Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Monkey Paw, Monkey Fist ❯ Chapter 1

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Disclaimer: Ranma 1/2 is not mine. Kim Possible is not mine. If they were, you would not be reading this; you would be watching it on television.


The following is a crossover of Ranma 1/2 and Kim Possible. Ranma timeline is manga universe, post-Saffron. KP timeline is before So The Drama, but after the Exchange episode.
I'll be trying to keep all characters as close to canon as possible. If you feel I fail to do so, give evidence of why you think this way in a review. For Ranma 1/2, when I say canon, I mean the graphic novels. For KP, I mean the television series.


Chapter 1

Classes had ended at Middleton High School, and the students were streaming out of the doors. One particular teen, a blond boy in a red shirt, wasn’t paying any attention to the world around him as he walked. He was too busy reading out of the green-covered book in his hands. A naked mole rat was lying on his shoulder, reading the pages with him.

“Hey, Ron!” a pretty orange-haired girl called out, running over to the boy with the book. “Hello, Earth to Ron!” When he still didn’t respond, she yelled, “Ron!”

“Huh?” Ron finally lifted up his head. “Oh, hey, KP! Sorry, didn’t notice ya there.”

“Ron Stoppable, bookworm? Okay, what’s going on? You’ve had your nose stuck in that book all day,” the girl, Kimberly Ann Possible, known as Kim or KP to her friends, asked.

“I dunno. It just kind of got me hooked,” Ron replied.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh!” the naked mole rat, Rufus, agreed.

“Monkey King, huh? What’s that about?” Kim was curious as to what book could have captured her friend’s attention so strongly.

“It’s a Chinese story about the Monkey King, Sun Wu Kong,” Ron told her as they walked.

“But you hate monkeys,” she looked at him incredulously.

“Uh…” Ron paused to think. I promised to keep the Yamanouchi school a secret. I can’t tell her I’m reading it because Sun Wu Kong was the inspiration behind the school’s style of Monkey Kung Fu, or that the Lotus Blade may have been modeled after his staff. “Uh…Well…he’s a talking, Kung Fu monkey that came out of a stone! He doesn’t count! Yeah! That’s it!” (1)

“O-kaaaay…” Kim’s face showed her confusion. Before she could say anything else, she heard a familiar sound.

Beep-beep-be-beep

Kim opened up her Kimmunicator, “What’s the sitch, Wade?”

Wade Load, the reclusive computer genius, appeared on the screen. “Hey, Kim. A statue has been stolen from the art collector, Cletus Beck. He calls it the Wounded Monkey. Here’s an image.” Wade’s plump form was replaced by a picture of a Japanese Snow Monkey, made of stone. The right paw appeared to have been severed clean off. On its head was some kind of steel band.

“The statue is Chinese in origin, thousands of years old. Studies have proven that the stone it is made from is much stronger than it should be. No one knows what happened to the missing paw, or if there ever even was one,” Wade explained.

“Any idea who took it?” Kim queried.

“Yeah. Here’s some footage from Beck’s security cameras,” Wade changed the screen image again.

“Hey! Those are Monkey Fist’s ninja monkeys!” Ron exclaimed as they watched the primates swipe the statue from Cletus Beck’s mansion.

“It looks that way. Any idea where Monkey Fist is now, Wade?” Kim checked.

“I’ve got a sighting of him in Tokyo, Japan,” the young computer expert answered.

“Aww, man, why did it have to be Monkey Fist?!” Ron complained with a heavy sigh, slumping over at the waist.

***

[The West Coast is 16 hours behind Tokyo, and the flight is over 10 hours]

A teenage Japanese boy in a yellow Chinese shirt and slacks was walking down the streets of Nerima. Well, actually, he was walking along the fences on the sides of the streets of Nerima. With his head staring at his feet as he trudged along, this was a good choice, as he probably would’ve bumped into someone otherwise. Under his breath, he muttered, “Bored…bored…bored…so bored…where’s Ryoga when you need him?”

After a bit, he caught a whiff of the smell of smoke. Looking around, his black pigtail flopping around as he did so, he caught sight of the source. There was no visible fire, merely smoke drifting out of a window of a restaurant. “Wha…that’s the Nekohanten!”

The boy rushed inside, finding that the place was a wreck. Tables and chairs lay broken all over, but there were no people in the dining hall. The smoke was emanating from the kitchen, so Ranma hurried into there, stopping in the doorway.

“Blast! There goes a perfectly good pot of ramen!” Cologne snarled, standing on her staff in front of the stove. A pot on one of the burners was the source of all of the smoke, but the dark gas was coming out slower now that Cologne had turned off the heat.

“What the hell happened, old ghoul? And where's Shampoo and Mousse?” Ranma asked.

Cologne hit his head with her staff particularly hard, a sign of her current irritation. “They're out on deliveries right now. As to what happened, the fact that my restaurant was attacked should be obvious even to you, son-in-law.”

“I could see that!” Ranma rubbed his head where she had struck him. “I meant, by who? And what did they want?”

“Oddly enough, it was a group of monkeys, highly trained in the ninja arts,” she told him.

“Ninja monkeys?” Ranma was surprised for a moment, then shrugged. He'd seen weirder.

“They stole an old magical relic, the Monkey's Paw. But why they would want it, I can't be certain. It's powers are flawed,” Cologne explained.

“What powers?” Ranma wondered, with a hint of caution. He had too many bad experiences with magic not to be careful.

“The Monkey's Paw grants wishes, but something always goes wrong. The wish is fulfilled to the letter, but usually not in the way the user intended,” the old hag said.

“Like how?” Ranma wanted to know what to expect.

“If you were to use it to, say, cure your curse, any number of things could happen. You could be suddenly splashed with water from a different spring, and receive a completely different curse. You could be made genderless, neither man nor woman. The curse could be given to someone else, or switched with another. In any case, you wouldn't like the results,” Cologne answered.

“So, why would someone want it?” the pigtailed boy wondered.

Cologne smacked him with her stick again, “I already said I don't know!”

“Ow! Dammit, old ghoul!” Ranma cursed.

“If whoever sent those monkeys to steal it makes a wish, the results could be disastrous,”Cologne warned.

“Whoa! Somebody was seriously tweaked!” a young male voice exclaimed in English from out in the dining hall.

(From this point on, everyone is speaking English, unless it says otherwise)

Cologne and Ranma went and looked to see a foreign girl with bright orange-red hair, wearing a black long-sleeved shirt that exposed her midriff, grey gloves, and green cargo pants with a large brown belt that wasn't really used to hold her pants up. A blond foreign boy behind her wore a similar outfit, only his shirt covered his stomach and his belt was holding up his dark grey cargo pants.

“Sorry, the restaurant is closed for now,” Cologne stated.

“Aaahhh! It's a talking monkey!” the boy screamed.

Cologne shot over and cracked him in the head with her staff, “Mind your manners!”

“Owww! And I thought the ninja monkeys were bad!” the blond replied.

The orange-haired girl's eyes scanned over Ranma, taking in every centimeter of his body. They started at his feet, locking in place when they reached his face. She could feel her temperature rising. He's so handsome...

“Ninja monkeys? So you know about them?” Cologne queried, still speaking English.

The orange-haired girl blushed; she had just realized she had been staring at Ranma ever since he came in. (2) “That's right. Did they do this?” she gestured at the mess.

“Yes, while stealing a very dangerous artifact,” the old woman said, “Maybe you could tell me what you know of them?”

“The monkeys work for a criminal who goes by the name of Monkey Fist. We've had a few run-ins with him in the past,” the girl explicated.

“You are following him?” Ranma asked, also in English, although he had a heavy accent.

“That's right. He stole a statue called the Wounded Monkey. We're going to get it back,” the orange-haired girl confirmed. She kept sneaking glances at Ranma, not that he noticed.

“I wasn't aware you understood English, Muko-dono,” Cologne's voice hinted at her surprise.

“I understand it well. Learned it while traveling with oyaji, and school. My speaking is not as good,” Ranma replied. (3)

“What did the monkeys steal?” the girl questioned.

“A cursed item in the shape of a monkey's paw,” Cologne told her.

“Monkey's paw?” the girl pulled out a handheld device with a screen. “Wade, that Wounded Monkey statue was missing a paw, right? Monkey Fist's ninjas just stole an item that looks like a monkey's paw. Could it be related?”

“Hmm. It's more than likely that Monkey Fist plans on putting the paw on the statue. But I can't find any legends about the statue or anything to suggest why he would try to repair it,” a boy's voice came out of the device's speaker. Ranma and Cologne couldn't see the screen from where they were standing.

“What about Monkey Fist? Can you find any clues to his whereabouts?” the foreign girl requested.

“I'm still looking, KP. But I'll find him. Wade out,” the transmission ended.

“Hey! I'm Ron, Ron Stoppable. This is my buddy, Rufus,” the blond boy held up a naked mole rat, who waved enthusiastically.

Ranma blinked at the mole rat for a moment, having never seen one before. He bowed, “I'm Saotome... Etto, I mean, Ranma Saotome.” He had to remember to place his family name last when speaking in English. “The old ghoul is Cologne.”

Twack! went the hag's staff. “Watch it, Muko-dono!”

“Cologne?” What a weird name. And what is it she keeps calling him? Ron thought. (4)

“And me? I'm...I'm...uh...” the girl seemed to have forgotten her own name as she gazed into Ranma's blue-gray eyes. “Kim! Kim Possible.” She blushed again, “So, what exactly is the curse on this monkey paw?”

“I'm rather surprised you believe in curses, being a Westerner,” Cologne commented.

“We've...run into magic a couple of times now,” Kim responded.

“I see. That will make things easier,” Cologne began. She explained the power of the Monkey's Paw to the foreign duo. Trio, if one counted Rufus.

“This is...is...” Ron began, apparently unable to think of a word that he felt was appropriate.

“Not good,” Kim finished.

“Monkey Fist could wish for anything! To be the ultimate monkey kung fu master! To turn everyone into his monkey slaves! To make all doughnuts filled with lemon-flavored icing!” Ron nearly yelled in panic.

“We've got to find him and get that paw away from him!” Kim declared.

“I'm glad you feel that way. Muko-dono here will join you,” Cologne proclaimed.

“Eh? Do not say things for me, old ghoul! And what about you?!” Ranma responded.

“I will be staying here. I need to clean up this restaurant and get it running again. I can't afford to be shut down for very long,” the Chinese hag explained.

Beep-beep-be-beep

“Wade! Tell me you got something,” Kim said to her Kimmunicator device.

“Monkey Fist's ninjas were spotted boarding a plane for Guangzhou in China just before it took off. Better yet, though, I think I've found where they're headed. It's just a few miles south of the Bayankala mountain range. I'll send you a map,” Wade said.

“What are we waiting for?!” Ranma suddenly sounded rather eager to go. After I save the day, I can make a quick stop at Jusenkyo! Never gonna be a girl again!

“Are you sure? Monkey Fist is dangerous,” Kim warned.

“I am a martial artist. I will be fine,” Ranma confidently assured her.

“Indeed. Ranma will be more than a match for the ones that attacked here,” Cologne nodded.

“Well, I've already gotten you transportation to China. One more along shouldn't be a problem,” Wade remarked.

“Then we should get going, if we want to get there before Monkey Fist makes his wish,” Kim advised.

“Lead the way,” Ranma motioned to the door with a hand.

Cologne sighed as the three teens ran out of the restaurant, “Hopefully, Mousse will get back soon so I can foist cleaning this place up off on him. But in the meantime...” She went into the kitchen to get it ready for cooking again.

Chapter 1 end

(1) Ron is reading an Americanized version of the Chinese epic, Journey to the West. If he was reading the straight Chinese translation, he would fall asleep from boredom. And I wouldn't blame him. It's written in an incredibly bland manner. Like a recounting of facts, not a story.

(2) I figured that if Kim liked the Japanese exchange student so much, she could be attracted to Ranma in the same way.

(3) What, you don't think Ranma learns in school? Give me a page and book number from the manga suggesting that Ranma gets bad grades or doesn't normally pay attention in class. Can't do it? Then shut up. It's accurate to canon if the manga never states otherwise.

(4) The muko part of Muko-dono means son-in-law. The -dono part is a suffix that is used like -san, only it is more polite/humble.
I'm not sure why Cologne uses the -dono suffix and not a less formal one, but perhaps the reason is that it is more formal that way. That maybe the formality might help Ranma accept the idea of being married to Shampoo.

Author's Notes:
Will this be a Ranma/Kim fic? I can't say for certain. It depends solely on my Muse. But at this point, I would call it unlikely.

I had planned to eventually write a Ranma/KP crossover for some time. Somebody, I've forgotten who, specifically asked me to write one, so I went ahead and started it. Originally, the plot was very different, the villains being Dr. Drakken and Shego. It just wasn't working out, so I had to come up with a new plot.
I had just recently tried reading Journey to the West, stopping about halfway through the first book. I got to thinking, the Lotus Blade shapeshifts kind of like Sun Wu Kong's staff. Maybe I could go somewhere with that. All these thoughts about monkeys brought up the old Monkey's Paw wish idea. And, of course, the villain would have to be Monkey Fist. The rest just developed from there.

Anyhow, I know this isn't much, just kind of setting things up. Whether I continue this anytime soon is up to the reviews I get, since I have other stories in the works as well.