I was originally going to send this into
[the Bet], but since it's a little too late for 
that, I'm going to release it as an 
normal fic. C&C welcome.

Everything except the idea belongs to 
someone else. This story was created 
for amusement, so don't sue me.
*******************************

Ryuromonogatari part 1a
(How to power-up Ranma-kun in a day)
A Ranma/Ryuroden crossover
by SeventhOne

***
Shanghai
October 14, 1975

The girl stood on the dock, looking back 
at the city. In her right hand was a ticket, 
her way out of the arranged marriage her 
uncle had set up for her. And there was a 
question in her mind. Did she have the 
determination to escape? Could she 
shame ancestors? She clutched the 
amulet hanging from her neck, a ornate 
amulet, engraved with a dragon and with 
a single jewel embedded in the center. 
She closed her eyes bit her lip. 
And then, for a single moment, there 
were two of her, one running toward the 
ship, and the other slowly walking back 
into the city.
The one that uses the ticket will travel 
abroad, and eventually end up in the city 
of Tokyo. Within three years she'll be 
married, and in two more, she'll have a 
son. In twelve years, she'll die in a car 
accident, and in twenty, her son will
disappear from a plane. 
This story is not hers. This story is the 
story of the other her, the one who 
returned home. For the honor of her 
ancestors, she sacrificed her happiness 
and married the wealthy merchant her 
uncle wanted to control. And then? The 
merchant moves his business to a 
smaller village in northeastern China, 
and two years later, the mansion burns 
down. The girl dies. 
Where does the story go from there? 
Let's see . . .

***
Long Shen Tzweng
April 23, 1995

Genma Saotome smiled as he looked at 
the amulet in his hands. It wasn't an 
especially nice smile, but wasn't a nasty 
one either. Rather, it was a trademark 
Genma Saotome smile, which was 
usually associated with things like 
getting free food and stealing scrolls. 
And indeed, this was what he thought he 
was doing. If the rumors were correct, 
the inscription on the amulet was a 
secret martial arts technique.
"Now if I could only read Chinese . . ."
And then it hit him. The 
Chinese/Japanese dictionary his son had 
picked up the day before. He got up and 
walked to the other side of the camp, 
where his son was sleeping. He knelt 
and reached over the sleeping bag to get 
the book. 
Ranma turned in his sleep, knocking his 
father's face aside with a well placed 
right fist. Genma rubbed his face.
"Stupid boy. I'm gonna have to correct 
that sleeping position."
He reached over again, and this time, he 
got kicked in the stomach. The amulet 
fell. When it touched Ranma, everything 
turned white.

***
Jusenkyo
Spring, 1194

The old man called himself George. It 
wasn't that he knew any English, but it 
just so happened that the pronunciation 
of the name he'd taken on was George. 
He'd picked it up somewhere on his 
travels, but he'd forgotten exactly where. 
You can pick up a lot of things in five 
hundred years. 
George hadn't started out wanting to 
become a mystic. It'd all begun with a 
martial arts training trip. He'd just 
picked up one technique too many. 
The specific technique that made him a 
mystic allowed him to control the 
structure of every single cell in his body, 
as well as most everything outside. 
Heavens, to think that it'd been an 
accident he'd picked it up. Compared to 
his almost fifty years of practice, this 
one technique had made all that effort 
wasted, it was so powerful. He almost 
hated himself for not finding out about it 
earlier. And then again it was highly 
unlikely. The technique was secret, 
known only to five people other than 
himself in all the country. The chance of 
anybody picking it up was almost zero. 
And considering the difficulty . . .
He was immortal. He'd made himself 
immortal with years of practice, and he'd 
slowly been able to make his body the 
way he liked it. By any other name, it'd 
be called shapeshifting, but it wasn't 
really that. Just the growth and 
destruction of body tissue to his will. 
Presently he was in his old-man guise, 
which had its benefits. Normal strength, 
normal speed, with the addition of free 
food and a place to stay. And 
considering his normal, that is, strong 
enough to destroy a mountain with a few 
hits, there wasn't much of a 
disadvantage. He'd stayed in this form 
for most of his life as a mystic, changing 
back to his more natural "young" form 
only during the occasional training trip.
The last century had been . . . 
interesting. 
Martial arts were being developed to the 
extreme, and there were more martial 
artists around presently than there had 
been for the past four hundred years. 
Quite a few of those martial artists had 
attained a level of skill that he couldn't 
beat with one arm. That was saying 
quite a lot.
Today, however, marked the beginning 
of something big. Why? The night 
before, he'd seen a dragon fall from the 
sky. After a little investigation, he'd 
found a girl, lying where one of the 
cursed springs used to be. That is, they'd 
been there the day before, but were 
currently dried up. That in itself wasn't 
particularly strange, as the heat of the 
"dragon," which he'd determined to be 
no more than a chi specter, would have 
done it. What was strange was that the 
girl woke up from what appeared to be a 
coma two hours later, now. More 
interesting, the coma was one induced 
under conditions similar to that in which 
he'd first learned the mystic technique. 
Which means? 
Simply put, the girl, upon waking up, 
became the world's youngest mystic.
You might be wondering, just what does 
a coma have to do with becoming a 
mystic? To understand, you have to 
know what a mystic is. A mystic is, as 
said before, a human being who can 
control everything in his body. To 
become a mystic, a person needs to 
possess this skill, and the skill can be 
learned under the following conditions: 
a)	You're conscious. b) You can't control 
anything in your body. A person under 
such conditions is basically dead, as the 
vital functions start fading as soon as the 
mind loses control of the body. In order 
to learn the mystic technique, a person 
has to regain all functions by himself, 
without any help. 

That the boy had done so was indeed a 
miracle. So much a miracle that George 
could do nothing but stare in awe as the 
boy sat up. And the boy spoke.
<"Where,"> asked the boy, <"the fuck 
am I?">
And George stood at the door gaping. It 
occurred to him momentarily that he'd 
been five hundred years without a 
student, and that it was about time.
At this point the Guide walked in.
"Very tragic. Is the boy still in a coma?"
And then he saw the boy. And George 
gaping.
"Uh, George, did you just do anything?"
"No, Chen."
"Why's he awake, then?"
"He's just become the world's youngest."
"Youngest? Youngest to do what?"
"To learn the Technique of the Body of 
Wind and Cloud."
"Um, 'scuse me for being blunt, but 
what's that?"
"The art of the gods."
"Oh."

Cut to part 1b (coming sometime in the 
next month)

***
So, how'd you like it, folks? Good? Bad? Horrible? 

Tell me about it at 
nanashi96@hotmail.com