Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Generation Lost ❯ Technical Support ( Chapter 3 )

Chapter 3 - Technical Support

"Nothing's the same anymore." Babylon 5, Season 5 Intro.

Ranma woke up in the upper bunk bed. She looked down to see Sarah sleeping in the lower bunk. No one had told Ranma that she needed to sleep in female form. Ranma and Sarah were brother and sister, technically half siblings, but that didn't matter.

Ranma had lost what had been his room, for a short time, so Allison could sleep there. It was a symbolic gesture, designed to appease Allison's parents. If Allison and Dan wanted to get frisky nothing could really stop them, especially given Allison's ability to turn invisible.

This bunk bed had a lower bunk running perpendicular to the upper bunk. Ranma jumped off the upper bunk, got dressed, and walked out of the room. She knocked on the bathroom door. "Just a minute," Allison shouted over the shower.

"Never mind," Ranma said, walking down the stairs.

Jack was sitting in the living room reading a newspaper. "Hey Ranma," he said without looking up.

At the foot of the stairs she asked, "How'd you know it was me?"

"I have my ways," the sheriff said, turning the page.

"I'm really sick of people saying that."

"Sorry to hear about your template."

"Have any suspects," Ranma asked, looking for the downstairs bathroom.

"Not my jurisdiction."

"Whoever did this tried to kill us,"

"Read the town charter," Jack said still reading, "I'll help when the time's right," he said in the grim tone of a man caught between duty and honor.

Ranma shrugged and went to find the bathroom. It was adjacent to the den, near the kitchen, and tucked away. Ranma tried the faucets first. She managed to change back with hot water. Her curse seemed to have stabilized, at least for now, and was back to the standard triggers.

Ranma exited the bathroom and went into the kitchen. Dan was sitting at the table. He had a pot of coffee in front of him, with a straw sticking out. The pot was half gone and he had a glazed look to his eyes.

Actually Ranma wasn't sure, considering he'd never seen Dan when he wasn't sleeping, pulling an all-nighter, or looked half baked.

"Hey it's the Ran-Man," Dan said before falling face first on the table. "Ouch," he said in a little too mellow voice.

Sarah wearing slacks, a blouse, and her vest walked into the room took a swig of coffee, put the pot back down. "You are an idiot," she said slowly to her cousin, then to Ranma. "We're going to have some problems unless we can get wonder boy here to wake up," she said pointing to Dan's now sleeping form.

"What did he do?" Ranma asked.

"He just stayed up all night getting a project essay done, but that's not the worst of it, if he can't drive us to school. . ." Sarah trailed off when Allison entered the room.

Allison done with bathing and dressed in her normal clothes that is to say revealing yet not cheap, well not that cheap. "You know Dan you shouldn't do this every night it's bad for you-" Allison's stern lecture fell short when she realized what Dan's present state meant. She stopped looked at her sleeping boyfriend then a the coffee pot, then ran out of the room.

Ranma heard the garage door slam shut. "Is she really that bad?" he asked, not wanting to know the answer.

"Worse. It's not that she can't drive, actually yes it is. I mean she's almost a good as Dan is when it comes to mechanics, but put her in the driver's seat, and well," Sarah rambled off.

"So what do we do?"

"You can't stop her. Unless you want to try."

Ranma remembered the maniacal glint Allison possessed, "Um not particularly." He then looked at Dan's comatose body, "So what do we do with him?"

"Help me drag him to the Beast."

Dan woke up. He felt nauseous and had a splitting headache. It almost felt as if his brains were being ground up. Wait that wasn't his brains. It was his truck. OH NO.

Dan bolted up, or tried to, he was secured in the front passenger seat by his belt. "Allison," he said grinding his teeth. "Why are you driving my truck? You know I love you but, YOU DO NOT DRIVE MY TRUCK."

Dan unclipped his belt and lunged over about to pull the keys out when it hit him. The truck sounded normal, a bit strained but normal, and otherwise fine. "Um sorry, but when did you start to drive competently?"

"Oh that," Allison said shifting into a higher gear, "I've been practicing at my parents house."

Dan nodded. Allison was driving a bit slow, only twenty over the speed limit, but she had shifted into the right gear, and was handing the Beast reasonably well. Considering the engine under the hood of the black tuck that was an accomplishment for even a normal driver, let alone Allison. "Why'd they let you drive I mean you're a great mechanic, but you backed into a tree." Dan paused, "repeatedly."

Meanwhile Raman was relaxing in the back. Allison was still going way too fast but at least they had yet to go airborne.

Sarah was sitting next to Ranma working on a laptop. She was humming.

"What are you doing?" Ranma asked.

"Researching on Spore," she replied.

"Oh the German guy who wrote my template."

"That's the one," she said then resumed humming. "Except he's not German."

"Huh?"

"I traced back those files that Sean was storing. The German account was just that, another account, another storage site." Sarah then hummed a few more bars, "So I searched the billing list as to who paid for the drive space."

"Who?" Ranma inquired, pondering the song it was vary familiar.

"A Japanese software company."

"Oh crap."

"Yup seems like one of your old 'pals' has a sick sense of humor."

"The software company may be just another shell," Dan said, watching Allison drive.

"To much of a coincidence," Sarah said, then started humming again.

Ranma nodded. That song was really getting annoying. It almost sounds like the opening to. . .

"Hey!" Ranma said indignant.

"Took you long enough," Sarah said grinning.

"Isn't that the theme song to Sailor Moon?" Allison asked.

"Eyes on the road," Dan warned.

Ranma fumed.

"Lighten up. I mean you can hum the theme to Mech. Warrior."

"or The Matrix."

"or Invisible Man."

"or The Terminator."

"or Stargate."

"Yeah but you guys chose your templates and you can still edit yours," Ranma said.

"True that does suck." Sarah said.

"But a least you've go some serious power," Dan said.

"You can fly too," Allison added.

Ranma grumbled.

The Beast pulled into the school parking lot. "Very good," Dan said as Allison put the truck into park and pulled out the keys. Getting out of the truck, "Okay Allison and I have all of our classes together, and you two have all of yours together," Dan told Ranma and Sarah also out of the truck.

"So did you get put ahead a year?" Ranma asked. After all he was a year older.

"Not exactly," Sarah said grabbing her pack and starting to walk to school.

Ranma thought about this, "I got sent back a year."

"Number one our school year ends in summer, number two education is different over here, and number three you're not a scholarly person," Dan listed.

"So you're saying I'm dumb."

"No you just don't care about school that's all."

Ranma approached the door to the school, "Wait, the hacker that did this to me is most likely a student here right?"

"That's why I'm suggesting we stay in teams of two," Dan said approaching the door.

The lady in shadows sat in the student lounge working. This time she was not alone, about two dozen other students were in the lounge. Most of them were working on laptops similar to hers. A few even had I/O spheres out. She had hers set on long range scan.

It started when she replayed what the golem sent out before being destroyed. She found that Sarah's twin was named Ranma, and when she correlated it with school records. She found a Ranma, but this person was male.

Further examinations of the broadcast, revealed two things, first in the hands of a skilled user that template was very powerful, and her toy had some other programs. The conversation in the standing circle refereed to a sex changing curse. She then researched the name they had used: Jusenkyou. Apparently it was a water triggered curse.

This made the repercussions of the imprint were even more amusing. The intentions of the Lady in Shadows were not that malicious, if Ranma ever got the decryption key he'd have a good chance of removing a good part of the code.

Wizards and such are generally a laid back bunch, but they suffer from the same malady of immortals and other beings of power, boredom. So they spend their time finding activities that they find interesting or entertaining.

Granted the lady does have sick sense of humor and that she'll play puppet master just for a few laughs doesn't mean she's evil. Oh wait yes it does, but at least she's no megalomaniac from an alternate dimension bent on global domination.

Given her intentions what she did to the school's computer system was no surprise, even though it was a simple trick.

Ranma was following Sarah, walking towards the doors when he heard something. A familiar noise, the sound of sprinklers about to go off. Ranma tried to dodge but for some reason he could never dodge water very well whether it was from a ladle, puddle, or sprinkler.

Jets of water came out covering the lawn and a certain martial artist. From inside the foyer Dan and Allison watched Ranma get soaked. "Ranma wasn't kidding when he said he was a water magnet," She commented

Dan nodded.

Sarah was standing by the door, "Come on in," she told Ranma.

Ranma walked in completely soaked. Her shirt was quite clingy. She was grumbling something.

"That was odd," Sarah said.

"Nah it's just my curse. This kind of crap always happenings to me."

From the guardrail of the student lounge, Ned Winston saw Sarah O'Neill enter the school followed by a soaking wet girl that looked just like her. He then walked up to the lady in shadows, "Hey Rebecca, you know Sarah had a twin?"

Rebecca looked up from her laptop, "Heard she's her long lost sister from Japan,"

Ned nodded, "Makes sense, I mean Sarah is half Japanese. Although the sprinklers must have hit her, odd."

Rebecca raised an eyebrow at Ned.

"Yes fine, that wasn't that odd at all. It was probably just a prank," Ned sensing awkwardness, then grabbed his bag and left the lounge.

Rebecca sighed, the only reason she put up with Winston at all was his ability to create golems; magically enhanced robots. Ned had that right mix of programming talent and engineering aptitude to excel in the field. They had worked out a little agreement, he gave her the occasional bot and she kept him supplied with raw materials.

"Well this sucks," Ranma said still in female form.

"What?" Sarah asked leading him to the next class.

"Let's see a good portion of the school saw me transform."

"I don't think so. I was standing right at the doors and I didn't see anyone out there, and no one from the lounge could see where you were standing."

"True," Ranma said pondering. "So now what?"

"You should just go on in ."

Ranma looked at the knob. Inhaled, grabbed and turned. She stepped into a classroom. At lest she though it was one. Her experience with classrooms it the rigid grid of desks that dated back to the 50's. this room had a white board that ran along one wall, a cluttered teacher's desk in a corner, a bunch of chairs and tables in the center of the room, and running the other three walls were numerous computer stations.

The teacher, a well rested looking middle aged man, walked up to the near twins. "I'm Mr. Jones and you must be the new girl Ranma," he said, then wandered back to his desk.

"Um, yeah." Ranma said unsure. "What's going on here?" she whispered to her sister.

"Most of the teacher are pretty laid back. I mean they have to be, they're teaching a bunch of people that have some pretty heavy powers. The only way you can stay sane around here is to go with the flow. But Jones is the most apathetic, then again he's been here the longest out of the entire staff."

"No not that. Why did he call me a girl?"

"There is the family resemblance," Sarah suggested.

"No that's not it. We'd have had different last names on the roster, yet he knew mine" Ranma had a bad feeling about this.

"Um, the records could be wonky. Come on let's sit down," Sarah said leading Ranma to a computer station in the back.

Ranma saw about a eighteen other students most of whom were asleep. He then sat down in a seat next to Sarah, who had just turned on one of the computers.

Mr. Jones shuffled to the front of the room. "Alright class. Come on you lazy bastards, I only require you to listen to me once a day, so Wake Up," he said clenching his teeth.

About a third of the class woke up blinked at the Mr. Jones and fell back asleep, the rest maintained consciousness but were apathetic and slothful.

"Close enough," Mr. Jones muttered. Then in a dry monotone "Anyway your projects are due Friday, not that any of you care. We have a new student. The damp one next to Sarah. That's it. I'll be sleeping." He then shuffled to his chair, put his feet on his desk and went to sleep.

Ranma found this surprising. She never had a teacher that didn't seem to care at all. She looked at the rest of the class. Some were still sleeping, while the others had shifted to computers. "What's with this place?"

"Nearly all the classes here are self paced," Sarah said. "It would be a futile to try and force any of us to do daily work. Even the people with limited potential and skill are too independent to be 'normalized' by public school. This must be really weird considering the uniform wearing, teacher respecting, hard work grinding, and pointless task completing regimenting of Japanese schools."

"That's an extreme interpretation."

"But an accurate one."

Ranma shrugged, he turned to see a girl standing behind her. She was rather average with long brown hair, pulled back in a lose braid.

"Hey Sarah?" she asked. "I didn't know you had a twin," she said pointing to Ranma.

"Ranma's not my twin Julie," Sarah said typing, "Technically she's my half brother."

"Huh?" Julie said, confused by the conflicting pronouns.

"We share a mother. You see when his father died, he moved over here. Now the reason he looks like, well, me is that he's got this weird curse."

"Oh is it a virus or corrupt coding?"

"I think it's a little of both, although it wasn't written in Calash."

"Have you tried removing it?"

"Oh the uninstall is easy, but it won't be taken out right now."

"Alright then," Julie said then walked off.

"It's not that I don't mind it. But no one's freaked out by the curse," Ranma said slightly confused.

"Granted there aren't too many sex altering applets floating around, but a couple of people have them."

"So what class is this?"

"Um English?"

"Wait you don't know," Ranma asked, god the teachers were lax here, which is a good thing.

"Well all he does is give us long range writing projects, and then grades them ruthlessly."

Ranma shook her head.

"So why don't you get some hot water?"

"My clothes are still wet. I'll just change right back."

"Yes I see," Sarah said looking at Ranma's shirt. "You really should wear a bra when you're in that form."

Ranma glared at her sister.

"Sorry, but I've got 'em too."

Rebecca checked the remote connection to her O/I sphere. She linked the device to what used to be a cell phone and made a wireless connection between it and her laptop. She didn't want to leave the sphere alone, but she had to distance herself from her toy, and the work she planned was far too precise for a the sphere's long range broadcast settings.

When she found out about her toy's curse she began making a little upgrade for Ranma's template. It was a program she had used before and required only minimal editing to suit her needs. Rebecca even found a way to compensate for the fact that the template could not function at all when Ranma was male.

Now all she had to do was wait.

Ranma grumbled, she was once again female. Just before lunch her clothes had dried enough to allow her to switch back, and then when they walked back from a restaurant near the school the sprinklers hit him again.

At least students were allowed to eat off school grounds. Ranma sighed pulling at her damp again clothes, tomorrow she would bring another set to change into. "So this is the physics room."

"Yup," Sarah replied working on a miniature Tesla coil.

Ranma looked around the room. Half the class was helping the teacher a Mr. Smith build some sort of contraption, while the rest of the class built other smaller machines. Down to the white boards covered with descriptions of Gaussian surfaces, Ampereian loops, and other things that Ranma didn't understand the room looked very much like a mad scientist's lair or a least a research scientist's lab.

During lunch Sarah checked the school records and found out that someone had changed Ranma's sex to female. Sarah remarked that this was another prank done by the same person that imprinted Ranma. Sarah fixed the settings, but considering how easy is was to get in the records could be switched back rather easily.

Ranma was bored and tired, all she wanted to do was take a little nap, and for once in her scholarly career no one would stop her. Ranma put her head down on the workbench and fell asleep.

"Ranma give me some more copper wire," Sarah said. When she failed to get a response she looked over to see her sister fast asleep.

"Fine be that way." Sarah went back to work.

A few minutes later she stopped, and walked out to go to the bathroom.

Rebecca observed all this from the security camera she compromised. Her patience had paid off Ranma was asleep and would be unaware of the edit, and Sarah who might have been able to tell something was amiss, was out of the room.

Being in study hall, she had no concerns of being interrupted, but she had to act fast. She linked the sphere to Ranma's template, and got the standard: "Program locked. Please enter edit code or software will be read only."

Rebecca typed in "noops_wraith_alpha_coMSYS_threve_56," and gained full access to the template. She then loaded her upgrade package which self extracted into the template. After checking to see that the installation was successful, she went into the template's history and deleted any record of the installation. She wanted it to look like the new code had always been there.

Rebecca satisfied with her work disconnected with the template. She would pick up her sphere after school. She continued to watch through the secure-cam to see how much extra time she had, before Sarah returned or Ranma awoke. It was about two minutes.

Sarah came back into the class room to see Ranma still asleep. "Lazy fool," she said, sitting back down and going back to work on her Tesla coil.

Sean Reno was at his computer, trying to contact Spore. He had some rather bad news. Sean knew that this was the chat room that Spore normally hung around, all he had to do was wait.

Spore: hello forge

Germ forge: y34h \/\/e h4v3 t0 t4[k

Spore: dont go into that l33t crap your language is hard enough as it is

Germ forge: sorry can we talk in private

[5 users have been removed from discussion group]

Spore: Remember this is my domain

F: true

S: what do you have to say

F: remember the hacker that stole those file i was storing for you

S: yes

F: that bitch imprinted this new girl

S: so

F: she and her friends are pissed

S: so

F: they are looking for you and the hacker

S: so they do not know where i am

F: neither do I but you should be prepared

S: true okay give me a description

F: japanese girl about 16 short well endowed with bright red hair and she's got a twin sister

[30 seconds pass without a response]

F: spore what's wrong

S: describe the template

F: short skirt ribbons and bows angel wings

S: not good

F: what

S: I have to go now but we will talk later

Gosunkugi Hikaru disconnected from the forum, and looked at his monitor blankly.

"Well you're screwed," a girl's voice said.

Gosunkugi turned to his other computer monitor. On the screen was a girl that looked about his age. She had dark blue medium length hair and was wearing black tights, black blouse, and a short chainmail skirt. She was an extremely lifelike 3d rendering.

"Thanks for pointing out the obvious Erika,"

"Why did you make all those templates in the first place? I mean Shampoo, Akane, Ukyou, Ranma's girl side. Oh wait I see," the computer generated girl glared at the pale teen.

"It's not like I have any magical skills. I mean look at how pathetic I was with voodoo."

"But you're actually good with Calash, those were fully functional templates."

"With Calash anyone can write the programs, but only a select few can actually execute them. I have no latent potential, so I thought they'd never be used. They were just practice."

"But you made me," Erika offered.

"No I didn't. All I did was hack into and link, the best experimental AI's. You were just a fluke."

"But here I am," Erika said pointing to herself.

"No, the only thing 'here' is you input/output feed and your graphical interface. The rest of 'you' is still on over a dozen campuses and corporate labs. The only reason you haven't been taken apart yet is that you've hidden your existence to your true creators."

"But I can pass any Touring test and am the culmination of the top minds in artificial intelligence."

"But all I did was highjack their work."

"So you're a really good hacker that made a simulated girlfriend," Erika said.

"That's too creepy is it?"

"Well not creepy. Is pathetasad a word?" Erika offered.

"I don't know. Is sarcastabitch a word?"

Erika laughed "Okay fine so what do we do about Ranma?"

"Well you try to find out why he left, and where he is now."

"Why don't you ask his friends?"

"Um, at school I'm considered the quiet background person. They'd get real suspicious if I started asking where Ranma was; considering they have yet to find him."

"And what'll you do?"

"I'll get as much as I can about that hacker."

"Why do you trust that drunk?"

"What?"

"When I found out about Germ Forge I traced back to his real name then did a government search on him."

"And what did you find out?"

"Drunken disorderly."

"So?"

"He's a bad person."

"Erika look, he's my friend. He was the one how gave me an I/O sphere and the Calash compiler."

"And why did he do this," she asked skeptically.

"Well, I cleared up some tax problems he had."

"I told you he was bad news."

"Why don't you like him?"

"He let someone get in to his system, and take files he was watching for a friend."

"That wasn't his fault."

"Yes it was."

Gosunkugi sighed, "Look I think I've got a plan but we need more information."

"Alright I'll do it."

"That's my girl."

"I thought you said I wasn't real."

"That's part of my plan too."

Erika looked quizzically at Gosunkugi.

"So what do you think of school?" Sarah asked while she was getting ready for bed.

"It's good, but weird. I mean everything is a long term project," Ranma said, striping down to her boxers and a t-shirt.

"Yeah but don't think it's not hard. It's real easy not to do your project, until the last moment, like Dan does," Sarah said getting into bed. "And you still don't have to sleep as a girl."

"I know, but it seems weird to sleep in a girl's room as a guy."

"Man, Nerima sure did a mind job on you?"

"Hum," Ranma said, not listening.

"What?"

"Ever think that Spore and that hacker are in cahoots or even the same person. I mean it's way to convent that someone from Japan makes a template of my girl side then stores that template with someone who just happens to live in Lock Ridge."

"You may have a point, we'll check it out tomorrow," Sarah said turning off the lights, "Goodnight Ranma"

"Yeah night," Ranma said, quickly falling asleep. Rebecca's supplemental programming activated, and the dreams began.

Author's Note: This is a short chapter, it's mostly setup for the next one.