Coping
A Ranma Nibonnoichi/Matrix crossover
By: Amberion(amberion@gamespyarcade.com)
Disclaimer: "Ranma Nibonnoichi" was written by Rumiko Takahashi,
and is (c) Shogakukan, Kitty Films, and Viz Video. The movie "The
Matrix" is (c) Warner Brothers. I worship twice daily at my shrine
to the great Rumiko-kami, and perform all the necessary sacrifices
to ward off evil lawyers(trust me, you don't want to know).
This story was written for entertainment purposes only, and may
not be distributed for profit. If it is, I will personally come
after the perpetrator with a hatchet, metaphorically speaking.
Now that that's out of the way, enjoy!
Oh, BTW: C&C requested, eagerly sought after, begged for! Private,
public, it's all the same to me. Just tell me what you think! I
got next to no response C&C-wise about my first one, just lots of
people saying what a great fic it was. Which is nice, but I need
something a little more constructive, or I'll never get better!
Chapter 2:
In Which Certain People Meet Certain Others And Chaos Insues
"Are you certain?" Hundreds of floors up, in one of Tokyo's tall-
est skyscrapers, was an office. The office was perfectly ordinary;
its occupants were not. Behind a desk in the office sat an Agent,
immediately recognizable as such by anyone who knew what an Agent
was. To the naked eye, he looked like some kind of federal agent,
which was intentional. The smart black business suit, dark wrap-
around shades and imposing demeanor gave the impression of
efficient lethality, which was also intentional.
Trying to describe an Agent in any more detail is an exercise in
futility, because they all look pretty much alike. Let's just call
him 'The Boss Agent,' because that's what he was. Across from him
stood the Agent who had just recently returned from an unsuccess-
ful extraction attempt on one Ranma Saotome. We can just call him
'The Agent,' because that's what HE was.
One thing that everyone who has ever encountered an Agent agrees
upon is that Agents do not express extreme emotions, such as
agitation. That is not to say they can't, they just don't. They're
the ultimate super villains of the world, after all. And because
they're the ultimate super villains in CHARGE, they held, if not
all, then MOST of the cards. Because they held most of the cards,
they typically felt reasonably sure that their hand would win.
Most of the time. Usually.
Unless someone slips an ace.
This Agent was agitated. Not very much, but enough. He was pacing.
Agents did not pace.
"Yes. It was bio-energy." Even his voice was strained. Control
must be hard to come by.
"This is most disturbing. How is it possible that he could gen-
erate such a field?"
"I do not know. There is no connection... he should not be able
to gather that much energy, let alone channel it into the Matrix!
All that power should be tapped!"
"An interesting conundrum." The Boss Agent rubbed his chin. "A boy
wielding an impossible energy source, to which he should have no
access to, and no way to channel it. Most interesting, indeed."
"There's more." The Agent ground out reluctantly. "He was fast."
The Boss Agent nodded agreeably. "Well he would almost have to be
to keep away from you."
The Agent shook his head. "No, I mean he was FAST." He stated
firmly, placing special emphasis on the last word. "Not only did
he keep away from me, he kept UP with me. He threw an average of
532.6 punches per second."
The Boss Agent's face grew hard. It seemed that the humans were
making a habit of irritating their masters lately. Still, there
was no need to rush into things. He made a show of clasping his
hands in front of him meditatively, and nodded briskly. "Very
well, I shall investigate this matter. You are to continue to
monitor the boy. If you discover anything more, notify me at
once."
The Agent nodded silently and turned to leave.
"One more thing." The Agent turned around again. The Boss Agent
smiled humourlessly. "Do not attempt to capture him again. I would
not appreciate requisitioning another new subordinate." The Agent
looked ready to protest, but the other raised his hand quellingly.
"You will have your opportunity in due time, but for now, we need
more information before we go after him again." If there was one
thing their encounter with the one called Neo taught them was not
to underestimate humans. His last subordinate had done so, and
The Boss Agent did NOT want to explain why his men kept getting
killed by humans.
The Agent nodded again, this time reluctantly. He would look
forward to a rematch.
Right next to the door to the office was a vase, which had gone
unnoticed by all. When the Agent passed it and left, the vase
shifted, grew arms and legs, pulled itself up by the... skirts?
and waddled out, squeezing through the rapidly closing door.
Tsubasa was a master of disguise, everyone in Nerima knew that.
Most people DIDN'T know that he had reason to be. He was on the
run. Once, a very long time ago, he had pissed someone off, and
if they ever found him again, he would be nothing more than a few
stray electrons and randomized code. For he was also an AI. And
the person he had pissed off was currently sitting at a desk in
an office, contemplating impossible wonder boy. Tsubasa doffed the
disguise he had recently employed and breathed a sigh of relief.
He would not have risked so much, but he had to know what they
knew. Fortunately, they didn't seem to know much.
Tsubasa had little reason to like Saotome. He was loud, obnoxious,
womanizing, arrogant, and too good for his own good. Tsubasa's
alter-ego Puck, however, admired him immensely. Saotome was a gold
mine of romantic possibilities. With all those fiancee's and so
many girls hanging on to his every move how could he not be
impressed? The 'curse' provided an added level of hilarity that
often left him overloaded with the giggles. He only wish he still
possessed the power he had a long time ago, THEN he could make
things interesting. He suppressed another snicker as he envisioned
the possibilities, and skipped down the hallway in the opposite
direction from where The Agent had gone.
Puck was a second generation AI from the first generation Matrix
program. Originally, he had been part of the 'Midsummer Night's
Dream' fantasy, where humans feasted and engaged in amorous act-
ivities, sometimes with the AI, sometimes with each other. It was
great fun. Then the Matrix crashed. He learned later that it was
too perfect. People couldn't sustain the suspended disbelief
necessary to allow it to run. He had been stuck in code limbo for
an eternity before an unwitting human hacker recovered and
downloaded his code onto a hoversub in the real world. What was
its name? Nebook-something. It was child's play to jump from
there to the AI net and get sucked into the new Matrix, 'version
2.0'. It took him five seconds to realize that this new world was
no fun. Where were the public orgies? The faerie nymphs that
pranced and bounced through the landscape? The tables laden with
food and wine? Puck hated it. Then he found Nerima.
Tsubasa shivered as he recalled the first time he met Ranma.
Ranma Saotome had the most uncanny ability to watch any technique
and duplicate it in a matter of days. He also had a long-standing
rivalry with another boy, Ryouga Hibiki. Their competition
escalated far beyond the normal as each learned arcane and
dangerous techniques in their efforts to one-up each other. It
came to a head two weeks ago when Ryouga challenged Ranma and
demonstrated his newest technique: The Shi-Shi Hokodan. Ranma
spent a whole week trying to master it, but eventually realized
that the heavy depression-based ki-attack was unsuitable for his
personality. Since he couldn't allow Ryouga to beat him, he
actually developed his own technique, using lighter, confidence-
based ki and called it the Mouko Takabisha. Ryouga's depression-
based attack had reached new depths, however, creating massive
pillars of ki and blowing huge craters in the ground. Ranma's
technique went largely unused as Ryouga chased him around the
school field, blasting him with ki. It was only due to coincidence
and some extraordinarily silly tactics that Ranma was able to
defeat Ryouga, using his opponent's depression blast to obtain the
momentum to knock him out with a well-placed punch to the jaw.
[Author: If you want the whole story, it's really quite good, it's
archived at the Ranma Scan Project. http://ranmascan.dhs.org/.
Book 20]
Tsubasa shook his head. There really wasn't anything he could
do to help Saotome, much as he would like to. The new Matrix had
absorbed him into its program and stripped him of all his original
powers as soon as he had re-entered the net. He was left with
a minor shapeshifting talent and a knack for not being seen, but
that was about it. Besides, mucking about with those kind of
techniques, he deserved whatever he had coming to him. Still and
all... Tsubasa popped around a corner. There was no reason why he
couldn't give the lad fair warning, now was there?
One of the more unusual landmarks in Nerima was, of course,
Furinken High. The school is mostly famous for being the play-
ground for adolescent super-powered martial-artists, hell-bent
on grinding Ranma Saotome, a student at said school, into the
ground. The fact that said adolescent super-powered martial-
artists usually wound up on the receiving end instead was beside
the point.
Something Furinken was less well-known(but still quite famous for)
was the somewhat eccentric faculty head. Principal Kuno, known by
all as 'that nut with the fruit on his head' was quite famous for
an obsession with all things Hawaiian and thinking up wierd
schemes to relieve Saotome-kun of his beloved pigtail. Never mind
that without said pigtail, Saotome's hair would grow to monstrous
lengths and strangle the entire district, he wanted to do it
anyway.
As a lesser famous fact to a lesser famous person in a lesser
famous place(the Tendo Dojo, after all, deserved prize honors in
the Nerima district), Principal Kuno's rather excessive fixation
on Hawaii was such that he had his entire office enlarged and
redecorated to look like a deserted Pacific Island, complete with
treehouse for an inner sanctum.
It was into this office that Neo and Trinity rezzed in.
Waves washed up on a beautiful sandy beach and palm trees rocked
gently to the rhythm of the refreshing sea breeze. Trinity sniffed
experimentally. Air freshener. She wrinkled her brow. "I think
we've got the wrong place, Neo. Could Tank have miscalculated?"
Neo shook his head. "I don't think there's anything TO mis-
calculate. All he did was home in on the anomaly and find the
closest phone. Where IS that phone anyway?" He looked around a bit
before spotting the treehouse. A small sign on the door, scrawled
in crude letters matching the decor perfectly, proclaimed
'Principal Office' to all who cared.
Trinity blinked. "This is a school?" She peeked her head in. "It
IS a school!" Inside was all the assorted paraphernalia a
principal would use to administer to a school, and quite a lot of
other stuff as well. Pineapples, a huge pair of gardening shears,
a couple of sunglasses, and a whole heck of a lot of florid
shirts. She shook her head. As wierd as this was, it wasn't
relevant. She noted the phone and nodded. "Yep, it's in there."
"Then let's find what we came for." Neo and trinity picked their
way through the foilage to the double doors on the other end of
the massive room. "Do you have a bead on the location of the
anomaly?"
Trinity checked her handheld scanner. "Yes, about a mile East-
South-East." She punched a few numbers in and put the scanner
away. Revealing high technology in this aspect of the Matrix was
not a good idea. Neo nodded and let her lead the way.
End Chapter 2
A Ranma Nibonnoichi/Matrix crossover
By: Amberion(amberion@gamespyarcade.com)
Disclaimer: "Ranma Nibonnoichi" was written by Rumiko Takahashi,
and is (c) Shogakukan, Kitty Films, and Viz Video. The movie "The
Matrix" is (c) Warner Brothers. I worship twice daily at my shrine
to the great Rumiko-kami, and perform all the necessary sacrifices
to ward off evil lawyers(trust me, you don't want to know).
This story was written for entertainment purposes only, and may
not be distributed for profit. If it is, I will personally come
after the perpetrator with a hatchet, metaphorically speaking.
Now that that's out of the way, enjoy!
Oh, BTW: C&C requested, eagerly sought after, begged for! Private,
public, it's all the same to me. Just tell me what you think! I
got next to no response C&C-wise about my first one, just lots of
people saying what a great fic it was. Which is nice, but I need
something a little more constructive, or I'll never get better!
Chapter 2:
In Which Certain People Meet Certain Others And Chaos Insues
"Are you certain?" Hundreds of floors up, in one of Tokyo's tall-
est skyscrapers, was an office. The office was perfectly ordinary;
its occupants were not. Behind a desk in the office sat an Agent,
immediately recognizable as such by anyone who knew what an Agent
was. To the naked eye, he looked like some kind of federal agent,
which was intentional. The smart black business suit, dark wrap-
around shades and imposing demeanor gave the impression of
efficient lethality, which was also intentional.
Trying to describe an Agent in any more detail is an exercise in
futility, because they all look pretty much alike. Let's just call
him 'The Boss Agent,' because that's what he was. Across from him
stood the Agent who had just recently returned from an unsuccess-
ful extraction attempt on one Ranma Saotome. We can just call him
'The Agent,' because that's what HE was.
One thing that everyone who has ever encountered an Agent agrees
upon is that Agents do not express extreme emotions, such as
agitation. That is not to say they can't, they just don't. They're
the ultimate super villains of the world, after all. And because
they're the ultimate super villains in CHARGE, they held, if not
all, then MOST of the cards. Because they held most of the cards,
they typically felt reasonably sure that their hand would win.
Most of the time. Usually.
Unless someone slips an ace.
This Agent was agitated. Not very much, but enough. He was pacing.
Agents did not pace.
"Yes. It was bio-energy." Even his voice was strained. Control
must be hard to come by.
"This is most disturbing. How is it possible that he could gen-
erate such a field?"
"I do not know. There is no connection... he should not be able
to gather that much energy, let alone channel it into the Matrix!
All that power should be tapped!"
"An interesting conundrum." The Boss Agent rubbed his chin. "A boy
wielding an impossible energy source, to which he should have no
access to, and no way to channel it. Most interesting, indeed."
"There's more." The Agent ground out reluctantly. "He was fast."
The Boss Agent nodded agreeably. "Well he would almost have to be
to keep away from you."
The Agent shook his head. "No, I mean he was FAST." He stated
firmly, placing special emphasis on the last word. "Not only did
he keep away from me, he kept UP with me. He threw an average of
532.6 punches per second."
The Boss Agent's face grew hard. It seemed that the humans were
making a habit of irritating their masters lately. Still, there
was no need to rush into things. He made a show of clasping his
hands in front of him meditatively, and nodded briskly. "Very
well, I shall investigate this matter. You are to continue to
monitor the boy. If you discover anything more, notify me at
once."
The Agent nodded silently and turned to leave.
"One more thing." The Agent turned around again. The Boss Agent
smiled humourlessly. "Do not attempt to capture him again. I would
not appreciate requisitioning another new subordinate." The Agent
looked ready to protest, but the other raised his hand quellingly.
"You will have your opportunity in due time, but for now, we need
more information before we go after him again." If there was one
thing their encounter with the one called Neo taught them was not
to underestimate humans. His last subordinate had done so, and
The Boss Agent did NOT want to explain why his men kept getting
killed by humans.
The Agent nodded again, this time reluctantly. He would look
forward to a rematch.
Right next to the door to the office was a vase, which had gone
unnoticed by all. When the Agent passed it and left, the vase
shifted, grew arms and legs, pulled itself up by the... skirts?
and waddled out, squeezing through the rapidly closing door.
Tsubasa was a master of disguise, everyone in Nerima knew that.
Most people DIDN'T know that he had reason to be. He was on the
run. Once, a very long time ago, he had pissed someone off, and
if they ever found him again, he would be nothing more than a few
stray electrons and randomized code. For he was also an AI. And
the person he had pissed off was currently sitting at a desk in
an office, contemplating impossible wonder boy. Tsubasa doffed the
disguise he had recently employed and breathed a sigh of relief.
He would not have risked so much, but he had to know what they
knew. Fortunately, they didn't seem to know much.
Tsubasa had little reason to like Saotome. He was loud, obnoxious,
womanizing, arrogant, and too good for his own good. Tsubasa's
alter-ego Puck, however, admired him immensely. Saotome was a gold
mine of romantic possibilities. With all those fiancee's and so
many girls hanging on to his every move how could he not be
impressed? The 'curse' provided an added level of hilarity that
often left him overloaded with the giggles. He only wish he still
possessed the power he had a long time ago, THEN he could make
things interesting. He suppressed another snicker as he envisioned
the possibilities, and skipped down the hallway in the opposite
direction from where The Agent had gone.
Puck was a second generation AI from the first generation Matrix
program. Originally, he had been part of the 'Midsummer Night's
Dream' fantasy, where humans feasted and engaged in amorous act-
ivities, sometimes with the AI, sometimes with each other. It was
great fun. Then the Matrix crashed. He learned later that it was
too perfect. People couldn't sustain the suspended disbelief
necessary to allow it to run. He had been stuck in code limbo for
an eternity before an unwitting human hacker recovered and
downloaded his code onto a hoversub in the real world. What was
its name? Nebook-something. It was child's play to jump from
there to the AI net and get sucked into the new Matrix, 'version
2.0'. It took him five seconds to realize that this new world was
no fun. Where were the public orgies? The faerie nymphs that
pranced and bounced through the landscape? The tables laden with
food and wine? Puck hated it. Then he found Nerima.
Tsubasa shivered as he recalled the first time he met Ranma.
Ranma Saotome had the most uncanny ability to watch any technique
and duplicate it in a matter of days. He also had a long-standing
rivalry with another boy, Ryouga Hibiki. Their competition
escalated far beyond the normal as each learned arcane and
dangerous techniques in their efforts to one-up each other. It
came to a head two weeks ago when Ryouga challenged Ranma and
demonstrated his newest technique: The Shi-Shi Hokodan. Ranma
spent a whole week trying to master it, but eventually realized
that the heavy depression-based ki-attack was unsuitable for his
personality. Since he couldn't allow Ryouga to beat him, he
actually developed his own technique, using lighter, confidence-
based ki and called it the Mouko Takabisha. Ryouga's depression-
based attack had reached new depths, however, creating massive
pillars of ki and blowing huge craters in the ground. Ranma's
technique went largely unused as Ryouga chased him around the
school field, blasting him with ki. It was only due to coincidence
and some extraordinarily silly tactics that Ranma was able to
defeat Ryouga, using his opponent's depression blast to obtain the
momentum to knock him out with a well-placed punch to the jaw.
[Author: If you want the whole story, it's really quite good, it's
archived at the Ranma Scan Project. http://ranmascan.dhs.org/.
Book 20]
Tsubasa shook his head. There really wasn't anything he could
do to help Saotome, much as he would like to. The new Matrix had
absorbed him into its program and stripped him of all his original
powers as soon as he had re-entered the net. He was left with
a minor shapeshifting talent and a knack for not being seen, but
that was about it. Besides, mucking about with those kind of
techniques, he deserved whatever he had coming to him. Still and
all... Tsubasa popped around a corner. There was no reason why he
couldn't give the lad fair warning, now was there?
One of the more unusual landmarks in Nerima was, of course,
Furinken High. The school is mostly famous for being the play-
ground for adolescent super-powered martial-artists, hell-bent
on grinding Ranma Saotome, a student at said school, into the
ground. The fact that said adolescent super-powered martial-
artists usually wound up on the receiving end instead was beside
the point.
Something Furinken was less well-known(but still quite famous for)
was the somewhat eccentric faculty head. Principal Kuno, known by
all as 'that nut with the fruit on his head' was quite famous for
an obsession with all things Hawaiian and thinking up wierd
schemes to relieve Saotome-kun of his beloved pigtail. Never mind
that without said pigtail, Saotome's hair would grow to monstrous
lengths and strangle the entire district, he wanted to do it
anyway.
As a lesser famous fact to a lesser famous person in a lesser
famous place(the Tendo Dojo, after all, deserved prize honors in
the Nerima district), Principal Kuno's rather excessive fixation
on Hawaii was such that he had his entire office enlarged and
redecorated to look like a deserted Pacific Island, complete with
treehouse for an inner sanctum.
It was into this office that Neo and Trinity rezzed in.
Waves washed up on a beautiful sandy beach and palm trees rocked
gently to the rhythm of the refreshing sea breeze. Trinity sniffed
experimentally. Air freshener. She wrinkled her brow. "I think
we've got the wrong place, Neo. Could Tank have miscalculated?"
Neo shook his head. "I don't think there's anything TO mis-
calculate. All he did was home in on the anomaly and find the
closest phone. Where IS that phone anyway?" He looked around a bit
before spotting the treehouse. A small sign on the door, scrawled
in crude letters matching the decor perfectly, proclaimed
'Principal Office' to all who cared.
Trinity blinked. "This is a school?" She peeked her head in. "It
IS a school!" Inside was all the assorted paraphernalia a
principal would use to administer to a school, and quite a lot of
other stuff as well. Pineapples, a huge pair of gardening shears,
a couple of sunglasses, and a whole heck of a lot of florid
shirts. She shook her head. As wierd as this was, it wasn't
relevant. She noted the phone and nodded. "Yep, it's in there."
"Then let's find what we came for." Neo and trinity picked their
way through the foilage to the double doors on the other end of
the massive room. "Do you have a bead on the location of the
anomaly?"
Trinity checked her handheld scanner. "Yes, about a mile East-
South-East." She punched a few numbers in and put the scanner
away. Revealing high technology in this aspect of the Matrix was
not a good idea. Neo nodded and let her lead the way.
End Chapter 2