MAGICAL GUARDIAN RANMA!

PREREADING AND EDITING ASSISTANCE BY:

No one, currently. I've lost contact with all of my prereaders…

DISCLAIMER: 'Ranma ½' and all characters therein belong to Rumiko Takahashi, Shogagukan, Kitty, and Viz Video. This fanfic has been produced for my own enjoyment and to pass on without profit. Other characters that come into play in this fanfict may or may not be pulled from other sources (including other fanfics, RPGs, manga, anime, literature, or possibly even GASP American comic books!).

TAGS: Alternate Universe, Humor, Drama, Action/Adventure, Violence, Lime.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

Ranma reached out with his will and directed a tree to gently catch Kasumi before the Warrior of Light could fall too far. Not something he would have ordinarily even thought of doing, but even as powered up as he was, there was no way he would have been able to make it all the way back across the battlefield in time… to… catch…

D'Oh!

Of course he could have got there in time! He currently had full access to Sparky's speed!

Speaking of which, he had been ignoring other abilities in favor of direct attacks in an effort to focus all enemy attention on him and him alone, but that plan wasn't going to work now with Sunshine's display.

He was rather curious as to how the dusky skinned girl had managed to tap so deeply into her brand new reserves on the first try. Particularly since he could tell that her power set was supposed to be primarily healing and support rather than for direct combat. At least until her reserves grew some more.

At the moment, he was near the remnants of the valiant school kendo club, where they had been attempting to mount a rescue of their captured schoolmates. Several of them were now deeply injured and possibly dying, paying a stiff price for their valor. Of those who had managed to hold their own bearing only wooden practice swords against live steel, only two were still struggling to continue on towards their goal, barely staying on their feet as their opponents scrambled away from the smoking hole in the ground where their quartermaster and a few of his goons had been…

O O O

Kuno forced himself to stay on his feet as he stumbled into the area where the demons had taken the captured students and teachers.

One student, a boy whose name he did not even know, was well beyond saving, having been carved up into so many pieces of meat.

Mr. Ukojo was hardly much better off, as the villains had been slicing strips off of each of his legs, and his left arm was broken, but the man was still breathing. Personally, Tatewaki had not particularly liked the man, as he was one of the few teachers in Furinkan High who ignored his noble status, and whom he viewed as a feeble and embittered old man.

A view he could hold no longer, having born witness to the elder teacher's incredible act of courage when the man had placed himself between the invaders and a set of the school doors, armed only with his ever present ruler.

Kuno looked around briefly, and placed said broken instrument in the fading educator's remaining hand.

"Rest well, Mr, Ukojo. You will be remembered."

O O O

Mr. Ukojo could barely hear whatever the rambling Kuno boy was going on about. Too bad too, because it seemed that it might actually be respectful for once. Still, he could tell that his time had come, as his pain was receding with the presence of a soft and beautiful light.

Oh, goody! With death, he got his arm and legs back. That was nice.

And his feet too, which was odd, as he had thought that ghosts didn't have feet.

"Wait… what?" The man sputtered in confusion at the shocked expression on the Kuno boy's face.

"You live!" the young kendo club captain exclaimed, before turning towards another boy. An unfamiliar boy wearing some sort of glorified wrestling outfit with a combined fire and water motif and gods-awful blue dyed hair.

A boy who was the most obvious source of the healing radiance, as it was coming from the lads hands.

Which Mr. Ukojo promptly swatted with his broken ruler! "Stop wasting your abilities on an old man like me! I'm well enough to get medical care now, so help the students! They're more important than a crotchety old man like me!"

"It wasn't like I was only healing you, ya old coot!" the boy grumbled in part irritation and part good humor. "I ain't got time to argue with ya anyway. Those youma are gonna rally soon, and I need everyone who can't fight out of here, and those who can fight defending them."

"My sword is yours, my Liege," The Kuno boy knelt before the punk with the ridiculously blue hair, proffering his bokken as a Samurai might present his katana when swearing fealty. Which, Mr. Ukojo supposed, he just had.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," the blue haired kid responded. "You'll need something better than that stick though." With that, he placed a hand on the thick, rounded blade of the wooden sword, and in mere seconds it became a blade in truth, compressing into the proportions of a regular katana…

O O O

Akane huffed from where she was, floating in an endless ruby hued sky.

While she couldn't really see what was going on, she could still hear well enough.

And she still had a sense of touch, somehow still connecting her with her empty skin. Which was both creepy and a bit aggravating, considering that it was being trampled repeatedly, and had been riddled with some sort of pin-pricks earlier. However, like the odd and personally horrifying experience of being flattened in the first place, neither event was truly painful. Just rather uncomfortable and a bit distracting now that there was a lull in the battle.

Trying to keep her mind off of the phantom sensations, the disembodied Warrior of Fire decided to look around her crimson prison.

Huh…

Okay, why hadn't the rings of figures appeared before she looked around?

Ooh! They were all her! Or she at least assumed that they were. Granted, there was one large and serpentine silhouette of a Shen Lung dragon, but it had what appeared to be her hairstyle, at least in profile, so it might also be her. And some seemed to be items of some sort.

Curious, she drifted over and looked at some of the silhouettes depicting weapons and items. There were an assortment of blades, pole arms, and blunt instruments, all of which being fairly generic as they could only be viewed in profile. However, the outlines of many of the apparently non-combat items included details that strongly suggested portions of her naked body had been included. One of which was a wine glass with the stem being her nude body leaning slightly forward, carrying the cone-shaped cup bowl on her back…

Eye's twitching, the flustered spirit turned way from the 'items' and toward the more human figures.

Three of which were 'unlocked', and she could clearly make out their details.

The first one was a nude version of her normal body, who grinned at her in embarrassment, trying to cover herself with her hands.

The next was her Fire Senshi form, who struck several sentai poses before giving her a wink and a thumbs up.

The third was wearing matching tiger skin boots and bracers. A tiger hide miniskirt, barely large enough to cover anything at all, was draped across her hips and tied on the left. Another swatch of tiger fur was draped across her shoulders as a mantle, and a tiger-striped headband studded with a pair of tiny horns completed the set. As Akane took all of this in, the figure started experimentally swinging a giant wooden mallet with an air of aggressive confidence.

The motions making it abundantly clear that the tiger skin garbed warrior was wearing nothing at all beneath the short cape, and most likely wasn't wearing anything underneath the skirt either…

Honestly, she had no idea this Zeus guy was, but if she ever met him, she was going to have some serious words about how he dressed the warriors of his order!

O O O

R'hul directed one of his minions to aid him as the rest hastily gathered what little resources their master had accumulated. One did not survive long as an incursion scout without knowing when to abandon a lair and seek out a new bolt hole to bunker down for a while.

And this situation just reeked of the potential for the wrath of heroes tracking him down.

Despite some initial success in springing the trap laid out for the two known element focused magical defenders, with a backup plan if the other two expected champions showed up, the plan went immediately downhill when all three of his on location minions were neutralized before even a third of T'rikkis' raiding company had been summoned. One of which by Inferno, but the other two by two other local heroes with no apparent affiliation to the expected elements of Earth and Air.

Granted, the witch with the wand was easily neutralized and captured in turn, but the other one proved to be elusive even before her empowerment.

And R'hul simply could not believe how T'rikkis had missed spotting that power-stone rolling away from the Water Warrior when the trap was sprung! It just boggled his comprehension how the raiding company leader could fail to see something that obvious until the ribbon wielding female reached for it herself.

It just had to be protected with all kinds of enchantments for that to have happened, as T'rikkis wasn't some neophyte raider on it's first mission.

What had happened next was eye opening, when the new warrior's empowerment cycle proved to be neither brief nor vulnerable. In fact, T'rikkis was very lucky that the Fire and Water champions hadn't done anything similar, or he'd be even more injured than he currently was.

And then the Guardian had arrived. Not as a cute, fuzzy, and potentially tasty mascot, but as some bastardized blue hybrid between a smilodon and a great ape easily as massive as any of the minotaurs T'rikkis had brought along. Not that this R'ahnmasa'oh'tomi, as the Guardian had named himself, had stayed that way for very long.

And R'hul honestly couldn't say whether that was a good thing or not, considering that even as a physically weaker human, the Guardian was proving to be an inordinately capable individual.

R'ahnmasa'oh'tomi's ties to the females were quite obvious, as his garb reflected that of the females under his charge. His ability to use the unrefined soul-stones of two of his charges without any preparation whatsoever was another clue to this effect, but the biggest piece of evidence was his use of each of his charges individual powers sets.

Still, regardless of how powerful R'ahnmasa'oh'tomi may prove to be, his apparent link to the power-stone just may prove to be an exploitable flaw. Destroy the stone and R'ahnmasa'oh'tomi would most likely be destroyed as well.

Which, of course, was never quite as simple as initially apparent. The fact that T'rikkis failed to even notice the gemstone lens until a local had drawn attention to it, and the fact that R'hul himself only remembered having seen the event only after it had taken place, spoke of very impressive defensive enchantments. Chances were that it would take a local female to be able to target the stone and destroy it.

It did fit the pattern of such things after all, even if R'ahnmasa'oh'tomi's ability to use opposition elements simultaneously was unusual to say the least.

Now, if only he'd been able to see what element the latest female champion had drawn.

Unfortunately, her empowerment apparently came with a powerful anti-scry effect, as evidenced by the still smoldering ruins of the mirror that R'hul had been using to watch the battle.

Half molten shards that remained in a now abandoned house…

O O O

Atsuko glanced back at the two teenagers in the back of their mobile news 'van' as the massive armored personnel carrier rumbled away from the long horned youma chasing it. "Shouldn't we be stopping them?" she asked quietly, as the kids were now only half dressed and engaging in a heavy make-out session.

"Ah, let them have their fun," Hikaru, her cameraman replied. "It's not like they're actually having sex yet."

"And the keyword there is 'yet'," the reporter pointed out. "Now, what are you going to do about it?"

"Okay…"

SLAP!!

"I didn't mean film them, you pervert!" Atsuko yelled at her cameraman as he rubbed his cheek where she had struck him.

"Okay! Okay! Sheesh! What a grouch!" Hikaru set aside his camera and made his way to the back of the APC where the kids where rabidly approaching happy rabbit land. "Hey kids."

Only the boy paused, looking flustered and embarrassed. The girl continued to try undressing both him and herself at the same time.

"Heh. Them's the breaks, Hero," Hikaru chided the boy, tossing him something. "Here, you better use this." He tossed the kids a packet of condoms.

And then scrambled to catch his camera as his partner threw it at him! "Hey! Watch it! This is expensive!"

"Stop encouraging them!"

O O O

T'rikkis was upset, but it knew when to cut it's losses and retreat.

Sacrificing the majority of his remaining raiding party in order to do so hurt, at least in the sense of any unpleasant unit expenditure, but it was better that it managed to escape so that a full record of the battle could be delivered and analyzed . R'ahnmasa'oh'tomi had to be neutralized somehow, and T'rikkis didn't have the means to do so on the spot.

Ducking around a corner, T'rikkis was very surprised to come face to face with the blue haired Guardian.

A moment later, the upper half of the C'thhulhoid slid down a diagonal cut that had suddenly appeared on it's torso, from left shoulder to right hip.

O O O

Ranma Saotome dismissed the flaming ice katana as he returned to the front yard of the school. That was one squidface. Four more to go, and five or six hornheads, then the battle was over.

Hmm... Maybe he could wrap things up faster if he could figure out which one was the leader and take it out...

END CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

OMAKE THEATER PRESENTS: Stop! Hammer time…

Eye's twitching, the flustered spirit turned way from the 'items' and toward the more human figures.

Three of which were 'unlocked', and she could clearly make out their details.

The first one was a nude version of her normal body, who grinned at her in embarrassment, trying to cover herself with her hands.

The next was her Fire Senshi form, who struck several sentai poses before giving her a wink and a thumbs up.

The third was wearing tiger skin boots, a matching skirt and mantle, and a tiger-striped headband with tiny horns, while experimentally swinging a giant wooden mallet with an air of aggressive confidence.

The motions making it abundantly clear that the tiger skin garbed warrior was wearing nothing at all beneath the short cape, and most likely wasn't wearing anything underneath the skirt either…

Honestly, she had no idea this Zeus guy was, but if she ever met him, she was going to have some serious words…

Forget the outfit or the lack of either a bra or panties…

The real travesty was that the giant mallet wasn't nearly big enough!