Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Ragnarock ❯ Nabiki's Diary ( Chapter 1 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Metroanime 
Nabiki's Diary chronicles how she and Kasumi fared up through the first month...
Anime/Manga: Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Psychological / Post-apocalyptic / Angst | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 11.08.2002 | Pages: 5 | Words: 6.0K | Visits: 1.4K | Status: Completed
Nabiki's Diary chronicles how she and Kasumi fared up through the first month...
Anime/Manga: Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Psychological / Post-apocalyptic / Angst | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 11.08.2002 | Pages: 5 | Words: 6.0K | Visits: 1.4K | Status: Completed
Ranma 1/2: Ragnarock
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.
Metroanime@mindspring.com
http://metroanime.home.mindsp ring.com/
Someone was going to take this one on, but i haven't seen an update in awhile. So here's what i've got. Who was gonna do it, when, etc, were prob lost during one of my hard drive crashes.
Chapter 1: Here's Ragnarock... Nabiki's Tale version 2.0
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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."
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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 according to the newscasters.
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.
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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. Even if he's a moron. 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? All through school up until this year she was more likely to play Romeo than Juliet. She was ignored for the most part, except for her friends Yuka and Sayuri among a few others. The boys, as far as I knew, never noticed her existence. Hmmm. That gives me an idea, and since Kuno's so easy to manipulate...
Oh yeah. Something wild on the news today. Freak astronomical accident. Mars got hit by a 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.
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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 it masses more than three times what the moon does. It isn't coming anywhere near us, thank goodness.
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.
The science types seem to feel that a couple of centuries ago, something BIG passed through the Oort Cloud. Orbits were altered just enough that now, like a snowball rolling down hill, the changes are obvious and catastrophic to anything in its path.
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. Having the very real possibility of becoming personally extinct, I suppose.
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.
Idiots. Rioting and panicking aren't going to do anyone any good. And I can't figure out the ones who are choosing suicide rather than wait for this to hit. I'm considering taking up religion myself, hobbies are good.
We'll see if the American plan to use nuclears on the Ragnarock gets any support. Greenpeace, among other groups, are making waves against the entire idea of using nuclear weapons. There's also groups that, like Akane, are stating the whole thing is some worldwide conspiracy and there are no asteroids. We'll see.
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December 26, 1991:
Asteroid:1, Us:0.
The nukes went bust, or close enough. There's a good chance the Ragnarock will be deflected just 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.
Despite all the criticisms from anti-nuclear groups, none of the missiles that were launched came back down with a trail of radioactive debris or anything similar. I don't understand why they're classifying the number of launches. It was nice to get the United States, China, and Russia cooperating on something. Even Israel threw a few out there, though I didn't know they *had* intercontinental nuclears.
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.
Akane vented a lot of tension and frustration. No way she was going to marry some boy. Of course, she was getting hit a lot at school with the "I don't think we're gonna survive this, and I don't want to die without having made love" line. Some guys have just *no* class. She stomped them, of course. But because there was this nagging feeling that some could have been sincere, you could see that Akane felt a touch of guilt for pounding them.
Nobody tried the line on me. I feel insulted.
The only one that didn't react to this Tendo-Saotome thing was Kasumi. Sometimes I wonder if anyone's home anymore. Funny thing, Doctor Tofu (local chiropractor and moxibuxtion expert) vanished after coming by to see Kasumi the other day. Note on his clinic states that he's gone up
to his family's home in the mountains. Kasumi's so out of it, I don't know that she's noticed.
Maybe she's better off that way.
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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 Furinkan Gym when the tsunami hit.
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 Ten. 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. The earthquake flattened our house and most of the local buildings despite the distance from the epicenter. I'd stayed home from school that day, a lot of us did, and was standing in the street listening to my radio when the earth started moving.
Tremors in Tokyo are common enough. BIG ones are not. I saw buildings going down like dominos, some people hadn't shut off their gas - so explosions and fires immediately going off all around. Then I was trying to get Kasumi out of the house, she'd just gone in "for a minute" when the quake had hit. I found my suitcase, I found Kasumi, then came this odd silence.
It was weird, there was still the alarms in the distance, and there were still items being smashed, and still a few screams and cries off, but it was like there was this "stillness" looming up around us. Then the radio that I'd left on and over by the wall when I'd tried to
unbury Kasumi, the announcer started screaming one of those words which no Japanese really wants to hear. On a news report at least. Tsunami.
It was weird, I'd just gotten Kasumi out. And I turned. That looming silence seemed to get bigger. And I saw it. It was just something weird about the horizon beyond the usual rows of buildings (those that were still standing), but the warning was enough that we knew what it was. We dragged each other to the other side of the house, found a section that looked fairly sturdy,and prayed. I'm not sure what Kasumi did, but I curled up into a ball, hoping that it would help somehow.
The wave hit and I was bounced around like a pachinko ball. I eventually came to the surface, bruised but alive. I found Kasumi and a section of the old Tendo dojo roof (sans tiles) floating not too far away. My radio, grabbed again just before the wave hit, somehow survived too. It has one of those wrist straps, which is how I kept ahold of it when the water hit. There's this big dent in it though, I'm not sure from what.
Better it than me.
We just rode it out, hearing nothing but the crackle of static from my little radio for hours. Finally we saw evidence of further *bad* things. The thick smoke trail visible and the occasional snippet through the static told of the volcano, a new one and a big one.
Now, there's a lot of jutting buildings off in the distance, but Nerima was always pretty low lying. Heck, most of the buildings were just two stories and they're underneath this heavily polluted water somewhere. Well, that and almost everything had gotten kinda flattened before the wave had even hit.
Akane was at Furinkan, but the wave or the quake 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 now. How the towers survived, I have no idea. 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.
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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.
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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 Shakespeare's old phrase: 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 to come back up with salvage. Heavy stuff too. No evidence of the bends, and when I take a look under the waves using a glass bowl, I can't see a thing. Part of that's due to the murkiness, I guess.
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.
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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. If ever.
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.
So, worldwide flooding, earthquakes, fires. Not to mention cloud cover from all the volcanoes worldwide. And with particles from volcanoes and explosions, some water sources are getting polluted.
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.
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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.
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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. After I got tangled in the rigging or whatever they call that bunch of ropes the second time, they tried putting me in inventory. Uhm, did I mention I never got my sea legs?
I'm also not as strong as that Atsuko, not as swift or acrobatic as the Amazons, not as experienced on boats as anyone else on this boat.
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.
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January 21, 1992
We rescued someone else today. Unconscious, 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 subdue them so that they can 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 and humiliation 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 had gotten over confident. He's seen it before, he says, where a successful criminal starts reaching a bit too far. He thinks Lao probably wanted the girls even more after it turned out they were the Senshi, and that she literally couldn't understand
the concept that some people would rather die than have their minds reshaped in that manner. He states that Venus doesn't bend that way, and became a real wildcat. She actually started reaching for greater power than she'd ever done when it was merely her life that was at stake.
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. Not that any monetary system or government is particularly stable right now. I mentioned that it was a wonder anyone could spare the time and money for sexslaves in all this, but Nathan muttered something about the darker side of human nature is always ready to seize an advantage and leap to the forefront.
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.
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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.
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January 23, 1992
We've found a nice little village in the Okayama region. We're staying there. The ship is in port but will be leaving during the night.
The night sky is... different. A large hunk of the moon survived, it's got a big wobble right now. It wasn't a straight impact, more a glancing blow. Still there's a "bite" out of it that shows up when the moon's lined up right as the whole thing rotates. 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 handed out a list of names, and Nathan or Fujii and their crew will post copies of it. It's an idea. There's a bulletin board here near the port, listing the names of survivors who still hope to be reunited with family. The idea caught on, and now they'll add another one which'll list other refugee sites when they become available. Just find the name you're looking for in a long list of others. My job here is to put the names and such into a database program, that way you can search the whole thing easily.
Boring as hell, but it's useful work and lots of people come by to talk.
Phones are still out, long range communication is spotty. A lot of the satellites were taken down by debris accompanying Loki. We expect the rest of them to go out when the debris from the moon hits.
Kasumi still has some hope that Doctor Tofu will have survived. She also mentioned this Ranma Saotome, our sister Akane, and Sakura Shinguchi - 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" (now taken over by Short Yes as "The Few, The Proud, The Male Gender") 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. This happened in real life BTW. 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 have a major power reduction, 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 if it bothers you that much.
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.
Metroanime@mindspring.com
http://metroanime.home.mindsp ring.com/
Someone was going to take this one on, but i haven't seen an update in awhile. So here's what i've got. Who was gonna do it, when, etc, were prob lost during one of my hard drive crashes.
Chapter 1: Here's Ragnarock... Nabiki's Tale version 2.0
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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."
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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 according to the newscasters.
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. Even if he's a moron. 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? All through school up until this year she was more likely to play Romeo than Juliet. She was ignored for the most part, except for her friends Yuka and Sayuri among a few others. The boys, as far as I knew, never noticed her existence. Hmmm. That gives me an idea, and since Kuno's so easy to manipulate...
Oh yeah. Something wild on the news today. Freak astronomical accident. Mars got hit by a 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.
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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 it masses more than three times what the moon does. It isn't coming anywhere near us, thank goodness.
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.
The science types seem to feel that a couple of centuries ago, something BIG passed through the Oort Cloud. Orbits were altered just enough that now, like a snowball rolling down hill, the changes are obvious and catastrophic to anything in its path.
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. Having the very real possibility of becoming personally extinct, I suppose.
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.
Idiots. Rioting and panicking aren't going to do anyone any good. And I can't figure out the ones who are choosing suicide rather than wait for this to hit. I'm considering taking up religion myself, hobbies are good.
We'll see if the American plan to use nuclears on the Ragnarock gets any support. Greenpeace, among other groups, are making waves against the entire idea of using nuclear weapons. There's also groups that, like Akane, are stating the whole thing is some worldwide conspiracy and there are no asteroids. We'll see.
--------------------------
December 26, 1991:
Asteroid:1, Us:0.
The nukes went bust, or close enough. There's a good chance the Ragnarock will be deflected just 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.
Despite all the criticisms from anti-nuclear groups, none of the missiles that were launched came back down with a trail of radioactive debris or anything similar. I don't understand why they're classifying the number of launches. It was nice to get the United States, China, and Russia cooperating on something. Even Israel threw a few out there, though I didn't know they *had* intercontinental nuclears.
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.
Akane vented a lot of tension and frustration. No way she was going to marry some boy. Of course, she was getting hit a lot at school with the "I don't think we're gonna survive this, and I don't want to die without having made love" line. Some guys have just *no* class. She stomped them, of course. But because there was this nagging feeling that some could have been sincere, you could see that Akane felt a touch of guilt for pounding them.
Nobody tried the line on me. I feel insulted.
The only one that didn't react to this Tendo-Saotome thing was Kasumi. Sometimes I wonder if anyone's home anymore. Funny thing, Doctor Tofu (local chiropractor and moxibuxtion expert) vanished after coming by to see Kasumi the other day. Note on his clinic states that he's gone up
to his family's home in the mountains. Kasumi's so out of it, I don't know that she's noticed.
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 Furinkan Gym when the tsunami hit.
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 Ten. 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. The earthquake flattened our house and most of the local buildings despite the distance from the epicenter. I'd stayed home from school that day, a lot of us did, and was standing in the street listening to my radio when the earth started moving.
Tremors in Tokyo are common enough. BIG ones are not. I saw buildings going down like dominos, some people hadn't shut off their gas - so explosions and fires immediately going off all around. Then I was trying to get Kasumi out of the house, she'd just gone in "for a minute" when the quake had hit. I found my suitcase, I found Kasumi, then came this odd silence.
It was weird, there was still the alarms in the distance, and there were still items being smashed, and still a few screams and cries off, but it was like there was this "stillness" looming up around us. Then the radio that I'd left on and over by the wall when I'd tried to
unbury Kasumi, the announcer started screaming one of those words which no Japanese really wants to hear. On a news report at least. Tsunami.
It was weird, I'd just gotten Kasumi out. And I turned. That looming silence seemed to get bigger. And I saw it. It was just something weird about the horizon beyond the usual rows of buildings (those that were still standing), but the warning was enough that we knew what it was. We dragged each other to the other side of the house, found a section that looked fairly sturdy,and prayed. I'm not sure what Kasumi did, but I curled up into a ball, hoping that it would help somehow.
The wave hit and I was bounced around like a pachinko ball. I eventually came to the surface, bruised but alive. I found Kasumi and a section of the old Tendo dojo roof (sans tiles) floating not too far away. My radio, grabbed again just before the wave hit, somehow survived too. It has one of those wrist straps, which is how I kept ahold of it when the water hit. There's this big dent in it though, I'm not sure from what.
Better it than me.
We just rode it out, hearing nothing but the crackle of static from my little radio for hours. Finally we saw evidence of further *bad* things. The thick smoke trail visible and the occasional snippet through the static told of the volcano, a new one and a big one.
Now, there's a lot of jutting buildings off in the distance, but Nerima was always pretty low lying. Heck, most of the buildings were just two stories and they're underneath this heavily polluted water somewhere. Well, that and almost everything had gotten kinda flattened before the wave had even hit.
Akane was at Furinkan, but the wave or the quake 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 now. How the towers survived, I have no idea. 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.
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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 Shakespeare's old phrase: 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 to come back up with salvage. Heavy stuff too. No evidence of the bends, and when I take a look under the waves using a glass bowl, I can't see a thing. Part of that's due to the murkiness, I guess.
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. If ever.
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.
So, worldwide flooding, earthquakes, fires. Not to mention cloud cover from all the volcanoes worldwide. And with particles from volcanoes and explosions, some water sources are getting polluted.
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.
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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.
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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. After I got tangled in the rigging or whatever they call that bunch of ropes the second time, they tried putting me in inventory. Uhm, did I mention I never got my sea legs?
I'm also not as strong as that Atsuko, not as swift or acrobatic as the Amazons, not as experienced on boats as anyone else on this boat.
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.
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January 21, 1992
We rescued someone else today. Unconscious, 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 subdue them so that they can 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 and humiliation 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 had gotten over confident. He's seen it before, he says, where a successful criminal starts reaching a bit too far. He thinks Lao probably wanted the girls even more after it turned out they were the Senshi, and that she literally couldn't understand
the concept that some people would rather die than have their minds reshaped in that manner. He states that Venus doesn't bend that way, and became a real wildcat. She actually started reaching for greater power than she'd ever done when it was merely her life that was at stake.
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. Not that any monetary system or government is particularly stable right now. I mentioned that it was a wonder anyone could spare the time and money for sexslaves in all this, but Nathan muttered something about the darker side of human nature is always ready to seize an advantage and leap to the forefront.
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 the Okayama region. We're staying there. The ship is in port but will be leaving during the night.
The night sky is... different. A large hunk of the moon survived, it's got a big wobble right now. It wasn't a straight impact, more a glancing blow. Still there's a "bite" out of it that shows up when the moon's lined up right as the whole thing rotates. 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 handed out a list of names, and Nathan or Fujii and their crew will post copies of it. It's an idea. There's a bulletin board here near the port, listing the names of survivors who still hope to be reunited with family. The idea caught on, and now they'll add another one which'll list other refugee sites when they become available. Just find the name you're looking for in a long list of others. My job here is to put the names and such into a database program, that way you can search the whole thing easily.
Boring as hell, but it's useful work and lots of people come by to talk.
Phones are still out, long range communication is spotty. A lot of the satellites were taken down by debris accompanying Loki. We expect the rest of them to go out when the debris from the moon hits.
Kasumi still has some hope that Doctor Tofu will have survived. She also mentioned this Ranma Saotome, our sister Akane, and Sakura Shinguchi - 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" (now taken over by Short Yes as "The Few, The Proud, The Male Gender") 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. This happened in real life BTW. 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 have a major power reduction, 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 if it bothers you that much.