Desperately Seeking Ranma

Desperately Seeking Ranma is a Ranma ½ Alternate Universe/Continuation Fic by PixelWriter1. It is the sequel to an earlier story, called Aftermath by the same author, in which the outcome of the failed wedding at the end of the Ranma manga results in Ranma and Kasumi leaving Nerima together and disappearing utterly.

Desperately Seeking Ranma picks up the storyline several years later, when an older and wiser Nabiki takes up the search once more... and finds a possible clue to Ranma and Kasumi's whereabouts. Following up on that clue leads her to Minato ward, where she finds her sister and Ranma are medical students. And married. And waist-deep in the paranormal activities that flood that neighborhood. They are in fact known there as "Chou" and "Yori", a pair of frighteningly powerful Magical Girls who in the past few years have managed to ride herd on the dozens of other Magical Girls with whom Minato is rife, imposing standards of behavior and responsibility upon the often chaotic and destructive girls.

Along the way they've befriended a team of four magical girls -- Aiko, Tamiko, Fumiko and Misaki -- with versatile powers and embarrassing costumes, and have begun training them in martial arts to supplement their magical powers. Welcomed into their circle by Ranma and Kasumi, Nabiki joins the training as well, and discovers that she has a greater potential than she'd ever believed.

Meanwhile, things start getting complicated. A group of magical terrorists have planted devices around the world that open portals to a realm of ravenous monsters. One of the groups of magical girls in Minato is starting to go off the deep end. And back in Nerima, Akane seems to be caught in an endless spiral of escalating rage and destruction. Problems both small and large, both intimate and universe-spanning -- and they all demand the attention of the band of girls surrounding Ranma and Kasumi. And some seem to hint at a larger, darker picture in the background...

Desperately Seeking Ranma can be found here or here.

-

""It's been fun and everything but we really need to get to work. We're already nearly two hours late because of you guys and I'm losing patience. Give me the gun or I'll punch you through the face." "You... How..." He looked wildly around, sweating even more, then focussed on her. A puzzled expression appeared past the horror. "...through the face?" Without changing her mildly irritated expression, Akane lashed out with a fist moving far too fast for him to follow, sinking it wrist deep into the marble-faced wall beside his head and spraying him with little chips of stone. He went very, very still for a long moment as every eye in the bank fixed on her fist, then slowly rolled his head to the left and watched wide-eyed as she pulled it out and held it up in front of him, dust and gravel falling from it. "Through the face, yes," she replied cheerfully."
 * AI Is a Crapshoot: The time machine.
 * Averted with the SIs, who are designed to be -- and gladly embrace the role of -- assistants and helpers to their owners.
 * Played with in the apartment building "security system", which wasn't supposed to be sentient at all, and strictly speaking may not be, but still behaves... unexpectedly in the pursuit of its primary purpose.
 * Aliens Speaking English: Averted realistically.  The demons/aliens have their own languages, but some eventually come to learn at least a little Japanese.  And inverted, in that they have a trade language which some humans -- including, of course, Ranma and Kasumi -- come to learn.
 * Ancient Artifact: The time machine.  How ancient?  Its subjective age is around two million years, but partly because it exists in its own pocket universe, it also predates all current (surviving) civilizations in all known universes.
 * Arbitrarily-Large Bank Account: Ranma and Kasumi appear to have one (or more), thanks to Happosai.
 * Artifact Title: Past the first few chapters no one is "desperate" to find Ranma and Kasumi.  Wistful and hopeful, yes, but far from desperate.
 * Asskicking Equals Authority: Ranma, Kasumi and the other girls eventually become recognized -- in some cases officially -- as The Experts in solving magical and paranormal problems.
 * Ax Crazy: Usagi, by the time they manage to destroy the time machine.  Some of the other Senshi were heading in that direction, too.  All of it was thanks to the time machine messing with their minds and memories.
 * Badass: Just about everyone from Ranma ½, of course, plus Aiko, Tamiko, Fumiko and Misaki.  And Hotaru.
 * Becoming the Mask: Nabiki invented the Ms. Aoyama persona just to screw with someone -- but with Jun's help has slowly become almost as scary and near-omniscient as she pretended to be, to the point that about the only thing Ms. Aoyama appears to have that Nabiki doesn't are the mysterious superiors/employers.
 * Big Eater: ((Whichever one of the four it is who's always got some kind of food.))
 * Canada, Eh?: Halleckton.
 * Casual Interdimensional Travel: Ranma and Kasumi get so good at it that they shock even seasoned mages with how simply and easily they open portals between worlds and universes.
 * Casual Interplanetary Travel: Thanks to the ultratech demon worlds that Ranma and Kasumi can reach.  At one point they even borrow a spaceship to investigate the Moon for the Senshi.
 * Catch Phrase: "That information is unavailable" for Ms. Aoyama.
 * Character Development: Some happens before the story proper -- Nabiki has grown beyond her High School Hustler days and continues to grow and mature through the story.  Ranma and Kasumi are both medical students, and Kasumi additionally has become a magical and martial arts powerhouse.
 * Initially Akane seems to have gotten worse, drifting from her canon portrayal to a fanfic-standard "psychobitch", until it's revealed that a brain parasite is responsible for a lot of her unstable and erratic behavior. When she's cured, she undergoes a remarkable change in both temperament and her ability to progress in the Art.
 * Classified Information: There is no such thing to Ms. Aoyama; uncovering such information, especially when it inconveniences the bad guys -- is her stock-in-trade.
 * The Conspiracy: A small international conspiracy is uncovered in the wake of the Halleckton incident.  By chapter 93, though, it begins to appear that it was just a small part of a much larger conspiracy, which includes the magical terrorists from earlier in the story and at least one military contractor.
 * Crossover: With a very divergent version of Sailor Moon.
 * Curb Stomp Battle: What Ranma and Kasumi -- and eventually Nabiki, Aiko, Tamiko, Fumiko and Misaki -- are able to do to even the best-trained normal human troops.
 * Defrosting Ice Queen: Nabiki starts out as this, as a result of the events of the prequel story, and completely defrosts before very long.  She keeps up a bit of a facade of her old self with her family.
 * Doorstopper: 95 chapters and almost a million and a half words as of February 2016, and it appears that the main plot arc is only now kicking into gear.
 * The Dreaded: Ms. Aoyama, to just about anyone who's ever met her.  And a few who haven't.  Yet.
 * Everything Is Online: Averted.  In chapter 95, Jun is frustrated in some of his investigations because at many of the institutions he would like to hack, the information he wants is still primarily stored on paper.
 * Freudian Excuse: A brain parasite was responsible for much of Akane's instability and bad temper.
 * Giving Radio to the Romans: Nabiki's plan to introduce alien technologies to Earth -- starting with portable fusion reactors.
 * Healing Hands: Very much a part of Ranma and Kasumi's style of healing magic.
 * Hidden in Plain Sight: Ranma and Kasumi once they start visiting the Tendo home as "Yori" and "Chou".
 * Hollywood Hacking: What Jun is capable of in the Real World, basically because he's a Magitek AI centuries, if not millennia, more advanced than anything on Earth and capable of remotely accessing pretty much anything electronic.
 * I Am Not Left-Handed: Akane -- who has already proved herself bullet-proof -- informs the leader of a bank robbery just how screwed he is:

""They're practically unkillable. The military in London apparently shot one point blank with a 40mm grenade launcher half a dozen times and only pissed it off. Automatic gunfire it barely noticed.""
 * Ice Queen: Nabiki, herself a Defrosted Ice Queen, channels her old self for her alternate personas Azumi Ito and Ms. Aoyama.  For the latter she turns it up to eleven. And a half.
 * Instant AI, Just Add Water: The security spell on the apartment building.  It wasn't intended to be sapient, and arguably it may not be -- but it certainly can take the initiative and look for loopholes in its restrictions when it decides the people it's supposed to protect need its help.
 * Just Toying with Them: Shampoo and Akane during the bank robbery, initially as a ploy to distract the robbers from the other hostages.  Once the hostages are protected, though, they take a few minutes to let the robbers understand just how outmatched they are.
 * Ki Attacks: Ranma and Kasumi have continued exploring mastery of ki far beyond anything seen in canon.
 * They also manage to train up Nabiki, Aiko, Tamiko, Fumiko and Misaki to the point that they can all use ki attacks.
 * Magic From Technology/Clarke's Third Law: The really technologically-advanced civilizations, when they don't actually employ literal Magitek.
 * Magical Girls: Ranma and Kasumi end up living in Minato Ward, Tokyo, which is Magical Girl Ground Zero.  And because of their power levels and their insistence that the other girls in Minato behave responsibly, they effectively end up the Queens of All Magical Girls.
 * Magitek: Most worlds seem to run on some degree of this; others are all-magic or all-technology, but they appear to be relatively uncommon compared to the mixed worlds.
 * The Medic/Combat Medic: Both Ranma and Kasumi, who have combined actual med school training with martial arts and magic to develop healing talents beyond anything anyone from any world has seen before.  Better yet, they hope to be able to teach their healing skills someday.
 * Mugging the Monster: When the bank robbers finally try to take down Shampoo and Akane, they find they have a lot more trouble with it than four guys with automatic weapons ought to have against two unarmed girls.
 * Multiverse: There are many universes and many worlds in those universes; a large number of them connect to each other and trade all manner of goods and services.
 * My God, What Have I Done?: Václav after Halleckton incident.
 * Nigh Invulnerability: Not only Ranma, Kasumi, and the rest of the magical girl contingent, but also Shampoo and Akane, as demonstrated during both their firearms training and the bank robbery they get caught up in.
 * Even more so, the demons summoned by the "portal bombs".

""How are you doing all this?" he asked, taking a step back as she took one towards him. "A lot of hard work and training, mostly," she replied happily. "It's a family thing. You know, it's good for you that some friends fixed my anger issues, if it was a year ago you'd probably all be in intensive care by now if you were lucky." She giggled as he stared, paling at the sound. "I used to be really dangerous.""
 * The Omniscient: Part of what makes Ms. Aoyama incredibly scary, especially to government types.  She seems to know everything -- especially things it should be impossible for her to know.
 * Partial Transformation: The "mermaid" and "flyer" forms acquired with the so-called "illusion" spell.
 * Person of Mass Destruction: Ranma.  Full stop.  During the Halleckton event he makes a crater big enough to become a lake -- with a single attack.  Kasumi is not far behind him.  And they keep getting more powerful through the course of the story.
 * Police Are Useless: Almost completely averted.  The main characters end up developing contacts in several different police forces or similar organizations, including a Japanese intelligence agency, the Los Angeles PD, the FBI, and the Canadian Mounties.  Although initially out of the depth when faced with paranormal crimes and criminals, they rapidly adapt.  While they may defer to the heroes on issues of magic and fighting monsters, they all prove to be good and useful allies.
 * The Reveal: Several times Ranma must reveal his true identity and gender to friends who have previously known him as a woman and under other names.
 * Reverse Polarity: How Nabiki pulls off a lot of Ms. Aoyama's creepiness/alien-ness -- by inverting her chi in such a way that it makes her feel completely unnatural even to those that aren't chi adepts.
 * Sanity Slippage: Akane -- who is perfectly fine now, thank you -- clearly gives this impression to the leader of a band of bank robbers:


 * Scare'Em Straight: Ms. Aoyama has this effect on some people just by talking to them -- and when she intends to intimidate...  well, just ask Akane and Ryoga.
 * Secret Keeper: Nabiki, for Ranma and Kasumi, even after she gains her own secrets to keep.
 * Sherlock Scan: During their audition week in Los Angeles, Akane and Shampoo are in a bank and notice little details that warn them a robbery is about to take place, allowing them to thwart it.
 * Shout-Outs: In addition to a highly variant version of Sailor Moon, there are shout-outs to a few other Magical Girl series among the inhabitants of Minato.
 * Britain has a magical government and subculture that draws heavily on Harry Potter.
 * Shrouded in Myth: What Ms. Aoyama is rapidly coming to be among the governments of the world.
 * Sock Puppet: When Nabiki catches up to them, she learns that Ranma and Kasumi both have a large number of alternate identities (which all have unique and distinctive appearances thanks to the disguise spell).  These they use for a wide variety of purposes -- some broad, some amusingly specific.
 * Split Personality: What Luna and Artemis really are, for Usagi and Minako respectively.
 * Spock Speak: One of Ms. Aoyama's distinctive character traits.
 * Stealth Hi Bye: Aiko does this frequently; so does Ms. Aoyama.
 * Stripperiffic: Aiko, Tamiko, Fumiko and Misaki's original Magical Girl outfits.  When Ranma and Kasumi figure out how to tweak their transformation magic to get rid of them, they're all incredibly grateful.
 * Take Our Word for It: Aiko, Tamiko, Fumiko and Misaki's original Magical Girl outfits are frequently described as being embarassingly Stripperiffic -- but we never find out exactly how, or even get any hint of what they actually look like.
 * Teleport Spam: Aiko.  And not just in combat.  She goes to New York for pizza, Australia for sushi, and gladly acts as chauffeur for Akane and Shampoo when they travel to and from L.A.
 * Teleportation: Aiko's favorite ability out of all her magical powers.  She uses it like other people use walking.
 * Teleportation Sickness: Happens to everyone the first time Aiko teleports them, then goes away and never bothers them again.
 * Terrorists Without a Cause: The group responsible for the "portal bombs" -- or so it initially seems.
 * Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: Minato Ward is extraordinarily prone to interdimensional doorways.  This is commented on in-universe several times as being very unusual.
 * Voluntary Shapeshifting: Although everyone repeatedly calls it an "illusion" spell, it's very clear that it's actually genuine shapeshifting.  Then again it started as a simple disguise spell before it contracted a serious case of Creeping Featurism.