."

"Oh my, I didn't believe her when she told me you silly little twits actually wore those things, but she was actually telling the truth!" Bellowed the demon thing. Laughing giddily, it began to gather electricity. The energy began to crackle and spark over its purple fur. "Die!!!"

The Senshi all narrowly avoided the attack, diving behind cars or into craters as the purple lightning the demon threw from its hands raked the scene completely. The black-haired girl in red was the first to regain her feet.

"Mars Flame Sniper!" she shouted, forming a bow of fire and launching a flaming missile at the demon. The projectile slammed into the demon's right forearm, but did no noticeable damage to the spiked gauntlet it wore.

The demon chuckled, then suffered a coughing fit as it inhaled the smoke left behind from the firebrand's attack.

"Jupiter Oak Evolution!" This came from a brown-haired girl in green. Wave after wave of electric force cascaded from her outstretched fingertips as she pirouetted gracefully. The energy flowed around and over the demon, once again leaving her unharmed.

"Come now, is that the best you have to offer?" the demon sneered. She raised wickedly clawed hands into the air and cackled to the heavens as power began to build between them. "I shall destroy you all!!!"

"I won't allow you to harm anyone else, you foul creature from the Negaverse!" Sailor Moon exclaimed, raising a wand that looked suspiciously like a dildo. She glowed, she twirled, she shouted something totally ridiculous and inappropriate for the situation; and in the end did more property damage than the demon had. And to top it all off, the demon stood not half a foot to the left of the energy beam as it destroyed several buildings, vaporizing the people who lived within them.

"Ranma, this is sad," Hotaru stated. "We’ve got to help them." If she was understanding things properly, Hotaru thought that the girls were the good guys, but that last one, in her ineptitude, had just killed dozens of people and destroyed millions of yen worth of property. If the girl was that pathetic as a superhero, she should find another business.

Ranma laid a restraining arm on Hotaru's shoulder. "We’re not supposed to interfere. They always win, eventually, and mom'll get pissed if she finds out that I revealed myself." Ranma could see how Nodoka didn't want him drawing attention to himself or his school, but she'd never even let him compete in any tournaments, even when he was assured a quick and easy victory.

Hotaru looked ready to hold back, but the demon chose that moment to throw a massive bolt of black energy at the girl in the blue skirt. She attempted to dodge, and was partially successful, her right shoulder barely getting tagged. Still, the blow held enough force to smash the girl into an overturned van. Hotaru broke away from Ranma and jumped into the fray.

Hotaru landed a dozen feet from the demon. From stasis emerged her staff, already whirling in a blurred disc and throwing blue fire from each end.

"They may dress, fight, and talk like idiots, but at least they're human," Hotaru shouted. "You, on the other hand, are not!" She brought the staff to a stop, pointing it directly at the demon. Chi gathered from Hotaru herself and the surrounding environment blasted into the demon in a continuous beam. The demon couldn't move fast enough to avoid the attack and had its left arm burned away.

"Arrrrggghhhhhh!!! You puny human, you shall die a thousand deaths for this insult!" Black and purple energy poured from the ghastly wound, intertwining and becoming a viscous version of the missing limb. "Arise, my pets! Arise and destroy those who would harm your mistress!!!"

From every shadow in the abandoned street came thousands of cat-sized demons, complete with tiny wings and miniscule fire breath. The purple demon cackled a final time before disappearing into a portal of the same energy it had previously lobbed around so negligently.

"Who are you?" Sailor Moon asked, breathless from the strain of using her most powerful attack. It never occurred to her that her sloppy aim had cost scores of people their lives. The girl was flanked by her four friends, each looking at Hotaru curiously.

"Uh, no one really, just a concerned citizen," Hotaru answered. The little minions summoned by the retreating demon were forming packs, some gathering together to create larger versions of themselves.

Now only ten school bus-sized shadow demons, along with a few hundred of the small demons remained. From both sides of the street the demons stalked, converging on the Senshi and Hotaru.

Ranma appeared beside Hotaru, looking mournful. His mom was gonna be soooo pissed, but he couldn't let Hotaru get hurt. "Unless you girls haven't noticed, there are some more demons to take care of," Ranma said coldly. He didn't approve of their careless methods and couldn't help but hold the Senshi in disdain.

"We might as well take care of them," Hotaru said. "These… girls certainly aren't up to the task."

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" one of the girls screamed indignantly. Ranma and Hotaru, now facing the demons, couldn't tell who has asked and didn't plan on acknowledging her anyway.

Ranma's match the day before with Hotaru had been a test of skill and speed mostly, with powerful attacks limited by their environment and the friendly nature of the competition. Now, though, Ranma had no intention of getting in range of the demons. Their mouths, little more than gaping maws filled with six-inch teeth, dripped acidic slime that bubbled as it struck the asphalt, and each arm was tipped with talons of dark energy that scraped deep furrows in the pavement as they drug the overly-long appendages behind them.

The nearest demon topped fifteen feet in height and had a flock of smaller demons orbiting it warily, carefully avoiding its snapping jaw. Ranma's battle aura came free, a great blurry gray distortion that nearly equaled the demon in height. Using his arms more as a guide for his battle aura, Ranma swept them both forward, patterning and arranging several layers of vacuum force. Windows exploded and buildings collapsed as Ranma unleashed his first attack. The demon, unaware or too stupid to realize that the rapidly approaching zone of wavering air was an attack, didn't even attempt to dodge.

The little demons simply ceased to exist as anything more than wisps of darkness that rapidly faded into nothingness. The big demon was more substantial, so when it was ripped in half by a pressure variance globs of slime and chunks of green bone splattered the area. A trio of elemental energy attack, fire, water, and lightning, careened into another of the big demons, killing it, but with much less speed. Its own little flock of mini-demons were left to fight over the corpse.

Three more giant demons fell to Ranma's power, two of them in the same manner as the first and the last losing its head to a huge vacuum blade. The Senshi took out the remaining two on Ranma's end. Ranma turned to see how Hotaru was doing, and was relieved to see the last demon on her end of the street fall to a focused beam of chi.

As the last demon fell to the ground, its head and most of its upper torso burned away, Hotaru breathed a sigh of relief. The creatures had been practically immune to hot and cold chi, but pure chi, properly focused with lighter emotions, worked wonderfully to destroy them. The problem was that the demons were enormous in size and all but the last of them required massive energy discharges to bring down. Two of the Senshi, with their efforts combined, had actually managed to kill one of the demons, but that had still left her with three.

"Nice work, a little messy, but nice," Ranma commented as he walked over to her, carefully avoiding the remains of fallen demons. His task was made easier as the black and purple innards turned into a fine black powder that rapidly ceased to exist in the mortal plane.

"You too," Hotaru said, returning her staff to its resting place. "Did you have to be so loud? I thought the whole point to your style was stealth." Hotaru stuck her tongue out at Ranma and tried to shake the ringing from her ears left by Ranma's thunderous attacks.

Shrugging, Ranma said, "Sometimes the situation calls for brute force."

"Hmmm mmm!" coughed one of the Senshi behind Ranma, Sailor Moon.

Ranma and Hotaru both looked at the girls. "Wow, that was so cool!" Sailor Moon squealed. "Are you magical warriors for love and justice too?"

Ranma turned a little green and Hotaru chuckled. "Sorry, honey, but I wouldn't be caught dead in that getup."

"We really should get out of here before reporters start showing up," Ranma whispered to Hotaru. "If mom sees me in the newspaper, she'll freak out." To the Senshi, he said, "Nice to meetcha and all, but you'll probably never see us again." With that, he enfolded himself and Hotaru in a blanket of warped chi and distorted air.

Ranma sat Hotaru down three blocks over and let the masking cloak fade away. Hotaru looked around, amazed that life and traffic were unaffected this close to a demonic battle zone. "Don’t ever, ever do that again, Ranma, not without my permission," she said, rebalancing her aura after such prolonged contact with Ranma's trademark vacuum aura. She couldn't imagine how his chi had become so warped.

Confused, Ranma asked, "Why? It didn't hurt, did it?" He sounded hurt.

Quickly, to assuage Ranma's confidence, Hotaru said, "No, nothing like that. Your aura is just unusual, sorta like a vacuum, and it tries to pull mine in whenever we touch. I can fight the effects off without any trouble, but if I had extended my resources too far in that fight back there you could have unwittingly have drawn in enough of my chi to knock me out."

"Ah, forgot about that, sorry," he said sheepishly. "Pops says that eventually I should be able to pull away someone’s chi at will without any visual evidence. Not much of a way to fight, if you ask me. It would just knock the person out, but it'd be a great way to kill someone if the need ever arose." Ranma scratched the back of his head nervously.

Hotaru reminded herself to never try the Happo Go-en Satsu on Ranma. To open a chi conduit between herself and Ranma would not be the safest thing to do. Maybe she should teach Ranma that technique. There would be time for that later. "Oh, well, it's not really important right now. Let's just get to your house."

"Love, I believe you were mistaken," the purple demon from before growled as she floated down out of the portal. Her demonic form became fuzzy and began to flex, moments later disappearing entirely. A young woman in her late teens now stood in the amber light cast by softly glowing lamps. Her aquamarine hair shimmered as the last vestiges of demonic presence slipped away.

From a shadow cast by a large bookcase, a pair of arms appeared. They wrapped around the girl's waist and pulled her into their owner's embrace.

"How so?" Haruka asked teasingly, breathing on her lover's neck while caressing her breasts.

"The Sailor Senshi are not the pushovers you made them out to be. The ones in the suits were pushovers, but the one with the staff, she tore my infernal-form's arm off with a beam of energy." Michiru didn't care about the encounter with the Senshi, not with Haruka there to lean upon.

"Perhaps we should consult your mirror later," Haruka suggested.

"Yes, later; but now…"

"Wow, nice place," Hotaru remarked as Ranma pointed out the large house. Closer to a mansion, the house possessed a large outer wall, complete with iron gates and a coded entrance panel.

"Mom's a little peculiar about it; well, at least about the Garden." The Garden was something straight out of a cheesy horror movie, complete with giant carnivorous plants and living statues. They never tried to eat Ranma, so he didn't bother them. He typed in the security code and the gates swung open on their own volition. "Stay on the path," he cautioned her, pointing out three-inch spikes hidden along the slightly higher grass that bordered the walkway.

Ranma led Hotaru into the house through a side door that opened into a spacious kitchen. A pot of something was bubbling on the stove merrily and the smell filled the kitchen with the aroma of chocolate.

Hotaru was more than impressed with Ranma's home and was about to comment further on it when a beautiful green-haired woman wearing an apron over casual black slacks and a green silk blouse walked in.

"Hey, Mom," Ranma greeted. Ranma's mother stepped forward and embraced her son warmly.

"Ranma, I see you've brought a friend…" The woman's mouth fell open and her eyes widened, but she quickly controlled the gesture and said, "Nice to meet you, young lady. I'm Setsuna Meiou, Ranma's mother."

Hotaru smiled and exchanged greetings with the striking woman, wondering silently to herself why she felt so familiar with Ranma's mother.

To be continued.

Author's Notes: Before anyone tries to attack me, remember this: Happosai took Hotaru as a child, therefore Mistress 9 never had a host and the entire Death Busters arc never happened. The Outer Senshi never had a chance to reawaken. The Inner Senshi have gone without the help of the Outers and Saturn, and aren't as powerful as they should be.

I don't really know what I'm gonna do with Haruka and Michiru yet, maybe something with them being swayed to use their latent magic for evil and were turned by it. As for Setsuna being Ranma's mother… I just had the idea while talking to a friend on AIM and decided to run with it. Setsuna could have had a big plan to use Ranma to control Hotaru, so she seduced Genma and got knocked up, but then Happi stole baby Hotaru away and she couldn't find her, so she stuck with Genma and Ranma, eventually growing to love them and keeping Genma from making too many mistakes with her son.

This chapter isn't proofread, sorry. Didn't feel like rereading it.

C&C is welcome at dark_phoneix@hotmail.com

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Last revision: May 21, 2007