Chapter 1: The Prince of Pigtails

Disclaimer: TSR, Takahashi & AIC creations used here without their permission. This is a Lawyer-free fanfic!

1a: It's Best To Let Sleeping Demons Lie…

"Who's that?"

"An acquaintance from Shadowdale." Rowan didn't elaborate further.

"That's HIM?!?! I thought he'd be taller."

"He's probably the only person who can sympathize with what Ranma has to go through."

The Guardian laughed at his little joke. The others just sweatdropped. Maybe if they were quiet, nobody would think he was with their group…

"Are you sure you want to do that?" Shadow asked the hooded figure.

"Of course, meddling is one of the few vices I still have."

The hood was thrown back to reveal an old man with a twinkle in his eye. With agility that few would suspect from such an ancient and dignified personage, he tossed a finely cut garnet into the pool.

"Waste of a perfectly good gemstone, if you ask me."

Chromosomes are a funny thing.

A single one of them determines if you're boy or a girl.

The rest serve as a template for who you are and what you might be.

But the most interesting thing about them, is that if given the slightest push in the right direction, the genetic information for one individual can be changed to someone else…

"Ranma! Ranma! Where are you, boy?!"

Yosho Masaki wondered where that scamp of a grandson had gone to now, as he walked up the stairs of the Masaki shrine.

Ranma Masaki was currently digging around in his grandfather's storage room, looking for a certain set of keys. This was his last chance; tomorrow he'd have to return to his home and -ugh-… school.

Ranma loved the summers he spent in this peaceful valley, but for the past couple of years he'd been too focused on finding a way to get into the Demon's cave to enjoy the scenery and the quiet reprieve from the normal hassles of teenage life. Then there was his father to worry about…

Nobuyuki had been a fine (if slightly shy) man in his day. Then his wife Achika died.

In a fit of grief he left his son with his father in law and became the apprentice of a mysterious martial arts master. When Nobuyuki finally returned from his training, he was a changed man. He was…

…a complete and utter pervert.

Ranma shuddered briefly before resuming his search for those keys. He just had to find out what was in that cave!

A whisper of air made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

Uh, oh…

Ranma turned to see the outside door slide shut. Frantically he looked around, Grandpa wasn't going to be happy if he caught him here. His emergency visual scan turned up empty, with the exception of a sleeping cat.

Ranma relaxed.

WHAP

"Ow!! What's the big…?!!!"

Pause.

Look over right shoulder.

Panic.

"Erk… Grandpa… what a surprise to see you here!"

"Looking for this?" Yosho pulled out a set of keys hanging from an old and worn key ring from his robe.

Ranma's eyes gleamed eagerly.

The birds chirped happily in the shade of the majestic trees.

As far as Mother Nature was concerned, all was right in the world.

Ranma might have argued about that, if it didn't hurt his jaw so much when he opened it. The old man sure didn't pull any of his punches, and packed quite a wallop for someone his age, but then Ranma wouldn't have had it any other way. He'd put up a good fight; in fact the battle between the two of them had lasted for nearly five minutes this time, a new record. In the end, though, Gramps had pulled out one of his sneaky special techniques and the next thing the younger Masaki knew, he had a date with the other side of the wall.

But he'd gotten the key.

Ranma smirked, then winced in pain. Damn, he'd forgotten about his jaw again. Ranma rubbed it ruefully. The swelling would go down in a few hours, he figured.

-Obligatory Flashback

[Scene edges soften]

"Ranma! How many times have I told you not to play in here?"

"Gramps, what's in there?" Chibi-Ranma asked, ignoring the scolding with an ease that spoke of long experience.

"A demon sleeps in there, Ranma."

"A demon? Really?"

Yosho nodded, then prepared to launch into his suitably heroic story in order to impress Ranma and convince him to never come back here.

At least, that was his plan.

"Wow!! Can I play with it? Wanna be friends, Demon? Where are youuuuu?" Chibi-Ranma darted around excitedly, looking around for the demon in the cave. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

Yosho sweatdropped.

{I'm getting too old for this.}

-We now return you to the present, which is already in progress

Inside the darkened interior of the cave, an ancient gate was ajar, the lock that had sealed it for centuries gathered dust on the rocks where it had fallen.

Ranma was busy trying to free what appeared to be a sword from a small shrine he'd found at the back of the cave.

Ranma gave a mighty tug, and a moment later he suddenly felt it sliding free from its stony confinement.

"This is the great weapon that imprisoned the demon???"

Ranma held the sword up to get a better look. The rusted iron blade snapped off and bonked him on the head, decades of corrosion finally taking their toll on the weakened metal.

"OW!" Ranma rubbed the large lump that sprouted from the impact. "What a piece of junk!"

Except for the three red jewels mounted in the sword's hilt, it was nothing to look at. He was a little curious about the design, though. Ranma didn't recognize the style or the material that the hilt was made of.

"Kuso." All that effort for nothing; just a little rusty trinket and a whole lot of pain. He'd skipped out on his chores for THIS??

Angrily he banged the pommel against the nearest object, a large rock with a ton of faded paper wards on it.

The stone broke in half. The Shinto wards vaporized.

Ranma's eyes bugged out.

{Oh man, I'm in trouble.}

Panicking, he backed up to the cavern wall, which suddenly wasn't there anymore…

"Aaaaaaaiiiiiiiiggghhhh… THUNK…"

Fortunately Ranma landed on his head, so nothing important was damaged.

A few minutes later Ranma ran screaming out of the secret entrance. Nothing living scared him, but the dead were a different story altogether. Especially when the corpse was still kicking!! His Grandfather had taught him that a little fear is healthy. It kept you alert and alive.

But right now he was beyond simple fear.

The only other time he had been this shaken had been when he was fourteen and his dear old dad had decided to make a man out of his son and dragged Ranma to a brothel.

It took three years of therapy to get him over his fear of the fairer sex.

"There's gotta be a way to close it!"

Ranma started tying the two pieces of the rock back together with some of the vines hanging from the walls.

"…"

"…"

"…"

"Well… it's never been done quite like that before."

The Guardian tried to think of a diplomatic comment to make. A large sweatdrop formed as he struggled to be honest yet polite at the same time.

"Everyone seeing trouble coming…"

"AYE!!" The entire crowd boomed.

"Anyone think that it'll actually work out in Ranma's favor for once?"

A cricket chirping filled the uncomfortable silence.

Ranma snorted and woke up. He yawned, then stretched out from his nap. The roof was a great place to catch up on his sleep. After all the nightmares that had haunted him last night, he'd needed it. Then he noticed something…

"ARGGGHHH!!! It's night already??!! I missed all my classes!!!"

Ranma paused as he realized what he had just said.

"Wait a sec… I missed all my classes! Why am I COMPLAINING about it??!!!"

A bell chimed softly.

"Meow."

"Huh?" Ranma pivoted around to see a small cat padding its way toward him.

Smiling, he reached down to pick it up only to see it vanish as it leaped toward him.

"What the…?" This was getting to be too weird.

"Ryoko."

Ranma looked up to see an attractive cyan-haired girl standing above him.

"Ryoko?"

"That's my name."

The girl smiled, her eyes seeming to glow in the starlit night. There was an almost feral quality to her features that seemed to enhance her beauty, in Ranma's opinion.

Wait a second… her eyes…

"YOU'RE THE MONSTER THAT WAS IN THE POOL!!!"

Her golden cat like eyes narrowed. Ranma instinctively took a step back from that steady glare.

"It was cold in that cave…"

Oops. Maybe he shouldn't have called her a monster.

"…And dark. I was trapped in there for seven hundred years. Seven HUNDRED years! Do you have any idea what's that like?!"

"Uh… uh… uh…" Ranma's intelligent response came.

"That's why I have to kill you. Too bad, though. You're kinda cute."

That snapped his wits back together.

"Kill me?! But I haven't done anything!!!"

Ryoko shrugged.

"So what? I've got a lot of pent-up stress and frustration that I need to let loose… RIGHT NOW!!!"

Ranma had already dove to the side, alerted by the motes of glowing energy that had spontaneously appeared around Ryoko and gathered to form into a ball in her palm. The blast blew a giant crater in the school roof and caused a lot of smoke and dust from the explosion.

He started running. Laughing wildly, Ryoko flew after him, firing brilliant beams of destruction nonstop.

Amazingly, Ranma dodged them all as if he knew where the blasts would be aimed at, despite not being able to actually see Ryoko for more then a few seconds at a time.

"HEY!! Quit it!! You're going to really hurt someone with that!!!" Ranma yelled back as he jumped to avoid yet another one of the demoness's attacks.

"I know. That's the point! Now be a good little boy and take your punishment like a man!!"

"Forget it, lady!!"

"What's the matter… feeling a little chicken?"

That did it.

Nobody, absolutely nobody, called Ranma Masaki a chicken. As another cloud of smoke temporarily obscured him from Ryoko's sight, the martial artist made his move.

He jumped…

Ryoko blinked in surprise as the dust settled to reveal no Ranma around. Then she came down to get a closer look.

{Where'd he go?}

"How'd he do that??!!"

GLOMP

Arms encircled Ryoko's chest, pinning her hands to her sides as a pair of legs wrapped around her waist from behind.

"Gotcha." Ranma whispered softly into Ryoko's ear.

1b: Me And My Big Mouth

Hovering in midair, a spiky-haired space pirate, feared throughout the quadrant for several centuries, found herself trapped by a mere seventeen-year-old earthling. To say that she was shocked by this turn of events would be an understatement of criminal proportions.

Ranma was equally surprised, but for a different reason. Apparently he'd misjudged Ryoko's position when he'd landed on her. As a result of this, he found himself clutching two rounded objects instead linking his arms around the demon's waist. Puzzled by this unexpected development, his brain locked up trying to figure out what was wrong with the situation.

Left without any guidance, Ranma's hands started roaming freely to try and get more data. Tactile senses determined that the objects in question were warm, firm to the touch, and much more then a mere handful. This felt awfully familiar, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it…

-Squeeze- -Squeeze-

Ryoko's eyes widened. What the hell was he doing?!

{I'm going to kil… ki… kill… oh… ah… Ooh!!}

His fingers discovered a smaller area that felt different from the rest, a hard point that tightened as his fingers gently explored this newest anomaly.

"Eek!!!"

This was all happening too fast! She was the one that was supposed to do the seducing around here! Ryoko dove toward the ground in a panicked attempt to get this unexpected passenger off of her. While this did snap Ranma's mind out of its locked up state, it also caused him to tense up in a reflexive response to being smashed against the school roof. His grip tightened involuntarily.

"EEEK!!!"

The resulting flood of sensation to that very sensitive area caused Ryoko to swerve wildly and narrowly miss colliding with the third story wall. She bucked wildly and began to zig and zag in midair, which only caused him to hold on more firmly.

In the meantime Ranma's central nervous system was trying to relay a message to his increasingly distracted Brain.

(Hand to Brain! Hand to Brain! We have a problem!)

(What is it? I'm kinda busy trying to keep us alive at the moment!)

(Just thought you'd like to know that we've found out what we're holding onto.)

(So what is it? And make it fast!)

(Ryoko's bosom.)

(Oh that's nice, now go do something useful… twing… ! … what did you say?)

(Ryoko's bosom. We're currently clamped onto a very nice pair of…)

(WHAT?!!!)

At this point Ranma finally realized what his hands had been clutching so tightly.

"Ack!"

The hands were retracted as if they'd touched just touched red-hot coals. In this particular case they were practically the same things.

Of course that was when Ranma realized that he'd just let go of the only thing keeping him airborne.

"AAAHHHHH!!!"

Amazingly, the young part-time martial artist and kendo trainee managed to somehow land on his feet. It helped that he'd chosen to let go during one of Ryoko's lower passes over the roof.

Which only left the space pirate to deal with.

The very embarrassed female space pirate who had just been mistakenly molested by a pair of rogue appendages.

"How dare you!"

"Wa… wait a sec!!! I didn't want to grab you or anything, honest!!! It's a mistake. Why'd I want to feel up a old demon trying to kill me??!!"

Oh, boy… that did it. Ryoko saw red as the insult struck home. A feline look of pure rage appeared, that made all the old legends about her wrath seem like little kid stories.

"Why, you!! Now you die!!!"

A bright orange beam saber materialized in her right hand as she dove downward like a striking bird of prey. The hellish glow from the blade seemed to promise much pain for its victim.

"Oh, shit!"

Ranma started running.

-A short while later

-PANT- -PANT-

Okay time to take stock of the situation. One roof blown to bits.

Check.

One classroom destroyed by a gas explosion.

Check.

One classroom blasted by a weird energy beam.

Check.

One very pissed off demon about to cut his head off for insulting her.

Check.

Call it dumb, call it sexist, or call it a deeply ingrained sense of survival, but he hadn't been able to work up the nerve to actually hit Ryoko. It probably would have only gotten her more mad at him then she already was, anyway. If he was going to die, he'd like to at least do so as a whole man.

"Um… I suppose it's too late to say I'm sorry?"

"You got that right!"

The plan had been to just scare the Masaki kid for abandoning her in the dark cave. But after he'd felt her up and then said those mean things to her to boot, Ryoko was out for blood. Ranma's blood, to be precise.

The deadly lance of solid light cut down.

-SNAP- -HISS- -CRISZZZZZTTT-

A blade of blue energy materialized from within the torn remnants of Ranma's schoolbag, as the Master Key activated to defend the blood of the Royal House of Jurai. It parried the blow intended for Ranma, and then thrust its hilt into the stunned schoolboy's hands.

"Hey! That's not fair!!" Ryoko protested as she swung again with the same lack of results. Her energy beams had no effect either against the other sword's defensive force field.

"Lady, I'm not the one doing this! This thing's got a mind of its own!!"

Pulled forward by an irresistible force, the reluctant teenager was forced into a duel with the ravishing buccaneer from the stars. Gradually he drove her onto the defensive; the sword supplying the experience that he lacked, to thwart Ryoko's every strike and thrust.

One such move left the young Masaki eye to eye with a bountiful display of cleavage.

"Arrggh!!!"

The therapy had gotten him up to being able to carry on a coherent conversation with a girl from a safe distance away. This was an entirely different story altogether!

Ryoko's anger was briefly replaced by curiosity, as Ranma's expression bordered on sheer terror before he somehow managed to move a good ten feet away from her before she could blink.

{What in the world?}

Then the implications of that look hit her, the cyan-haired beauty looked down to see what had scared her opponent so.

{Why that little… how dare he!!!}

She'd never felt so insulted in her life. The blow to her pride was considerable, especially since Ryoko knew she was very attractive. Tears started to form in her eyes at this complete rejection of her by the one person she'd waited for seventeen long years to be with.

"So… So you find me that hideous, do you…"

Unnerved by the threatening shimmer he saw building in those heartbroken golden pupils, Ranma blurted out the first words that came to mind. Of course, that meant his brain didn't get a chance to proofread his speech…

"NO!! NONONONO!! That's not it at all!!! You're too attractive!!! It's my fault, I'm not used to being so close to such a cute girl!!! It was an accident I didn't mean to call you a devil.!!! It's just that this has never happened to me before!!!"

{Did I just say what I think I said?!}

Oh, well. Can't win them all.

[Does he really mean that!?]

Suspicious, yet hopeful at the same time, Ryoko decided to test the truth of his words.

Using her free hand, she inched the shoulder of her outfit down… WAY down. A wind and a prayer kept the fabric from falling past the bounds of decency (relatively speaking).

Ranma's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, his attention glued to the teasing sway of the oh-so-thin cloth. A sudden weakness in his knees nearly caused him to collapse, but he didn't notice. Ranma's primal instincts were torn between fight, flight, and something else entirely…

{Well, well, well… what have we here…?}

Ryoko's mood improved immediately as she watched the effect her little display had on her chosen prey. Now she knew exactly what kind of punishment to give him. Her wicked grin was not for the faint of heart, nor did the lusty gleam in her eye spell anything except trouble.

Ryoko took a confident step forward.

Ranma took a small trembling step back.

She advanced. He retreated. The mingled look of panic mixed with a raging case of repressed male hormones was getting her juices flowing; nothing like stalking your prey, before bringing it down to prepare for the main course.

Deciding to end this little game, enjoyable though it was, the space pirate teleported the distance between them.

She forgot about the sword Ranma was holding. The automatic defense program was still running, and Ryoko was still designated as hostile. It targeted her power source and prepared to neutralize the threat.

Both of them realized what was happening at the same moment the glowing blade came up from its guard position.

{Oh, no!}

Ryoko froze in shock as she watched the sword swing toward her wrist in slow motion.

Ranma saw the fearful expression on the girl's face as the Master Key aimed for her hand, and something within him snapped.

"NO!!!"

Digging his heels into the dirt, he pulled back with all of his strength, trying to divert the sword from its course. Ranma bit down as he strained to stop himself from cutting off the demon's hand. She'd tried to kill him moments ago, but he just couldn't allow her to be hurt, for some reason. A salty iron taste filled his mouth as his gritted teeth cut into his lower lip. The pain drove him on, and with a visible heave of effort Ranma managed to just nick her, taking her gem off in the process. It was a masterful feat of incredible swordsmanship that was made even more impressive by the fact that it had just been a stroke of incredible luck.

The small red gem burst into flame and disintegrated before it ever hit the ground. In the background, Ranma's entire school exploded as human and alien looked at each other, unsure as to what to do now. Normally the fight scene was resolved one way or the other, but since this wasn't a canon story there were no precedents to follow.

"Um…"

"Oh, well, another battle lost. That's the story of my life, it seems."

Ryoko decided to stick to her rehearsed script. Since Ranma had just saved her from what would probably have been a very painful experience, she couldn't just start attacking him again. For starters, she'd probably lose to that damn sword. Besides, she had other plans for her hero…

"I'm sorry."

Granted, he hadn't actually beat her, but it seemed like the right thing to say at that moment. For some strange reason, this situation of defeating a girl in combat sent a shiver running down Ranma's spine.

"Oh, don't worry, Ranma… we'll meet again."

The cyan-haired girl bowed then vanished into the ground with a smile.

"Uh…"

Why did he have a very bad feeling about this?

It might have been partially due the fact that the gas main for the entire school chose that particular moment to blow up.

"Oh Gods, what a day."

Demons, Giant Explosions, Magic Swords, this day was starting to resemble that anime series he watched. Lost Neon Saber Successor Tenchi ½; now that was a guy who had a messed up life. Tenchi Saotome was such a weenie, even though he was a great martial artist. He had multiple fiancées, mortal enemies popping out of the woodwork, and he couldn't make up his mind and see that the one person he could be happiest with was right there in front of him!

{If I was in his shoes I'd never mess up that badly! All Tenchi's got to do is marry Kasumi Yuriko! It's so obvious!!! How can he not see it?!}

Trudging up to his room Ranma had almost convinced himself that today had just been a bad nightmare resulting from letting Nobuyuki order their dinner. His father had the weirdest taste in fast food. Who ever heard of a meal with no rice in it?!

The exhausted young man threw himself on his bed, too tired to even bother with a shower.

Strange, his bed wasn't usually this lumpy…

{Wait a second… this mound feels awfully familiar…}

-Grope-

{Oh, no…}

Flinging off the cover confirmed his worst fears.

Lazily Ryoko opened one eye from where she lay.

"Welcome home… Ranma."

Ranma raised his gaze to the ceiling, as the sight of the disordered state of the girl's clothes was quite distracting.

"Oh boy…"

Maybe exploring the cave hadn't been such a good idea after all…

To be continued.

Webmaster: Larry F
Last revision: May 21, 2007