"Anything You Can Do ..." By Angus MacSpon "Magic girls?" said Ranma. "Oh, please." "I'm serious," huffed Akane. He sighed. "All right, which urban legend are we talking about here? The girl with the magic playing cards? Or the one with the flying starfish? Or maybe the --" "The Sailor Senshi," Akane said. "Oh, please," Ranma repeated in digust. "The most hackneyed ones of the lot. Short skirts and magic wands and squealing." "I always heard they were heroes," said Kasumi softly. "Come on, Kasumi, you know I could do better than them with one hand tied behind my --" "What's the matter, Saotome?" put in Nabiki mockingly. "Feeling threatened by a little girl power? Afraid the old Saotome School might fall short against monsters from another dimension?" "Meh." Ranma scowled. "When it comes to fighting, I'm the best there is. What would a bunch of girls know?" "I hear you talk the talk, but I don't see you walking the walk." "You want proof?" he said, nettled. "I'll give you proof." He got up and stormed outside. Akane gave her sister a pained look. "Why do you egg him on? Shouldn't you be following him with a camera, or something? How are you going to make money out of _this_?" Nabiki cocked an eyebrow at her. "It's not about making money, Akane." She gave a long, satisfied smile. "It's about having him wrapped around my little finger." --**-- It took Ranma surprisingly little time to find the Senshi. By all reports they hung out in the Azabu district, so he caught the train in -- it was a little far for roof-hopping -- and went looking for trouble. Before long he heard shouting, and then screaming. He ran to look, and saw a bizarre ... thing ... chasing people around. It looked for all the world like an enormous woman made out of motor scooters that had somehow been fused together. He glanced around for movie cameras, just in case -- you never knew -- and then decided to take a hand. There were no magical girls in sight, but he might as well get warmed up while he waited. 'Okay,' he thought. 'Let's see ...' The motor scooters looked pretty fragile, and he suspected that this thing would go down as easily as Kuno. He moved in fast, going for a leg sweep to drop her to the ground and give him a few moments to see how she reacted. He didn't quite see what happened next. He woke up a minute later, aching all over, and found that he was half-embedded in the wall of a nearby shop. Worse still, the girls in the short skirts were there. It was even worse than he had expected. He hadn't heard that one of them had wings. He watched, half-dazed, as they fought the thing. They were every bit as bad as he'd thought they would be. They obviously didn't have the first idea how to fight; there was a lot of squealing and getting thrown around. He couldn't help noticing, though, that they disposed of the monster pretty effectively. The girl with the wings hit it with something powerful-looking, and it screamed out "Lovely!" (for some bizarre reason) and disintegrated. Afterward, they had the nerve to come over and ask if he was all right. He'd managed to finish levering himself out of the wall by then; he dusted himself off and told them, somewhat arrogantly, that he was fine. "You should leave these youma to us," said the one in the orange skirt. "We know what we're doing, and you'll just get hurt if you interfere." "Hey, I'm a martial artist, y'know," he said, a little put out. "The best there is. I just thought I'd show you what a _real_ fighter can do." "Yeah, you sure showed us that," said the girl in the red skirt. "Martial arts are all very well," said the one in green placatingly, "but you're a little out of your league here. It might be safer for you to stay --" "My _league_?" he said, outraged. "Hey, I told you, I'm the best! I killed a _god_, you know." "A god?" He'd expected that to throw them. Instead, to his surprise, they went into a huddle, talking quietly. He could only make out a word here and there. "Beryl?" said one of them. "Mmm ..." said another. "Maybe not." "Metallia, then." "Oh, yes, I'd think so." "Ail and Ann ...? No, maybe not. How about Wiseman?" "Hm. Maybe. After he became the Death Phantom, anyway." "Mistress Nine?" "Well --" "Master Pharaoh-Ninety!" "Definitely." "Nehelenia?" "Maybe ..." "Galaxia!" "Ye-es, effectively, I suppose." They turned to him again. "Tell us about this god," one of them said. A little uncertainly, he told them about the fight with Saffron. They immediately went into a huddle again. "Well, if that's all he's talking about, I think we should be allowed to count Beryl." "_And_ maybe her generals." "And Rubeus and the other Black Moon guys." "And Mistress Nine." "And those five witches. Well ... some of them." "_Definitely_ Nehelenia." "And --" One of the girls looked up. "Hey, where's he going?" Ranma had heard enough. He left them to their bickering. --**-- "Back so soon?" inquired Nabiki archly. "Yeah, come on, Ranma!" said Akane. "How did it go?" "Meh." Ranma gave them a pained look. "I already told you: when it comes to fighting, I'm the best there is. What would a bunch of girls know about martial arts?" END Notes: Just doing a bit of axe-grinding here. There are an awful lot of R/SM crossovers out there, and most of them, while loudly trumpeting their impartiality, feature Ranma (with a few unlikely power-ups) humiliating the Senshi with one or two easy moves and then ending up training them in martial arts -- apparently because, canon notwithstanding, martial arts are clearly the only way to true power. I thought it might be fun to swing the pendulum in the other direction, for a change. Ranma 1/2 created by Rumiko Takahashi. Sailor Moon created by Naoko Takeuchi. Also mentioned are Card Captor Sakura (by CLAMP) and Shadow Star (by Mohiro Kitoh).