I do not own Ranma, nor the characters therein.  Nor do I own Starcraft and 
it's characters.  I am writing this story out of affection for these 
characters and I mean no harm.  Please do not sue me, you won't get much 
anyway.
Author's Notes at the end of Part C.
And Here We Go. . . 



Second Star
Written by: Michael D. Rever
This version edited 4/27/99



Chapter 3

     Ranma loved to fly.  To soar up into the air and view the world 
from above.  Zooming over the streets of Nerima, diving under the 
small bridges, and racing the birds as they flew to unknown 
destinations.  He paused a minute to watch a baby chick call for its 
mother, demanding food, and then he was off again.  He had someplace 
he had to be.  Someone he had to meet.  Launching himself straight 
up, he rose over the rooftops and headed for the park.  There she 
was, waiting by the small lake, feeding the ducks.  As he came to 
land next to her, she started to look up.  Her face was starting to 
turn towards him...

     !BEEP! !BEEP! !BEEP! !BEEP! !BEEP! !BEEP! !BEEP! !BEEP! !BEEP!

     Ranma awoke with a start, sitting straight up in bed.  Almost 
immediately though, he flopped back down into his reclining 
position, pulled the leathery cover over his head, and started to go 
back to sleep, murmuring something about 'Goddamn alarm clocks...'  

     *Waitaminute,* some slightly active part of his brain called 
out, *'leathery cover'?  This bed ain't right either.  Kinda hard.  
Like metal.  Feels a little familiar though...*

     *Who cares?  I can sleep on it.* Another, even fuzzier, part of 
his brain responded.

     The first part considered this.  *Yes, I can sleep on it.*

     *Sleep gooooood.*  The second part mumbled.

     The two parts mentally shook hands, and joined the rest of the 
brain in dreamland.

     !BEEP! !BEEP! !BEEP! !BEEP! !BEEP! !BEEP! !BEEP! !BEEP! !BEEP!

     Ranma's arm went on automatic.  It shot straight up into the 
air, and swung mightily down, on a course to send a certain 
annoyance into mechanical heaven.  As it reached where its intended 
target was supposed to be however, instead of hitting a small but 
very annoying clock, it hit...nothing.  Ranma quickly found himself 
tumbling off of a fairly high bed, carried by the force of his own 
swing.
     Still groggy from sleep, Ranma sat up slowly, scratching his 
head and smacking his lips.  As his mind and vision started to 
clear, he idly began wondering who put a bed in his room.  That 
thought suddenly evaporated from his mind as he started to look 
around, and his eyes grew huge.

     The room he was in was very small, about the same size as his 
room back in the Tendo house.  Rectangular in shape, the two longer 
sides and one of the short ends appeared to be nothing but large 
computers with blinking lights and screens which displayed lines 
that moved in strange rhythms.  The short wall without any computer 
banks was simply a blank wall made from what looked to be pewter.  
Glancing around in bemusement, he noticed that the 'bed' he had 
fallen from actually appeared to be a squat, rectangular metal 
pillar with several opaque crystals held above one end of it from 
the ceiling. About where his head would have been had he still been 
laying on it.  The only two sources of color in the silver and gray 
room were from the bright purple sheet that had been covering him, 
which was now twisted around his feet since he had jumped up from 
his sitting position, and from his usual red and black clothes which 
he was wearing.
     Looking around at the highly technical machines and the ominous 
looking bed, Ranma could only come up with one answer.  *Oh no, Pop 
engaged me to that B-Ko girl!*
     *No wait, that's not right.  What's goin' on here?!*  It was 
such a good question, he thought it was worth shouting out.  And so 
he did.
     As if to answer his question, the pewter wall suddenly 
disappeared, without a sound and without fanfare.  It was just 
simply not there any more.  "ummmmm...ok"  Ranma mumbled as he 
slowly walked towards the now open doorway.
     What was revealed on the other side was a large circular room 
with a tall domed ceiling, about fifteen feet high.  The room, in 
great contrast with the small room he was in, was made entirely from 
carved stone, which had been polished smooth.  The rock it was made 
of was a strange mixture of dark brown, light tan, and pure white 
strata all swirled around each other in a strangely compelling 
pattern.  There were also flashes of green, blue, and gold from time 
to time, but no discernible source of these colors was evident.
     Ranma slowly started walking out of the 'bedroom' he was in, 
into this larger one.  Other than the opening he just walked out of, 
the room was featureless and barren, though well lit and at a 
comfortable temperature.  A slight feeling of air pressure behind 
him caused Ranma to spin around to discover that now the room was 
completely featureless, the door having closed behind him.  
Searching the wall where it had been, Ranma was unable to find it 
again.
     He spent the next fifteen minutes trying to find the door 
again, and, having failed that, searching the rest of the wall for 
anything that might point a way out of the room.  After he was done 
he realized three things.  One, he had no idea where along the wall 
he had started out from.  Two, it didn't matter since he couldn't 
find that door anyway.  And three, he was going to have to wait 
until whoever put him in the room came back before he could get out.  
So he started doing some katas to fill in time until his kidnappers 
came for him.  
     *And then,* he thought cracking his knuckles, *they're going to 
regret messing with Ranma Saotome!  If this is another plot by some 
guy who wants to marry Akane...*  Ranma paused at this thought, 
horrified that it had not come sooner.  *Where's everybody else?  
Where's Aka...uh, everybody else?*  Ranma sped up his katas as worry 
started to build in him.
     An hour passed.
     And then another hour passed.
     And a third.
     All the while, his mind was working, trying to remember how he 
got here.  *OK, I was fighting Ryouga...I think.  And Akane came out 
with a bucket of water, trying to stop us from fighting...she 
splashed us..and..something...I remember holding her...no that's 
Ucchan...and Cologne was there smiling and making a wedding 
okomiyaki...no, that's not right...*  Something appeared to be wrong 
with his memory.  He remembered clearly his life with his Pop, and 
arriving at the Tendo Dojo that first day.  He remembered Ukyo and 
Shampoo coming into his life.  He remembered the failed wedding.  
But then things started getting a bit foggy, and whenever he tried 
to think about those times he got disjointed and confusing images 
that didn't make much sense to him.  *Ryouga fighting...boomers?  
What's a boomer?  What happened?  Why can't I remem...the Xi Fa 
Xiang Gao!  Cologne!  That old troll must have used it on me!  Ha!  
But I'm too strong for it!  I still remember everybody!*  Ranma 
paused once again, *I think.*
     Having gone through most of his katas, Ranma decided to rest a 
minute and sat down against the wall that ran around the room.  He 
closed his eyes and rested his head back against the wall for just a 
second, when they suddenly shot open again and stared at the room.  
There was something he saw, just as his eyes were about shut.  What 
was it?  Something about the walls, about the designs, the swirls 
and flashes of color...*That's it!  Its like those 'magic pictures' 
Nabiki showed me!  Stare at them and they show you something!*  He 
groaned aloud, he had never been able to get those damn things to 
work for him.  Feeling that this was something important, he spent 
the next half hour squinting and closing his eyes, trying to see the 
pattern he had glimpsed.  He looked sideways. He looked at an upward 
angle. He looked at a downward angle. He looked upside down.  He 
looked close-up and far away. No success.  His mind fuzzed a little 
bit while he was silently berating himself.  
     Then something appeared, out the corner of his eye.  But when 
he looked that direction, there was nothing.  But it kept happening, 
he started seeing things, shapes, out of the corners of his eyes.  
And then the secret came to him and he deliberately let his eyes 
unfocus, concentrating on using his peripheral vision.  And the room 
came alive.  Beautiful images, mosaics, shapes, and patterns filled 
the walls in vibrant colors and graceful lines.  There was not a 
single inch of the wall nor the ceiling that was not covered with 
images of strange creatures, lush plants with odd flowers, and what 
looked to be scenes from space.  Two images seemed to dominate the 
room, as they were much larger than the others and were situated at 
opposite ends of the room.  One was of a strange creature, tall and 
impossibly thin.  Its two arms were long and bone thin, it's hip-bones
were prominent, and it's waist was small enough that Ranma bet 
he could almost surround it with his two hands.  Its face was longer 
than a humans, and did not seem to have a mouth nor nose.  Its eyes 
were sunken in and the picture seemed to portray some sort of energy 
radiating from the top of its head.  The second image was simply 
that of a huge eyeball, with lines stretching away from it in many 
directions.  The entire image seemed to have that same energy 
pattern radiating from it.  Ranma shivered momentarily, for the 
image of the eye seemed to ooze malice and threat.  
     Shaking his head and tearing his eyes away from these two 
images, he started walking around the room looking in wonder at all 
of the pictures.  Now that he had learned the trick, he no longer 
needed to unfocus his eyes, he could see the decorations normally.  
As he was walking around the room, another flash from the corner of 
his eye caught his attention.  From the floor.  Just now realizing 
that the floor was still bare of design, Ranma unfocused his eyes 
and tried to see the decoration he had glimpsed.  Nothing.  Looking 
at it from different angles, to the point of getting on his hands 
and knees, provided no more help.  Shrugging, he continued with his 
explorations and started walking around the room again.  When he got 
to the other side of the room, it happened again.  A flash of 
something on the floor.  Looking around, he noticed that he was 
halfway between the two dominant pictures, or nearly so.  On a 
hunch, he started inching backwards until he estimated that he was 
exactly halfway from one picture to the other, and looked at the 
floor with normal eyes.  The design was clear and easily 
recognizable.  Moving his head from one side to the other, he 
watched in fascination as the decoration appeared and disappeared 
according to his head's, and eyes', position.  It was not a trick of 
focus like the walls and the ceiling, but more of an optical illusion 
where you had to look from a certain angle to view it.  Ranma 
stepped away from the wall, causing the floor's picture to disappear 
from his vision, but it was not needed.  The design was a simple 
one.  A spiral, leading to the center of the room.
     Keeping the design is his head, Ranma slowly, and then more 
quickly, started doing the spiral dance, as if he was going to 
launch the Hiru Shouten Ha attack.  When he reached the end, the 
center of the room, he stopped, strangely out of breath, and looked 
around.  And promptly passed out.
     He awoke again, a short time later, and slowly got back onto 
his feet, a splitting headache he did not remember having fading 
away as he became upright.  He raised his eyes and looked around.  
And gaped at what he saw.  The decorations were gone, as well as the 
swirls of color that had made them.  The wall was now a uniform dark 
brown, polished smooth, yet the light that filled the room did not 
reflect from it.  Three red dots of light, similar to the light from 
a laser pointer, shown brightly from three different locations on 
the wall, each quite a distance from the other.
     Almost hypnotized by the glowing red lights, he walked towards 
the one that was directly ahead of him.  When he got to about a foot 
or two away from it, he stopped.  The dot had not changed.  Looking 
at it from different angles, he could not tell anything about it.  
It was just a dot on a wall.
     "Hello?", he hesitantly spoke to the light, "Ummmm, this is 
great and all, but could you let me out?"
     No response.
     "I said let me out!"  He was getting a bit angry now, the 
strangeness of the situation, worry for his friends, and being 
cooped up in a cave started to get to him.
     "Listen, I don't care what this is about, but I'm gonna count 
to three, and if you don't open a door, somebody's gonna get hurt!"  
he shouted, cracking his knuckles and brandishing them.
     "One..."
     "Two..."
     "Thr......" Suddenly a image of the great Ranma Saotome waving 
his fist at a dot of light on the wall of a cave formed in his mind, 
and he froze for a moment, realizing just how utterly stupid he 
looked.
     *I bet they're just laughing it up right now.*, he thought 
darkly of his captors, *When I get outta here...*  He left the 
thought unfinished as he dropped his arm and stood up straighter.
     Standing up straight, the light was about chest high to him.  
Looking around he could still see the other two lights on the wall, 
and did not see any change in them.  Bending over, he started to 
bring his face close to he light in front of him, looking at it as 
if it were a peephole of some sort.  When his head came within a 
foot's distance however, the dot changed.  Instead of just a small 
dot of red light, it stretched out, become a red outline slightly 
oval in shape and growing larger as his face got closer.  Jerking 
back quickly, Ranma saw the red outline shrink back onto itself so 
that it was just a dot again.  Hesitantly, he poked his finger at 
the light.  As soon as his finger broke the one foot mark from the 
wall, the light once again spread out into an outline, only this 
time it was much smaller.  Pulling his finger back, the outline once 
more became a dot.  Poking his finger in and out of the one foot 
range, Ranma watched the dot expand and shrink several times.  
Poking two fingers at the dot, he saw that the resulting outline was 
different.  Instead of a single round outline, the shape was of a 
sideways figure eight with the center cross missing.  After several 
more tests, Ranma came to realize that the outline the red light was 
forming, was the outline of whatever came close to it.  A sudden 
flash of understanding burst through his head, and Ranma firmly 
extended his hand, palm out, towards the light.  The dot expanded as 
his hand came closer to it, until it exactly fit his hand as he 
touched the wall.  A flash of bright, white light came from 
under his hand and suddenly the wall in front of him was no more.
     Instead of a section of the wall, he was now looking through 
the very same door he had exited hours before.  The 'bedroom' for 
lack of a better term, looked exactly as it had when he had first 
awoken, except that the crystals which had previously hung just 
above one end of the bed were now hanging just a couple inches from 
the ceiling.  Understanding now how the door worked, Ranma took a 
step backwards and watched the wall reappear.
     "Cool!" he exclaimed.  He played with opening and closing the 
door a few more times before he remembered that he still had no way 
out of the room, and that there were two more lights on the wall.  
*Now I'm gonna get some answers!*
     Walking over to the next closest light, he confidently stuck 
his hand forward and opened the door.  Instead of a doorway into a 
room or the way out of this one, what was revealed was a small 
alcove, maybe a foot and a half deep, and hemispherical in shape.  
The walls of the alcove seemed to be made of the same brown rock of 
the room Ranma was in now, but the floor was a metal plate 
crisscrossed with lines of clear crystal or glass. There were the 
outlines of two feet engraved on the floor, with the heels against 
the back of the alcove.
     Figuring he had nothing to lose, Ranma stepped carefully onto 
the plate and planted his feet so they matched the engraving on the 
floor.  The wall suddenly reappeared, leaving him within a very 
small area, with barely enough room to move more than a few inches 
in any direction but up.  Looking around in panic, he noticed that 
the little alcove extended much higher than he would have thought.  
He could tell this because a dull white light was slowly making its 
way down towards him from high above, shining through previously 
unseen veins of crystal embedded into the walls.  As the light 
reached about head level, Ranma started to hear a slight buzzing.  
No matter which way he turned his head, the buzzing seemed to come 
from directly behind him.  A few seconds later it did not matter, 
for the light had traveled down the veins of crystal until they had 
reached the lines of the mineral on the floor-plate.  And Ranma was 
suddenly blinded by an intense white light.
     When his vision had cleared, he found himself back in the 
center of the main room of his prison.  The decorations were still 
gone, and the three dots of light were shining on the wall.  The 
only difference was, standing right before him was...himself.  Or 
maybe it should be said, herself.
     Ranma immediately and instinctively dropped into a ready stance 
and sized up the person in front of him.  The girl looked exactly 
like his female half, from the red hair down to the black soft-soled 
shoes on her feet.  His trained senses and eyes had quickly 
categorized everything about her and they told him that she was not 
a threat.  Her eyes were wide and honest, her stance unthreatening, 
and the expression on her face looked more bored than anything else.  
But there was something about her that nagged him (besides the fact 
he was facing off against himself).  Something just was not 'right' 
about her.  And it came to him.  She was not breathing.  Not at all.  
And had not been since she he had first appeared.
     The girl, for the most part, simply stood there while staring 
at him, occasionally blinking her large blue eyes, and looking 
expectant.  She was balanced easily on her feet and her hands were 
clasped behind her back.  As a matter of fact, Ranma realized with a 
start, she looked exactly the way he had when he was first 
challenged by Akane a few years ago.
     "Who...who...who are you?" he asked hesitantly, not absolutely 
sure 
he really wanted to know.  *Am I dreaming?* he wondered to himself.
     "Ghjihijkn jhikh, ihuygi bkuy bh bb b y f uyfu kjh okl." The 
girl before him responded.  Immediately her smile, which had 
appeared when he spoke, disappeared and her eyes narrowed a little 
bit in concentration.
     "TbjgGjio Ranma, dreaming HGj hgj tv you iut fgj." The girl 
closed her eyes for a second and tried again.
     "No Ranma, you are not dreaming."  She beamed happily at 
finally being able to speak correctly.
     "Wha?  Hey, who are you?"  He paused for a second and did a 
double-take "How did you know what I was thinking?!?"  He had not 
yet relaxed from his fighting stance.
     The girl suddenly looked a bit nervous and tilted her head to 
the side a bit, before starting to pace back and forth in front of 
him, with her hands still clasped behind her.
     "That...is a bit hard to explain.  For both questions." She 
replied.  She suddenly laughed a bit ruefully.  "I have been 
planning for this exact moment for a long time.  A very long time.  
And now that it is here, I have absolutely no idea how to begin...what 
to say."
     "How 'bout telling me where I am, who you are, and what you've 
done with Akane?" Ranma grated out, starting to lose patience with 
this impostor.  "And the others!" he hastily added.
     The girl stopped and seemed to think for a second, eyeing Ranma 
sideways.  She then sighed and turned to face him.  "Yes. Yes, I 
guess that is as good a place to start as any. I am a memory in 
essence. A psionic program projected directly into your brain.  When 
you stepped on the viewing pedestal, you activated the chamber you 
are in now, and me.  You are actually still standing in the little 
niche, but I am controlling what you see and hear.  You see what 
happens is that a mind impression, focused through the crystalline 
weave, is able to psionically project itself...Ranma?  Uhh, Ranma?"  
The hologram stopped speaking when it noticed the blank look that 
had overcome Ranma features.  "Ranma!"  Ranma's eyes refocused.
     "OK, look," the hologram stated tersely, "I am here to help 
you.  To explain things to you."  The girl sighed.  "I am not a 
Leader.  I don't have the conversation skills of one.  But I need 
you to listen, your life depends on it."
     To tell the truth, Ranma had not been paying much attention.  
Worry, anger, and confusion were warring over each other in his mind 
as to which was going to take control.  He heard every word the girl 
was saying, but the content of those words was just not being 
heeded.  But this last sentence brought his full mind into focus.  
There was a threat.
     "Good, I can see that you are finally listening.  Now listen 
carefully, understanding what I am going to tell you might be the 
most important thing you ever do."  She seemed to take a deep 
breath.
     "Millions of years ago a species was born.  Like other species 
were destined to do, they grew, multiplied, and evolved.  After 
centuries and millennia of change and evolution, the race had grown 
into a highly advanced and structured society.  They were called the 
Xel'Naga.  Being a naturally curious species, they learned and 
researched everything they could about their home planet and about 
themselves.  Using biochemical experimentation they were able to 
accelerate their growth, artificially manipulating their life-strands
so as to amplify their minds and bodies.  Their experiments 
caused several races to appear within the Xel'Naga for the first 
time.  Soon they had learned everything they could from their planet 
and they were unable to persuade their bodies to evolve any more.  
They had developed limited control over the three powers of life: 
the power of the Body, the power of the Mind, and the power of the 
Spirit.  Their lifespans were limitless.  What was left?  They 
started feeling bored and entrapped.  Before long they were building 
and growing ships to take them beyond their home planet's 
atmosphere.  Reaching out, they colonized their solar system, and 
then traveled beyond.  Excited again at the thought of experiencing 
something new, they studied, and researched, and learned.  The 
powers of the stars, the paths of the planets.  Astrophysics.  
Cosmic energy.  Everywhere they turned they found new things to 
study, and those things, in turn, led to other new fields.  The 
Xel'Naga were once again happy."
     While she was talking the landscape around Ranma changed.  
Instead of being in the cave, he found himself floating in space, 
high above a solar system with three large planets and a sun that 
was much brighter than the one he was familiar with.  As the story 
progressed, he and the girl experienced planetfall and he saw images 
of buildings fade in and out of existence, along with different 
terrain and landscape.  First there were huts, which changed to 
small buildings, and then into tall ones.  These tall buildings, in 
turn, were replaced with other tall buildings, which were also 
replaced.  Images of strange ships sailing on smoky looking water 
were seen, as well as small oddly shaped hovercraft sailing through 
the sky.  Soon other ships of various shapes and sizes were seen 
floating in the air, only to fly off far above him.  Ranma seemed to 
follow these ships up past the atmosphere and into the blackness of 
space, where he saw the ships split up and travel in every 
direction.  The girl had disappeared, with only her voice remaining.
     "But then the Xel'Naga came across something that would change 
their existence forever.  On a small moon, near a newly explored 
planet at the edge of their galaxy, they found life.  They were 
stunned.  Despite their vast knowledge and curiosity, they had never 
thought that there might be other life-forms out there.  And if, 
they came to realize, there was other life amongst the stars, might 
there not be another race like them?  What knowledge could be 
shared?  What new things could be discovered when they found this 
brother race!  The life they had found was simple, a single-celled 
organism whose life span was about two days long.  Such a simple 
thing, but with such great consequences!"
     "The Xel'Naga flew out into the reaches of space with new 
purpose.  To find other species to talk with.  The idea had become 
all-consuming to the Xel'Naga.  But they quickly became 
disappointed.  Beyond that simple organism that they had found, no 
other form of life had yet developed.  They were the first and only 
beings in the universe.  At first they despaired.  Their dreams of 
finding new species and life-forms had crumbled to dust.  But 
eventually this dream changed, twisted.  They came to believe that 
they had evolved first for a reason.  And that reason was to create 
and guide life throughout the cosmos.  To invent that which they had 
been searching for."
     "In their arrogance they began two new fields of study.  That 
of xenobiogenetic manipulation and Projective Evolution Management. 
They created life-strands in their biolabs and seeded thousands and 
millions of planets.  And they watched, guided, and protected the 
results; ever working towards evolving species which would develop 
sentience and learning abilities.  After millions of years they came 
to watch over thousands of success stories, with the life-forms 
developing societal structures and the beginnings of civilization.  
They kept themselves hidden, content to guide secretly, and to watch 
and to learn.  Eventually several of the more advanced species 
learned space travel.  Hidden from scanners and searching eyes, the 
Xel'Naga watched as these life-forms reached out and began 
colonizing planets, just as the Xel'Naga had done so long ago.  And 
the entirety of the Xel'Naga watched as two of these races came into 
contact with each other, wanting to experience vicariously the 
meeting they themselves had searched for millions of years before.  
But something went wrong.  Instead of the glorious blending of two 
of their 'children', the two races waged war on each other.  Still 
not wanting to expose their existence, the Xel'Naga could only watch 
as the two races continued to fight.  And, as the races developed 
more and learned more, the fighting grew larger and larger.  
Eventually other, not as developed, planets were conquered and 
brought into the fighting.  Two thousand years later a quarter of 
their galaxy was at war, and it was spreading."
     The view of Ranma had changed much while the story continued.  
First he was traveling over the landscapes of countless planets.  
Strange vistas, oddly colored skies, thick oceans, and planets 
without any ground at all were all shown.  He was then back in space 
looking down at a moon that circled a small planet with several 
rings.  Many ships, much larger than the ones he saw take off from 
the home planet of the Xel'Naga, hovered over this moon.  Then they 
took off in every direction as well.  A brief view of a galaxy was 
shown, resembling more of a rough sphere than the spiral shape of 
the galaxy he was familiar with (well, that he had seen pictures of 
anyways).  He was then taken to a yellow-orange planet, from which a 
small spacecraft was slowly leaving its atmosphere.  A blink later 
and there were suddenly several more of these ships, constantly 
moving back and forth from the planet to its neighboring planets.  
Then a much larger ship appeared from around the planet, rotated in 
place, and disappeared into the inky blackness of space.  His view 
followed this ship as it sped along towards a distant star that was 
slowly becoming closer.  After it had reached its destination, Ranma 
saw another ship, just as large, hovering over a brown-green planet.  
Whereas the ship Ranma had been following was silver, sleek, and 
angular, this new ship was dirt-brown, gangly, and had many 
hemisphere-like protrusions covering it like boils.  After a short 
while of sitting still, the ship that Ranma had been following 
suddenly shot some sort of energy weapons at the new ship.  And the 
battle was engaged.  The images that floated by Ranma now were of 
derelict ships, blasted and dead, floating in space.  The hulls of 
these ships changed, becoming larger, more damaged.  He found 
himself planetside, looking at vast fields that were burned and 
pitted.  Destroyed buildings and burning structures were seen.
     "The Xel'Naga were at a loss as to what to do.  They pulled 
back their observers and returned to their home planet to decide on 
a course of action.  It was eventually decided to leave their 
galaxy.  To travel to a new one and start again.  And so they packed 
up everything and left, leaving no evidence that the Xel'Naga had 
ever existed."

Attach to Part B