The Road to Cydonia

The Road to Cydonia is a crossover fan fiction between Ranma ½ and X-COM: UFO Defense written by Cap'n Chryssalid. In it, Ryouga and Akari are abducted by aliens, who discover the existence of the Nerima Wrecking Crew while probing Ryouga's mind. After killing Akari and mind raping Ryouga, the aliens follow him to Nerima, where they attempt to abduct the rest of the crew. While the aliens succeed in capturing Cologne, Ranma and Ryouga manage to free the Tendos and take over the ship that was abducting them. After crash-landing it in South America, Ranma and Ryouga are approached by X-COM, an organization dedicated to fighting the alien threat. Ryouga, eager to seek revenge on the aliens, immediately decides to join, and Ranma ends up following him into the organization. Deciding that they'll need allies, they immediately seek to recruit the rest of the Nerima Wrecking Crew, and the Juliet and India squads are formed. The story then follows Ranma, Ryouga, Shampoo, Mousse, Ryu, Ukyou, Konatsu, and Tatewaki as they battle against the alien threat as members of X-COM.

There is also Reflections Lost on a Dark Road, a crossover fic that takes place after The Road to Cydonia, written by Lathis and Cap'n Chryssalid.

The Road to Cydonia can be read here or here.

Tropes used in The Road to Cydonia include:

• Alien Abduction
• Alien Autopsy
• Aliens Are Bastards
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Because all aliens are hardwired into the Mind, they never turn on each other. The sole exception being an incident in which a ship of aliens fresh from another dimension apparently killed each other. Micronoids. X-COM is still trying to figure that one out.
• Battle Aura: All of the Juliet and India squads at one point or another, but special mention goes to Ryouga during his first confrontation with an Etherial. To protect himself from its psychic abilities, he engulfs himself in his battle aura at full power. It's compared to "lighting yourself on fire to keep from freezing to death."
• Big Brother Is Employing You: Occasionally a character will muse on the unpleasant implications of what X-COM is doing, and its abuse of ordinary people's rights. Then they'll decide the end justifies the means and carry on with whatever distasteful task they were going to do.
• Brainwashed: The trenchards that are made by converting a human. The duplicates may also count, since severing their connection to the mind causes them to act like their original selves pre-abduction.
• Casting a Shadow: Ryouga's shishi houkodan and its variants.
• Clone Degeneration: Trenchard Cologne uses a special technique to prevent this.
• Cold Flames: Battle Auras sometimes count as this. Especially Ryouga's.
• Crack Pairing: Ryouga/Nabiki
• Crossover: This is a crossover between Ranma ½ and X-COM: UFO Defense.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: This is a story about Ranma 1/2 characters fighting aliens using futuristic weapons and ultra-violent martial arts techniques. There are lots of them.
• Curse: The Hibiki family has no sense of direction because of a family curse.
• David Versus Goliath: The first fight against a sectopod.
• Deus Angst Machina: Ryouga. Girlfriend killed right in front of him after being cut up for 20 minutes? Check. Father turned into an evil alien hybrid, forced to fight him, then required to be kept locked up to avoid attacking them? Check. Months worth of shameful memories erased, then returned en mass? Check. Dead girlfriend revived as an alien hybrid no longer under control of the aliens, but dying, requests to be allowed to die, forcing him to prevent the operation that would save her life at the cost of her remaining humanity? Check. New recruits enable the aforementioned operation to succeed anyway, returning her to the control of the aliens? Formerly dead girlfriend now psychically attacking him in his dreams? Check.
• Elaborate Underground Base
• ET Gave Us Wi-Fi: X-COM gets the majority of their technology by reverse engineering stolen alien technology.
• Evil Knockoff: Trenchard Ryouga
• Evil Twin: Trenchard Cologne
• Flying Saucer
• Fountain of Youth: The aliens appear to do this to Cologne. In actuality, it's a clone.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Trenchards
• Heir to the Dojo
• He Who Fights Monsters: X-COM frequently resorts to tactics that would be considered war crimes in their fight against the alien menace.
• Hive Mind: The Mind.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum: Elerium
• Improbable Weapon User: Ryouga uses his belt and headbands like blades, and has an alien alloy umbrella. That said, he also uses conventional weapons.
  • Tetsuya Hibiki uses his clothing as a weapon. His outfit comes apart in strips of cloth, which act like Combat Tentacles, and his undershirt hardens like armor.
  • Mitsuko Hibiki also uses cloth as a weapon. It seems to be a Hibiki thing.
• Involuntary Shapeshifting: Jusenkyo victims all count.
• Just Friends: Ryouga and Kasumi
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Curing a Jusenkyo curse removes the victim of all the memories they acquired while in their cursed form.
• Lethal Chef: Akane, though has been working to improve that since being forced to eat her own cooking.
• Meat Puppet: Etherials are capable of possessing humans and even other aliens and remotely controlling them.
• Mind Rape: After having his memories of P-Chan erased, an etherial returns them to Ryouga en-mass while torturing him.
• Mirror Match: Ryouga vs. Trenchard Ryouga, Cologne vs Trenchard Cologne.
  • Oddly enough, neither match-up has identical combatants. Ryouga's trenchard knockoff is bald and doesn't really look human, and Cologne's knockoff isn't the same age.
• Moral Myopia
• No Sense of Direction: Ryouga. Fortunately, his dog, Checkers, has both a functional sense of direction, and an unnaturally high intellect.
  • All the Hibiki's, actually. Apparently, it's because of a family curse.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Most of the X-COM agents are at peak levels of human fitness, and are in the best physical condition they have ever been in. Nevertheless, they are completely overshadowed by the Nerima Wrecking Crew.
• Pay Evil Unto Evil
• Playing with Syringes: What the aliens frequently do to their abductees.
• Powered Armor
• Ray Gun
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Why Ryouga joined X-COM.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Ryouga/Nabiki
• Sociopathic Soldier
• Strapped to An Operating Table: Ryouga and Akari when they were abducted by aliens.
• Touch of Death: Ryouga's "killing point" technique.
• They Would Cut You Up: The reason that powerful martial artists are moved to sanctuary communities ^[1] after the aliens find out about them.
• Unstoppable Rage: Ryouga's rage is really unstoppable. After the aliens kill Akari, it doesn't completely go away for a significant portion of the story.

1. ↑ read: internment camps