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.
A scowl marred Eiko's face as she was returning back to the computer club meeting. It was rare for her to express her feelings this openly, but still, with no one there to see her, the matter of letting her guard down was of no importance.
She had strided to the gym building with the intent of making a good amount of money in Nabiki's absence. Of course, since Ukyo already had the full inside scoop on the matter, she didn't expect to match Nabiki's usual turnout. Kuno did pay the usual fee, and if she had been quick, she might've had the time to sell the information to the Ranma fanclub before their meeting disassembled.
But the confrontation with Akane had botched up that plan. It had cost her a quarter of an hour, first attempting to evade Akane before ending up telling everything she had heard Ukyo talk with Haruo... for free. By the time she got to the classroom that held the Ranma fanclub meeting, the meeting itself had already been disbanded, probably because no one had anything new to tell about Ranma.
Haruo was sitting behind the teacher's desk talking with Ukyo, who had moved a chair from a student desk to sit opposite to him. The two had talked about their options for a while when Eiko entered the classroom. The rest of the club had already left home, leaving the two no need to speak in hushed tones.
"Eiko, come in here," Haruo called. "Ukyo here," he waved his hand grandiously at the girl in question, "has agreed to be the club chef for the next three months... if we succeed in a challenge she gave us."
Challenges - Haruo lived for them, Eiko recalled. She let a small smile appear on her face. But what was Ukyo doing... in... oh darn it all. "Nice going, Eiko... it sure will turn out a challenge after getting Kuno and Akane involved," she silently cursed.
On the outside she kept her expression and jumped onto Haruo's lap. "And don't we both just love challenges? So, what's it all about?" she asked and gave a peck on Haruo's cheek, the smile never leaving her face.
The three Users and Poro had almost made their out of the memory archive bank canyons. The trip hadn't been a short one after they had lost their transportation, and constantly dodging recognizer and tank squads looking for them didn't help them travel any faster, or at least not constantly in the right direction. The walk of five hours did give the four time to reflect, as Poro's recommendation to remain silent was taken to heart.
Her husband and in-laws now last on her mind, Shinobu wondered what was going on with Ranma and Nabiki. The latter had said Ranma was engaged to her sister, but Shinobu felt there was something off in how the two acted, and it wasn't only because of their current predicament. Maybe it was just her, but she expected future in-laws to get along better than these two.
Now that she thought about it, Nabiki had said she had been searching for Ranma, who had disappeared well before they ended up in the digital world. Ranma must've come here before they did, so maybe he knew more of why they were in here?
Nabiki's mind was no longer preoccupied only by the misassessment when escaping the game grid. Yes, that was still on her mind, but she had pushed it back and put up her usual facade. She, too, believed that Ranma had been here longer than her, but what had he learned? And why had she been pulled into this mess as well? Once the four got into safety, they'd need to have a small... discussion on exactly what had happened. Especially about how he pulled her out of the mecha.
Ranma's latest stunt was very much on Poro's mind as well. No normal program could've done that. No normal program should've done it either, as now he was pretty certain Kernel had already dispatched even more recognizers, tanks and protocol guards to seek the fugitives. He didn't know what system the three had come from, but if he stuck with them, in the end, he might get back to his own system.
The person on everybody else's mind had been thinking of the mysterious rescue operation as well. Poro had said he had moved faster than anyone, but in his opinion he hadn't moved any faster than usual without ki. But what about the changes in the speed at which the mecha had spun? And what about that odd something he felt when he tried to use his ki, which just wasn't there?
Poro broke everyone from their reveries as he noted they had come to their destination: the unallocated memory blocks. The canyons they had walked through had been lined with tall black blocks laid out in an orderly fashion, but in contrast, these memory blocks were littered with small smoky grey slabs, slates, prisms and blocks, all laid out in one merry, seemingly chaotic fashion, and with glittering bluish edges by which small pulses travelled at a slow pace. At the bottom of a nearby pit, the remnants of a wrecked tank were strewn around.
The four wandered deeper into the rugged terrain. Rubble, tall cliffs and cave formations covered the area. At the same time, Ranma was under interrogation. Shinobu and Nabiki had agreed to ask Ranma later, when Poro was not present, of how he had ended up inside the computer, but that didn't keep Nabiki silent on all topics.
"Ranma, how did you get Nabiki out of the mecha?" Poro asked as he helped Shinobu climb up a small cliffside. This also had Nabiki's ears perked at Ranma's direction.
"Well, the mecha spun slower and I already was on the mecha, so it wasn't that tough for me ta pull her outta there," Ranma replied, some of his pride seeping through.
Poro and Nabiki looked incredulously at Ranma. Poro knew what he had seen and Nabiki knew what she had felt. Unlike Poro, however, Nabiki had also the benefit of knowing Ranma was horrendous at lying, and Ranma truly seemed to believe what he was saying.
Nabiki stepped onto a long, narrow slab acting as a bridge over a gap between two large boulders and voiced her opinion. An explanation formed in her mind. "Ranma, got any idea who Einstein was?"
"Uhh... not a martial artist?"
If she hadn't been using her hands to balance herself on the bridge, Nabiki would've slapped herself on the head. The long fall down would've been quite painful, though. "Now, why I am I not surprised of that reply?" she thought.
"Albert Einstein was a physicist, and one saying frequently credited to him is that everything is relative," Nabiki expounded as she stepped off the bridge safely.
"Relative? As in family? Are ya saying I'm related to the Kunos?" Ranma nearly shouted as it was his turn to step on the bridge. It was Nabiki's luck that she was already on safer ground as her step faltered. How did he reach that conclusion? A bit off to the side, Shinobu was silently wondering who these Kunos were. She also had a strange feeling she was better off not knowing them.
"No, you fool! In this case, I meant that for different observers time can run at different speed," Nabiki said as she began climbing a slight slope onto a ridge to follow Poro. She doubted it was worth it to explain to Ranma the most commonly known results of the theory of relativity; that's what the teachers at Furinkan High were for. Well, some of them at least.
"So what's this gotta do with anything?"
At times, Nabiki felt talking with Ranma was like leading a stubborn mule through an obstacle course, dangling a bunch of carrots before his head. What a fitting equine analogue it was. "You said the robot slowed down its spins?" At Ranma's nod she continued, "Was it only the robot or did you notice something else slowing down as well?"
Ranma strided up the ridge and thought over what Nabiki was asking. Shinobu's mecha had already settled down by the time the spinning slowed down, Poro seemed to be pretty much out of it anyway, so he wasn't expected to move much. Now, what else was there that did move at all? The sky was one alternative, but he hadn't paid any attention to it at the time. He turned to look back at Nabiki. Nabiki. That's it.
"You," Ranma replied.
Nabiki, whom he had by now already passed, raised her head and her eyebrow at him in a silent question.
"In the cockpit, ya just seemed to move a bit sluggish, that's all," he elaborated. Nabiki kept her expression.
"I mean, it was like ya were floating in tar or something, almost like," he continued, before realising, "like in slow motion."
Nabiki grinned. Very much like leading a mule to a goal. Shinobu and Poro had also listened to this discussion, the former relating the happened to the wire fu movies she had seen whereas the latter silently wondered exactly what did Ranma's identity disc contain. After all, the disc recorded everything a program did and learned. "Yes, it would be most interesting to see." Then with a grim undertone he added, "Especially if you were Kernel or MCP."
Driven by this minor success, the mercenary girl asked a few more probing questions from Ranma. To the disappointment and frustration of both her and Poro, they couldn't get anything more useful out of him. Regardless, this had given Ranma the starting point to think over the incident.
This wasn't a ki-driven technique, he understood that much. But he did try to do something like that. And there was something - something he couldn't name out there. He tried reaching for it in his mind as he followed the rest of the troupe on autopilot. Whatever it was, it was much fainter and weaker than it had been before, pulsing further away in the distance of his mind's eye.
He looked around him. The area was still pretty much as messed up as it had been. In the distance he saw a red glowing line shooting from the ground to the sky from a building whose shape vaguely resembled that of a horse shoe. Ranma was about to ask Poro what that was, but he was already talking with Nabiki. Instead he let his gaze wander some more for a while. Down the ridge they had been walking on Ranma saw something glitter, like in the ice cream and watermelon he had eaten on the game grid simulating a park. Nabiki had just turned to talk to Shinobu, so he addressed Poro.
"Hey Poro, that sparkly stuff, what is it?"
"That, Ranma, is a source pool, and that's where we're going now to take a break," he said, a grin growing on his face, and began descending towards the sparkling pool. The Users shrugged and followed him back down the hillside.
As the pool reminded Ranma of the food he had eaten inside the game grid, he realized that other than the time the avatar had tried hitting on him... then her, he hadn't eaten anything in here. The Saotome stomach should've made itself known already before he was shipped to the diskette drive, but now, days later, it still hadn't made a single complaint. This was not natural.
Poro reached the pool and took out his identity disc from behind his back. The disc served as a saucer as he drank the liquid, the circuitry patterns on his body lighting up. "Ahh... hey you, don't just stand there," he called at the rest of the group and waved them to come closer. "The Power here will do you a lot of good."
Ranma was a bit skeptical about getting too close to anything that resembled water, even if it was called Power instead of water. However, the choice was made for him, as Shinobu tripped on a small block behind his back and upon falling pushed Ranma into the source pool.
Shinobu stared at the thorougly soaked boy-turned-girl who was now spitting Power from her mouth like a fountain. Nabiki had the insufferable smirk on her face. "You never get a break, do you, Ranma?"
Poro, who had seen the entire exchange, asked, "Where did Ranma go and how did Ranko get here?" With a hint of cold steel in his voice, he asked, "Are you one of MCP's spyware?"
Nabiki stared at Ranma and Poro, the latter more than the former. He couldn't have missed the change, not two metres away right in front of his eyes? Sigh. And she thought there were no Kunos in here.
Back in Furinkan High, Ukyo and Haruo had finished "informing" Eiko of what their task was. She had only one more question to ask from Ukyo and Haruo. "So, what's the plan?"
"First off, we're going to check the arcade ourselves," Haruo said with a wide grin, which soon was mirrored on Eiko's face as well. Haruo imperceptibly nudged his head at Ukyo. Eiko's smirk only grew wider as the two turned to face their 'employer'.
Ukyo touched the spatula on her back, the episode from the previous night not yet all forgotten from her mind. If the guards at the arcade considered her now an unwelcome person... they'd have to be re-educated. No one was keeping her from saving her Ranchan! It was then that she noticed the way the two were grinning at her.
"No," she said.
"Oh yes," both computer specialists said in unison, their smirks growing ever wider.
"I don't have that much money to spend around! You pay for your own games!"
Not too far away, Kuno was walking to his home. The information the lackey of the insufferable Nabiki Tendo had supplied him with left him pondering what steps to take next. Unlike her mistress, the girl hadn't offered any advice on how to proceed - not that he expected to get it for any less than five thousand yen.
He frowned as he recalled that Nabiki Tendo had been absent from school that day. Rusty gears creaked and turned in his head, but ground to an abrupt halt as he noticed a one hundred yen coin on the sidewalk.
Yes, certainly this was a sign from the spirits! He would find his ensorcelled love in the arcade on his own and protect her fiery yet delicate person from whatever had imprisoned her in those cold, unfeeling shells of plastic, wood and silicon.
Cue foreboding rumble of thunder in the distance.
"No, Ran...ko is not spyware," Nabiki explained Poro for the third time.
Poro still couldn't believe it, even if a third party said it. A few metres away Ranma mused this was better than how MCP dealt with it, since he had given up shooting hostile glares at her. He'd even understood that Ranma and Ranko would never be seen together - but why was it so difficult to accept that Ranma was Ranko? That went over both Ranma and Nabiki's heads.
Well, at least he hadn't started spewing bad poetry.
Ranma was having a bit better luck explaining the curse to Shinobu. Both had climbed out of the pool and were now having a 'relatively' calm discussion. Magical curses and multiple engagements didn't really fit in her view of the world of few hardships and where most things were controlled so that chaos had little foothold. Still, it looked like no mallet, proverbial or not, would be making an appearance.
"- and don't ya start thinkin' I like being a girl for the rest of the time I'm in here. Why the big red face has something against me, I dunno."
With the revelation that Ranma was actually Ranko, the one person who Shinobu knew to be somehow involved in why they ended up inside the digital world in the first place, her ire was dissipating. Having now a face to connect to the name, blaming her was now harder. This didn't mean she wasn't wary of him... her. She would give Ranma the benefit of the doubt, but only for now.
Ranma watched in surprise as the woman opposite to her was calming down. She wasn't used to resolving arguments by talking, after all. No, usually the arguments only escalated until someone got lost, was knocked out or was punted skywards.
It was only a brief flash in her mind, shorter than a blink of an eye, but the image of a then long-haired girl with black hair arguing with her derailed her thoughts. Akane. Why did she have to think of her right now?
Shinobu watched as Ranma averted her eyes, her face assuming an expression of longing. The pigtailed girl then shook her head to clear her thoughts and returned her attention to Shinobu.
By now, Nabiki had given up her attempts to explain the curse to Poro, so the two of them had begun walking towards Ranma and Shinobu. Ranma felt she was done with Shinobu, too. She was already moving to stand up when Nabiki spoke.
"Don't get up, Ranko. We need to talk with you," she said, emphasizing the name. She admitted Poro was the only one of them who knew his way around here, and for that reason he had to listen to their discussion. Shinobu, on the other hand, might have been not so well-versed in computers, but she knew more of the people in Encom than anyone else present. And even if Shinobu didn't believe Encom or its employees were directly involved in the events, she was keeping her mind open.
Poro and Nabiki sat down next to Ranma and Shinobu, who had now moved a bit to the side so that she could lean against a tall block.
"So, how did you end up in here," Nabiki directed her first question towards Ranma.
"Ya remember the debt I paid back 'bout a week ago? Well, I got most of the money in advance for doing some basic kata with a few stickers on."
"Motion capture," Shinobu interjected.
"That. Two days back, this one man, Nobuo something, calls me an' asks if I want to do another session."
Nabiki nodded to herself. This was the call she listened to on the landline extension. Keeping her cards close to her vest, she nodded to Ranma to prompt her to continue with her recount. At a later time, she'd confront her about the Tendo share of the money earned from the recording sessions.
"Well, at the labs, there weren't any but the voice in the loudspeaker there. He told me to get back to the recordin' area and once I was there, zap!"
"Wait wait wait, you mean you didn't see anyone? Who opened the blast doors then, or the outer doors even?" Shinobu was surprised. Encom labs had very tight security rules for the people working there, and even tighter if you included MCP overseeing all of it.
"No one, they just opened on their own when I walked up to them."
"That's not how things are supposed to happen! I mean, the security rules have already been violated in more ways that I know. No visitor is ever left unsupervised, the blast doors may not just 'open on their own' and in general, no new guests are permitted in after the front doors are locked at six pm!"
Exasperated, Shinobu, who had stood up in her overexcitement, sat heavily back down. What good were the rules if they weren't being followed? Apparently, this branch of the company had to have been targeted by industrial espionage and there was a mole deep undercover already; it was the only thing she could think of that explained this.
A thought she didn't even want to consider popped up in her mind. What about MCP? Why didn't the last line of their company security do anything?
"Back on topic, a bright beam struck me and I woke up in a cell." Deciding to conveniently cut off a few of the more embarrassing events such as being zapped unconscious more times than she cared for, he skipped over to the 'trial'.
"The big red head, Master Control something Poro said his name was, babbled something about me breaking some laws of maths or somesuch."
"Master Control Program?" Shinobu queried, feeling a cold pit forming in her stomach.
"Yah, that's the one."
Shinobu wasn't a stupid person, even if she didn't hold a college degree. Even though she worked only at the receptionist's desk, her terminal there was connected to MCP. MCP could've edited the personnel records. MCP could've handled the lab security systems so that nothing had appeared amiss. All leads pointed to him. Him. It felt strange, wrong even, to refer to a computer program as a person, but in here it didn't feel all that out of place.
She tossed aside that train of thought. If MCP was as much of a big shot here as she had the impression of, they were in deeper trouble than she had cared for. Naturally, being imprisoned in the digital world was trouble enough, but this piece of news only showed how much worse than she had thought the things could get in there.
As Shinobu's shoulders drooped, Poro was thinking to himself. Even if he was rather lethargic and impassive for a program, something about these three programs and Ranma just wouldn't let go of his attention. Ranma had said he was a martial artist, but what would a program by that description do? The program who had most likely broken more than a few of the constraints Kernel had put on program execution. No, whatever it was that he executed when he pulled Nabiki out of the mecha wreck was not within normal parameters.
Another point was that of the four, only Shinobu appeared to know who MCP was. Anyone on the system must have heard or known about him, but not Ranma, Ranko or Nabiki. Although, Ranma had met him before he was sent here, but he still had no idea who the "big red face" had been. Poro gave a small chortle at the memory of this alias.
Poro didn't know enough of Nabiki to form a conclusion what manner of program she was. Still, her ignorance of the system state was hinting that she likely wasn't a program of standard configuration either. She also had known Ranma and Ranko before they were transferred to this mainframe, but what exactly was their connection?
Shinobu might've been a normal program, but for some reason, he doubted that. "Guilty by association," some might say, but she understood too well what the others were talking about. In their discussion, many nouns Poro had never heard of before had popped up like money and kata, but she had followed the discussion without a hitch.
"You're not normal programs, right? But what are you then?"
His interjection cut short the discussion the three Users had been in.
Nabiki and Shinobu took a look at each other, then at Ranma, who had raised her hand and was opening her mouth to answer.
"I thmmhph!"
The rest was muffled by Nabiki's hand that had suddenly covered Ranma's mouth. Above her hand, Ranma's eyes gave an angry glare at the girl with pageboy hair cut.
"Excuse us for a minute," Shinobu asked Poro before moving over to Ranma and Nabiki herself.
The three huddled together, and conversed in low, whispered tones. Every now and then, Nabiki cast a quick look at Poro, as if to ascertain he hadn't moved any closer. Something of a grin could have been seen forming on the edges of her mouth, even though she was definitely trying to keep her features expressionless.
Poro had moved back to the source pool to indulge in the glimmering liquid while he waited for the three to finish their talk. He scooped some Power from the pool with his identity disc and slowly sipped it, not in the slightest hurry for their break to end. Far ahead of him, the red transmission beam from an IO tower crossed the horizon and vanished into the black nothingness high above their heads. The beam appeared to remain still, not a single bit transferring through it. It only made him realize how much in isolation the system was. Getting out of here would be a problem.
"Poro?"
He turned his head at Shinobu. Ranko and Nabiki were beside her, their impromptu negotiations already over.
Nabiki, her face now missing the grin it previously had, took up the bat. "You are right. We aren't programs. We are what you would call Users."
Poro raised one of his eyebrows, then the other. Finally, he began chuckling as the three put-down Users watched him.
"That's one reaaally tall tale you're weaving, you know? Piece of malware with access to system functions I could've believed. Corrupted pieces of an obsolete Kernel, maybe. But Users?"
Nabiki's mouth had twisted into a thin line in displeasure. "Are you done?"
"Are you?" came Poro's sobered reply.
"What's wrong with the truth, not good enough for you?"
Poro glared at the three in front of him. It was as if they didn't understand just how laughable their claim was. Users? Here in this system? And how could they be so... clueless?
A nagging uncertainty began to form in the back of his header. He had never heard of anyone actually seeing a User; at best, they had heard their voices in IO towers. Was it even possible for them never before to have come to the digital world?
That would explain some things, but right now he was the lone skeptic of the group that had appeared to agree to that absurd statement of them being Users. No, he had no option of blindly trusting them, especially once you added the mess with Ranma and Ranko.
"You think I'm going to take that for the truth without anything backing up your claims?"
A bit to the side of the two arguing, Ranma sat down, a thoughtful frown on his face, as she tuned out the arguing between Nabiki and Poro. If Poro wanted proof, she'd give him some proof. But what? If they were supposed to be gods, what were they supposed to do?
Miracles and all that flashy stuff would've been good, but she didn't know how to pull that off. Sure, she had managed to do something different when she pulled Nabiki out of her mecha, but it was a different thing to do it again intentionally.
Miracles... well, her curse didn't faze him in the least, even if it was because he appeared to deny anything even remotely linking to it.
At this point, anyone watching her face would've noticed her face lit up like a Christmas tree. As it was, though, her realization of the possibility of removing her curse went unnoticed in the digital world. Still, she now had not only one but two good, very good, reasons to find out what her limits were in here.
Ranma decided to test one of her theories. Like when she had rescued Nabiki from the mecha, she concentrated on reaching for that something she had felt. Like before they had come to the pool, the presence was relatively weak, but it might have been slightly stronger than before. She dove into her mind, attempting to locate what that feeling was.
To an external observer, it appeared like she had been sitting still for several minutes. To Ranma, it felt like she had been searching for hours, but giving up was not an option, not when it was about the curse or even getting changed back to her male form. The spark she had been attempting to reach seemed to avert her approaches, never coming any closer. When the direct approach didn't work, she began to weave her way there through an imaginary obstacle course in three dimensions.
Whatever it was that she was doing, it appeared to pay off. Finally, she saw a spark in the distance that emanated the aura of the presence she had been looking for slightly increase in its luminosity. Elated, she picked up her pace and approached the spark within an arm's distance.
In her mind's eye she saw it now as a glowing blob, whose contours constantly shifted. She reached for it with an imaginary hand, but it always avoided her touch. For a few more minutes, she continued to try reaching for it before trying another approach. Did she need to touch it? What if she only had to follow and change its shape? She let her hands move up and down beside the amorphous sphere, which squeezed the sphere flatter, now more closely resembling a round loaf of bread. A subtle swipe upwards on both hands, all the while bringing the hands closer together, gave the lump the shape of a teardrop.
She let her imaginary hands down. The energy was malleable, easily even, but the significance of the different shapes evaded her. Another important on top of her mind was if it was possible for her to project it outside of her?
Ranma's consciousness returned smoothly back to the digital reality. She now knew what the energy was and where it was. Maybe she could already do something with what she had noticed?
She stood up from her meditative pose and walked away, turning behind a large block which hid her from the eyes of others. Poro had laid back down on his back to casually lounge, half-heartedly listening to Nabiki and Shinobu talking after their argument had whittled down to nothing.
Soon, two thumps were heard from where Ranma had gone. The first thump, not much different from the splat of a fist striking a wall of stone, carried with it a strange, vibrating echo. It almost sounded like there was a pattern hidden in it, but before any of the three people listening to it could figure it out, the sound had already become muted. The second thump was much like the first one, only without the trailing sound.
As Poro and the two Users watched at the boulder, in half a second, something not unlike a Mandelbrot fractal appeared on all surfaces of the slab, eating away the block itself. A second later, the boulder had vanished and behind it lay unconscious Ranma, the blue glow on her suit practically gone.
As she looked over at the unconscious martial artist, Nabiki certainly hadn't forgotten the ambush in the canyon and how Ranma had saved her, and for her staying in debt was something to avoid at all costs. Even if she enjoyed playing pranks on Ranma, this hardly was an opportunity to make fun of her if she wanted to survive. That in mind, she forcefully pulled Poro on his feet and then dragged him with her to Ranma's prone form.
The Liberate Ranma Squad, that is to say Ukyo, Haruo and Eiko, had reached a compromise and had now reached the arcade. Ukyo would pay first five games for all of them, but not all. She let out a deep sigh. This was getting even more expensive than she had thought.
As the trio stepped inside, the guards took note of Ukyo. They wouldn't throw her out - yet. But at the first sign of the events from yesterday making an encore appearance, they were instructed to immediately intervene, bad PR or not. Letting raving lunatics roam there freely just happened to be not only bad PR but also a danger to their game machines.
Haruo took command as soon as the squad got inside. "Ukyo, you check the okonomiyaki game. Eiko, Tokyo Kaiju Rumble. I'll see to the Fist of Justice myself."
Half an hour later, the three had finished their games to have a short debriefing, which turned out very brief.
"No Ranchan?"
"No," both Eiko and Haruo replied before turning to different games to continue their search.
Elsewhere in the arcade, two hapless teenagers were still trying to play the Tokyo Luv-Luv Memorial. "If you don't succeed at first, try again." They certainly had tried enough many times, having spent both of their weekly allowances on the game in just two days. Still, it wasn't all in vain, as they were now making progress, as some of the girls in the game had actually agreed to go on dates with them.
"I bet that if I got the redhead to appear again, I'd get to take her on a date as well!" Kyu enthused.
"Dragging her off by her pigtail? Dream on, buddy."
The casual banter of Kyu and Yosuke came to a close as an ominous presence made himself known behind their backs.
"You peasants dare claim my Pigtailed Goddess is game for thy wooing?"
It was not the bokken in Kuno's hands that made the two run like a pack of bloodhounds were on their tails. No, it was the combined effect of the glint in his eyes and the arcs the bokken made when Kuno swung it at them.
Once the knaves had fled like the cowards they were, Kuno turned his noble attention to the game machine that apparently held her beloved imprisoned and took out the massive purse of divine implements of justice - enough coins to play the game until next morning. He was game, and for the undying love of the treeborne kettle girl no price was too great.
Ranma woke up to feel a drop fall on her lips. It took a while before she registered she was awake. Her mouth felt moist, giving her the impression that drop hadn't been the first one. She opened her eyes to see Poro and Nabiki leaning over her, the latter holding out her hand in front of Ranma's face. She reached again down beside Ranma and gave her a few more drops of the glittering fluid.
A while later, Poro pulled Ranma into a sitting position and gave her his identity disc upside down and and filled with Power. "Drink it," he told her. Still halfway out of it, she noticed that she was now sitting by the same source pool she had fallen in earlier.
As Ranma took the disc and drank the liquid, the glow on the circuitry patterns on her increased, but was still quite far from the lightshow the other three were displaying. She looked at Poro with a question written on her face. Why did they glow like that and what did this liquid have to do with it?
"The Power is what sustains us programs, Ranko. And as for Users like you," at which point Poro nodded his head at Shinobu and Nabiki, "well, it appears to be the same." He took the disc from Ranma and gave her some more of the Power from the source pool.
Ranma's renewed display of powers no program of any kind should've had access to had convinced Poro that maybe there was something to the claims of his three companions. Well, he might just as well go with them until something happened to show that they weren't Users.
As Ranma kept drinking the sparkling liquid, Nabiki thought over what she had exactly seen happen. Before Ranma had gone behind the block and then obliterated it, her glow had been slightly less luminous than that of the others. But after she had fallen to the ground unconscious, it had been practically nonexistent, and the pulses it had even looked... laboured, if some leniency in the use of the word was permitted. There had to be some connection between these things.
There were some things Poro couldn't explain, though. For instance, why had MCP decided to pay such attention to them? And who was this Nobuo Shimizu, even though Nabiki and Shinobu suspected or were practically certain he never existed as anything beyond a file MCP had created in the personnel database?
The Power Ranma had drunk had revived her from the stupor: a quick look at her arms showed the glow had returned to her with interest. She made a quick check on her pool of Power, and if there was something new she could use it on. .
Poro was still sitting next to Ranma, wondering what she was doing with her thousand-yard stare. Then she suddenly fixed her eyes on him, stood up and smirked shortly before disappearing before his eyes. Alarmed, he stood up, only to feel Ranma tapping on his shoulder from behind him.
"I see you feel better now," Poro remarked with dispproval to his voice. Even if Ranko was a User, he didn't appreciate being the target of pranks.
"Yup," Ranma cheerfully replied with a wide smile on her face. He had now some new techniques to learn and create, and they were very impressive even for him. To some extent, she could substitute the ki with Power in her old internal ki techniques, but she didn't expect it to always work perfectly. Still, as this test showed, at least in some cases it worked well enough. She reached for the glow again, noticing that it had again grown weaker. She frowned. This was not good. If it took this much out of his reserves to use this new-found ability, he could use it at most three or four times before she couldn't reach it at all.
Or worse. After she had left to try forcing the... Power out of him, he had done something else. She took a glance at the boulder she had struck with her fist, only to see it was not there. In its place was now a nice pothole. There was no way his normal punch could've just disintegrated the block. Putting one, one and one together, Ranma got three. The missing boulder, the fact that she had attempted to push the Power through her fist into the boulder in question just before her lights went out and that her Power reservoirs had been emptied. Now, how could she repeat that and either make her Power reservoirs larger or its applications cheaper?
Poro and Nabiki watched as Ranma was lost again in a world of her own.
"So, Poro, whereto now?" Nabiki asked. He was the only one there who knew what was what and where, so he'd have to be the guide for them. She didn't like it, but it was the only real alternative to staying cooped up in here.
"No idea," Poro said, and laid himself on his back on the ground.
"What!" Nabiki exclaimed.
"Let's see - this system is pretty much cut off from the other computers; the diskette drive is the only way you can get out. I was brought on this system as well, so I don't have a function or place to go to here either." Still, he believed that with three Users they'd eventually come up with some way of getting away from Kernel and MCP's ire.
"And we'd have no idea of when there's a diskette in the drive and where the diskette is going next. Right," Nabiki acquiesced.
But if they had to stay here, she needed to learn to stand on her own. Her new knowledge of Users and Ranma's show of new skills made her think of a change of career; from a high school student and a future business dealer to a ghost in the computer and a goddess of her own right. With the banks and stock exchanges already embracing the era of computers, this might be the best thing that happened to her... assuming she survived. She cast a good look at Ranma, who was now out of her trance-like state and moving to drink straight from the pool.
"Time to get back to school to ensure longevity," she told herself and approached Ranma. Even if Ranma hadn't taught Akane, she'd better think twice before refusing now. If he didn't, she'd just have to remind him how she could complicate his life once they got back to Nerima.
In the arcade, the attempts of one Tatewaki Kuno to find his elusive angel with scarlet pigtail did not come to fruition. The women in the game shied away from his magnificent presence, no doubt to make room for the pigtailed goddess. Why else would they have done so, when they could've basked in his overwhelmingly glorious presence? But alas, she remained out of sight. Oh, how the heavens wept of the difficulties fate had laden on the path of their love. His brows scrunched as the realization struck him. No, it hadn't been enough for the vile sorcerer Saotome to have banished her out of this world, but he must have had her imprisoned even further somewhere inside these cans of metal and plastic.
He pulled out his bokken and began the proclamation of his divine fate, which sent those Furinkan High students who had dared to play on the nearby machines scrambling for cover. Those who were not from the same school just wondered why the guy playing Tokyo Kaiju Rumble gave up his four-hour attempt to break the high score so close to his goal.
At the other end of the arcade, Akane only barely heard the unfortunately familiar rumble of thunder outside over the loud games around her. She had come to the arcade with very much the same intentions as Ukyo; for once, she could show Ranma she wasn't always only a helpless damsel in distress and could just as well rescue him. And she'd be damned if she let Ukyo take the center stage this time. The okonomiyaki cooking game and the judges who didn't appreciate the food she had prepared forgotten, she strode to the source of disturbance. Kuno would be just the person she'd expect to try the can opener approach to rescue girl-Ranma.
A while later the security guards had to intervene to remove one unconscious Kuno and one fuming Tendo from the arcade. Collateral damage: only one Tokyo Luv-Luv Memorial game booth due to three strikes of Kuno's bokken and one hit from his head.
Another half an hour had passed before the LRS convened again, still without any results, although Ukyo was somewhat baffled why Mika had now been fighting against flying radioactive camels lobbing okonomiyaki at the teen heroine. Such a surrealistic show was too weird for her taste, but whatever the cause of that might have been, it hardly was relevant without any sightings of Ranchan.
"So, what now?" Ukyo asked.
Haruo and Eiko exchanged looks before gesturing Ukyo to follow them outside the arcade. The guards watched as the three made their way out quietly, and then returned their attention to the kids kicking the pinball machines in frustration.
The three ducked behind the corner of the arcade. There, Eiko and Haruo shot a glance at each other, just to make certain both knew what they were going to do, then nodded once to each other in confirmation. They turned to face Ukyo.
"This night, after the arcade has closed its doors, we'll be making an entrance," Eiko whispered.
"You mean, you're going to break in here? Don't you need to plan this through first?"
"We had plans to hack in here anyway, but that plan was foiled before start. The mainframe here isn't connected anywhere outside the building, so we had to change our plans to physically break in here," Haruo said, also in a whispering tone.
"Now, are you with us?"
Ukyo thought for a while. "In for a penny, in for a pound, they say."
Out loud she said, "I'm in."
In the holding pits, the protocol guards were preparing to escort yet another program to the game grid. As another guard lowered the force field keeping the program locked in, protocol guard named Fsguard was standing beside the entryway.
"Get moving, conscript," he prompted. The greenish glow on the script wasn't a common occurrence, but that didn't matter. They all derezzed at the game grids all the same anyway... except for the four escaped programs. For some reason, all protocol guards and system utilities had been given orders not to terminate them on sight with the exception of the editor program.
The guard had been in his thoughts for a microcycle when the script cackled and threw a fist at Fsguard, who had to take a step backwards so as not to fall down from the landed hit. The other protocol guards struck quickly struck the insurgent, derezzing him on the spot. Fsguard shrugged. They'd just take another program to the grid instead.
As he moved to the next cell door, the red glow on him was beginning to shift towards green.
The fluorescent lights of the arcade sign glowed in the night after the arcade itself had closed its doors. The few people passing by in the street didn't see or just didn't pay any attention to the side alley where three high school students were making their entrance. A window whose lock had most conveniently broken earlier in the day opened to admit Ukyo, Haruo and Eiko clad in black inside the arcade hall, the latter two carrying black gym bags.
The first phase of their plan was simple: to find out if Ranma was inside the computer or not. Even though the mainframe itself was behind locked doors, it was of little hindrance as the game machines were not. After all, they were all dumb terminals and in constant connection to the mainframe, each one a loophole in the security a sumo pig would fit through.
In one corner stood the wrecked Tokyo Luv-Luv Memorial machine, its screen shattered and frame mangled. Haruo led the three to another similar one beside it. He took a screwdriver from the large bag he had brought with him and expertly opened the back panel. As the game machine had been built on top of a standard build terminal, there was little difficulty in finding out exactly where to plug in the keyboard Eiko had brought with them. After little tinkering the keyboard was perched atop the control panel before the screen.
Haruo and Eiko blinked as the screen changed from the game title screen to a command shell prompt. Ukyo just stared, wondering what was strange about this.
"What's wrong?"
"We're in," Haruo said in disbelief. "We didn't even have to find out the password." He had been expecting to spend a good time cracking the password and now they found out it wasn't even necessary.
"Do you think the game machines are constantly logged in?" Eiko proposed. "I mean, maybe we just took over that session?"
"Yeah... that must be it. But this - this is such a letdown!" he cried as Eiko hugged him from behind and whispered soothing words next to his ear.
Ukyo just stared at the two and wondered why was it such a bad thing if things were easy for once.
After Eiko had managed to calm him, Haruo sniffled and began typing on the keyboard. "Let's see what this lil' honeypot has eaten then," he mumbled before the screen was filled with long string of program names flashing by.
A few tries later, the list had shortened significantly to just a few. Haruo and Eiko shook their heads, not comprehending how this was possible, the former more than the latter, as Eiko had been well into Nabiki's information trading business and knew a good deal of the various insane situations Ranma often ended up in. Still, this was no longer just a convenient way to get free food for the club and a free day at the arcade.
"I'd say we've got a winner. This program, , sounds like what we're looking for," Haruo told the two who were peeking behind his back.
The okonomiyaki chef was elated - they had found Ranma. All the brownie points were hers!
Meanwhile, Eiko pointed one line on the screen to Haruo, who nodded and typed a new command on the prompt. The result displayed the names of three programs, which made the two hackers' eyes widen. "Well, this explains some things," Eiko murmured before turning to Ukyo.
"Ukyo, ever heard of anyone named 'Shinobu Kaneko?'" she asked.
"No, who's she?" Ukyo couldn't shake the feeling that she didn't want Ranchan to know her either.
"Well... Ranma's not alone in there."
Ukyo shoved Haruo by force away from the keyboard. True enough, on the screen were the names of three programs... , and... "Nabiki Tendo? What is she doing in there!"
A few minutes later after Haruo and Eiko had pushed the agitated Ukyo away from the computer, Ukyo stared in wonder as Eiko and Haruo were working on the computer. She couldn't understand half of the words that flew in the air between the two and much less of the text flashing by on the computer screen. Seeing how she was not needed, she decided to find out where the real computer was.
Haruo and Eiko could think of only one way to get to talk with Ranma. Neither of them were his User and, by the looks of things, he didn't even have one, as strange as that was. That made the direct user-program interaction impossible. No, they'd have to open an IO stream and hope he knew how to answer the request.
Ranma felt something akin to an alarm clock ringing in her head. She didn't know how or why, but she knew what she should do. She pulled herself up from the ground, dusting the imaginary dirt off her bodysuit. Opposite to her, Nabiki was sitting in the same pose.
So far Nabiki hadn't made any progress with User Powers, but she had been expecting that. It hadn't been a quick job for her to learn apply her ki either. On the other hand, she had made some progress herself in conserving Power. It wasn't much, but if she kept up with the progress, things would get better.
This had been why she had agreed to teach Nabiki. On her own, Ranma's Power pool was still far too limited. If she managed to teach Nabiki how to access her own Power, then living might get a bit easier. Even if it appeared rather empty, to them this was a hostile world.
"We need ta get moving."
Shinobu, still somewhat wary of the cursed boy, asked, "Why?"
"Look, I just know I have ta get ta that big red line there," Ranma said and pointed at the line he had seen from the top of the ridge, "an' somehow the name 'luvluv-2' ties in with it," she said before pouting and looking at Nabiki snickering beside her. "Do ya have ta do that?"
"The IO tower. Someone must want to talk to you," Poro interrupted the byplay between the two. It was curious, though, why the IO tower had become active. Whenever he had looked at it earlier, it had been idle, not transmitting a single packet.
"Someone?" Ranma echoed, before her face lit up in recognition. "Ucchan!"
"Ukyo, Ranko?" Nabiki asked with the tone that usually carried the implied threat "if you know what's good for you, keep talking." But now the effect was more lenient with the use of "her" first name instead of surname.
"Yep." Furthermore, Ranma didn't often pick up the subtle nuances either, even if they weren't all that subtle. Or maybe she just ignored them.
"She played a game against a user avatar who knew something only a certain User would know," Poro supplied Nabiki.
"Got hot and heavy with the guy, huh?" Shinobu threw in her opinion, having made the connection between Tokyo Luv-Luv Memorial and the terminal login name "luvluv-2". Even she knew the game was aimed at boys, so she naturally assumed Ukyo was a guy who had been playing the game.
Ranma snarled at Shinobu's barb but turned away and began walking towards the tower. Nabiki followed after her, but only after first turning at Shinobu. "Want to know which facts you got wrong? Ten thousand yen after Ranko gets us out of here." Shinobu replied with an incredulous look and a shake of her head.
A masked man, clad in black, was making his way in the downtown Nerima, doing his best to avoid lit places. To his misfortune, this act only drew more attention to him than otherwise would've been warranted.
The passersby didn't care to stop him, though. He wasn't attacking them, hence, he wasn't their problem. Especially since the man appeared to carry a sheathed long blade with him.
Had someone stopped to listen to the mumblings of the man, they might've had even less reason to worry for their health, as the worry would've been shifted for his mental health instead.
"Oh, why doth the fate test us so? The lowborn curs that restrain you from springing to my arms may keep us apart in the day, but for my fiery warrior-princess, even the stain of using the means of the ninja is but a low price for thy freedom!"
And so, in the middle of the night, Tatewaki Kuno continued on his meandering course towards the Encom arcade.
End of line.
AN: This revised chapter was proofread/preread/anything by me alone. So, if you see something badly wrong, please let me know.
The next chapter will finally have little old content to it. A fair share of this chapter (most scenes in digital world) had to be rewritten because of the change in Shinobu. Nonetheless, the other sections were mostly unchanged and only one all-new scene was added.
Thanks for weebee for discussing the technical content of this fic with me... my inbox was at best (worst?) bursting at the seams with his PMs; of course, I promptly returned the favour ;-) And once more, Akuma-sama helped me with some plot points.