“What is the hold-up, Katsuragi?” asked the woman with a brown page-boy haircut, glaring at the man across from her in the research shelter.
“We are moving as quickly as we dare,” said the man, swallowing harshly as he met with the person assigned to the group from his main investor. “You’ve seen those photos of Adam, I for one don’t want him active in any way, do you?” he said, hoping that he could make her see logic.
Nabiki Tendo, representative and board member of Kuno Enterprises—thanks to some material that shall remain hidden—glared back at him. “A giant of supposed light is nothing I fear, Katsuragi. I’ve been exposed to much weirder and more dangerous before I even entered college.”
“And you think that bodyguard you brought with you will save you, save us?” he asked, shocked at how callously she was treating their work.
Nabiki just sneered. “He’ll do what he’s paid to do.”
Said bodyguard blinked. “Wait; I’m getting paid? Since when?”
“Not now, Saotome,” she said before focusing back on the man before her. “Fine then, Katsuragi; take me to see our billion yen baby. I want to see what we need to be so cautious of.”
Sighing, the man shook his head. “Very well, this way then.” He tried to console himself with the fact that after witnessing it, anyone with common sense would either run away or ensure every bit of safety was used to keep the frozen giant sleeping.
Sadly, he had never met anyone from Nerima.
Ranma gazed at the giant before him, his mind going through several thoughts at once.
One immediately regretted getting talked into coming there to guard Nabiki. Seriously, did her father expect her to be held ransom by penguins with a militaristic agenda? Sure, he could understand squirrels as a fear—Akane never could go into a park after that without acting like him with cats. But it was Antarctica! What the hell would get her here?
Second was the fact that he was supposed to be getting paid! Oh yes, Nabiki was going to explain that … to his mother. He wasn’t going to risk it; he had wised up a few years ago. Let her face his mother, lest he find himself somehow owing her once again!
After you got into complaints of snow, penguins, more snow, and no real descent place to shower or practice, plus the crappy quality of the food, he came to what had just become his biggest problem: Adam.
When he observed the giant, he tried to open his senses like he did in a fight, letting them tell him things his other five would often miss.
Adam wasn’t dead. Oh no, the giant was sleeping, probably like those people in the sci-fi series, crypto-sleep or something like that. It had a power within it that quite frankly scared him, dwarfed his own power, and that was saying something. He could destroy a mountain, easily, had done so quite a few times.
This thing had enough power to probably crack the world. No, this was not something they should be playing with. He even told Nabiki such.
“Do I look like a fool, Saotome? Destroying the world is very bad for business. Besides, the bio-tech we can reverse-engineer from this thing is worth more than Kuno-baby’s family would ever make in their lifetimes. You think I am going to fuck up that amount of money because some of the Board is hoping for a quick profit?
He certainly hoped she would follow through on those thoughts. When he had gazed upon that thing buried in the ice under Mt Markham, he didn’t just feel awe.
He felt a fear far surpassing the fear of cats.
That told him all he needed to know about that thing.
The ground was shaking, the wind howling as the beast woke up. His breath was coming in pants, not even misting before him as the very air seemed to heat from the power of Adam.
He couldn’t save them, not the ones at ground zero of the beast’s awakening. Whatever that thing was doing was screaming at his senses, as if a live wire was striking out to them.
“If whoever did this isn’t dead, I’ll fix that!” screamed Nabiki as he raced with her across the fracturing ice field, trying to put as much distance between them and the insane power behind them.
If anyone asked later, he’d deny it, but he was seriously tempted to go back there and do just that.
But their luck wasn’t holding out. They had been on the wrong side of the excavation entrance to make it to the storage shed with the survival pods in them. And with Adam’s power growing into the heavens, he wasn’t about to risk that.
So he had been forced to make a desperate bid to cross the ice field, hoping to make it to a nearby peak and put faith in the ancient rock to provide some sort of buffer between them and the beast.
“Gendo!” she yelled as he carried her. “That rat bastard! He knew this was going to happen! That shit left yesterday for some damned important meeting! I knew he was making shit up!”
Oh yes, Ranma had a target to visit … assuming he survived the next few minutes.
The air was getting thicker, as if reality was preparing itself for something big. His mind could literally feel the power behind him growing, shifting, changing into some form he could barely comprehend. It felt like it was … focusing on the ambient chi in the world, drawing it in like a sinkhole.
It ate ambient chi quicker than he even thought possible! This was definitely a fear he felt was justified in surpassing the Nekoken.
He barely made it to the rocky crag of some nameless mountain, as the wind’s howl grew fiercer, almost like it was both trying to suck him back and blow him away, an oddity he put to his senses attuned to the ambient chi. The tail wind at least assisted him in getting up the mountain a bit, before his senses screamed at him once more.
It was too late.
So he did the only thing he could do, hoping it was enough. He released his tightly controlled aura, forcing it to try and protect him and Nabiki, as the power of Adam was unleashed.
This … is going to hurt.
And then everything went white.
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(Posted Sat, 05 Jul 2008 11:29)
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