Bubblegum Crisis Fan Fiction / Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Battle Angel Alita Fan Fiction ❯ Hearts of Fire and Chrome ❯ Prologue: The Angel ( Prologue )

Hearts of Fire and Chrome
by The 17th Immortal
<chengxian17@yahoo.com>

Disclaimer:
Ranma 1/2 is copyrighted by Rumiko Takahashi, Kodansha, Viz Comics, and anyone else that I may have forgotten. Battle Angel Alita is under the copyrights of Yukito Kishiro, Viz Comics (again!) and Shueisha, Inc. Bubblegum Crisis is the product of Toshimichi Suzuki, Youmex, Inc. and AnimEigo. I therefore cannot be held responsible nor sued for any involvement with the use of characters that originate from any of these three series.

Any other, original characters that may come about during the course of this fanfic are the result of my own warped mind. You have been duly warned.

Author's Pre-Note:
This story takes place towards the end of the Battle Angel Alita manga, as well as long since after Vol. 38 of the Ranma 1/2 manga, and at the tail end of "Revenge Road", episode 4 of the original BGC miniseries.

[…] indicates thoughts

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Prologue: The Angel

There were no choices left.

But then, there was never a choice to begin with. With Melchizedek's deliberate self-destruction, literally ejecting its own core from out the bottom of Tiphares in an act that Alita could only compare to a childish temper-tantrum, the orbital support ring keeping the midair city of Tiphares aloft, suspended more than two and a half kilometers above the earth, would crumble and fall apart, dropping uncountable billions of tons of steel and plastic onto the planet. Tiphares itself, the Scrapyard beneath it, any farms or villages that the falling pieces of the ring might impact upon… Thousands, millions of innocent people would die!

There never was any choice to be made in the first place.

Perched on the Sky Hook where the orbital ring connected to Jacob's Ladder, Alita spared herself a brief moment of reflection. Above her, hundreds of kilometers distant, was the city-in-space Ketheres. Once intended to become a spaceport to the worlds outside, it was nothing more than a technological abomination where the harvested brains of Tiphares citizens were sent to further the operation of the enormous Melchizedek computer, a place where people too frightened of the unknown pointlessly fought against the controls of nature and time. At least, she had learned, her own homeworld of Mars has refused such, living life as it was supposed to be lived: in transition, living and dying as humans meant to do.

And down below, just as far away, was Tiphares. The floating, midair city, it had been thought of for centuries as the aloof rulers of all by those on the surface, now exposed to all as merely the dwelling-place of a bunch of spoiled, bratty `children' of a psychotically deranged computer that its inhabitants had become. The only true Tiphares, the ones worth believing in, were the ones who had been cast out, the criminals and the idealists, shunned as impure and cast out with the refuse.

Fallen from Grace. Alita allowed herself a brief chuckle at that. How morbidly appropriate.

The rumbling increased, signifying that the ring sections were beginning to separate. No more time. The time is now.

Alita gripped the mechano-remote, the trigger that would activate the transmutation of her Imaginos cells - the living, mechanical cells that formed the basis of her own cyborg body, Professor Desty Nova's ultimate achievement in cybernetic nanotechnology - tightly in hand, and pressed the button.

The effect was almost instantaneous. White light flooded Alita's vision as the Imaginos cells in her body joined and merged into one single unique purpose. As Alita's consciousness faded into white, her last thought was:

[Dr. Ido… Lou… Figure Four… I did it. I did good, didn't I?]

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"Well, you're certainly looking dapper for one who's just about to have her entire physical structure discorporated, aren't you my dear?"

[What?] Alita eyes snapped open. Standing in front of her was what had to be the LAST person she ever expected to see after doing what she just did: Professor Nova himself, with his swept-back curly white hair, his full-cheek wraparound glasses that looked like some kind of cybernetic face-shield, his Tiphares citizen's mark, and his white lab coat. He even had that damn plateful of flan in his hand!

"Now, now, my dear," Nova said lightly, spooning a bit of the flan into his mouth. "No need to be so quick to judge. After all, if it weren't for my incredible genius, your consciousness and personality would have dissipated and spread throughout the network of Imaginos cells only now about to begin to merge with the orbital ring and the Ladder. Kya ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"

Alita grit her teeth. Damn, that cackle of his was so annoying! Then it hit her what he said. "Wait, didn't you tell me…"

Nova stopped laughing as though a switch had been thrown. "Yes, if you're referring to the time-effect the reaction has, yes indeed, it should be practically instantaneous. However, a signal sent from the trigger the instant that the Imaginos cells were activated caused the cerebral accelerator I had installed in your brain to activate as well, so that we can have this little chat. Consider this an inside space within a single instant of your own mind." He took another bite of flan and made a rapturous little face.

Alita blink-blinked. "Then, you're not…"

"Kya ha, ha, ha, ha! Of course not! I, Alita my dear," he took a little bow, "am but a simulacrum of the great Professor Desty Nova, at your service! My template, the real Professor Nova, included me for the purpose of asking you for a small favor, one he believes for which you are… uniquely qualified."

Alita had to narrow her eyes at that one. None of Prof. Nova's favors ever came lightly. The last time she had been forced to ask this madman for a favor herself - to resurrect poor Dr. Ido after Zapan had gone totally berserk and killed him in a fit of insanity - she had been forced to wait almost ten years before returning, due to her forced service as a `Tuned'. And even then, the good doctor's memories of her were completely gone, erased by Dr. Ido himself when Nova had revealed the dark secret that Tiphares had over its citizens - that the `initiation ceremony' one had to go through to become such a citizen involved the replacement of the person's brain with a bio-chip contained a digitized version of that person's memories and personality.

The copy-Nova went on as though he either had not seen or ignored Alita's expression; and, knowing the good professor's profound eccentricity (some would call it insanity), it could swing either way.

"You see, my girl, yours is not the first Imaginos body I have ever produced. Oh, no! That honor belongs to the whole POINT of this little debacle!"

Narrowing her eyes, Alita asked frostily, "What are you getting at?"

Copy-Nova smiled exactly as his original would have; a bit unnervingly. "When I first constructed the Imaginos body, I used the brain of a boy I had discovered, frozen preserved in ice in what remains of our world's southern icecap, as the basic blueprint for the design. Brilliant tactical mind, that one was, if a bit uneducated in the worldly sciences. Must have been encased there for centuries at the very least, maybe even as much as a whole millennium! Used a style of martial arts that could quite possibly give even your Panzer Kunst a run for its credits!

"In any case, my original Imaginos design unfortunately did not include the presence of a specialized tachyon emissions filter. Quite imagine my surprise when the poor boy suddenly disappeared from right out in front of me! Disappeared completely outside of Time, as a matter of fact!"

Alita blinked again, and then her jaw gaped open. Tachyons, subatomic particles that had been long-since proven to travel at speeds faster than light itself, had been the cornerstone for theories centering around time-travel for centuries, even if not one of them had ever yet been proven. "You mean…"

"Oh, yes!" Copy-Nova nodded excitedly about another mouthful of the dessert, on the verge of another bout of mad laughter. "The greatest scientific achievement of this, or any other century, and I stumble upon it quite by accident! Kya ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!" That did it.

"In any case," he went on a moment later, all seriousness again, "this brings me to the favor I must ask of you. Included with this simulacrum is the data that you can use to follow after your wayward `brother' of sorts. Accept or refuse this favor, it is entirely up to you. You know I don't like to limit your free will like that. However, I would think that your sense of honor would admit to a debt owed to this poor, lost soul. After all, he IS the prototype that went into your making!"

Damn it! This flan-eating megalomaniacal crackpot had her over a barrel and he knew it! Alita's honor did indeed demand that she at least try to help this man, a man whose sacrifice had raised her to where she now stood. And even if her honor could find a way out of this, her conscience wouldn't let her!

"………Alright. Alright, damn you, I'll do it," she hissed through clenched teeth, a tear finding its way down her face as she forced back a sob. "Show me how to go after him."

This time, the smile that Copy-Nova graced her with was a genuine one. "Thank you," he said a bit quietly as he held out a hand, in it a data diskette. "I may be only a simulation of the real Professor Nova, but I can honestly tell you this means a lot to me, to us. The data here includes how to temporarily disengage the tachyon filter included in your body, as well as the exact conditions under which your predecessor disappeared. Theoretically - THEORETICALLY, mind you; without knowledge of all the variables present, even I have no way of ever knowing for sure - by duplicating those conditions, you should arrive in roughly the same time period that your `brother' did."

The diskette was merely for show; the instant Alita's fingers touched it, the data it would have contained was beamed directly into Alita's memory banks, and the diskette itself dissolved into oblivion.

Then Copy-Nova perked up, his smile returned to the real Nova's crazy smile. "It's just as well, you know. If you had refused, you might not have been able to return to yourself - at least not as you currently are, and nowhere near so quickly. One thing my template failed to realize, at least by the time he handed me over to you, is that by saving everyone this way, his life would be indebted to you. Such a thing, at least by the Professor's standards - to be rescued from death by the selflessness of a mere EXPERIMENT - why, such a thing simply cannot be excused. Poor man, such an intense flux of karma would drive him utterly insane!"

Alita went rigid in shock. "WHAT!?"

Copy-Nova waved out the concern dismissively. "Oh don't worry your pretty head about it, my dear. Remember I told you - or rather, my template told you, you know how these things go - with my physical composition and memory and personality data coded into the molecular motion(1) of the planet's atmosphere, I am now the closest thing to immortal that a human can become! At the worst, you would have to wait until his current vessel has died or is killed off, and a replacement generated. On the other hand, if the backup memory bio-chip in my template's stomach remains unaffected, why, it could take as little as two, maybe even as much as five or six years before you would be up and running about again!"

Alita scowled, her fists tightening in growing anger. "Novaaaaaa…"

"Glah…! Um, I do believe it's time for us to be going, my dear. Best of luck to you and all that!" Copy-Nova said nervously, sweat pouring down his face as he realized his predicament. "Bye now!"

And then Alita's vision began to haze to gray, her knees buckling as dizziness swept over her. And a sense of falling in all directions…

"Oh, by the way," Nova's voice called out to her from seemingly far away. "When you do happen to find your counterpart, remember! His name is Ranma! Ranma Saotome!"

And then everything truly went white.

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To be continued…
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Author's Note:

Well, there's my brainchild, off to a running start! Do email me and tell me how you like it, won't you?

Point of order, however: For those of you who have seen the Battle Angel anime, keep in mind that I have not, and am using the nine-book manga series, along with the "Last Order" insert series, for any and all of my BAA info. The names should be a dead giveaway.

For those interested in the series, the order of books are as follows, published by Viz Comics:

Battle Angel Alita
Tears of an Angel
Killing Angel
Angel of Victory
Angel of Redemption
Angel of Death
Angel of Chaos
Fallen Angel
Angel's Ascension

Last Order series (takes place during Angel's Ascension):

Angel Reborn
Angel of Innocents
Angel Eternal (most recent book, more to come)

(1) Molecular motion: in a nutshell, it states that although for the most part random, there is information to be had in the specific motion of any given molecule; a sort of "data dance", to use the closest possible analogy. See Last Order, book 1: Angel Reborn for the full details.