A Mother-Reuqested Story Concept Pt.2 (Patreon)

Okay, here is the second of my mother-requested story concepts. Let me reiterate this is a CONCEPT. It is not a story I am going to follow up on. If, after Semblance and AGGC are done, I wish to introduce another Ranma one shot, it would not be this one. It would probably be the DC comics crossover, but that’s a big maybe. 

Anyway, the request was for a Ranma crossover that has him acting as a villain. This is a tricky one since I normally don’t think villains are all that interesting as main characters. A good villain’s essential for a story, but as the character the story revolves around, no. Moreover, unless we’re talking an accidental sort of villain, I don’t think Ranma could pull it off, not without a lot of backstory changes to his character. Still, I think I’ve found a way to do something along those lines. No doubt the lovely lady (seriously, tipping my hat to all mothers even more than normal in this time of turmoil, I know mine is responsible for not having us all at one another’s throats) will tell me if she is unsatisfied. And once more, I asked, and she was fine with lemons… 

And now for my take on an evil Ranma, or as close as I could get: 

Gleam Eyes Ranma, a Ranma/Sword Art Online concept:

During a week where, astonishingly, the school building is not damaged during a brawl with the weekly-rivals/comedic elements, Ranma and the others are introduced to computers, and more importantly, computer games. After some time playing them after being introduced to them by a desperate Daisuke (he needs access to computers for his classes and is thinking of being a programmer in college) everyone of the normal, as in they live in the area, crew agrees the computer room is now off limits and have picked out their favorite genres. 

Kuno likes visual novels, specifically the LN type because in his words “Forsooth, even when the scion of Kuno plays at being someone else, he can still win the love of all his fated flowers!”

Nabiki finds herself loving SIMs. The number crunching of that kind of game appeals to her greatly. So too does the idea of playing god. When they hear of her plans to somehow broker her skills in this area into earning some real money, no one is surprised.

Akane likes strategy games, and finds herself kind of good at them, especially the turn-based sort. She particularly likes the fact that she is better at them than any of the other ‘so-called fiancés’, even, at one point almost fooling Ukyo into giving up on chasing Ranma, only for Ranma to accidentally interfere. Ukyo remains her only real rival in this genre, but they routinely have to be reminded of the no-fighting in the computer room rule.

Astonishingly though, the three who get into gaming most are Kasumi, Shampoo and Ranma. Ranma enjoys it because of the number of skills and combat styles, although he does complain occasionally about the fact that his characters can never pull of the moves he can in real life. 

After being dragged along by her sisters to the school a few times, Kasumi loves the adventure aspects, seeing it as escapism from her boring, everyday life. She routinely plays as a bizarre, strange race and a thief, the more to distance herself from her normal self. 

Shampoo just finds all of it fascinating, liking the MMORPGs like the other two, but instead of the combat or the adventure, she just likes exploring, the graphics drawing her in. Mousse too enjoys them, but is quickly banned for his attempts to steal a computer from the school.

The only one who doesn’t get into the gaming scene with the others is Kodachi. Going to a different school though, she has long known of computers and games in general. Indeed she even has a computer of her own, and a Full immersion headset for playing VRMMOs (that is the acronym right? LOL) and was a beta-tester for a new game soon to hit the open market, Sword Art Online. 

When she learns that her Beloved Ranma-sama is interested in such things, Kodachi takes it into her own hands to get him a computer and immersion headset of his own. “Although, Ranma-sama, you should be aware it probably won’t be able to copy all of your physical skills into the game. There is a limit to what mere technology can do after all.”

However to her shock Ranma refuses. And not because he is leery of taking anything from Kodachi either. No, he knows that there’s no way the computer would remain in one piece for long, especially the helmet set. His father would pawn it within a day, and the computer itself saying they are distractions from the art and it was for Ranma’s own good. Or they would just be destroyed when Ryoga of the rival of the week attacks. Mousse too has been attacking him more and more at home thanks to how he and Shampoo have been spending time (once a week at best) in the computer room at school with Kasumi. And since every headset can have only one user, Nabiki might just grab it too.

Kodachi responds to this by buying four sets of the headsets, one for each of the youngsters living in the Tendo household and pays Genma a stipend for not trying to pawn them. Like everyone else, she has learned that food and money is the way to control the panda-who-is-sometimes-a-human. The other issue though stumps her for a time until she comes across a little shop selling knickknacks. There she finds a paint that can make anything painted with it indestructible. “Not that I believe it though.”

With that, and with Kasumi agreeing to house the computer in her room, everyone is happy and has their headsets and characters ready for the grand opening of SWO. They are all online and playing when the Gamemaster cuts them off from the real world, and are back in the starter town soon after. Just as the Gamemaster is about to make his announcement, Ranma is splashed by a water attack. Which, oddly enough, has his avatar changing genders for a brief moment before blinking out of of existence, the game unable to deal with the change.

The Gamemaster becomes aware of someone about to escape back into the real world, and, rather than let his trap be broken even once, stops the data flow containing Ranma’s personality. A few minutes later, a wicked idea occurs to him, and instead of just returning Ranma to where he had been, he decided to make use of him, sticking him in the body of one of the Floor bosses. But first, a bit of tweaking to it’s mental profiles, and to the game structure…

1. Some lead time: As you can see from the above, there would have to be at least ten thousand words or so of lead up and background story time. I would try to make it fun, and in particular concentrate on the well-established party of Kasumi/Shampoo/Ranma or as they are called in the games, ‘Kassandra Swiftfingers, The Real Chun Li, and Wild Horse’. But there would have to be at least some set up to show the coming of computers and computer games slowly into the world of Nerima. 

2. Gleam Eyes Ranma. As it says on the tin, when he regains consciousness Ranma will find himself in the body of the Gleam Eyes. For those who don’t know this is the floor boss of the 74th floor. He’s a giant, blue-furred Demon Creature, with gleaming eyes – now blue – insane strength and a large Zanbato. It obviously isn’t intelligent, and isn’t supposed to leave it’s room, but with Heathcliff modding it, Ranma does the first and can now do the latter. However, that isn’t the only mods Heathcliff has ‘gifted’ Ranma. 

a. Communication troubles. Ranma is Gleam Eyes. That means he cannot speak human, so cannot communicate. Luckily Ranma knows the Hidden sign technique thanks to his old man. Not so luckily, he has no sign. At least at first. 

b. Body issues. Ranma won’t be able to dance through the air as he likes to do, or use his Amaguriken attack. He won’t be very agile, and will be more of a tanks than anything else. Whether he allows the state of being to continue to exist is a question LOL.

c. New skills. Like a player, Ranma will have access to skills and abilities, and can even learn new ones. Unlike most players however, some of his abilities will come with some negatives. One of the negatives being he can all too easily fall into a berserk state – this comes with nearly every skill – and loses control of himself.

d. Hunted. He’s a Floor boss, and is now randomly walking around, heading down to the starting area looking for his friends. At least at first. The rest of the players are most certainly going to take an attack first, wonder never attitude towards him, especially the beta-testers. This will only be reinforced when he butchers the first few groups to challenge him…

e. Enemy of the state: just because he doesn’t look like a player doesn’t mean the other monsters will just let him by. And after he kills three other boss level monsters and then just keeps going down, Heathcliff will be forced to scramble, ordering the monsters to attack Ranma Gleam Eyes on sight. This will be especially true since by the time the actual players get organized he’s already down on the tenth level, and has leveled up considerably.

f. Not knowing yourself. Given the odd nature of his SWO life, Ranma finds himself at times fighting off thoughts he has long tried to keep from appearing in his mind, such as its fun to squish people, or why not just take something I want, and ‘mine, mine, I will claim this’ type thoughts. He is in the body of a Devil after all

g. Different verse, same as the first. Ranma will still have his curse. When splashed with cold water, he will turn into a female Gleam Eyes. He’ll be a red-furred, extremely busty (like twice Shampoo’s size) Devil/Minotaur girl. And while weaker in this form, he’ll be even more prone to going berserk and he will be a lot faster too.

3. Angst ahoy. As is standard in the SWO universe, there is going to have to be angst, it’s sort of necessary. But I will try to keep it to a manageable level and spread it out quite a bit. But the characters who were left behind will have to deal with shit, Ranma will have to deal with shit – both his being stuck in a Devil body, and then the realization that he has been killing people for real, and then… the realization that for some reason, that doesn’t bother him.

4. Different POVs. This should have been obvious, but I will have to show other characters and their adventures in this new world. Kasumi will be one, but not Shampoo, as the two of them will be staying together. Kodachi will be another. As a beta-tester, she will, like Kirito in canon, be seen as a bit of an outsider. This is not helped by her disdain for people attempting ot blame her or take advantage of her. I would say at first that the chapters are going to be 2/5 Ranma POV, and 3/5 other people for at least a few chapters. Right up until Ranma starts interacting with other canon SWO characters. That should occure maybe four, five months in.

a. Kodachi influence. Unlike in the original, Kodachi will be the one to meet Asuna at first, rather than Kirito. Kirito will meet Asuna, but they won’t be anything but acquaintances, while Asuna feels better being around girls, even Akane. They will form their own guild, with Kodachi being the driving force and Kasumi the organizer. Asuna won’t join right away since the guild won’t have any long term goal other than to survive and learn more about the game world, but she will eventually do so under unusual circumstances…

b. Character death. Like in SWO if you die, you die. Uncertain if I would kill off anyone right away, but it would definitely be coming. And if she runs into Ranma as Gleam Eyes, Akane better keep her temper, or else.

c. Early Rika and Ayano involvement. Even in a game, Kasumi, once she is in her own body anyway, can’t stop herself from giving off caring big sister vibes, and girls will routinely be drawn to her. This will make their guild one of the first to get organized, and the only one to be entirely women. Of course, that means they will also be targeted just as much. 

5. First impressions are hard. Thanks to his body, Ranma will have a hell of a time getting anyone to talk to him. In fact, he will have to beat down on people just to the point of death and then refrain from finishing them off to get them to listen at all. And that is not going to be easy at all. 

a. Bad luck. Ranma will be in place when Asuna and a large raiding party is attempting to clear one of the floors. They watch in shock as Gleam Eyes appears from the other end, kills the boss and then just marches towards them. And since Ranma hasn’t found a sign yet, or indeed anything he can use to write with, well… after Asuna realizes she is still alive and being held upside down in the Gleam Eyes’ hand though, things start to change. Especially when he turns around and drags her back the way they came, unwilling to fight any more players just now. (and before anyone asks, she survives because she doesn’t try to attack him along with the others, and doesn’t 

b. Player beatdown. Since she was part of a raiding party at the time it should come to no surprise that a lot of them didn’t survive meeting Ranma. The survivors, faced with the threat of Gleam Eyes, are shocked, appalled, and frightened, as well as plain disbelieving. Party are sent after him only to find nothing, or at least not report anything…

c. Getting to know you. Once Asuna is captured Ranma will try to use any means he can to communicate with her. This is the start of his interacting once more with people, and the start of Asuna’s mind just being completely cracked by the crazy that is Ranma. 

6. Plan going awry. Heathcliff will learn to his chagrin that monsters which are killed by other monsters – which Ranma technically is, take a long time respawning. So Ranma’s killing every dungeon boss stupid enough to attack him along with every other monster who tried to fight instead of choosing flight has caused a swathe of nothing which the players can spread into.

a. OP as all get out. Eventually. Ranma will have killed a lot of enemies before he even encounters players for the first time and will have leveled up like no one’s business. But those points and abilities are sort of extant, he is going to be unable to access them until he can convince someone, a player, to say the words to activate the status screen. For him, it has to be verbal and even then specific words. 

b. But I like it here.  More players, Kasumi among them, will be perfectly content to live in this world. Not because they are afraid to die, but because they just like this world better than their old life. Beyond being in her own body instead of her created avatar, Kasumi will greatly enjoy the adventures and the danger and everything else. Kodachi too will enjoy it, as will, to a lesser extent, Shampoo and many others. So the whole ‘clear the game to escape’ will be slower to build, and then will run into the Gleam Eyes mystery. 

c.  Secrets coming out.  Ranma will basically force Heathcliff to reveal his whole immortality cheat a heck of a lot earlier than he had wanted to otherwise when Heathcliff and his guild try to hunt Ranma down.

d. Realer than real. Thanks to the Seed kernel in the game, the game itself will begin to evolve, the monsters and the environment and even the player’s own skills evolving in ways Heathcliff won’t have planned for. This includes a in-game Jusenkyo, a heap ton of new magics, new, more intelligent monsters, and many players being able to ‘rate themselves 18 and older’ as it were

e. An ending? Who knows.  Beating Heathcliff won’t be the end of the game any longer, the game having evolved out of his control. 

7. Kirito as a secondary character. This should be self-explanatory, but until he and Ranma start interacting, Kirito won’t have the impetus he gains through interacting with Asuna to really help push things along. He’ll be a powerful solo-player, and the only one that Ranma will have any respect for, but he won’t be the person driving the plot along. 

8. The Pairings: Ranma/Asuna/Kasumi/Kodachi. 

a. If you take away her laugh and her penchant for backstabbing and poisons, Kodachi could actually be quite nice. And she will be the first to see past Ranma’s exterior to the fact that inside, Ranma is still Ranma. Indeed, she’ll be a little fascinated by his new form.  Her reaction to the curse though is going to be a bit of a hurdle due to past association

b. Kasumi will also have developed feelings for Ranma before coming to this world but won’t have acted on it due to Akane and the whole engagement. In this world she will be more willing to leave that aside. As for Ranma’s new form, that will indeed be a hindrance for her for a while. More the mechanics of it than the fact she can’t see Ranma within the Devil though. After all, there is a certain issue of compatibility to consider. 

c. Asuna will have the hardest and yet the easiest time with Ranma’s form. First, she won’t have known him as a human. Instead he will be a tragic player stuck in a nonhuman body somehow. Further, Ranma will be almost completely reliant on her to help him figure out how to interact with other people, and indeed will be a go between in many ways. After all, signs down grow on trees, and at least at first just writing in the dirt isn’t something the game mechanics will allow for. She will see him at his raging worst, then at his best, and will see that for all his form, he is still a good person deep down.

This one I think would need a lot more in the way of world building once inside the game. I would have to show Ranma being influenced by his new body’s thoughts and desires, and how meeting Asuna helps him to come back to himself. After that it would become much easier. Still, there is no doubt that Ranma would be acting in an evil manner for a while… maybe. I’m sorry but it’s the closest as I could get to making him a true villain LOL. Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed reading this idea, but I will again repeat I won’t be even thinking about writing hits out further for a loooong, long time.