The World at War: Chapter 1

Through means best left unmentioned, I managed to extract a great deal
of information from my captured Elder before putting her to the knife,
or the magical equivalent. Seems that this town was simply a rallying
point for the three factions before they began a trip into Russia to
gather up a load of enchanted weaponry created for them by a powerful
sorcerer. I also discovered the source of payment for the
transaction. Hidden, about a kilometer from the town, within a small
copse of trees, was a large wooden trunk. It was bound in iron and a
number of fairly decent protective wards, containing crumbling four
tomes of magic, an ancient athame that bore the aura of long and heavy
use, and a sack of extremely valuable gems. They weren't valuable for
their monetary worth, though their size and quality was impressive.
These were the kinds of gems that had been in contact with places of
power for thousands upon thousands of years.

The tomes were useless to me, not being able to read, or even
recognize, the language they were written in, and the athame wasn't
stable enough to be trusted with the kinds and levels of power I was
accustommed to(not to mention that Xochial's athame put this one to
shame). The gems, they would stay with me. Thinking about them made
me shake my head. To have gathered such a collection of nearly
priceless objects together, the Alliance must be expecting a major
product.

I'd gotten vague directions from the Elder, but they would be good
enough to get me close enough to reliably use magic to find the
Artificer. Anyone capable of dealing on equal footing with the
Alliance was worth checking out. The man may even have a cure for my
Ami.

****

"And the latest probe?" Bill Gates asked. The so-called Wizard of
Gates(he'd only taken that title so others would think him insane, and
therefore easy to manipulate, double cross, etc...) sat in the command
chair of the Microsoft Lunar Testing Center. Through holographic
displays, he recieved constant streams of information from satellites
orbiting the Earth and Moon.

The petite young woman that sat far to his right behind a touch screen
console replied,"The results are the same, sir. We can get visuals of
the surface easily enough, but as soon as atmospheric contact is made,
all communication ceases. Other probes and satellite feeds indicate
that like the others, the probe lost all descent control and broke up
on re-entry."

Bill frowned. His quantum computer(explained in the author's notes),
B.A.S.C(Big Ass Super Computer), had predicted a global conflict, but
the actual reality went beyond just war. The world, was, for all
practical purposes, in the stone age. How B.A.S.C. had come up with
even a hint of the war that was slowly spreading throughout China,
Bill didn't know, but it had and he was glad he'd acted. The
resources of the U.S. had been more than enough to establish a lunar
base and the natural deposits of titanium and materials able to be
turned into a sturdy concrete had aided in rapid construction.

Even now, in two automated consturction facilities, plans were being
carried out to manufacture the first in a series of Humanoid Vehicular
Exoskeletons. The H.V.E.'s were constructed mainly from the titanium
variant found in large deposits on the moon and their weaponry
included the latest in particle beam and magnetic levitation through
manipulation of Earth's energy fields. A sizable portion of
B.A.S.C.'s computing power was turned to discovering a way for the
Gundams, as Bill referred to them(a reference from a favorite anime of
his), to operate in the altered conditons on Earth that had rendered
its technology useless.

"Very well. From this day forth, I want bi-weekly insertion attempts
by the probes. All information will be fed directly to B.A.S.C." If
all went as planned, Bill expected the computer to have found an
adequate counter to the anti-technology field shortly after the
Gundams went online.

****

"Kijin Raishu Dan!" I recognized the attack as I heard it shouted, but
not the voice of its user. Had the fat bastard gotten the balls to
teach his 'forbidden' techniques to someone? Well, that was a stupid
question.

The building that I stood before was large, but that was only the
visible portion. I could sense, through distortions in the Earth's
energy patterns, that the structure extended far into the mountainside
that it rested against. No roads led to it, and there appeared to
never have been a road. Weird.

I shrugged that little mystery aside and leapt from the top of the
large bouler I'd been standing on, using a trace of levitation to
carry me above the 20 odd stories of the building. I could not see
nor probe past the shiny black material used for windows. Gravel
crunched under my heavy boots as I landed on the roof.

Littered around the roof of the mysterious building were a number of
things that should not have existed. The large dobermens, they would
have been expected, except that they were running towards a Japanese
man no more than three years older than myself, and they were dead.
Three zombies also shuffled towards the man. There were dozens of
them already down, some immobile and others crawling weakly through
the gravel. The man, a powerful and skilled martial artist, was
fighting a demon. The demon easily topped thirteen feet. Its spiked
and taloned arms were disproportionately large when compared to the
rest of its massive frame, and the creatures skin looked like
partially melted wax mixed with chords of exposed muscle.

What's unusual about this, besides a lot of zombies and a demon?
Quite simple, really. There wasn't a bit of magic in any of them.
I'm not a practitioner of necromancy, it's a vile art for the weak
willed, but I have sufficient knowledge in the area to know that you
can't animate any kind of corpse without necromatic energies
channelled through a living sorcerer(does very strange and ugly things
to that sorcerer). The human and canine zombies had never been
exposed to nercomancy. They shouldn't be anything more than rotting
worm food. That demon, it also had no magic. All demons possess
innate magic, they can't exist without it.

Answer. Those weren't zombies and that wasn't a demon. This place
was starting to get on my nerves. Oops, they just spotted me. The
zombies weren't worth bothering with. Those that decided to eat me
instead of the martial artist(another mystery) didn't get to enjoy
being undead for very long. They might not be mystical in origin, but
a little dose of white magic and the sons of bitches turned into
pretty little piles of dust.

Not constantly harrassed by lesser foes, that martial artist made
quick work of the not-demon. I watched with interest as he kept his
distance and steadily widdled away pieces of the creature. He avoided
coming in contact with any of its blood, going so far as to flash his
battle aura into intense heat whenever the black ooze sprayed too
widely for him to easily dodge. The poisonous property of the blood
was a good enough explanation for why the man hadn't used any of the
Yama-sen-ken's direct physical attacks.

A little more than a minute after arriving, I witnessed the demon-like
creature collapse in on itself, becoming little more than a puddle of
steaming black and red ichor. The martial artist, his fight over,
seemed to come out of a daze. He looked around and was obviously
suprised that there were no living dead waiting to feast on his brain.

I whistled, catching his attention. Without taking a chance to see
who I was, the martial artist turned, flinging a vaccum blade in my
direction. The attack met my shields and dissipated harmlessly. Now
that I could see the man's face, the exhaustion of fighting off so
many attackers was clear. That last blade had cost him whatever small
reserves he had left. Time for another good deed.

****

The martial artist possessed a fairly high level of Talent, so I was
able to infuse enough energy into him to heal any minor injuries he'd
taken and bring him around within minutes. He sat up, shaking his
head groggily, and attempted to stand.

I'd put as much distance between us and the creature infested building
as I could in five minutes."Mind telling me what in Hell those things
were back there?" I asked. His eyes focussed on me and he assumed a
deceptively tight fighting stance."Oh please, you couldn't fight of a
kitten right now, man. Just sit down and tell me what it was you were
fighting back there."

Warily, the man sat down across from me, the small fire I'd built
forming a barrier between us."Who are you?" he asked suspisciously.
He'd just been through some rough shit so it wouldn't hurt to tell the
guy.

"I'm Ranma. I saved you from the zombies. Now, tell me what that
place is and why there were zombies and demons running around." Though
he had the Talent, this man hadn't been trained in its use at all. He
wouldn't have known that he was fighting unnatural undead, if the
undead can be said to ever be natural.

His voice edged with the kind of mental exhaustion brought on by
constant stress, he began,"I'm Ryu Kumon, special operative for the
JSDF. Roughly three months ago, I was sent on a mission to infiltrate
and destroy the Umbrella installation where you found me. I was
chosen specifically for my...special abilities. In route to the
rendezvous point with my contact, my chopper went down and ever since
then I've been unable to get a satellite uplink with HQ and I've found
nothing of any technological sophistication that actually works. My
weapons won't even discharge. Knowing the importance of my assignment
to the entire free world, I chose to continue the mission. I finally
arrived last week. Without proper navigation equipment, and with the
GPS down, the trip took much longer than expected." His eyes were
haunted, those of a man who had seen too much. I know the look, I
still get it sometimes when I think of Ami.

"Umbrella, what is that?" I asked. I was getting one of those bad
feelings. The kind that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand
up, stretch their legs, and run away.

Ryu shrugged."I'm not entirely sure. All I was told was that they
were some sort of secret world wide organization bent on global
domination. There are dozens of those, though. Umbrella ranked
special attention because they had the means to possibly succeed.
Their scientists have developed a series of viral mutagens that can be
used to reanimate the dead by restoring nervous function and
forcefully awakening primitive parts of the brain, or if allowed to
properly incubate, develop living biological weapons possessing
qualities from several natural species." That's some fucked up shit.
Damned idiots. No wonder I couldn't detect any magic in the zombies
or the demon."The beast that gave me so much trouble earlier was a
frightened scientist just a couple days ago. He'd been using a type
of enormous electric jelly-fish to maintain enough power within the
facility to contain the experimental subjects, but the jelly fish died
last week of side effects from exposure to the mutagen. When the
storage and containment fields went down, he was infected with a new
strain of the mutagenic virus. In less than twenty four hours he grew
into that...thing." Damn. It's mass had been easily ten times that of
almost any man. Such a growth rate was frightening, and would have
been moreso if I'd not watched Demon literally grow before my eyes.

Uh oh. I threw up my shields, keying them to specifically screen out
anything but clean air. My eyes rolled back in my head as I scanned
my body for any irregular activity that could indicate a viral
infection. None, I was clean. I relaxed, and saw that Ryu was giving
me the eye."Sorry, just making sure I'm not infected with whatever it
is you're talking about." Still with the eye."It's sorta like a
martial arts technique," I explained. That seemed to suit him well
enough.

Without the huge amounts of energy that I kept stored within my body,
Ryu was much easier to scan. Almost immediately, I found more than
just an irregularity. The guy wasn't infected, no, his immune system
was at least as strong as mine. Ryu was a cyborg of some kind, a very
advanced one if he was able to survive in today's less than perfect
world."What school do you practice?" Ryu asked, not really caring
whether I answered or not. Jeeze, this guy is almost as bad as Ryoga.

Without really thinking, I answered,"Saotome School of Anything Goes
Martal Arts. That's what I was originally taught anyway. I've picked
up quite a few styles in the past decade." I was still preoccupied
with solving the problem presented to me by Ryu. How 'was' he
surviving?

I looked up as I heard rocks scraping, expecting to see a zombie or
something similar. Instead, obscured faintly by firelight, Ryu Kumon
stood once again, glowing with a faint battle aura and once again
taking the familiar Yama-sen-ken stance."Saotome!" he hissed.

Before this could get out of hand, I exerted my will, forcing the
martial atist back to the ground. His eyes were wild and threatened
to roll out of his head when he found he could not longer control his
body."Calm down, damnit!" Another fine mess courtesy of the bastard.
"What did my father do to you?" I asked, mentally adding this to the
very long list of reasons to torture my father."I don't have any money
if he stole something that belonged to you, not that money is much
good nowadays."

"You're the son of Genma Saotome?" the older man grated from between
clenched teeth. At least he'd had the sense to kill his battle aura.


I nodded."Not by choice, but yes, he is my father. It's been a few
years since I saw him last, though. He was running away from me at
the time. Idiot tried to sell me to a Chinese circus." 'That' one was
going to get Genma a skinning.

Ryu's expression seemed less anger now and more curiousity. He didn't
attempt to kill me when I released the pressure of inverted shields
from him, so I continued,"Does this have anything to do with you using
the Yama-sen-ken? He didn't steal it from your family, did he?" Was
the man put on this Earth for the sole purpose of pissing off the
entire human race?

Ryu shook his head."No, he didn't steal the techniques. He gave them
to my father without warning him of the danger of practicing them. My
father died when our dojo collapsed on him as a result of your
father's carelessness." Genma couldn't have possibly done that out of
charity. A round about way to kill off a rival? Possibly.

"Sorry, man. I feel for ya, I really do." He couldn't possibly know
what it was to truly lose someone you care for more than your own
life.
"My father is an idiot, honorless, ugly, the scum of the Earth..." I
didn't stop for about five minutes. When my little lecture was over,
Ryu was smiling faintly and the only negative emotion he was feeling
was a weak regret.

"At first I spent years looking for Genma Saotome, to take the Umi-
sen-ken and revenge from him, but then there was the explosion and my
priorities changed. Now, I guess I've found the other half of the
forbidden techniques and I won't live to learn them." Gloomy.

"The explosion, is that why you're a cyborg?" Before he could ask how
I knew, I said,"Magic, true magic." He swallowed that pill much easier
than I'd expected.

The man nodded."It wasn't just an explosion. The truck was carrying
sulfiric acid. The government was only able to save 35% of my body.
The rest is life support equipment covered over with biomimetic alloys
and poly-ceramic armor. My main power source has been dead ever since
my chopper went down. I've been supplementing the back-up fuel cells
with my own chi, but that won't work but a couple more days." Ouch.
Who knew the government was good for something, afterall?

"Your fuel cells have been working for the last few months, though?"
That shouldn't have been possible. Then again, Ryu shouldn't be alive
at the moment.

"Yeah. It's some kind of bioelectric battery. Fighting my way out of
the Umbrella installation has pretty much drained the remaining power
from it." Hell, if his body still worked, even with the technology
dampening field of Saffron's, why not try to keep it running.
Ami...if I ever found a cure for her, could probably find lots of uses
for that kind of technology.

Ryu was Talented, at least at the level of the senshi, and would, with
instruction, eventually be able to keep himself running, but for now,
I'd have to play generator. I reached into my spatial pocket and drew
out a perfect, marble sized yellow diamond. It was one of those the
Alliance had sent as payment for their new toys and I'd planned on
giving it to Makoto in a couple decades when this whole mess was over.


"Remember, magic," I responded to the unasked question as Ryu watched
in complete fascination while I worked. I used my athame to carve the
elemental symbols of air into the diamonds surface(yep, it's much
harder than any diamond), empowering it with an enormous electrical
charge. Full night had taken hold when I finished. The yellow gem
glowed with a greenish-white light and floated an inch above my palm.

"It'll give you electricity for a while, but I don't know how much
your body needs or at what level it needs it. If what you say is
true, though, it's your only chance at survival." I passed the gem to
Ryu.

The older man held the glowing diamond reverently. He stood up and
took his brown and green camo shirt off. Without any visible action,
he caused a three inch square hole to open in the his chest, the
realistic skin parting at an invisible seam. Within the small cavity,
a short and thin cylinder filled with a luminescent green liquid
hovered. Ryu took a deep breath and snatched the cylinder from his
chest, replacing it with my diamond in the same motion.

I didn't really have much hope for him to do more than start smoking
and explode, but after a couple minutes of rigid inactivity, he sighed
and the panel closed, the skin resealing and looking unbroken.

Ryu shook his head in wonder."I don't know how you did it, but I'm
back at full power. That little rock gives off more power than my
original, but I can handle it." He pulled me to my feet and shook my
hand vigorously.

Yes, yes, I know. I'm such a good person that I leave trails of
blooming flowers in my wake. Hmmm, I really could do that. Ranma the
Messiah. Nah, I hear the All Mighty frowns on that kind of thing.
Anyway, back to the moment."No problem, just don't get in my way and
we'll get along fine."

"Huh?" I guess I should explain.

"That thing won't last forever, and you'd better believe that you
won't be able to find any of your old batteries that actually works,
for a long, long while." I hate it when people look at me like I'm an
idiot.
"Trust me on this. In the entire world, you're the only piece of
technology that isn't a paperweight." And that was only true because
of Ryu's chi control and latent Talent, I suspected."The reason for it
is that a guy got hold of some powerful magic and turned it loose.
Now technology is dead for a hundred years. You have the ability to
learn magic and if you want to survive, you're gonna have to let me
teach you." Okay, I've gotten used to teaching. I wouldn't really
mind the company of another martial artist all that much, either.

"Magic? I can't say that it doesn't exist, not after the last hour,
but learning magic, I don't know." Please don't be one of those purist
assholes. I've run across them every so often. They always want to
use just martial arts or just magic. So few people seem to understand
that when taken to the higher levels, the two disciplines compliment
each other immensely.

"I won't force it on you, though you'll die without the knowledge. I
guess I could teach you the Umi-sen-ken too. Anything to piss the old
man off."

****

Author's Notes: I know that this Ryu Kumon is way different than
canon, but this one had been through some major shit, you know, the
character building kind. I'm planning on him having some really cool
weapons built into his body that will be revealed next chapter. Sigh,
no one sent in any Resident Evil info, so I'm gonna have to do the
research myself. Send C&C to me at dark_phoneix@hotmail.com


About B.A.S.C.- I'm not entirely sure about the theory of quantum
computers, but it goes something like this. Since a quantum particle
can and does exist in more than one place at any given time, a comuter
that could use a quantum processor like the cpu of a normal computer
could run trillions(if not more) of equations in the time it takes
todays fastest computers to run one. That translates to a whole hell
of a lot of power. B.A.S.C. would not only be able to possess an A.I.
of some kind, it should be able to decipher the meaning of life, the
purpose of the universe, and God's last name.