Athena looked at him sympathetically, in a way, she understood his difficulty. The boy wanted to rebel, to chose something else, yet he actually wanted what they were trying to make him pick, just not for the same reason. "If this is what you want, kid, go ahead and do it. Just remember that you're doing it for you, not for them," the goddess whispered to him consolingly.
With a second, firmer nod, Ranma braced himself and stepped through the archetype. Only to have a child like voice, Skuld's, yell out unexpectedly from seemingly nowhere. "ERROR, ERROR! SYSTEM IS UNABLE TO OVERWRITE FILE! PLEASE REENTER DATA TO TRY AGAIN!" boomed Skuld's voice from everywhere and nowhere all at once.
Ranma looked positively terrified at the unexpected, and loud, message. Athena was also confused, Skuld had assured her that the Pocket dimension's OS would work without any major hitches. Yet Athena hadn't even gotten everyone properly processed yet and bugs were already showing up in the system. "Er, sorry about that, kid. This is the prototype version after all, I should have expected at least one or two bugs to be in the system. Please try it again," she told Ranma with a sheepish grin.
The boy nodded nervously, but bravely tried again like he'd been told. Stepping around the taller figure, Ranma tried entering his chosen archetype again. "ERROR, ERROR. STILL UNABLE TO OVERWRITE FILE DATA. ANALYZING . . . ANALYZING . . . PROBLEM ISOLATED, READ ONLY SUB-CODE DETECTED. CURRENT OS PARAMETERS UNABLE TO MODIFY IMAGE DATA ON CHARACTER FILE 'RANMA SAOTOME' AT THIS TIME. FULL ERROR REPORT AVAILABLE TO SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR, 'ATHENA', ONLY," announced Skuld's booming voice again, much to the gathered crowd's annoyance.
With an annoyed grunt, Athena pulled her laptop out sub-space and accessed the error report. There was a long line of code listed under the error report with a detailed explanation at the bottom. Apparently this Ranma person had encountered Jusenkyo, and had been changed by it. Unfortunately, Jusenkyo had been created through the use of the 'ultimate force' and as such was immune to random meddling, even from gods. Basically Athena needed permission for a class 1 unlimited overwrite, have the boy reincarnated, or direct intervention from the boss himself to fix this. However the last two were unlikely to happen this eon, while the first option would only seem that way...
...Except that Athena simply hated owing other gods and goddesses favours. Money ("root of all evil") did not exist in Heaven, naturally, but to keep things fair, reciprocal obligation was something enforced almost as severely as Contracts. Owing favours was like handing over a blank check, something she would not be comfortable doing with any of the Class Ones save perhaps Belldandy (and even she had her scary side; if Athena had to sit through one more of those fancy pansy tea parties...). Belldandy (like the considerable majority of Class Ones) was assigned to the Planet Earth Restoration Team anyway, and PERT members were being considered unavailable until further notice, which basically meant that everything that needed to be done to set the planet into a healing and regrowth cycle was all underway, which the preliminary timetable indicated would be at least a century... when PERT participants would finally be able to start a rotating cycle of time off (there was a LOT of work to be done there).
Athena sighed. If she didn't want to wait forever on this, she was going to have to find a solution to this herself. Okay, start with basics: Ranma's curse was bonded to his karma. In the normal reincarnation process, suffering under such a curse would be translated into positive karma for his next life. That, along with all the other crap the poor boy had been forced to deal with, would pretty much have bought Ranma's way into being born to a very nice, supportive and healthy family in his next life... or would have, before the world ended anyway. Since reincarnation was halted, the curse was still bonded to his karma, and being 'born' into Athena's little astral world didn't count as anything remotely like a proper reincarnation, as far as The System judged things.
Since Jyusenkyo curses mainly dealt with forcing forms and body shapes onto the person, Athena could not alter Ranma's form in any way (and in fact it was a pretty good bet that once --IF-- he got his new astral world body, the curse would return to operating as it had in Ranma's last life, changing him into a girl with cold water. Poor kid; he could really use a break, considering how much of his last life he'd spent being Fate's bitch). If Athena could not alter Ranma's form, she could not assign him an Azerothian race. If she could not give him a race, she could not assign him a class appropriate to said race. Without a race, Ranma could not really take part in the conflict or have a home city to access the resources of. Without a class, Ranma couldn't grow in any particular direction within the world.
Athena blinked as that last thought stuck with her. Any particular direction? What about multiple directions? Redesigning a new class just for Ranma would take months of planning, but if she could blend the existing classes together... It would break a good many of the rules and conventions of the world she'd designed, but they were her rules to break. Granted, it wasn't really going to be fair to the other souls, who would be forced to play by the rules, as it were... but really, after his last life, didn't Ranma deserve something of a break? She would have to set some limits and handicaps, so that his advantages didn't become too unfair, but the notion was workable. For starters, since he belonged to no specific class, she could easily deny Ranma any of the skills that each class began with, and higher ranked versions of those spells and skills would be impossible to acquire without their prerequisites. Mages, for example, began with a Fireball and Frost Armour spells; those would be two spells Ranma would never be able to learn, nor any of their higher ranks. Frostbolt, on the other hand, which mages learned from their trainers at level 4, would be available to Ranma if he wanted it. Any skill or spell learned from trainers could be Ranma's... if he could afford it. Training was a major expense for all classes, and the cost would prevent Ranma from learning all the skills and spells, or even a majority of them. He would, however, have his pick of what was within his price range. She supposed she should also completely throw out the whole Talents set-up for Ranma. "Jack of all trades, master of none" sounded like a good compromise (besides, 18 separate specialisation tracks was a bit much to dump on Ranma's plate, especially on top of the 9 class skillsets he was already going to have to choose from).
Now how to solve the race problem? Could she apply the same logic? Not one race but all? Well no, that wouldn't quite work out, but perhaps if he was considered as a unique race? And how would that race be regarded by the other groups? Would he be considered as a hostile to both factions? No, that would be very cruel indeed! How about a neutral? Yes, that would work. There were neutral groups to both factions in Azeroth, like the goblins, but those were populated entirely by NSCs (Non-Souled-Characters ^_^). She wouldn't make Ranma actually a goblin, or even associated with their cartels, but she could set him to be regarded as the same way. Not to mention, each souled character always retained the option of personally declaring war against such neutral groups, though Athena had doubted she'd see that happening often. Of course, considering the number of opponents Ranma had garnered in his last life, and that most of them were still around him, she would probably see more than a few individuals choosing to declare war on the 'Ranma Race' of 'Ranma Faction'. Other than that, Ranma would be free to come and go in all races cities, though he would have to work hard to gain enough of a reputation with any of them that they would give him discounts on goods and services. 'Note to self:' the goddess thought, 'set Ranma's two spoken languages to Orcish and Common. Not much point in being neutral to all sides if he can talk to neither.' Athena nodded approvingly to herself. If she was giving him one major advantage, there should be several minor disadvantages to balance it out. Granting Ranma a favour was fine, but she wasn't about to make his whole 'life' one big easy street.
Thinking she had her plan mostly worked out, with but a few details to iron out later, Athena turned back to where Ranma was patiently waiting (well, maybe not patiently, but at least silently. He didn't think it would be a good idea to start poking the Creating Deity of the entire new world he was presumably going to spend the next few million years on in the ribs, telling her to hurry it up). Athena pulled him aside, not wanting to cause any jealous demands for similar special treatment from the other souls, and outlined her plan to Ranma.
To Ranma, this all made fine sense. If he could equate these 'classes' with different schools of martial arts, then to take the best bits of every school to use as his own was the very embodiment of the Anything Goes philosophy. The principle tenets of which had been drilled into Ranma by his father since before he was old enough to understand the full meaning of the words.
He was not going to have any out-and-out enemies save those who personally chose to make one out of him? That was fine, he was pretty sure there'd be enough of those to keep him busy, and being chased by the population of an entire city was something he'd had more than enough of thanks to Happosai.
He could travel in any land and make friends with any group if he worked to earn their trust? Great! He had gotten quite comfortable living in the Tendou home (when the violence slowed down enough that he could) but he had never minded the open road, going to new places and meeting new people. Earning the trust and admiration of an entire race by doing these quest things (which Ranma understood as something between a one-time job or an errand)? He could do that easy, and it would be nice to impress a whole group of people instead of having a whole town not like him for things that weren't his fault.
He was going to be one of very few people in the whole world (and likely the only one of those who possessed human souls) able to speak the languages of both sides, which might lead to people of different factions seeking out his help to resolve conflicts or solve communication problems? Well... he wasn't sure that was something to get all excited about, honestly. He'd never had much desire to be a negotiator or a peacemaker (never had much skill at either, for that matter). Still, he supposed it was no bad thing.
All this and he got to combine the techniques of wildly different schools of combat together into a fighting style that was uniquely his own! Sign him up!
Grinning, Athena gave him one last reminder that even though he was going to look just as he had in his old life, he was not going to be considered human by any of the other races, or even the humans themselves. He was entirely unique. To this, Ranma merely grinned and replied he'd always been one-of-a-kind, which the laughing Athena was forced to concede to.
After a few more minutes working on her Asgardian Super Control Interface Implement (it looked to everyone else like a laptop computer, but Skuld had invented the things and wasn't tolerating anybody calling the ASCIIs anything but the name she'd picked for the admittedly useful things) Athena had arranged the necessary variables, and fashioned up a "Ranma Archetype" which created no conflict with his Jyusenkyo curse, and would allow him to interface with the world properly. She'd also set up other details like which stats would increase by how much when Ranma levelled up (she averaged all the classes together) and set the his Omni-class's usable armour types (Leather armour, with Mail available at level 40, and allowed him the use of shields, like Shamans) and weapons-use abilities (she let him have all types, including wands, since she knew he was going to be needing his money for skill training more than weapon training. Besides, if he intended to create his own combat system, he should have all the options). Convincing Ranma that fighting barehanded in the world she'd designed was NOT advised took some doing, but he eventually conceded that things might work differently in this world than the one he knew, and if Athena designed it, she would be the one to know. Only one decision remained, and it was not Athena's to make.
Where would you like to start out, Ranma?" She asked, waving at the line of race Archetypes. "Most races have their own start areas; little camps or villages suitable for tales of great heroes to have their humble beginnings in. Since you don’t belong to any of these races, and none are hostile to you, you can begin with any you like. Basically, who would you like to hang around with for the first little while, until you're stronger and experienced enough to travel to visit other peoples?"
Ranma looked thoughtfully at the line-up, then gave a weary, side-long glance at the gathered souls behind the felt rope. Quite a few of those he knew were leaning forward and straining their ethereal ears to catch where Ranma would be going. Obviously, none of them intended to let Ranma enjoy any peaceful solitude for a while until he decided to come look them up (if ever) for old times sake, or maybe even some new times. Some of those eager ones wanted to hurt him; some wanted to possess him, others wanted to control him. None of these were how Ranma really wanted to start out his exciting new life in a new world. He waved Athena to lean toward him, and whispered his choice into her ear.
Smirking (for she had noticed the troublemakers intentions as well) Athena nodded and wordlessly typed the start location into his new special 'race' profile. She then tossed him a simple staff for an initial weapon (one of the most basic martial arts weapons, so she assumed --correctly in fact-- that he was at least somewhat familiar with it) and waved him through the gate.
Pretending he couldn't hear the sudden demands of those behind him over the rushing air of the gate, Ranma entered his new life with an excited grin.
Athena silently wished him a happier life this time than he'd had last, and then called up the next applicant, a sulking if pretty girl of Chinese heritage with a lot of violet hair...
"ERROR, ERROR! SYSTEM IS UNABLE TO OVERWRITE FILE! PLEASE REENTER DATA TO TRY AGAIN!"
Athena just groaned.
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(Posted Fri, 05 May 2006 09:49)
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