Dies Irae

A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum - harnums@hotmail.com

All Ranma characters are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, first
published by Shogakukan in Japan and brought over to North
America by Viz Communications.

***

'And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power
was given unto him to scorch men with fire.'

___

     This is Tokyo.  See how she is fallen.  See how her towers
are reduced to twisted girders rimmed with blackened stone,
skeletons standing barren to the wind.  See how the dust blows 
through her streets, past shattered hulks of train cars and 
shards of glass strewn like fallen snow through the cracked 
streets.

     This is Tokyo.  In Tokyo, there is a place that was once
called Nerima, in the time a few hours ago when people could 
live in Tokyo.  Go there.  Walk through the streets, to a spot 
where once-white walls lie in ruins around the ruins of a house.  
Amongst those ruins, perhaps the eye will catch upon a spot of 
red, a tattered piece of colour clinging to the splintered and 
blackened bamboo of an umbrella, a vividness somehow surviving 
amidst the destruction.

     Even the wind seems dead here, lifeless and barren.  See how
the dust blows through the ruins of the house, and how the wind
tears free that scrap of red, that glistening scarlet piece, and
sends it tumbling with the swirling dust through empty streets.  
Everything in Tokyo is painted in shades of black.  Burned by 
fire.  The canals that ran through her are dry.  The waters in 
her harbour stand still and heavy.

     This is Tokyo.  See how she is fallen.
___

Report 67-B
R Division, China Observation Post, Shanghai
Observer C-42

The unknown entity was first noted on eastern edges of Qinghai 
province.  Reports are consistent.  Thousands in Xining described 
a winged man covered in fire.  Sightings of the UE coincide with 
the destruction by fire of most of the central section of Xining.  
The death toll of the Xining attack is estimated at this point at 
over one hundred thousand.

Chinese air forces moved to intercept.  UE is reported to have 
destroyed nearly sixty attack jets before retreat was called.  
Several surviving pilots claim to have struck UE with cannon fire 
or missiles.  UE escaped with minor or little damage.

UE headed roughly east at a speed estimated to be over six
hundred miles per hour.  Any settlements passed over were 
attacked.  Death toll for total activities of UE in China are
counted at one point five million, with another one million 
still unaccounted for.  UE passed out of Chinese airspace at 
roughly 600 hours GMT, and was last spotted at Qingdao after it
attacked the harbour.

[A few scribbled notes complete the document]

-Possible Chinese bio-experiment?

-ETE?
___

     There is an old woman who screams a name in her sleep, in a 
hospital in China.  Shrunken and impossibly ancient, blind and
crippled by the ravages of age, she still yet refuses to die.  
They take care of her there.  Her skin is only burn scars.  She 
has no ears or nose or eyes.  No one knows her name.  The medical 
teams found her in the burned ruins of a small village in western
Qinghai.  She was the only survivor of the attack.

     No one knows her name.  Some think it is the one she screams
in her sleep.  But it is not.  That is a god's name, and not 
hers.
___

Report 67-B     
R Division, Korea Observation Post, Seoul
Observer C-29

UE attacked Seoul at roughly 700 hours GMT.  Chinese warnings
were no help.  South Korean air forces attempted to bring UE
down off the western coast of the country.  Video footage clearly
shows UE being hit by missile.  Nothing is left after the
explosion.  UE rises into view again moments later.  Cannon
fire seems to wound it.  Wounds heals moments later.

It is not safe to go out of the bunker yet.  I can hear the city
burning overhead.  All radio, all television, all communication, 
is down.  Have lost all means of outside contact since 804 GMT.

___

     Once upon a time, there was a very brave young man.  He was
a great warrior, loved by many women, and friends to many other
great warriors.

     He had many adventures.  He won and lost many battles.  
Once, a god stole the soul of the one woman who he truly loved, 
and would not return it to her body unless the young man could 
defeat him in combat.

     The young man fought the god with the aid of a powerful
magic staff and the help of his friends.  The young man was 
brave and strong, but a god is a god, and a god can be stayed,
but he can never be defeated.

     But the young man stayed the god for a time, and took back
the soul of the woman he loved and returned it to her body.  They
went back across the ocean, to the land of their birth.  In time, 
they were married.
     
     The young man and his friends thought they had defeated the
god.  But they had not.  In time, the god returned, and his wrath
was great.

     First, he destroyed his servants, for they had failed him,
and a god does not tolerate failure.  Then he took flight on 
wings of fire across the ocean, for he was a god, and in the 
end, the gods are always revenged.  He went towards the young 
man's home, killing as he went.

     The god came upon the young man as he and his wife 
celebrated with their friends the anniversary of their wedding.
Perhaps he had known, somehow, for who can guess at the mind of a
god?

     The young men and his friends fought bravely, but they
fought a god, and while before the god had been made weak, now he
was full of the glory of flame, and no force upon the earth could
stay him now.  And the young man had no magic staff to help him 
this time.

     The young men and his friends were as strong as mortal men
and women might be, brave of heart, and full of the love of life 
and each other.  They fought with all the bravery and skill and
love that mortal man and woman might have, but they fought
against a god.  They died, in the end.  Not quickly or easily, 
and not without courage.  But still they died.

___

Report 67-B
Document X-11-Beta

<transcript of conversation between HQ and Observer C-38 at
roughly 830 hours GMT>

C-38:  This is observer C-38.  HQ, do you copy?

HQ:    Copy, C-38.

C-38:  Huey is destroying Tokyo.  I still have satellite 
       viewing, but that's all.  The city looks like a bomb hit
       it.  <pause>  Dear God in heaven, what is this thing?
       
HQ:    Wish we knew, C-38.

C-38:  They were hitting it with everything short of nukes at the
       start.  Then they just started trying to get people out.

HQ:    Are you evacuating, C-38?

C-38:  Safer down here than anywhere else.  I'll ride it out--

<at this point, the transmission ended.  UE is believed to have
destroyed the bunker>

___

     The scrap of crimson paper, varnished and stiffened,
tumbles through the streets until it is pinned against a blasted
brick wall.  Alerted by the soft noise, the huddled figure lying
against the wall raises his head.

     It is dark on the dead streets of Tokyo.  Clouds of dust 
were thrown so high into the air that they blotted out the sun.  
Tokyo has died in a little over an hour.  Her streets and 
buildings and alleys and houses and canals and streets were 
burned, first with the fire of a god, and then with the fire men 
made themselves from the heart of an atom.

     The missiles fell on Tokyo perhaps an hour after the 
attack began.  Most of the population of the city were dead by
then; the god had unleashed his fury upon them, and his flames 
swept through the city.  Some were not dead, though.  Some fled
the wrath of the god, or hid below the earth, or lay dying or
wounded.  Sacrifices had to be made, those who pressed the 
buttons said.  What the hand of the god had not destroyed, the 
hand of man did.  The nuclear fire rained through dead Tokyo 
once, twice, a dozen times, two dozen, blanketing the entire 
city in light.

     A hand picked up the ragged square of paper, and crimson 
eyes studied it neutrally.  A thin trail of smoke at first, a
blackening of one edge, and then the square of paper burst into
flame, and fell to ash.

     The god looked about idly.  The heat of the blasts had done
nothing to him, but the shockwaves had been enough to batter his
body apart.  He stretched his wings; golden, with the pinions
coloured like the arcing of a rainbow.  A single slow flap, and
the dust and ash stirred about him in a lazy circle.

     There had been silence on the earth about the space of half
an hour.  Around the world, they waited, to see if anything might
rise from the ruins of once-great Tokyo, if there would be sign 
of the god's return.  Men with their fingers on buttons, families 
crowded around televisions or radios, crowds huddled in the 
street.  The sign would be given now.  Unseen yet by the eye of 
mortal man, the god spread his wings, and rose, like the phoenix, 
from the ashes.  

___

'And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down
from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.'

***

Author's Notes:

This story resulted from the recent thread begun by Matthew
Lewis on the concepts of might and right.  A thanks goes to him
for his commentary on the earlier draft.

The first draft of this story was written to Beethoven's 'Missa
Solemnis'.  The revision was done to Leonard Cohen's album 'The
Future'.

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