[Ranma][Fanfic][revision] The Bet- Ragnarock
Gregg Sharp
Ranma 1/2: Ragnarock (DARK) (possibilities for lime)
twisted idea that didn't make the cut,
submitted for your amusement. i got this idea partly
from ID4 (which i didn't like) and "Lucifer's Hammer"
(which i DID like.) i had not seen "Deep Impact" or
"Armaggedon" at the time of the original story.
Metro...@mindspring.com
http://metroanime.home.mindspring.com/
Chapter 1: Here's Ragnarock... Nabiki's Tale version 1.5
----------------------------------------
Ares looked up, catching the eye of Hel.
"This...sucks."
Hel nodded. She chose to remain silent.
"These are aliens centuries in advance of the
humans in terms of technology, capable of psionic combat.
They have forceshields and powerbeams, antigravity, and
mile long spaceships. Their mothership is damn near the size
of Earth's moon. And they're just completely and totally lame..."
Hel nodded again.
Ares grinned. Nobody was watching. Well, just
himself, Hel, Tiamat, and Ahriman. "Let's see if I get a less
advanced but smarter group of nasties to poke their heads
in. This Ranma guy is supposed to have a Destiny, right?
Let's give him one."
------------------------------------------
excerpts from the Journal of Nabiki Tendo:
January 12, 1991:
It's all over the news. Confirmation of the
formerly hypothetical Oort cloud.
Chunks of ice and rock are inward bound,
detected by any number of telescopes. The theory is
that something Big disturbed one of the clumps of
meteors and comets out there beyond Pluto's orbit.
Should make for some interesting meteor
showers early next year.
I shook up Daisuke and Hiroshi for extra
money today. Looks like Kuno isn't the only one
interested in Akane photos. Little sister is beginning
to bloom and the sweet smell on the air is the aroma
of profit. I am SO glad I took that photography course.
------------------
June 12, 1991:
Made some excellent profit on the Gateway-
Furinkan baseball match. A real grudge match. As usual,
a brawl occurred. I had set the odds just right, the brawl
took place in the third inning, and I cleaned up.
Kuno-baby is showing definite signs of
obsession as regards little sister. Doesn't notice me,
which is too bad as he's tall and rich, two of my fav
things. Long as I can profit off of him, I'll keep it
friendly.
What is it about Akane, anyway? Is it the
forbidden fruit aspect, that she'll hurt them severely
for even attempting to ask her out? Hmmm. That gives
me an idea, and since Kuno's so easy to manipulate...
Oh yeah. Something wild on the news today.
Mars got hit by an comet. If there was life on Mars
before, there ain't now. Six mile diameter chunk of ice
and rock at 22,000 mph equals BIG crater. Volcanoes going
off, etcetera. Computer animation of the whole thing
and talk about it being exactly the sort of thing that
toasted the dinosaurs.
Gotta remember that. I'm sure it'll end up on
a test sometime.
-------------------------
December 24, 1991:
They lied.
When they told us there was no danger last
year, they lied to us. When Mars was hit by that comet
in June, they told us it was a freak accident and that it
couldn't happen to us. When the amateur astronomers
and some of the other countries started saying alarming
things, our goverment and the news agencies were going
on about alarmists and terrorists and misleading data.
All lies.
It's coming. It finally got to the point where
so many people were able to find it, that the powers
that be couldn't put a lid on it anymore.
They call it the Ragnarock. It's a chunk of
rock and ice and some "exotic materials" about the size
of Tokyo. When it hits, well, whatever it hits isn't going
to be there. The scientists are still screaming at each
other over the exact details.
It's the "big mother" of a whole bunch of
other bits and pieces. Some of the rocks or ice chunks
are small enough that I could lift them myself. The really
big nasty one is a chunk of ice that is moving very slow
and will probably miss everything. THAT sucker is
called "Aquarius" and masses more than three times
the continent of Australia.
The lab types are also still screaming at each
other over some things they find odd about the whole
thing. Each planet is getting hit with a set of small rocks
and a single big rock. Almost as if they were aimed.
There's other details that seem to be stirring the "alien
invasion" crowd but no one has seen spaceships.
I'm used to keeping track of my business
here, how much money I've gotten off of what. It just
somehow doesn't seem as important anymore.
Kasumi's going on as if nothing happened.
Akane heard about the Rock and has been going not
so quietly nuts trying to deny all the facts and figures.
She still hasn't come up with a convincing reason for
the release of the information slowly through private
channels. Considering the panic and rioting, the
reason that our fearless leaders kept the secret as long
as they did is pretty obvious.
We'll see if the American plan to use
nuclears on the Ragnarock gets any support.
--------------------------
December 26, 1991:
Asteroid:1, Us:0.
The nukes went bust, or close enough. There's
a good chance the Ragnarock will be deflected enough.
Some of the other rocks were vaporized or close enough.
Some of the remaining are small enough that they won't
be as much of a problem. One of the smaller rocks is due
to hit early next month. Called Loki, it's more than twice
the size and mass of the Tokyo Tower. There's a chance
it too will miss.
Daddy laid a little bombshell on us. If he
doesn't survive and we do, he'd made a deal with one
of his old friends. Unite the families with a marriage.
Some guy named Ranma Saotome would marry one of the
daughters Tendo. If anyone survives, I added.
The only one that didn't react to that
observation was Kasumi. Sometimes I wonder if
anyone's home anymore.
Maybe she's better off that way.
----------------------
Jan. 11, 1992:
"Loki" hit. I'm writing this from the raft
we threw together. There's no sign of Akane, and
with her swimming abilities she might not have made
it out of the house when the tsunami hit.
Finding Kasumi was an incredible stroke
of luck. We put together everything we could find that
could float to make this raft, and that includes part of
the dojo roof. Kasumi finally came apart about two
hours ago and is sleeping now. The shell she had
retreated behind collapsed when she realized that
Akane was probably gone.
The details I record for posterity. "Loki"
proved the alien theory all right. It evaded missles.
Astronomy was never my big field, but this much I
DO know. Meteors do NOT do evasive patterns.
When it hit, Loki slammed into the arctic
at nearly Mach Five. Again a clue, as that's really slow
for a meteor. Millions of tons of ice vaporized. More melted.
It didn't hit straight on, but almost tunnelled
through the arctic ocean and then somehow triggered a
massive set of volcanoes. There will be a new Arctic
landmass before long.
The roads were packed. The news agencies
had been predicting a miss almost to the last moment.
Still the traffic jams in every country as people scurried
about were on all the news programs until the ionosphere
went wacky.
Then the roaring noise. Then the water. It
seemed that when "Loki" approached, it separated. The
one part slammed into the Arctic as described above.
Another chunk managed to hit the water Southeast of
Japan. On a major faultline.
Now, there's a lot of jutting buildings off
in the distance, but Nerima was always pretty lowlying.
Heck, most of the buildings were just two stories and
they're underneath this heavily polluted water somewhere.
Akane was at Furinkan, but the wave might
have collapsed the building. Neither of us see the place.
I'm getting little bits and pieces of stations
on my little portable radio. I can piece some of what's
going on from these snippets. In the meantime Kasumi
is asleep, her wet clothes stretched out to dry but they'll
probably smell of that damn volcano.
Getting tired. Noticed that I've been shaking
for the past half-hour and getting quite twitchy. Hope
we find land soon.
--------------------
January 15, 1992:
Rescue. For the moment, at least. Kasumi and
I are aboard a ship known as the Myou No Maru. The name
is fairly descriptive. A truly odd looking crew and the ship...well,
it survived the tsunami so it must be tougher than it looks.
I'll introduce the crew in later chapters. Being
able to have a hot bath, dry clothes, and both warm food
and hot tea...
I wouldn't sell my soul, but my gratitude is
quite sincere. The rescue was yesterday evening so
we really only spent three days on the raft, watching
parts of it sink, with a layer of salt and ash on everything,
and just being all sorts of miserable.
Kasumi has some serious problems. She's
sick and puking, but apparently the owner of the ship
has had some medical training and says she'll be fine.
Too much exposure, too much salt, and she swallowed
too much water after the wave had hit. According to
him, we're also still both suffering from exhaustion.
I agree, but I have to know what's going
on. Apparently this ship was a "jack-of-all-trades."
A little smuggling, a little spywork if the surveillance
equipment is any indication, and a cover story of being
a fishing vessel. It's the surveillance and communication
equipment that's got my immediate attention.
Some of the stories here are really bizarre.
While sitting with Kasumi, Lufa was telling me about
the wonders of her homeland. Ancient amazon tribes
locked in periodic battles with an ancient enemy, a
race of ancient beings looking on dispassionately,
and a set of cursed waterholes created by an ancient
magical battle...
If it weren't for Tolkein and that guy that
turns into a cat, I'd have said she was full of it. More
on the weirdness factor later.
The water is still polluted badly. At least
there aren't all those floating bodies anymore.
Somewhere under that waterline is our
ancestral home, our high school, and our past.
Where our future is, I have no idea.
----------------------
January 16, 1992:
I thought I was hallucinating. I wasn't.
I thought that I knew how the world worked. It
appears that I need to consider MacBeth's remarks
to Horatio, that there are far stranger things in the
world than my former philosophies indicated.
The Captain is an ex-superspy who
reads cheap romance novels. The owner makes
casual references to things that happened over
a thousand years ago. The surly pilot apparently
came from an amazon village in China years ago.
And a short, stocky, British sounding
seaman has been diving down hundreds of feet
to come back up with salvage. No evidence of the
bends, and when I take a look under the waves
using a glass bowl, I can barely see the tops of
the buildings.
Somehow this guy "Tolkein" is able
to swim down there, then come up laden with
loot that should have weighed him down.
Some girl named Atsuko and a kid
named Ryunnosuke were found during the
night. As soon as we've got enough supplies,
we're heading to a safe port. The Captain isn't
sure the usual Chinese port is even going to
be there, and the volcano is between here and
Australia.
None of the crew seems to particularly
care what we figure out at this point. The owner
smirks, and the short guy just mumbles something
about how if I've got the time to play "junior
detective" that I should be helping out instead.
Point taken.
------------------------------------------
January 17, 1992:
The crew called everyone in to hear this.
Turns out, lots of places like the American Midwest
and Central Europe have pretty much survived
unscathed. Island nations like Japan, well- the shoreline
is at what used to be 525 feet above sea level before
Loki.
Not only have both poles been melted, but
there are new landmasses forming. Water gets displaced
there so there's more of it here. They expect the waters
to recede some as the Arctic refreezes but it may take some
time for sea levels to return to normal.
Kasumi's looking a lot better. Having something
to do, like help with the cooking, has improved her a lot
faster than bed rest.
Atsuko (weird girl), Ryunnosuke (elementary
school kid), some JHS student named Nanami Rokugo,
and three people from what used to be a mountain village
were already there.
Yeah, we've made contact with other Japanese.
Forgot to mention that. Other than the first tsunami, the
water levels were just slowly rising for the past several
days. Not that one can notice away from land, but the
landbound folks were continually scrambling to get away
from the new shoreline.
When it hit, "Loki" also ripped open a section of
the planetary crust. I've never been that much up on geology
or planetary sciences, but apparently Nathan and Kissu are
both into this stuff a little more. What "Loki" did, according
to the brain trust in Zurich, was to create very briefly a very
intense gravitational field. Ice was crushed before it melted.
Then the planet's crust buckled and fissured.
There's an awful lot of displaced water right now.
Not to mention cloud cover from all the volcanoes worldwide.
On to the current problem. One of the really big
chunks of rock is going to miss us. Yay for our side. The
remains of Ragnarock is gonna miss us. Unfortunately, the
computer models all indicate we're gonna be missing a
moon real soon. They've renamed Ragnarock to "Fenris"
now.
A chunk of ice, rock, nickel-iron, and those
aforementioned "exotic elements" roughly the size of
Shinjuku (those nukes did some good after all) will
impact the moon in eight days. With the velocity of
Fenris at being 28,500kph, neither is expected to survive.
This turns the "planet killer" cannonball into
more of a shotgun effect. Pieces of moon and meteor will
be drawn into the "gravity well" of Earth and are gonna
continue to hit for some time.
Another missle like "Loki" hit Germany.
It's a mess.
----------------------------
January 19, 1992:
Something really unusual happened today.
I was helping out to seperate the last bundle of stuff that
Tolkein had brought up (mainly canned foods and some
stuff from camping stores) when the owner's voice came
over the loudspeaker and said for all the women to get
belowdecks STAT. He followed that with a cryptic comment
about "she survived."
Judging from the other refugees, I'd guess none of
them had a clue either. From the crewmembers, you could tell
they knew what the scoop was. Talcum, who is usually so
calm and stoic you'd think he was stone, actually snarled. The
reactions among other crew varied, but it appeared that whoever
"she" was- liked was not an option. I saw fear (Neko-san), some
disgust (Tolkein), hate (Kissu), and Lufa actually looked like she
was gonna puke.
Hmmm. I promised I'd intro the crew sometime. In brief,
Talcum and Rogain are males of an amazon tribe somewhere in China.
Lufa and Kissu are women of the same tribe (no they're not mates) who
washed out as warriors for one reason or the other. The owner's a guy
named Nate Brazil who's a riddle wrapped in an enigma. Ritsuko Fujii
is the Captain. Tolkein is a short guy who seems to do the impossible
on a regular basis. I get the impression that "Tolkein" is a nickname,
but I'm not sure from what. The guy named Neko-san is East Indian,
don't know what his real name is. I've seen Neko-san change. He's
some sort of werecat.
Naturally, I was curious. I peeked out of a window to see
a fog rolling in. At high noon. With no land in sight and it being a
brisk day with a strong wind blowing. Once these little details
registered seeing a thick, completely obscuring, fog appear was
a little unnerving.
The wind continued. So did the fog. I heard music, and
against all my plans, I started to go out on deck. I realized that my
body was acting on its own initiative but couldn't seem to stop
myself. I felt as if I were falling down a deep well, from which I
might never recover.
When I woke up, I found out that Tolkein had seen me
and had belted me a good one. My jaw is sore but working. If
what Kissu tells me of my likely fate had I walked out onto the
deck is true, I owe Tolkein BIG time. I also understand why
Lufa looks ill whenever you mention "Madame Lao" or the name
of her ship.
------------------------------------------
January 20, 1992:
Found a "niche" I can work around here. Kasumi
is still working in the kitchen. I'm in what has become the
"map room" as we put together what's going on at any given
point.
I mean, I tried to be helpful on the deck, with the
inventory, but I'm not nearly as strong as the amazons, much
less Tolkein or that Nuku Nuku girl. I don't have Neko-san's gift
for staying on his feet no matter how the ship's rolling. Captain
Fujii seems to have a knack for picking up all sorts of esoteric
knowledge, while Nathan seems to have done all sorts of odd
jobs over his lifetime.
So, instead, I'm stuck manning the radio, taking notes,
and using one of the computers to make corrections and flags
on a worldmap. So, today was kinda busy.
Germany's got a massive set of volcanoes near the
border of what used to be Poland. Poland isn't there anymore.
Both poles are melted. Antarctica is tearing itself apart
in massive volcanic actions. The arctic, however, is beginning to
stabilize. When everything cools off, you'll be able to walk North
from Quebec and end up in Russia without ever getting your feet
near the water.
The Home Islands are pretty much toast. What isn't
underwater is getting buried in ash from the volcano that's SW of
where Kobe used to be. The major technology/population centers
left with minimal disruption are the American Midwest, Canada,
Southern and Western Australia (except for the flooded bits).
There are little areas here and there, but a number of
the supply and distribution routes were wiped out and are being
reworked now.
Refugees are descending upon these "safe" areas
and the results are unpleasant. Take in the extra people, in which
case your own supplies are stretched past the breaking point, or
start shooting 'cause that's the only way to keep from being
overwhelmed.
In three days it may be a moot point anyway. That's
when we lose the moon.
---------------------------
January 21, 1992
We rescued someone else today. Unconcious, drifting,
and looking like she'd been through a massive fight. It was one of
the Sailor Senshi. I never thought they were this YOUNG.
Anyway, if I've got the colors of her sentai uniform right,
this is Sailor Venus. She's still unconcious, and it looks like she's got
CLAW MARKS on her. Tolkein put his hand over her forehead and
winced. Seems he's got some way of looking into someone's head
when he does it. Guy does three impossible things before breakfast,
what can I say.
What he was gathering, and assuming it wasn't some kinda
fever dream, is that there were these young girls on a mountain, looking
out at all the devastation around them, when Madame Lao shows up.
She sees a guy and a large number of recruits, so she invites 'em all
aboard. After they're on this ship of hers, she has the guy thrown in a
cage, and sics these heavily armed mercenary types on the girls to
undergo various personality modification stuff.
The girls, of course, are the Sailor Senshi in civilian costumes.
They decide that keeping their secret identities is NOT worth being turned
into submissive lesbian playtoys. One of 'em, Sailor Uranus, apparently
leans that way but isn't into the S&M stuff like Lao is. Big fight. Madame
Lao turns into a tiger during the scuffle. Venus here doesn't know what
happened to the others, just that the ship could regenerate damage up to
a certain point and that this point was rapidly being exceeded when she got
mauled and thrown overboard.
Tolkein speculates that Lao knew she'd bitten off more than
even she wanted to chew and was trying to get the Senshi off her ship
at that point. Venus happened to be nearest the exit. He also mentioned
he'd seen this before. Some villain operating a successful operation for
a whole lot of years, gets greedy, overreaches, and suffers.
Nathan calls it hubris. I call it stupid. Taking slaves? In
this day and age? And with all the problems the survivors are having,
somebody wants to make a profit off it all? You don't steal from the
poor, they don't have anything worth the effort. That's why they're
called poor. The rich have all sorts of ways of keeping what's theirs, so
you scam them and they give it to you.
Oh sure, she has her floating sex palace running around,
if it didn't get sunk by the Senshi. As I've seen on this ship, there's a
lot of strangeness out there. Sooner or later, Lao is going to piss off
an even bigger shark than she is.
Maybe she already has.
------------------------------------------
January 22, 1992
Sleeping beauty woke up, screaming. Apparently she
had some kinda pet cat who they think shuffled off the mortal coil
when the floods hit. Between that, seeing the dead bloated bodies
of former classmates, then narrowly avoiding becoming some
deranged immortal pirate's sextoy...
Yeah, I can see where that'd make even one of the Senshi
want to curl up and scream a few times. She got over it, of course, the
same way we all have. We're just putting everything off until we have
the luxury of going to pieces. THEN we'll all quietly fall apart. Right
now, surviving is enough to keep us occupied.
After Venus there shifted back to her normal form, we
left her alone for a few hours. She tells us that she can contact the
others later, after we reach port.
Wakayama or Okayama look feasible as ports. The
plagues (results of having bodies washing up on shore) and
such haven't touched these regions too much. We can unload
at either of those, try to make a living. Me and Kasumi will
debark there with the rest of the refugees. This strange little
ship will continue to operate in the area while the rest of us
settle into survival mode.
Tomorrow we make visual contact, first with Okayama.
Tomorrow also is the impact day for Fenris. Should be interesting.
------------------------------------------
January 23, 1992
We've found a nice little village in Okayama.
We're staying there. The ship is in port but will be leaving
during the night.
The night sky is...different. The meteor showers
should really start in another three days. We're settled in and
it looks like we'll be able to fit into this society.
When we were saying goodbye to the crew,
Kasumi mentioned a few names, and that if Nathan or Fujii
and their crew heard of 'em, to send them over here where
we'll be waiting.
Kasumi still has some hope that Doctor Tofu will
have survived. She also mentioned this Ranma Saotome, our
sister Akane, and Sakura Shingei - the old samurai woman from
down the block. I tend to agree that old Shingei-san is entirely
too tough to die from a mere tidal wave or meteor impact.
They talked it over and put together a little board.
They'll fax sheets over to other ships and towns, and anyone
who is genuinely looking for someone else will have a chance
to find them.
Speaking of which I've actually met a couple of
celebrities now. Of course, they're pulling normal jobs now,
and they're refugees like everyone else. If things ever get
even vaguely back to normal, though, they'll be contacts.
Anyway, back to bed. Lot of work to do tomorrow.
------------------------------------------
i'd been getting a LOT of negative
e-mail about the "Man Among Men" concept,
with Plague of the Four Horsemen introducing
a change. It occurred to me after people were done
throwing stones in my direction after "Enslaved"
(and similar stories that some people really really
hated) that i'd at least managed to get the beehive
moving.
i _have_, after all, been trying to come
up with new twists on the old stories. i've been told
that it's all been done before. Sounded like a challenge
to me...
As for "Man Among Men" yes, the
American military forces proved once again that
Military Intelligence is an oxymoron
when they blew up a biological weapons facility in
Iraq. NOT using firebombs. The change in "Man
Among Men" was a mutation in a virus that made
it a LOT more effective than it could have been.
back to Ragnarock:
Big chunks of meteor coming down,
chewing up the local real estate. The missiles and
such are few and far between (more resource
consumptive and they're here to claim resources,
not use them.)
The aliens don't even need to make
an appearance, they could be REALLY alien and
have an inscrutable motive. My original take on
them was "let's keep the natives pinned down while
we go after the planetary resources elsewhere, by
the time they recover we'll be gone." So they wreck
the majority of the planets, send the remains along
their chosen flight path, then leave. As Earth isn't
as resource rich as some of the others, they'll leave it.
Each chapter details a little further how
character X is coping, and reveals a little more detail
on how the world in general has been affected.
Ranma in China, finds an injured amazon
girl. Together, they try to overcome the language barrier
and survive as the area is devastated by earthquakes
and new volcanoes forming along the faultlines. Genma
has been seperated from Ranma, Shampoo separated
from her village (which was being evacuated due to the
ash from one of the new volcanoes.)
Akane spends time trapped on a raft with
Kuno. She can't swim. This is pretty dark in and of itself.
Making it funny would be the scene where Akane meets
Ranma and starts telling Kuno that she can't marry him
because family honor demands she marries Ranma. Its
possible she'd be VERY nice to Ranma to avoid this fate.
(Figure that lost at sea, no hope of rescue, they're the only
two people around, things said and done that might leave
Akane wishing that she HAD died.)
Of course, if someone is meaner than i am, Akane
could have been rescued by Madame Lao and converted/
brainwashed to lesbian sex slave before the end of Chapter 2.
Senshi being heroic outside of Japan. i'm told that
their powers aren't reliant on the planet so much as on the
principles/concepts behind them. If this is so, their power
levels wouldn't be affected by their planet being consumed.
If not, then by the end of this: Jupiter and Saturn will have
their power levels reduced, Mercury and Venus unaffected
as their planets are too close to the sun for the raiders, Moon
would be powerless, the three outermost planets would
likewise be gone and not supplying any manna to their Senshi.
Various other characters coming together as
the world begins to recover from the cataclysm before
Ragnarock strikes.
Nuku nuku and Ryunnosuke are from "Nuku Nuku."
i can see Kasumi making friends with Nuku. Nanami Rokugo is
a pyrokinetic JHS student from "Phantom Quest Corporation."
Eventually the UN Spacy battlecruiser "Yamato"
takes off to contact the Juraians for help. Shampoo watching
tons of space opera anime as "research."
Yes, this is THAT fic. Akane "I'm a spacefighter
pilot, too, you know" Tendo in her B-Wing. Nurse Kasumi!
Ryouga getting lost during a space battle in his Y-Wing.
Shampoo singing the "Star Blazers" theme as she goes into
battle in her powerarmor. Makoto Mizuhara and Keichi
Morisato trying to figure out how some of Washu's gadgets
work so they can fix them. Chinese Amazon Space Marines!
Belldandy feeling guilty because Marller was keeping her
busy/exhausted while all of this was going on. Tenchi & Co
feeling guilty because they were off on the "Planet Of Hot
Springs" and got sidetracked.
The crew of the "Myou no Maru" appears in
Featherbrite's Tale, and is mentioned as the "Chacha Maru"
in Happi Days. Madame Lao appears courtesy of Jim Bader.
She's a survivor, after all.
Any engineers who want to correct me about
the sizes/masses involved, don't bother. I am NOT the engineer,
and have no idea how much mass Shinjuku actually has.
Change the story to make whatever corrections you want and
take it over.
i am still collecting input on the various fanfiction Jusenkyo
springs and will write up a "Fanfic Guide to Jusenkyo" when i've got
a chance.
Oh well, ja ne.