Right. Folks, before we begin I just want you to know that this is a rough
draft of the first chapter of what I intend to be a rather long, complex
Ranma fic.

Now, the reason I'm releasing a first draft is this: despite my hints that I
might need a couple, I've had no enthusiastic offers from anybody who might
pre-read, and I don't trust any of my friends to give me an honest opinion;
I figure: "What the hell. This is a writer's forum. It's more like the
factory than the showcase anyway." Besides, I'm too excited about this
concept to not go seeking feedback. For weeks, I've had nothing but ideas
about things to do with this fic. Never had this much inspiration in all my
life. I've resisted the urge as long as I could, and I honestly intended to
release the whole thing at the end of the holiday. Really. 

Anyway...with all that in mind, feel free to criticize, compliment, flame
(privately, of course. I'm itchin' for a fight.) If the fic is really bad,
go ahead and make fun of it. I'd rather somebody else played with it and
made it worth reading than have my feelings spared.

So, with apologies in advance, here there be the first chapter of:

~The Ascension of Cologne: A Ranma ½ Fanfic~

by Blasphemy Kilmanjar, Greater Daemon of Eris Kallisti Discordia and
Disciple of the Most Holy Kodachi.

Chapter 1

"Cult of Chaos: An Ancient and Powerful mystick tradition dedicated to
furthering the aims of the Goddess Eris Discordia, the ancient Hellenistic
Goddess of Chaos and Discord. Maintained throughout the ages by the Bavarian
Illuminati, an equally ancient organization of Sleepers. Cultists are
careful to distinguish themselves from the mad Marauders."
                        -The Dictionary of Magickal Philosophy, Hermetic
Library of Circea Chantry

	Deep in Central Appalachia, the easternmost mountain range of the
continental United States, there lives a small university town called
Morgantown. Like many college towns, the prosperity of the natives there
depends largely on the foolish largesse of the students, who are regarded as
a profitable and necessary evil. 
	The locals are, therefore, largely tolerant of the eccentricities of the
students; a position they are encouraged to take by a University
administration that permits the student body to walk all over it. This means
that life at the university is like a four-year vacation for the paying
student, with the supposed authorities not permitting themselves to wipe
their asses unless the act is approved by a student committee.
	It was the sort of arrangement that suited Joseph Kaosu Towenaar just fine,
and that notable had just finished that thought with a certain amount of
satisfaction when he finally opened his eyes and lazily stared at the
ceiling of his eight-by-twelve foot dormitory cell.
	He shifted, dislodging a large pile of hardcore porn; yawned, stretched and
waded through knee-deep Sbarro's pizza boxes and empty Wendy's bags and
burger wrappers in a grand and noble quest for the front door. After a
five-minute search during which he managed to unearth a desk, a computer, a
phone, and a vastly underworked trash can, he made it to his goal. Through
that great portal was the way to the communal bathroom and his own personal
Nirvana. 
	-Spiritual fulfillment in the shape of white porcelain...- Kaosu began to
giggle, his hand on the doorknob. He almost let himself sink to his knees,
but no! No weakness must be allowed to delay him from his goal. 
	Straightening, he gave his legs a good hard look and issued his orders.
-All right, men. Forward, march!- For an instant, it seemed a mutiny was at
hand, but the legs managed to pull through and deliver what he wanted. With
the help of a strategic strike from his hand to the enemy-held doorknob and
his impeccable timing, Kaosu was out of the front door and standing in the
hall. -Good work, men.-
	Now it was relatively easy. The erstwhile general staggered to the
bathroom, flung open a stall door, and took a long reflective piss in the
general direction of Stalnaker Hall. -Ahhhhh...-
-=-=-=-=-
	Meanwhile, a world away...
	Special Recon Command Cyborg Unit 9X803 stood motionless in the thin,
chilly darkness of a suburban street at three AM. Location: Nerima, Tokyo. 
	9X803 was one of the Series 9 class of cyborg, a unit developed to command
and coordinate lesser units and bring organization to the efforts of vastly
inferior human agents. Her augmented brain was at that moment processing the
visual feeds from a dozen men in black who were scouting the ward with
umbral viewing equipment, hoping to spot the source of a serious reality
deviation. 
	Nothing. The ward looked the way it should: completely dormant. 
	\Perhaps there was an error./ One MIB appeared to be inclined to doubt the
Order's reports. 
	\Perhaps./ 9X803 would have chastized the true-human severely if she hadn't
been rather doubtful herself. This was their third night here, and the third
night of sensing nothing unusual anywhere, except... She set the video feeds
to act as background processes for a moment and raised her machine arm.
	/: BEGIN PROCESS HOLO.TEST
	WARNING: PARADOX PROBABILITY: 98.4% CONFIRM?
	/: Y
	A hologram, realistic, lifelike, suddenly popped into view in front of the
cyborg. The image of the young woman turned and smiled at nobody in
particular, then vanished as 9X803 twisted in exquisite pain at the
inevitable backlash. That was pretty undeniable. An effect like that should
be coincidental, easy. Anywhere else in the civilized world, it would be.
Just not here.
	\Keep looking./

	Meanwhile, back at the dorm...
        Kaosu Towenaar was giving the woman sitting in his recently
unearthed desk chair a look that, if mixed metaphors could skin a cat, would
have seen her tanned and made into mittens.
	"You want me to what?"
	She sighed. "I want you to drag your lazy, besotted ass to Japan so you can
play general. There's an... interesting... situation developing there."
	"Do tell."
	"You know that Japan and Tokyo in particular have always been among our
greatest problems. The Tech-heads are firmly entrenched there. A tradition
mage can't so much as turn his farts purple anywhere in Japan without having
paradox come around and turn him inside-out, dick first."
	"So? We've known that for years."
	"And we've been counting on centuries of work to bring the Techno paradigm
crashing down in that area, yeah. Well, I got news for you: we've got an
opening."
	Kaosu opened his eyes wide. He turned his head and examined her more
carefully, searching her face. Treachery was not unknown in Tradition ranks,
and this sounded both dangerous and pretty ludicrous.
        Carolyn sat there primly, her calm, middle-aged society woman
demeanor an incongruous mask on her vulgar, ribald personality and
I-love-to-get-my-hands-dirty nature. He and she were not in opposing
positions in the organization, as far as he knew. She was a liaison between
her own faction, the Cult of Ecstasy, and his own group, the Cult of Chaos.
Still... no. She showed no signs of deception, and his magickal probe came
up with nil.
        "All right, Lynn. Tell me what's happened."
        She pulled a file out of her case. "This is all we know. I had the
librarian on Circea pull every cross-reference we could find, but most of
the Nerima connections; that's where you're going, by the way, Nerima;
involve Kuh Lon, an old Akashic renegade.
        Kaosu started. "I know her... she's in on it?"
        "Apparently. She surfaced in Nerima three months ago. One of our
Akashics, a dojo owner in a neighboring ward, recognized her."
        "I see. Did you know she was at least five hundred years old?"
        "Really? How did she manage that?"
        "She's a specialist in static magick. Everything from acupressure to
node-type curses. She researches it. I wouldn't be surprised if she managed
to extend her life somehow."
        "Hmmm. Sounds like a tough old bitch, lasting this long."
        "Oh, yes. She is."
        "Right," Carolyn moved on. "What's happened is this: somehow, the
Technocratic static reality has been banished from this one ward, this
Nerima place. It's like a shard realm on earth. Technocratic magick has
gotten extremely vulgar there, while nonsensical magick like ours, while
still difficult, is a lot easier to perform. Their monitors and advanced
network devices don't work there anymore."
        "Why?"
        "We don't know. The Adepts found it first, of course. They thought
it was a minor glitch in the Technocratic security system, but it's consistent."
        "Hm. What do you want me to do, then?"
        "Defend the place, Towenaar. The Technocrats are moving in. If you
can, build us a chantry or establish a fortress. Try to widen the bubble."
        There was a lengthy pause.
        "Are you going to take this?"
	He considered. He'd been stagnating here in West Virginia, growing to be a
homebody. He needed some excitement. He was, after all, only a hundred and
fifty. A mage in the prime of life.
        "Give me the tickets."
	"Excellent." Carolyn got up to exit the room, finding her way through the
trash with far less difficulty than he did. She opened the door, paused.
"One thing, Towenaar. Two, actually."
	"Yes?"
	"You're going to be the visible opposition. Don't worry too much about
secrecy."
	"I guessed that. What's the second thing?"
	"We can't afford to lose this one, old friend. We're focusing all our
efforts here, and we intend to keep it. That means we're leaving our primary
weapon there on sentry duty."
	"You mean..."
	"If you ever leave Japan, don't bother coming to us for sanctuary anymore."
	The door slammed.

	Nerima, Japan. A quiet suburb, the morning peace and stillness broken only
by the occasional shout from a happy schoolchild. 
	"RANMA NO BAKA!"
	A cheerful place with cheerful inhabitants, where violent crime is
virtually unknown.
	*THWACK* "Aaaaaiiiieeeee..."
	A wonderful place for children to play, with police too interested in their
own hides to do much about it.
	*CRASH*
	"Baka," snarled Akane, tossing her mallet to one side. Nabiki looked up at
the hole in the ceiling with an experienced eye and immediately began coming
up with contractor estimates.
	"You really shouldn't do that, sister dear. I heard the contractor was
thinking of buying his second Mercedes with our business."
	"It's not my fault he's an insensitive jerk!" Akane picked up her schoolbag
and waited by the door while Nabiki finished her tea, stretched, and got up,
bag in hand.
	"Did you aim him at the school?"
	"He should come down in the courtyard, although he might hit the roof. My
aim has been a little off lately."
	The two sisters started off for school, walking instead of running,
discussing little things between themselves. A black-suited piece of the
scenery caught Nabiki's attention suddenly.
	"Hey, Akane?"
	"Yes?"
	"Have you noticed those odd men who've been hanging around lately?"
	"Like that one?" Akane pointed to a large, bald man in a black suit and
sunglasses who was standing motionlessly across the street from them. At
their looks, he turned and walked the other way. "Yeah, I guess."
"I thought they might be some kind of government agents or something, but I
don't know for sure. They don't talk or anything. You think something's
going on?"
        "Maybe. There's a lot of gaijin around just lately too, but they
don't turn up till evening. Maybe the big guys have something to do with them."
        They turned the corner into the school courtyard and were greeted by
the sight of Ranma Saotome crawling out of a small crater in the concrete.
"Owwwwwww..." He rubbed the back of his head. "Geez, Akane! I wasn't making
fun of you! I just said that your scrambled eggs weren't dissolving the
plate anymore! It was a compli-" *WHAM*
        "Baka." Akane sniffed and turned to go in. Nabiki bent over the
crater and offered Ranma a hand up. "You ever heard of something called
'tact', Saotome?"
        Ranma scrunched up his forehead. "Isn't it a sort of American cracker?"
        "Never mind. C'mon or you'll be late."

        Kaosu sat in his seat in first class on the USAir redeye flight from
Pitt to L.A., going over the file Carolyn had given him.
The plane was dim except for his own little spotlight and the lights of a
few other unfortunate working souls. All around him, other passengers
snoozed or watched the packaged entertainment on silently flickering
personal TVs mounted in the backs of the seats in front of them. 
        There wasn't too much in the file. A city map of the district,
profiles on local authority figures, sleeper ciminal activity, and, of
course, the full report on the reality deviation, starting with surmise and
theories from Adept hackers and working up to surmise and theories from the
heads of the council. The basic evidence was pretty strange: the
Technocracy's security and monitoring systems were all fragging up within
Nerima. Nothing more complicated than a standard computer was working there.
Even better, a report snagged from a piggyback tap seemed to indicate that
the New World Order's assassin droids, their HIT Marks, were unable to cross
the ward's borders without total system failure. Cyborgs were barely able to
function, as long as they didn't do anything too visible.
        So much for the main report. Kaosu turned to the files
cross-referenced to Nerima.
        The first file he looked at was the council's sum total of
information on one Kuh Lon, a Chinese Amazon from Joketsuzoku, a village
noted for producing an unusual number of highly skilled mysticks. -Heh. They
got her birthdate wrong.- The council didn't know very much, he realized.
The Akashics had banished her from their ranks for playing with dangerous
forms of static magick, then later labeled her a renegade so they could
ignore her when she came to them requesting aid or sanctuary. -She must have
scared somebody bad. Depressing to think that even the Akashics aren't
immune to corruption.- 
        The next part was generated by monks the Akashics recruited to keep
an eye on her. After the Brotherhood dropped her, Kuh Lon returned to her
village and began pursuing magick with vigor, studying everything she could
get her hands on. She studied martial arts and ki, both readily available in
her warrior culture, learning how to incorporate this static magick into her
regular system. She learned, at some point, the technique of extending her
lifespan to an unbelievable degree without suffering paradox. As she grew
older, she gained more and more power and status in her village until she
was behind everything that went on.
        These records stopped at about the one hundred year mark. A short
note stated that the monks handling the surveillance had all been killed in
a cave-in at their monestary and that the Akashics did not consider Kuh Lon
important enough to continue watching her. -BAD mistake.-
        The last entry in the file was a note, written in kanji:Kaosu had
made a hobby of memorizing the symbols, fortunately. Kuh Lon, recognized
from a portrait somewhere, noted entering Nerima district.
        -Right.-
        Kaosu turned to the other file, labeled 'Xian Pu'. One page in it
and another short note. "Spotted with Kuh Lon. Looks harmless. Suspected
relative of Kuh Lon."
        The mage closed the files slowly and stacked them neatly in a pile.
He spent the remainder of the trip deep in thought, breaking out of it only
to change his clothes in the tiny bathroom before disembarking. His old
ones, new that morning, were already in rags. He still had a flight across
the Pacific to survive and couldn't afford to have the damn things fall off
in the middle of the terminal.

        It was approaching evening in Nerima, and Cologne looked boredly
around the main room of the Nekohanten. Nothing much had been happening
lately, and she wasn't exactly sure she wanted anything to happen. She'd
been taking an unconscious rest from driving and persecuting her potential
son-in-law and had spent the vast majority of the last week or two indoors,
running the café and fiddling with her spices, chemicals, and elixirs. 
-Maybe I'm getting old,- she thought as she considered her odd apathy for
the last week or so. -Or bored. Pursuing the son-in-law is fun, but it's the
same thing, over and over.-
        She sighed quietly, watching Mousse attempt to take an order from a
potted plant. -Idiot,- thought she.   -All his years of training in the
arts, building up his physique, fine-tuning his reflexes, trying so hard to
compensate for his blindness, and here he sits in Japan, taking orders from
houseplants. He'll never know it was my fault. Not that there was a way
around it. The universe demands a penalty for mistakes. Better he pay it
than I.-
        So she told herself, and so she slept at night.

        A few blocks away, Doctor Tofu was sitting in his darkened office,
looking out the window. It was long past his closing time, evening turning
gently to night, but with the man in the black suit standing on the other
side of the street, he was considering his moves as carefully as a man
playing chess against black-robed Death. He knew what the man across the
street meant to him if his least suspicion was aroused. 
Fortunately, he knew that the men in black were keeping an eye on every
miracle worker, pill-peddler, fortune teller and chiropractor in the
district. He hadn't been singled out. Yet.
        After considering for a few more minutes, he made up his mind. He
stood, stretched so that his silhouette was clearly visible in the window
despite the lack of light from inside, and went downstairs and out, walking
swiftly in the direction of the Nekohanten.

        Inside, Cologne was ringing up a small party of students when she
noticed Tofu walk in and find a table near the back of the ramen shop. She
finished with the students and hopped back to the kitchen. "Shampoo, go tend
the register. I'll handle the cooking. Tell Tofu-sensei to come back here
where we can discuss his work in peace." Shampoo nodded and left.
        A few moments later, Doctor Tofu stood in the door.
        "What is it, Tofu? I'm very busy here."
        "Have you been outside lately, elder?" Tofu was speaking with
respect and a deference not normally apparent in his manner to anyone.
        "No. What is going on outside that I should see?"
        Tofu thought about ways to lead into this, then decided that clear,
direct, and simple was probably the best way. "The Static Ones have entered
Nerima. Their soldiers are posted to watch everyone even suspected of being
a mage."
        It was not often that anything happened to surprise or worry
Cologne. She was over five hundred years old, after all. She had lived
through innumerable evils, had suffered through at least five more lifetimes
than any sleeper. When she turned, Tofu was disconcerted to see her withered
face as pale as a cup of milk.
        "The Static Ones are HERE?"
        "Hai. My office is being watched by a bald man in a dark suit. I
noticed three more on my way here."
        Cologne sat quietly on her staff for a moment, face still pale but
regaining colour. "Why did you come to warn me, doctor? I am no longer in
the Brotherhood. Your people should welcome a chance to see me destroyed."
        "Perhaps they would, but it would be wrong to leave you in such a
predicament. Besides, I have no intention of leaving, no matter how bad it
gets. You and I are the only Awakened in Nerima, besides them. We will need
each other."
        It was true enough. Cologne sat on her staff, lost in thought. Tofu
leaned on the counter, and both meditated for a span until: "Great-grandmother?"
        Cologne looked up at her child's child's child and smiled fondly to
herself. So like herself at that age, so energetic, so alive... she
remembered the threat impending and shivered. Her great-grandaughter was not
going to die in a Technocratic death camp in some shard realm somewhere, of
that she was sure. "Yes, child?"
        "Great-grandmother, some gaijin come in. They wearing lots of chains
and leather, got funny hair. Shampoo think they want food, but no can
understand them. Speak English."
        "Gaijin. Just what I needed." Cologne muttered to herself and hopped
out of the kitchen to the main room. She located the table with the loud,
rude teenagers immediately and had started to hop over to it when she
stopped suddenly and peered closely at the Americans. "Tofu," she said,
without turning to the man she knew had come up behind her. "Are those
gaijin breathing?"
-=-=-=-=-

Right. That's all I've got structured so far. I know it's a little rough
around the edges, but I'm not Hemingway, dammit.

If I get even one request to do so, I'll go ahead and finish this.
Otherwise, I'll go clean out my d:\fanfics.original directory and start over
with a different idea.

*crosses his fingers and hits the send button...*





-Drakkus Blasphemy, Greater Daemon of Eris Discordia
drakkus@labyrinth.net
-><-