Resident Ranma –()- Chapter one
Disclaimer:- You guys know the drill by now. No one owns these characters, except for Rumiko Takahashi and anyone she says does.
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Ranma Saotome sat on a small granite boulder as he stared at the night sky. The bright and not so distant lights of Tokyo did little to diminish the brilliant points of light that hung suspended above his head as he was above the layer of pollution that covered the city and reflected the cities lights back to earth. The crisp cold air caused his ears and nose to become slightly numb, just like the rest of him.
Usually the stars above would tend to put the pig-tailed martial artists life in perspective, but that was usually, and there had been nothing usual about the last few days.
-flashback-
He came in from the garden like he always did in the mornings. He'd left the panda slumped in an untidy heap in the middle of the backyard to recover as best he could just like he usually did. He decided to take a quick bath before he came out for breakfast. Casting ahead he made sure that no one was in the bathroom before entering. It looked like the Tendo's were all clustered in the front-room of their home.
"Wonder what's goin' on there?" Ranma muttered quietly as he slid the shoji screen closed and began to undress. He was down to his boxers when he heard the rapidly approaching thud of feet, Akane's feet if he was any judge. Without any pre-amble the door was slammed open so violently that Ranma was in a crouch and ready to apologise for whatever he'd done before he even realized that the expression on her face wasn't rage but fear.
"A-Aka-ne? What's wrong?"
"It's, it's, horrible Ranma! They're dying!"
"Who's dyin?"
"Millions, they're dying Ranma."
"Hold on 'Kane, who's dying?"
"The Americans."
"HUH???"
"Come and listen to the news, it'll tell you what's going on."
"Why're they dyin'?"
"There's a plague or something. The details aren't very clear but it's spreading." She grabbed him by the hand and dragged him into the front-room, not heeding his struggle for release so that he could appease his modesty and put some clothes on.
When they reached the rest of the family he found them clustered around the television listening to the excited chatter of a special panel of experts as they discussed the situation, and its possible ramifications. Just as he took his place and started to listen to what was being said a man rushed in from the side of the screen and handed a sheet of paper to the person Ranma assumed was the host of the show, all the others had the rumpled appearance of those who had other things on their minds than what they looked like to the world as a whole, the man in the centre on the other hand had that glossy appearance that all T.V. presenters seemed to possess. Even the snazzy clothes couldn't hide the fact that the man in question was barely holding himself together as more and more facts were added to the situation.
"This is just in. The government in collaboration with remaining CIA and FBI assets in Japan have begun investigating a company called the Umbrella Corporation in the United States. It appears that they were developing biological super-weapons when one of their experiments went wrong and the laboratory was infected with a strain of a new virus. It took several weeks for news of the event to reach the outside world, and in the interim the whole underground base was infected." The presenter looked up with eyes wide with fear, there wasn't even any pretence at an unruffled appearance anymore. "It gets worse." He said before going back to reading the document in his hand. "Having successfully hacked the bases mainframe the joint taskforce has uncovered encrypted files. Starting with the last file known only as T they uncovered as much information as they could. It turns out that the T-virus as it is now being called has a high infection rate and is completely effective, it destroys the brains higher functions and turns the victim into a primordial beast that hunts. The file also had hyperlinks to a file called M and another titled R. Learning more about these files uncovered the names behind the letters. T stands for Terminus, or death. M stands for Mutation, and R stands for Replicating. Apparently the T-virus has been linked to the others to make it even more effective. The mutation part we don't understand as yet but the replicating part is simple enough, anyone infected with the virus becomes a carrier, if they scratch someone within two days of falling ill with the virus then that person will become infected, no one is immune to the disease though roughly one in ten thousand will survive with no harm done though they will still be a carrier for the two days the virus is active."
-end flashback-
It was all so clear in his mind, that single program had changed his world, or rather it had already changed and they were just informing people to the changed status of the world. With all his skill there was nothing he could do. You can't punch a virus into submission. He looked down at the lights of the city once again and thought, 'Those lights will eventually die, just like the people did.' It was a morbid thought but then it was a morbid situation. A city of eight million people suddenly reduced to a few thousand survivors.
He turned away from what had once been his home and looked at the scattered fires around which huddled the pitiful remnants of a once vibrant city. Now the Nerima Wrecking crew was the only thing that stood between these people and certain annihilation.
What do we know about the T-virus? Well much of it we learned from the radio and television before the plague arrived on our supposedly inviolable shores. We were an island there was no way the T-virus could reach us, all we had to do was maintain a strict quarantine, any aircraft or ship that approached Japan was destroyed, regardless of where it came from. They weren't taking any chances and it might have even worked, but for one thing. One thing would change the outcome and….
Then again Japan was isolated from the rest of the world, and America was a long way away. They'd been afraid, but felt they were probably safe from the virus. Oh how wrong they'd been.
It was midnight when the plane came in over the sea of Japan, the cockpit was empty and the planes auto-pilot was lined up with Tokyo airport as closely as an automated program could be. The radio crackled to life again.
"Flight AH-400 out of New York, respond! You are flying into restricted airspace. If you do not respond you will be shot down." They'd made numerous attempts to get someone but they feared there was no one there that would be able to talk to them.
"Sir we still have no response from flight AH-400." He turned around to face his superior who's call it would be.
"We have no choice then but to shoot them down." The man in charge looked stressed as he considered that he could be wrong but with the news coming from around the world he couldn't take the chance. Picking up his microphone he called, "JSDF flight 1 you have a go on termination. Clear the skies." The last was a safety code that allowed the pilots to know that there was no coercion on the man giving the order and that they should carry out his order.
JSDF flight 1 was currently at twenty-five thousand feet as they tailed the commercial jet-liner from a safe distance. Upon hearing their orders they moved into position to attack and locked on. As soon as they had tone they launched their IR AIM-9 Sidewinder air-air missiles. The lumbering 747 didn't have a chance as six missiles closed from three different angles. Then the unexpected happened, the plane that was supposed to set down in the Middle East finally ran out of fuel, the engines sputtered as they ran dry and the heat source that the missiles locked onto was lost. Their was still heat there, but it wasn't enough to maintain a positive lock and they streaked off into the night. All except one, it didn't have a lock but just happened to be on a vector to intercept the tip of the right wing causing ten metres of it to disappear in a massive ball of flame and shrapnel. There should have been a chain reaction as the fuel cells in the wings ignited but the outer cells had been dry for the longest time and the vapour failed to ignite. As luck would have it, it was enough to cause the huge plane to nose over and begin to dive into the sea thousands of feet below. JSDF Flight 1 wasn't taking any chances and launched AMRAAM missiles at the damaged plane, watching in satisfaction as the fuselage disappeared in a bright ball of flame. Even if something from the plane landed in Japan it had been cleansed by fire.
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Elsewhere in Japan, a certain wanderer did what he did best. He'd been sick for a few hours now and had no idea what was happening to him. He was tireder than he ever remembered being, even the times he hadn't eaten for days hadn't felt this bad. He decided that it was time to camp even though he still had hours of daylight to travel in, and pitched his small tent, attaching all the pieces together with rope and finally himself with a fifteen metre chain. He never took his backpack off, just in case he wandered away, he didn't want to lose his few possessions, especially the gift he'd brought for Akane.
After about an hour of looking into the flames of his campfire Ryoga spiked a fever and got even sleepier. Closing his eyes for a moment he relaxed. The last thought to cross his mind was that Ranma would pay for this.
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Author's notes:- You know the drill at this end of the chapter as well guys, I'd love to hear from you. In fact I look forward to it immensely.
Alright for those of you who missed it, yes I see you in the back row. Ryoga is infected with T, he's in the wilderness, or maybe it's a park that he thinks is wilderness. Anythings possible with the lost boy. Where am I going with this? You'll have to wait and see.