About the only good thing Pluto could say about it was that this was really going to make certain menaces freak entirely out.
Especially as they were artificially built, almost born to an assembly line. Nodoka Saotome had grown up the daughter of a genius inventor, and you could trace her line back to someone who'd made a discovery of an Artifact.
That Artifact had been decoded, deciphered, and rebuilt. In the 1960s through the 1970s, persocoms had developed. First the Maid series, which had been sort of cold and impersonal and had the odd ears. Then, in 1977, had come the Usagi series. Realistic human emotions, a desire to make people happy, and some problems but marketed as "the only friend money can buy" - it sold MILLIONS. The cost came down over the years, and the upgrades were just as odd as its biomechanical construction, but the upgrades ensured that the model would still be popular decades later.
Then had come the Ami unit, built for intelligence and with excellent sensory capability. The often brash Rei units. The strong but feminine Makoto units. The loyal and sometimes comical Minako units.
Millenium Biomechanicals then introduced their first full combat unit, the Haruka series. Soldiers who could perform nearly as well as the real thing. The elegant Michiru units. The calm administrators of the Setsuna units. The cute and gentle nature of the Hotaru units.
More specialized units were eventually developed. Lillith and Morrigan and Nakoruru and Nuku Nuku and the others.
Setsuna looked further and determined that Ranma Saotome was still the son of Nodoka and Genma. It was just that Nodoka was a wealthy heiress and Genma had been a martial artist hired for teaching fighting skills to the original Maid series and then on to other units. The two had their son, and frequently fought and reconciled.
In this world, this life, Ranma was not a penniless martial artist. He was a fantastically, some would say obscenely, wealthy martial artist. He preferred to fight his own fights, but a snap of his fingers would see a private army at his beck and call.
He also had grown up with friends. As the heir to Millenium Biomechanicals, he had a prototype unit of each model for his personal use. Those who had personalities and the capacity for such had found a kind if sometimes slip-tongued Master in the guise of the young heir.
Which wasn't to say that there weren't problems with the setup. Many areas had a population implosion where the persocoms were owned. There were a few spurious lawsuits that couldn't prove anything but blamed the persocoms for this factor. When people didn't have facts, sometimes they made them up.
Ranma Saotome was now sixteen years old, and was about to discover:
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(Posted Thu, 09 Sep 2004 11:15)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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