*** Earth 0.000, 0.000
"One cannot live without being surrounded by others," Fuyutsuki heard himself say.
"One cannot live alone," he heard a voice answering back. It sounded, somewhat surprisingly, like it was Colonel Gendo Rokubungi's.
Startled awake by a brief lurch, Fuyutsuki blinked, uncertain where he was for a moment. He glanced around briefly, seeing other passengers involved in their own interests, a few sleeping as the train made its way steadily on the final leg of the trip from Tokyo and finally neared the vibrantly growing city of Hakone. Sitting up, the treatise he had been re-reading just before his brief nap slipped to the floor.
He bent forward and picked it up with a grunt, thinking about the odd concepts contained within it. Contacting other worlds, seeing the many different ways that history could have gone, they inspired fascinating conjectures on the nature of reality. Even now, after Ranma's project had been terminated at the request of his father, reading this treatise still inspired him to wonder sometimes if it could all be real, if other versions of Earth actually existed.
The dream had been oddly ominous, but all he could recall was seeing an older version of himself speaking with another man, that one hidden in shadow, the two of them conversing together in a dimly-lit chamber, speaking their lines in portentous tones.
He shrugged, not sure what his subconscious might be trying to tell him. Perhaps his latest dream was simply a comment that he was getting older and should try and do something about his solitary life. After all, it was said that marriage was a younger man's burden but an older man's comfort. Not that he was some doddering relic like in his dream, he hastily amended in his thoughts.
Not yet.
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Weekend Trip
A Quantum Destinies Side-Story
A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic
By S. Thesken aka Jurai Knight
Ranma 1/2 and its characters are owned by Rumiko Takahashi. This story is inspired by her works and the stories from some of my fellow fanfic authors. Among these are D.B. Sommer's "Shampoo 1/2", Jim Bader's "A Very Scary Thought -aka- Nabiki 1/2", and John Biles' Elseworlds series. All C&C is welcome.
The list of worlds occurring in this story:
Earth 0.000, 0.000 - The world of Scholar-Ranma (Baseline cluster)
This story takes place sometime around Chapter Thirty of Quantum Destinies.
Just what does Professor Fuyutsuki do with his weekends anyway? It's a look at some Evangelion characters in this altered timeline.
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As the train slowly pulled into the station, Fuyutsuki was pleased to see which one of his colleagues was waiting for the train's arrival.
Sometimes he was the one needing to wait, especially if Dr. Katsuragi was the one assigned to come pick him up that week. The man could be frustratingly absent-minded. Perhaps to make up for that shortcoming, he was an undeniably brilliant thinker within his chosen specialties. Fuyutsuki was grateful to be working with him on the two fascinating undertakings they were collaborating on for the benefit of the Empire at the Ministry of Science's Artificial Evolution Research Center, just so long as he didn't have to ride in a car with the man driving.
Katsuragi's other flaw was that he was a maniac terror behind the wheel of a vehicle.
Their first collaboration was Project Phoenix, an effort being carried out with the ultimate goal of the betterment of humanity through an induced upgrade of the human genome, one represented by Ranma Saotome and his teenaged peers. It would soon be made available to all Imperial citizens.
Things were going quite well in that area, and the second phase of testing was nearing completion. Psychological aberrations like the sociopaths and megalomaniacs produced among the first phase's test subjects had not been observed. The various testing groups had begun interacting, and the resulting social dynamics were proving to be quite fascinating and informative to observe.
As ever more Newtypes began appearing and reaching physical maturity, it was understood that there would have to be very careful monitoring of the societal landscape to minimize any resulting social disruptions as their numbers grew. Fortunately, another example of the megalomania exhibited by Khan Noonian Singh and the clone of Shishio Makoto did not appear probable to appear among the test subjects in this batch. That was a profound relief. The last thing the Empire needed to deal with was a transhuman monster like Keel Lorentz seemed intent on creating.
The discovery of the alien entity under Hakone, codenamed Lilith, had enabled the creation of the Type-II Newtypes, and none of them would have even existed without it. The Eucharist symbiote had mutated quite favorably upon exposure to the growth medium Dr. Moreau utilized, using as its basis the strange, bloodlike substance found surrounding the Lilith entity. The elderly British scientist was celebrated for his inspired efforts with Lilith, and the new symbiote had been one of many leaps forward in bioscience that had taken place over the last two decades because of it.
Dr. Kado Kashuoh, a close colleague of Dr. Moreau's and one of the founders of the Artificial Evolution Research Center (before his abrupt departure from there to pursue his own interests), had also benefitted greatly from the discovery of Lilith. After obtaining approval from the Emperor, he had invested his family's resources into the creation of Genom Corporation years ago, a company now known the world over for their various Lilith and Samael lines of replicants.
Genom's annual revenues were now greater than the GDP of a small country.
Project Prometheus, the second effort Fuyutsuki had become an integral part of over the past few years, represented a radical new direction for deploying the Empire's military might in the world. After several disturbing setbacks he didn't care to dwell upon, the next generation of war machines for the Empire's forces was nearing completion, and the prototype unit was almost ready to be demonstrated to the Emperor. With the likes of Keel Lorentz and his terrorist SEELE organization working with the other powers in the world, the Empire could not afford to be second best in weaponry.
Both undertakings were planned to work in tandem, preparing for the final unification and uplifting of humanity under the divine rule of the Emperor, the man who held the Mandate of Heaven. But SEELE was racing for the finish line as well, seeking to implement their twisted designs upon the world. The Germans, Ottomans and Russians were working in close collaboration with SEELE, pouring unimaginably vast sums of money and resources into the organization's efforts to achieve their goals. To oppose them, the Empire had created a new organization to better utilize the abilities of the children of Project Phoenix in combination with the weapons of Project Prometheus.
The maddeningly incomplete copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls, damaged during their acquisition from one of SEELE's hidden labs in southern Europe, painted an apocalyptic portrait of that organization's final objective. Operatives of the Security Directorate obtained it serendipitously over sixteen years ago, but it was then stolen from them almost immediately by one of Shadowlaw's deadliest agents: the Contessa.
The woman had brutally murdered the entire team involved in the effort before they could deliver it. As Shadowlaw and SEELE were known to be enemies, battling each other in a vicious struggle to the death, a secretive cold war fought out in back alleys and hidden lairs going back for many centuries, this unfortunate team of Imperial agents had unknowingly gotten caught in between the two criminal organizations' latest skirmish.
Getting the Scrolls back had been viewed by most in the Directorate's leadership as an impossible mission, but also one seen as vital for obtaining a better understanding of SEELE's goals and why Shadowlaw opposed them so fiercely. Against this murderous, utterly ruthless woman, one agent with a flawless track record at dealing with such situations had been chosen to deal with her. Somehow, he managed to recover the documents back from her grasp, albeit at great personal cost.
While the Contessa was widely believed to be dead at his hands, there were still stories whispered about her to this day in the intelligence communities. One story posited that she had left a daughter behind, but the current whereabouts of said child was unknown. Another whispered tale was she had switched sides to SEELE, in exchange for somehow restoring her back to life.
Imperial intelligence efforts, using the Dead Sea Scrolls as a guide to analysis of SEELE's activities, led to the total destruction of Keel's Geofront base in Antarctica over six years ago. It vaporized in a ball of atomic fire that had also taken three hundred of the Empire's finest soldiers with it in the process, and a vast region of that continent had ended up sterilized of all life. But their great sacrifice had prevented something that SEELE had codenamed "Second Impact" in intercepted communiqués and bought the Empire vital amounts of time to prepare for the inevitable endgame planned against the organization. There was even some speculation that SEELE was behind the Mobius Institute's current precognitive blindness, but it was unknown how such a thing could have been accomplished.
The Magi, the Institute's three most powerful precognitives, had all predicted with pants-wetting certainty the end of the Empire itself and a cataclysmic loss of life going into the billions if Keel had been able to succeed in executing his scheme as planned. The consensus view that had emerged since then, as was reported to the Emperor by his top men when it came to all of SEELE's activities, was that the madman had been excavating an alien lifeform deposited there, a counterpart to the entity discovered under Hakone that provided the source material for Project Prometheus.
Well over a year after Keel's "Second Impact" attempt had been barely thwarted, several other communiqués referencing "Third Impact" were intercepted. The Security Directorate was known to be extremely concerned, wondering just what the hell SEELE was planning.
Someone in the Imperial bureaucracy had suggested the name NERV for the Empire's anti-SEELE organization, all in capital letters like it was some kind of acronym, apparently to mock both SEELE and the Germans, their primary backers. For his own reasons, the Emperor liked the sound of the name, and it quickly became its official designation. Over the past several years, the nascent organization had been drawing with an increasing demand for resources from the Ministry of the Military, the Security Directorate and the Ministry of Science. Genom Corporation, pioneers of numerous biotechnological advancements in the Empire, had also been quite heavily involved as well, obtaining numerous valuable patents for itself in the process.
NERV was finally ready to become fully operational, an elite agency able to operate in a self-contained fashion, and the city of Hakone had been transformed into a company town wholly dedicated to supporting it. The Artificial Evolution Research Center had been closed down after transferring to NERV the staff working on Project Phoenix and Project Prometheus. It had been three years since the changeover.
The NERV organization's Technical Division was staffed by many recruits from both the Ministry of Science and volunteers from Genom. Similarly, its Tactical Operations Division was filled with transferees taken from the Ministry of the Military. The Security Directorate had been tasked with staffing NERV's Internal Security Division, and it had responded with its usual high levels of performance.
All the organization lacked was a commander who could direct its many disparate parts and weld them all together into an efficient structure serving the Emperor and defending the Empire's citizens from SEELE. The search was currently narrowing down to the final few candidates to find the one who would be both clever enough and ruthless enough to satisfy the Emperor that they were the right choice for the job. It would take someone with exceptional ability in those two categories.
Fuyutsuki had been asked recently if he would consider taking a more active role in the organization as head of NERV's Technical Division, representing the Ministry of Science in the chain of command, since he was one of the main researchers previously working at the Artificial Evolution Research Center. He was still in the process of considering it. Doing so would require him to leave the Imperial Academy in other hands. Someone from the Security Directorate would take over the role this time, as the two ministries had traded control of it ever since its establishment.
He was currently leaning towards accepting the offer.
Fortunately, this would not deprive him of observing the endlessly fascinating social dynamics of Newtypes from Project Phoenix. A select group of them would be recruited to NERV to act as pilots when things drew closer to a war footing with SEELE and the other nations of the world. As a high-ranking officer, he would have the ability to make recommendations as to who should compose that group. The addition of piloting duties would likely be quite stimulating towards the inherent competitive nature of the Newtypes, but hopefully it would also channel their energies against the Empire's enemies.
As the train pulled into the station, his thoughts returned to the present, pleased to see Dr. Naoko Akagi was the one waiting for him on the platform. She was checking her watch and clearly filled with her usual levels of impatience with the world's imperfections.
In charge of NERV's main networked computer system, MAGI, she had single-handedly designed its systems, naming both it and its three subsystems after the precognitives of the Mobius Institute. With the precognitive blindness the Institute was currently struggling with, MAGI and its predictive algorithms were meant to act as a substitute along with performing a wide range of other functions. Dr. Akagi was one of several brilliant minds he enjoyed being able to work with, at least as long as her sometimes quite fierce temper was kept under a modicum of self-control. Her most powerful glares could wither a man where he stood and made even the strongest-willed of their colleagues feel quite intimidated.
They had developed a close but occasionally combative relationship over the past several years spent working together, and the two of them enjoyed jousting at each other verbally in public. Quite some time ago, it had become a regular event for them to have dinner alone together at her place when he came down to Hakone, as he did once or twice a month. Afterwards, the two of them would always enjoy some gently passionate intimacy with each other before he had to return again to Tokyo and his duties at the Academy.
After the first few such incidents had occurred spontaneously over the course of a couple of months, they had talked the matter over at length. She had informed him then that a more settled, serious sort of relationship between them would be too difficult to pursue with their differing career goals and personalities, so she had proposed to have a "friendship with benefits" with him instead. Their liaisons began going on with almost clockwork regularity for nearly a year when Naoko had shockingly revealed to him that she was two months pregnant with his child. He had been quite stunned she had never gotten an anti-fertility implant, and he had immediately offered to marry her and be a proper father to the child. She had refused him quite firmly, preferring to retain her independence and raise their child on her own, admitting to him that she had been desirous to have a baby for some time and had chosen him to "assist" her in this, admiring his intellect.
That revelation had prompted a truly ugly argument between them.
Ritsuko, a healthy baby girl, was born seven months later.
Sometime before the birth, Naoko had purchased a Genom-made lilith named Maya to help her around the house and act as Ritsuko's nanny after she was born, so she could return more quickly to work. After taking a bit of time to heal hurt feelings on both their parts, they had gradually resumed their relationship and even their prior levels of intimacy with each other. Ritsuko did not yet know he was her father, but she was a very precocious child and might already suspect.
Six months ago, based on the successes seen with the latest testing groups, Naoko had brought Ritsuko to the Ministry of Science to test her for compatibility with the Type-II Eucharist serum, even though it wasn't yet ready for widespread distribution. Dr. Katsuragi had also brought his own daughter, Misato, Ritsuko's playmate at school. Both had been cleared to be given the serum, recovering from the treatment in only a couple of days. Both scientists did not want their children to miss out on the opportunity, given that the age ceiling was fast approaching for both girls.
As Fuyutsuki recalled, one other playmate from Ritsuko's class had also been given the serum, Ryoji, the son of the head of NERV's Internal Security Division, Hiroshi Kaji. The trio was practically inseparable, and they were usually found playing together, or plotting some kind of childish mischief. Ryoji was a very cheerful child, and while Fuyutsuki liked him, he also felt oddly certain the Kaji boy was going to be a serial heartbreaker someday.
Neither he nor Naoko had made much of an effort at seeing anyone else seriously since her pregnancy, a fact left utterly unexamined by either of them, and they were both fairly content to leave it so. But if he did accept a permanent posting to Hakone, they would have to reevaluate their relationship. He wanted to have a much larger role in Ritsuko's life. A child needed their father, and he hoped Naoko might be more amenable to an offer of marriage from him this time. Neither of them was getting any younger, and he doubted any other man would put up with Naoko's sometimes erratic personality like he could.
When he stepped off the train, she came over to him swiftly, tapping the face of her watch meaningfully several times with a well-manicured index finger. "We need to hurry. The first of today's meetings is scheduled to start in just a little over an hour. Moreau-hakase's annoying bitch of an assistant is likely looking forward to upbraiding me if we come in late. You're lucky you don't have to deal with her on a full-time basis like I do. I wish they'd just stayed in the backwoods of China, dealing with renegade replicants."
"Nice to see you too, Naoko-chan," he said with a smile, enjoying the opportunity to discomfit her. He noted she was dressed in one of NERV's khaki-colored uniforms underneath her long coat instead of civilian clothing, the skirt reaching down to just above her knees. Despite her advancing years, she still had an attractive figure and rather nice legs, the result of her daily yoga workouts. She was also wearing the ruby earrings he had given her for her birthday two years ago.
He could tell from the occasional nervous tics on her face that she was in extreme need of some cathartic intimacy with him later, which he would be happy to provide her. He reasoned that her heightened levels of stress were probably due to her just voiced frustrations with Dr. Moreau's assistant, as she had never gotten along well with Silk. While he would hardly call Dr. Moreau's attaché a bitch, since she had always been respectful and cordial towards him, he knew it would be highly impolitic of him to disagree with Naoko on this particular issue. To maintain his good relations with her, he chose to pick his battles very carefully with the woman. He held off for now on asking about how their daughter was doing, but he would do so over dinner.
She suddenly frowned when she saw his lingering regard of her body, although she secretly found his attentions quite flattering and had been looking forward to his arrival. Even so, her eyes flashed with low-level irritation at him for his teasing tone, but then she became suddenly aware of her lack of manners towards him and bowed to him in greeting. He responded in kind, still smiling at her when they both stood back up straight. He realized he would have to change into his uniform quickly before the day's meetings.
"Welcome back to Hakone, Kozo-kun," she said a bit gruffly. "We should go now. The others are already waiting at the Geofront."
"Of course, Naoko-chan." He picked up his bag. "Lead on. We wouldn't want to miss Moreau-hakase's opening remarks."
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"My daddy's visiting this weekend," Ritsuko remarked to Misato, both girls playing on the swings. Their mutual friend Kaji was involved in some rough and tumble play with several of the boys their age over on the grass.
They were supposedly playing soccer, but apparently tackling was allowed. The two girls winced when they saw six boys dogpile on top of Kaji, since ganging up on him was the only way they could match his athletic abilities on the field. When he staggered back to his feet after that, blood streaming from his nose, they both felt relief.
"They told you yet?" Misato looked over at her friend quizzically.
"Nah, but it wasn't very hard to figure out. Things seems a lot clearer to me lately."
"I know what you mean." Misato pumped her legs harder, increasing the length of her arc. Ever since they had their shots at the Ministry of Science, it was remarkable how much slower their classmates now seemed. Her daddy was now teaching her some basic mathematics at home.
Grinning, Ritsuko did the same, the two girls competing to see who could swing higher. She was looking forward to seeing her father again, although it was getting to be a pain to pretend she didn't know the truth.
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This was an idea that came to me years ago and demanded to be written. I couldn't really fit it into the main storyline, so I've broken the scenes out and made them into a side story after polishing it up a bit.