Disclaimer: Buffy and the Sunnydale Scoobies are the property of Joss Whedon, Ranma and co are the property of Rumiko Takahashi. I’m neither one of these people, I’m merely borrowing their creations for my own writing pleasure, and I won’t make a penny of profit from this work. Enjoy.

Summary: One shot. A vampiric Ranma faces off against the Slayer after tracking the survivors of Nerima to Sunnydale. Things aren’t looking good, until an unexpected ally arrives to aid Buffy.

Rated T for violence and some swearing.

Dead, and Very Much Alive

by

Leonar Greyheart

Angel knew he was no match for Saotome himself, knew that taking a swing at the teenage martial artist was an exercise in masochism. Then again, Angel felt he deserved as much punishment as he could find. All that really mattered in that moment was that Saotome was hurting Buffy, and Angel had to get him away from her. Buffy was on her knees in the middle of the road, her hair held in Saotome's iron grasp as she glared woozily up at him, her nose and mouth bloody. Saotome raised his free hand, the one with the weird gauntlet on it, over Buffy's head. The gauntlet began to glow with dark energy. Angel had seen that thing in action, what it could do at full power. Buffy would never survive. It was now or never.

Angel rushed forth and targeted Saotome's head with a flying kick. The boy sensed him coming, his yellow slitted eyes turned towards Angel and he raised the gauntlet toward him instead.

“Too slow, Angelus.” He said coldly.

Dark energy sparked and then exploded towards Angel in a short burst, enough to send him flying backwards down the street. Seeing her beloved go hurtling and hit the tarmac hard brought Buffy out of her stupor. The distraction offered by Angel's failed attack was enough to let Buffy get one Slayer-powered punch in Saotome's torso. His hand let go of her hair and he went hurtling back. However, Saotome merely spun in the air and landed back on his feet, seeming barely winded by the blow.

“So, you still have a bit of life left in ya, huh Slayer? Good, was hopin' you'd give me more of a fight.” The sky crackled, and let loose a torrent of rain, a rarity in Sunnydale. Saotome smirked, showing off his fangs. The rain did nothing to alter his body. The Jusenkyo curse was attached to his soul, which was not currently in residence. It was good to be a vampire.

Near the blackened remains of their van, Kasumi and Nabiki sat beside Soun, each holding one of his hands as Willow did her best to provide first aid. Giles was trying to help Hiroshi, with Daisuke lending a hand where he could. Meanwhile, Xander, Cordelia and Akane stood watching the fight worriedly.

It wasn't going well. Buffy's rejuvenation was short lived, and Ranma had knocked the wind from her lungs with a Katchu Tenshin Amiguri-Ken strike, leaving her crawling on her hands and knees, struggling to get up.

“C'mon Buffy, you can do this.” Xander said under his breath, but Akane shook her head.

“No. She's good. In fact, she seems to have been trained in Anything Goes to a decent standard, but she's nowhere near strong enough to defeat him.”

Akane looked down tearfully. “The only person who can defeat Ranma, is Ranma.”

Xander took that in, then smirked, “Well, in that case, I think things are about to turn around.”

Akane looked at him confusedly, following his gaze past the fight. What did he mean?

Saotome gripped Buffy under the chin and dragged her to her feet, pulling back his fist to deliver the finishing blow, smirking over at Akane darkly, “You wasted a journey Akane, not even the Slayer can stop me!” His smirk grew wider as he saw Akane staring at him in what he assumed was fear. He failed to notice that Akane's gaze was not on him, but on the fallen figure of Angel.

The trenchcoat seemed to have grown bigger on the vampire. No, it wasn't bigger. He was smaller.

Then it hit her. The first time she'd met the ensouled vampire, she'd thought there was something familiar about his clothes. That black Chinese-style silk shirt he wore underneath it. It couldn't be...

“She didn't come here for her.” A hauntingly familiar female voice called from behind Saotome.

“Huh?” Saotome dropped Buffy in surprise and spun at the voice, and got a faceful of hot, angry ki which propelled him backwards down the road, tumbling like a wheel until he slid to a halt. He shook himself as he sat back up, and stared stupidly at the figure who had blasted him.

A black trenchcoated figure. Angel? Impossible, vampires couldn't channel ki, they didn't have any. That's what the gauntlet was for, absorbing the ki of a vampire's victims to create a similar effect.

No, it wasn't Angel, it was someone quite a bit smaller. “Who...”

Then he spotted a mop of red hair sticking out from under the collar of the coat, with piercing blue eyes glaring out from within, and Saotome couldn't finish the question. The answer struck him with a power equal to that of the crack of lightning that illuminated the face hidden within that oversized coat. The face of a ghost. But he refused to accept it, it couldn't be true. “No way...”

The figure threw the coat off, letting it flap in the wind and land on the road to collect rainwater. Then she started marching towards him, anger ki flowing around her, giving her the appearance of an avenging angel. A pigtailed, red-haired avenging angel, with eyes blue and cold as ice.

“No fucking way!” Saotome roared as he slipped and slid backwards in a frantic, almost panicked attempt to get back on his feet. The pigtailed girl continued stomping towards him, glaring at him as if she could turn him to dust by sheer willpower. Defiantly, he climbed to his feet and stood his ground. “This is a trick! It's not possible! You're dead! You're fucking dead!”

The girl stopped and smirked at him, “No buddy, you're dead. I'm very much alive, and I, Ranma Saotome, of the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts hereby challenge you. Whatcha say? You game? Or has being dead made a coward of me?”

“Ranma?” Akane breathed the girl’s name as she bore witness to this new turn of events.

Saotome, for his part, dead or alive, could not take an accusation of cowardice without retaliating. “Bitch!” He yelled, before charging forth, fist raised. Ranma charged forward also, ready to meet his attack in kind.

Nabiki, who had left her father's side to join the others, raised an eyebrow at the oncoming fight. “This,” She commented, with a genuine feeling of awe, “should be interesting.”

Author's Note:

I apologise for any grammatical or spelling errors which may appear in this piece. The person I usually go to for pre-reading doesn’t like Buffy, so I had to just trust my own instincts.

Incidentally, if anyone is willing to beta my future works, please let me know. I'd be very grateful for the help.

This is a scene from a Buffy/Ranma One-half fanfic I was working on a while back, as a response to a challenge made on a now dead fanfic challenge forum I once hosted. I eventually gave up on it because I was having problems with some of the background for it. Also, the first few chapters were too much of a re-hash of Buffy's pilot episode, only with an extra cast member.

All the same, this scene popped into my head and would not go away. So, I decided to get it off my chest. This takes place at a fairly late stage in the story I had planned, there were two parts that I had all worked out, and this would have taken place somewhere in the middle of the second part. I may pick up the project again at some point, but now that I've posted this later scene for it already, it rather spoils the story a bit. In any case, this little warm-up will hopefully help me work my way toward writing more long-term projects. Here's hoping.

For those who find it of interest, the first half of this was written to the sound of 'Enemy Unseen' from the Bleach soundtrack, the second half was written to 'Battle Ignition' from the same disc. Those of you who've got that particular soundtrack might understand why I chose those songs when writing this scene.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this, short and incomplete though it may be. Please R&R. Ja na!

P.S. For those of you who liked ‘Tears In Rain’ last year and wanted to see a sequel of some kind to it, I’m giving it some though right now, so watch this space.