Addventure Homage Episode 2 (Patreon)

Edited: 10/4 – Once more, this was looked over by Hiryo, but well after I had initially posted it. 

Okay, this is a bit later in the day than I had expected (RL issues had me busy until around eleven, then had to play designated driver) but here it is, the end of the first Addventure Homage poll. Remember this too is a weighted poll: I go through and weigh the votes by multiplying each dollar you donate by 4 (four) for EACH poll you vote in per month. Another way to earn votes is to be one of my editors, who I mention in the Author’s Forward in every chapter.

Because of this, the poll results you all see in the initial poll thread can sometimes be misleading. For this Addventure Homage poll, this issue is exacerbated by the fact that I am voting in it – something I usually reserve for when I can throw my weight behind a story that hasn’t been updated in a while.

I also forgot one of the facts of life: everyone is a little perverted inside LOL. I should have realized that mentioning lemons would mean one choice would get more votes than otherwise. So I will be instituting a -200 (minus two hundred) tax on that choice. While I have no problem with writing lemons, I do not like the idea of writing a story whose purpose are the lemons within.

There is another aspect as well. I warned that there was only one episode that I could use to build on this initially. After that, it would take quite a bit of work to make any of the other Addventure threads which cross Ranma with the Moon girls work out, and few of them are interesting to me.

Anyway, with that being said, here are the results.

In last place, soooo far behind as to be hilarious, is the idea of Manipulate the Gate of Time to get rid of Ranma, ignoring the warnings on the box with only 52 votes. Ouch. This would have led into the idea of time travel, and might have led to one of the better written thread from Anime Addventure, the Setsuna’s Fault/Timelost. For all it was well-written, though, it was very much a survival/building your own society kind of story. While that kind of thing has its place, it isn’t really my cup of tea.

In third place, ‘Pick a specific place in time and remove Ranma to another world’ with 714 votes. A bit of a pity since this would have let me segue into other Anime Addventure threads. Maybe it would have revived my Gold Digger muse. But the voters have spoken.

In second place, thanks to the -200 Anti-pervert tax, is ‘Work the problem, possibly to make it go away?’ with 768 votes.

But fear not those of you who honestly wanted to see Ranma paired with one of the Sailor girls, there are ways to bring in the Sailor Moon cast anyway. And if that wasn’t the point, and you all did vote for the lemons, well, to quote the best Cowboys Quarterback (as in an anti-cowboy fan like me actually likes him,) ever, Roger Staubach: ‘I enjoy sex as much as Joe Namath, only I do it with one girl.’ LOL. There will still be lemons, but they won’t be the point of the fic.

And yes, in first place because of my 100 (leaving 500 for Magic) votes and the aforementioned tax, was ‘Kill Ranma off with a Random Event sometime before he comes to Tokyo’, at 790 votes. This will, hopefully, lead eventually to Wonder About Zero, one of my favorite Addventure stories.

And now for the actual fic. I take inspiration from the next four original episodes, and give them my own twist, which was the whole point of this idea, after all. Once more the original aspects will be underlined. And thanks as always, goes to Kestral for the idea of the original thread.

Episode 2: Planning Sometimes Means Failing in Style

Yes, Pluto mused, killing Ranma off with a seemingly random event some time before he returned to Tokyo, to Japan at all, was probably the easiest way forward. Any other way would pose further dangers to the timestream and to Crystal Tokyo. That was always a risk when working within the timestream. The whole, ‘and who killed your father’ question was alas all too real. Change one small event, and it took a magical supercomputer the size of a small planet to figure out how to manage all the changes. Thankfully, Pluto had access to such a thing. “It is all for Crystal Tokyo. Everything is worth it for that objective. Queen Serenity’s vision will come true.”

Decision made, Pluto thought about how best to go about removing Ranma from the equation. It had to be subtle and yet permanent. And it had to be as recently as possible, so long as it removed him from the timestream before he returned to Tokyo. The further back you started to introduce changes, the more random factors cropped up, the more different dimensions you had to then cull.

That, and whatever her mandate, Pluto hated killing children. Setsuna refused to do that, and thankfully up to now there had always been a different way of making certain the timestream would continue on to its proper objective, Crystal Tokyo.

“So, the best time would be to kill Ranma off, while he is traveling through China. Lots of area to play with, and several months’ worth of time as well… Hmm… Given Ranma’s personality and his attitude, a direct challenge, say making Vega or another killer hunt him down is not optimal, only a 35% chance of working. Perhaps a martial arts manual like that Cat-Fist technique?”

And after Ranma, the chaotic element, is removed, killing Genma just makes sense as well, Pluto thought grimly. The part of her that was devoted to Crystal Tokyo seemingly agreed with that as well. The man was a possible danger all on his own, though nowhere near the level of Ranma.

Thinking that, Pluto played out a few scenarios, but the problem was, by this point, Ranma was extremely leery of his father’s idea of training. Training grounds, yes, but none were deadly enough at this point. “Unless… could I perhaps have him drown at Jusenkyo? Hmm… no. Not possible, only a 60% chance of working without direct intervention. But then, perhaps a Dog-Warrior Technique to offset the Cat-fist?”

Searching through the database and timestream, Setsuna was flummoxed. “What the heck! I would have thought there would have been some kind of Wolf-Fist at the very least, but nothing? Strange, I mean there are several types of martial arts styles but none of them involve training deadly enough to suit.” And the less said about that one school of marital arts that force their members to dress up in dog suits the better. I’ll admit it makes them powerful, but that is just too bizarre.

“The easiest method of getting rid of Ranma, therefore, would be to prey upon his gluttony. Both Saotomes are walking stomachs. Let’s see, that has… a 99% chance of working!?” Setsuna shook her head. “Wow. They really are gluttons. Still, the problem then is, thanks to his life so far, it would require quite a powerful poison to kill Ranma off. Hmm… Now where did I put that basilisk meat?”

A few minutes later found Setsuna tossing things every which way in her fortress’s storage area. There was a lot of junk in here. 

A staff that thrummed with power. “Hmm, oh yes, that group of American wizards. That one fellow was quite handsome I recall.”

Next out of a box was a dildo that looked as if its creator had decided, ‘yes, tentacle porn’. “GAH!” Setsuna dropped it back in the box, shaking her head. “Damn it Serenity, just because you’re my queen doesn’t mean you can hide your marital aids among my junk. How did that thing even get here?”

Next was a picture of Stalin entering the room he would later be found near death in with Setsuna beside him dressed as a secretary. “Ah, heh. Yes, killing him never gets old, does it?” Setsuna reminisced on that moment for a time until the need to get on and remove the threat to Crystal Tokyo started to get to her, which caused her to scowl and move on.

There were also several varieties of food from across the ages and numerous different recipe books, including the original pizza recipe and a few types of meat from creatures no longer found in the world. “Huh, I didn’t know there were any Roc wings left, yum. Now if I could find that recipe for ultra-nuclear spicy wings, that would be fantast, ah here it is!”

So saying, Setsuna held up a glass jar of pickled meat. Setsuna couldn’t remember where she had picked it up, but it and the mermaid meat were her best bet for killing off Ranma. Mermaid meat was so poisonous it made badly prepared fugu look like a nice slice of haddock, while basilisk venom was so poisonous it more resembled acid than poison. She frowned though as she looked at the basilisk meat. “Hmm, is it just me, or is it looking a little too pink?”

Grumbling in annoyance, Setsuna brought both meats to a poison analyzer, one of the hundreds of devices around the place left over from the Moon Kingdom. After all, the various princesses and the Queen were often not exactly popular in their history, no matter how much they could wish it were otherwise.

When the analyzer’s report came back, she scowled, thumping her hand against the wall of the small kitchen she used, while staying with the Gates of Time. “It’s lost at least half its lethality, it’s no better than three golden poison frogs. Damn, I don’t think that would be enough to kill Ranma. Feh, best if pickled, shows what Aristotle knew about cooking. Honestly, if it wasn’t philosophy that man was utter crap at everything. Ah well, on to the next one.”

Switching out the basilisk meat with the mermaid, Setsuna waited, then smiled grimly as the results popped up. “Yes, we have a winner.” The mermaid flesh was just as poisonous now as it was when Setsuna took it from that mad former-Nazi scientist who thought it could be the final key to giving his new super-soldiers eternal life. There was still enough poison here to wipe out a city. “Excellent.”

Finding the right moment to administer the poison was easy as well. Right after Jusenkyo, there was a time where Ranma had split off from his father, angry at Genma for getting Ranma cursed. Alone, nearly unable to speak the local language, and without money, this was when Ranma was at his most hungry …

OOOOOOO

Ranma Saotome, recently cursed at Jusenkyo, right now was not a happy camper. Of course, he hadn’t been a happy fellow for days, not since his old man, in his new panda body, had knocked Ranma into the pool of drowned girl. After that, they’d had a few fights, had to run from a group of crazy Amazons after one of them proved a sore loser, and then the old man had the gall to blame it all on Ranma! When it had been Genma who had smashed Ranma into the Spring of Drowned Girl.

Well, that had been the last straw. Ranma had kicked his old man to the curve, left him tied up for the crazy Amazon to find, and hightailed it higher into the Bayankala Mountains at an angle, hoping to throw both of them off his trail. “Not that the crazy Amazon seems to care about killin’ the old man, only me. Psycho sore loser. Ugh. And what was up with that last group? I only tried to eat their food, I mean, I’m freaking starving! I would have worked it off. There was no need to sic those soldiers on me before I could even finish my meal.”

As Ranma, thankfully a man at the moment, reflected on this, his lord and master made its own opinion of current events known. “GRRHFHGHGMRMUmbble…”

Pausing, Ranma looked around, as the echoes of his stomach’s rumble bounced around the rocky area, he was currently traveling in, like the roar of a jet fighter. For a moment, all was still, then, there came an answering rumble from above. This was swiftly followed by dozens, then hundreds of boulders wet mud and snow. “OH, come on!”

About an hour later, Ranma, tired, sore, once more female and now even hungrier, paused as ahead of her, Ranma saw an inn. It looked kind of like the last one, but there wasn’t any town nearby, so no soldiers. And there didn’t seem to be any customers either. So no weird bald idiots yelling at he. “HELL YES! FOOOD~!!~”

With that wild cry Ranma raced forward. Moments later, Ranma barged into the inn’s kitchen. She was just too hungry to even try to talk her way to a meal. In the Saotome School, it was always better to ask forgiveness than permission. And there was a large bowl of food out and ready for eating.

Ignoring the cry of anger from the innkeeper, Ranma grabbed the bowl of what she took to be some kind of local shark fin soup and wolfed it down. At first it was fine, a little tangy, and there was an odd texture to the fish’s meat. But then Ranma grabbed at her throat as something within her stomach rebelled. The next second Ranma was falling out of her chair, convulsing on the ground. Wh, what is.. .what, what was… Ranma’s mind slowly juddered to a halt, as the poison did its work, and Ranma Saotome, heir to the Aerial Style of Martial Arts, died.

The innkeeper watched this happening and as the young girl who had just burst into his inn collapsed shook his head callously. "Oh. Guess that not work after all. Mermaid flesh still poisonous. Very sad. I bury you though, no point leave soup thief out to rot."

OOOOOOO

Pluto kept watching events in the inn for a time, slightly amused at Ranma’s little mishap before the big event. Still, that was the life of a Chaotic Element for you. She kept on watching until Genma came by, then deciding to finish this distasteful job with a bit of a high note, watched him panic for a time as he looked down at where his son had been buried while she prepared the best, most humorous death she could imagine for the panda-man. “Hmm… I wonder if I could figure out a way to use Serenity’s toy somehow…”

Later, after setting up Genma’s death, Setsuna left the Gates of Time for a few days. Feeling good about what she had accomplished, Setsuna went to Monaco for a good time. Then she headed over to check in with the Outers, and make certain that all the younger girls were set to meet at the appropriate time. Still feeling really good about how well things were going, Setsuna went back to the Gates of Time.

But when she activated them, she froze, as she saw the startup screen. That screen was the one that showed Crystal Tokyo as a background, with the Gate’s prognosis of how likely it was to come to fruition. The results should have been above 85%, the minimal odds Setsuna was willing to allow in her mission to make Serenity’s vision a reality. Instead it was lower than before, barely 41%, and it was dropping as she watched! “What in the world!?”

Quickly tracing back the reasons, she gasped, as she saw Ranma once more interacting with the Sailor Scouts. If anything, they were all closer to him, even USAGI for goodness sake, was standing by, cheering as Ranma used a powerful ki blast to destroy a Negaverse monster. “Wait, where’s Endymion!?” A quick search found him locked up for pedophilia of all things. “SHIT. But, but how is he even alive?”

Retracing to the moment she had left the Gates of Time, Pluto tuned them into the inn where she had Ranma poisoned. At first nothing seemed wrong, so Sailor Pluto sped up the viewing rate, and saw what happened one year later: Ranma Saotome shouldering his way out of the ground, tossing bits of vegetation and soil to all sides as he clambered out of his grave.

“How? How did he survive the mermaid meat!?”

Setsuna had forgotten the most basic of rules for dealing with a Chaotic Element: when trying to get rid of one, the more orderly you were in your attempts or goals, the worse your plans would go wrong. Nature abhorred a ‘perfect’ anything. There had to be an equal amount of order and chaos in the universe. So Ranma, with the amount of toughness he already had, had somehow survived eating the meat of a mermaid. Perhaps purity of spirit just meant physically pure. Perhaps the mermaid in questions wasn’t altogether ‘good’ herself. Whatever the case, after the meat’s magical and mystical properties had worked through his system, Ranma had been reborn.

Not unchanged though. Baron Zemo's treatment of the contaminated mermaid flesh might have produced a number of factors in another time or place. A dupe named Simon Williams might have eventually gone from third rate villain to second rate hero. Eventually.

In this current time and this current place, Baron Zemo had been going senile for centuries and frequently believed he was back at his beloved Third Reich laboratories working up plans for the Ultimate Stormtrooper. His hirelings and henchmen were less competent, mainly because the more competent ones were now involved in writing computer viruses and hacking into financial institutions - lower cost to start up and greater chance of monetary rewards.

Therefore, the effect of the mermaid meat that Setsuna had taken had been added and enhanced. Even the curse form had been eradicated.

Humans and animals at least as advanced as a frog could be cursed at Jusenkyo. Insects, fortunately for the area, could not receive a Jusenkyo curse. Neither could plants, pollen and a number of other things. Ranma wasn't a plant nor an insect, but he was outside the parameters of what the Cursed Springs could affect. He was neither human nor animal once you got past the surface appearance and into the cellular level. Ranma's body had been rebuilt from within.

OOOOOOO

As Ranma stared into his face I the window, he blinked, frowning. “What the heck… why are my eyes glowing?” Ranma didn’t know much at the moment. He felt as if someone had taken a steamroller to his head, frankly. But he knew that wasn’t normal. Stumbling away, he scowled, shaking his head. “Okay, think. What’s the last thing you remember?”

This did not take very long, but alas, Ranma didn't remember much about why he was there or what was going on. He could remember his name and he knew he was Japanese and had memories of a few things that he didn't quite understand. He knew he was a martial artist on a training journey, and there were a few images of some sumo wrestler he'd apparently been travelling with - who was somehow a panda too - and how he had crazy ideas about training, some of which didn’t work out. “Huh, okay, so glowing eyes, um, maybe the whole memory thing too can be blamed on him?”

For some reason while the man’s name, even Ranma’s own last name and whatever relation they might have been didn’t come to him, that sentiment made sense to Ranma. “Fine, let’s go with that. Now where to go from here?”

So thinking, Ranma looked at the path before him. Behind him he'd left some site he'd been buried at, which obviously held no answers for him. But heading down from the mountain ridge Ranma found himself on, he could see that the path split into four branches which wound their way through the Bayankala mountains. After a moment's hesitation, Ranma decided to go:

1. North. Towards the nearest Village he could see nestled at the foot of the mountains. (*straight-line run to Wonder)

2. South. Out of the mountains and into the plains of Mongolia. (possible crossover?)

3. West. Towards Phoenix Mountain. (first a few fight scenes…)

4. Towards that jet fighter that just passed by overhead. Jets meant civilization, right? (more possible crossovers… eventually)

End Episode 2

Hope you all enjoyed this! I am having fun with these and am eager to see where it goes from here. Please note that the only path forward originally was the first choice. The others will mean a bit more work.

This poll will last until the 17th.