Ranma 1/2: Evangelical History By Dr. Suekeiichi Kaiton --- White. A field of blinding purity. White snow blanketed everything in sight. Gently sloping snow dunes melted into the scenery of Earth's last undiscovered country...Antarctica. The bleak white wasteland provided no comfort from its harsh elements but merely embraced one with cold, slow, numbing, death. The plateau stretched on into infinity, white melding with white, unbroken in the harsh silence except for one gray blemish on the surface of that alien terrain. Grayish-white, with antiseptically clean corridors and labs, this was the proving ground for the Katsuragi Expedition's science team. It was built within a year for the personal use of the Katsuragi expedition, its facilities included biomedical labs, testing facilities and a docking bay big enough for an Eva. The bay itself was a mile underground, a sleek steel tomb for a god of old, a god who had slumbered here for countless eternities before being freed for the use of selfish individuals. The roof was covered by a plexi-glass dome to protect against hail storms. A VTOL model hover vehicle was readying for takeoff at that moment, its cargo was one man. The man was dressed in a nutmeg parka with a thermo-suit underneath, standard issue clothes for the Antarctic. His glasses were frozen over with a thick layer of frost as he boarded the craft. he thought, Within a moment the ship was gone from the scene, its passenger safe from the catastrophe yet to come. Deep in the subterranean depths of the complex, a fourteen year old girl with purple hair wandered into the lab area. She was a curious girl, eager to come and see her estranged father after so long but still apprehensive on exactly what she was doing here. Her father, Dr. Hiromi Katsuragi, was the leader of this expedition and a gifted scientist; he worked for GEHIRN, a scientific organization funded by the UN. Without a thought, she entered the enormous docking bay with its mysterious giant awaiting release. It was found in a deep ice cavern far below the complex itself, at zero degrees north latitude, zero degrees east longitude, the apex of the planet. It was humanoid with four limbs, a thick trunk and a red rust-colored spear jutting from its chest. The red spike seemed interwoven with the material of its chest, as if the spear was an extension of the being itself. The weapon was nick-named "The Lance of Longinus" after the Roman centurion who impaled Jesus on the cross, while the giant remained under the codename "ADAM," as in the progenitor of the human race. It was a black and lifeless thing that stood on its hunches with the spear resting on the deck in front of it. Dr. Katsuragi was testing his Solenoid theory on the giant, the project's investors were quite impressed at the success of the project, and his funding was promised indefinitely if the quality of work persisted. He seldom spoke to his estranged family and his daughter was very depressed as a result, feeling that her father didn't care about her. She was cast away from his lab and wandered aimlessly around the base, her footfalls tapping on the metallic floor paneling. She walked drearily on until bumping into a technician and spilling his tools over the deck. She was bumped back by the impact and skittered across the railing, falling to her death. Darkness was at the back of her eyelids and she prayed for the bright light of heaven. Instead of heaven she found an angel, a male Adonis that leapt from the catwalk above and easily caught her in mid fall, landing with catlike precision on the floor. She was fourteen, an impressionable age, and latched onto the eighteen year old tech with the crush of a love-struck adolescent girl, not something he was unfamiliar with. "Are you alright?" He wasn't even breathing hard. "That's quite a fall, what were you doing in here anyway?" "I...I was just walking around, I guess." "Well, little girls like you shouldn't just be 'walking around' especially in here. You could've died, if I hadn't caught ya." He coiled his legs on the floor and shot up to the third story catwalk in a single leap. "Here ya go miss...?" "Katsuragi, Misato Katsuragi." She just sat in a chair dumbstruck by the feats of impossible strength that the boy had displayed. "My father is the leader of the expedition." "Oh! That's why you're here, I was wonderin' what a little girl like you was doing in the Arctic." He was grinning like a buffoon. "'Little girl?' I'll have you know I'm fourteen and a half! I can take care of myself!" She flashed an indignant scowl at the young man who was showing such impetuous indifference to her obvious superior intellect. "I'm already in high school, I'm one of the smartest kids in my class, how dare you call me a 'little girl!'" "Hey, you've got spunk huh? Well nice to meet ya Miss Katsuragi, I'm Ranma Saotome." She obviously wasn't impressed as she crossed her arms and lifted her nose in the air. "And what is your job here, Saotome-san?" "Just Ranma's fine." "Ranma it is." "I'm a technician for the computer's sensors. Dr. Katsuragi wants them checked every four hours so the temperature doesn't rise. I don't know, there's just something about this 'THING,'" he stuck a thumb back towards the creature, "that puts me on edge." Yes, what was Ranma Saotome, the greatest martial artist in the world, doing there? To answer that question one must look at his life and times. Life was difficult, the times were harsh for one Ranma Saotome, his 'friend' Nabiki Tendo offered him a chance to get away from the havoc of Nerima for awhile and he eagerly accepted. That was before he found out it would be in the Antarctic. As the martial artist grew up, he discovered a latent talent for computers and technology that astounded his teachers and friends. It was this unique ability that allowed him to attend the expedition in return for a passing grade in all his classes, a fair deal, right? Wrong. Ranma now felt the acute pangs of loneliness and boredom in the subterranean labs and longed for the feel of warm sun on his brow, little did he know that an act of God would take place soon and it would be these underground labs that saved his life. "Hey!" "Huh? What?" He was shaken from his daze. "You sorta spaced out there for awhile...I was worried." Misato also was angry with the young man for not noticing her, but she'd get over it, or more aptly, she'd 'forget about it.' "Nah, don't worry about it. It's nothing." He still had his doubts. "Well then Ranma...will you answer my question?" "What question?" Misato was pissed. It was bad enough he didn't look at her, but ignoring her as well? This called for serious measures. "The question I just asked you jerk!" She shoved him backwards. Ranma tumbled back along the catwalk. Yielding metal met his back and he fell against the railing, bending the surface far beyond its normal limits. The lance, it was the fateful mistake of mankind that would grant death to half of civilization. Second Impact, NERV, SEELE, Evangelion and Human instrumentality would flow from this moment that seemed to last forever. A fatal mistake in the wrong place at the wrong time and the first God of Man was loosed upon the world. Ranma saw a glow appear over the giant, a fierce aura of chaotic power and divine breath, and force it's way into every corner of the room; it blinded those around it for moments, the way a flashbulb does, then it rose in the air and freedom. Emergency alerts flashed through the base as the giant of light slowly lumbered across the sea of snow to it's original resting place, leaving the lance buried with the foolish lillums that sought to imprison it's divine power. Snow caved in, ice melted, rain fell as a total reversal of the norm occurred at the highest peak of the planet. Ranma awoke to find himself lodged between the twisted catwalk and the twisted lance. Reaching out with his ki, he empowered his arms to bend the steel cage around him and flee the base. The awful sound of metal bending screeched through the air and awoke other survivors. The lance refused to neither bend nor break, it simply was what it was and refused to be bent into any other shapes. Ranma spread his battle aura then and created an outline of indented metal where he lay, his ki forcing the metal down in a shape that reminded one of a snow angel. "Dr. Katsuragi! Your arm!" An assistant screamed from across the deck. "Leave me be! I have to save Misato!" The doctor's gruff tone pushed back the worried sea of technicians around him, splitting the proverbial Red Sea. Ranma wearily got to his feet and scuffed the debris from his feet. It was at that exact moment that the above ground crews were imploded by blasts of light ejected from the giant's eyes. Girders, glass windows, lab equipment, and other hazardous wreckage rained upon the helpless survivors and crushed many of those that were injured. Dr. Katsuragi's arm was stripped of it's remaining flesh by a falling tank of sulfuric acid, the corrosive fluid dripping away skin and muscle leaving bloodied bone behind. Even with irreparable damage to his own body, the doctor lifted his daughter and carried her out towards the underground escape pods, determined not to fail her again. Ranma had to give the guy some credit, he had guts. Turning back to the lance, Ranma observed that it was glowing strongly with a soft yellow light. It seemed to illuminate the room with its pale iridescence, a sickly color that seemed to emaciate the faces of those that survived. Tentatively, Ranma reached out to touch the aura and in a flash he was gone. --- The underground warehouses each held six life pods that fed off of six diesel generators, a back-up plan in case an experiment went wrong, in turn these pods would be shot through conduits until reaching the surface. Dr. Katsuragi's skeletal hand grabbed hold of a handle and yanked with all its might. It came off. The acid had burned away nerves as well as flesh so the good doctor felt no pain as the appendage left his body only to clutter the ground in so many pieces. He gazed lovingly at his daughter and regretted his decision of work over family, and silently hoping that this final act of fatherly love would erase the hurt feelings between them. A blast was heard from above. Adam was burrowing down now to make its new resting place, if the teams of technicians were successful then Adam would expel all its power and shrink to an embryonic stage when it used it's weapon. The power released would be enormous, a staggering death toll around the world! These thought whirled in the head of the doctor as he lay bleeding on the floor. Misato brought only one possession of her father's to the surface, his white cross necklace. He hoped it would bestow upon her more luck than him. His last thoughts were interrupted as the world was wiped clean. --- Ranma awoke slowly to a feeling of vertigo. His head swam. He realized with a sickening sight that he was floating in a field of white nothingness. Devoid of life, in this realm nothing could be seen save the blinding illumination at the center of it all. It paused, letting that sink into his charge. Ranma was worried now, when people took that tone he usually got another fiancˇe. There was no way he was going to die without a fight. Ranma was livid at this point, here he was talking to a God who just said he killed off half the human race! Could his day be any worse? he left his imagined hands resting on his imagined hips. The being of light gestured to Ranma with a sword of light. Ranma could feel the change take place, his body shifting and melding with the streams of light around him, growing. He ballooned out and faced the creature now at the same stature. A pause. He didn't particularly like to admit it.