Author: Riniko22

Notes: The Characters and Places within this story are not mine, and remain the property of their respected owners. As such, I do not own them, nor am I making any money off them. So sad, very tragic tale of a penniless author that fell into the spring of ….

The characters in this story will likely not react the same as in cannon (written or video), so don't flame me about this. Some will have grown up with different influences on them leading them to react in different ways.

Advice is welcome. I will continue the story to its end, and I have several other ideals in the works after this one or during breaks between chapters. I hate seeing stories that are dropped and never finished.

Hitotsu ni suru

We all know the start of the Naruto story where Naruto is tricked into stealing the Forbidden Scroll and learns the high level Ninjutsu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu and defeats Mizuki. But, what if this was not the only technique that Naruto learned and this was not the one that he used to defeat Mizuki. What if he tried another technique, one that he had not perfected and made a tragic mistake that would rip the fabric of their universes at the same time that another individual was using a final technique to kill a minor godling in another universe? With the two universes tied together and the two being ripped part from the tidal forces unleashed both Naruto and Ranma are dying, refusing to give up the Kyuubi grabs hold of this other life-force fusing the two together to save her life, even if it is as a prisoner within this new body.

Naruto's Side

"Don't you dare touch Iruka Sensei or I will kill you," Naruto defiantly screamed as he stepped into the line of fire between the wounded Iruka and the treasonous Mizuki.

"Shut your trap punk," Mizuki sneered back, "So, you even think you have a chance against me you little shit! I'm going to enjoy killing you and that demon loving loser. No one will care that your dead, no one."

"Try it you piece of trash! I'm going to make you wish you had never been born," yelled Naruto as he began a quick series of hand signs and shouted out, "Solar Fire no Jutsu!"

As the words left Naruto's mouth, the very air began to burn around the pair and Mizuki began to scream as his very flesh began to blacken and peel away from the intense heat. Then his very body seemed to burst into flames as Mizuki's very own chakra began to feed the flames as they burst outward engulfing the area.

"Naruto, stop feeding the Jutsu," screamed Iruka as he began to crawl backwards away from the intense heat. The ground began to blacken and smoke around the two figures still trapped within the growing sphere of death.

"I can't stop it Iruka Sensei! I can feel the heat around me, pulling at me. Make it stop! Please Sensei, I can feel it reaching out to me," screamed Naruto. It wasn't supposed to happen like this thought Naruto; I'm supposed to become the Hokage!

"Fight it, Naruto! Close the chakra drain down before it is too late."

Within Naruto's mind, the Kyuubi began to awaken from her slumber. Feeling the increasing drain on her chakra, she expanded her senses outward to take in what was happening around them. With this came understanding of what was taking place, while at the same time she started to scream into Naruto's mind, "Release the seal Kit!" Sensing that the child was panicking and did not understand her commands she began to speak into his mind in a gentler fashion to try to lessen his panic, "Close your eyes Kit and rip the seal from the bars, it is the only way I will be able to stop the drain."

"I can't! I can't let you be released. I'll die before I become you! I will not become what everyone has always thought of me!"

"No, I swear Kit! I will only do what it takes to save us. You have to set me free, it is feeding off my power. If you don't release me it will not stop with us, the energy it gets from me will burn the Fire country to a crisp! I swear on my name that I will just do what I have to save us all and go back."

As this conversation was taking place within Naruto's mind, the runaway Jutsu began to feed upon more of the Kyuubi's vast stores of chakra. Causing the flames to begin to flare higher around Naruto as the clothes that had been protected by his own body's chakra field began to smolder and burn. Naruto could feel that his body was fighting a losing battle trying to repair itself from the mounting damage, while having to endure the increasingly mounting chakra drain.

Iruka could do nothing, but back away from the increasingly expanding flames, fearing that Naruto was already consumed and that he would be the next to die. His last thought before the ground seemed to disappear from underneath him and all went painfully dark was that he had only wanted to protect Naruto from being hurt when he failed him in the genin exam; he felt that he was the one that had failed Naruto instead.

The flaming inferno that was Naruto began to flare ever higher and brighter as the seconds pasted. "I release you. I release you to stop the fire. Stop it all."

It was at this point that the blue-white flames around Naruto flashed like a newborn sun. Turning the night into day around the helpless boy and rippling a burning hole though the very fabric of reality around them.

However, for the being that was the Kyuubi that was an eternity and a heartbeat in time. Much could be done and she had to bleed away the excess energy that the corrupted jutsu had stolen from her. She felt another burst of energy from another fracture in the fabric of reality that could be used to counter the energy pulled from her. She just had to reach out to it and pull it in.

Ranma's Side

The pain Ranma was feeling was incredibly excruciating as wave after wave of searing energy poured off Saffron body baking and searing Ranma's flesh from his body. While at the same time, this same energy seemed to hang in the air freezing him to his very core. But, still he would not allow himself to give in to the mad Phoenix King; Ranma Saotome never gave up, not now not ever. Digging deeper into the well of confidence and determination that make up the core of Ranma's being, he forced himself to fire off the most powerful Moko Takabisha that he had ever attempted. There would be no other way to protect his friends and family behind him. He had to end this fight now or they never would be able to get Akane bathed in the sacred water that feed the Jusenkyo springs in time to save her life.

But, Ranma felt that luck was with him for once in his life as that last Moko Takabisha blast had ripped clean through the Phoenix King's defenses. He had blasted Saffron violently backwards and clean through the base of the Dragon Tap both destroying it and releasing the trapped water of Jusenkyo. The highly pressurized water was now released allowing the water to spray freely outward over the entire cavern and bathing all those within with its magical waters. The effects of this were two fold as the released waters caused all those under the cursed influence of the springs of Jusenkyo to be forced into their cursed form and to release Akane from her doll form before it was too late.

The destruction of the Dragon Tap unfortunately had also served to drive Saffron over the blink of madness as he realized that he would never be able to have the damage repaired as his ancestors had adapted everything in the cavern from a now lost to time civilization. With little rational thought left, the heavily battered Saffron picked himself up and flew up into the air planning on driving the Kinjakan clean through Ranma's body.

Seeing that Saffron was currently distracted having focused all his attention on Ranma, the rest of the heavily battered rescue party grabbed Akane's unconscious body and proceeded to retreat expecting Ranma to follow.

Ranma pulled herself up weakly from the floor from where she had fallen after having hit Saffron with that last Moko Takabisha blast, leaving behind some of her baked flesh that had stuck to the floor. The only thing keeping her still standing being her overpowering determination, she seemed to be bracing herself with the Gekkaja to meet Saffron's attack when it came. Just before Saffron could drive the Kinjakan into her body, she slipped to the side of Saffron's attack and plunged the Gekkaja into Saffron body forced all of Saffron's barely contained energy to be released. This wild energy reacting with the magic's of the Gekkaja tore a small hole into the fabric of this universe.

Kyuubi

Kyuubi reached out with her now freed energy, grabbing hold of the Gekkaja and pulled it and those close to it safely through the warp in space, saving Phoenix Mountain from becoming ground zero. Realizing that she had pulled more that she had planned through the rift, she quickly redirected the energies to countering Naruto's wild Jutsu, while protecting and bolstering the failing life force of her unintended guests.

During the microseconds that preceded the final stages of the suicide solar jutsu that Naruto had mistakenly used against Mizuki the Kyuubi had succeed in countering its full effects. However, she was finding that Naruto had suffered injuries that were too extensive to repair as his life force had been used partially to empower the jutsu he had used. There were also the other two humans that she had pulled through the tear in space when she grabbed hold of the Gekkaja's energies. The male was all but dead, his body and life force being in worse shape than any of the other three. The girl was the puzzle, she was extensively damaged having injuries that would guarantee that she could not possible survive, while at the same time her life force blazed like a small sun. There was only one thing to do, she would save the girl and what remained of Naruto by fusing their essence together so as to both honor her pledge to the Kit and the debt that she owed the girl by pulling her through the rift.

Ranma

Ranma heard a voice; a female voice, which sounded much like her mother's in the warm comforting feelings it was giving her, but it was not one that Ranma knew. Strangely she did not seem to be hearing it through her ears, but from inside her head.

"Well kit, I have got good news and some bad news, I've healed the injuries to your body and mind. You had a lot of damage, but I was able to return both to better than their original condition."

"What do you mean better?"

"Well you had a lot of new and old injuries to both your body and mind. The newer physical injuries that I found you in would have killed you outright, soon after you arrived. While the older physical injuries that had been repaired by your body would have eventuality caused you great pain and severely limited your mobility in your old age. The odd part to me was the curses that seemed to be attached to your spirit, it took me quite awhile to untangle the threads but you will never be affected by them again."

"That's great, now I'll never change into a girl again. I'm free!"

"What are you talking about?"

"The curses, you said there was no trace left of them. I'll never change into a girl again after being splashed with water."

"OK, Kit, I've got some good news and some more bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"

With a sense of growing trepidation, I asked the speaker to tell me everything that she was talking about.

"Well Kit, you don't mind that I call you Kit do you? I don't know your name yet, and I think of you as almost family now."

"No, that OK, I have been called much worse in my life. My name is Ranma Saotome, heir to the Saotome family's style of Musabetsu Kakuto Ryu kenpo."

"Well Kit, I removed several odd curses from your body or more appropriately I removed your life-force from your old body and placed it within the improved body that I created based on what remained of your old body. This seemed to have had the effect of permanently disrupting all the curses that were attached to you. I also, repaired the damage that had been done to your mind by some truly odd techniques when I began to merge your life force into your new bodily home. And I found the former tenant of your mind to be quite a delectable dish."

"Are you saying what I think you are saying that you have removed the cat spirit from my mind?"

"Yes, that is exactly what I said, there could be only one of us here and it did not stand a chance between the two of us."

"What? You mean that now that you're in my mind? That the cat is gone?"

"Isn't that what I said before? I sometimes don't understand you humans at all; you seem to have the hardest time following the simplest of conversations. However, you are young and over time, you will learn under my care, as we will be together for a very long time. I am now bound to you as I was before and am still bound with my Kit, Naruto."

"What do you mean by bound and still bound?"

"I mean that I am sealed within your body and mind, the former body and mind of my previous host. I was able to save your life force to inhabit this body and was able to rebuild it to make us both more comfortable this one time by absorbing and using the excess mass and energies left over by your fallen foe and merge you with my lost Kit. I will grieve for him more fully later, but he has not been fully lost to us. Over time you will integrate what could be saved into your mind gaining the knowledge and understanding of this world to survive here without having to rely completely on my telling you what you need to know."

"You mean that I have this other boy's mind in my head too? I don't feel or remember anything different and why am I so calm about all this? I should be panicking over just part of what you have told me."

"That would be true, but I am suppressing your panic for the moment while you are here with me. I will release you in time; don't worry that I will be in control of you all the time. I am only able to do this now because you are still new in this body and that I had promised the Kit that I would relinquish my control when everything is safe again. Soon you and what remains of my Kit will be one and I will once again be bound by the seals that once tied me and will again. I swear that I will never hurt you as you will once again be my adopted child and my jailor."

Well what do you think? Different? I got the ideal into my head two weeks ago to do a Ranma x Naruto crossover, but I was not planning on doing it so soon. It was the brain freeze that I was having while writing on my first story that forced me to start writing this. I am hoping that being able to release my creative juices on this story will allow me to get back to my first child. Once again, I want to thank all of you that read this far and doubly those that honor me with a review of my work.

1/29/12 - Did some minor editing to correct incorrect word choices that seem to have gotten past my first and second read through, and those that read the story since it was posted. I will continue to do corrections as I work my way to my last posting to re-familiarize myself with the story before I pick-up writing the new chapter.