Prologue

Disclaimer: Ranma ½ and its characters and settings belong to Rumiko Takahashi, Shogakukan, Kitty, and Viz Video. Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko, Koudansha, TV Asahi, and Toei Douga, and DIC.

Three months have I searched, three months have I wandered an Asia decimated by newly-arisen barbarism, and in that three months not even so much as a glimmer of a cure has surfaced. Sure, I've run across other Talented people, some even reasonably powerful— this is a land of ancient mysticism and spiritual awareness— but none have been able to tell me anything I didn't already know about the poison that kept me from my Ami.

Sometimes I would run across a bastion of peace— a small valley too isolated to be in danger, maybe one where a sorcerer had made himself at home— but mostly, whenever I found someplace where people were relatively safe and well fed, those people had banded together into militia type units. They fought off the bandits and thieves that such a drastic societal change can create.

It was at one such town, a sizable affair of nearly three thousand people, that the Elders and Commanders in charge of the place had confronted me. I'd thought at first they would attempt to press me into service for them; it'd happened before, unsuccessfully. Not this time. They knew I was coming. How? They had a precognizant child living within the walled city. At least they're not so bad as psychics.

"Please, your Mightiness," begged the Elder in charge, a wiry little man with no air and watery eyes, "we will be crushed without your help." He was referring to an approaching attack force from the Alliance. I'd taken the time to listen to his story because I was starting to miss hearing Japanese, even if my Chinese was steadily improving.

Why not? Maybe there would be some Amazons in this group. I nodded, pulling the old guy to his feet. The Senshi wouldn't be bothered with this kind of thing. They probably wouldn't have participated anyway, but the powers-that-be that even knew about them— namely Cologne— were smart enough to keep them and their pokémon in reserve for when such high numbers had to be fought that too many mundane warriors could be lost. "Just stop the begging, please." It was embarrassing.

I was led, parade-like, through the dirt streets of the town. I couldn't help but admire the amount of work done to turn the place into a defensible retreat. However, walls may keep out wild animals and men with clubs, but they were useless against the type of warriors produced by Jusendo.

A few hours of being treated like a king were all I could stand. I made my departure from the hastily thrown together celebration as politely as possible. These people would be feeding me for a time, and I didn't want to needlessly offend them.

There wasn't much of a wait. An endless stream of pretty girls kept my bed warm at night, may Ami forgive me, and I spent most of the daylight hours cooking up nasty little one-use enchantments that would permanently turn Amazon women into Amazon men. I'd probably be able to hear the screams of agony from here when they try to cure their warriors with the cursed water of Jusenkyo. Setsuna's ring had finally yielded its knowledge to me, and I was making use of it to torment the Amazons every chance I got, a sort of poetic justice. By my last count, just under three hundred had been transformed.

There were a few more complicated spell constructs that would be able to turn the wings of the Phoenix People into lead, and to use their crossbred DNA to drive the Musk into killing frenzies (they always went after other Musk when that happened). Each construct was simple, a small glass bead, but it would be the most effective weapon my benefactors would ever have against the Alliance.

Two weeks, four days, and three hours after I'd been asked to fight for the town, a joint force of Phoenix People, Musk, and Amazons attacked it. The attack came at midday, not the best time for a raid.

Each faction of the Alliance fought differently. Saffron's people always chose to dive at high speed, leveling off rapidly and leaving trenches carved in the Earth where the vacuum force generated by chi-strengthened wings struck. The more talented of the winged warriors didn't need this action to produce the deadly attack, but dove anyway, launching from their wings a combination of enchanted steel feathers and more accurate vacuum blades that they could specifically target their victims with.

The Musk preferred to use the extremes; brute strength, raw speed, or sheer power. Their strong warriors were never just big, they were huge, and they simply smashed through any defenses erected before them and crushed any type of offense. The fast Musk were typically small, both short and thin, and some could nearly rival the Amazon Elders and me in speed. Give one of them enough knives or a good sword, and they could wreak absolute havoc within enemy ranks. When it came to power, the cousins and siblings of Herb, all with lower amounts of the dragon blood within their veins that gave them their huge chi force, simply stood around and lobbed energy blasts, blowing up anything in their path.

Amazons were all skilled. Their strength and speed, on average, was less than that of the Musk, but the combination of what they had with that skill made them the equals, if not betters, of any other non-ruling warrior in the Alliance. When an Amazon learned the tribe's secret techniques, she temporarily gained, with the kachu tenshin amaguriken, the speed of a speed-bred Musk. The bakusai tenketsu increased their endurance to nearly that of the Musk powerhouses, and the ability to explode solid, non-living matter almost made up for the difference in strength. Chi training, though not enough to bring most Amazon warriors up to the dragon-descended Musk, was used widely enough that the greater number of chi-using Amazons could equal the fewer, if more powerful, Musk royalty.

The people designated to handle the enchanted weapons held their ground, using up the stored energy within each bead. Amazons who were affected— when they realized they'd had the whammy put on them— started screaming in terror and became pretty much useless. Phoenix People fell from the sky like stones, smashing into the ground with pleasing splats. The Musk started howling and eating each other.

That left about three hundred warriors, all of superhuman ability, for me to deal with. Not the easiest thing to do, when you consider that I was inside of a walled town and could only defend one area at a time.

I took to the air after a near miss from a trio of extremely powerful chi blasts. They wouldn't have gotten through my shields, but I didn't feel like getting battered around by that much concussive force. My clothes were literally saturated with the blood of my victims, and in there were tears and slashes in the cloth where a few enchanted weapons had gotten through my shields. That had prompted a reworking of my shields so that I didn't get a mystic arrow in the back.

There weren't really all that many Alliance soldiers left. Those that remained were arrayed around me. The Musk only had a few royal descendents; the Phoenix People had the most remaining, almost a dozen, and one of them was a moderately powerful sorcerer. The sole Amazon was, to my surprise, an Elder. What was an Elder doing attacking a relatively useless town in the middle of China? For that matter, what were seven— four of whom were now dead— of Herb's cousins doing here? I didn't know enough about the organization of their forces or the Talented to non-Talented ratio of the Phoenix People, but I'd guess that there was significantly higher number of heavy hitters in their ranks than was common.

Well, it looked like I'd have to spare one of them long enough to find out what was going on. I smiled at the Elder, a gesture barely discernable through the distortion of the heavy battle aura and dense shields I was maintaining. "Do they still scream?" I asked. "Or has someone put them out of their misery yet?" My choice to leave Jusendo had been prompted as much by a desire to help Ami as the need to separate myself from those who I had destroyed. I never have felt guilty about what I did, but definitely uncomfortable.

The Elder, one of the few who had remained silent as I'd laid down the rules all those months ago, gasped as realization came to her. Ahh. She knew who I was, and she was scared. The Elder began to step back, steadily gathering and focusing as much chi into an impending strike as she could. I looked her in the eyes, never breaking the line of sight, even as I deflected a series of concentrated energy bolts designed to strip away my shields. The sorcerer responsible for the attempt didn't get a chance for another spell. I used the back trail created by the attack to force enough energy into the Phoenix Person to permanently sear the Talent from his soul.

"DIE!!!" roared the Elder, now glowing a bright yellowish-orange. Her impressive aura flowed across her lithe body and coalesced into bright spheres of power that she launched at me. The attack was powerful, truly worthy of an Elder of the Amazon Nation; but fully aware of it, I was able to redirect its power. I channeled the captured chi energy through the enchanted sword held at my side and used it to incinerate the three Musk. Not a drop of my own power wasted.

Exhausted by the ill-prepared attack, the Elder collapsed to the burnt grass. She would be my unwilling informant soon enough. I turned my attention to the Phoenix People. None of them had attacked me yet, not even while my back was turned, but they couldn't be allowed to survive. No one could know that it was I who had destroyed this force and several others. The safety of the Senshi and the others from Japan depended on it.

The fallen sorcerer clutched his head between his hands and rocked back and forth on the ground, weeping. I sympathized with the guy, I really did, but he shouldn't have tried to kill me. The ten warriors, four glowing with battle auras, and at least one of them a member of the elite soldiers who had those magic steel feathers, formed a barrier between me and the sorcerer. I ignited my spell, a type of fire that only destroys living matter. The screams were horrible as the winged men and women slowly turned to ash. When it was over, nothing remained in the area except for myself— and the unconscious Elder, whom I had protected from the magical fire

True, I could have used some other, less painful, method, but I wanted to get some of the enchanted feathers carried by that one guy, and the other enchanted weaponry I'd spotted among the warriors, without damaging it. The quality and strength of the enchantments and the enchanted material itself had improved dramatically a little over a month after the war started. Just out of curiosity, I wanted to know why.

"Are you sure this will work?" Akane asked Kasumi. The Tendo sisters were living in the countryside, far from any other humans, and the lack of men and electricity had been devastating to say the least.

Kasumi nodded enthusiastically, happy to finally be getting some from someone besides herself or her sisters. "Oh, yes, he's just wonderful. It's a little unusual at first, what with all the hair, but I think you'll enjoy him just as much as I did."

Akane and Nabiki were following their sister through the woods, supposedly to meet with a man that would be able to satisfy them all. The two younger Tendos wouldn't have believed anyone else, but this was Kasumi, and she had been practically glowing when she's stumbled into the camp, barely able to walk.

She led her sisters around a bend in the trail and into a small clearing. Waiting for them there was a giant panda. It was munching lazily on a stalk of bamboo, but when it saw the three girls, hastily climbed to its feet— its hind legs actually— and began looking cute.

"Isn't he great?" Kasumi asked, running up to the giant panda and hugging him fiercely. She made sure to give his dick a good hard squeeze so he'd know what he was in for.

Nabiki and Akane exchanged glances, shook their heads, and were about to tell Kasumi that she had gone absolutely insane, when from the panda's waist, grew an enormous dick. They nearly gagged on their own tongues before they could gain control of themselves.

Was a panda really so bad? They were gentle creatures, and from all Nabiki had heard, very loyal. It appeared to be very intelligent and its sheer bulk would scare off the majority of predators, human or beast. Then, there was that giant piece of meat…

Akane had to count backwards from ten, repeatedly, to keep the fantasies from intruding on her mind so heavily that she couldn't think. Leave it to Kasumi to be the lucky one, getting to break in this wonderful animal.

Genma Saotome shook his head minutely, careful not to give away more than he should. The schools would be joined, no matter what he had to sacrifice. He would live with the girls, help them any way he could, and when the time came, reveal his true identity. By then, they would be dependent upon him for more than just sex; they wouldn't be able to survive in this harsher world without him.

If Ranma wouldn't do his duty, Genma would. Besides, if the other girls were only a fraction as good a lay as Kasumi, he was in for quite a vacation.

To be continued.

Author's Notes: Here's the first part of 'The World at War'. From here on out, Ranma will be meeting new people, helping some, and killing many, many more. He'll be moving on to Russia in the next few chapters, and I am going to have him meet the first of some of the characters submitted to me by my readers (this one is yours, Ginne). I've been thinking, and decided that I wanted to try to bring Resident Evil into this as more than just a cameo appearance. I'm not sure if it will work out, but having genetic mutations within the populations of the world due to an incurable virus could be fun. I never finished the first game (stupid memory card burnt out and I was too lazy to go through the whole game again) and have only read one of the books, so any info on Umbrella and anything else about the world of Resident Evil would be a big help. Finally, I'm going to stop taking character submissions in a week. I appreciate all your help, but my mailbox is getting hard to check. C&C me at dark_phoneix@hotmail.com

PS: Can It Get Any Worse? was my first finished work, ever! Yay!

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Last revision: May 21, 2007