Ok..first off..this is my first fanfic...that pretty much speaks for it self there. I'm not writing this for reviews..so chance's are I'm not even gonna read them.. Ok..now that's out of the way... Oh and i have no prereader or anything..so anything my spell checker don't catch most likely wont get changed

(update, I ran this through the site's spell checker and am ashamed of myself..that's what happens when you wright at 10 pm after not sleeping for 2 days. Anyway I have *Hopefully* fixed all the spelling errors so this should be somewhat easier to read now.)

Disclaimer: All characters, places, and plot points NOT created by me are copyright there respective owners..also I'm dead poor so suing me won't get you much anyway.

thoughts

"speech"

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Chapter 1. The Best Lay'ed Plans

Ranma Saotome...to most that name meant nothing. To others it was the name of the bane of there existence and/or happiness..usually both. To a few it meant a fiance. To fewer still a friend. But to one person...it meant everything, after all..it was *his* after all. But to all who knew him it did NOT apply to what it did now..a small girl..looking about 6 to 7 years of age..wearing a simple dress..standing in a forest clearing..her head tilted to the night sky..the rain falling from overhead making it imposable to tell if she was crying on sight alone. It was the sniffling that gave that away. As she stood there she reflected on how it had come to that point.

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It had been a normal day in Nerima, if you were a pigtailed martial artist that is. To anyone else it would have been a horrible day. What set this day apart from the others was that evening when a letter addressing Ranma had arrived..it had been at that point where for him the world was winding up to throw him the biggest curve ball of his life.

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It seemed so simple at first. Ranma thought. Help the Musk stop a simple skirmish with the Phoenix tribe over land. I was only meant to show up as a deterrent if they tried to push to hard.

Ranma turned and began to walk out of the clearing, her feet on autopilot as she was lost in the memory. Feh..if only I'd known..I'd have never have agreed to help..god..it was 3 weeks ago..yet the memory is still as fresh as if I was still in the middle of things...

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"YO! Herb!" shouted Ranma as he neared the tent housing the command center for the Musk.

The dragon prince glanced up as he approached..it was only a few seconds..and a lesser person would have never seen anything odd..but Ranma was no lesser person. And, true to habit, spoke the first thing he thought of..lucky for him it was exactly what Herb was hoping he would say.

"Hay man..you alright?...I'd imagine that someone who is about to win would look less glum."

"Normally yes," said Herb, "but that was before new details came to light. Now it's looking more like an annihilation against us then a victory *for* us." Herb finished..his voice both heavy with emotion and yet completely devoid of it at once.

Ranma had been here a week so far..long enough for him to make a few friends, rivals, and unwanted love interests (he avoided these at all costs..after all, the Musk are over 80% populated by males)..and the thought of them being wiped out made him feel enough depression and anger he could have beat both Ryoga and Akane with chi attacks using there own emotions against them.

Well, I'm here to help..mabey there's something I can do. "Hay, there has to be something I can do to help..what's the problem?" He said..his ego unknowingly shining through.

Herb sighed before starting to talk, not once looking up from the map on his table.

"The Phoenix managed to get there hands on a very powerful artifact..the Kami's Judgement."

seeing Ranma about to ask the obvious question he cut him off. "Its an object of eminence destructive capabilities. Under normal circumstances it wouldn't be worth noticing however, because such power comes at a high cost. Normally using the Judgement would be like launching a warhead at the enemy that's powered by your own life force. The reason it is never used is that no warlord would willingly sacrifice the number of solders needed to destroy an enemy army of substantial size and any thing smaller then that would be a very expensive overkill."

"Ok I get all that but how does that rate a problem then? If they cant use it then what does it matter they have it?" asked Ranma.

"One reason, Saffron" said Herb.

"Saffron? What's he got to do with this? Last i heard he was a baby again."

"That's just it..even as a mere child he has enough energy to power the artifact. And the fact he will only be reborn right after rather then die means they have the means AND the drive to use it"

Ranma was speechless..so many things had hit him in that moment. This first being that the Musk where actually gonna cease to be a people in the not so distant future. Second was that this was in many ways his fault..after all with Saffron unaccended the Phoenix had lost there heat and light..2 things crops need to grow well..meaning a shortage of food. That was why the Phoenix where attacking the Musk lands. And the third?...That he was gonna stop this.

"Hay man..listen..i tell you now..what ever it takes to get this set right I'll do, alright man?"

That was where things went wrong....

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Ranma had be this point wondered into the cave she had been in the last few weeks.

The soles of her feet were blistery and bloody from the rocks in the area.. the shoe's she had been wearing long gone.. the only reason she was still wearing the dress was because she had nothing else to wear. As she set to starting a fire she continued her thoughts on what had happened.

I should have never agreed to the plan..I should have tried to find a new plan..well..tried harder anyway. The plan had been rather simple in theory. Disguise himself as a Phoenix, sneak through the mountain, and either steal or destroy the Kami's Judgement. simple. It was the execution that was the hard part.. first was making sure it was impossible for them to guess it was him...so that automatically made him a her. The next part was the wings..by simply pouring some water from the Spring of Drowned White Hawk down her back and bingo, instant Phoenix women. The next part was actually making it possible for her to get *to* the artifact. This was hard due to the fact that it was kept in Saffron's bedroom. Meaning no admittance..so she had to make herself seem so innocent that they wouldn't think twice about letting her in. Lucky(at the time) for Ranma the Musk had some of the age mushrooms they used to make sure there 'beast brides' were the right age.

And the final touch. A splash from the locking ladle and it was complete.

The plan was for Ranma to enter the mountain unnoticed, make her way to Saffron's room, hopefully get in by acting like an adorable 6 year old who only wanted to play, steal or break the target, and get out. After getting out she would be splashed by water from the unlocking kettle and given an age mushroom to restore her back to normal..the only change being the feathery white wings on her back. A good simple plan...but of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy.

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She had managed to get almost all the way to the mountain thanks to Herb using his own energy to keep hers from dropping to match her age. Leaving her with all her abilities, physical, spiritual, and martial. Her only loss being in reach. She had just managed to get to the base of the mountain when the one thing the plan did not take into account happened.

The Phoenix attacked.

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By this time what had been a small pile of wood had become a rather large fire. The orange glow revealing more of her features as she sat at the edge of the fire. Her eyes were a very pretty color of cerulean. Her hair red and at odds with her asian features. Her dress was crimson at the top fading to black towards the bottom. The blue eye-shadow that was there every time she turned into a girl and that never came off..leaving her to wonder if that was the natural color or that part of her face rather then make-up (its true...watch the anime..you'll see). All in all had the been the features of someone in there late teens they would have been very good looking. On a 6 year old however, she mearly hit 'cute' on the looks-o-meter. Or she would have had it not been for the 4 foot wings folded up against her back. She had entered a few towns here and there after having learned to make them vanish for a short while by folding her energy around them in a modified version of Mouse's trick..but they never stayed gone long..and she stopped going after the second town tried to hunt her down thinking she was a demon.

For the hundredth time she cursed the Phoenix..

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The artifact worked just like Herb said it would. What looked to be a large fireball came flying out of the mountain's side to slam into the valley where the Musk were encamped..the impact was so large that Ranma all the way at Phoenix Mountain was shaken to the ground. As she stood there in shock 1 more fireball shot out to slam into the heavily forested area the Musk had there home village in...this time the shock wave sent Ranma's head into a rock knocking her out.

It was dawn when she woke back up. It took several minutes for her to become aware enough to even move..several more after that to have every thing come back to her. At that point she did what she never had let herself do before. She gave into her anger..anger at the life's lost, anger at the Phoenix, anger at the artifact, anger at the creator of the artifact, and most of all anger at herself for failing the Musk.

She moved so fast into the mountain that it was unclear as to whether she was flying or running. She moved with only one thought in her head 'Revenge!' And yet..no mater where she went..what door she opened she was met only with dead Phoenix. Still, she didn't stop until she hit the bedroom Saffron was supposed to be in. And there she found only a large egg. But not golden like it was supposed to be. But a rotten green color. When she touched it's surface it broke under her finger like rice paper and oozed a rotten yoke.

It was this that brought her out of her rage. That Saffron..the Immortal Phoenix..was dead..she could only guess at what had happened. She assumed that after the first attack he had been reduced to an egg. the Phoenix however. in there hurry had tried to used the artifact again assuming that even as an egg he would be able to take the brunt of the power.

They assumed wrong...

Instead it had consumed the limited amount of energy in the egg..then from the rest of the Phoenix. Both those that had used the artifact and those that distanced themselves from it. From the soldier standing at his post to the child in her nest. In the end the Phoenix had killed both the Musk and themselves.

For the first time in her memory, she cried tears both for fallen allies and for the Phoenix innocents that had naught to do with the devastation.

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She was laying on the ground now, sleep was going to come soon.

As she lay there she thought back to the next realization she had had...that the Musk had both the kettle and age mushrooms needed to make her him again. How she had spent a week searching for them both. And the 3 days she spent in a nonstop depression till necessity for water had driven her out of it and into a semi-awake state.

As sleep finally came over her she had one final thought for the night.

Tomorrow.. it's time to go home.