Sailor Moon Fan Fiction / Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Crossing the Streams ❯ Ordinary World ( Chapter 2 )

Morning dawned in the life of Ranma Saotome, and as was habitual, he was awakened by a bucket of cold water to the face. Nothing out of the ordinary here. All in all, par for course if you were an aqua-transsexual martial artist. Right. A what now? Say it with me: `Aqua-transsexual.' Most people, they get a bucket of cold water to the face and all they do is splutter. Ranma on the other hand, he transforms. The cold tingle of the transformation rippled across his body, softening his angles into curves, shifting his weight around, and making two very visible alterations in the chest area and one less visible but no less significant alteration to the pelvis. The new form looked much like a female version of the old - what the boy would have looked like had he been born a she - but not exactly. There were certain differences that could not be accounted for. Her hair was still dark, so there was that, but her features, while still somewhat oriental, were now only maybe half Japanese at best: a mix of Japanese and something else. If a person didn't know better, they'd say it was probably British ancestry. The eyes were the same, at least. A deep, shining blue.

 

That was when he, now a she, spluttered angrily. “What'd you do that for!?”

 

It seems there are some universals after all.

 

Ranma glared at... well, that was a surprise. It wasn't her fiancé who'd splashed her this morning, but rather her father - Genma Saotome - who even now held the bucket he had flung into his son-turned-daughter's face. “Baka Oyaji!” Ranma hissed, and leaped to her feet just in time to get punted out the open window. She did a double back flip before landing gracefully on the boulder overlooking the koi pond.

 

Genma went leaping out after her, coming down with a tremendous flying kick.

 

Ranma shifted to the side, and Genma planted his foot in the boulder. Ranma took the opportunity to deliver a vicious snap-kick to Genma's jaw, sending the older man flying up, up, up into the air. Still, what goes up must come down. Gravity, that is. Down he went, landing in the koi pond with a tremendous splash. Instant panda.

 

See, Ranma's not the only one who transforms when splashed. But of course, you probably know all that. Still, even if you're familiar with it, it is a bit odd, boys turning into girls and men turning into pandas and piglets and ducks and yeti-bull-eel-crane combinations. No, Ranma had never been normal, and never would be. But as she finally defeated her father and strode into the house to eat breakfast (and to change back into a boy), she didn't much care.

 

Or could you imagine Ranma the ordinary boy? Or the ordinary girl? Ranma the boy who goes to school and does his chores and comes home at night with a long career as a cubicle worker to look forward to? Ranma the salary man? How about Ranma the housewife, settling down with some man and giving birth to some odd number of children? Ranma the husband, who marries his sweetheart, settles down and raises a family, Ranma the father to two point five children? Ranma the grandmother or grandfather, utterly senile, forgotten by his family who mourn her senility like he had died before her body had actually quit? Ranma Saotome, dying alone in some retirement home somewhere?

 

No?

 

Well, neither could Ranma. Whatever else she knew, the pigtailed girl at least knew this much: she was meant for something other than a normal life, and the universe, it seemed, agreed. If there was a monster to be found, she was the one who found it and fought it. If there was a Chinese prince looking for a bride, it was Ranma's fiancé that they took. All this strangeness, all this insanity, transformations and high powered martial arts battles, all this chaos, it was normal for Ranma. Par for course. It had always been that way, as long as Ranma could remember, and despite all the problems that cropped up, she, now a he once more, wouldn't have it any other way.

 

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Crossing the Streams

by P.H. Wise

A Sailor Moon, Ranma 1/2, Doctor Who crossover

 

Chapter 01: Ordinary World

 

Disclaimer: I don't own Ranma. I don't own Sailor Moon. The BBC owns Doctor Who. Please don't sue me.

 

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The sun was already trudging its way on up into the sky when Ranma and Akane left for class that morning. They took their usual route, running along next to the canal, with Ranma, a boy once again, racing along the top of the fence that overlooked said canal. The air was bright; the smog-haze had been lifted by the recent rains, and puddles still lined the streets like little mirrors, shining in the sunlight.

 

“Hurry up, dummy!” Akane called irritably. “We're going to be late!”

 

Ranma smirked confidently. “Ain't no way we're gonna be late today. I got a plan.” And so he did. He had it all planned out. First he'd dodge the sprinklers, then he'd roof-hop past the kids having a water-fight in their front yard. From there, he'd have to return to street level to avoid the faulty pipes on the roof of the old curio shop. He'd then roll underneath the hose spray of the old man who would be watering his garden right about this time, and then it was just a matter of dashing the last hundred yards to the school. No problem at all. Still, as he carried out his plan, he couldn't help but feel a nagging sensation like he'd forgotten something. Something important.

 

As the pigtailed boy evaded the sprinklers and took to the rooftops, Akane shook her head incredulously. “Showoff,” she groused, and began what to anyone else would have been a mad dash but was to a Neriman martial artist (even one of the weaker ones, like her,) a brisk jog, in order to keep up.

 

Ranma exulted in his own physical prowess. It was working! He'd finally get to school without transforming even once! And he'd make it on time, too! A thrill shot through him even as he rolled underneath the hose-spray of the old man who was watering his garden. He came up smoothly to his feet and dashed on after Akane, who was almost to the school gates now.

 

Then he realized what he'd forgotten - the one variable he'd failed to take into account.

 

The ladle lady.

 

With the flick of her elderly wrist, she decided Ranma's fate. The pigtailed boy got a face full of cold water, and skidded to a halt in front of the school.

 

Akane laughed, and rushed inside just in time. “Serves you right for showing off!” she called over her shoulder, amusement in her voice.

 

Ranma clenched her fist. Someday - she wasn't sure when or how - she'd figure out the ladle lady. Someday, she'd finally beat the old woman's invincible water-toss technique, or her name wasn't Ranma Saotome. Someday...

 

The school bell rang, announcing Ranma's tardiness to the world.

 

“Aw, that ain't fair!” she said to no one in particular. She walked into the school and soon afterwards was set to the undignified (yet ever so familiar) task of holding buckets in the hall.

 

“I told you, you should have left earlier,” Akane said as Ranma trudged past her desk on the way back into the hallway, buckets in hand.

 

Ranma shot Akane a withering look, and for once, kept her big mouth shut.

 

It was an odd sort of day after that point. Once the teacher gave her permission, Ranma walked back into the class, but she did it with a strange sense of detachment. Not that it was unusual for her to not pay attention to her class, but this was a bit odder than usual. Today was too ordinary. Too... normal. Well, normal for Ranma. On top of that, there hadn't been any major challengers for at least a week. That was always a bad sign. Even worse, Kuno hadn't been there to challenge them when they'd arrived at school. It felt like... well, no matter. Perhaps the day would pick up as it went on. Maybe that would drive away the sense of impending doom.

 

Hours passed, and teachers rotated through the classroom as the subjects changed. Hinako-Sensei came and went, and not a single student was drained. Lunch arrived with nothing in particular happening, and Ranma took the opportunity to change back into a he. He even managed to stay that way clear through Gym and into the beginning of math class - the last class of the day, when Hiroshi, coming back in from the restroom, tripped and fell over his own desk, sending his open water bottle flying into Ranma's lap. Still, that wasn't particularly unusual. Unusual would have been it not happening. So why did she feel like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop? Why did she feel like she was stuck between the tick and the tock? And why was the rest of the class staring at her like that?

 

Ranma took a mental stock of her recent memories. Let's see. Walk into class on autopilot and plop down in his usual chair. Ignore the math teacher as usual. Get splashed by Hiroshi. Continue ignoring the math teacher. Get called up to plot a point on a graph. Plot a five dimensional point in space/time. Go back to her seat. Continue ignoring the...

 

Wait a minute.

 

A five dimensional point in space/time? Where had that come from? OK. Right. Don't panic. So she had known how to plot a five dimensional point in space/time. That wasn't anything weird, was it?

 

“Ranma,” Akane breathed, stunned. “What is that?”

 

Ranma looked at the equations on the board, scratched the base of her pigtail, and shrugged. Wherever that strange detached feeling had come from, it was gone now. The equations might as well have been chicken-scratches for all the sense she could make of them. “Uh, math?” she asked.

 

“This isn't just math,” the teacher - Nakamura-sensei - said, staring at the board. “This is... well, I don't know what this is! This is revolutionary! How did...” He trailed off, then quickly produced a cell phone and took a photograph of the blackboard. He glanced down at the display on his phone, took a few more pictures, and then, satisfied with the clarity of the photos, shook his head incredulously. “Class is dismissed early,” he said. “All of you, go home.” He glanced at Ranma. “Except you, Saotome. You stay for a moment.”

 

The class exchanged glances, and then rose, bowed, and filed out one by one.

 

All, that is, except for Ranma and Akane.

 

“Tendo-san,” Nakamura-sensei said, looking somewhat annoyed, “You can go. I'll only be a moment.” He was a large, unpleasant man, and prone to gas. He was bald, but what hair he did have was dark. He usually dressed in business suits designed to disguise his girth.

 

Akane gave the teacher a doubtful look, then rose to her feet and headed towards the door. “See you at home, Ranma,” she said.

 

“Yeah, whatever.” Ranma replied insensitively.

 

Akane stiffened ever so slightly at that and didn't look at the pigtailed girl as she strode out of the classroom.

 

Silence fell over the classroom for about a minute as the teacher waited for Akane to leave the building. Finally, he was satisfied. “So, Saotome-san,” Nakamura-sensei said. “It seems you've been hiding something.”

 

Ranma gave the teacher a nonplused look. “Uh, I guess?”

 

“Where did you learn to do that sort of math problem, Saotome-san?”

 

Ranma looked at the problem on the board. It still looked like chicken-scratches to her. Although... no. Chicken-scratches. “Uh, I ain't got no idea how ta do that, uh, that kind of problem.”

 

Nakamura strode up to the blackboard. “Then where did this come from, Saotome-san?” he asked in a low, dangerous tone.

 

Everything seemed to shift, then. Ranma's danger sense went wild: the teacher was radiating ki charged with the intent to kill. She grew nervous, being unused to such feelings being radiated by teachers. “It just came out, uh, Nakamura-sensei. I dunno where it came from.” She rose to her feet.

 

Nakamura farted loudly, but neither he nor Ranma commented on it. Ranma caught a faint smell - it wasn't methane, but something like bad breath.

 

“I have a proposal for you, Saotome. You help me, and I let you live.”

 

Ranma laughed. Who did this teacher think he was talking to? By the way he was standing, Ranma could tell that he didn't even know martial arts!

 

“You think your survival is funny? That's fine. So do I. I don't know how you did that problem, Saotome, but the knowledge is locked in your head somewhere, and I mean to have it out. So it's your choice: do you surrender it voluntarily, or do I have to extract your brain and download the information directly?”

 

Ranma dropped into a fighting stance. “Bring it on,” she taunted.

 

Nakamura charged.

 

Two seconds and one swift kick to the face later, Nakamura went flying back the way he came and crashed into the blackboard with a meaty thud.

 

Ranma lowered her leg and straightened up. “Geez, I was right. He's got no training at all! What a wimp!”

 

Nakamura began to laugh.

 

“Somethin' funny, Sensei?” Ranma asked.

 

Nakamura reached up and pulled a small strip of flesh off his forehead, revealing... a bright, shining blue light beneath. “It's been a long time since I've had a chance to step out of the disguise,” he said, grinning widely. “My ship's navigation computer was damaged, but the math problem you produced on the board should be enough for me to plot my own course home. Not as reliably as if you had helped, but it should work. I was going to arrest them and bring them back for trial, but I'm fed up with this stupid place and you stupid people. The Slitheen family can burn this rock to cinders for all I care.” His flesh began to fall off.

 

“What the hell!?” Ranma exclaimed, backing away from the transforming teacher.

 

The Nakamura-suit fell off, and a massive, bipedal, green-skinned alien with huge claws on its forelimbs rose to its full, eight foot height. “Let's see how you deal with a Raxacoricofallapatorian!” he bellowed.

 

Ranma blinked. “Hold on. A what?”

 

The monster blinked, and looked at Ranma, clearly annoyed. “Raxacoricofallapatorian.”

 

“Raxacori...fallo...thingy?”

 

“Raxacoricofallapatorian!” the monster snapped. “It's not that hard, girl! Even a stupid monkey like you should be able to pronounce it.”

 

Stupid monkey? OK, stupid she could buy, but monkey? Ranma glared at the monster, feeling considerably less charitable towards the thing. “Raxicoricoreallystupidname,” she sneered.

 

“AAAAAAAAGH! DIE!” The monster charged once more.

 

This time, Ranma's kick only launched the monster about half as far: in its true form, the Raxacoricofallapatorian was considerably better able to resist kinetic impact than when its compression field was in use to allow it to fit inside its human skin suit. Still, the thing was uncommonly pleased at the thought that here, at last, was prey that would be worth the hunt. It told Ranma so. “Here,” it said, “At last, is a prey that is worth the hunt!” See? There you are then.

 

Again and again, the alien lunged at Ranma, and again and again she shifted to the side and watched as it smashed headlong through desks and into walls. It was strong and it was powerful, and it moved with the instinctive grace of a natural predator, but it had little skill in the martial arts. After about two minutes of this, Ranma yawned visibly, which further enraged the creature.

 

A minute later, Ranma was visibly putting as little effort as possible into foiling the creature's every attempt to attack her. Finally, the thing that had been Nakamura-sensei collapsed onto the teacher's desk, breathing hard. “Damn you, girl. You...” It wheezed. “You haven't beaten me yet!”

 

Ranma cocked her head to the side, considering the alien. “I gotta say, as aliens go, you really suck,” she said helpfully. “Probably all the doughnuts ya eat before class. You should go easy on that sort of thing, ya know. Get some exercise. Work out. Maybe take some martial arts classes. As is, hell, even Akane could probably beat ya.” Ranma pulled out a business card - the first of a batch that Nabiki had made up. “Here. If ya ever get enough trainin' to be worth the trouble, come on by.” She handed the business card to the exhausted alien, who took it with a clawed hand and looked down at it incredulously.

 

`Ranma Saotome - Saotome Musabetsu Kakuto Ryu - Tendo Dojo - To defeat the owner in savage combat, please use rear entrance.'

 

“Anyways,” Ranma said, “This is lame. I'm outta here.” She walked over to the window, slid it open, and hopped out.

 

The creature that had been Nakamura rushed to the window and gazed down just in time to see the pigtailed girl land gracefully in the courtyard below. It stared after her, not able to quite believe what had just happened. Then it looked furtively around, picked up its Nakamura-suit, and began the arduous process of putting the blasted thing back on. Screw this miserable planet. It was time to leave.

 

Maybe it would blast the Tendo Dojo to rubble once it was in orbit.

 

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It's funny the kind of things that completely change the shape of our destiny. Take Ranma for example. He never would have imagined that his actions that day would bring his safe, wonderful, chaotic world of martial arts mayhem to an abrupt end. After all, what's an alien in a world like his? Surely nothing special. And he wasn't, really. The alien that had taken the body of Nakamura-sensei was quite an unsuccessful Detective back on Raxicoricofallapatorius, and had only really come to Earth hunting the Slitheen family on something of a lark gone wrong: the chances of actually finding them here were nearly astronomically low, but if it got him an all-expense paid vacation courtesy of the Raxacoricofallapatorian police force, well, who was he to argue? He'd certainly never expected to get stuck here with a faulty navigational computer. Still, in a way, he was grateful to the Saotome girl. Boy. Whatever it was. And there was another thing. What kind of species changed so freely between male and female? It was unnatural, it was. The sooner he was out of here, the better. In any case, he was grateful. That equation had given him just what he needed to extrapolate the route from here back to his home, with or without the navigational computer. He'd be sure to thank the girl by blasting her home to dust once he was in orbit. So he thought, and muttered to himself, even as he boarded his ship (cloaked on the roof of Furinkan high) and began the long process of powering it up from sleep/hide mode into full active functionality.

 

If Ranma hadn't plotted a five dimensional point in space/time, the alien would not have decided to leave the Earth that day. If Ranma hadn't then proceeded to utterly humiliate a very proud member of a very proud race of hunters and defile the ritual hunt with his flippancy, the Raxacoricofallapatorian might well have not departed in such an angry huff. And then, everything would have been different. On any other day, this would not have been any big deal. He would have powered up and been gone (and possibly have destroyed the Tendo Dojo from orbit). On this day, however, a small fleet of Black Moon starships were hovering in the clouds above Tokyo. Their focus had been on the Minato ward where their enemies, the Sailor Senshi, were even now fighting a small force of droids in an effort to prevent a Crystal Point from being corrupted. Their sensors detected the Raxacoricofallapatorian ship powering up, and immediately one of them flew off towards Nerima to investigate.

 

The great crystal ship descended through the clouds above Nerima and hovered just above the power source it had detected - just above Furinkan high school. Unfortunately for both ships involved, the Raxacoricofallapatorian ship's sensors had been damaged when it had first landed on Earth, and now had a blind spot in precisely the area that the Black Moon ship now occupied. Even more unfortunately for both ships involved, the Black Moon ship's sensors could detect only an unusual energy source, and could not otherwise detect the presence of the ship below. Even more unfortunately for both ships involved, the Raxacoricofallapatorian formerly known as Nakamura-sensei chose precisely that moment to blast off into orbit.

 

The ships collided with a terrible roar - the mingled sound of tearing metal and shattering crystal. A great crystal spire went right through the main engines of the Raxacoricofallapatorian vessel, and the bow of the Raxacoricofallapatorian ship smashed right through the central crystal core of the Black Moon vessel. To make a long story short, both ships in short order fell flaming headlong back to Earth and smashed into Furinkan high school with a tremendous, earth-cracking boom. Then, for good measure, they both exploded, sending debris flying halfway across the Nerima ward, but mostly just making a total mess of the Furinkan high school campus.

 

Word of a crashed alien spaceship quickly found the ears of those that listened for such things (and really, if it was going to happen, it would probably happen in Nerima: it was that sort of place). The news media quickly descended upon the site, and soon the whole nation was up in arms over what the government was attempting to explain away by mentioning something about swamp gas, a weather balloon, and the reflection of Venus.

 

None of that mattered to Ranma, of course, who was generally ignoring the tremendous events that had occurred as a direct result of her actions earlier that day.

 

“Tadaima,” Ranma called absently as she walked in the front door, taking a moment to kick off her slippers and put on indoor shoes.

 

For a moment, there was no response. The front room was dark, and a faint glow was coming from the TV room. “Okairi,” Kasumi called at last.

 

Ranma walked into the TV room. There, Akane, Nabiki and Kasumi sat glued to the television set. “What's going on?” she asked.

 

“Ranma! You're ok!” Akane exclaimed.

 

“Uh, yeah. I'm fine. What's the big deal?”

 

Akane pointed, and Ranma looked at the television screen. All of Furinkan was in flames.

 

“Huh,” Ranma said intelligently.

 

“'Huh?'” Akane asked. “That's all you can say? `Huh?' You were just there, dummy! You could have...” she trailed off. Fortunately for the illusion of her not being interested in Ranma, Ranma wasn't paying attention.

 

“I wonder if Nakamura-sensei being an alien and all, uh, maybe he crashed his ship or somethin',” Ranma mused.

 

“Nakamura-sensei is an alien?” Akane asked.

 

“Yeah. A pretty lame one, too. Even you could probably beat him, tomboy.”

 

Some things, it seemed, never changed.

 

Ranma soon lost interest in the events and wandered off in search of warm water, but Akane, Nabiki and Kasumi sat glued to the television as the story unfolded. Even Mousse, Shampoo, and Ukyou took the time to watch history play out before their eyes: this was quite possibly the first contact with an alien species in the history of the human race. Well, second if you counted that nonsense over in England, but the Japanese generally didn't.

 

What did matter to Ranma, though he didn't know it yet, was what happened next.

 

Far away, within a particular Time And Relative Dimension In Space, the Doctor blinked as he looked up at the image being projected on his view screen. Space ship crash in Tokyo? Huh. That's interesting. He didn't remember that happening. He was sure he would have remembered something like that happening so soon after he'd met... no, he wasn't going to think about her right now. He'd only just dealt with Doctor Lazarus, and with Martha joining him full time, it wouldn't do to get all down again. Not now.

 

Speaking of Martha, she was only just now walking into the main room of the TARDIS, suitcase in hand. She was a lovely young woman, with dusky skin, dark hair, and captivating brown eyes. “Doctor?” she asked, her distinctly London accent filling the TARDIS. “What's that, then? You've got a telly in here?”

 

The Doctor looked up, instantly cheerful. “No, of course not! I'd never have something as ordinary as `television' on the TARDIS. Not me. It's a chrono-lens!”

 

“Really? What's that?”

 

The Doctor shrugged, smiling a faintly goofy smile. “I don't know. I just made it up. It's a good name, though, isn't it? No, I'm watching the view screen, of course.”

 

“The view screen? Your view screen is a telly? Do you get Sky Movies?”

 

The Doctor nodded enthusiastically. “No,” he said, and Martha's face fell ever so slightly. “But I apparently do pick up `Galaxy Television' out of Japan. In this case, it's a signal from, oh, two years ago. Maybe three.”

 

“And that's normal?” Martha asked incredulously. Sure, she had seen some truly odd things so far traveling with the Doctor, but watching the telly in the TARDIS just seemed downright weird - even for the Doctor.

 

“What? No. Totally beyond the pale. Of course, it's a great idea. I should think about that. But no, not normal at all. Which is why...”

 

Martha smiled, cutting the Doctor off. “I've always wanted to visit Japan,” she said.

 

“Oh, it's a lovely place! Lovely people. Just absolutely lovely.” He began flipping switches on the TARDIS's main console. “Right now, something is displacing a television signal two years through time, and we're going to find out what.” He looked at the burning wreckage displayed on the Japanese news program - apparently a place called Furinkan high school in the Nerima ward of Tokyo. He put on faux-gentlemanly mannerisms and asked, “Would you care to accompany me to Tokyo, Miss Jones?”

 

Martha nodded. “I'd love to, Mister Smith,” she replied. His name wasn't Smith, but it was something of a private joke between them.

 

The whole room shuddered, and the distinctive sound of the TARDIS in transit filled the air: they were off. They were off, and though he didn't know it yet, for a certain pig-tailed martial artist, nothing would ever be the same.

 

END CHAPTER 01

 

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Author's notes:

 

So it begins. The first chapter is a bit shorter than I wanted (actually ten pages shorter than I wanted), but ah well. I can always make the next ones longer. They cover more material in any case.