The genesis of this particular crazy idea requires a bit of explanation. I've seen a number of Ranma/FF crosses over the years--in particular the Song of the Phoenix epic--but what I wanted to write wasn't quite a crossover, but more of a fusion. A war between Earth and a darkened FF-style (but not any specific FF game) fantasy world, with Ranma and company being aided by the Summoned Beasts (Espers, GFs, Aeons, et cetera)--using my own interpretation of the latter, in which the Beasts in nearly all the games are the same godlike beings manifesting in different ways on different worlds, and in which the story of FF6 is their "true" origin.
I ran into a stylistic stumbling block almost immediately, though--I wanted to keep the feel of a fighting manga/anime, and having the Wrecking Crew summon Beasts to fight instead of or even alongside them just wasn't right. Then it hit me--in Ranma's world they'd have to manifest through the characters, turning them into avatars, granting them power and partial transformations.
Then, and only then, did I realize just how perfectly this worked--because one of the most powerful beings in Ranma canon is clearly such an avatar already...
So, here's the first (fragmentary and unfinished as yet) chapter of Phantom Beast Soldier Ranma...
With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney,
Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end--
Methinks it is no journey!
--Tom O'Bedlam's Song
Dimensions flexed and shattered, and the air over Tokyo screamed like a wounded steel mill as a sleek black airship of ornate and sinister design emerged from a gray hole in the sky.
The ironclad ship, over two hundred feet long, was held aloft by a dozen humming propeller-rotors. Rows of cannon protruded from each side, with several more fore and aft of its exposed battle deck; each was manned by a crew of men clad in armor the color of the night sky half an
hour past sunset.
In the forecastle, a tall man looked out over the city below. He wore armor much like that of the gunners, but for its utterly black hue and silver-edged deep purple cape; like the crew, his visor remained firmly shut. Only he knew that as he beheld the metropolis before him, he smiled a vicious and triumphant smile.
At his side, a woman clothed all in crimson stared in disbelief. Almost reverently, she doffed her hat, the golden feather in its brim ruffled by the same wind that swept up her blonde hair. "Such power, such life..." she murmured. "The probes weren't lying after all. So this is what a world is like in its prime..."
"It's perfect," the black-clad knight stated. "This abundant life energy is exactly what we've been searching for all these years."
The red-garbed woman stared at him in shock. "Lord Shadow... you can't be planning to drain this world?! The others were near death already, their inhabitants were desperate for the chance we've given them!" She waved at the brilliant lights beneath them. "There must be over a million people in this city alone! We could never hope to evacuate even a fraction of the planet's population before the air went bad--it would be an unthinkable atrocity...!"
"Would it really?" the one called Shadow asked her. "Take a deep breath of their precious air, Magister. Smell the pollutants carried on it." His own armored hand swept out. "Look at those lights--incandescent bulbs, neon and fluorescents. All signs of a purely technological civilization... which means this world is already doomed to choke on its own poison. Do you remember Bangaia, Farla? Do you remember how the pathetic handful we were able to save cursed their own ancestors for the slow destruction of their ecosystem?
"Out of the thirty worlds we've discovered, only five relied completely on science--and in every case it was science that killed them. This world is perhaps not quite so far along that path, but it too will fall into ruin. Taking its energies will only accelerate what has already begun... and there is enough here to fully restore our Crystals, so anyone we can bring over will be assured of life and health." Shadow folded his arms in a gesture of finality. "Those who survive will thank us, once Tenebrea is reborn and they live in a better world than this."
Magister Farla shuddered and turned away from the black knight. "I wish I could believe that. Even if this planet is doomed, they'll never accept that we are saving them..."
"What would you then, Magister? Do you now choose to turn against the Empire?" There was edged steel in Shadow's voice.
"...No... Better that one world dies than two," she said
reluctantly. "I am loyal to Tenebrea and the Empress. But I wish there was another way." And may the Unknown Powers forgive us, thought Farla nel Erras, Magister Incarnadine, because the people of this world never will.
The Evil Midnight Lurker what Lurks at Midnight presents:
GENJUU SENSHI RANMA: SUMMONED TO TOURNEY
Chapter One:
"MY NAME IS CHAOS!" THE FIRST PHANTOM BEAST SOLDIER APPEARS!
The Indomitable's war magi emerged from below decks: five shrouded in the all-concealing robes of the Black Order, only glowing eyes visible beneath wide-brimmed wizard's hats; one in the elaborate silken garb of a West Gepponese Feng Shui master. The commander turned his attention to the latter.
"Well, geomancer? Where are they?"
The wizard of wind and water gulped. "Milord...there is a problem..."
"Can it be resolved quickly?" The black knight's voice left no doubt that it had damn well better be.
This left the hapless geomancer in a bit of a bind. "I...I can only barely make out that this world -has- Crystals, milord! It is partly a matter of this world's abundant elemental energies, but... it's almost as if they've been deliberately hidden. I can't get a fix on even one of them..."
(...)
The aircraft was clearly nonmagical--twin rotors whirled at unbelievably high speeds and were still barely sufficient to keep the thing aloft, not at all like the Indomitable's lazily spinning Float Blades. Its armor would doubtless be negligible, sacrificed to the relentless demands of unopposed gravity.
No threat at all, really.
An amplified voice rang out over the rotors' roar: "You're under arrest for violation of Tokyo airspace! Land that...thing...and surrender at once!"
The black knight choked down a laugh and called on his helmet's own loudspeaker spells. "You... want US to surrender? Oh no, that wouldn't do at all. Are you in communication with your commanding officers, and can they hear me?" The pilot nodded nervously, and Shadow assumed a self-consciously formal voice. "Then I, the Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, supreme commander of the Armed Forces of the Tenebrean Empire, hereby demand your nation's instant and unconditional surrender! Land YOUR craft or be destroyed!"
Horiuki Sato had one slight advantage in this situation over most other JSDF personnel: he was Nerima-jin born and bred. He'd run into minor spirits and major martial artists quite often in his youth, had even on one memorable occasion twenty years past joined a mob chasing down the Dread Master Happousai and his hapless students. He was as prepared as one could be for an alien invasion, and wasn't predisposed either to deny it outright or to fly into a panic.
On the other hand, he was also uncomfortably aware of the existence of the supernatural and only too ready to believe that the outlandish airship and its belligerent commander could indeed blow his helicopter out of the sky.
On the gripping hand (Sato was a Niven fan), there was his duty to consider. Plus they were hovering over Nerima itself and communicating quite loudly, so there was every chance that help was already on the way. Weird help it would probably be, but help nonetheless.
(Shadow orders black mage #1 to blast the 'copter)
Sato knew mystic gestures when he saw them, and the guy making them couldn't have looked more like a wizard. Wishing he were in something more maneuverable, he
">Rising storm, break and smite the foe! THUNDER!"--the purple aura surrounding him flared into actinic, eye-searing brightness--"...KONTON!"
And the light stabbed out at Shadowknight and Farla...
...and the mages frantically began chanting defensive spells...
...and Sato stared helplessly up at the airship, wondering who or what the being who'd just named himself "Chaos" might really be...
Eighteen hours previously:
Deep in the throes of dream, Saotome Ranma was running for his life from a furry, cat-eared and -eyed Akane -- he wasn't entirely sure whether she wanted to kill him or... or, but what with the whole felinity thing knew he wasn't interested in finding out -- when an oddly real voice called his name.
The deep, echoing voice cut through the dreamfog, jarring Ranma into total lucidity -- dream-Akane's cat aspects vanished, along with her school uniform, but Ranma was now far too busy worrying to contemplate his innermost desires.
Mysterious voice in a dream, don't sound like a dream at all -- oh no, I ain't fallin' for that one! Time to wake up before I get caught in somethin' too stupid to believe again!
Swimming upstream to consciousness, Ranma managed to shake himself awake and free of the frustrated caller. "Oh jeez," he muttered, throwing the blanket aside and sitting up in his futon. "Second night in a row, that can't be good...maybe I better ask the Doc about--"
His monologue was interrupted as a large wooden sign reading {SHUT UP AND LET YOUR POOR OLD FATHER GET SOME SLEEP!} broke over his head, knocking him back to the futon and into dreamland in an instant.
In a plummet, in fact...
With a cry of "DAMN YOU OYAJI!!!" Ranma dropped into the depths of his dreams... landing flat on his back in a field of clover, with a very large and odd-looking being looming over him.
"About spooni time you started paying attention," the creature growled in a distressingly familiar tone.
The man (if man he was) was...large. VERY large, nearly eight feet tall and almost half that wide, equipped with muscles that made Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime look like Gosunkugi on a bad day. Those muscles were covered in a coat of short tan fur, and two long straight horns held a shaggy mane of blue-gray hair out of a wide, craggy, surprisingly human face that was contorted into something like a wry smile. His legs curved backward, doglike, and his feet ended in vicious talons.
Oni was Ranma's first thought, and a rather more impressive variety than the wiffleball-from-heck that had possessed Kasumi a few months before. But this guy wasn't giving off any kind of demonic or even sinister vibes; rather, he radiated a sense of patience and good humor--and of a vast yet thoroughly leashed power, not ki but something very similar. And very familiar...
"Well?" the furry being finally boomed. "You finished boggling yet, or am I gonna have to shake you around to give your brain a jumpstart?"
Ranma reflexively kipupped, dropped into the Stance of the Drifting Rhinoceros, and debated the relative merits of the sixty-seven musabetsu kakutou maneuvers intended to seriously discommode eight-foot-tall youkai. Before the word "jumpstart" had been spoken he'd settled on a personal variant of #35 ("float like a butterfly, sting like a walrus") that, never having fought an eight-foot-tall youkai before, he'd been concerned he'd never have a chance to test properly.
The youkai grinned toothily, failing to deliver any sort of attack. "Relax, Saotome. This ain't the time for fighting," he said. "I'm here to deliver a warning, and to offer you folks my help in what's coming."
Ranma mulled that over, not breaking stance for a second. "Warning, huh? What's so bad you gotta break inta my dreams to tell me about it? And just who or what are you, anyway?"
"What am I...?" The creature paused as if to think the question through. "There're a lot of answers to that one. My kind has many names across the worlds... we've been called Eidolons, Guardian Forces, Aeons, Espers..." He shook his head. "I prefer the name we were given on our homeworld, long ago. I was born Mael Duin, but I gave up
that name with my mortal life. Call me Maduin, and my people the Genjuu--the Phantom Beasts!" He'd assumed a ridiculously dramatic, Kunouesque pose--but the gleam in his eye, the crooked grin, told Ranma that 'Maduin' wasn't taking himself the least bit seriously.
'I could get ta like this guy,' Ranma found himself thinking. He relaxed and sat cross-legged in the dream of a clover field... keeping the kakutou sadou seated combat styles in the back of his mind. "So ...a warning, huh? Evil god waking up? Secret ninja clan plannin' to pave Nerima and build a theme park? Outbreak of girly-eye measles? 'Cause I gotta tell ya," he smirked, "I been there, done that, and nailed it shut, and if you think me and the local wrecking crew can't handle bad stuff then maybe you got another think comin'."
"Oh, I know what you can handle," the Genjuu replied. "We've been watching you and your buddies for a while now, that's why I'm here. You've all got more skill and experience than anyone your age should have, and you in particular have more raw talent than anyone your world's seen in centuries." Taking on a stern expression he continued, "And all of you put together don't stand a chance against what's coming."
Ranma raised an eyebrow. "Okay, so convince me. What's the situation and what kinda help you got to offer?"
Maduin grimaced, something for which his face was extremely well-suited. "That takes some explaining. Fortunately time is bunk in dreams, so if you want the long version I can give it to you." At Ranma's nod, he continued:
Like I said, I was human once--a long, long time ago in a world that was in another universe entirely. A magical accident--more of a catastrophe really--turned me and a bunch of other folks into immortal magical creatures, Phantom Beasts as we wound up calling ourselves. It was bad at first--sure we were tough, but a lot of us weren't even humanoid anymore, and then some of the local wizards came up with spells to bind us and used us as weapons. Made the war that was already going on even worse.
Near the end of the war, we managed to break free and pooled our powers to escape. We found another world, an empty paradise, and we closed the gateway behind us... figured we'd sealed all our troubles away. And we had, for a thousand years.
When the troubles came back... it was bad, really bad. Started as the old story, humans trying to use us or outright steal our magic, but that wasn't the worst of it. One of them went totally insane, drunk on the power he'd raped from us, and he came within a hair's breadth of completely destroying the world. Killed all of us
in the process, or at least that's what we thought had happened--our spirits wound up locked in magic crystals. We couldn't do a thing to stop Cefca... but humans could. Through the crystals we lent them our help, taught them magic, even managed to give them the power to summon our spirits for a little heavy artillery. In the end, working together, we managed to take that bastard down and save
what was left of our worlds...
We thought that'd be the end of us, but somehow we all woke up back in our pocket world--alive again, and a good deal more concerned about the outside. Our old world was out of danger for the moment, but during that second war we'd become aware of some deeply disturbing things. Cefca had more power than he should've, power that didn't
come from us or the goddesses who'd changed us or any other source we'd been aware of, and we figured out at last that it came from ...outside. Some other force from the darkness between worlds was feeding him, was egging him on. Making him more and more insane, encouraging him to destroy everything he could. And killing him hadn't done a thing to hurt what was backing him. It was still out there, and we couldn't touch it.
After that we started keeping watch over our old world; we found ways to quietly help them rebuild, and we made damn sure that anyone the darkness tried to contact learned to have nothing to do with it. In the process we stretched ourselves and realized we were developing powers beyond anything we'd imagined possible--in a thousand years of solitude we'd never thought to try. Whole other worlds, other universes, were opened to our sight... and we found the darkness at work among them.
Ever since then, we've set ourselves against that force. We know it for what it is now--Mu. The Void, the Silence, the power of Oblivion that seeks to undo all of creation and reduce reality itself to nothing. We've helped fight it on a thousand worlds, in a thousand forms... and we've never lost yet. Not once.
We try to maintain a presence on every world we can find, and offer our aid to whatever heroes and forces for good might be there; that way, if the Void shows up we're already in place to stop it. This time, though... we've known about your world for four thousand years, but magic works so damn weird here compared to what we're used to that we couldn't use the standard approach. The one time one of us tried to offer his powers to an Earthling... let's just say it didn't work out very well. We've been watching what came of that ever since, though, and now I think we've worked the bugs out of the
process.
Just barely in time, too. Ramuh and Asura--two of the best scryers we've got--they've sensed activity from a universe near this one, one we can't see into worth a damn, but what we can pick up says there's some kind of military force on its way here. Big, bad, highly magical, and probably able to shrug off anything your local armies can throw at it.
(Further discussion. Ranma is pretty much ready to accept, Maduin explains the process--and then tells him he has it in mind to resurrect an old condition of Genjuu aid: you gotta fight me first. A duel from heck ensues; Maduin is the master of Chaos, and it's simply impossible to anticipate his movements. In the end, though, he declares Ranma worthy to wield his power. Oh, and we'll be recruiting others from around here to help... Ranma, predictably, wants them to leave Akane out of this, but Maduin won't have any part of that--he bawls the kid out something fierce.
(Back to the present: "Konton the Chaos Beast," despite his lack of practice, is doing a fair job with a combination of martial arts and the Chaos Wing energy attack... until Shadow enters the fray. Ranma is now getting the tar whaled out of him--but as a deady Dark Wave is about to connect, there's a sudden bright white light...
(...aaaaand end chapter.)
--Sam
"I didn't know there were ninjas in Japan. Did you?"
I ran into a stylistic stumbling block almost immediately, though--I wanted to keep the feel of a fighting manga/anime, and having the Wrecking Crew summon Beasts to fight instead of or even alongside them just wasn't right. Then it hit me--in Ranma's world they'd have to manifest through the characters, turning them into avatars, granting them power and partial transformations.
Then, and only then, did I realize just how perfectly this worked--because one of the most powerful beings in Ranma canon is clearly such an avatar already...
So, here's the first (fragmentary and unfinished as yet) chapter of Phantom Beast Soldier Ranma...
With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney,
Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end--
Methinks it is no journey!
--Tom O'Bedlam's Song
Dimensions flexed and shattered, and the air over Tokyo screamed like a wounded steel mill as a sleek black airship of ornate and sinister design emerged from a gray hole in the sky.
The ironclad ship, over two hundred feet long, was held aloft by a dozen humming propeller-rotors. Rows of cannon protruded from each side, with several more fore and aft of its exposed battle deck; each was manned by a crew of men clad in armor the color of the night sky half an
hour past sunset.
In the forecastle, a tall man looked out over the city below. He wore armor much like that of the gunners, but for its utterly black hue and silver-edged deep purple cape; like the crew, his visor remained firmly shut. Only he knew that as he beheld the metropolis before him, he smiled a vicious and triumphant smile.
At his side, a woman clothed all in crimson stared in disbelief. Almost reverently, she doffed her hat, the golden feather in its brim ruffled by the same wind that swept up her blonde hair. "Such power, such life..." she murmured. "The probes weren't lying after all. So this is what a world is like in its prime..."
"It's perfect," the black-clad knight stated. "This abundant life energy is exactly what we've been searching for all these years."
The red-garbed woman stared at him in shock. "Lord Shadow... you can't be planning to drain this world?! The others were near death already, their inhabitants were desperate for the chance we've given them!" She waved at the brilliant lights beneath them. "There must be over a million people in this city alone! We could never hope to evacuate even a fraction of the planet's population before the air went bad--it would be an unthinkable atrocity...!"
"Would it really?" the one called Shadow asked her. "Take a deep breath of their precious air, Magister. Smell the pollutants carried on it." His own armored hand swept out. "Look at those lights--incandescent bulbs, neon and fluorescents. All signs of a purely technological civilization... which means this world is already doomed to choke on its own poison. Do you remember Bangaia, Farla? Do you remember how the pathetic handful we were able to save cursed their own ancestors for the slow destruction of their ecosystem?
"Out of the thirty worlds we've discovered, only five relied completely on science--and in every case it was science that killed them. This world is perhaps not quite so far along that path, but it too will fall into ruin. Taking its energies will only accelerate what has already begun... and there is enough here to fully restore our Crystals, so anyone we can bring over will be assured of life and health." Shadow folded his arms in a gesture of finality. "Those who survive will thank us, once Tenebrea is reborn and they live in a better world than this."
Magister Farla shuddered and turned away from the black knight. "I wish I could believe that. Even if this planet is doomed, they'll never accept that we are saving them..."
"What would you then, Magister? Do you now choose to turn against the Empire?" There was edged steel in Shadow's voice.
"...No... Better that one world dies than two," she said
reluctantly. "I am loyal to Tenebrea and the Empress. But I wish there was another way." And may the Unknown Powers forgive us, thought Farla nel Erras, Magister Incarnadine, because the people of this world never will.
The Evil Midnight Lurker what Lurks at Midnight presents:
GENJUU SENSHI RANMA: SUMMONED TO TOURNEY
Chapter One:
"MY NAME IS CHAOS!" THE FIRST PHANTOM BEAST SOLDIER APPEARS!
The Indomitable's war magi emerged from below decks: five shrouded in the all-concealing robes of the Black Order, only glowing eyes visible beneath wide-brimmed wizard's hats; one in the elaborate silken garb of a West Gepponese Feng Shui master. The commander turned his attention to the latter.
"Well, geomancer? Where are they?"
The wizard of wind and water gulped. "Milord...there is a problem..."
"Can it be resolved quickly?" The black knight's voice left no doubt that it had damn well better be.
This left the hapless geomancer in a bit of a bind. "I...I can only barely make out that this world -has- Crystals, milord! It is partly a matter of this world's abundant elemental energies, but... it's almost as if they've been deliberately hidden. I can't get a fix on even one of them..."
(...)
The aircraft was clearly nonmagical--twin rotors whirled at unbelievably high speeds and were still barely sufficient to keep the thing aloft, not at all like the Indomitable's lazily spinning Float Blades. Its armor would doubtless be negligible, sacrificed to the relentless demands of unopposed gravity.
No threat at all, really.
An amplified voice rang out over the rotors' roar: "You're under arrest for violation of Tokyo airspace! Land that...thing...and surrender at once!"
The black knight choked down a laugh and called on his helmet's own loudspeaker spells. "You... want US to surrender? Oh no, that wouldn't do at all. Are you in communication with your commanding officers, and can they hear me?" The pilot nodded nervously, and Shadow assumed a self-consciously formal voice. "Then I, the Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, supreme commander of the Armed Forces of the Tenebrean Empire, hereby demand your nation's instant and unconditional surrender! Land YOUR craft or be destroyed!"
Horiuki Sato had one slight advantage in this situation over most other JSDF personnel: he was Nerima-jin born and bred. He'd run into minor spirits and major martial artists quite often in his youth, had even on one memorable occasion twenty years past joined a mob chasing down the Dread Master Happousai and his hapless students. He was as prepared as one could be for an alien invasion, and wasn't predisposed either to deny it outright or to fly into a panic.
On the other hand, he was also uncomfortably aware of the existence of the supernatural and only too ready to believe that the outlandish airship and its belligerent commander could indeed blow his helicopter out of the sky.
On the gripping hand (Sato was a Niven fan), there was his duty to consider. Plus they were hovering over Nerima itself and communicating quite loudly, so there was every chance that help was already on the way. Weird help it would probably be, but help nonetheless.
(Shadow orders black mage #1 to blast the 'copter)
Sato knew mystic gestures when he saw them, and the guy making them couldn't have looked more like a wizard. Wishing he were in something more maneuverable, he
">Rising storm, break and smite the foe! THUNDER!"--the purple aura surrounding him flared into actinic, eye-searing brightness--"...KONTON!"
And the light stabbed out at Shadowknight and Farla...
...and the mages frantically began chanting defensive spells...
...and Sato stared helplessly up at the airship, wondering who or what the being who'd just named himself "Chaos" might really be...
Eighteen hours previously:
Deep in the throes of dream, Saotome Ranma was running for his life from a furry, cat-eared and -eyed Akane -- he wasn't entirely sure whether she wanted to kill him or... or, but what with the whole felinity thing knew he wasn't interested in finding out -- when an oddly real voice called his name.
The deep, echoing voice cut through the dreamfog, jarring Ranma into total lucidity -- dream-Akane's cat aspects vanished, along with her school uniform, but Ranma was now far too busy worrying to contemplate his innermost desires.
Mysterious voice in a dream, don't sound like a dream at all -- oh no, I ain't fallin' for that one! Time to wake up before I get caught in somethin' too stupid to believe again!
Swimming upstream to consciousness, Ranma managed to shake himself awake and free of the frustrated caller. "Oh jeez," he muttered, throwing the blanket aside and sitting up in his futon. "Second night in a row, that can't be good...maybe I better ask the Doc about--"
His monologue was interrupted as a large wooden sign reading {SHUT UP AND LET YOUR POOR OLD FATHER GET SOME SLEEP!} broke over his head, knocking him back to the futon and into dreamland in an instant.
In a plummet, in fact...
With a cry of "DAMN YOU OYAJI!!!" Ranma dropped into the depths of his dreams... landing flat on his back in a field of clover, with a very large and odd-looking being looming over him.
"About spooni time you started paying attention," the creature growled in a distressingly familiar tone.
The man (if man he was) was...large. VERY large, nearly eight feet tall and almost half that wide, equipped with muscles that made Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime look like Gosunkugi on a bad day. Those muscles were covered in a coat of short tan fur, and two long straight horns held a shaggy mane of blue-gray hair out of a wide, craggy, surprisingly human face that was contorted into something like a wry smile. His legs curved backward, doglike, and his feet ended in vicious talons.
Oni was Ranma's first thought, and a rather more impressive variety than the wiffleball-from-heck that had possessed Kasumi a few months before. But this guy wasn't giving off any kind of demonic or even sinister vibes; rather, he radiated a sense of patience and good humor--and of a vast yet thoroughly leashed power, not ki but something very similar. And very familiar...
"Well?" the furry being finally boomed. "You finished boggling yet, or am I gonna have to shake you around to give your brain a jumpstart?"
Ranma reflexively kipupped, dropped into the Stance of the Drifting Rhinoceros, and debated the relative merits of the sixty-seven musabetsu kakutou maneuvers intended to seriously discommode eight-foot-tall youkai. Before the word "jumpstart" had been spoken he'd settled on a personal variant of #35 ("float like a butterfly, sting like a walrus") that, never having fought an eight-foot-tall youkai before, he'd been concerned he'd never have a chance to test properly.
The youkai grinned toothily, failing to deliver any sort of attack. "Relax, Saotome. This ain't the time for fighting," he said. "I'm here to deliver a warning, and to offer you folks my help in what's coming."
Ranma mulled that over, not breaking stance for a second. "Warning, huh? What's so bad you gotta break inta my dreams to tell me about it? And just who or what are you, anyway?"
"What am I...?" The creature paused as if to think the question through. "There're a lot of answers to that one. My kind has many names across the worlds... we've been called Eidolons, Guardian Forces, Aeons, Espers..." He shook his head. "I prefer the name we were given on our homeworld, long ago. I was born Mael Duin, but I gave up
that name with my mortal life. Call me Maduin, and my people the Genjuu--the Phantom Beasts!" He'd assumed a ridiculously dramatic, Kunouesque pose--but the gleam in his eye, the crooked grin, told Ranma that 'Maduin' wasn't taking himself the least bit seriously.
'I could get ta like this guy,' Ranma found himself thinking. He relaxed and sat cross-legged in the dream of a clover field... keeping the kakutou sadou seated combat styles in the back of his mind. "So ...a warning, huh? Evil god waking up? Secret ninja clan plannin' to pave Nerima and build a theme park? Outbreak of girly-eye measles? 'Cause I gotta tell ya," he smirked, "I been there, done that, and nailed it shut, and if you think me and the local wrecking crew can't handle bad stuff then maybe you got another think comin'."
"Oh, I know what you can handle," the Genjuu replied. "We've been watching you and your buddies for a while now, that's why I'm here. You've all got more skill and experience than anyone your age should have, and you in particular have more raw talent than anyone your world's seen in centuries." Taking on a stern expression he continued, "And all of you put together don't stand a chance against what's coming."
Ranma raised an eyebrow. "Okay, so convince me. What's the situation and what kinda help you got to offer?"
Maduin grimaced, something for which his face was extremely well-suited. "That takes some explaining. Fortunately time is bunk in dreams, so if you want the long version I can give it to you." At Ranma's nod, he continued:
Like I said, I was human once--a long, long time ago in a world that was in another universe entirely. A magical accident--more of a catastrophe really--turned me and a bunch of other folks into immortal magical creatures, Phantom Beasts as we wound up calling ourselves. It was bad at first--sure we were tough, but a lot of us weren't even humanoid anymore, and then some of the local wizards came up with spells to bind us and used us as weapons. Made the war that was already going on even worse.
Near the end of the war, we managed to break free and pooled our powers to escape. We found another world, an empty paradise, and we closed the gateway behind us... figured we'd sealed all our troubles away. And we had, for a thousand years.
When the troubles came back... it was bad, really bad. Started as the old story, humans trying to use us or outright steal our magic, but that wasn't the worst of it. One of them went totally insane, drunk on the power he'd raped from us, and he came within a hair's breadth of completely destroying the world. Killed all of us
in the process, or at least that's what we thought had happened--our spirits wound up locked in magic crystals. We couldn't do a thing to stop Cefca... but humans could. Through the crystals we lent them our help, taught them magic, even managed to give them the power to summon our spirits for a little heavy artillery. In the end, working together, we managed to take that bastard down and save
what was left of our worlds...
We thought that'd be the end of us, but somehow we all woke up back in our pocket world--alive again, and a good deal more concerned about the outside. Our old world was out of danger for the moment, but during that second war we'd become aware of some deeply disturbing things. Cefca had more power than he should've, power that didn't
come from us or the goddesses who'd changed us or any other source we'd been aware of, and we figured out at last that it came from ...outside. Some other force from the darkness between worlds was feeding him, was egging him on. Making him more and more insane, encouraging him to destroy everything he could. And killing him hadn't done a thing to hurt what was backing him. It was still out there, and we couldn't touch it.
After that we started keeping watch over our old world; we found ways to quietly help them rebuild, and we made damn sure that anyone the darkness tried to contact learned to have nothing to do with it. In the process we stretched ourselves and realized we were developing powers beyond anything we'd imagined possible--in a thousand years of solitude we'd never thought to try. Whole other worlds, other universes, were opened to our sight... and we found the darkness at work among them.
Ever since then, we've set ourselves against that force. We know it for what it is now--Mu. The Void, the Silence, the power of Oblivion that seeks to undo all of creation and reduce reality itself to nothing. We've helped fight it on a thousand worlds, in a thousand forms... and we've never lost yet. Not once.
We try to maintain a presence on every world we can find, and offer our aid to whatever heroes and forces for good might be there; that way, if the Void shows up we're already in place to stop it. This time, though... we've known about your world for four thousand years, but magic works so damn weird here compared to what we're used to that we couldn't use the standard approach. The one time one of us tried to offer his powers to an Earthling... let's just say it didn't work out very well. We've been watching what came of that ever since, though, and now I think we've worked the bugs out of the
process.
Just barely in time, too. Ramuh and Asura--two of the best scryers we've got--they've sensed activity from a universe near this one, one we can't see into worth a damn, but what we can pick up says there's some kind of military force on its way here. Big, bad, highly magical, and probably able to shrug off anything your local armies can throw at it.
(Further discussion. Ranma is pretty much ready to accept, Maduin explains the process--and then tells him he has it in mind to resurrect an old condition of Genjuu aid: you gotta fight me first. A duel from heck ensues; Maduin is the master of Chaos, and it's simply impossible to anticipate his movements. In the end, though, he declares Ranma worthy to wield his power. Oh, and we'll be recruiting others from around here to help... Ranma, predictably, wants them to leave Akane out of this, but Maduin won't have any part of that--he bawls the kid out something fierce.
(Back to the present: "Konton the Chaos Beast," despite his lack of practice, is doing a fair job with a combination of martial arts and the Chaos Wing energy attack... until Shadow enters the fray. Ranma is now getting the tar whaled out of him--but as a deady Dark Wave is about to connect, there's a sudden bright white light...
(...aaaaand end chapter.)
--Sam
"I didn't know there were ninjas in Japan. Did you?"
![[Image: smile.gif]](http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/smile.gif)
I know how it begins, I know how it'll end, connecting the two can be tricky.
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