Private Bet #10
by Shade

Disclaimer: Ranma 1/2 and affiliates are 
the property of Rumiko Takahashi,
Rifts and Phase World are owned by Palladium.
Other references belong to their
respective owners.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
1b: Some things never change

1 Galactic Standard Year later.......

�Good of you to come on such quick notice Commodore,
 I�ve been meaning to talk to you about that officer of yours.�

�You mean Commander Saotome?� 

�That�s the one. Bit of a loose cannon so I�ve heard.�

�He gets the job done sir, that maverick streak of his has 
saved our bacon on more then one occasion.�

�I take it you�re talking about that incident with that 
alien intelligence infiltrator. Messy business that.�

�We�d never have found it without him, he�s got to be the most damn
 lucky person I have ever met.�

�Luck is all well and good but it seems he�s fighting with our 
troops almost as much as he does with the Kreeghor. There�s also 
the matter of the complaints from our provision department.
 Saotome eats enough supplies to feed two whole divisions and
that�s just breakfast! I�d swear that he was a transformed dragon 
if the tests hadn�t come back negative.�

�Well he does work hard, if I had a hundred like him 
we�d whip the Empire in no time.�

�If we had a hundred more like him we�d all starve to death.�

�....Sir, exactly what is the real problem?�

�....*Sigh*......Sit down.�

�General?� 

�I won�t argue that Saotome hasn�t proven himself a fine and loyal officer, because he has. However his continued presence here 
is becoming detrimental to both morale and property values.�

�I�m aware of the Commander�s tendency to put his foot in his mouth, 
but isn�t that going a bit far?�

�Commodore, half of the troops love him, the other 
half would love to kill him.�

�So what are you suggesting I do about it? I wish I 
knew what it was that attracted women to Commander Ranma. 
It�s unnatural how they just seem to fall for him, almost as 
mysterious  as how the heck he manages to get on the bad 
side of every male soldier he meets within five seconds of running into 
them.�

�We�ve recently acquired a new experimental corvette from some 
friends on Phase World. The Free Worlds could use another privateer, 
don�t you agree Commodore?� 

�Ah, I see. But what about the crew?�

�Entirely female of course. It simply wouldn�t do for 
the captain of the ship to be lynched by his own people.�

�Somehow I doubt Saotome will be grateful for that. 
I suspect a lynching would have been kinder.�

~~~~~~~

Ranma relaxed in his quarters, one of the few remaining 
places he could find any privacy anymore. 

He didn�t understand women at all.

Ranma doubted that he ever would.

What did they see in him anyway?

It had been bad enough back home when it was just human girls. 
Even though he hadn�t had much contact with them he had still 
wondered about the looks they would give him more and more 
often as he�d gotten older. 

Here he had to deal with Dragons, Elves, Nymphs, and females 
from half a dozen other races that all wanted one thing.......

Ranma blushed bright red. Even after a crash course in reproduction
 six months ago he still got embarrassed thinking about IT. 

{Me and my big mouth. I should never have accepted 
that challenge. But I thought she was talking about Martial 
Arts, not Marital Arts!}

On the bright side after a month of intense studying and training he 
had won the match. Of course that victory had brought him a whole
new set of problems. Not the least of which had been the discovery 
that the match had been recorded and broadcast on a minor 
interstellar network. 

His women troubles had increased tenfold after that incident.

Right now he was off duty, which was good since it 
would give the bruises he'd gotten from this morning's 
brawl some time to heal. Just why had that chef attacked him anyway?
All Ranma had been doing was asking for his 273rd helping of breakfast.
It wasn�t his fault that the portions were so small.

He sighed, life had been so much simpler when he was 
just a martial artist back home.No legions of amourous
women after him, no bounties on his head and various other
choice portions of his anatomy, no bizarre advanced 
technology, a place where a giant interstellar battle
between the Rebellion and the Empire was just a movie 
and psychotic tentacled aliens from another dimension 
were just the product of quickly forgotten
nightmares.

Absently Ranma checked the date as he relaxed in his bed.
This precious reprieve from the �command bunnies� was 
worth its weight in credits. He fully intended to take 
advantage of it to the fullest.

Had it really only been a year since he had arrived in this strange dimension?

Even as his eyes closed Ranma�s mind wandered back to 
those hectic weeks and months earlier. 
~~~~~~~~~~~

Ranma Saotome had found himself stranded on a strange and 
very hostile alien world in the middle of a very brutal 
and very, very bloody war.

The Rebellion forces were outnumbered, outgunned and 
outclassed on almost every military level. The Kreeghor 
Empire had been playing for keeps,even now Ranma could 
only wonder how he had survived through 
those first two months of sheer hell. 

A daring strike had cut off the ground forces from the fleet, 
stranding thousands of Rebel troops on the surface of the 
planet as the Kreeghor blockade bombarded the planet 
on an hourly basis.

Left with no other alternative he�d hooked up with the 
remnents of the Rebel army. It had been two months of 
running and guerrilla combat along with endless lessons 
that crammed the basics of survival in this universe 
into his thick head.

He hadn�t wanted to learn at first. Always the confident
martial artist, contemptous of the �crutches� of modern weaponry.
Getting most of his shoulder vaporized by an enemy plasma bolt
made him change his mind about that very fast. 

Ranma flexed his right hand again, the reassuring feel telling 
him that his arm was still there.

Thank the Gods that Livia had been nearby and that she 
had possessed the psionic ability of Super Bioregeneration. 

After that nearly fatal battle he�d lost a lot of his 
cockiness and soaked up everything he was taught eagerly,
there�s nothing quite like confronting your own mortality
to get you properly motivated. Ranma had quickly become the 
proud inventer of Anything Goes Speed Reading, Anything Goes 
Computer Hacking, Anything Goes Power Armor Combat and 
dozens of other new sidebranches to the Anything Goes School 
of Martial Arts. Nor did Ranma ignore his original training either, 
his style of martial arts was unknown in this universe and it gave him a 
cruical advantage over most of his opponents who tended to underestimate a
�mere human�.

By the time the Rebel fleet broke the blockade Ranma had already 
reached the rank of master sergeant via battlefield promotions. 
And he�d earned each and every one of them.

After escaping from the planet(who�s name he had learned later was Ristmoth) Ranma had intended to just leave and look for a way
back home. As luck would have it things didn�t turn out that way.
Instead Ranma found himself in the middle of a conspiracy to 
assassinate the leader of the Free Worlds. Along the way he 
had also literally stumbled across a Kreeghor agent, one that 
turned to be part of an unknown alien intelligence. For his role 
in thwarting the assassins they had  promoted him to officer 
status and he�d known at that moment that for better 
or worse he was stuck here.

There were worse fates he figured.

His last promotion had been only four months ago to
his current rank of commander.

Ranma had been ashamed to receive it, in his opinion
he didn�t deserve it. It had been a fluke and an 
embarrassing one at that. 

Ranma and a small group of fellow Rebellion officers
had been doublecrossed and captured at Phaseworld by 
a Kreeghor Fleet. They were taken onboard the Dreadnought
that served as the Flagship to serve as �examples� to worlds 
that resisted the might of the Empire. Somehow a cat had 
snuck on board the ship during docking and when their captors had discovered that Ranma was scared to death of it they decided to 
have a little fun before they killed him.

The last coherent image he could remember had been the
tawny furball clutching to his face in feline aggravation. 

When he woke up later he was being congradulated for singlehandly 
capturing the Dreadnought virtually intact, a major coup for the Rebellion.

It wasn�t until he reviewed the records that Ranma learned of what he
had done. The cat triggered the Neko-ken, Neko-Ranma found himself 
in an enclosed space full of many enemies and few friends. 

The feral beast cut loose. By the time the alarms sounded
every Imperial troop within 100 feet had been shredded into
unrecognizable kitty litter. The Kreeghor found out the hard
way that Neko-Ranma could SWIPE their blasts aside with 
absolutely no difficulty.

A surprise attack by local Rebellion forces increased the confusion, 
by the time the Kreeghor finally figured out what had happened their 
forces were crippled and every one of their personnel on the 
Dreadnought was dead. 

Things had rather quiet since then. Besides the normal battles going 
on in contested territory there was no new fighting between the Rebellion 
and the Kreeghor. It was almost......boring.

Well, besides the legion of WARS (Women After Ranma Saotome).

Sleep descended on the weary officer.

But this time his dreams were different. 

[Greetings Ranma Saotome]

{Who are you?}

[All, Connection, Life, Light, Hope.]

{Which one?}

[All and none....I am the Cosmic Forge.]

{What do you want with me?}

[I will show you.]

And so a hero was born........

To be continued

____________________________________________________________________
Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1