The usual disclaimer. Ranma, Tron and all the related intellectual property making an appearance in this fic are someone else's than my property; the former Rumiko Takahashi's and the latter.. Disney's? Steven Lisberger's? And whoever they've given/sold their rights to. I'm not and won't be making any money off of this.
Inside the Encom arcade mainframe, two unhappy digitized women were escorted down the very same ramp Ranma had come down two days prior. Like Ranma, they were escorted by a group of three protocol guards, armed with shock staves. Any attempt to talk was instantly suppressed with an electric shock or two. They hadn't yet had the time to set things straight, because as soon as they found themselves on the mainframe, they were taken to the write buffer and onto the diskette.
Shinobu, her long hair somehow hidden under a small helmet, covered with the same blue circuitry design as the rest of her body, kept giving Nabiki annoyed looks. She wasn't certain, but she had a feeling this girl was somehow part of the reason she had ended up in here.
To her glares, Nabiki responded with indifference. Right now, there were more important things to do than think why did they get here - like for instance how they were going to survive and get back.
There had been times when Nabiki had wondered what it would've been like to be involved in Ranma's adventures and how she could've profited if only she had been there. But now she really was taken for a ride, and she was not thrilled at all.
She had made preliminary checks what Encom was all about in Japan. Until now, most of their game machines had been imported from the US, but now they were opening an arcade of their own in the middle of Nerima. Beside games, they did also research and development here in Japan and not only in the US, where the majority of that activity was located.
This was what Nabiki had learned of their public side. But then she had ended up in here, wherever 'here' was. Some of the terminology she had heard did remind her a bit of computers, like "program", "diskette" and so on, but honestly - she, inside a computer? What a ludicrous idea. Ludicrous. Exactly like the life of Ranma Saotome. Ludicrous.
Her shoulders slumped and she sighed. Okay, so she was inside a computer then.
But unlike the usual trips where the traveller paid the bills, Nabiki was intent on having a certain someone pay for this and then some. Besides, it looked like there'd be no opportunity for her to swindle money in here. Even worse, she was not in control of the situation, and this unnerved her even worse.
At least she had brought only a light bento to school... this bodysuit wouldn't have looked this good with a bulging stomach. "As proven by Mrs. Kaneko..."
Meanwhile, Shinobu was busy thinking over what was going on as well. In spite of being a virtual stranger to the all-encompassing weirdness around martial artists resident in Nerima, she could understand the idea that she was inside the computer. Whether she accepted this idea or not was a completely different question. She still didn't like the fact that she was now treated like a prisoner and trapped in a place that hardly looked like Japan or anything close to reality.
Why did she have to get involved in this? Her life at the age of 24 had little out of the ordinary. She had plans to eat out tomorrow with her husband and in-laws, but obviously that dinner was now... postponed at the very least. There was no bad blood between her and her in-laws before this, and while she was at work her husband was finishing his degree in mathematics at the university. Why did this have to happen to her? Why couldn't her life remain as simple as it had been? Then in comes this girl and somehow gets her mixed up in all this.
Girl. The makeup and the clothing gone, she saw the girl was only a high school student. What was her business with Encom anyway? Then she took yet another envious look at the girl's flat stomach. "Why did I eat such a big lunch?"
The five soon made their way out to a data stream at the base of the tower, which led them straight to the quarantine area. As they were escorted past tens of cells, each holding at least one program, Nabiki was trying to catch a glimpse of a pigtail in any of the cells. Before she found Ranma, they had reached their cell and were shoved inside.
The mutual silence, even after the shock staff enforced speech ban had ended, didn't vanish in a minute.
On their way to the quarantine area Nabiki had decided how much to tell Shinobu for free. The more information she gave, the more likely Mrs. Kaneko was to trust her. And even though she was Nabiki Tendo, the one cat to always land on her feet on soft cushion of yen, she was not certain she'd make it out of here on her own. No, having someone on your side who might know a bit more of the situation at hand was good.
"So is this what Encom does," Nabiki began. True, she believed she ended up here because of Ranma, but it wasn't him pressing the button that started up the laser... was it? She tried imagining Ranma clad in a long white coat, pressing a large red button before him and laughing the standardized Crazy Scientist laugh, that is, a bit more drawn and less screeching than the standardized Kodachi Laugh.
Shinobu misunderstood the small smile that had sneaked on Nabiki's face, and the loyal company woman within her lashed out.
"And what is so funny?"
The smile vanished instantly, replaced by the hard look that had earned Nabiki the nickname of Ice Queen.
"What else could be reason for this, considering the only other likely reason for our current disposition is my future brother-in-law, who one, has been missing for days, and two, hasn't got a clue about computers?"
"You think we're inside a computer? Isn't that a bit too farfetched to be true?"
"I didn't say that's where we were, you did. Besides, farfetched or not, that's the best explanation I have. Unless you have any better ones?"
Shinobu contemplated silently for a while before yielding. Nabiki saw her chance to take control of the situation and pressed on.
"Regardless, neither of us is to blame, and unless we work together, we'll never get out of here."
Shinobu had to agree with Nabiki's assessment of the situation. Alone she would have little chance of escaping.
"What was that about your brother-in-law?"
"Future brother-in-law. His name is Ranma Saotome -" Nabiki began before Shinobu interrupted her.
"Black hair in a pigtail, red Chinese shirt, black pants and a martial artist?"
"So you've met him." Nabiki didn't let her smile show through. This was what she had been looking for at Encom in the first place: the reason why Ranma had come there.
"He came maybe a week ago to work on a project in our lab to work on a video game."
The discussion between the two continued, the tension lessening before completely disappearing. Both still held secrets - Shinobu was a loyal employee of Encom, even if she hadn't been there all that long yet and giving away even the smallest of company secrets was a big no-no; Nabiki in turn kept some of her shadier deals out of the limelight, Ranma's curse in particular. Besides, Encom employees should've known her as Ranko Tendo, right?
"What about my cousin Ranko Tendo? Red hair in a pigtail, one regular tomboy, had a meeting with Dr. Shimizu three days back?"
Shinobu shook her head. "Doesn't ring a bell."
"Well, she was supposed to -" Nabiki was explaining as the forcefield at the cell door vanished and a protocol guard pulled the startled Shinobu out.
While Nabiki was left alone in the cell, the guards led Shinobu onto a game grid. A large screen shimmered to existence before her, a low, circular platform with diameter of roughly a metre and a half following the next moment. The light blue tint and the white concentric circles covering the platform gave the appearance of etched glass.
A huge transparent cylinder glowing with darker blue light appeared, leaving Shinobu and the platform inside it. As she stood there bewildered, the diameter of the cage she was now trapped in began to shrink. In a few seconds, the cylinder had shrunk so much that Shinobu was forced to step onto the platform. At that point, the platfrom started to ascend. Slowly picking up speed, it finally stopped at about 20 metres high from the ground, where also the cylinder ended.
Opposite to her appeared another pedestal, with a distinctly male shape on it clad in white with huge sideburns, shirt collars and pantlegs wide enough to hide a small piggy in both them. A generic disco beat began to play out as small specks of light floated upwards from the base of the cylinder, no, pedestal she was standing on. The screen in front of her was like a mirror, showing her standing on the pedestal and the sparkles floating upwards.
The first sparkle had reached the man's platform, lighting up a small portion of it. He stepped on the lit piece, which appeared to make his pedestal glow for a fraction of a second. He did the same when another sparkle reached the platform, making him look like he was stomping on cockroaches.
At this time, the first sparkles had almost reached Shinobu's platform. "No way am I going to get caught looking that ridiculous," she swore in her mind. The first spark hit the platform and she remained still, standing at the centre of the platform.
The spark quickly darkened until it was pitch black. Then she felt a wave of passing nausea at the same time as the platform briefly flickered in and out of existence. Even so, she refused to change her resolution.
The next spark that hit the platform was even worse; she felt slightly dizzy and the flickering grew worse.
"I'm 20 metres high above the ground, on a platform, which looks like it might disappear any time," she remembered. There was little choice. The next light mote struck the platform and she stepped on it. The lightshow that had been the reward for her opponent now appeared on her platform. The nausea and the flickering of the platform were notably absent. She gritted her teeth. She was not going to lose.
As the disco beat continued and continued, the sparkles came faster and faster. Shinobu's opponent started to act erratically. At times, he'd barely hit the ever faster flowing stream of the coloured sparks, at others he acted like he had gained a sudden speed boost, clearing the sparks easily. Shinobu was only barely holding onto the pace of the song herself and missed a note, the nausea hitting her even worse.
But then her opponent began missing notes. It was only one at first, but that put him out of rhythm, resulting in another miss a few beats later. Then, ten seconds later, third miss. His platform disappeared completely and he fell down inside the pedestal, vanishing mid-air in a burst of yellow light while screaming "Disco never dies!"
The pedestal that had appeared to support the platform beneath Shinobu flickered, then vanished as she collapsed on the platform out of breath. The platform didn't fall until without the slightest jerk, it began moving towards the protocol guards waiting for Shinobu at the edge of the game grid.
Back at their cell, Nabiki was talking with an investment program named Kelo, who had been brought to her and Shinobu's cell after the latter had been called to the game grid. Nabiki had almost completely forgotten where she was as she enthusiastically learned of modern portfolio theory from the program.
"- and so by dispersing the instruments in your portfolio you can minimize the volatility of your portfolio for a given expected yield. Essentially, this means that you don't pick them all from one field, say, camera manufacturers, because if that field encounters problems, say goodbye to your portfolio value," Kelo lectured.
"And this efficient frontier tells me how to achieve the lowest risk level for given expected yield?" Nabiki queried. In her mind, she was already planning on how to divide her efforts on different fields to gain maximum profit using more robust methods than the gut feeling she had been working with until now. Having all your money-making schemes depend on Ranma did little good if he was to suddenly disappear like he had done a few days prior.
"Yup. But past performance is no guarantee that's the way things will go in the future," Kelo warned. "And real stock analysts do not rely on this method, because they are quite well aware of this shortcoming."
The two might've continued their discussion much longer if it weren't for Shinobu entering the cell, looking like death warmed over, then crumpling down on the cell floor in exhaustion.
"Never again, never I say, will I go to dance in a disco," she managed to mutter before she fell asleep.
Nabiki looked at the woman before walking over to her and lifting her up to sleep on a bench. She didn't know what exactly had happened to Shinobu, but she had a feeling she'd find that out sooner than she'd like.
Like she surmised, soon thereafter it was Nabiki's turn. The protocol guards left her alone on the game grid. She was wary, not knowing what to expect. The way Shinobu had pretty much simply collapsed on the hard floor after her visit outside the cell did little to reassure her this wouldn't be a painful or at the very least a stressful experience.
Soon thereafter it was Nabiki's turn. The protocol guards left her alone on the game grid. She was a bit wary, not knowing what to expect. The way Shinobu had pretty much simply collapsed on the hard floor after her visit to the game grid did little to reassure her this wouldn't be a painful or at the very least a stressful experience.
She was brought back into the present by the humming noise of game scenery fading into existence around her, one element at a time. First came the first floor with a small fast food restaurant, a jewellery store and a clothing store. Those were the ones Nabiki could see, anyway. She noticed she was standing in the foyer of a multistory mall, the escalators going up, up, up for several floors. No, this was no minor shopping centre.
Her head snapped up, a greedy glint shining in her eyes. If she was at the mall, the people here would have money she could scam! But, whom should she select as the first mark? There were quite a few literally faceless programs walking around, so she approached the one closest to her first.
"Excuse me," she asked of a program with the build of a young woman, who simply sidestepped Nabiki and continued on her way. Nabiki frowned at this, but then decided to approach another program, this time one who looked like a middle-aged salaryman. Putting on the expression of a cute, innocent high school girl reserved for those who had never heard of Nabiki Tendo before, she tapped the program on the shoulder. Again, the program simply walked away from her.
Nabiki sat down on a bench in front of a shoe store and looked around with a deep frown. This looked like a mall, it sounded like a mall, and the programs here acted like they were in a mall. Hence, she must have been in a weird computer version of a mall, but why did the guards bring her here? And what was she supposed to do in here?
The latter problem was unexpectedly solved by the appearance of a male player avatar.
"Hello, you beautiful flower."
Nabiki grinned to herself. She was again in control, even if only for a while. If there was something she knew how to handle beside money, it was people like Kuno-baby.
Kyu could barely stifle his laughter. Correction: he couldn't. He was bent over, his torso shaking, laughing at the stupefied face of his dear friend Yosuke, who in turn was staring at the "Game Over" -text blinking on the screen, the dating game machine playing the refrain of a cheap Japanese cover of "Material Girl". Beneath the "Game Over" text read: "Your debt of 1,992,334,902 yen has put you in a position where the next time you might own your toothbrush is at least 98 years into the future."
"Kyu... I agree with you. This game is evil, but the frisbee chick is only half as scary as... her," Yosuke said and gulped.
Kyu only laughed louder.
At the time the guards were moving Nabiki to the dating game game grid, on another game grid Ranma was not in a particularly cheerful mood. She wouldn't have thought she'd miss Nerima this much... Akane, Ucchan, Ryoga, ... all of them. Just as bad was that she couldn't even practice her art to the fullest without ki in here. No, it wasn't quite as bad as it had been with the ultimate weakness moxibustion, but being this weak was not acceptable at all.
That wasn't the only thing bothering her. There was a screen floating above her head with an image of her on it, as well as two separate game fields. The screen showed her in a frilly light orange dress, more fit to those over-the-top sugar high inducing mangas. Even worse, on the screen her image had bright red-shudder-c-c-cat ears and a tail.
The game grid before her was now a prism, and Ranma herself was at the bottom of it. The grid appeared half-filled with large, shiny spheres, which were slowly but continuously rolling at her direction above a void. In front of her was a glowing line marking where the void ended and the platform Ranma stood on began.
Ranma took out her identity disc and threw it at the spheres. As the disc hit a sphere, the sphere disappeared and the disc rebounded. The screen that had catgirl-Ranma and her opponent, a player avatar that looked like a preschool boy, showed him doing the same on his separate half of the game grid.
The floating screen showed all of the game field, including the empty spaces behind the foremost spheres. For anyone playing the game this information would've been most important as the spaces allowed the disc to hit many spheres at once, slowing down the speed the wall of spheres moved on at the player. Even better, should a cluster of spheres become separated from the backstack of the spheres, they would've disappeared only to reappear on the opponent's game field. This left Ranma at a severe disadvantage, as she could barely look at the image of herself dominating her side of the game field, making all but the simplest strategic planning near impossible.
Ranma threw her disc at the spheres as quickly as she could, attempting to take as many spheres as she could with each single throw. The front of the wave of spheres receded, but the relief was only temporary, as soon thereafter a flurry of dull gray spheres appeared before her after her opponent had successfully dispatched a cluster of them on his field.
She gritted her teeth and continued the assault on the spheres. After she had vanquished half of the gray spheres to the void, another batch of them appeared on the game grid.
It took less than ten seconds for the game to end as the nearest spheres reached Ranma's platform. "The player wins," the loudspeakers announced. The spheres disappeared from sight as Ranma fell on her knees. "I lost," she repeated in her mind. Sure, it wasn't a martial arts fight per se, but she had still lost. Like salt onto wounds, it only made the loss of her fighting prowess sting even worse.
She was still doing that when the protocol guards dragged her to the change plate and back to the holding pits.
The long, curved corridors of the directory tree were nearly empty. Every now and then, a seeker program scanned the tree for a specific archive or the system utilities verified the integrity of the tree.
An archive finder program was moving along the passageways. Another program had stopped him a few subdirectories ago, and now he was not functioning within parameters. The gold patterns on his body had taken a sickly green colour hue and reordered themselves in irregular, broken lines. His header felt dizzy and he fell down.
When he stood up again, he was dragging his left leg behind him as he sought other programs for some reason he didn't understand.
The virus had infected yet another program.
The frustration Ukyo felt was evident as she sat at her desk in Furinkan High, twirling a throwing spatula between her fingers. She knew she had to do something but what? She was a novice when it came to successfully solving problems in nonviolent ways. The teachers in previous classes had repeatedly noticed her distractedness and apprehended her as she had tried to figure out a solution to this dilemma.
Misa and Toshiko, who had been at the arcade with her, were fidgeting on their seats, throwing nervous glances at her every now and then. Ukyo had come close to lashing out at them in the arcade, and they were even now somewhat anxious of getting within swinging range of her. Even so...
"Ukyo? Erm... can you tell us what happened yesterday?" Toshiko asked.
Ukyo wondered if Misa and Toshiko were going to believe her, should she tell them all. At best, they could help her find a way to help Ranma. At worst, they'd reveal where Ranma is to the rest of the fiancée squad and Nabiki, which would keep her from playing the cute fiancée-heroine, and that wouldn't do. Although right now Nabiki felt like the best person to approach, if only she had come to school.
"Eh, forget that - no need for you to worry about it," Ukyo attempted to shrug aside their concerns.
Ukyo's friends cocked their eyebrows with some skepticism and let her be for the rest of that short break. But as soon as the bell chimed to signal lunch break, they took hold of both of Ukyo's arms and dragged her to a more solitary location in the girls' restroom for a little talk. After checking all the stalls were empty and that Ukyo was not yet reaching for a spatula, the two cornered her again.
"Okay, Ukyo, spill it," Toshiko ordered. Misa, standing beside her, nodded sharply.
"Look, I already told you to forget about it," Ukyo insisted.
"And you should've already understood we don't take that answer. So, what was that about Ranma yesterday?"
Ukyo frowned, annoyed. For the most part it was nice to have friends who weren't as oblivious as Ranchan, but not when they decided to butt their heads in things that were none of their business. Also, her spatula hand was itching badly.
Then again, maybe she could get two more co-conspirators this way for the future... as her plans with Ryoga had been less than successful in the past. The itch subsided as she changed her mind.
"Fine, you two, " Ukyo said as she began to relate Ranma's disappearance and the okonomiyaki game chef from yesterday to Misa and Toshiko.
When Ukyo had finished her story, Misa had an unreadable expression on her face whereas Toshiko had her brows furrowed and stroked her jawline with her right hand.
It was Misa who broke the silence after half a minute had passed. "Huh?" Ukyo felt the itch returning to her hand.
"Do you think the computer club could help you?" Toshiko interrupted.
"There's a computer club here?" Ukyo asked. There were quite a few clubs at their school, but Ukyo hadn't heard of a computer club before, probably because she didn't care all that much about clubs that weren't about martial arts, cooking or her Ranchan. Speaking of which, she should drop in the meetings of that particular club soon to remind who was Ranchan's fiancée and who were not.
"Yeah..." Toshiko said, then leaned in closer to Ukyo. "I heard they've already had some trouble with the law", she whispered conspiratorially to Ukyo.
"I heard that the JSDF and Yokota air base were involved somehow," Misa chimed in. Upon seeing the faces Ukyo and Toshiko she huffed and indignantly added, "Well, ask Takashi if you don't believe me!"
"The same Takashi who said that the Kunos were originally exiled aliens?" Toshiko snickered. "I thought you had learned to doubt his word by now, especially after you spent your monthly allowance on those 'magical' videotapes."
"Hey, it was worth the shot! I mean, if the tapes were real and I managed to make a living copy of Him..." Misa's voice trailed off as her eyes glazed over.
"She really needs to get over her bishonen obsession," Toshiko deadpanned.
As soon as the day's lessons had ended Ukyo hurried to see Haruo, the president of the computer club, in their club meeting. With the rather limited resources on the school budget, the club had access to only two computers there. Naturally, most of the club members had their own microcomputers at home, but here the club activities were mostly done without a computer, such as basic machine language programming lessons, if there were any people present who didn't already know how those. It was from this important task that Ukyo dragged him out to an empty classroom.
Had Ukyo known which company ran the arcade, she might've mentioned Ranma's visit at the Encom labs. As it was, she related only his disappearance and the okonomiyaki game event to Haruo.
"- and I can't help Ranchan because I don't know the first thing about those game machines!" Ukyo took a deep breath before continuing. "And that's why I need your help."
Haruo scratched the back of his ear in contemplation before taking off his glasses and cleaning them on the hem of his shirt.
"How's this for a deal: in return for our help, for next two months you'll be cooking okonomiyaki in our club meetings?" Haruo asked.
Ukyo thought this over for a while. She could ill afford to keep her restaurant closed for a whole day. But if they managed to find Ranma and bring him back, maybe she could rope Ranma into taking care of Ucchan's for those days? Not likely, but the potential rewards made the gamble worth it. "Only if we succeed in bringing Ranma back and only once a week?"
"Three months and on Mondays after school, assuming Ranma either isn't there or we get him out. Is this okay with you?" Haruo asked. Upon seeing Ukyo nod, he continued with a grin. "Deal. Let's go tell this to the club."
Ukyo grabbed Haruo's shoulder before he managed to take two steps towards the classroom door. "Is it necessary for all of them to know?"
Haruo turned back at Ukyo. "As good as I am alone, my friend and I are a team. She will have to know."
Ukyo's mouth narrowed into a thin line. The more people knew of Ranma the higher the possibility of someone meddling in the matter.
"Is it enough to tell only her?"
The two kept bartering for a while longer before reaching a solid agreement.
Eiko, a first year student, was one of Nabiki's informants at Furinkan High. She wasn't one to stand out in a crowd with her average stature and a black braid. Not that she wanted it either, as this made her well-suited for eavesdropping and information gathering.
More noteworthy at the moment was that she was also a member of the computer club and had seen Ukyo approach the club president. Grasping at the presented opportunity she sneaked behind the door to the room Ukyo and Haruo were in to listen to what business Ukyo had with them. When Ukyo had started her rant about her 'Ranchan', Eiko knew this information would sell well before it was made public knowledge. The only problem was that Nabiki had gone missing as well and she didn't take kindly to people who stepped over her.
However, Eiko haddn't reached her position this quickly by avoiding risks. She'd simply give the money to Nabiki once she returned. Besides, Nabiki would've certainly hated to see this opportunity to make money slip between her fingers.
Her decision made, she walked to the gym building. There she found her mark and bowed at him.
"Upperclassman Kuno, I have information on the whereabouts of Ranma Saotome and your pigtailed goddess."
"Tadao, got any idea where'd Eiko go?" Haruo called as he returned to the classroom with Ukyo.
"She walked out a while ago - don't know where. She'll be back, though, her schoolbag's still in here."
"Ah well, I think the explanations will have to wait until she gets back," Haruo commented to Ukyo.
Back inside the arcade mainframe Nabiki and Shinobu were being brought to another game grid, this time both of them together. Shinobu's three-hour long sleep cycle had done wonders to help her recover from her Disco Revival Revolution induced exhaustion.
Nabiki was walking beside her. In this case, 'walking' was an euphemism for stomping. Oh, all the wonderfully expensive items she couldn't get refunded in the mall!
Once they reached the game grid, they saw that it was easily thrice as large as the grids they had been before. The pitch black gray walls towered well over a hundred metres above the bottom of the grid. This time, there was not only one of the orange platforms that brought the programs down onto the grid; there were three of them, all on the same edge of the grid. As Shinobu and Nabiki were prodded onto the leftmost platform, Nabiki noticed that there were two programs on each of the other platforms as well. And on the one closest to them was... "Ranma?"
Shinobu had also recognized Ranma as the person who had come to the lab a few days ago. Her talk with Nabiki earlier today in mind, she couldn't place any blame on him, and if Nabiki wasn't exaggerating, he might've been their best and worst hope of getting out of here. Best in the sense that he was a master in surviving and even triumphing in tight spots, but worst in the sense that he was probably clueless what was going on in here, making the stereotype of a dumb jock seem politically correct and inadequate in describing the boy. Even so, she wasn't willing to bet on winning another disco dance experience like the previous one, and what if that game wasn't even the worst this place to had to offer?
On their platform, Ranma and Poro waited to begin their descent down to the grid. Ranma's previous loss was clearly readable from his face. It was only his luck that the game had not been to the death, and luck was something he never wanted to be grateful for. As it was, he was lost in his thoughts when the platforms began descending before stopping maybe twenty metres off the ground level. Then, the game field formed before the eyes of the six programs and users.
The game grid became filled with tall buildings, but the streets were deserted. There were plenty of cars parked all around the streets, but none of them were moving. Then 'they' appeared in front of the six non-player characters. 'They' were twenty metres tall giant robots, fit to old anime shows like Voltron, Balatack and Gekigangar-3, covering all of colour spectrum with their glow patterns on black background: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and magenta. In the arms of each mecha was a knife of some sort, the blade topping about five metres in length.
Ranma felt the not so gentle tap of a shock staff on his back as he was prodded inside the yellow mecha. He slipped into the pilot cockpit in the robot's upper torso, each of his limbs falling in the harnesses. The entrance hatch above him closed and he was in the dark, lit only by the yellow glow of the interior of cockpit.
As Shinobu settled into the orange robot, Nabiki, inside the red mecha, had already opened communications channels with Ranma.
"Saotome. Only you can get yourself into this kind of mess, and drag me alongside with you," Nabiki's voice rattled in through the speakers on Ranma's seat.
"Nabiki?"
A loud rumbling noise in the distance caught their attention before Nabiki could continue. Turning at the direction the sound came from, they saw two buildings at the edge of the grid topple down.
"What on Earth was that?" Shinobu exclaimed, now also in open communication with the other mechas.
"It's coming this way," Ranma stated with a low, flat voice, after seeing three more buildings come down.
"But where can we run - there's no exit in here!" Shinobu raised her voice.
If the yellow mecha had been able to express facial emotions, a deep frown would've marred his face. "We cannot run anywhere," Poro commented inside the green mecha. "We can't leave the grid until the game is finished - and this time I think it's going to take until either us or... whatever it is out there is derezzed."
"We got nothing but these oversized knives! How'd you expect us to be able to... kill whatever it is!" Shinobu retorted. Had she been a bit calmer, she might've remembered what Nabiki had previously told of Ranma in fights and felt the same false sense of security Nabiki had right now.
"Like Poro said... we just have to," Ranma stated before assuming command and leading the mecha squad to an ambush point near the edge of the game grid. He couldn't afford to go at it alone like he would've done in the real world. His loss at the game grid only supported this view. No, the best shot of anyone surviving was to have everyone involved. With the intention of attacking the building destroyer from the flanks and the rear, the six spread out themselves around the path the building destroyer was approaching judging by the sounds the collapsing buildings made. Then, total silence reigned for half a minute.
"Do you think it's gone?", Shinobu asked on the comm channel.
"Not a chance," Nabiki replied.
The program piloting the magenta robot stood up from crouch and opened comm channel.
"I'm taking a look where it is," he said as he stepped into a crossroad section.
An impossibly long, black tongue, lined with pink glow patterns, flew from behind the buildings and hit the magenta mecha straight through, slamming it in the process inside the building behind him, which then collapsed on top of the wrecked mecha.
"Ribbit!"
Shinobu jumped onto her feet and made a quick 360 degree spin. That sounded like... like... one of those slimy, disgusting long-tongued creatures whose moonlight serenades had often been the cause to her sleepless nights, especially after her friends had conned her to kiss one in preschool.
"Ribbit! Ribbit!" The powerful croaks came from the direction the tongue had disappeared at.
"A frog!" she screamed, nearly deafening the remaining mecha pilots with the sheer volume of her voice. To her luck, the building she was behind was taller than her mecha. Otherwise she might've been decapitated with a quick flick of the tongue.
Once Ranma's ears had stopped ringing, he took a look at the collapsed building the magenta mecha was now buried under. The rubble and the top of the building that hadn't fallen apart leaned against the outer wall. The unstable structure was almost high enough for an escape route from the game grid, being roughly twenty metres shy of the top of the wall. One robot alone couldn't escape, but if one of them was left to serve as a spring board...
"Poro, how'd ya like to escape from here instead of taking the frog head-on?" Ranma asked, still crouched in cover behind a building. The frog had not yet moved from wherever he was.
"You got a plan?" Poro answered with a question.
"If we piled something more, like a mecha, on that pile, ya could jump with your mechas onto the grid wall. Nabiki, you hearing this?"
"Sounds like you're not quite as much of a jock as I thought," Nabiki drawled. "So get on it already!" If there were more games like this, she sure was not going to take the chance of playing them alone.
Already on the right side of the crossroads, Ranma moved his mecha to the top of the pile and kneeled there to wait for the first mecha to come. From his position, he couldn't see the frog; a tall building was obstructing his view. He assumed and hoped the frog couldn't see him either.
"Shinobu, you go first. Then I, then the green mecha and finally blue," Nabiki commanded.
As ordered, the orange mecha ran to the yellow one, which helped the former take a hold of the grid wall edge and pull himself up.
"How is the yellow mecha going to get up here?" Shinobu's voice crackled in Nabiki's cockpit speakers.
"Ranma? He can clear that jump anyday, if not in his mecha, then without it," she replied confidently. She'd seen Ranma easily jump over two-story buildings in both of his forms, so getting up here shouldn't have been even a minor exercise for him, if he only got out of his mecha and jumped from the top of it.
In the real world, the boy controlling the frog saw that the pitiful human characters were attempting to run away from the might of the invincible Fragger Frog instead of attempting to find their weaponry in the city as they usually did. This surprised him. Usually the game AI was not designed to actually run away before the first blood, and this was certainly the first time he saw that kind of behaviour in this game. But if he let the them escape the game field, he couldn't break the high score, no matter how many buildings he demolished with combo moves. Stepping up the pace he launched the Tongue Slash Attack at the yellow mecha.
The tongue lashed at Ranma's mecha, piercing the torso and only barely missing Ranma inside the cockpit. His mecha fell onto the ground on his knees and elbows. Staying put had turned into a very bad idea, and he struggled to get out of the robot as quickly as possible. The first method of approach left the hatch closed and his knuckles hurting after attempting to punch the hatch out. A second later, he noticed the small button beside the hatch and pressed it. The hatch cover slid off and Ranma crawled out of the cockpit.
"Blue, bring him up with you," Nabiki ordered, when the huge head of the frog, glowing with bright green lines forming circles around the just as huge eyes, showed up in her view at the end of a street leading to the escape route. The blue mecha had his back turned at the frog as he was moving towards Ranma's mecha.
"Ribbit!" came the rumbling sound. The tongue lashed out once again, cutting the blue mecha in half at his midsection. The top half fell on top of the yellow mecha as the bottom half rolled down the pile of rubble until finally stopping at the street level. Poro and Nabiki, whose position gave them a view inside the mecha's bottom half as it fell down, saw there a brief orange glow which disappeared almost immediately.
"Deresolution," Poro stated, a somber undercurrent audible in his voice.
"Deresolution?" Nabiki parroted. "The program was killed," Poro said in a way of explanation before straightening the back of his mecha.
"I'm going back to pick Ranma up," Poro replied and leaped back inside the game grid. Even if he had submitted to the evident fate of dying at the game grids before Ranma had arrived, Ranma wanted both of them to get out of the game grid. Now that the goal was within their reach, he'd do his best to get the other out of there.
The frog kaiju had been moving towards them, taking his time to wreck every building on his path and a bit off his path as well. Lower buildings were destroyed by the kaiju making a belly flop onto them, taller ones were brought down with a lick of the tongue that cut down the building in half.
Poro had noticed the frog had picked up his speed as it no longer leisurely destroyed all the buildings, only those on his immediate path to the two fallen mechas. To their luck, one of the buildings the frog hit collapsed on his path and hid Poro and Ranma from him. The green mecha kneeled and lowered his hand next to Ranma, who quickly leaped onto it. The mecha quickly stood up and climbed atop the remains of the yellow and blue mechas and jumped for the ledge of the game grid.
The jump fell a bit short, and the mecha's legs were left half dangling over the game grid. Ranma quickly jumped off the mecha's open hand to allow Poro use both of his hands to pull himself up. But before he could do that, the tongue whipped out again and cut the legs off the green mecha, turning the mecha into a giant paper weight.
With the legs gone, the remains of the green mecha could easily pull the now lighter body further up so that it had no danger of falling back down to the game grid. Quickly thereafter the hatch behind the mecha opened and Poro crawled out. Both of the remaining mechas kneeled to pick up the two grounded pilots; Ranma climbed on the red mecha's hand and Poro on the orange mecha's.
Inside the cockpit of the red mecha, Nabiki stared at Ranma as he climbed - climbed, not jumped - to the mecha's shoulder. A roaring "ribbit" was heard when the frog reached the fallen mechas and seeing how many had escaped death. The last lash of the tongue flew over the heads of the four escapees.
Loudspeakers over at the game grid had come active, blaring out an alarm signal. "Illegal program exits from the game grid. Sending out recognizers and tanks."
Poro and Shinobu signaled Nabiki to follow them to the tall, black cliffs rising close to the walls of the game grid. Seen from ground, the tops appeared to nearly reach the mosaic clouds passing far over their heads.
"If we find our way through these memory archive banks, we'll get to the unallocated memory blocks. There we can hide and plan out what we'll do then in peace," Poro explained to the benefit of the three users while gesturing towards the maze of black slabs.
The four had walked for a few minutes when they came across a deep crevice that ran through the archive banks, twenty metres wide ledges framing it on at least three levels below them and another two above them. Poro raised his hand to signal a stop and listened carefully for a while. The chasm carried into their ears the echoes of a muted, sputtering sound that was growing louder and louder.
"Recognizers. Quick, back into the canyons!"
The two mechas scrambled as fast as they could with their passengers a hundred metres in the direction they came from where they turned inside a canyon leading to the chasm. The sound was growing stronger and stronger until after fifteen seconds they saw two huge, black constructs with something akin to square brackets for their bottom half float past their hiding place. After a minute had passed Poro signaled them to get back to the chasm and continue on.
"What were they?" Shinobu asked Poro.
"As I said, recognizers, and that's all I'll say about them until we get to safety," Poro replied. As the encounter with the recognizers had proven, the sounds carried all too well in the chasm, giving the pursuers an easy lead to follow.
"Saotome? Why didn't you simply jump up here from the game grid? We wouldn't have lost the green mecha then," Nabiki asked the man still sitting on the shoulder of her mecha. She might not have known everything about the place they were in, but she did understand that each remaining mecha was a valuable resource. Now that she had seen a violent death of a sort right before her, anything to help them survive were even more important than before.
Ranma fixed a cold gaze where he knew the eyes of the pilot were. "Guess ya know this ain't the real world. But I can't use ki in here, so no roof hopping." Ranma lowered his gaze downwards at the feet of the mecha. "It's not as bad as the ultimate weakness moxibustion mark, but not much better either. Feh."
Nabiki's eyed widened a fraction when she understood what that meant. She had miscalculated and had been ready to leave him down at the game grid. On the betting table there had been Ranma's life. Not even in her dealings with Kinnosuke Kashao had her manipulations carried the risk of anyone actually dying because of her. This was no game, the derezzing of the program piloting the blue mecha vividly playing in her mind. She couldn't shake the thought of her role in Ranma's near demise out of her mind, only push them back for a while. Those thoughts would resurface, though, much too soon for her liking.
On the far side of the chasm, thirty metres below the fugitives' current level three tanks on patrol had just noticed them. The tanks raised their aim and waited for the firing command from their commander.
The quartet didn't see the shells coming until it was already too late. One hit cut off the top of orange mecha's head, sending the mecha himself on the ground on his back. Another one struck the red mecha's left leg, ripping it off at the hip. The third shot struck the red mecha's left shoulder, the momentum sending the mecha on an uncontrolled pirouette on the one remaining leg. Ranma, who had been standing on the mecha's right shoulder, only barely managed to hold on. After the first two spins, however, he could foresee the mecha would topple down the chasm, which meant a fall of at least fifty metres - taking Nabiki with it unless she immediately got out of the mecha.
Ranma understood the speed at which he had to act. When he had first woken up in the holding pits, he felt something instead of his usual ki reservoirs. As he attempted to pull himself closer to the hatch to the cockpit of the mecha, he was also grasping for straws - this weird feeling included. Then, the spin slowed down. Not one to look the gift horse in the mouth, he quickly moved to open the hatch.
Inside the hatch, he saw Nabiki nearly frozen on the pilot's seat, her face turned away so that he couldn't see her terrified expression. The bodysuits didn't have a collar, so Ranma couldn't only drag her out by pulling on that. No, he'd have to place his hands lower, below her armpits, before he could pull her out and hope she wouldn't take offense to it. Acting rather than thinking things over any longer, he wormed his arms below hers and began pulling her up. He offhandedly noticed that her freed limbs moved slowly, as if floating in molasses, before he had taken hold of her in his arms and jumped down on top of the prone orange mecha. As he touched down, he turned around to see the crippled mecha continue his dance of death, the rotations picking up speed again before the robot finally fell down the chasm.
Poro, who had been on the hand of Shinobu's mecha before the tanks had fired at them, was now staring in awe at the pigtailed martial artist. Ranma knelt and set Nabiki on the ground, only now noticing how he had had his hands a bit too close to her chest, and quickly let go of her. But as he expected her to lash out at him any moment now, he finally noticed her still terrified face, staring into nothingness.
"You okay, Nabiki?" Ranma braved. There was no answer.
"Nabiki?"
Nabiki slowly came out of the shock and attempted to focus her gaze on Ranma.
"How... how did you do that, Saotome?"
"I'd like to know that as well, Ranma," Poro said, a questioning frown on his face.
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"I mean, you moved faster than a light cycle on a speed up, that's what I mean!"
"Help me out of here!" a muffled voice came from inside the wrecked orange mecha. Taking this diversion as a small blessing, Ranma moved over to help Shinobu out. They'd have to hurry if they wanted to get to the safe area before the tanks requested for reinforcements to check in on the wrecks.
Over at System Core the lord of the mainframe and MCP's highest-ranking vassal on this system, Kernel, was watching the system load graphs. A few microcycles ago the CPU load alarm had triggered for the second time after Kernel had been compiled on this system. One time was an anomaly. Two times meant there was a program bug to hunt down.
The system monitor programs were busy tracking down the program that had been changing program priorities without proper authorization. Such crime was punishable by deresolution, but only after a thorough debugging session at the quarantine zone. Then, one of the monitor programs cracked a smile.
"Kernel, we have identified the conscript. Program name: . MCP designated locations: the holding pits and the game grids. Current location: memory archive banks."
Akane's eyes glinted with glee as she waited outside the school gym. All day long, she had been following Ukyo, waiting for her to slip up and show that she knew where Ranma was. Ukyo had managed to escape her only for the lunch break, but once she returned, she didn't let her out of her sight again.
Now, she had again missed a potentially important lead - she had seen Eiko eavesdropping on Ukyo and Haruo and couldn't get any closer herself. But at least she knew she could get her information from Eiko, so she set out to follow her instead.
Akane had heard Toshiko's query in the classroom before lunch break, even if not the whole discussion. Something had happened yesterday, and she was positive it had to do with Ranma.
When Eiko got out from the gym hall, Akane confronted her.
"Eiko. What was Ukyo talking about with Haruo?" she demanded.
"Akane." Eiko knew she'd have to be careful with her lest she incur Nabiki's wrath - and in particular not to ask money for information.
So much for Ukyo and MCP's plans to keep a lid on the situation.
End of line.
Omake (based on the idea by Raneko):
Kyu and Yosuke had wide grins on their faces. Now that they had found out they could play Tokyo Luv-Luv Memorial in co-operative mode with two machines, the Frisbee Girl and the Moneydrain Girl would not stand a chance against their combined charm.
Fast-forward ten minutes.
Once again, "Game Over" flashed on the two screens. This time, however, the screens showed the Frisbee Girl and the Moneydrain Girl tangled in a passionate lip lock. Under the picture the screens said: "Due to your bumbling dating practices you have converted these two lovely girls into devout life-long lesbians."
Both boys stared at the two figures until Kyu broke the silence. "Umm.. did we lose or win?" Yosuke wiped some drool away from his chin before answering. "Shush. Did you have your camera with you?"
Omake by crystlshake:
Tatewaki Kuno strode through the doors with purpose. His eyes filled with determination, his heart filled with purpose, and his pockets filled with yen. Today he, the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High, would prove triumphant in his quest to free the beauteous pigtailed girl.
Eight tension filled hours and 60,000 yen later...
His palms were slick with sweat as he tightly gripped the weapon at his disposal. He would deny it to any other but his heart was gripped with apprehension and worry. This was his last chance. If he failed now he may never see the pigtailed girl again. The foul sorcerer had finally pulled out all the stops but he had valiently fought on against the ever increasing waves of minions sent to stop him with the pressures of time pushing him to the limits of his reflexes. He stood at the pinnacle, the point of no return. One wrong move and what was assuredly the final obstacle in his way would forever prevent him from his destiny.
His enemy moved! Like a bullet he raced forward, intent on his goal, blood pounding in his ears at the rush of the final confrontation. Quick as lightning he struck, sending the monster to its demise. Swelling with pride at his accomplishment he strode forward to claim his prize and his destiny.
He was stopped just short of embracing his beloved. Fury warred with grief as he was denied by one last trick! Then she spoke. The words turned his blood to ice and behold, it was as if the great Blue Thunder had been slain! He gasped as their meaning registered and openly wept. He had failed! How could the heavens torture one as virtuous as he so?
The Encom Arcade security guards sighed at what had become a common occurrence over the last two weeks. Resignedly they helped the young man from the floor and escorted him to the exit.
As Tatewaki bemoaned his failure he cast one forlorn look back at the arcade machine that so taunted him and the words that tore his soul. Firming his resolve as he walked away he resigned himself to his fate. He would have to throw himself into practice to overcome the limits time placed on him, and from the looks of his significantly lighter wallet come better prepared. As he attempted to rally his spirit the mocking words of the sorcerer echoed in his head and he shed a tear at his failure.
The princess is in another castle.
AN: Well... I guess I was badly mistaken. Pretty much all I needed to change for this were the scenes with Shinobu and add only a little more flesh to the real world scenes.