Desperately Seeking Ranma

Desperately Seeking Ranma is a Ranma ½ Alternate Universe/Continuation Fic by PixelWriter1. It is the sequel to an earlier story by the same author, called Aftermath, 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. Sadly, after several years of updates with a clock-like regularity, the story screeched to a halt in May 2016, and as of May 2017 has not yet resumed; it is feared that it has become a Dead Fic.

-

""You know, most people I've met would find that attitude very strange," she remarked, making both Nodoka and Nabiki smile. "But to you this is basically just another morning, isn't it?""
 * A.I. 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.
 * Alternate Universe: Of both Ranma ½ and Sailor Moon.
 * 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, primarily because they're so very good at doing so.
 * 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.
 * Beam Spam: Basically Chiyoko's combat style.  Accurate aiming is not really a priority (or, apparently, a possibility) with her.
 * Becoming the Mask: Nabiki invented the Ms. Aoyama persona just to scare Ryoga, Akane and Shampoo into behaving after a destructive fight -- 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.
 * About the time the portal-bomb arc kicks into gear, Ranma notes that his "Yori" persona was originally intended simply as a disguise for taking care of the occasional high-powered task he couldn't do either as himself or one of his non-martial identities; but being Yori has become a large part of his life -- he's come to enjoy being her, and wouldn't give it up even if told he had to.
 * BFG: Chiyoko's staff is essentially a magical particle beam weapon with no power settings between "off" and "vaporize".
 * Big Eater: Misaki.  She has her Hammerspace storage filled with food and drink.
 * Bring My Brown Pants: Both of Nabiki's alter egos, Azumi Ito and Ms. Aoyama (especially Ms. Aoyama), produce this effect in people who meet them.
 * But for Me It Was Tuesday: An observation made by a "normal" friend of Nabiki's in chaper 98 about the Tendo and Saotome attitude toward the previous chapter's demon attack:

""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."
 * Canada, Eh?: Halleckton.
 * Casual Danger Dialogue: Pretty much anything Nabiki says or does in her "Ms. Aoyama" guise. Bonus Points when she breaks out the folder.
 * Most everyone at the party in chapter 97 as the "demonic duck" approaches.
 * 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.
 * Comically Missing the Point: The guy in L.A. who can't seem to grasp that the magic and martial arts he's seeing are real and not a spectacular but badly-managed promotion for an upcoming movie.
 * 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.
 * Continuation Fic: For Ranma ½.
 * 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.
 * Doomy Dooms of Doom: The core cast jokingly refer to themselves as "The Sisterhood of Doom", which has become the semi-official name of the setting as a whole.
 * Doorstopper: 98 chapters and almost a million and a half words as of May 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.
 * Extreme Omnivore: The small, furry demons that Chiyoko chases about Minato.
 * Freudian Excuse: A brain parasite was responsible for much of Akane's instability and bad temper.
 * Fuku Fic: Very much averted despite the presence of the Sailor Moon cast.
 * Gas Leak Coverup: The authorities explain the flash of light caused by destroying the demon duck in chapter 97 as a small meteorite breaking up over Tokyo, Chelyabinsk-style.
 * Giving Radio to the Romans: Nabiki's plan to introduce alien technologies to Earth -- starting with portable fusion reactors.
 * Good Is Not Nice: Ranma cites the trope almost word-for-word when explaining why he and Kasumi chose to trust Nabiki after she found them.
 * Hammerspace: All of the core cast have this.  Nabiki keeps Ms. Aoyama's folder there.  Misaki keeps a small grocery store's worth of food.
 * Healing Hands: Very much a part of Ranma and Kasumi's style of healing magic.
 * Hero Insurance: "Chou" and "Yori" have set up a fund to reimburse anyone suffering property damage due to Magical Girl activities. Originally intended for the Minato area, but by chapter 94, it's paying out to the occasional international location.
 * 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:

"[Nabiki] shook her head slowly, still staring at them. "When did I fall into some sort of manga or anime series?" Ranma laughed, getting up to refill the coffee-pot. "Quite a while ago, I think. Years, at least.""
 * 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.
 * Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Chiyoko, who basically never hits what she's aiming at.
 * Insistent Terminology: "We're not magical girls, we're martial artists."
 * "Don't call me Nabs."
 * 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.
 * Leaning on the Fourth Wall: This moment from Chapter 22:

""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.""
 * Little Miss Badass: Hotaru -- nowhere more so than during the destruction of the time machine.
 * 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 medical 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.
 * Morally-Ambiguous Ducktorate: The giant demonic duck accidentally summoned by Gosunkugi in chapter 96.
 * 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 the 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 Quiet One/The Silent Bob: Misaki, mainly because most of the time she has food in her mouth.  Her first few "lines" are inarticulate grunts.
 * 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 -- the disguise/illusion includes something that inverts her chi in such a way that it makes her feel completely unnatural even to those that aren't chi adepts.
 * Running Gag: Referring to Ranma/Yori's high-powered attacks as "making duck ponds", after the first such one seen in the story -- it left behind a glass-lined crater in a park, and the authorities just filled it with water and put benches around it as soon as it had cooled down.
 * 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.
 * An operation orchestrated to frighten Gosunkugi out of further boneheaded attempts at magic caps chapter 98. Naturally it involves Ms. Aoyama.
 * 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.
 * "Yori" mentions to an FBI agent that there are pockets of magic in Louisiana, the coast of Massachusetts, and Arkansas.
 * Shrouded in Myth: What Ms. Aoyama is rapidly coming to be among the governments of the world.
 * Small Girl, Big Gun: Chiyoko is the magical equivalent.
 * 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.
 * Summon Magic: Gosunkugi accidentally gets a summoning circle right in chapter 96, initially calling forth dozens of tiny voracious demons, and just before it expires, something far more dangerous.
 * Ms. Aoyama then recruits Cologne to summon Gosunkugi (to a barren patch of the Australian outback) to teach him to stop messing with magic he doesn't understand.
 * Take Our Word for It: Aiko, Tamiko, Fumiko and Misaki's original Magical Girl outfits are frequently described as being embarrassingly 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.
 * Time Skip: The first few chapters incorporate several time skips.  After opening about six months after the events of Aftermath, subsequent scenes briefly show events and people a year, two and a half years, and three years after Ranma and Kasumi disappeared.  It then skips again after Nabiki finds Ranma and Kasumi, eventually taking us to four years later before the main action of the story starts kicking in.
 * 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.
 * The Wiki Rule: Now has a (fairly rudimentary) Wikia site.
 * You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The bank robbers are killed in their jail cells.