Chapter one. Welcome to Tokyo-cit.
The weather Sat was malfunctioning again and a storm was lashing the metropolis. Not that the streets didn't need a wash but it was doing nothing for Officer Genma Saotome's mood.
This was Tokyo-Cit the biggest urban sprawl on the planet. It was home to nearly two billion citizens and still more nulls. The city was of course massively divided, rich from poor, those on the system from those who remained SIN-less. But now a new trend was making matters still worse, a resugence of feudalism. Genma was no saint that was true but what he saw from these self-proclaimed noble houses made him sick to the core. Already they were asserting their right to own labour, not just employ it in unfair terms but own it. Under the guise of re-awakening the Bushido code the so-called nobility were taking away man's last possession
Genma had been an officer of the Tokyo law for all his life, and had worked from one end of the city to the other. Sure he had taken a few bribes and misused his powers a little when it suited him but that was just the grease that kept the gears turning. And yes he had a wife and a child, despite the regs specifically banning such activity for an active officer. The way he saw it the rules were there to be bent and what he did was none of their business. Sure he had used some of that grease to put his boy into the best military academy in the city, and to make sure that he got the best instructors while he was there, but hey what was a parent to do.
So here he was on foot patrol through the streets and pedways of Nerima, chewing an illegal narcotic and quietly not noticing a few of the petty crimes that occurred every day in the poorer areas of the city. Little crimes like drug-dealing, extortion and prostitution. He stopped briefly at an okonoykami stand, got his 'free sample' and wandered on. Around him rose the tall con-apts of the district, vast self contained towers that housed thousands of souls. Each one contained everything from schools, clinics and gyms to offices and manufactories. Each was connected to the rest of the city by flight pads, roads, mag-lev trains and a vast array of plazas and walkways. Generally speaking the higher up the towers you got the more luxurious the facilities and habitations became. The flip side of that is that deep down near the heavily polluted City Bottom, the con-apts became lawless mazes of the dispossessed.
Even before the rise of the noble houses there were always people who the system simply pretended did not exist. Without a System Identification Number, SIN, such people were doomed to a life in the grey economy. They couldn't get jobs, own living space, register a car or get any form of government help. They had to rely on so called Ripper-Docs for their healthcare and criminals for almost everything else. Gangs and syndicates controlled most of the commerce and daily lives of the SINless. And the rest of society ignored them.
Today Genma was meeting an old friend, Tendo Soun. They had trained together and walked their beats together for years before Soun had left the force. The poor sap had fallen head over heels for one of the mid-level working girls and let her persuade him to do the honourable thing. His buddy had set up a happy little home and begun teaching defence classes to the proles. She had dropped three lovely little daughters which the two of them busily raising them to be model cits until Kimiko died. Soun fell to pieces and the three daughters were growing wilder and wilder as time went by. Of course before Genma saw his buddy he was just going to stop by a friend's place and have a quiet little chat.
"Ah Genma my man, good to see you," said a portly man sat behind the best table in the house. The two of them were in a fancy nightclub, still being cleaned up from the night before. Near the boss stood two heavy looking Yojimbo, genetically tailored bodyguards of unquestionable loyalty. "You've come for our monthly chat?"
"Yes please Higurasi-sama" Genma replied, eyes bright with greed.
"Have you got time to eat my friend?" the crimelord asked, and Genma was not stupid enough to demur. This was the way Higurasi asked Genma to do things for him, and was normally very lucrative indeed.
"Large things are on the wind" the boss started "the large operators are putting the squeeze on smaller families like mine. What I hear is that the official Yakuza are getting help, official help."
"I would like to help you Uncle," Genma apologised using the more familiar title, "but it seems that real lawmen like myself are out of favour these days."
"The wind is bowing and we must bend with it" said the boss, his voice sad. "I am sorry Genma, I had no choice." From behind the lawman came the sound of the door closing. Genma knew who it was before he even turned.
Two red and white armoured internal affairs officers stood there. They made no effort to hide either their noble alliegance or their willingnees to use force. "Officer Saotome Genma you are held over by Law!" came the voice of one of the armoured officers. "For the crimes of corruption and collusion with criminals you are under arrest."
And with that Genma's life crashed down. As he stood up he whispered, "Take care of Ranma." And then he was led away, only a swift trial standing between him and ignominious execution.
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A ten year-old Ranma watched the death of his father. It was broadcast on a large screen, compulsory viewing for all cadets. Only once before had Ranma even seen a man die, and that had been nothing like this.
The twenty foot high hologram of Saotome Genma apologised for his crimes and formally begged the forgiveness of the Emperor before cutting his own belly open and having his head chopped clean from his shoulders. No detail was spared, not his spilling guts and not his fountaining jugular vein.
Even at this age Ranma knew better than to show any emotion. The other cadets had already made it painfully clear to him that he was out of place here and that they would leap on any opportunity to see him gone. So the young cadet buried his feelings and kept his oath to himself.
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"How is young Saotome taking it?" Two men stood in an office overlooking the mess hall of the academy. Instructors at the Academy, they were old-school, both veterans of an overseas war, and both friends of the late Saotome Genma.
"Still don't think we should have let him keep the name." Said the second officer.
"It's a common enough name, nobody will be able to prove the connection," replied he first speaker, "but I was asking how he was handling it."
"Since the 'event' he has been working harder than ever. That schedule his father forced on him is lightweight by comparison. He's retreated even further away from the other cadets, to be honest I think its only a matter of time before one of them pushes him too far."
"Would that be a problem?"
"Only for the other one. I don't think I have ever seen anyone as capable as him even in the graduating years."
"He's that good?"
"Better, but there is more to it. He's taken on a nasty bent recently, been destroying his opponents rather than just beating them. He always stops just short of breaking the rules but it sure looks like he wants to go further."
"What are we going to do?"
"What can we do? We'll keep training him, try and get him out of the academy as much as possible and hope the kid doesn't kill himself training too hard."
"You called Nodoka?"
"Nope."
"and you don't intend to?"
"Anything that connects him to his father can only do him harm."
"So he loses his mother too?"
"Looks like it."
"May the Kami help us all."