Ranma 1/2: Ragnarock (DARK) (possibilities for lime)
twisted idea that didn't make the cut,
submitted for your amusement. i got this idea partly
from ID4 (which i didn't like) and "Lucifer's Hammer"
(which i DID like.)
Metroanime@aol.com
http://members.aol.com/greggsharp/index.html
1: Here's Ragnarock...
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	Ares looked up, catching the eye of Hel.

	"This...sucks."

	Hel nodded. She chose to remain silent.

	"These are aliens centuries in advance of the
humans in terms of technology, capable of psionic combat.
They have forceshields and powerbeams, antigravity, and
mile long spaceships. Their mothership is damn near the size
of Earth's moon. And they're just completely and totally lame..."

	Hel nodded again.

	Ares grinned. Nobody was watching. Well, just
himself, Hel, Tiamat, and Ahriman. "Let's see if I get a REAL
group of nasties to poke their heads in. This Ranma guy is
supposed to have a Destiny, right? Let's give him one."
------------------------------------------
excerpts from the Journal of Nabiki Tendo:
January 12, 1991:
	It's all over the news. Confirmation of the 
formerly hypothetical Oort cloud.

	Chunks of ice and rock are inward bound,
detected by any number of telescopes. The theory is
that something Big disturbed one of the clumps of 
meteors and comets out there beyond Pluto's orbit.

	Should make for some interesting meteor
showers early next year.

	I shook up Daisuke and Hiroshi for extra
money today. Looks like Kuno isn't the only one 
interested in Akane photos. Little sister is beginning
to bloom and the sweet smell on the air is the aroma 
of profit. I am SO glad I took that photography course.

December 24, 1991:
	They lied.

	When they told us there was no danger last
year, they lied to us. When Mars was hit by that comet
in June, they told us it was a freak accident and that it
couldn't happen to us. When the amateur astronomers
and some of the other countries started saying alarming
things, our goverment and the news agencies were going
on about alarmists and terrorists and misleading data.

	All lies.

	It's coming. It finally got to the point where
so many people were able to find it, that the powers
that be couldn't put a lid on it anymore. 

	They call it the Ragnarock. It's a chunk of
rock and ice and some "exotic materials" about the size
of Tokyo. When it hits, well, whatever it hits isn't going
to be there. The scientists are still screaming at each 
other over the exact details.

	They're still screaming at each other over
some things they find odd about the whole thing. Each
planet is getting hit with a set of small rocks and a single
big rock. Almost as if they were aimed.

	That hasn't gone unnoticed but no two
theories are the same.

	I'm used to keeping track of my business
here, how much money I've gotten off of what. It just
somehow doesn't seem as important anymore.

	Kasumi's going on as if nothing happened.
Akane heard about the rock and has been going not
so quietly nuts trying to deny all the facts and figures.
She still hasn't come up with a convincing reason for
the release of the information slowly through private
channels. Considering the panic and rioting, the 
reason that our fearless leaders kept the secret as long
as they did is pretty obvious.

	We'll see if the American plan to use 
nuclears on the Ragnarock gets any support.

December 26, 1991:
	Asteroid:1, Us:0.

	The nukes went bust, or close enough. There's
a good chance the Ragnarock will be deflected enough.
Some of the other rocks were vaporized or close enough.
Some of the remaining are small enough that they won't
be as much of a problem. One of the smaller rocks is due 
to hit early next month. Called Loki, it's more than twice
the size and mass of the Tokyo Tower. There's a chance
it too will miss.

	Daddy laid a little bombshell on us. If he
doesn't survive and we do, he'd made a deal with one
of his old friends. Unite the families with a marriage.
Some martial artist son would marry one of the 
daughters Tendo. If anyone survives, I added.

	The only one that didn't react to that
observation was Kasumi. Sometimes I wonder if
anyone's home anymore. 

	Maybe she's better off that way.

Jan. 11, 1992:
	"Loki" hit. I'm writing this from the raft
we threw together. There's no sign of Akane, and
with her swimming abilities she might not have made
it out of the house when the tsunami hit.

	Finding Kasumi was an incredible stroke
of luck. We put together everything we could find that
could float to make this raft, and that includes part of
the dojo roof. Kasumi finally came apart about two
hours ago and is sleeping now. The shell she had
retreated behind collapsed when she realized that
Akane was probably gone.

	The details I record for posterity. "Loki"
was one of the small chunks, about the size and shape
of a skyscraper. When it hit, the nickel-iron meteor 
slammed into the arctic at nearly Mach Five. It went
boom. Millions of tons of ice vaporized. More melted.
It didn't hit straight on, but almost tunnelled through
the arctic ocean and came out the other side. Almost.

	The roads were packed. The news agencies
had been predicting a miss almost to the last moment.
Still the traffic jams in every country as people scurried
about was on all the news programs until the ionosphere
went wacky.

	Then the roaring noise. Then the water. It
seemed that when "Loki" approached, it broke apart.
One chunk slammed into the Arctic as described above.
Another chunk managed to hit the water Southeast of
Japan. On a major faultline.

	I'm getting little bits and pieces of stations
on my little portable radio. I can piece some of what's
going on from these snippets. In the meantime Kasumi
is asleep, her wet clothes stretched out to dry but they'll
probably smell of that damn volcano.

	Getting tired. Noticed that I've been shaking
for the past half-hour and getting quite twitchy. Hope
we find land soon.

January 15, 1992:
	Rescue. For the moment, at least. Kasumi and 
I are aboard a ship known as the Myou No Maru. The name 
is fairly descriptive. A truly odd looking crew and the ship...well
it survived the tsunami so it must be tougher than it looks.

	I'll introduce the crew in later chapters. Being 
able to have a hot bath, dry clothes, and both warm food 
and hot tea...

	I wouldn't sell my soul, but my gratitude is
quite sincere. The rescue was yesterday evening so
we really only spent three days on the raft, watching
parts of it sink, with a layer of salt on everything, and
just being all sorts of miserable.

	Kasumi has some serious problems. She's
sick and puking, but apparently the owner of the ship
has had some medical training and says she'll be fine.
Too much exposure, too much salt, and she swallowed
too much water after the wave had hit. According to
him, we're also still both suffering from exhaustion.

	I agree, but I have to know what's going
on. Apparently this ship was a "jack-of-all-trades."
A little smuggling, a little spywork if the surveillance
equipment is any indication, and a cover story of being
a fishing vessel. It's the surveillance and communication
equipment that's got my immediate attention.

	For one thing, it seems like we're still in
Furinkan. Roughly 2000ft over it, to be exact.

	Somewhere under that waterline is our
ancestral home, our high school, and our past.

	Where our future is, I have no idea. 

January 16, 1992:
	I thought I was hallucinating. I wasn't.
I thought that I knew how the world worked. It
appears that I need to consider MacBeth's remarks
to Horatio, that there are far stranger things in the
world than my former philosophies indicated.

	The Captain is an ex-superspy who
reads cheap romance novels. The owner makes
casual references to things that happened over
a hundred years ago. The surly pilot apparently
came from an amazon village in China years ago.

	And a short, stocky, British sounding
seaman has been diving down thousands of feet
to come back up with salvage. No evidence of the
bends, and when I take a look under the waves
using a glass bowl, I can barely see the tops of
the buildings.

	Somehow this guy "Tolkein" is able
to swim down there, then come up laden with
loot that should have weighed him down.

	Some girl named Atsuko and a kid
named Ryunnosuke were found during the 
night. As soon as we've got enough supplies,
we're heading to a safe port. The Captain isn't
sure the usual Chinese port is even going to
be there, and the volcano is between here and
Australia.

	None of the crew seems to particularly
care what we figure out at this point. The owner
smirks, and the short guy just mumbles something
about how if I've got the time to play "junior 
detective" that I should be helping out instead.

	Point taken.
------------------------------------------
January 17, 1992:
	The crew called everyone in to hear this.
Turns out, lots of places like the American Midwest
and Central Europe have pretty much survived 
unscathed. Island nations like Japan, well- the shoreline
is at what used to be 3,525 feet above sea level before
Loki. They expect the waters to recede as the Arctic
refreezes but it may take some time for sea levels to
return to normal.

	Kasumi's looking a lot better, having something
to do, like help with the cooking, has improved her a lot 
faster than bed rest.

	Atsuko (weird girl), Ryunnosuke (elementary 
school kid), some JHS student named Nanami Rokugo, 
and three people from what used to be a mountain village
were already there. 

	Yeah, we've made contact with other Japanese.
Forgot to mention that. Other than the first tsunami, the
water levels were just slowly rising for the past several
days. Not that one can notice away from land, but the 
landbound folks were continually scrambling to get away
from the new shoreline.

	On to the current problem. One of the really big
chunks of rock is going to miss us. Yay for our side. The
remains of Ragnarock is gonna miss us. Unfortunately, the
computer models all indicate we're gonna be missing a
moon real soon. They've renamed Ragnarock to "Fenris"
now.

	A chunk of ice, rock, nickel-iron, and those
aforementioned "exotic elements" roughly the size of
Shinjuku (those nukes did some good after all) will
impact the moon in eight days. With the velocity of
Fenris at being damn close to Mach 10, neither is
expected to survive.

	This turns the "planet killer" cannonball into
more of a shotgun effect. Pieces of moon and meteor will
be drawn into the "gravity well" of Earth and are gonna
continue to hit for some time.

	The latest hunk of the swarm to hit was what
they're now calling a "tunneller." It's a hunk of metal or
whatever that's just pointy enough that the impact causes
it to tunnel into the ground a fair distance before it explodes
to release all the energy from speed. This one did as they
tend to do, and there are reports that Germany now has a
new volcano in the formative stages.

	It's a mess.

January 19, 1992:
	Something really unusual happened today.
I was helping out to seperate the last bundle of stuff that
Tolkein had brought up (mainly canned foods and some
stuff from camping stores) when the owner's voice came
over the loudspeaker and said for all the women to get
belowdecks STAT. He followed that with a cryptic comment
about "she survived." 

	Judging from the other refugees, I'd guess none of
them had a clue either. From the crewmembers, you could tell
they knew what the scoop was. Talcum, who is usually so 
calm and stoic you'd think he was stone, actually snarled. The
reactions among other crew varied, but it appeared that whoever
"she" was- liked was not an option. I saw fear (Neko-san), some
disgust (Tolkein), hate (Kissu), and Lufa actually looked like she
was gonna puke.

	Hmmm. I promised I'd intro the crew sometime. In brief,
Talcum and Rogain are males of an amazon tribe somewhere in China.
Lufa and Kissu are women of the same tribe (no they're not mates) who
washed out as warriors for one reason or the other. The owner's a guy
named Nate Brazil who's a riddle wrapped in an enigma. Ritsuko Fujii
is the Captain. Tolkein is a short guy who seems to do the impossible
on a regular basis. I get the impression that "Tolkein" is a nickname,
but I'm not sure from what.

	Naturally, I was curious. I peeked out of a window to see
a fog rolling in. At high noon. With no land in sight and it being a
brisk day with a strong wind blowing. Once these little details 
registered seeing a thick, completely obscuring, fog appear was 
a little unnerving.

	The wind continued. So did the fog. I heard music, and
against all my plans, I started to go out on deck. I realized that my
body was acting on its own initiative but couldn't seem to stop
myself. I felt as if I were falling down a deep well, from which I
might never recover.

	When I woke up, I found out that Tolkein had seen me
and had belted me a good one. My jaw is sore but working. If 
what Kissu tells me of my likely fate had I walked out onto the
deck is true, I owe Tolkein BIG time. I also understand why 
Lufa looks ill whenever you mention "Madame Lao" or the name
of her ship.
------------------------------------------
storyline.
	i've been getting a LOT of negative
e-mail about the "Man Among Men" concept,
with Plague of the Four Horsemen introducing
a change in a prevailing wind. It occurred to me
after people were done throwing stones in my
direction after "Enslaved" that I'd at least managed
to get the beehive moving.
	
	Big chunks of meteor coming down,
chewing up the local real estate.

	The aliens don't even need to make
an appearance, they could be REALLY alien and
have an inscrutable motive.

	Each chapter details a little further how
character X is coping, and reveals a little more detail
on how the world in general has been affected.

	Ranma in China, finds an injured amazon
girl. Together, they try to overcome the language barrier
and survive as the area is devastated by earthquakes
and new volcanoes forming along the faultlines.

	Akane spends time trapped on a raft with
Kuno. She can't swim.

	Senshi being heroic outside of Japan.

	Various other characters coming together as
the world begins to recover from the cataclysm before
Ragnarock strikes.

	The crew of the "Myou no Maru" appears in
Featherbrite's Tale, and is mentioned as the "Chacha Maru"
in Happi Days. Madame Lao appears courtesy of Jim Bader.
She's a survivor, after all.

	Any engineers who want to correct me about
the sizes/masses involved, don't bother. I am NOT the engineer,
and have no idea how much mass Shinjuku actually has.
Change the story to make whatever corrections you want and
take it over.

	Shadow6865 is taking over "Crippled"
	Short Yes is taking over "Man Among Men"
and "Young At Heart" (somebody tell Krista about this
last, please.)
	Genius_20@hotmail.com (Jessica) is taking
over "Ranma's Father" and doing a most excellent job
from what i've seen.
	"Addicted" will be taken over by Gamers@pacbell.net
	"Catscratch fever" will be taken over by Tagan1@pacbell.net
	"King Of Fighters", "The Art", "Dragon's Destiny" will all be
taken over by Dragonbard@hotmail.com
	Jared of "Mirrors Multiplied" fame will take over the Bet Too
Much- Blue Side plotline.

	There's also four people doing various Bet shots besides me,
for your consideration and reading pleasure. 

	Oh well, ja ne.