Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ The Weapon ❯ Chapter 3 ( Chapter 3 )

Chinangel: Ugh! I'm so so sorry! I haven't posted for so long. I've been feeling lazy and uninspired to post anything. So today, I finally gave myself a kick in the butt, sat down and started writing. Hopefully, there won't be many repeats of this. ANYHOW! This chapter will actually move the story along (surprise surprise!) and, with any luck, will be longer than that last piece of garbage that I spat out.

Also, when people speak of Ranma's gender, it's in the way that they view Ranma. Anyhow, here's Shrieken!

Shrieken: I’m not sorry. I have no doubt everyone at Fanfiction.net is more than supportive, but over at Mediaminer, where I manage, it’s completely dead.

Still, I do feel a bit bad for the FanFiction folks. Still not gonna apologize, but I do feel a bit bad.

Suggested Listening Music: Flawed Design by Stabilo

The golden-eyed doctor watched the sleeping red head beneath her. The poor girl kept muttering in her sleep, twisting and turning. If it wasn't for the cocktail of drugs pumping through her system, the doctor was certain that she'd be awake and hammering against the walls. After reading her profile and watching the fantastical media clips, she was sure that the girl would be more than capable of punching through the rather meager defenses of the medical wing.

Sadly, Doctor Karasu couldn't find it in her to condemn that course of action. Any sane person would fight tooth-and-nail against those who would take them from their home and butchered their body.

She chewed her lip in concern. Masashiro had refused to assign more than a skeleton security detail to the wing.
"It's a hospital for Christ sakes!" he had scoffed, "What are they going to do? Hobble to freedom? Beat armed guards down with crutches? Outrun them in wheelchairs? No Doctor Karasu, the security is fine."

She sighed angrily and looked back at the other physicians. Useless drones. Instead of trying to calm the poor girl down, they had shot her up with more drugs, great. Wonderful way to build trust. She wasn't even going to bother wasting her breath on them. All that counted to them was the bottom line and project progression. They all saw big fat paychecks.

"But you can't get paid if your project doesn't work!" she thought in disgust. Subject eight had to trust them, or at least, not hate them in order for the project to continue, or to even have ANY chance of success.

"Remove the IV drip." she snapped to the others, who proceeded to gawk at her, "Get your witch's brew out of her and let me know when she starts to wake up." she snarled and walked out the doors of the observation room. The automatic doors pleasantly sighed open, denying her the therapeutic sound of a slamming door.

Frustrated, she marched back to her lab, dodging the mousey technicians, bookish researchers and bored guards. Rows upon rows of laboratories, each numbered and labeled for convenience passed her by, reaching easily up into the hundreds. She was beginning to despise the clinical cleanliness of the facility, and the militaristic undercurrent that charged the building. She hadn't seen the outdoors in months, she wasn't allowed to.

Nobody who had any significant knowledge of projects was allowed outside until they had been proven to be a low risk factor. Even then, a small security division shadowed them. In her case however, Akuyo Masashiro simply didn't like her, a sentiment that she whole-heartedly returned. Akuyo Masashiro was also notoriously petty, and had denied her access to the outdoors with a conga-line of execuses and reasons. Sadly, she was bound into her contract, so her hands were tied.

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CMND: START_UP.exe

Program found. Running…
DIAG.exe referenced. Found. Running.
WARNING Primary Operator not found. Waking
"What the...what the Hell!? What the hell is going on!?"
Working… Operator found. DIAG.exe resumed.
Life Support initialized. Stable.
WARNING 20mg Etomodate found. 200mg Succinylcholine found. 10mg Versed found. 10mg Nercuron found. 100mg Lidocaine found. Flushing system.
"What the Hell!? Who's there? who's talkin'?"
System clear. Resuming.
"Resumin'? Resumin' what?"
WINOS.exe referenced. Found. Running.
Active Diagnostics… Online.
WIFI Connec… Online.
Prosthetics Startup… Running.
Neural net connected. Pain/Feedback discovered. Fixing… Complete.
"Hey...that feels better."
Adjusting compensators… Complete.
Full Diagnostic…
WARNING External Error
"Error? What kinda error!? What the Hell is goin' on here?"
Prosthetics Startup… Fail : Hardware Error
"Pros...what the?"
Systems Run-down:
Soft-plasma generator… 93% efficiency-Within acceptable limits
Life support… 97.8% efficiency
Internal 12mm GH5 Panzehuast Arm… Hardware Error-Missing
Internal 12,000 volt Tesla Coil/Projection Arm… Hardware Error-Missing
Associate External Multipurpose I/O Ports… Initialized… Unused, shutting down…
Ocular Implants… Online
"AH! I can see! Now why can't I talk!?"
Combat Recognition Software… Activated
Translation Software… Activated
Run WINVIS.exe
OS Systems… Online.

Hello Ranma.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!?"

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"I don't know if I can finish the project!" she snapped to Edward, while pacing back and forth in his laboratory. The large gaijin grunted as he looked through a microscope and made several notes on a clipboard, "I turn my back on them for two seconds and some idiot gets it in his head to dope her up every drug in the wing!" she sat down heavily and scowled at the door.

"I'm not a babysitter." the irony of her own statement was lost on her as Edward grunted once more.

"Are you listening to me?"

"...No." he responded and made a few more jots on his clipboard. She glared grumpily at him but grew silent, watching him half stroll, half waddle about the lab. A stark contradiction to her own personal disaster zone, Edward's was clean, sterile. In Karasu's opinion, it lacked personality. Edward was head of programming the AI that was now an intricate part of Ranma, so why he was utilizing a microscope puzzled the golden-eyed woman. But she shouldn't ask, Edward was fond of secrets and conspiracies, and would sooner answer her with a riddle or some round-about clever answer that was correct in a certain light.

"What are you doing?" she asked, unable to contain her curiosity.

"Why I'm looking...through...a....microscope." he answered in an as-a-matter-of-fact way, jotting notes down and peering back into the microscope. She rolled her eyes, and opted for silence.

"Aren't there microscopes you should be looking through yourself?" she rubbed her head.

"No, my subject is still in a drug-induced coma."

"Ah yes yes." he looked up, "The 'drug cocktail'." she nodded. So he HAD been listening.

"So what are you going to do when she wakes up?" a few more notes jotted down.

"I don't know, probably...probably just tell her that she has to cooperate or else the project will be cancelled and she will be flushed down the proverbial toilet." Edward looked up at this, his right eyebrow raised.

"Tell a military-grade cyborg, who can bench press a tank, that she has to cooperate?"

"Her limbs aren't online and we haven't loaded her up with her internal systems. Her external weapons are only half done too." Edward frowned, but nodded.

"I see." he didn't approve. But then again, Doctor Miyuki Karasu was almost morally bankrupt. Almost. She still had a conscience and it was nagging at her right now.

"What about her combat software?" Edward asked, going back to his microscope.

"It's online naturally, but after she woke up last time, we decided to take her limbs offline. At least, until we know she won't power through the guards and destroy the facility."

"So if it's online than, shouldn't her system be flushed of the toxins now?" Karasu's face blanked for a moment, before becoming one of intense aggravation.

"SHIT!" she scurried from the lab, the chuckles of Doctor Edward Delahue following her.

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"Doctor!" one of the faceless members of her medical team breathed a sigh of relief. She pointedly ignored his babbling about 'breach of protocol'. There was no protocol for this situation! She was flying blind here. She pushed through white coats of her incompetent medical team and peered through the window. The sight that greeted her forced a grimace on her face.

The red head had stopped shouting and was glaring. Glaring directly at the glass, her eyes had a slight golden tinge to them, indicating that Ranma was using some sort of optical enhancement. Behind her, the medical team was in an uproar. People were pointing fingers as to why their subject wasn't reacting within expected projections. Apparently, they thought that she should react like some kid in a candy store; after all, who DOESN'T want to be part of something that could have been stolen from a comic book?

"Shut. UP!" Karasu roared, and was echoed by Ranma. She flicked a look at the still glaring red-head. She had greatly underestimated the latent skills of the girl. Ranma was supposed to only have the most basic of skills available to her, and yet she had somehow managed to access the optical enhancements, and auditory feedback.

The nameless drones fall silent, stunned and cowed into submission by the superhuman cyborg and their creepy supervisor.

Ranma glances at the woman who just came in, a golden-eyed girl in a lap coat. From the way the various doctors are acting, she’s obviously higher up. Ranma points directly at her, and asks forcefully. “Who the hell are you, where the hell am I, and what the HELL have you done to me!?”

Karasu almost sighs. The idiotic, so-called ‘doctors’ obviously had made a bad impression. “I’m Dr. Miyuki Karasu. We’re in what is called the Facility. As for what has been done… A lot. Come with me, and I’ll tell you about it.” She types in the access code, releasing the locks and letting Ranma enter the observation booth.

Ranma cautiously watches her as she does something out of view. Suddenly, there’s a loud clunk, which the voice in her head identifies as locks unlocking, and the armored door to the right of the observation window swings open. She’s noticed, by now, that everything feels okay. Except for the almost complete lack of human ki in most of her body. Other than that disconcerting feeling, however, it’s as if she was never injured.

Ranma goes to walk forward, and notes the slight delay in thought and action. That will be a liability, should I get in a fight, she thinks. I’ll have to be careful and end it fast. She passes through the door, and, throwing the doctors who were trying to contain her a ki-powered glare, follows the strange, yellow-eyed woman.

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"Look around Subject Eight." Karasu said with a slow wave of her hand, and Ranma did, gaping. Whatever it is that they jammed in her head highlighted a passing doctor's face with a digital, green rectangle, and then his id, bringing both up on the left hand side of her vision, she absently waved her hand at it, and tried not to absorb the information about Kobayashi Kogatsu, a Doctor who was in charge of the 'Controlled Mutagen Evolution' project.

She squeezed her eyes shut and gave her head a quick, but violent, shake and pried her eyes open again, her gaze landing on a guard. Guardsman Miho Shishimiya. She was new to the corporation, but a veteran of firearms. Her armor was kevlar and hard leather with her weapon being an MP5.

"ARGH!" Ranma held her head and Karasu turned to her in concern, "What's wrong?" she asked startled, "GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD!" Ranma shrieked, her fingernails digging into the sides of her head, "GET IT OUT GET IT OUT!" and then as the stressed red head shrieked, she heard a mental 'click' and when she looked up, there was no weird information flooding her brain. No green boxes floating around people's faces, clothes or guns.

Just joyful silence.

"The Artificial Retinal data Gathering/storage and Utilization System. Or ARGUS." Karasu nodded, "You'll get used to it." Ranma glared at her, a vicious response on her lips, but she swallowed it and followed the doctor. If she was going to get out of here, she'd need to know the layout of the building.

"This way." Karasu stated. Ranma felt naked in the hospital gown, but followed none the less, her metal limbs clinking eerily against the ground.

"Why me?" She asked quietly, bitterly, very much aware that the doctor's who were spying on her in the recovery room where following in a swarm, trying to be stealthy but failing rather spectacularly.
"Circumstance." Ranma was taken aback by Karasu's equally bitter tone. The Doctor stopped at a door that had two armed guards. Ranma had quickly become accustomed to the machine-like appearance of the guards: black-painted metal, black kevlar and black guns, with black helmets that covered their heads, and black facemasks to protect their identity.

Black and sterile grey were the colour schemes for this...place, where-ever the hell she was, it was depressing, artificial. Everything was rigid and lifeless; even the guards were more like machines then people.

Ranma quickly killed that line of thinking, not wanting to think of machines or people, although the 'good' doctor was making that exceedingly difficult.

Karasu showed Ranma the medical wing, explaining that until they had a chance to fine-tune Ranma's new body, that this would be her home. Ranma, through a herculean effort, was managing to keep her anger in check. she kept reminding herself that if she blew up, they would just drug her, and she couldn't fight unless she knew what they had done to her.

Karasu took Ranma to a particularly spartan room, it was softly lit, and had a single bed inside, a room with a toilet could be seen connecting it, and a few light switches.

"This is where you'll stay." Karasu began. Ranma wasn't impressed, the room wasn't all that small, but any martial arts done in here would be...limited.

"What did you do to me?" Ranma demanded quietly, barely keeping a hold of her rage.
"Saved your life," Karasu snapped back smartly, before muttering to herself, "in a manner of speaking."
Ranma's sharp ears picked it up, but she didn't press it for now.

She had to know what exactly had happened to her body.

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“Cyberization.”

Ranma just stared. Karasu seemed to be under the impression that she understood that. So, she elegantly and politely conveyed her confusion.

“Huh?”

Karasu sighed. Ranma bristled slightly at the implication that she was stupid, but before she could say anything, the doctor started to explain.

“Basically, when we recovered you, you were a wreck. Without help, you would have died. Hell, even with help, you barely had a chance. Somehow, you managed to pull through, and you’ve even adapted to the implants faster than expected. We didn’t think you’d be able to walk yet.” Her eyes tracked down to the bottom of the hospital gown, which Ranma had just realized she was wearing.

With a hard blush, Ranma tugged the thin gown down as much as possible, embarrassed. Karasu just rolled her eyes, and offered a plate of snacks, which Ranma accepted.

The tastes of the sandwiches were sharper than she recalled, either it was the crap they had stuck in her body, or maybe she was just very alert, but either way these things tasted really good.

"When are ya gonna let me go?" she asked after she finished one.

"I don't know." the doctor admitted and Ranma growled.

"You can't keep me here forever Doc, I'll get out. Sooner or later I swear."

The doctor didn't reply, but her eyes flicked to a strange small black orb attached to the upper left corner of the ceiling, before looking back at Ranma.
"For now I ask you to trust me," she states, her eyes seeming to glow. "That's all I ask of you. Trust me."

"...okay doc..." Ranma's instincts were screaming while her internal warning was shrieking 'defcon 5' went off in her mind, but she found them so easy to ignore.

The doctor nodded, and left the sandwiches and red-head alone, giving Ranma time to eat and think. It was only when the Doctor was out of the room and well down the hall did Ranma finally notice how WRONG the situation was. But showed uncharacteristic patience.

"I can't get outta here until I get m'body back under control." she mused, "May as well start with getting washed." she looked around at her room. It was actually fairly large, double the dimensions of her old one, roughly the size of a small dojo, with a bed in one corner, that black orb up in the roof and a connected bathroom with shower.

with a sigh, the red head walked until the bathroom and stripped out of the hospital gown they had left her in, and studied her body carefully. On the surface they LOOKED the same, but when you looked closer: one would notice how her arms were oddly shiny stiff. They had no hair anywhere on them, and no wrinkles in the skin, no veins on the back of her palms, and her fingernails were perfectly flat. She turned her hand over, feeling the fears and cables in her arm shift, which was disturbing to the Red head. The doctor had explained that she had robot parts in her, but to feel them in action, through her synthetic nerves, was...unsettling at least.

She dropped her hand, prematurely ending the self-examination and stepped into the shower, turning on the hot water. She yelled as it cascading down on her and leapt under the water-free safe-zone beneath the shower-head, and adjusted the knobs so the water was more appealing.

"I'm..." she paused and looked down, still a girl, dripping with hot water. Oddly she wasn't surprised. She never recovered the kettle, and from what she had been told; Herb blew up the Mountain.

"You..." she fixed an image of Herb's smirking visage in her mind and snarled angrily, clenching her fist until sparks shot from her fingertips and palm. She had a goal, now all she needed to do was work towards it.

Chinangel's Rant: HOOOOOOOOLY CRAAAAAP! I'm alive! FU FU FU FU FU! Yes I'm alive, and finally working on my stories again! I know I write slower than a melting iceberg but please bear with me. I know where I wanna go with this mess but getting there is the hard part. MUUUU...why can't fics write themselves? It'd make my life soooooooo much easier. At any rate, Yes, Ranma is OOC in this, but I'm trying to keep her close as I can without having her go bonkers from being roboticized (insert Robotnik's theme here) because of that typical Takahashi stubborness and short temper. So anyone who's hyperfocused on 'canon' may wanna stop reading here because Ranma's going to be unusually patient with this situation, biding her time until she deems that it's 'go time' as it were. Muahahahahaha! At any rate, thank you for your patience. Please read and review!