Note I know I said I was putting this on hold while I edited it. And edit is in progress but if I don’t keep writing this I will lose touch with the story. So I am continuing now anyway and forever removing my “comma” key from the keyboard. ;) As I looked at the pages of edits from my lovely wife the vast majority of the bright purple marks (she loves me too much to use red) were about comma use. Any grammar errors I blame on Mini-Skuld.

Special thanks to Innortal, who almost single handedly keeping me doing this. Just the guilt of seeing him online, and me not writing is doing wonders ;)

Reviews of last chapter at end of course.

Chapter 9 Here’s Nabiki, Senshi problems, a a call to the Hells.

The car moved smoothly, with is occupants silent for the most part lost in their own thoughts. Nabiki‘s dwelt on the upcoming job she had taken and to the entire change her life had taken. There was no part of her life that was a known quantity. Now she had nothing to feel secure in really other than Nodoka’s continued good will. The only reason they noticed her originally was because of Nodoka’s recommendation, and she could lose it just as easy. ‘I wish that Kasumi were here then at least I could have something…’ her thoughts trailed off at that point. The Sakuraba manor was impressive, as they drove up to it. Two buildings attached with walk ways to the center “house”. There was a nicely attended yard that was extremely large for being so close to central Tokyo. A maid was waiting for them at the door. She seemed to have a panicked expression on her face.

She watched with interest as Miyabi spoke with her, an Ms Aoi. Whatever the maid said to them apparently disturbed them greatly, as they both went quickly into the house, leaving Nabiki standing there, with the maid, who look very worried.

The maid bowed properly, “I am Taeko, maid here. I am instructed to get you set up in the guest house, and Ms Miyabi will be getting you once the she has a free moment. Please follow me “. Nabiki kept quiet as she moved her things into the guest house. She really wanted to know what was going on but decided the perhaps she should keep quiet for the present time. Taeko helped her set things up but continued to look distraught over the issue going on in the main house. “Anything I can help with?” asked Nabiki. Taeko looked at her a bit flustered. “No, not really. Its just that Ranma-sama has been passed out, and the doctor has been…” “RANMA?” Nabiki breaks into a run.

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Ami was shocked. They knew. Who ever these persons were they just looked at her and knew who she was. She had to get out of there. No time for thought, or analysis, just run. And run is what she did blowing right past the two who were rushing to Ranma’s room. She runs headlong into Ms. Miyabi and they both fall to the ground. Amy’s bag goes everywhere which she hurriedly starts putting back together, mumbling very quickly about how sorry she was for running into Miyabi. In the rush one of her books is left behind the door and she is back again trying to get away from these folks before anything worse happened. There was no telling how much damage they could do if they could just look at her and tell what she was. All of their secret identities were at stake. They needed to put a stop to this group at once.

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The outers were all gathered together. Well in truth the outers plus two were gathered together in the living room of their house. Because Chibi-Usa, sat very quietly off to the side, as the Setsuna, and her Puu-Chan sat looking at the others. Setsuna was silent, as her elder self spoke.

“I am not 100 sure this will work. It is however our best chance at heading off Usagi’s death. Also to insure the possibilities coming about in case you fail, I have brought back Little Lady for her to stay here, until we know for sure that her mother survives this. One way or the other, there WILL be a queen to sit on the throne.” Sailor Pluto looked at the assembled outers, including her younger self. There were some obvious differences between them, the older and younger one. Setsuna was exactly as you would expect her to be. But the older one who looked around the room with her good eye, was scared on the left side of her face. Her hair was cut short, and her Senshi uniform was more militaristic, armored than what one would expect. It is understandable since she had spent the better part of her timeline fighting, in wars with the other Senshi. It had taken her 2 centuries to power the gates on her own without the power sources approval that had always powered it before. Enough power for one trip, one that with any luck would cost her life and make her own existence never come into being. The images she had shown the outers had convinced them what they had to do but she knew that it was her younger self that was the crux. Setsuna must resist the direct order from Usagi. No matter what or it would all happen again.

“That is more or less everything I can tell you. Anything you can do to protect him, and keep him from fighting the Inners you MUST do. Otherwise, well, you have seen what happened in my time line.” The older Setsuna looked so tired, she sat heavily on the couch. “Please go and help him. Right now Mercury should be heading to tell the inners about being discovered. Its already started. So please stop it.” Pluto started to look Odd. Something was happening to her, like she was fading from sight. “PUU!” Chibi-Usa jumped up concerned.

“no its ok little lady my life force is powering that gate. I stayed too long. The rest of you” Pluto was growing see though, her shape growing somewhat distorted , “hurry. Please stop this….. plea…” and with that her form disappeared completely. Leaving nothing but the whisper of “please” hanging in the air.

Silently the outers prepared, they had to get to Ranma’s house, to attempt to protect him from the inners mistaken interference.

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As soon as she got clear, Ami got her communicator out sending a frantic message to the scouts to meet her ASAP. She got no response at all from the outers, but the others now all know where he is, and agree that they need to do SOMETHING about this. Usagi was at Ucchans. She was trying to talk in hushed tones to avoid letting Ukyo know they had found Ranma. The end result of their conference call was that they would watch the building, tonight, and attempt to confront him, later in the evening. That gave everyone time to see if they could get any information on why the outers were ignoring them and saying they would not help.

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While all of this weird activity is going on Skuld looks to Ranma “Ranma, I don’t suppose your ready to decide on that wish now are you?”.

Ranma let loose a deep sigh. “No. I still don’t trust magic. I accept you’re who you say you are but I am not ready to trust in magic yet.”

Skuld nods ‘ Well at least I know what Onee-chan went through. ‘, she thinks to herself. “I will wait as long as you need to Ranma. When ever you want, just ask for it”

The others in the room look at this exchange very strangely. The strange girl is talking to him about something that he needs to ask for. Skuld and Ranma seemed to ignore the rest as they talked among themselves. The only person who seemed to get their attention was Urd who was trying to continue to “examine” Ranma. Ranma and Skuld talked quietly between themselves while Ranma pushed Urd back and bit, until two things happened. First Ranma stood up to address the assembled concerned. The second was that while he stood up Urd decided now was a good time to check a part of his body she had not had enough time to explore. Knowing what her sister had planned to do, Skuld very casually pulled Mallet-Sama 9000 from the neither space, and pounded her on top of the skull. Ranma’s thoughts were completely distracted by this action, as he suddenly checked himself to find where he had been hit. Seeing Urd’s pounded form with her hand outstretched towards his posterior made him realize something. While Skuld was telling the truth that she was not going to hit him she ha said nothing about not assaulting others.

Everyone else just gaped in shock at the scene.

It was at this point that the door was burst through again, and Ranma looked at a very familiar face, one he was Not expecting to see right now. His face darkened, a bit as he looked at her. Nabiki

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Far above several stars sat together seeing their numbers decrease with some regularity. The few that remained “discussed” the situation among themselves. Not often in the history of the universe were they allowed to concentrate to the level that they had with Ranma. Such sweet misery they had together fated that man to suffer, and to see it all fade away was not something that they were willing to accept. Even with the goddesses help he would not be allowed to be free form their designs. He held too much capacity for self delusion. They as a group must do something before he is given the chance to be free. Stars who sit above the universe, and supply it with the direction of fate are a part of the design of the universe. They have a form given to them to meet their function. But this very form limits them to what they can and cannot accomplish.

However, all stars are linked to Yggdrasil, the world computer. Pulses from them go out, into the system. Options are weighed against current programming. A request is sent through the pathway of lights, until on the screen in front of Peorth comes the request. stars of misery collective request an avatar for work on special project concerning the continued monitoring of Ranma Sakuraba Not an unusual request. Also did not flag any “special needs list’ flags. It should have. But a bug in the system was interfering with the linkages of the name Ranma Saotome and Ranma Sakuraba. There should have been a warning file attached but the bug was happily eating that file.

Request approved: forward request to Hades for asset request for low level demon to serve as avatar for Stars of Misery Collective . More streaming through the Data-space, lights traveled through pathways to reach the other end of our spectrum. Hades is more bug ridden than heaven is in part because no demon likes spending time hunting the buggers down. In spite of the bugs, the message got to Hild’s system more or less intact.

Stars of misery collective request an avatar to work on special punishment concerning Ranma Sakuraba….. Request approved: forward request to Hades for asset request for level 1 demon to serve as Avatar for this position…. Peorth Hades central did not usually get these type of requests. Only the worst of certain types of evils were ever punished by heavens request of Level 1 demonic interference. Usually they requested an imp or other low level sort. Hild examined Ranma’s file to see what type of power she would need if she chose to grant heavens request. He had four fiancées? His ex-wife was in jail now, and blamed him for it. He was the leading force in the nightmares of 3 terminally insane. He killed a god. Hild digested all of this information, and came to the conclusion that normal demons would not do for this. She needed something special, to match the parts of his file she could get into. Someone special, really special she thought. She scanned her list.

Hild picked one of the old ones. One no one had used in a long time. It would take time to wake him for he had been asleep for a long time, but he would do. Typhonus, the one time duke of hell and currently sleeping demon lord. Some said he was the one who first suggested the concept of duality to end the wars of heaven and hell. That he was forced to sleep, as punishment by the other lords. Many thought he suggested it, just to add a chaotic death system among his own kind rather than ending the wars. After all he was fond of saying that no demon could stop hating an angel even if it would kill him to do so.

Saffron may have fallen to Ranma but Hild doubted that he would far so well against one of the oldest lords of hell. Since Typhonus was only a shadow anyway and could possess even angels when he needed to it was not like Ranma would have that much he could physically fight with anyway. As she filled out the forms releasing Typhonus form his sleep she gave thoughts for a moment of requiting Ranma, rather than letting Typhonus consume his soul. She will have to ponder this before sending him. Ranma would make a good demon, based on what she had read in his file.

And the Bugs continued to consume little bits of his file here, and add bits there. All because the best debugger known to the heavens was busy on an assignment that seemed to be getting longer and longer.

End of chapter.

A note. Ami is a bit more militant than IC here. This is the world where she is destined to become the surviving Senshi in a Senshi war after all, if things go bad with Ranma. Hell that time line might be fun to write. Killing off the Senshi in on pointless war after another could be fun. She is the most intelligent, and this is after the end of stars, so she is a little more jaded than she was before. Age her intelligence and everything else s starting to combine into cynicism.

And No Typhonus is not an Insert for Typhonis

Innortal : Its not like sex was the only thing he could have been malleted for. Cooking for example, or any one of another things. Hell, She could have just imagined it was Ranma, and malleted first, questioning later. ;)

Bobboky: It was a lawyer. I am not sure that Australia would even press charges.

Lerris : I know. The problem with my characterization of Akane comes from my views of my own ex, and perhaps I am making her a bit more unstable than she needs to be. I am kicking around ideas on how to either mitigate her, or have good reasons for it. I will say that in an abusive relationship, she prob would not be that fast at getting rid of her habits, one of which being blame Ranma for everything she does.

Wonderbee31 Nodoka will not be allowed to repeat her past mistakes. Ranma is an asset to the clan, now that they know him. She will be encouraged to butt out, forcefully if needed.

Light02 Actually, If you reread that, she is squashing her opinions on him like that pretty hard (Ukyo). She is done with that part of her life. Even if she ran into Ranma now, she woud not initiate that with him. At least in this story ;)

Tenchi Saotome Just have to decide if its going to be Demonic possession, or some other punishment. But yeah, Bitch must pay

borg rabbit Well, The police may not be aware he is a lawyer yet…. She has to stay in jail while they investigate if there is a crime or not. Nah someone will rescue her, at some point, so she can come back and confront her “husband who abandoned her to jail for a death he is responsible for”

Sonic 1 Starfire? Uhmm… Damm, that one almost shuts down logic circuits. She is nice and all, and cute, but well, Strange… even for Ranma