BETA .5

Prologue

Cadet Reika Niimoto head jerked right as another piercing alarm begged for her attention. The visual circuit feeding information into her iris by way of laser shifted and blurred as the screech of metal being torn away from her TSF filled the cockpit. The onboard computer helpfully overlaid the damage to its systems as the seventeen year old girl pulled back hard on the cyclic stick while trying to will the machine she piloted to move faster through the mech's neural interface.

"Reika-out! –Your jets!-Get out-!"

The trainee whimpered, biting her lips in terror as the claw came down again to drown out the transmission. This time the entire cockpit buckled, killing the retinal projectors video feed permanently. Emergency lighting activated, bathing the interior of her control unit red even as her TSF died piece by piece. Reika's fortified suit hardened as more metal was ripped away from the outside, sending the world tumbling end over end, while the locks on her suit prevented her from smashing into the instrument panel.

More shrieking.

More dying.

"Break left-Eight! It's on—Oh God! OHMY—AHHHEEEIIGH!"

"Low on ammo! Fifty rounds of-! Too many-!"

Reika Niimoto likewise screamed in terror. Discipline had fled. Her months of training scattered to the wind as the cockpit shifted brutally again. Her head jerked hard, but the harness locked up, forcing her to remain conscious and alive through what was sure to be her own demise.

"Ohgodohgodohgod…" The black haired cadet began to hyperventilate uncontrollably. Her eyes were fixed on the now blank cabin wall, waiting for it to be ripped open. After that, the instructors were pretty clear as to what would happen to her. If she were lucky, she would be killed instantly. If she were unlucky, she would be conscious through every moment as the BETA consumed her piece by piece. Tears streaked down her cheek as her eyes widened with the horrific memory of that particular lecture. Reika took a deep breath and screamed some more.

The blackness that overcame her after five minutes of hysteria was a mercy in and of itself, yet the warmth was… unexpected. Her subconscious didn't want to wake up. It didn't want to face the horrors of reality but the warmth was nice; nicer than the abject terror. Nicer than the cold death she knew was waiting for her. The warmth crackled contently, calling her back to the waking world even as a part of her screamed not to open her eyes. They would be waiting. They would eat her. They would…

Reika's panic stalled as a small fire dance before her eyes; the source of her warmth and life. The cadet blinked as it crackled softly. For all her surprise it might as well have been the technological wonder as she stared at the organized pile of burning wood. Around it were cans. Tins of Vienna sausage. Sardines. Canned tomatoes.

'I'm alive.'

The realization was stunning. She shouldn't have been, yet she was. Another realization formed and her eyes flicked up to scan her immediate area, immediately finding what she was looking for with no small amount of wonder. Fires didn't organize themselves. Food wasn't mysteriously deposited at her feet without help. She was alive, but so was somebody else.

The person she found was silhouetted against the dusk horizon, her contours all too obviously female. Reika watched as the stranger looked out over the edge of their position, which was apparently a rooftop by the looks of the accompanying air-conditioning units. Her mysterious benefactor seemed to intent to watch out over the edge and she was content to watch from the warmth of the fire until the girl turned and stopped short, suddenly realizing that she was awake.

Crystal blue eyes danced with firelight, her red hair nearly orange with its cast. After several long moments of mutual staring the stranger affected a nervous smile.

"Ah, Ranma Saotome." She volunteered, then gestured to the fire. "Ah, sorry about this."

"R-Reika..." The cadet tried to answer for herself. The world spun as she attempted to prop herself up and suddenly pain stabbed through her abdomen. The black haired girl glanced down, finding a large, bloody gash that had managed to breech the skin tight fortified suit. More surprisingly, there were stitches to accompany it. She hissed in pain, but settled back to her slump against the wall. She glanced from the redhead to the stitches and back, fingering the tender wound. "You… did this?"

"Ah, figured best do it while you were out." The girl shrugged, stepping around the fire's perimeter to join her. She seemed to appraise her work with a frown. "It's only clothing thread, so don't put too much stress on it. Best I could do on short notice."

Reika Niimoto nodded dumbly. The best she could have hoped for was a quick death. Now she was warm. Alive. The possibility of food was in her future. As opposed to being food. A sharp spike of regret lanced through her conscious, prompting her next question. "Did you… see anybody else?"

The frown and reluctant silence from the girl was all she needed. Yuuka. Mia. Risa. Suuko-sensei. She rounded out the silent roll call with final prognosis. '….all dead.'

"I'm sorry…" Ranma shook her head, gesturing back to the ledge. "Only found pieces of one of the robots and the other was pretty mangled."

The TSF cadet nodded solemnly. It was almost a given. Still, she was alive. There still remained the question as to whether she deserved to be or not, but she was. "Thank you for your assistance… Saotome, san?"

"Ranma's fine." The redhead correct with a seemingly easy smile that belied the gravity of their mutual situation. It lapsed into uncertainty however with her next words. "But if you really wanna thank me, you can answer a question for me…"

"If… if I can." Reika cocked her head wondering at the content of her request. She watched the uncertainty deepen into a dissatisfied frown as she turned back to the skyline. Beyond it was a city in ruin. Cratered streets pot marked the urban landscape amid the tumble of decimated buildings and raging fire. Thin beams of coherent light lanced across the horizon on occasion, usually accompanied by a distant explosion somewhere in the night sky. The city, however, was not yet dead. It teamed with life from their vantage point. Giant crab-like lifeforms. Muscular red creatures with multiple appendages… And teeth. Wide incisors that seemed to chew through anything in their path. Another explosion detonated several kilometers away, briefly lighting the skyline. Ranma Saotome turned away, shaking her head in muted horror as she found the stricken girl once again to ask her question.

"…What the hell is happening out there?"

Chapter I

The BETA had happened.

Ranma Saotome, heir to the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts chewed over the fact as she carefully picked her way through the devastated city. In sixteen years of life, the Jusenkyo cursed teen had seen things most people would never see in their lifetime. Her daily life, in fact, consisted of magical artifacts, curses, potions, mythical animals and opponents both powerful and bizarre… Sometimes both. She was so inured to the fact that if asked about the possibility of alien life before hand, the redhead would have probably shrugged, citing that anything was possible.

The giant alien crab crashing through the remains of a department store as a result of its mere passage confirmed that beyond a shadow of a doubt for the martial artist. She risked only the briefest glimpse at the towering creature and its phalanx of reddish multi-limbed escorts before deciding any further curiosity would be detrimental to her long term health. She pressed against her side of the wall and waited as the line of monsters plodded through the city block's remaining structures.

'Tanks.' She assigned the little red bastards their proper name. Those she could take. The crab scorpion thing, on the other hand… That would be dicey. Reika had named those things Grappers, and with claws like those, she could see why. At well over ten meters, they would be a bitch to bring down unless they just happened to be made of toilet paper.

'Play keep away from the pinchers and unload on its spine,' Ranma defined her tactical doctrine once more if push came to shove. Even so, it was a game she wasn't exactly enthusiastic to play at the moment. The city was crawling with the things and dispatching one seemed to inevitably bring another to investigate. One wrong move and she would have every alien within five kilometers looking for a piece of her.

Literally.

The neo-girl suppress the churning her stomach sought to engage in. Her new rooftop friend had received the sanitized version of events concerning the other wreckage she had found. The martial artist had indeed located the remains of a robot belonging to one of Reika's friends… Splattered with blood and gore as the red skinned tanks seemed to take their time pulling apart the pilot's corpse. It was with that particular encounter that she decided no quarter would be given to the monsters occupying the city around her if hostilities became inevitable.

For now it was apparent that the creatures had other places to go and people to eat as indicated by their disinclination to loiter about. The redhead grimaced at the morbid thought and continued to pick through the hollowed out remains of the drug store she was sulking in. The roof was half caved in with most of the building imploding upon itself. Still, there was inventory scattered haphazardly about, and that was why she was there. Ranma picked up a translucent orange bottle and scrutinized the label briefly before tossing it into the cloth bag she bore with a shrug. She wasn't a pharmacist, but it might come in handy. The crushed box of gauze next to them, on the other hand, represented some small degree of pay dirt. While she was more than happy to scavenge them and the first aid kit that had managed to survive the collapse of the front counter, they weren't her primary objectives.

Drinking water, however, was.

Unless the city were flattened to level, Ranma was certain that the bread crumbs of society would suffice for as long as it took for them to find the front lines and the rest of humanity. Potable water, on the other hand, would be the most pressing issue they would face.

'Besides being eaten.' Ranma grimaced but continued to trace a path through the store and into the back supply room. It, too had been demolished, but the battered remains of a men's room sign quickly pointed her in the right direction. She stepped carefully through the remainder of the wall, tow shattered urinals and a hanging precariously from the wall, bereft of support. The plumbing looked intact, so the neo-girl gave the facet an experimental twist.

Nothing. She tried the hot water spout with the same lack of success and surprise. Like many of the other buildings she had visited, water had been cut off or simply lacked pressure. Though disappointed, the martial artist found it hard to be concerned. There was enough of the city left intact that it would be impossible not to find a source of water sooner or later.

'Hopefully sooner than later.' The teen though blandly. The longer she was out and about, the more likely something was to happen, either to her or her robot pilot friend.

Notes— What, you've never heard of Muv-Luv? Artifical life forms land on earth and set up shop, pretty much steam rolling anything that get in their way via hive mind, purpose built artificial lifeforms that pretty much look like something out of a less than creative Halloween horror flick.

If I was going to do a 'Ranma Pilots a Mecha' this would be it, simply because I hate mecha scenarios that devalue Ranma's primary attributes as a martial artist. In Muv-Luv, it's not just a giant mecha lumbering around firing stuff. There's a fair deal of skill, piloting and melee action involved.

What, you though I was writing something useful? BACK TO YOUR CAGE, HOPELESSLY NAÏVE READER!